#AScareADay - October Reading Challenge Days 18-20

Today we've got more vampire fiction, sapphic fiction, and domestic horror. Let's dive in!

Follow the challenge list: https://romancingthegothic.com/2025/09/21/the-scare-a-day-challenge-october-2025/

Read the posts on my website and on my Ko-Fi.

Intro/Outro Credits:

"Danse Macabre - Busy Strings" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hello and welcome back to Eldritch Girl. And

this is the next instalment of A Scare A Day,

which is based on the Romancing the Gothic challenge

list with a scary poem or spooky story all the

way through October. We're on to Day 18. Day

18 was The Canal by Everill Worrell. And this

was published first in 1927. There's... place

linked in the post on my website where you can

read and listen to it and you can also find the

full challenge list at Romancing the Gothic linked

in that post as well both on my website and on

my Ko -fi. And I honestly read this thinking

the first person narrator was a woman and this

was a deeply sapphic story. And I think that

just made it better. And I just want to think

about like a 1920s he, him, lesbian, dressed

up in dapper men's fashion, wandering about the

canal bank at night and meeting a vampire living

on a narrowboat. Like maybe in Tweed, like a

three -piece Tweed thing going on. And brogues

and like the 20s hair, like very slicked back

to the head with a side parting and a tie. Yeah,

imagine that. And I couldn't help but think of

the vampire girl as a character in a Jean Rollin

film as well. So those beautiful visuals. I really

like Pseudopod's summary at the end of the episode

that this is a story about the world ending and

an outbreak of vampires coming for humanity but

nobody has twigged that this is the situation

yet. And they do a very good version of the story

if you want to listen to it. So having read it

as a sapphic story and then realising that it's

actually a guy. I felt the need to write an aspect

of it, just to retell it as F/F. I think

the clues are there. Even though the narrator

is referred to as he, him, his by others, I think

that that can be explained by the clothes, the

style, the way certain clubs allowed for butchers

and transmascs to be he, him in those queer spaces

at the time, presentation, you know. Anyway,

I'd like to think of this as a... butch lesbian

story I wrote a little bit of it like rewrote

it as a sapphic thing but from first person perspective

so that's what I want you to picture this is

called the narrow boat I lie down and listen

on the other side of the creaking boards the

water is tar -pool still a slick sheet of undisturbed

shadow -glass reflecting dimly the polluted orange

of the city and the pale cheap coin of a lover's

moon i see nothing but wood poorly painted the

once jaunty colours of blue and yellow cracking

and peeling I lie in the smell of bilge and rot

as the narrow boat rests heavy in the water,

a floating coffin carrying the dead and undead

and me, the dying, holding us in place. I am

lying on my back and waiting to be kissed. I

longed for nothing but her red lips in the darkness

from the first. She drew me in with the blaze

of her eyes, cat -bright and brilliant, arresting

me in the path of my life and anchoring me there.

I could not go back to my life before I met her.

I cannot. I won't. Tonight she comes to me, velvet

-footed and soft, and tonight we shall see if

I am her victim or her lover. Does it matter?

There is scarcely a distinction between the two,

but I am willing for both, and waiting for both,

and wanting all of her. I took her pale hand

in the moonlight and promised to serve her. So

gallant, I know, so sincere, and my heart was

hers for ever. She is my goddess of the night

with diamond eyes, serpentine ringlets falling

over her delicate shoulders, capable of calcifying

my doubts and fears with a mere look, a single

breath upon my cheek. She is my lady of the water,

who needs no sword to cleave my breast in two,

and take my heart as hers. And now... She comes,

her mouth still hot and lurid from the lured

souls now decomposing in this lonely birth. I

lie in repose, composing my farewells in my head,

but I shall never say them to another living

soul, for I am no longer among the living. Now

she comes, and her lips drip cherries, her breath

sweet with all the things my nature craves and

calls for, all the excitements and freedoms of

the night. I have lived my miserable days only

for the sultry pulse of the nights where darkness

has been my true friend and the favoured time

of my dearest adventures and fellow adventuresses.

