The Damnation Game

This is the story that started it all for Clive Barker, published back in 1985 and standing as his first novel, and it carries that first-novel hunger: nothing held back, nothing polite about it, no easing anyone in gently.

There's no need to give the shape of it away, only that it begins with someone making a deal they think they've got the measure of, and the horror comes from watching how wrong that certainty turns out to be.

Don't expect jump scares or slamming doors here. This is the slower, colder kind of dread, the sort that creeps in once you realise a bargain was never as simple as it looked. Pour something stronger than tea before you start, and maybe don't answer the door if anyone knocks halfway through.

It's the right pick for a night when the flat's gone quiet and you want a dread that settles in with you rather than one that shrieks and clears off.