The Shadows We Cast: Tales of the Uncanny

By S.B. Fates

Dive into a labyrinth of terror, wonder, and the unknown with "The Shadows We Cast: Tales of the Uncanny." This gripping anthology features twelve spellbinding stories, each one a journey into the dark corners of the human psyche and the mysteries of the universe. Crafted with chilling prose and haunting themes, this one-of-a-kind collection weaves together multiple genres—horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, crime, science fiction, and fantasy—into a tapestry of dread and fascination.

 

Discover unforgettable tales such as "In The Room Where Silence Grows," where a journalist stumbles into a room that reveals the darkest fears of anyone who enters. Uncover "The Oracle's Crime," set in a world where magic is outlawed but essential to solving a prophesied murder. Experience the unraveling of time in "ChronoVirus," and hear whispers from the beyond in "The Whispering Gallery."

 

From the eerie piano of "Moonlit Sonata" to the unsettling void of "The Memory Eater," each story pushes the boundaries of genre and beckons you to question the very nature of reality. As you traverse through different dimensions, realities, and emotional landscapes, you will come to an inescapable conclusion: we all cast shadows, whether seen or unseen, in the worlds we inhabit.

 

Unsettling, thought-provoking, and utterly captivating, "The Shadows We Cast" is an anthology for those who dare to confront their deepest fears. As the stories interlace, sharing characters, themes, and sometimes even dimensions, one thing becomes clear—you may escape this book, but its shadows will stay with you forever.

 

Click "Buy Now" to begin your journey into the unknown—if you dare.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sean Benoit
• Release date: Sep 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223745129

S.B. Fates

Sean Benoit, writing under the pen name S.B. Fates, is a masterful author specializing in the realm of dark fiction. His unique literary style seamlessly weaves together elements of horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, crime, science fiction, and fantasy, creating stories that not only captivate but also challenge the conventional boundaries of these genres. His works are renowned for their complex narratives, richly developed characters, and the ability to transport readers into worlds where the mysterious and the ordinary intertwine. In addition to his literary pursuits, Sean harbors a deep passion for drawing and comic books, engaging in these activities as personal hobbies. This artistic inclination, while separate from his writing, enriches his creative perspective and contributes to the depth and imagination evident in his storytelling. Known as S.B. Fates in the literary world, Sean stands out for his ability to blend a diverse range of elements into his narratives, making him a distinctive voice in the genre of dark fiction. His dedication to exploring and redefining the limits of genre fiction has cemented his status as a notable author in his field.

Book preview

Prelude by S.B. Fates

Welcome, dear reader , to the labyrinth of the human psyche—illuminated by fear, darkened by mystery, and unfathomable even to those who dare explore its depths. The Shadows We Cast: Tales of the Uncanny is an anthology that does just that. It peels back the veneer of normality to reveal the uncanny worlds that dwell just beneath the surface, each one reflecting our most primal fears and hidden desires.

In these pages, you will traverse landscapes of crime and magic, where the possible and the impossible meet in an eternal dance of chance and fate. You'll walk through dimensions where time spirals into chaos, where reality is but a simulation too compelling to escape, and where forgotten myths awake from their eternal slumber to haunt the modern mind.

Some stories you'll find hauntingly familiar, like the cautionary tale of In The Room Where Silence Grows, revealing the depths to which curiosity can lead us astray. Others will challenge the very fabric of your understanding of justice, like The Oracle's Crime, setting its stage in a world where magic is a sin yet holds the key to unspeakable truths.

You will grapple with the implacable forces of destiny in Moonlit Sonata, discover the perils of knowledge in The Librarian's Ledger, and come face to face with your own darkest reflections in The Whispering Gallery.

Each tale is a thread in a greater tapestry, woven from the fibers of varied genres—horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, crime, science fiction, and fantasy—all stitched together with the needle of human emotion and intellectual curiosity. Together, they form a pattern complex and beautiful, yet frightening in its scope.

So, as you turn the pages, remember this: the stories we tell ourselves shape the world we see, but in the shadows we cast linger the truths we dare not speak. Take a step into the dark, if you dare. For, after all, how can one truly know the light without first knowing its absence?

