After Dark

What happens when the monsters are the ones we choose not to see?As Halloween night falls across seven communities, ordinary people make extraordinary compromises. A suburban mother discovers her neighborhood’s prosperity requires feeding something ancient. A marketing executive finds his costume becoming his flesh. A social worker encounters the child who represents every case she couldn’t save. From dusk to dawn, these interconnected stories expose the horrors we create through willful ignorance-the gossip that destroys families, the traditions that demand sacrifice, the systems that fail the vulnerable.This literary horror collection examines the price of belonging in modern America, where the real terror isn’t what lurks in the shadows, but what we’ve agreed to ignore in the light. Each story peels back another layer of comfortable denial, revealing how communities maintain their monsters through collective complicity.Seven stories. One Halloween night. The question isn’t whether you’ll sleep with the lights on-it’s whether you’ll ever look at your own neighborhood the same way again.Perfect for readers who appreciate the psychological complexity of Shirley Jackson and the unsettling social commentary of contemporary elevated horror.Some traditions are worth breaking. Some secrets demand to be told.