I am about to forego the wretchedness of the

cold daylight where the watchful eyes judge and

accuse, forever chaining me to their ruts and

grooves and their well -worn tracks of nonsensical

nothingness. I will embrace my love, whatever

she will do with me, and I will fly into my friend

the night. She is here. She has never looked

so beautiful, that face so sweet and sated, her

death's head visage now more human and humane.

She leans over me, and I see in her eyes the

hatred of all that binds me to the daylight,

and the love that will lead me into the embrace

of the dark. Her mouth hovers above mine. She

is warm with borrowed heat, basking against bodies

she has drained of their vitality, leaving the

fleshy shells for the crabs to make homes in.

I soak it up, that heat, that warmth, that vitality,

the essence of death, and discard the shell of

life which no longer fits me. We kiss. I drink

her in and she drains me. It is sharp and sacred,

this unholy kiss of peace. It is the peace of

the grave. I am hers, but she is mine, and we

are one now, together. I taste her on my tongue,

and she licks my life away, and we lie together

in the bobbing boat on the shadow -glass waters,

as the dark and sleeping city beyond remains

in ignorance of our love and squanders its dreams.

So there we go. That was my Suffolk Vampire narrowboat

story thing piece. I don't know. In response

to the canal by Everill Worrell. Day 19 for A

Scare a Day is The Tarn by Hugh Walpole. I enjoyed

this short story. I really loved the inevitability

of it. This one was first published in 1936.

From the first, you can see where the hatred

of the protagonist for the other character in

the story is going, and the descent as it spirals

into dark, watery oblivion. I really enjoy stories

about how people become consumed by their worst

selves, and I find these fascinating and chilling.

So for this one, I thought about the themes of

darkness, oblivion, inevitability, being consumed

by your negative emotions, your shadow side,

if you will. And I thought I'd share a piece

from Pagham on Sea set in the council estate

on the edge of town, which I don't think has

been published anywhere to date. This is maybe

a companion piece to The Sound of Darkness, which

has. And you can get that and the audio on this

podcast and the e -book can be found literally

anywhere. It's also part of an anthology published

by Red Cape Publishing called F is for Fear.

There is also an audiobook version of that collection

as well. So this is called A Dark Place of One's

Own. And I thought this one plays quite nicely

with the Tarn's themes. I don't know what I want

anymore, was what Kayleigh wished she had said,

instead of I don't want to be with you anymore.

But even if she'd said the first, Lou would have

heard the second. The only thing Kayleigh didn't

want was loneliness. But with Lou's departure,

that insidious companion had moved in, uninvited.

I don't think we can stay friends, Lou said.

I think I need time on my own. Except Lou was

never alone. Lou was a bright light in a gloomy

room, a warming, attractive glow, a beating heart

brimming with desires and wishes and dreams.

Cayley was a cold stove, an uninviting grotto

of silence and echoes and jealously kept secrets.

Open her up, and it was all disappointingly small

and hard and hollow. Lou's light never filled

those places of her with anything. It only showed

her how dark her shadows were. The first time

Kayleigh saw the face in the dark place was like

stepping down onto a stair that wasn't there,

the awful heart -lurch -stomach flip of glancing

into the garden and seeing something staring

back that shouldn't be there. Kayleigh had stopped,

frozen, her hand on the light switch. The features

weren't clear, but it looked exactly like a face.

Not a human face, not an animal, something else.

Something that shifted as she stared at it, something

made up of shadow and layers of absent light,

something that formed a mouth and two eyes that

didn't see so much as suck, pulling her in. Then

a breeze caught the buddleia and the face dissipated

in the brightening of that little corner, and

it didn't come back for a while. But it had seen

her. and she had seen it, and Cayley started

to come into the kitchen without the light on

in a perverse attempt to recreate that moment

just to feel something. The problem was that

she got used to it. The apparition, if that was

the right word, was the same every time, no body,

not that she could ever see, an illusion, a phenomenon,

a phantom, some trick of her eyes or reflection

from the glass creating a face in the dark. it

never moved she never saw it anywhere else only

in the dark place beyond her kitchen window and

since she saw it she stopped feeling so alone

walking home with loo they had always kept to

the lit streets Lou didn't look into the darkened

gardens. These were few and far between on the

estate anyway. Everyone had some kind of lights

at the front and back of their houses. Every

little side alley was lit with fairy lights or

solar lamps and all the kids had these glow -in

-the -dark things on the wheels of their bicycles.

