A Shuddersomely Entertaining Tale

Looking through the archives, I see that I only made one post referring to Karl Edward Wagner's much-anthologized short story Sticks, originally published in 1974 in the fanzine Whispers.  Karl Edward Wagner was a titan, literally and figuratively, of late 20th century horror publishing, perhaps being best known for editing DAW Books' The Year's Best Horror Stories anthologies from 1980 to 1994.  In 1973, he founded Carcosa Press to publish collections of stories by authors who published in the 'weird' pulps decades earlier.

Wagner knew the genre in-and-out, and Sticks is a love letter to pulp horror stories.  If you've seen The Blair Witch Project, the creepy stick lattices seem cribbed directly from this story, which cribbed them directly from the work of artist Lee Brown Coye, who often incorporated weird stick lattices in his later artwork.  The story begins with a protagonist, based on Coye, encountering an isolated farmstead surrounded by such stick figures, apparently inspired by an incident in Coye's youth.  The story then takes a turn to the macabre as the Coye-character interacts with characters based on August Derleth and H.P. Lovecraft and eventually learns the significance of the figures.  Gruesome fun ensues...

Sticks is a fun read, but its primary appeal is to readers familiar with the old pulp artists, writers, and publishers.  It's a fan-work, but a really well-done one by a superfan who ascended to the ranks of beloved professional author and editor.  Even if you aren't well-versed in the old pulp personnel, there's still a creepy story for your Halloween consumption:

 

As I noted, it is much-anthologized, but I'm not sure how well it's known outside of the pulp fandom community.