The Anechoic Chamber and Other Weird Tales
The Anechoic Chamber and Other Weird Tales
An anechoic chamber is a soundproofed room with no echo. The profound silence it produces is disturbing enough. But listen carefully and you’ll hear something worse … In this new collection of uncanny short stories, award-winning author Will Wiles finds sinister creatures and subtle nightmares in mundane modern environments and bureaucracy.
A cursed NHS file brings doom to whoever handles it. A memory-foam mattress breaks down the walls of sleep. A marketing executive for a property developer turns to the occult. And horror seeps from the most unexpected places: eBay purchases, boxes of holiday photographs, and the hidden corners of the smart TV menu.
While mostly modern in setting, this is a collection steeped in the tradition of the weird tale and the ghost story, and includes homages to the greats of the previous century: a doomed Edwardian antiquarian is drawn into a murderous plot involving a Roman mosaic, and river boatmen uncover eldritch terror in a deserted mining town.
You’ll never look at some things the same way again.
Reviews
There aren't many writers out there as entertaining as Will Wiles. He has a real gift for manoeuvring between the quotidian and the truly sinister, often within a single page. These brilliantly executed stories offer delicious bite-size portions of his unsettling wit and eye for the killer detail (sometimes literally). Funny, chilling, intriguing: each tale offers something different from the last, and the overall result is like listening to a perfectly made album.
Will Wiles brings his usual sharp eye and flair for the unexpected to a series of more classically weird tales, all packaged up in a lovely little volume that fits in your pocket. A delight.
Welcome to the off-kilter neighbourhoods in Will Wiles’ weird world, where warnings are ignored and sage advice goes unheeded, with dire consequences for his increasingly frightened characters in these nimble, shivery stories.