Teens wore high -vis and glow -in -the -dark

clothes like it was a uniform. Tweens plastered

on UV makeup like they were going to raves just

to hang out under streetlights where it wouldn't

even show up. One or two still disappeared. Kayleigh

walked past their missing posters on her way

to the car when she couldn't find a place to

park on her street. Rumours flew. They had walked

into a dark place for a dare and hadn't come

out. Kayleigh knew about the dark places on the

estate. She had lived there for five years and

couldn't remember anyone telling her about them.

Perhaps nobody had. It didn't matter. Like everyone

else, Kayleigh just knew. Being told about it

would make it too real, too weird, and then she

would have to avoid the bearer of this unhinged

bollocks like the plague. Lou always tried to

be sensitive, always knew how to talk to people

in ways Kayleigh didn't. Lou got tired of correcting

her, tired of trying to make her see other sides

to things, and finally got tired of being tired.

And then she was gone. Kayleigh wasn't surprised.

She'd spent their whole relationship waiting

for Lou to leave, waiting for her to turn the

whole world into a dark place. Lou was the only

thing that made Kayleigh smile. Other people irritated

her, animals were a dirty annoyance, kids pissed

her off. Lou was a patch of sunshine that Kayleigh

had never felt before, warming her, thawing her,

but she'd clung to it jealously like a tourist,

staking a claim to a spot on a busy beach. Lou

was hers. And without Lou, she just snapped back

into cold, hard gloom, reverting into her old

shape like memory foam. Lou had left before all

her own light was snuffed out entirely, and in

doing so, stole all the sun from Kayleigh's world.

What a bitch. Stubbornness kept Kayleigh in the

house without her, clinging to the best place

she'd lived in for years, the kind of house she

desperately wanted as a kid. Like a lot of people

in Jubilee, Kayleigh was stuck there, although

in her case more through inertia than lack of

means. It was also that the darkness, and its

strange unspoken -of quality, suited her. She

had even created a dark place of her own. Turning

out the light in the kitchen, Kayleigh stood facing

it, her own dark place. She had made sure this

was the only room in the house that did not overlook

a source of light. The streets were lined with

glaring LEDs, and almost all the neighbours had

twinkly lights in the gardens. Hers did not.

Lou had liked them, so Kayleigh had pulled them

all out after she left, and threw them away in

a moment of sheer perversity, creating the dark

place on purpose out of somewhere that had been

safe and bright and cheery. She didn't know why.

Her chipper neighbours had asked. She had said

something rude to shut them up and hadn't spoken

to them since. Where the bedroom window above

was high enough to look over the wall and catch

the light pollution of the brightly lit council

estate, the kitchen was overshadowed by some

out -of -control buddleia bushes that created

a near -impenetrable scream. It was her dark

place, her spot to control, and she could kill

it with light whenever she wanted. But for now,

it existed because she allowed it to exist. That

made her feel something, even if the face's appearance

no longer made her stomach flip. Sometimes it

even made her smile. Kayleigh stood in her pyjamas,

bare feet planted squarely on the linoleum, and

waited for the face to form. It wasn't a human

face. The features were never clear, but they

were obviously features. While Lou was there,

even when the garden lights failed, as they did

occasionally, the darkness had no face. Not that

she'd ever noticed. There had been other things

to think about, to talk about, to laugh about,

and now Lou was gone and it was just Kayleigh

in her empty kitchen. There was nothing to distract

her from the dark beyond the glass. Kayleigh

looked into the dark, counting to ten with her

hand on the light switch, and waited for the

dark to look back. One. the garden was silent

the faint traffic noise didn't disturb her the

darkness almost had its own sound or at least

created its own quality to the air but cayley

wasn't good at listening lou had grown tired

of that too two the window reflected some of

the kitchen back even with the door closed Was

it really a face, or just a distorted bowl, or

something reflecting off the kettle into the

glass, distortions on distortions? She had moved

everything out of sight this time, put everything

away, nothing rounded or oval or square. Her

counter was clear. She had checked the garden

in daylight and tried to make a face out of the

branches of the bush, but without success. Three.

