Transfer — Terry M. West - howling libraries

TITLE: Transfer
AUTHOR: Terry M. West
GENRE: Horror
AGE RANGE: Adult
PAGES: 51pg
SOURCE: Author

Prepare to scream forever! Howie Payne and Nick Enlow work the midnight shift at Big Carl’s Video Transfer and Media Services. An odd AVI clip begins to appear in their public drive on a nightly basis. At first Howie and Nick think it’s a serialized art house horror film someone on the day shift is sending them in secret. As the clips progress, however, the now obsessed duo discover something deeper and darker in the videos. Horror author Terry M. West would like to introduce you to the Green Room and its primary occupant, The Screamer.

He heard the whispers from the darkness. It sounded like a hundred voices — a hundred ghosts — calling his name.

I’ve been meaning to check out Terry M. West’s work for years, and own a few of his books on my kindle, but somehow hadn’t read anything until Transfer—and I’m only mad at myself for waiting so long, because wow, I am such an instant fan.

Transfer follows a couple of guys who work overnights in a video editing shop, where they pass the time in fairly mundane ways—that is, until they start finding unnatural video clips intermingled with their other files each night, each evening’s snippet growing more and more sinister and strange. It begins to completely consume Howie and Nick until they can’t possibly walk away, and the two men decide they have to know where these files are coming from.

I was absolutely blown away by how powerful of a punch this tiny novella packed. The characters immediately draw you in, and the fear element is so… primal, for lack of a better word. It felt like the terrors being described in this story were simultaneously incredibly modern, given their relation to technology, and yet so deep-rooted in me that I couldn’t imagine having not been chilled to the core by the descriptions Terry offers of this wicked, cruel threat. I’m honestly an incredibly difficult reader to rattle, but for a couple of days after finishing this novella, I kept finding my thoughts drifting back to this awful creature and it unsettled me a little every time.

Whether you love horror novellas or are brand new to the format, Transfer is one you can’t afford to miss. It’s original, brutal, and downright horrifying — truly, Terry’s imagination is twisted in the best way and I can’t wait to read more from him.