Author: Janelle Schiecke
“Then he heard the whimper. They always whimpered…every last one of them. It came before the screams.”
Novella Review
A cross country road trip in the summer of 1984, lingering euphoria from a Nevada rock festival, and a wrong turn into a decaying ghost town set the stage for Janelle Schiecke’s Death Cult. While shorter fiction often risks feeling rushed or thin on character investment, Schiecke dispels that concern immediately. The novella is lean, depraved, fiercely focused, and unabashedly fun as hell.
The book hits with an immediate rush of late night 1980s VHS nostalgia. From the opening prologue, the dread is so heavy that you already mourn for the cast before you even know their names. When we meet recent college graduates Jason and Eddie, their easy charm and relatability make their impending peril infinitely worse. Yes, they make classic, boneheaded horror decisions, but that reckless innocence is precisely what makes the impending carnage work. Watching their sun drenched trek collide with Carrie fighting for survival inside a murky subterranean lair had me verbally warning them to turn the car around and flee within the first ten pages.
Schiecke understands how to pace unyielding terror. The narrative accelerates from zero to a hundred in an instant, turning every quiet moment into a pressure cooker where you brace for the next strike. The contrast between reminders of the normal world outside and the sheer, stomach churning depravity of the desert residents makes every sliver of hope feel desperately earned. It is a brutal, unapologetic survival story that will make you double check your deadbolts, securing a well deserved, blood soaked spot in our archives.
Curator’s Notes
Dual Tracks of Terror: The tension alternates between the desperate cat and mouse evasion of Carrie in the dark recesses of an underground lair and the horrifying realization awaiting two travelers above ground.
Unfiltered 1980s Grindhouse Spirit: Set in the summer of 1984, the narrative channels golden age creature feature and backwoods slasher dread, leaning into beloved genre tropes with savage, gory execution.
High Tension Acceleration: The narrative pivots instantly from quiet suspense to visceral horror, turning basic survival into an urgent battle of raw cunning and resilience.
A Fun Note on the Author: It’s hilarious to me that the author of this utterly brutal, ruthless, and gory story seems to be one of the nicest authors on social media.