Dunnstown is in the midst of a strange season: the choking fogs of the “paper mill days” and the discovery of weirdly altered and elongated skeletons buried within Dunnstown’s sprawling Municipal Park. Homicide detective Raphaella Castellano—a three-year veteran of the DPD—and her partner, Detective Mike Guidry, are on the trail of the murderer responsible for these crimes, an investigation that will draw them both deep within the pall of uncanny corruption which inundates Dunnstown and its unfortunate residents. “That imagination precedes reason in our lives is perhaps the most obvious truth of all. It is the foundation upon which the mind is raised. In The Infusorium Jon Padgett adeptly conjures the more terrible and, we should admit, blatantly captivating aspects of the imagination. What is not obvious is how Padgett has done this and done it so well. While the terrors of his story are imagined, they are no less real for that.”
- Thomas Ligotti "Profoundly disturbing and seriously frightening."
- Rue Morgue Magazine "Only a few writers are able to distill the essence of some personal, primal nightmare and transmit it to others. Only a few horror stories are so artfully constructed that they generate an authentic sense of dreadful darkness and impending doom. Jon Padgett is one of those writers.The Infusorium is one of those stories."
- Matt Cardin, author of Dark Awakenings and Divinations of the Deep
Author
Jon Padgett is a professional–though lapsed–ventriloquist who lives in New Orleans. He is the Editor-In-Chief of Grimscribe Press, which publishes Vastarien: A Literary Journal , a source of critical study and creative response to the work of Thomas Ligotti. Padgett’s first short story collection, The Secret of Ventriloquism, was named the Best Fiction Book of the Year by Rue Morgue Magazine. Padgett’s voice has also become synonymous with the works of Thomas Ligotti. Padgett has lent his voice to numerous Thomas Ligotti works, including the recently released Penguin Random House audio version of Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe and various Cadabra Record releases, “The Bungalow House,” “The Red Tower,” “The Small People,” “Gas Station Carnivals,” “The Clown Puppet,” “Pictures of Apocalypse,” and “Mrs. Rinaldi’s Angel.” In addition to his work as a Ligotti narrator, Padgett has also narrated two Cadabra Records releases of his own work, “20 Simple Steps to Ventriloquism” and “Origami Dreams.” With his ability to channel Ligotti’s prose and poetry via the spoken word, Padgett is a singular figure in the world of weird storytelling.
