Angela Slatter's Blog, page 79

The 2nd Spectral Book of Horror Stories: Gary Fry

Gary Fry lives in Dracula’s Whitby, literally around the corner from where Bram Stoker was staying when he was thinking about that character. Gary has a PhD in psychology, but his first love is literature. He is the author of many short story collections, novellas and novels. He was the first author in PS Publishing’s Showcase series, and none other than Ramsey Campbell has described him as “a master.” Gary warmly welcomes all to his web presence: www.gary-fry.com

What inspired your story “Scraping By”?

I find the economy and how global problems are translating into local difficulties really fascinating. It maps on to interests I had as a student, trying to figure how the individual related to society (and vice versa). The credit crunch was a bit like a fiscal earthquake, like a slippage in the structure of the social world. The tsunami of austerity which arose caught so many folk sitting out on beaches, some nonchalantly in hammocks, others sipping self-satisfied drinks, etc. And so in this story I wanted to capture that feeling of a couple’s lives in motion, and how they were suddenly swept sideways by events outside their control, and how little they could do to deal with that. Scraping By is, I hope, about the way private and public tragedy intersect.

What’s the first horror story you can remember making a big impact on you?

I’d say it was Roald Dahl’s ‘Man From the South’. It’s a perfect one-note horror story, whose terrors are located firmly offstage. I like that sense of elusive (and allusive) terror. It appealed to me powerfully as a kid, and just as much as an adult. One unusual aspect of it is, I think, the way that, unlike many horror tales which leave the reader just before some terrible event occurs (indeed, the story’s structure promises that all along), the terrible events in that tale have already occurred. If you know the piece, you’ll know what I mean. The whole tale is like a great melody: simple and resonant. Believe me, that’s hard to achieve.

Name your three favourite horror writers.

Ramsey Campbell. Stephen King. H P Lovecraft. I think those have had the most influence on me, and in that order. However, there are significant honourable mentions to Robert Aickman, M R James, Algernon Blackwood, TED Klein and Michael McDowell. I’d also include the scariest writer not described as a horror writer: Ruth Rendell (and her twisted sister Barbara Vine).

Is your writing generally firmly in the horror arena or do you do occasional jaunts into other areas of speculative fiction?

Almost entirely horror. I do occasionally touch upon scifi concepts, but usually within the Lovecraftian framework of alien beings summoned to earth. I don’t read much scifi or fantasy — Lord, I’ve tried, but it’s not for me, alas — and so tend to stick to what I know. My fictional preferences are very much grounded in the minutiae of everyday life, like a kitchen-sink drama with ghouls. I don’t why all that appeals to me; my north of England upbringing probably bears the guilt.

What’s in your to-be-read pile at the moment?

Oh, plenty. With a little time free right now, I’m indulging in all the books I never quite got round to as a younger man. I’ve devoured with peerless pleasure the likes of Roth’s American trilogy, Ellison’s Invisible Man, the less famous Greene novels, rereads of my beloved Martin Amis, and also Atwood, Updike, Faulks (a new discovery and a welcome one!), Murakami, et al. Going forwards, I hope to try a number of other writers who’ve always been on my radar: A S Byatt is there, as are Johns Cheever and Irving, along with Hilary Mantel and many more. Every so often I intersperse such weighty stuff with a bit of comic relief like Tom Sharpe. The number of books I’d like to read staggers and dismays me, but then I look at it another way: I have all these great books to read!

The 2nd Spectral Book of Horror Stories can be pre-ordered here.

The Sourdough Posts: Lavender and Lychgates

Arthur Rackham, Girl Beside a Stream

Oh noes! Second last Sourdough story! Soon it will all be over.

With “Lavender and Lychgates” I wanted to draw some threads together: I wanted to see Emmeline and Peregrine from “Sourdough” in their later life together – I wanted to know they were happy. I wanted to add another dimension to Emmeline’s mother, and I realised she was one of the twins from “The Angel Wood”, all grown up and with a family and personality of her own. I wanted to continue the idea of the importance of books in this collection, and of Lodellan as a place where books were born – that, in addition to its degenerate places, it also produced some wonderful things. Sidenote: the Carabhilles who own one of the bookstores in Lodellan have gone on to appear in The Bitterwood Bible and the new novella I’m working on, The Witch’s Scale.

