Book cover for The Wishing Well: A Collection Vol. 1 by Christopher Ruíz

The Wishing Well

A Collection Vol. 1

2025 Released
272 Pages
4-6 Hours
Ebook Unavailable
Audiobook Unavailable
Pesadilla PressISBN 9798993235400

Finalist for the International Latino Book Awards (Best Collection of Short Stories & Best Audiobook)

The Wishing Well is a collection of interconnected horror stories centered around an ever-changing bar and the desperate souls within. Each tale follows a different patron, driven by want, ambition, or desperation, who casts an ill-fated wish into the bar's unearthly namesake. And each discovers this well is less a cheap gimmick and more a conduit for twisted fulfillment, as they come to understand the true horror of getting exactly what you wished for.

Within these pages are tales of:

  • The Monsters Within: An alcoholic loses his grip on reality as his pursuit of freedom turns into a psychological nightmare; and a combat veteran learns the inescapability of her past as the world around her burns.
  • The Monsters Without: Five friends on a remote mountain lake discover there's more to the feeling of the vastness beneath your dangling legs than you could ever fear; and a snow-blind survivor finds shelter in a cabin that is not quite unoccupied.
  • The Monsters of Childhood: A young boy in a religious household receives a visit on Christmas Eve from something quite unlike Santa; and a traumatized student breaks from reality into a fairytale-like fever dream when he discovers what lurks behind the door at the back of the classroom.

Crafted by award-winning author Christopher Ruiz, these tales are darkly atmospheric, uncompromising, and deeply unsettling. From creature features to psychological horrors, The Wishing Well serves a deadly blend of wishes gone wrong.

Christopher Ruíz

Christopher Ruíz is a fiction writer specializing in horror. Born in the City of Angels and raised in the shadows of the Rocky Mountains, he now writes of the demonic, supernatural, and psychological in the Midwest. A veteran of both combat and crisis response, his stories draw inspiration from both the real and unreal, from years of sleep paralysis and nightmares, revealing the darker corners of the human experience.

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