I have been wracking my brain for the last week trying to remember the author of a few stories I read back when I was a kid. After another round of internet searching I came across this website, hopefully you guys can help me out.
So, this guy was mainly a horror fiction author. And one of the things I distinctly remember is that he was quite able at describing (what would be) graphically disturbing scenes. I mean, lots of horror stories have their unpleasant scenes, but this guy really dragged out some passages to give you no other choice but to start feeling uneasy with every word you read. Anyways, there are two books of his I remember reading. One, was a bundle of short stories. The other, a more lengthy novella.
Of the short stories, I only remember one; about a man that strayed from town to town, carrying a filthy old carpet with him; the carpet was some sort of sacrificial item. He lured people onto it, it consumed them, then he went to some place to deposit his sacrifice.
The other story had a really slow build-up. It told you the story of a kid and his grandfather, and the little village they lived in. It gave you an insight in the other people living in the village, their relationships, etc. Every few days, the grandfather took his grandson for a walk, towards a mysterious fence that was put up in a nearby forest. Nobody knew what it did there, and there was a lot of speculation. Then at one point, the story shifted to what was actually happening inside the fenced area; where there was a hi-tech scientific/military base, where they somehow managed to summon some demon. Then the last few chapters were spent on how the entire village is torn to shreds by the demon's minions. Everybody eventually turned up in some sort of their own personal nightmare. I remember a few of those; like an old woman who crawled into a huge oven because she heard the voices of her deceased loved ones in there. The other ones I remember were particularly vile so I decided against detailing them :P
I was already a Stephen King fan at that time, I'm pretty positive it wasn't him. Although eldritch summonings and people going mad sounds Lovecraftian, it's not him either. At first I thought it was Dean Koontz, but after looking over his bibliography, I can't find the stories I'm talking about, so I'm guessing that's wrong too. Any ideas?
EDIT: Very well, here's all the bits I can remember from the second story. Some are a bit vague, this is literally everything I can recall. Also, as I said, some are quite disturbing.
At the point when the village got attacked, someone got stranded just inside in the village. He/she got out of the car, and was pulled through a small hole in the ground, breaking every bone in the process.
A woman had her body slowly torn apart, her blood vessels staying intact until they formed a web around the room with her beating heart in the middle.
A girl woke up in the middle of the night, tied to her bed. Her bedroom had a hole in the wall, from which slowly emerged a seemingly endless line of men, which took turns raping her.
The girl's brother was wisped away to a dark area. He appeared to be standing in a huge line for all eternity. His mind was trapped in his body, being controlled without his will. Once he got at the front of the line, he ended up in a dusty old room with a mummified, barely breathing corpse tied to a bed. He raped her and got back in line.
- The end of the story was an anticlimax; every protagonist ended up dead and the epoligue depicted a hellish world where the demon ruled.
