I stood in front of my friend’s house alone. He’d handed over the keys as though they were nothing more than twisted shapes in cheap alloy, as though the act of supplying me with shelter was as simple as lifting a cup to your lips. Perhaps the act truly was so trivial to him; Ali was many things, destitute was not among them. In fact, of those various wayward souls that had composed our little circle in secondary school, Ali stood out as the Rich Kid. I...
Welcome to Ferenbrooke
Ferenbrooke is a medium-sized town somewhere in the East of England, not far from the East Midlands. It has a vaguely defined population and location, and is home to many notable anomalies and regrettable discoveries. A university town, it attracts a wide variety of students from all the world's dark places. The natives live in fear of the next time the graduate students in the physics department get a little excitable.
In another context, Ferenbrooke is a setting in which I place most of my horror stories. It's part Cambridge (my home town), part Arkham (of Lovecraft Mythos fame). If you like horror with a little occult strangeness and a dash of sci-fi, you might enjoy my work. Most of it is here, free for anyone who wants it.
But first, a word of caution. This site is written for mature readers and will contain horror and violence and bad language. Content warnings for specific stories are supplied on a best-effort basis. Shoot me an email if you feel I've missed something and I'll correct it as soon as possible.
That said, please do explore. I'm writing and adding to the site very regularly, so if you pop back in a couple of weeks there will surely be something new. There's an RSS feed if you want to be kept updated (and are the kind of nerd like me who still uses RSS feeds).
Happy reading.
--Antony Frost
Recent Writings
Short Stories
‘That’s the last of them,’ Mark said as he placed yet another cardboard box on the kitchen table. His face shone with sweat and joy, a broad smile parting his moustache from his beard. Ivy paused her self-assigned task of filling the built-in kitchen cupboards with crockery and glassware and glanced at him, smiled. The last few weeks had been a blur. They’d put the offer in, squared it with the bank, gone through the bureaucratic purgatory of...
With helmet in one hand and overladen saddle bags in the other, Ethan charged out into the bitter autumn evening from number 43 and let the door slam behind him. He glanced back at the building, once a large house for an expansive family and now three mediocre flats. One of them, until just that moment, had housed him and Erin. He wiped the wet from his eyes and stepped quickly to the road. His bike, an obedient if underpowered Royal Enfield Bullet 500, waited...
The event was larger than I’d anticipated. Close to a hundred people filled the small University hall, half a dozen or so waitstaff tending to the crowd. Across the other end of the room I saw Chelsea getting balls deep into yet another white wine spritzer. Old stone walls lent the whole affair a grandiose atmosphere and spine-breaking acoustics. Every word became a warcry, every whisper a scream. The main man, Doctor Sullivan Griever himself, occasionally appeared from a dark corner and...
Lucy Hayward placed her mug down on her kitchen table, furrowed her brow, and said, ‘You’re actually gonna do it?’ Chris O’Halloran, a good-natured Canadian from the flat across the hallway, shrugged and said, ‘Yeah...
Serial Fiction
In the wake of his estranged father's death, Owen travels to Ferenbrooke to settle the will and get some measure of closure. Dark truths meet him there.
Blog Posts
It’s been a hell of a year in the F. household. I started 2024 unable to walk and uncertain that I ever would again due to the hit and run that I never shut up about. We had a one-year-old, my wife had not returned to work, and my job as a wax factory worker was looking untenable. I’d eventually get back on my feet with crutches in January, a walking stick in April, and unaided in June...
It’s been a long time since I’ve written creatively. I’ve done a few blog posts about tech and politics on my other blog, but I haven’t made stories in quite a while. I’ve...