S.B. Fates

In The Room Where Silence Grows

Lena Montgomery sat at her desk, flipping through the local newspapers she had subscribed to for just this purpose—finding stories that hid beneath the mundane, stories begging for a closer look. As her eyes scanned the headlines, they caught an odd snippet in a small New England gazette: Another Disappearance Linked to Town's Cursed Room.

She read the article twice, absorbing each sentence. A young man had ventured into an abandoned building and never came out. Locals swore the room he'd entered was cursed, a place where people disappeared without a trace. The article was filled with quotes from residents that ranged from cryptic warnings to desperate pleas to seal the building for good. Lena felt the thrill of curiosity that always preceded her best stories.

This is it, she murmured to herself.

Her fingers danced over her laptop, booking a last-minute flight and accommodation. Lena packed her bags with the essentials: notepads, various recording devices, a camera, and of course, a pen that had been through more adventures than most people. She looked at her reflection in the mirror, seeing the spark in her eyes that came alive when a story beckoned.

After landing, Lena rented a car and drove to the sleepy town, where mist hung heavy over aging colonial houses. She could feel the weight of eyes watching her as she passed—strangers didn't go unnoticed here. Checking into her hotel, she set her investigative gear on the desk and took a deep breath. There was work to do.

She decided to start her investigation that evening, under the cover of darkness. Wearing a dark hoodie and jeans, Lena visited the local tavern hoping to hear more about the mysterious room.

You ought to stay away from that place, said the bartender when she brought it up. He was a middle-aged man with a stern face that looked as though it had never known a smile.

Why? What is it about that room? Lena prodded, her recorder discreetly capturing every word.

Nothin' but sorrow comes from there, he mumbled, avoiding eye contact as he wiped a glass clean.

Sorrow. It was a term echoed by the few patrons willing to talk to her. They told her tales of people going into the room and simply vanishing, as if swallowed by the darkness. Some said it was cursed by witches, others claimed a malevolent entity resided there, feeding on souls. The stories were varied but the conclusion was always the same: stay away.

But staying away was not in Lena Montgomery's nature. These warnings only fueled her determination, for she sensed a story here that was far bigger than whispers and legends.

As she left the tavern, she felt both the weight of the town's fears and the electric charge of a challenge she couldn't resist. Lena returned to her hotel, where she laid out her investigative gear and prepared for the following day. Tomorrow, she would venture into the room where silence grows, armed with her wit, her pen, and a pocketful of recording devices.

Lena closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. There was no turning back now. She was stepping into the unknown, a place where legends and reality converged. The journalist in her was skeptical, but the human in her was afraid, and excited. And so, armed with the cautionary tales of a reluctant town, Lena prepared to confront the silence.

The town's reluctant hush couldn't be overlooked. Lena sensed it the moment she stepped out of her hotel room the following morning. Her questioning the previous night had put people on edge; their eyes seemed to follow her with a mixture of curiosity and concern. As she strolled through the center of town, Lena approached a woman watering flowers outside her quaint, colonial home.

Excuse me, ma'am. I was hoping to talk to you about the room in the old building at the edge of town, Lena began, notepad and pen in hand.

The woman dropped the hose, water splattering her shoes, and looked up with a furrowed brow. Why would you want to know about that accursed place?

I'm a journalist. I specialize in investigating unexplained phenomena. Can you tell me anything? Lena asked, her pen poised above her notepad.

The woman glanced around nervously, as if expecting some unseen force to punish her for speaking. Finally, she muttered, All you need to know is that no good can come from going there. Those who walk into the darkness... never return.

Cryptic, to be sure, but enough to galvanize Lena's resolve. She thanked the woman and continued her journey towards the edge of town where the building, a decaying monument to better days, loomed like an ancient sentinel. The windows were boarded up, and ivy snaked its way up the crumbling walls. Lena felt a shiver crawl down her spine, not from fear, but anticipation.

She reached into her bag, pulling out a voice recorder, her camera, and a flashlight. Taking a deep breath, she pried open the heavy front door, its hinges groaning in protest. The interior was shrouded in darkness, a black so complete it seemed to swallow the beam of her flashlight. Lena walked cautiously, her senses on high alert.