I wanted to continue to explore concepts about the consequences of Emmeline’s actions in “Sourdough”. I had an image in my head of a young girl playing in a graveyard, which managed to entwine itself with a garbled tale of lilacs and lychgates a friend had told me years ago, the precise details of which I cannot remember. I managed to garbled it even more, replacing lilacs with lavender. I couldn’t get the words ‘lavender and lychgates’ out of my head, nor the image of shadows swirling in the apex of a lychgate roof above the heads of people passing out underneath. Emmeline ends “Sourdough” with the words ‘My memory is true’, and I wondered what happens when you hang onto a recollection too tightly.

This story was chosen by Stephen Jones for The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 22.

 

Lavender and Lychgates [extract]

My mother’s hair catches the last rays of the afternoon sun and burns. My own is darker, like my father’s, but in some lights you can see echoes of Emmeline’s bright fire buried deep.

She leans over the grave, brushing leaves, dirt and other wind-blown detritus away from the grey granite slab. A rosebush has been trained over the stone cross, and its white blooms are still tightly curled, with just the edges of the petals beginning to unfurl. Thomas Austen has rested here for fifteen years. Today would have been my brother’s birthday

To our right is one wall of the Cathedral, its length interrupted by impressive stained-glass windows that filter light and drop colours onto the worshippers within. My father, Grandma Tildy and my twin brothers, Henry and Jacoby, are among them, listening to the intoning of the mass. I can hear the service and the hymns as a kind of murmur through the thick stones. Emmeline has refused to set foot in there since Thomas’s untimely demise. I used to attend, too, but only until I was three or so, when I made plain my preference for my mother’s company over one of the hard-cushioned pews. Peregrine gave up arguing about it long ago, so I’ve been perched on the edge of Micah Bartleby’s tomb, weaving a wreath. I braid in lengths of lavender to add colour. I put the finished item beside my mother and tap her on the shoulder to draw her attention.

‘Thank you, sweetheart,’ she says, voice musical. Her face is smooth and her skin pale; only the flame-shaped streak of white at her widow’s peak shows that she’s older than you might think. Her figure remains trim and she still catches my father’s eye. ‘Don’t go too far, Rosie.’

She says this every time even though she knows the graveyard is my playground. When I was smaller, Emmeline would not let me wander on my own. She knew – knows – that things waited in the shadows, bright-eyed and hungry-souled. Now I am older she worries less for I’m aware of the dangers. Besides, the dark residents here want only to steal little children – they are easier to carry away, sweeter to the taste. She believes I am safe. I drop a kiss on the top of her head, feel how warm the sun has made her hair. She smells of strawberries.

I take my usual route, starting at Hepsibah Ballantyne, ages dead and her weeping angel tilted so far that it looks drunk and about to fall over. Under my carefully laced boots crunch the pieces of quartz making up the paths, so white it looks like a twisted spine. Beneath are miles and miles of catacombs, spreading out far beyond the aboveground boundaries of the graveyard. This city is built upon bones.

The cemetery devours three sides of Lodellan Cathedral, only the front entrance is free, its portico facing as it does the major city square. High stone walls run around the perimeter of the churchyard, various randomly located gates offer ingress and egress. The main entrance is a wooden lychgate, which acts as the threshold to the home of those-who-went-before.

No rolling acres of peaceful grass for our dead, but instead a labyrinth, a riotous mix of flora and stone, life and death. There are trees, mainly yew, some oak, lots of thick bushes and shrubs making this place a hide-and-seek haven. It’s quite hard, in parts, to see more than a few feet in front of you. You never know if the path will run out or lead over a patch of ground that looks deceptively firm, but is in fact as soft and friable as a snowdrift. You may find yourself knee-deep in crumbling dirt, your ankles caught in an ancient ribcage or, worse, twenty feet down with no one to haul you back into the air and light.

I am safe from these dangers at least, for I recognise the signs, the way the unreliable earth seems to breathe, just barely.

You might think perhaps that becoming dust would level all citizens, make social competitions null and void, but no. Even here folk vie for status. Inside the Cathedral, in the walls and under the floor, is where our royalty rests – the finest location to wait out the living until the last trumpet sounds. Where my mother sits is the territory of the merchant classes, those able to afford a better kind of headstone and a fully weighted slab to cover the spots where the dearly departed repose.

