"That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die."
-H.P. Lovecraft
For the past never truly sleeps. Rick still wakes screaming from dreams of the forbidden seal, and a question gnaws at him in the quiet hours: what became of the Terror Mask? As long as it exists, it can all happen again. And the strange gifts he carried out of that house, the visions, the whispers of other minds, suggest the Mask never quite let him go.
When his neighbors, the family of toy magnate Vito Sardini, flee their home in terror and vanish without a trace, Rick senses a familiar darkness gathering over his idyllic suburb. Soon the neighborhood is overrun by creatures unlike the Deadmen of his past, flying saucers hum above the manicured lawns of Connecticut, and even a pair of celebrity ghost-chasers come knocking with solutions to sell. Something new is at work here, and it answers to the name of Dr. Tongue.
Joined by Zeke and Julie, the fearless teenage monster-hunters of the Ghoul Patrol, Rick must take up arms once more, from water pistols and hedge-trimmers to the ancient power he swore he would never wear again, and cut his way to the root of the evil before the storm consumes everything he has built.
Splatterhouse: Calm Before the Storm is a work of fan fiction crossing over Splatterhouse 3 with many Sega Mega Drive horror videogame franchises, in the satirical intertextual style of Eugene Byrne and Kim Newman: a tale of hard-won peace, lingering trauma, and the monsters that never stay buried.
