‘At Dark, I Become Loathsome’: Read An Exclusive Full Chapter From Eric LaRocca’s New Novel
Eric LaRocca has built a career on transgressive, brutal, often heartrending horror, and in the years since his novella Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke put him on the map, he’s only grown more ambitious. Other novellas followed, along with story collections and, in 2023, his first novel, Everything the Darkness Eats. Now, LaRocca is back with his second novel, one that ranks among his most compelling, and deeply disturbing, fictions to date.
At Dark, I Become Loathsome, the latest release from The Walking Dead star Norman Reedus’ imprint at Blackstone Publishing, follows Ashley Lutin, a man whose life was brutalized by the death of his wife and the sudden disappearance of his son. Alone, desperate for answers that might lead him to his boy, and intensely focused on his own dark nature, Ashley has developed a kind of ritual that allows him to assist others who are conflicted about their willingness to remain in this world, people who feel like dying but are desperate for some kind of reawakening of their desire to live.
It’s through this ritual that Ashley forms unlikely connections, including a mysterious man named Jinx, who challenges the ritual, and Ashley’s own dark nature, in ways no one has before. What happens next is a descent into darkness as deep and black as the grave, crafted as only Eric LaRocca can.
Today, Dread Central is pleased to offer an exclusive peek at the entire first chapter of the novel, in which Ashley attempts to explain his nature, and reveals his ritual to his readers. Read the full excerpt below.
At Dark, I Become Loathsome is available January 28 from Blackstone Publishing.
I wish there were a way to somehow soften the unpleasantness of it—to disguise some of the foulness, to hide some of the repulsiveness—but the horrible, wretched fact of the matter is that I become remarkably different when it’s dark out.
I don’t believe that I become another person, that I change entirely under twilight’s enchantment, but there is undeniably a shift in my temperament, in my demeanor, in my ability to think rationally and engage with others as I usually do in daytime.
I’m not prone to committing outrageously violent, unspeakable acts when the sun goes down, nor do I deliberately hurt anyone. It’s just that I become different at night. I think a lot of people are like that and don’t care to admit it. I believe most people change considerably when their environment shifts. Darkness is a substantial change to our environment when you consider the implications that nighttime brings. Some things can only happen at night for this reason. People’s inhibitions are lowered—their wants, their needs, their desires become paramount. That’s why I only make arrangements with my clients at night. Of course, that means they never know the true me, but that’s the way I prefer it.
It isn’t that I loathe my clients or wish them unwell; it’s simply that I don’t want to give too much of myself to them. That happened when I was more inexperienced in the process—when I was far more eager to serve some people’s capricious whims—and when I didn’t guard myself the way I should have. I think people should remain protected when nighttime approaches, almost as if twilight were a cancer that could rot us away until we were threadbare, tattered, and broken things, never to be repaired again.
At dark, I become loathsome.
I’m sure that some of my clients expect me to behave a certain way given the outlandishness of my appearance—the large metal piercings embellishing my nostrils and bee-stung lips, my forehead with its silver horn implants, my jewelry-decorated ears, bent and reshaped to resemble the ears of an elf.
At night, I become guilty of crimes I haven’t committed, much less even contemplated. I become a caricature of my former self—a creature to be persecuted, loathed, reviled, detested. At nighttime, I’m something to be tortured until condemned—someone completely and forever misunderstood.
I can’t pretend I didn’t summon some of these accusations, these charges, by the changes I’ve made to my appearance. But though humanity doesn’t escape us when it’s dark out, I’ve learned that human decency only exists when it’s convenient. The rest of the time, we’re feral creatures tirelessly spinning against the white-water current of rapids bearing us down and carrying us toward an infinite black sea.
At dark, I become loathsome.
I think she can perhaps tell. Naturally, I’ve done everything I can to make certain she’s as comfortable as possible, given the arduous demands of the ritual. This is what she wanted, after all. But she still looks at me with a bewildered expression when I motion to the simple cedar coffin I’ve arranged in a shallow hole in the open field where we agreed to meet.
“Are you ready?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer, seeming much too preoccupied with her next destination—inside the coffin.
With the tenderness and care I deliver to all my clients, I lower her gently into the coffin until she’s lying on the cushions I’ve arranged there and is facing me. I set the oxygen tank beside her and instruct her how to use it before I strap the mask to her face. She looks at me, and for the first time in the few hours I’ve known her, she appears troubled, frightened, like a convicted adulteress being led to the public square where she’ll be stoned to death. Before I allow myself to think too critically about what I’m doing, I close the lid of the coffin and begin to shovel dirt on top. I wonder if she’ll scream. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they beg me or plead with me to stop. But they’ve signed the contract and I must finish the ritual or else they won’t achieve what they desire.