Further on, the poorer folk have simple graves with tiny white wooden crosses that wind and rain and time will decimate. Occasionally there is nothing more than a large rock to mark that someone lies beneath. In some places sets of small copper bells are hung from overhanging branches – their tinkling plaint seems to sing ‘remember me, remember me’.

Over by the northern wall, in the eastern corner, there are the pits into which the destitute and lost are piled and no one can recognise one body from another. These three excavations are used like fields: two lie fallow while one is planted for a period of two years. Lodellan does not want her dead restless, so over the unused depressions lavender is grown, a sea of purple amongst the varying greens, browns and greys. These plants are meant to cleanse spirits and keep the evil eye at bay, but rumour suggests they are woefully inadequate to the task.

In the western corner are the tombs proper, made from marble rather than granite, these great mausoleums rise over the important (but not royal) dead. Prime ministers and other essential political figures; beloved mistresses sorely missed by rich men; those self-same rich men in neighbouring sepulchres, mouldering beside their ill-contented wives, bones mingling in a way they never had whilst they breathed; parvenus whose wealth opened doors that would otherwise have remained firmly shut; and families of fine and old name, whose resting places reflected their status in life.

My father’s family has one of the largest and most elaborate of these, but he is banned from resting there – as are we. Even after all the scandal with his first wife and the kerfuffle when he set up sinful house with my mother, Peregrine had his own money. His parents saw no point, therefore, in depriving him of an inheritance and left him their considerable fortunes when they died. What they did refuse him was the right to be buried with them. They seemed to think this would upset him most, which caused Peregrine to comment on more than one occasion that it was proof they really had no idea at all.

Once upon a time I liked to play with my dolls in the covered porch that fronts the Austen mausoleum, imagining these grandparents I’d never met. But now I’m older, I don’t trouble with dolls anymore, nor do I concern myself with grands who didn’t care enough to see me when they lived. I feel myself poised for I know not what; that I stand on a brink. Grandma Tildy tells me this is natural for my age. So I simply wait, impatiently. I walk up the mould-streaked white marble steps and sit, staring into the tangled green of the cemetery.

Across the way a veil of jasmine hangs from a low yew branch, and something else besides. Something shining and shivering in the breeze: a necklace. I leave my spot and move closer to examine it without touching. There’s little finesse in its making, the blue stones with which it is set are roughly cut and older than old. The whole thing looks pretty, but raw. I know not to take it. Corpse-wights set traps for the unwary. There are things here the wise do not touch. Should you find something, a toy, a stray gift that seems lost, do not pick it up thinking to return to it for chances are its owner is already contemplating you from the shadows. There are fetishes, too, made of twigs and flowers, which catch the eye, but nettles folded within will bite. Even the lovely copper bells may be a trick, for many’s the time no one will admit to hanging them.

There’s a rustle in the boughs above me and I see a face, wrinkled and sallow, with yellowed buck teeth, the brightest green eyes and hair that is, in the very few parts that are not white, as fiery as Emmeline’s. The creature seems a “not-quite” – part human, part something else. Troll? My heart stops for a few beats as I stare up at the funny little visage; its gnarled hands hold the leaves back so it may peer at me clearly. Then it tries a smile, a shy strangely lovely expression, which I cannot help but return. I do not think this being is associated with the shiny temptation on the branch below it.

‘Rosie! Rosamund!’ My mother’s shout reaches me. I back away and race through the bone orchard, my feet sure.

Emmeline is standing, stretching her arms up to the sky. In her hand is her sun bonnet, which she wears less than she should, its ribbons fluttering. She smiles to see me. ‘Afternoon service will be finished soon.’

I’m almost there when my foot catches on a tree root I could swear was not in existence a moment before and I fall towards my brother’s grave. My hands hit the rough-polished granite and while one stays put, merely jarring the wrist, the right one skids across the surface, catching on the letters of his name. I feel the skin peel from my palm and let out a squeal of shock and pain. A slew of hide and a scarlet stain mar the stone. The ring my mother gave me, silver vines and flowers all entwined, is embedded into the flesh of my finger and I think I feel it grind against bone. I knock my knees against the sharp edge of the slab, too, ensuring impressive bruises in spite of the padding of my petticoats and skirt.

