The four stories in They Lurk are a mixed bag.

Skullbelly centers around a private detective searching for information about three missing teenagers in a rural location on the West Coast. Their companion returned home bloodied and comatose and will not give any information about what happened while they were in the forest. The story is easy guesswork for any fan of horror, but it's creepy as hell. It does a good job of keeping you on the edge of fear until the end.

The Separation was a big pity party for a manly prizefighter whose wife has filed for divorce and is never coming back. I had a hard time discerning the era of this story. At the beginning, I thought it was a weird steam-punk alternate-universe thing, but then the story settled into present day Europe. After that, it became boring. Then it devolved into outright misogyny (I totally understood why the wife would want to ditch the lot of them.) and stupidity. No, the tacked-on supernatural ending did not make up for what a confusing mess the rest of it was. I hated this story, and it's by far the worst I've read from Malfi.

The Stranger is about a newly minted couple traveling across the country in an old car. Irrational and shocking behavior abounds. I felt worse for the poor car than any of the characters, who are incredibly annoying.

After The Fade is a great short horror story about a group of people stuck in a home-town bar helplessly watching the end of the world through a window. The set-up is quick and clever, the characters are likeable, and the action scenes come in fast. Very well written. This is the second time I read this one. ( )