Welcome, you twisted fuckers, to the latest installment of Split Scream, Volume Seven, brought to you by the delightfully deranged folks at Tenebrous Press. This bad boy is a double-barreled shotgun of horror novelettes that’ll leave you questioning your sanity. We’ve got Evergreen by John K. Peck and L. Mahler, and Sequoia Point by Íde Hennessy. These two tales take you off the map and into the deep, dark woods where the trees whisper your name and the shadows have teeth. Let’s carve into each story, rip out their themes, and see if they bleed brilliance.

Evergreen by John K. Peck & L. Mahler

John K. Peck is a Berlin-based writer and musician whose work spans horror, travel, history, and gaming. His fiction and essays have appeared in outlets like Interzone, Pyre, Cosmic Horror Monthly, McSweeney’s, and Glasgow Review of Books. He’s also the editor of Degraded Orbit, a site exploring abandoned places, unusual architecture, and underground culture. With his wife, he co-founded Volta Press, a letterpress and book arts studio that began in Oakland in 2007 and continues in Berlin. Peck’s punk rock roots shine through in his DIY ethos, having reviewed music for DyingScene.com and played in various bands, which infuses his writing with a raw, rebellious edge.

L. Mahler is a designer and doctoral researcher specializing in cellulose-based origami structures and living design systems. Based in northern California, Mahler brings a unique perspective to horror, informed by their academic work on mycelial structures—fungal networks that inspired Evergreen’s eerie premise. While their publication history is primarily academic, Evergreen marks their first major fiction piece. Mahler’s background in writing and printmaking from their undergrad days, where they contributed to DIY lit mags, adds a tactile, hands-on quality to their storytelling.

Deirdre, a city girl with a grudge, returns to her dead-end hometown of Falls Valley after her mother’s death. The place is eerily quiet, with a dwindling population and a dense forest that feels alive in all the wrong ways. Her mother’s house holds unsettling surprises, including a strange natural phenomenon that defies logic. As Deirdre reconnects with an old friend and confronts her hatred for the town’s remaining residents, she’s drawn into a creepy mystery tied to the forest’s unnatural pull.

Evergreen is a snarling eco-horror tale about nature’s quiet vengeance and the weight of past grudges. The forest looms as a living, breathing entity, not just a setting but a force that watches and waits. It’s a middle finger to humanity’s obsession with taming the wild, suggesting that nature’s got its own plans, and they’re not friendly. The story’s central natural anomaly, something bizarre and organic, symbolizes nature’s ability to infiltrate and reclaim spaces we think we control.

Isolation is a core theme. Falls Valley is a nowhere town, a place where people vanish and no one bats an eye. Deirdre’s return amplifies her alienation; she’s a stranger in her own memories, and the town’s emptiness mirrors her inner disconnect. The strange objects she finds around the house (knick-knacks like baseball cards and a lighter) hint at a deeper, darker history, suggesting the forest has been collecting tributes for years. The story wrestles with how we confront (or feed) our personal demons when trapped in a place that amplifies them.

Peck and Mahler wield prose like a rusty axe, sharp, gritty, and ready to hack through your expectations. They paint Falls Valley with vivid detail: the “snap of screen doors in the wind” and the “hum of flies circling half-empty plates” create a palpable sense of desolation. The forest’s voice, described as “low and coarse,” adds a mythic edge, while Deirdre’s grounded bitterness keeps things human. The pacing is a slow creep, building dread like roots pushing through concrete, though it can drag when it lingers on Deirdre’s brooding. It’s atmospheric without being flowery, balancing supernatural unease with small-town stagnation.

Evergreen is a deliciously creepy slow burn that nails the folk-horror vibe. Its central anomaly is a stroke of originality, a twisted idea. The prose is quotable as hell: “They thirst for the coppery flavors of the life-throbs that meander past” is the kind of line that deserves to be shouted from a rooftop. The horror builds steadily, creating a suffocating sense of inevitability.

Deirdre’s resentment toward Falls Valley, however, gets repetitive, hammering the same note until it feels like a grudge match with no payoff. Secondary characters, like her old friend, are flat, serving as props rather than people. The forest’s mythology is evocative but vague. There’s a sense of something massive lurking, but it’s never fleshed out enough to hit as hard as it possibly could. Still, the story’s ambition to blend ecological dread with personal vengeance is bold and mostly lands.