I may be almost an adult, but for all that I wail like a child while Emmeline fusses about with her lacy handkerchief.

‘Oh, oh, oh, my girl! Come along home, we’ll get those seen too. Your grandma will have something we can put on that.’ She helps me up and dabs at the seeping blood while I howl. My abused flesh stings and burns as we pass out under the lychgate. Shadows crowd above us in the angles of its ornate roof.

As we hobble away, I remember that I forgot to whisper good wishes to my brother.

 

***

 

The 2nd Spectral Book of Horror Stories: Ray Cluley

Ray Cluley’s short stories have been published in various magazines and anthologies. He has appeared in a few ‘best of’ anthologies and a couple of his stories have been translated (into French and Polish). He won the British Fantasy Award for Best Short Story with ‘Shark! Shark!’ in 2013. Water For Drowning, from This Is Horror, is currently short listed for a British Fantasy Award for Best Novella. His most recent work includes Within the Wind, Beneath the Snow, from Spectral Press, and Bone Dry (aka Curse of the Zombie) from Hersham Horror, while his collection Probably Monsters is available now from ChiZine.

What inspired your story “Mary, Mary”?

“Mary, Mary” began life as a simple story about a somewhat taboo subject (even in the horror genre) and was inspired by my own reaction to how the subject is so often presented in fiction and the media. If that sounds a bit vague, it’s because I’m trying to avoid major spoilers. The story developed when I was asked to write for an anthology I’ve since had to withdraw from, mainly because “Mary, Mary” refused to be nurtured into a story it didn’t want to be. Thankfully the publisher was very understanding about that and I was able to prune the story back and let it grow into what it is now, which in the long run has turned out very well because now it gets a more suitable home in The 2nd Spectral Book of Horror Stories.

What’s the first horror story you can remember making a big impact on you?

I’ve just been drafting a blog on this very subject! It wasn’t something I read, actually, but rather something I heard – the Jeff Wayne version of The War of the Worlds. It’s often considered sci-fi but for me it’s firmly a horror story and it terrified me as a kid, but in a good way (which was a weird feeling to get your head around as a child – like crying on a roller coaster then demanding “Again! Again!” afterwards.) Thirty odd years later it remains one of my favourites. I was too young to fully grasp the story, probably, but a sense of fear and panic permeates that album, thanks to Richard Burton’s wonderful narration and that evocative music – the heartbeat, the drilling electronic blasts, that drawn out Martian cry of Ulla! I used to imagine Martians skulking outside at night and knew it was only a matter of time before one of them peered in a window…

Name your three favourite horror writers.

I have so many, but to focus on newer writers I’d say Nathan Ballingrud, Helen Marshall, and Lisa Hannett. I’m excited whenever I hear one of them has new work coming and hope they never stop writing.

Is your writing generally firmly in the horror arena or do you do occasional jaunts into other areas of speculative fiction?

Oh, I do like a jaunt! Wherever I go, though, tends to end up being a suburb of horror. So the darker side of science fiction or fantasy, usually. I enjoy the crime genre, too, but it has to rise above puzzle-solving or serial killers. I think horror, any genre actually, benefits from a bit of overlap with another genre, it can help a story avoid becoming mired in tropes and clichés. Horror will always be my favourite genre, though. I feel we learn more about ourselves by looking at what scares or disturbs us.

What’s in your to-be-read pile at the moment?

Ha! What isn’t?! But the ones nearest the top, that I’m most looking forward to, are Stephen Volk’s Leytonstone, M.R. Carey’s The Girl With All The Gifts, and the latest issue of Interzone. I can’t wait to add The 2nd Spectral Book of Horror Stories to that pile…

The 2nd Spectral Book of Horror Stories can be pre-ordered here.

Another Bitterwood Bible Giveaway!

Lisa’s photo

To mark Bitterwood’s shortlisting for the World Fantasy Awards, Tartarus Press and I are celebrating by giving away another copy of the increasingly rare limited edition hardcover of The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings (we’re down to roughly the last one hundred copies), with illustrations by Kathleen Jennings, Introduction by Stephen Jones, and Afterword by Lisa L. Hannett.

To enter, click here and then click the very complicated Enter Giveaway button at Goodreads (even I can do it and I am challenged by the toaster).

Should you feel moved to actually purchase a copy, you can do so here at Tartarus’ brand spanking new site.

