Midnight Somewhere
Johnny Compton
Hardcover/Ebook
ISBN: 979-8228364790
Blackstone, December 2025, 280 pgs

If you grew up chewing through horror anthologies, as I did, then you will feel right at home with Johnny Compton’s first collection, Midnight Somewhere. Back in those days, I didn’t really pay much attention to who the editors were or who wrote the stories. If it was a horror anthology, I wanted to read it! One of the characteristics of horror short fiction in those anthologies was that it didn’t matter if it was themed or not; you would usually be in for a range of styles, approaches, and interests. Even as many people I knew would balk at the idea of horror, inevitably saying something like, “I’m just not into slasher stuff,” folks who read those anthologies knew, sure, there is slasher stuff, there’s gore and blood, but horror can take on nearly any shape. It can be pages of random violence, or it can be creepy, or it can be atmospheric, as well as anything and everything between.

Compton’s book felt like dipping into one of those anthologies, which isn’t to say that there is no discernible identity lurking between the lines. After a few stories, you start to get a sense of Compton as a writer, you start to feel like you recognize him. But it is to say, he likes to do different kinds of things, and I think readers are better off for it. I’ll go over a few pieces to give a sampling, so you can get a glimpse of Compton as well as the book, and the rest, hopefully, you’ll read for yourself.

“He Used to Scare Me by Accident,” one of several entries that are original to the book, takes a conversational tone, as if the narrator is sharing a story over drinks with the reader. There’s an easy familiarity to it that pulls you in, and the narrator is in that relatable situation of being on a date and feeling jumpy after watching a horror movie. The realness of things lulls you in, and it’s easy to forget you are reading fiction. Like the title implies, Olivia is prone to getting scared, and since this is horror, you know things will get worse from there. She seems to have a good relationship with Stephen, so a first date becomes a second date becomes them moving in together. Her jumpiness never quite subsides, though. They try to find ways to deal with the situation, and . . . well, if you know horror, then you know that good intentions sometimes lead to really bad things. Some readers will really become involved with Olivia, which is to Compton’s credit as a writer, and makes the turn even more effective. Horror often imitates life, and more than some of the stories in this book, the events that unfold in this one might even be plausible. What Olivia faces by the end of the piece is a terror that mirrors what many women face in our culture, which is perhaps one of the reasons it can scare people so much.

“Safety in Numbers,” originally published in On the Premises, is a bit more playful with language, a bit more fun with sentence-level expressions. It starts with a man pointing a gun at the first-person narrator. There’s something about the opening paragraph that makes the character immediately relatable. Maybe it’s in the framing of a person being singled out by someone who sees them differently, in a bad way, than they see themselves. When the narrator makes a run for it, just when you think “this is actually a fairly standard story,” said narrator does something unexpected, deliberately and consciously referencing the narrative elements that would have made it a standard story, thereby turning it into something intellectually engaging, something with a slightly literary bent, and making the reader wonder (in a good way), “okay, wait, then where is this going?!?” Folks, it’s going in a violent direction. And even though it’s pretty short, it does what it needs to do in an entertaining way. It feels like a story built around a “cool idea,” and often those kinds of stories aren’t interesting enough to sustain themselves, but this one works perfectly.

“The One,” another original, focuses on a basketball player, Justin Bless, who sees himself as destined to be one of the greats of the game, but who has been underperforming lately. The narrative explores a lot of toxic traits through interiority, which, in a sense, explains the traits without pretending to justify them. In a practice session where Bless is pushing himself and mentally trying to figure out why his abilities seem to be declining, an enigmatic, seemingly diabolical presence shows up. The story feels like a comeuppance piece, and I didn’t fully understand all of what happened, but somehow it still felt right when the ending wrapped everything up. If pushed, I’d say that the piece is ultimately about treating the people around you right, and perhaps that seeing yourself as a phenomenon who exists in isolation forgets the contributions of those who are part of your life. Perhaps it is also about the way we, as a culture, drive people to want to be toxic. I lean towards thinking that the diabolical presence is a metaphor for self-destruction, but I’m not as sure about it as I sometimes feel when reading a story. At the same time, if you like comeuppance stories, you will like this one, and Bless is a solid candidate for the kind of satisfying or even cathartic vengeance those stories provide.

“A Story Overheard in a Room,” originally published on The NoSleep Podcast, combines the common experiences of hotel or motel discomfort with the less common but still too often occurring experiences of mistaken identity. James is on a business trip and can’t sleep. It could be health concerns keeping him up, among other things. As he’s watching the TV, he hears the voice of a kid responding to the screams of the woman on the program. Or he thinks he hears the voice . . . or he thinks the voice is talking to the woman . . . he isn’t sure, and it could all be a trick of his insomnia-struck mind. But when James finally speaks, the kid thinks James is the one to blame, that James is the cause of the woman’s screams. Things go downhill from there. Even though it’s a very short piece, for me it evokes something specific and important, which may or may not be the intent of the author. In my personal experience, mostly in my teenage years, I was often stopped and questioned by police, something which never happened to my white friends who lived in the same predominantly white Denver suburb, who dressed in a similar way, and who even had similar habits. But much worse happens to many people of color in the US, to the point where folks end up incarcerated or even shot because of an assumption of guilt or systems impacted by bias. The Compton story is short and sharp and speaks, to me, of the fact that these real-life horrors are often the result of snap decisions, that they go unquestioned, and in no time the damage is done; it’s too late. This isn’t necessarily the intent behind the story. I mean, it could be. But this is what the story evokes for me, perhaps because I understand the story deeply, or perhaps just because of the life experiences I bring to the read.

“The Happy People,” original to the book . . . well, sometimes stories can be metaphors for deep traumas or social conditions, or whatever else. And again, sometimes they’re just cool ideas. Science fiction, fantasy, and horror tend to have a lot of authors who just write stories that are cool ideas. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But quite often, the ideas are not as interesting, fresh, or new as the author may think. A cool idea might not sparkle or incite interest for readers as much as it does for the author. “The Happy People” might just be a cool idea. One where the author said, “Know how some people say, ‘smile through the pain’? What if that was more literal, what if it meant survival in a physical sense!?” So we have Farrah, who has been subjected to an experiment that enables her to regenerate from extreme physical damage as long as she can keep a happy mindset. Maintaining the mindset is easiest with a partner, someone who can keep up with the energy and vibe. Unfortunately, Farrah’s partner in happiness let his smile slip, which meant he became a bloody mess. Now, Farrah needs to find a new partner, which means subjecting people to a similar experiment and torturing them to see if they can fix themselves with a smile. This story is one of the more brutal, visceral, and graphic ones, and guess what? It works fantastically as an idea piece. It’s pretty short, it’s interesting and frenetic; Compton pulls it off with perfect horror execution. It could be a metaphor for the ways that we try to smile over emotional and/or psychological pain, and the fact that the pain is always there, lurking just beneath the surface, since we haven’t actually healed said pain. As soon as we stop smiling, the pain will come flooding back. Or it could just be a cool story. Either way, it’s a fun read! But: not for folks who don’t like “slasher stuff.”

This collection does something I really appreciate: It offers a mix of pieces from a range of sources, as well as a good number of originals. One of Compton’s skills is getting relatable characters on the page quickly and deftly, which makes horror more potent than otherwise. Some stories feel like they have a more deliberate depth and weight, some have references like easter eggs to delight readers, and some seem like they are more about painting a cool scene (but you can probably still see some meaning behind the gore if you want to). Compton’s interests are varied, his approaches diverse, and he is an adroit storyteller. This is a book for true horror fans, the ones who delight in all kinds of tales, and it sits well with the books on my shelves.