After navigating through a labyrinth of hallways, Lena found it—the room. The door stood ajar, an impenetrable darkness seeping out. She hit record on her voice recorder and said, This is Lena Montgomery, about to enter the room where local legends say people vanish, never to be seen again.

With her heart pounding, Lena pushed the door open. It was just a room—empty and dark, with peeling wallpaper and a damp, musty smell. She laughed nervously, almost disappointed. Local superstitions, all folklore, she said into the recorder, her words echoing strangely back at her.

But the moment she stepped inside, the door slammed shut behind her. Lena spun around, flashlight quivering in her hand, and tried the handle. It wouldn't budge.

A cold draft brushed past her, and she felt the air thicken, as though it were filling with unseen particles. She turned back to the room and her flashlight flickered. For a split second, the room was pitch black, and in that instant, Lena felt a sudden, overwhelming dread.

The flashlight flickered back on, but the room had changed. No longer empty, it was now filled with shadowy forms, shifting and undulating in the corners of her vision. Lena felt her stomach drop, as she realized the folklore might be something far more sinister.

Taking a shaky breath, Lena knew that dismissing local beliefs had been a mistake. She was now a part of the legend, a reluctant player in a nightmarish game. As her flashlight flickered again, Lena braced herself for whatever would come next, her finger hovering over the stop button on her recorder, questioning whether her story would ever be told.

In that terrifying moment, Lena understood: she had stepped into the abyss, and the abyss was staring back.

The room seemed to inhale as Lena took a step deeper into its bowels. Her flashlight wavered, causing the shadows to dance on the peeling wallpaper in an erratic ballet. She frowned; the device was new and fully charged. But here, inside the room, it was as if even batteries were unwilling to give their life force.

She slapped the recorder, which emitted nothing but static. Not now, you piece of junk, she muttered, shaking it as if physical admonishment could rectify its ailment.

Then she froze.

Did she just hear a whisper? A soft rustle of syllables, barely audible, caught between the stunted breaths of the room? She strained her ears, her own breath held hostage in the tension.

Nothing.

It's just your imagination, Lena. You've psyched yourself out, she told herself aloud, trying to break the pressing silence that had enveloped her since the door had slammed shut.

And then she heard it again. A whisper—distinctly clearer this time—rising above the fuzzy sea of white noise coming from her malfunctioning recorder. She couldn't make out the words, but the tone was plaintive, almost pleading.

Lena's reporter's instincts kicked in. She pointed her shaky flashlight towards the source of the sound—yet all it illuminated was more emptiness. It was as though the room itself was a void, swallowing light and sound.

Just as she began to doubt herself again, her eyes caught something. Writing—phrases and sentences, in varied handwriting—scrawled across the walls. They were appearing out of nowhere, like invisible ink suddenly made visible. She squinted, turning her flashlight to illuminate the words better.

HELP US, one phrase read. Another stated, IT WATCHES. IT LISTENS.

As she read the messages, Lena felt her skin prickle, her pulse quicken. She was no longer alone; the room was filled with the desperate echoes of souls who had entered before her, who had also heard the whispers, who had also seen the words form on the walls.

More whispers swirled around her now, a cacophony of disembodied voices speaking all at once, some begging for freedom, some warning of a malevolent presence. Lena's head spun; the room was closing in on her, becoming smaller, the walls appearing as if they had eyes—dozens, maybe hundreds of eyes—watching her every move.

In a panicked, blind fury, Lena hammered the stop button on her voice recorder, suddenly terrified that it was the device allowing these phenomena to manifest. For a moment, the room seemed to waver, as if uncertain.

Then, an overpowering voice echoed through the room, drowning out the whispers. It was neither male nor female, neither young nor old. It simply was.

You should not have come here, Lena Montgomery, it intoned, as the room quivered with a malevolent energy she could feel down to her marrow. Your story ends now.

A shockwave of dread washed over Lena as she recognized a horrifying truth—she was not just the observer here; she was a part of the story. And it was a story that had terrible plans for her.

Lena understood that dismissing the whispers and ignoring the writing on the wall had been foolish. This room—this entity—had now marked her, integrating her fears and uncertainties into its malevolent fabric.