The 2nd Spectral Book of Horror Stories: Stephen Volk

Stephen Volk is the author of the superb novellas, Whitstable and Leytontone, as well as a screenwriter of note, having written Ghostwatch, Afterlife, and Gothic. He’s won BAFTAs and British Fantasy Awards and is generally delightful.

What inspired your story “Wrong”?

I don’t want to give too much away, because I don’t want the reader to know what’s coming, but it was directly inspired by something that happened in my home town a few years ago. The way prurient gossip surrounds this kind of thing, and the attendant moral outrage, made me think it was the core of an unusual story, but I didn’t know how to tell it until I combined it with my memories of student life. The two things seemed to gel and make it work, I hope.

What’s the first horror story you can remember making a big impact on you?

Possibly “Enoch” by Robert Bloch, because it was the first story in the paperback tie-in to the Amicus film Torture Garden. I remember the thrill of realising it took me inside the mind of somebody mad. It was the first paperback I bought with my pocket money instead of comics and it felt like forbidden fruit.

Name your three favourite horror writers.

Tomorrow it might be three different ones, but today it’s Richard Matheson, Mark Morris and (unfashionably) Dennis Wheatley.

Is your writing generally firmly in the horror arena or do you do occasional jaunts into other areas of speculative fiction?

I’ve written stories that are crime (arguably my novellas Whitstable and Leytonstone) and science fiction/fantasy screenplays such as adaptations of The Box of Delights and The Chrysalids but I’m most at home in the supernatural and psychological. But I go where the story takes me. I don’t really think when I’m writing a story that it has to be “horror” – Mark said this story, “Wrong”, for instance “wasn’t really horror but was horror”: which I take as a great compliment! My wife doesn’t think I write horror, as a matter of fact, but that’s to do with her definition. I’m happy to be called a horror writer because it is the glove that fits me best, but happy to be just called a writer too.

What’s in your to-be-read pile at the moment?

John Connolly’s Nocturnes, Mark Morris’s The Wolves of London, Marion Couts’s The Iceberg, Sarah Pinborough’s The Death House, and The Shining: Studies in the Horror Film edited by Danel Olson. What’s at the top of the pile always shifts around depending what I’ve just read and what I fancy reading next.

The 2nd Spectral Book of Horror Stories can be pre-ordered here.

The 2nd Spectral Book of Horror Stories: Lisa L. Hannett

Lisa L. Hannett has had over 60 short stories appear in venues including Clarkesworld, Fantasy, Weird Tales, Apex, the Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror, and Imaginarium: Best Canadian Speculative Writing. She has won four Aurealis Awards, including Best Collection for her first book, Bluegrass Symphony, which was also nominated for a World Fantasy Award. Her first novel, Lament for the Afterlife, was published by CZP in 2015. You can find her online at http://lisahannett.com and on Twitter @LisaLHannett.

What inspired your story “Sugared Heat”?

I often think about how, as a kid in Canada, I’d go on school trips out to the sugar bush to tap maple trees for syrup. (There were taps plugged right into the trees! And we’d pack snow onto popsicle sticks and drip syrup right onto them!) I was also thinking about really small, really isolated towns (again, as I often do) and the lengths to which the people who lived in them might go to avoid too much inbreeding. (Assuming they’d be okay with a bit of inbreeding, of course.) At the same time, I’d been thinking a lot about dryads, and also about terrible skin afflictions — and wouldn’t tree bark make an excellent back-scratcher, if you got hold of a big enough slab? But surely the dryads wouldn’t be all that keen on giving up their bark, I thought. Maybe it would be better if you stripped down and rubbed up against them … which sent the story spiralling in a much darker direction than I expected, given that the whole train of thought kicked off with kids and maple snow-popsicles.

What’s the first horror story you can remember making a big impact on you?

I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson. (The book, not the film, which was dreadful.) The way those vampires taunted Neville when he was barricaded inside his house at night has stuck with me for years. It was such an inhuman — but human —thing they did to him. Brilliant psychological horror.

Name your three favourite horror writers.

Shirley Jackson. Robert Shearman.[Insert all other horror writers here because how can I narrow it down to three? What a cruel, cruel task.]

Is your writing generally firmly in the horror arena or do you do occasional jaunts into other areas of speculative fiction?