It was there. She could have sworn she hadn't

blinked. A fluid shape of shadow had gathered

in a pattern. A mouth, oval, open, and two eyes,

also oval, also open. The edges blurred into

the night. There was no body, nothing else, but

three holes in the dark that stared into her.

Four. It didn't make her heart race like before.

It was always the same. It had become an experiment,

some puzzle that had lost its mystique despite

still being a mystery. She had almost convinced

herself it was not the same thing that made the

hairs stand up on the back of her neck when she

got out of the car at night, not the same thing

that waited on the edges of the brightly lit

streets, not the same thing that made her want

to run all the way home when she got off the

train. This could not be the thing that stalked

the estate in the dark, triggering the fight

-or -flight instinct, the primordial part of

her brain. This was just some illusion that appeared

in her kitchen window, something she controlled.

Five. Kayleigh took her hand away from the switch

and came closer to the pane. She could still

dart back and hit the switch if she got freaked

out. The face in the dark place did not move.

She stepped sideways, trying to see it from another

angle, but it was static. She didn't know anything

about refraction or reflection, but surely if

it was something weird with the glass, it would

look different if she moved around. It did not.

Almost as if someone was standing there, someone

made of shadow with a face full of holes. There

was an arm's length between her and the window

now. If she reached out, she could touch the

glass. What if she opened it? Something rebelled

in her, and she pulled her hovering hand back.

She looked back at the dark place, and couldn't

see the face any more. Her movements had disturbed

it, broken the effect. Disappointing. Her gaze

slid out to the lawn, and her stomach lurched.

It was there. It was directly in front of her,

the holes in the darkness swallowing up the pale

outlines of her own eyes and mouth, so her own

reflection had neither. She jerked back, reflection

briefly restored, and the shape outside remained

still. Cayley lost count. It was time to turn

the light on. She darted for the switch, and

there was a pop and a bang. The flash of light

came and went. And Kayleigh didn't see what happened

to the face in that moment, but stood clutching

her neck, pulse battering her throat. Lou had

always changed the light bulbs. Lights, spiders

and crochet, that was Lou's domain. Kayleigh

fixed things and broke things. Lou said there

was nothing Kayleigh broke that couldn't be mended,

and Kayleigh hoped she was right. She had certainly

broken something in Lou, or Lou wouldn't have

left. Power cut. Even the streetlights were out.

The whole street had become a dark place. Kayleigh

looked back at the window where her reflection

ghosted pale against the deeper darkness beyond.

Two holes of solid darkness stole her eyes. It

was there, growing solid, pressing against the

pane and obliterating everything beyond it. There

was no garden now. There was only darkness. Kayleigh's

eyes had already adjusted, but the drawers still

eluded her. She fumbled around for the handles,

groping for the emergency matches. She had never

kept emergency matches before moving here, and

nobody had told her to do it. But it was like

the urge to stay in the light, an instinct born

of some primal panic. Except she wasn't panicking.

She should be. Her hands were clammy, for sure.