She thought of the eyes, the countless eyes that had stared at her from the walls. They were no mere hallucinations; they were windows into the many souls ensnared by this room, warning her that if she didn't act, she'd become one of them—another set of eyes on this wretched wall.

Desperate but determined, Lena pulled out her notepad, her most trusted companion throughout her journalistic career. If her voice recorder was useless here, she'd resort to the old-fashioned way. She had to document this, had to make sense of it, had to find a way to fight back.

Whatever it took, she vowed never to become another whisper in this room, another set of desperate eyes watching from the walls. And with that promise, etched into the fiber of her being, Lena braced herself to confront the horrors that awaited her.

Lena's pen moved with frenetic energy over her notepad, recording every nuance, every unsettling whisper and inexplicable message that she had just experienced. The ink flowed over the pages, a testament to her desperate need to make sense of it all. Even as she wrote, she knew that this story—her story—was different. It defied reason and logic, hovering at the edge of her understanding like a wraith in the mist.

Just as she completed the sentence, The room has a consciousness of its own, she felt it—the air seemed to thicken, almost imperceptibly, like quicksand enveloping her limbs. A chill raced down her spine, as though someone had walked over her grave.

And then she saw them.

Visions flickered in and out of the periphery of her eyes, overlapping with the dreary reality of the room. At first, they were formless, indistinct. But soon they congealed into a series of memories, each one dredged up from the depths of her past, the ink of her subconscious made manifest.

She saw herself as a young girl, no older than seven, sitting in her room alone. The shadows under the bed reached out for her like sinewy arms, the darkness in the closet gaining form and volume. She saw the eyes of her childhood fears glaring at her, monstrous and malevolent.

Then the scene shifted. She was a teenager, faced with a panel of judgmental peers, their laughter echoing in her ears, their mocking words cutting through her like shards of glass. Freak, they chanted, loser, weirdo.

And yet another scene: her first big journalistic investigation, a controversial story she had been sure would make her career. Instead, it had almost broken her, forcing her to question her worth, her abilities, her very identity.

The visions, though deeply disturbing, carried with them an air of familiarity. Lena knew them well; they had been etched into the corners of her mind, lurking in the crevices of her fears and insecurities. And while her first instinct was to dismiss them as figments of an overstressed imagination, she realized that here, in this room, they were more than mere phantoms. They were harbingers.

She forced herself to focus, to document these visions in her notepad, scribbling even as the room seemed to close in around her. Manifestation of psychological fears, she wrote. Some form of collective consciousness? An interplay between the room and the individual's psyche? She questioned, skeptical even as she pondered the unthinkable.

Yet she was unaware of the subtle transformation taking place around her. The walls seemed to absorb her words, her fears, her vulnerabilities. The room was listening, learning, feeding. And it was preparing to strike, to shape her dread into something far more tangible and infinitely more malevolent.

Unbeknownst to Lena, her quest for understanding was only deepening her entanglement in the room's malevolent web. As she paused, pen hovering above the paper, as if contemplating her next sentence, she failed to notice the shadow that stretched from her own form, growing darker, more substantial, more sentient.

Her journalistic skepticism was becoming her downfall. And the room—this nexus of torment and despair—was eager to shatter that skepticism, to manifest her worst nightmares into grotesque reality. After all, skepticism had no dominion here, not in a room where the walls listened, where fears came to life, where silence grew like a malignant force, ever expanding, ever consuming.

Lena finally looked up from her notepad, taking a moment to shake off the disquiet that clung to her like cobwebs. She took a deep breath, fortified by her resolve to understand, to confront, to emerge victorious.

But the room was ready. And as Lena glanced toward the far corner, her eyes widened in shock and horror at what she saw taking form there.

It was time for the room to introduce Lena Montgomery to a new chapter of fear—one written not in ink, but in the very fabric of her being. And this chapter had only just begun.

The darkness within the room thickened, as if it were tangible, as if it were an entity unto itself. Shadows stretched unnaturally across the walls, intermingling with Lena's scribbled observations that now seemed almost absurd. A murky fog began to pool at her feet, rising gradually to obscure her vision.