A stellar slice of weird horror that takes big swings and mostly connects.

Sequoia Point by Íde Hennessy

Íde Hennessy (she/they) is a writer, musician, and graphic artist based in the rugged “post-apocalyptic wastelands” of northern California, where she lives with her partner and three special-needs cats. Her work blends cosmic horror, eco-horror, folk horror, sci-fi, and cli-fi into genre-defying “weird blobs.” A musician with a punk rock streak, Hennessy has played in post-punk bands like Control Voltage, a minimalist synthpop group called Blood Gnome, and as a guest vocalist for the experimental Starving Weirdos. Her love for nature and fascination with non-human intelligence infuse her horror with a primal, otherworldly edge.

Meg, a widow drowning in grief, retreats to Sequoia Point, a remote coastal village, to start over. Her solitude is shattered by a bizarre, otherworldly presence that upends her sense of reality. As the town’s isolation deepens with a storm cutting off the only road out, Meg uncovers whispers of missing persons and strange local rituals. She’s forced to confront the town’s dark secrets and her own pain, navigating a dangerous game to survive the supernatural threat.

Sequoia Point is a raw exploration of grief, survival, and the moral cost of self-preservation. Meg’s journey mirrors her internal struggle with loss—her husband’s death is a wound that festers, and the supernatural entity she encounters feels like an extension of her fractured psyche. The story’s ritual objects symbolize the cyclical nature of trauma: you can try to bury it, but it keeps resurfacing. The coastal setting, with its “black sands” and stormy cliffs, amplifies the sense of being trapped in a liminal space where reality bends.

The entity itself is a powerful symbol of identity and transformation, forcing Meg to confront who she is when stripped of her civilized shell. The town’s “magnetic anomalies” and hints of otherworldly portals suggest a place where the veil between worlds is thin, reflecting Meg’s teetering mental state. The imagery of glowing rifts in the cliffs is haunting, representing both escape and danger, a tempting but perilous way out of her pain.

Hennessy’s prose is jagged and vivid, like sea glass cutting through fog. She captures Sequoia Point’s wildness with lines like the “roar of waves” and the “soggy box” of cremains, grounding the supernatural in tactile reality. The dialogue is sparse but sharp, especially the snarky exchanges with a local teen. The entity’s scenes are feverish, blending primal horror with pathetic vulnerability. The pacing is relentless, though it can feel overwhelming, and some lore dumps (like blog posts) are clunky.

Sequoia Point is a visceral plunge into grief and survival, with a supernatural threat that’s both terrifying and tragic. Hennessy’s knack for making Meg’s desperation palpable is a goddamn triumph: lines like “A swirling pit had opened in her stomach, aching to be fed” hit like a punch to the gut. The coastal setting is a character in itself, wild and unforgiving. The horror is relentless, with disturbing imagery that’ll make your skin crawl.

But the story trips over its own mythology. The rituals and portals are intriguing but underdeveloped, too many questions go unanswered, leaving the supernatural elements feeling half-cooked. Meg’s arc, while emotionally raw, rushes toward its climax, diluting the impact. The blog posts used for exposition feel like a shortcut, pulling you out of the story’s flow. It’s ambitious but doesn’t quite stick the landing.

A wild, messy ride that’s scary as hell but wish it had a bit more space to allow its lore to breathe.

Split Scream Volume Seven is a bold, weird, and occasionally brilliant duo of novelettes that lean hard into isolation and supernatural hunger. Both stories take risks, blending personal trauma with cosmic dread, and their prose is sharp enough to cut. Evergreen edges out slightly with its tighter focus and unforgettable closet tree, but Sequoia Point’s raw emotion and gruesome imagery keep it close. The collection’s biggest flaw is its vague mythologies—both stories tease big ideas but don’t fully deliver. Still, for a horror blog crowd that craves the strange, this is a damn tasty treat.

TL;DR: Evergreen is a creepy, nature-fueled nightmare where a pissed-off woman faces a forest that’s way too alive. It’s bold and unsettling. Sequoia Point is a grief-drenched coastal horror show with a freaky entity and killer vibes.

Recommended For: Freaks who get off on nature turning humans into mulch or doppelgängers chowing on sea lions.
Not Recommended For: Normies who think horror peaked with The Conjuring or need every plot hole sealed tighter than a coffin.
Published March 27, 2025 by Tenebrous Press