I don’t hear any sounds coming from inside the coffin as I ladle more dirt on top of the wooden lid. Finally, when the coffin has been fully covered, I toss the shovel aside and make my way toward my van, parked near the barbed wire–wrapped fence on the opposite side of the field. I grab my cell phone from the front passenger seat and thumb through my apps until I land on the timer. I set it for thirty minutes and watch as the clock begins to slowly count down. Shoving my phone into my pocket, I lean over the vehicle’s center console and open the glove compartment, where I keep a pack of cigarettes.
Tapping one out, I light the end and inhale sharply as I circle the front of the van and lean against the hood. The headlights shimmer across the grassy knoll ahead of me and reach the small skirt of tall grass that guards the distant row of trees where the forest begins. I squint, wondering if there’s someone, something, with inquisitive, bead-like eyes, hiding between the trees and staring back at me, straining to measure me just as much as I’m struggling to understand them.
At dark, I become loathsome.
I can’t help but wonder if whatever might be watching me from the distant trees can somehow tell—if they are keenly enough aware to know that I’m a different person at night. I’m something monstrous, something unspeakable, something appalling, something to hide away like a shameful secret. That’s what I am—a secret to be kept, away from everyone, in a dark room.
I wonder if the young lady I’ve buried—the one who had sought me out for my expertise, my skill at performing this ritual—if she thinks I’m something atrocious. The way she regarded me when I prepared the oxygen tank for her . . . her face filled with such loathing, such disdain for me and what I was about to do to her. I think of proving to her just how monstrous I can truly be. I imagine myself gathering the equipment I’ve brought, loading it into the back seat of my van, and driving off. I think of her growing confusion, her uncontrollable panic when she realizes I’m not coming back for her. I imagine her horror—her shock, her dismay—as the air thins inside the coffin and she realizes that she’s issuing her final breaths.
My own thoughts disgust me, repulse me to the point where I wonder if I’ll become too sick to carry on. Of course, people expect me to be a monster, but do I need to satisfy those expectations? Just looking at me, some might assume I would be the type to bury someone alive, to trick them into willingly climbing inside a coffin only to murder them. It pains me to think there are people who expect that kind of behavior from me because of what I look like.
I finish my cigarette, crushing the burnt end beneath my shoe and squishing it into the grass. I glance at the timer on my cell phone screen. After taking a swig of whiskey from the small canteen I left on the passenger seat, I meander back toward the grave. It’s at the center of the open field, the mound of fresh dirt piled like a makeshift pyramid. When the timer goes off, I snatch the shovel from the ground and start digging. The earth begins to swallow me as I scoop more and more dirt from the grave, piling the soil and debris to one side of the hole. Finally, my shovel hits something solid—the coffin lid.
On hands and knees, I clear the dirt from the coffin until it’s completely uncovered. With a trembling hand, I open the coffin and come face-to-face with the young woman I buried. Her eyes are wide; she stares at me with such shock, such amazement, as if I were a welcome trespasser on some private, ancient ritual. I peel the oxygen mask from her face and she inhales deeply, eyelids fluttering.
“Can you move?” I ask her.
She doesn’t respond. She seems enamored with the mere sight of me, her mouth curling into a smile. Given my appearance, it’s a look I don’t receive too often—a look of joy, euphoria, almost unimaginable longing. She releases soft whimpering noises as I kneel above her, one knee on each side of her torso. Her whimpers soon begin to weaken to sobs. I clear some of the wetness beneath her eye with my thumb. She regards me with such thankfulness that I scarcely recognize the woman I buried.
In an act of tenderness that shocks even me, I bend and kiss her forehead.
“Happy birthday,” I say.
She still hasn’t said a word, doesn’t seem capable of speech. She looks at me with a strange combination of bewilderment and delight that disturbs me.
Right now, this young woman doesn’t regard me as a monster. Instead, she looks at me as if I’m a sibling, a gentle steward, a devoted lover—perhaps even an im- mortal god to be adored, worshipped, and revered.
I don’t quite know how to react to her as she takes my hands and squeezes them with apparent thankfulness. I think I should perhaps tell her, but I don’t:
At dark, I become loathsome.
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