And then she felt it—a subtle shift in the architecture of the room itself. The walls pulsed and contracted as though they were living tissue. Lena reached out a tentative hand, her fingers almost recoiling when they met the wall, which now had an unsettling, fleshy texture.

Her heart pounded in her chest as she realized the room was no longer a static construct. It was fluid, ever-changing, morphing into a labyrinth of corridors and alcoves, dead ends and spirals. Nausea gripped her as the floor itself seemed to tilt, adding to her disorientation.

The journalistic instinct to document was replaced by a primal urge to escape. But escape to where? The exit, once so clearly marked, had been swallowed by the shifting walls.

She stumbled forward, her steps hurried yet aimless, a rat in a maze with no way out. Her flashlight flickered, its once powerful beam now feeble and erratic, casting grotesque shadows that danced and pirouetted across the walls like dark wraiths. And then she heard them—the footsteps.

Soft, padded footsteps, each one echoing in a timbre of malevolence. They were footsteps other than her own, and they were getting closer. Lena swung her flashlight wildly, its faltering beam revealing nothing but walls, endless walls that twisted and turned in maddening configurations.

She pushed herself to move faster, her fear lending her a frantic energy. She turned a corner and came to an abrupt stop. Before her stretched a hall of mirrors, each reflection capturing her own terrified face from a hundred different angles. But that wasn't what froze her to her core. It was the figures standing beside her reflections, a grotesque gallery of her worst fears made flesh.

The monster under her childhood bed, its eyes gleaming a malevolent red. The taunting visages of her high-school tormentors, their sneers frozen in cruel perpetuity. The shamed face she wore after her first journalistic failure. All were here, all were real, and all stepped out of the mirrors toward her.

The room had become a nexus of her anxieties, each one now a corporeal entity stalking her every step. They reached out, their fingers just inches from her, when a voice broke through her terror—a voice emanating from her pocket.

It was her own voice, an audio note she had recorded earlier, advising her to remain calm in the face of inexplicable phenomena. The reminder triggered something within her, a rekindling of her investigative spirit, momentarily pushing back the pall of horror.

Enough, she gasped, fumbling to stop the playback. She pulled out her pen, using it to etch a rudimentary map on her notepad, while mentally filing away each nightmarish entity she encountered. They were clues, she reasoned; pieces of an enigmatic puzzle that she had to solve if she were to escape this hellish landscape.

But even as she formulated this plan, she felt the room respond. The gathering shadows deepened, the walls seemed to draw closer, as though the room itself were inhaling, gathering its strength for a decisive strike. The darkness pressed upon her, trying to smother her renewed resolve.

Lena gripped her pen like a talisman, her pulse racing. The next confrontation, she knew, would be pivotal. Either she would pierce through the room's malevolent enigma, or be swallowed whole by her own dark reflections, her voice forever silenced in the room where silence grows.

The labyrinth beckoned, the footsteps resumed, and Lena stepped forward into the encroaching blackness. Whatever awaited her, she was now the hunter, not just the hunted. And she would not go quietly.

The walls seemed to close in on Lena, suffocating her, as she navigated through the room's labyrinthine configuration. Every step forward led to further confusion, every decision branching into more dead ends.

Then her eyes fell upon her notepad, lying open in her hand. She'd been using it to sketch a mental map, a guide back to sanity, but now it bore new markings—words she hadn’t written.

Turn back, while you still can, the first message read. Her heart clenched. She recognized her own handwriting, but she hadn’t penned that caution.

Another message materialized as she stared: Don't trust the walls.

And then another: Follow the whispers.

Whispers? She had heard them earlier, incomprehensible mutterings skimming the periphery of her senses. The thought of following them seemed absurd. Yet, she found herself hesitating, caught between dismissing this advice as another of the room’s torments or accepting it as genuine guidance.

Another message appeared, this one in handwriting that was more jagged, almost frantic: Find the clock. Time’s not what you think.

A clock? Now that was something concrete, something real she could focus on. With a newfound resolve, Lena set off, navigating through the room’s cruel geometry, her ears straining for any indication of ticking, of time measured and contained.

But her journey was punctuated with fresh torments—horrifying tableaux of her past failures, moments of loss and shame that now seemed to animate before her. Through it all, the whispers grew louder, more insistent, as though cheering on the demons that clawed at her sanity. Her gut screamed at her to turn back, but the messages on her notepad guided her forward, a string of cryptic instructions that led her deeper into the room's bowels.

