Graven Image Author:Ray Garton Hal Dillon collects strange pieces of art -- odd paintings and drawings, quirky sculptures. When he stumbles upon the bizarre crucifix in a curio shop, he decides to take it home and add it to his collection. On the wooden cross is a hideous figure of Christ -- it looks angry and hateful, and its teeth have been filed down to sharp points. But t... more »his piece is unlike anything else in Hal's collection. It behaves in very un-Christ-like ways, and turns Hal's life into a living nightmare.
This is a controversial religious horror story as only Ray Garton can write: dark, thought-provoking, and gruesome...
Praise:
"For its length, Graven Image covers an amazing amount of emotional territory. Curiosity, insecurity, love, rapture, terror, disbelief, rage, and despair float through this story, each registered carefully and well. When the horrors kick in, as they powerfully do, Ray Garton demonstrates a master's capacity for extending and maximizing the good old tension/fear affect so necessary in a story of this kind. His ending introduces a very satisfying ambiguity. Why did nice, attractive Jacquie wake up screaming in darkened rooms? Now, there's a question to haunt the reader of Graven Image, all the more so since the answer may never be given."
Peter Straub, author of Ghost Story and In the Night Room« less