Her heart pounded. But it wasn't panic. Was this

excitement? She had butterflies, like the moment

Lou had texted her back, the moment before their

first date, the moment Lou had cracked a stupid

joke and Kayleigh had actually smiled. There

was something out there and it had no name but

it was looking at her. She had made it somehow

or conjured it but either way she had created

space for it and it had come. It was here. Still,

she fumbled for the matches to remind it that

she still held the power, that she still controlled

the light. The first match snapped in half. The

second wouldn't strike. The third flared and

Kayleigh raised it to see herself in the window

to assert herself over the thing in the garden,

but it wasn't there. It could be anywhere. Her

whole house beyond the tiny flame was a dark

place. The match flame ate up the bare inch of

wood until she dropped it on the floor and it

died on the tiles. Kayleigh struck another and

it snapped almost through, lighting up but hanging

by a splinter. It was pathetic. A pathetic tiny

light for a pathetic woman in her pyjamas going

to bed alone and waking up alone in an empty

house because she couldn't love someone without

smothering the life out of them. The urban legend

of the estate rang in her mind like a mantra,

a warning. If you go into the dark places, you

never come out. She put the matches down, closed

her eyes, blew the flame out and stood barefoot

in the dark. When she opened them, the darkness

filled her empty kitchen. Empty except... Except

she wasn't alone anymore. She felt it rather

than saw it. She couldn't see anything, but there

was a solidity to the air and a sound she had

never heard before, or had heard but never listened

to. It was beneath her breath, behind her heartbeat,

another breath that was not hers. She was sure

that in other places darkness never sounded like

that. It breathed around her, a whisper brushing

her ear. It didn't care who she was. She was

an irrelevance to it, just something else to

cast a shadow, something for it to surround,

to envelop, to flow through, to consume. Kayleigh

opened her eyes as wide as they would go, straining

to see, and opened her mouth as far as her jaw

would reach, as much as her lips would stretch,

wider, wider, wider, into a smile that became

a grimace, that became a rictus of desperate

invitation to something, anything that would

change her that she could keep forever. She turned

her mouth into an oval hole, pupils dilating

to let in the dark, and it rushed in to fill

her. Her mouth stretched in a parody of a smile.

She was darkness, and to darkness she belonged,

and now she could finally find her place. Her

lifeless body hit the floor, the stretched rictus

of her lips gaping up at the ceiling, eyes open

and staring, staring, staring into the heart

of all the dark places. Yeah, there we go. I'm

going to redo that one. There's bits of it that

I think don't work very well. There's bits I

could rewrite. I'm going to fix the pacing a

bit. But that's kind of like a first draft version

of that. I think I will tidy that up and look

at maybe doing something else with that. I think

it works to go with The Sound of Darkness. So,

yeah, there we go. A dark place of one's own.

Day 20, moving on, is Three Miles Up by Elizabeth

Jane Howard, published in 1951. There was a 1995

TV adaptation of this story for BBC's Ghosts

series, which is on YouTube, and I've linked

that in my post on this, both on Ko -fi and in

my website post. There's a lot going on in this

one. I think I should read it a few more times

to get a feel of all the layers of it. Basically,

the story is two friends. They're on a canal

boat. Again, it's another canal one. One of them

has had a nervous breakdown. The other friend

is tagging along to accompany him. In the BBC

Ghosts TV version, they're brothers and their

mother has just died. So that's kind of like

a very different feel to it, a little bit different

dynamic. and they meet a girl called Sandra and

she's just kind of sleeping rough on the side

of the canal towpath I think or camping doesn't

really have much going on and they invite her

onto the boat and she just kind of tags along

with them and nobody really knows who she is

she's quite mysterious and As they start going

along the canal, things seem to change. They're

meant to get to a village at one point and the

village just doesn't appear. It's just not there.

A young boy is on the side of the canal. He screams

when he sees Sandra and runs away. So obviously

what he's seeing is not the same as what the

two friends are seeing. And then there's just

this really weird, creepy moment where every

time they ask where the village is or where this

person lives that they're talking to, they just

say, oh, three miles up, which is the title.

And they keep going, but there's nothing there.

And eventually the canal just opens out into

this expanse of water. And there is nothing,

just water. And there is nobody on the boat with

them. And Sandra has completely disappeared.

And it's really creepy. I really like it. It

gave me the Willows vibes in places, that Algernon

Blackwood story, just for the water and the two

male friends travelling down. and just something

very mysterious going on. It also reminded me

a bit of the miniseries The River, which came

out in 2012, which was a USA -made supernatural

found footage horror series about the experiences

of a boat's crew travelling down the Amazon,

where very similar sorts of mysterious geography

-twisting things occur. So yeah, it definitely

left me wanting to know more about Sandra, who's

weirdly like this perfect domestic goddess who

just starts cooking for them and stuff. And like,

is she real? Is she a spirit of the water? Is

she a ghostly hitchhiker drawing them into her

world? I don't know. I love the way that things

start to blur and fade and how known landmarks

like the village simply aren't there anymore.

