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.
Abrecan Geist. In Leeds, Massachusetts, the name evokes dangerous magic, unspeakable blasphemies, black rites in the basement of Anne Gare's notorious book shop. Outsized rumors surround him. 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, and he could speak to birds. He and his coven, the Hilltown Ten, were responsible for the notorious priest murders and disappearances of the early 1980s. 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 in Leeds, Massachusetts. 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.
FROM THE AUTHOR
“I’ve referred in passing to Abrecan Geist in several stories," says Matt. "A biographical snippet appears in 'The Witch-Cult in Western Massachusetts.' I envision him as a less annoying, more entertaining Aleister Crowley. I’ve always wanted to explore the character more fully, and in The Obsecration, I do just that—I hope you enjoy him as much as I do.”
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. Bartlett is a sui generis figure in modern horror fiction—there’s no one quite like him. Most writers, whether by design or not, fall into categories or factions or frameworks built by the giants of the genre, but Bartlett stands in no one’s shadow. 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 elbowing for position around the table, but at its center sits Matthew Bartlett, his head surrounded by a halo of flies.” (John Langan, author of Corpsemouth and Other Autobiographies)
The Obsecration
Surreal horror novel The Obsecration by Matthew M. Bartlett.
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.