At long last, she heard it: the faint ticking of a clock. And soon she found it, hanging incongruously on a wall that seemed to writhe in protest at its presence. The clock was old, its face tarnished, but the hands moved, circling in a dance of hours and minutes that somehow existed within this timeless chamber.

Beneath the clock, another message had appeared on her notepad: Break the cycle.

With a mixture of dread and determination, Lena grabbed the clock from the wall and hurled it onto the ground, shattering its glass face, its hands spasming in mechanical death throes.

A shockwave radiated from the destroyed clock, and Lena felt the room shudder, as though it had lost a vital organ. The whispers turned into screams, a cacophony of countless voices in varying timbres of anguish, until they settled into one unified, ear-piercing wail that emanated from the walls themselves.

And then, silence. A deep, profound silence that seemed to rebuke the very concept of sound.

Lena's notepad flickered with one final message, this one in her own steady hand: Now you know. You’ve heard us. Free us.

She looked around. The walls had stilled. The darkness had retreated, albeit slightly. For the first time, she felt as though the room wasn't just an adversary but a prison filled with the essence of those who had come before her, those whose fears had been harvested for eternal torment.

These were the Voices of the Lost. Her very being felt their sorrow, their eternal longing for release, their dread feeding the ancient entity that commanded this room.

As Lena stood there, contemplating her next move, she understood. She was not just fighting for herself, but for the countless souls ensnared in this chamber of horrors.

Armed with this revelation, a new sense of purpose surged within her. The room had committed a fatal error: It had educated its prisoner. And now, Lena vowed, the student would become the master.

With pen in hand, Lena began to write on the walls, turning her investigative acumen against the room itself. It was time to decode its secrets, to unmask the entity that held them all captive. But more importantly, it was time to free the Voices of the Lost—and in doing so, find her own way out.

There would be puzzles to solve, demons to confront, but Lena felt ready. For now, she knew she wasn't alone. The Voices of the Lost were with her, and together, they would dismantle this sanctum of suffering, word by word, scream by scream, until the silence was finally broken.

Lena had barely taken a step forward when the walls quivered around her, as if agitated by her newfound resolve. She understood now that this room was a sentient trap, an ancient being's mousetrap for human souls. The Voices of the Lost had been clear: her liberation and theirs were linked, and the room’s puzzle was the key.

In a niche set against one undulating wall, she spotted an array of objects. Each appeared random, unrelated: an old mariner’s compass with its needle spinning erratically, a tarnished silver locket, a shard of mirror, and a small wooden figurine of a raven. The objects were set upon an engraved pedestal, encircled by a series of obscure runes.

She approached cautiously, feeling a deepening pressure in the air—the gravitational pull of ancient malice. The runes seemed to shimmer and vibrate as if beckoning her to interact. Lena felt an internal debate stir within her. The arrangement screamed ‘ritualistic,’ which could be dangerous, but also implied a set of rules, a way to channel or divert the room’s inherent power.

She referred back to her notepad. No new messages had appeared, but a previous one came to mind: Time’s not what you think. The compass, a traditional symbol of navigation through both space and time, seemed the most innocuous and perhaps the most crucial of the assembled objects. Hesitant, but with no better option, she reached out and adjusted the spinning compass needle. It offered slight resistance and then snapped into place, pointing due north.

A reverberating hum emanated from the pedestal, causing the surrounding runes to flash brighter for a moment before dimming. The walls seemed to shudder as if struck by an invisible force. Had she activated something, or perhaps, disabled a part of the room’s machinery?

Heart pounding, Lena turned her attention to the remaining objects. Each must represent a component of the puzzle, she reasoned. She grabbed the tarnished locket and cautiously popped it open. Inside was an empty frame, space for a picture but containing none. It felt like a metaphor for the room itself—a void begging to be filled. Almost instinctually, she ripped out a piece of paper from her notepad, jotted down the names of the Voices she had heard and folded it into the frame. As she snapped the locket shut, a sigh whispered through the room, as though it had been waiting for this very act.