So when I was thinking about how I was going

to use this as a prompt. It took me a little

while to think about it because I really liked

it and I wondered what aspects I could play with

myself based on this story. I thought about the

ending the most and the endless expanse of water.

It made me think of like those North Sea videos.

I don't know if you've seen them on TikTok or

YouTube where a sailor is dwarfed by a gigantic

wave that builds up and then there's nothing

beyond it except more grey waves. Like very much

that vibe for me. It also made me think about

a scene in KJ Charles. 1920s set paranormal MM

romance novel Spectred Isle where the two male

emcees get stuck in a similar way but on a road

that goes on forever kind of get stuck in a bit

of a loop that was quite a cool moment and like

yeah so Actually, with those themes in mind,

I'd like to introduce you to my story Along the

Xylophone Road, which is being published in the

anthology Occupying Bodies later this month on

Halloween itself by Black Hair Press, who are

an independent small Australian press. So my

story in the Occupying Bodies collection is called

Along the Xylophone Road. It's about a decaying

revenant making its way slowly along these endless

train tracks in a desert on its way to where

its long distance partner lives. And they never

got to meet up in person before the end of the

world. And now the revenant is dragging itself

along the sleepers to the person who in life

felt like home. And it's deeply sad. It's a little

bit sinister. And I think this story, with its

never -ending journey, the strange sense of loss

and haunting, travelling companion who's not

really there because I tell the story in second

person, is a good one to pair with the spooky

story today. And I also like the juxtaposition

of the canal in Howard's story with the desert

in mind. So I think I'm just going to do a little

quote from it because Black Hair Press have the

rights to this for a year and then I will...

Maybe do something else with it. But this is

my story and how it starts. I stare down the

length of the xylophone road, the one that looks

like my ribs and plays the hollow song of civilization,

its slats extending into the shimmering horizon.

The rails glare in the harsh light that slows

me down. My bones ache. The world looks different

under the dusty rose of the sun, a bloodshot

eye in the sepia heights. I look for you, but

you aren't there. I know that. We never spent

a single day together in person before the world

fell apart, but I look for you every morning

as if the space between us were as thin as the

breath I could no longer take without pain. You

were never there. But this morning, as I pull

my shattered body up into another lurching start,

I look for you anyway. Even as the infection

took me, I spent my last moments in front of

the blinking screen in my room, reading your

address over and over until it became an earworm,

embedded inside me like a snatch of percussive

song. If there was to be nothing left of me,

I hoped there would be something left of you.

And now you are still too far. So I drag myself

along the xylophone road, following the metal

rails into the distance. I don't know my name

or what other people used to call me, but I know

where you live. I know where you live and I am

coming. And you can get Occupying Bodies now

on pre -order, but you can also wait and it is

being released on the 31st of October. Perfect

body horror collection for Halloween. So I'm

going to leave it there for now. I know this

is a shorter one. But we're catching up to the

posts as they go out every day. So yeah, the

next episode is going to come out on Friday.

I'm trying to do three times a week. So we're

going to get into the shorter episodes now. But

yeah, I hope you enjoyed that. And I hope that

you will. Have a look and check out Occupying

Bodies. I also, by the way, have a flash fic,

very short microfiction piece in another of Black

Hare Press's anthologies. That anthology is called

Alone. It's a Katie Porter themed flash fic for

that theme. And that is out now. That came out

in September. So you can also grab that with

other little bits and pieces that people have

written on that theme with an image prompt. And

yeah, some of them are great. They're so creepy,

so well done. I think it's really worth a read.

And that's e -book only, but wherever e -books

are sold. And that is Alone by Black Hare Press.

Anyway, I shall catch you on Friday. Have a lovely

week. Stay scary. Bye for now.