Dive into a surreal urban horror novel by Matthew M. Bartlett with The Obsecration. Bear witness to the resurrection of Abrecan Geist.

Leeds, Massachusetts. The patrons of the Look Diner await their meals, drawn by something greater than hunger, something stronger than the need for shelter from the oppressive heat and humidity of summer. Waitresses hustle. Cooks sharpen knives and light burners, giving birth to blue blossoms of flame. Something is stirring in the greased air sliced by whirling ceiling fans. You and I, we have a corner booth. A front row seat.

LEEDS, MASSACHUSETTS

In Leeds, the name Abrecan Geist evokes dangerous magic, unspeakable blasphemies, and black rites in the basement of Anne Gare's notorious book shop. Outsized rumors surround him. That he lived a full three hundred fifty-eight years, dying in 1982 and taking to the casket the cadaver of what appeared to be a sixty-year-old man. That he and his coven, the Hilltown Ten, were responsible for the notorious priest murders and disappearances of the early 1980s. That he could bend reality to suit his will. And in his later years, his dreams took over, warping reality even as he slept.

Something is going to happen tonight, here, in the Look Diner. Something devilish. Something unnatural. All will play a part. You and I? Though we are but observers, we may not live through the night. But we will see something no one has ever seen before. It might be starting soon. Yes... the lights are flickering. The ceiling tiles are bulging like brown-stained bellies. The yolks of the eggs on my plate are filling with blood, and my water is boiling in my glass. Don't look away. Don't even blink.

What does all this have to do with our favorite occultist, leader of the Hilltown Ten, dreamer, diarist, monster? Sit tight. Soon all will be revealed.

PRAISE FOR THE AUTHOR

"Matthew M. Bartlett is the mad prince of weird fiction. Welcome to Leeds." (Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and The Cabin at the End of the World)

"Not all writers are storytellers, but Matthew M. Bartlett sure is. The Obsecration will draw you in with its first unsettling sentence and hold you rapt and breathless until its last unnerving image." (Molly Tanzer, author of Creatures of Will and Temper and Vermilion)

"Bartlett writes like a man in the grip of a vision, when he writes like a man at all and not just a pile of worms in a man-shaped suit." (Orrin Grey, author of How to See Ghosts & Other Figments)

"A new book by Matthew M. Bartlett is always cause for celebration. [...] He's a species all his own, brilliant and terrifying and unique, and when the cartographers of the Weird map the horror-lit scene of the twenty-first century, Matthew M. Bartlett's work will stand alone." (Polly Schattel, author of Shadowdays and The Occultists)

"In Matthew M. Bartlett's splendid The Obsecration, the apocalypse comes to the town of Leeds, Massachusetts. All of the ingredients of a 1980s-style horror blockbuster are here: a small-town setting, multiple points of view, a cast of outsiders, a sinister henchman, a malevolent villain whose return threatens the end of everything. Bartlett boils them down to a thick broth of Grand Guignol gore, psychological disintegration, and cosmic nihilism. Familiar elements of his fiction—WXXT, malevolent corporations, ventriloquist's dummies, those awful flying leeches—swim in the mix, together with new disturbances. Hieronymus Bosch, Lucio Fulci, Thomas Ligotti, and Stephen King are just some of the apostles...