I like the umbrella term ‘speculative fiction’ because it’s broad (and unspecific) enough to encompass all of the sorts of stories I write. My work is mostly strange, sometimes creepy, often unsettling — all trademarks of horror, I suppose — but I rarely consciously sit down in front of my computer and think, ‘Today, I’m going to write horror.’ (Or fantasy / science fiction, for what it’s worth.) Bluegrass Symphony contains stories I thought maybe were mostly fantasy, but they’ve also been received as horror (‘The Short Go: A Future in Eight Seconds’ won ‘Best Horror Short Story’ at the 2011 Aurealis Awards; meanwhile the collection itself was nominated for a World Fantasy Award.) Midnight and Moonshine is pretty firmly fantasy, and The Female Factory is science fiction in that its stories rely on scientific concepts and questions— but there is nary a spaceship or planet (other than Earth) to be found in that collection. All of my uncollected stories straddle the fantasy/science fiction/horror borderlines, too. The ones I think might be science fiction get bought by horror venues, the ones I think are horror get bought by fantasy markets, the ones I think are fantasy wind up as something in-between. And then there’s Lament for the Afterlife, my first novel, which is a mid-apocalyptic dark fantasy horror war story. Think Platoon meets Pan’s Labyrinth meets Things We Didn’t See Coming, and that starts to describe it…

What’s in your to-be-read pile at the moment?

I’m 95% of the way through The Anchoress by Robyn Cadwallader, so that’s at the top. I’m also partway through The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro, so that’s next. I’m also well into Redeployment by Phil Klay, which I’m reading slowly so that it lasts longer, but I’ll have to get to the end sooner or later. After that I want to re-read Hild by Nicola Griffith (because I devoured it the first time, and now want to savour it). Then I’ve got Sweetland by Michael Crummey lined up (whose previous book, Galore, is one of my favourites of all time). I also want to read Archivist Wasp by Nicole Kornher-Stace.

The 2nd Spectral Book of Horror Stories can be pre-ordered here.

The 2nd Spectral Book of Horror Stories: Nicholas Royle

The delightful Nicholas Royle is a novelist, creative writing lecturer, reviewer, editor and publisher of Nightjar Press. Here he takes some time to chat about his story “The Larder”.

What inspired your story “The Larder”?

If I were to say precisely what inspired “The Larder” it would kind of give the game away, so I’ll just say my love of birds. But also my love of the Observer’s books, a series of British pocket-sized books published between 1937 and 2003. In particular I liked the Observer’s Book of Birds and the Observer’s Book of Birds’ Eggs.

What’s the first horror story you can remember making a big impact on you?

Not strictly speaking a horror story, but I found it horrifying and, now that I look back, I realise it inspired much of what I’ve been writing about in the last 30 years. It was a comic strip story featuring Pixie and Dixie and Mr Jinks in, I think, the 1968 Huckleberry Hound Annual featuring a dressmaker’s dummy that was made to appear to have a mind of its own.

Name your three favourite horror writers. 

Joel Lane, Alison Moore, Dennis Etchison.

Is your writing generally firmly in the horror arena or do you do occasional jaunts into other areas of speculative fiction?

I write in and on the borders of lots of different genres, but mainly horror, crime, mystery and literary fiction.

What’s in your to-be-read pile at the moment?

Noir by Robert Coover. Also a range of short stories by British writers published last year, from which I’m selecting the contents of Best British Short Stories 2016 (Salt). I’m judging some prizes, so I have a lot of reading for those – the Lightship First Novel Prize, the Novella Prize and the Manchester Fiction Prize.

The 2nd Spectral Book of Horror Stories can be pre-ordered here.

The 2nd Spectral Book of Horror Stories: Thana Niveau

Thana Niveau is a Halloween bride who lives in a crumbling gothic tower in Wicker Man country. She shares her life with fellow horror scribe John Llewellyn Probert, in a Victorian library filled with arcane books and curiosities. She has twice been nominated for the British Fantasy award, for her collection From Hell to Eternity and for her short story “Death Walks En Pointe”.

What inspired your story “Behind the Wall”?

The origin of this story is bittersweet. Shortly after my friend Joel Lane died, I had a strange dream. My husband John and I had bought a new house in an isolated village and someone told us we could keep Joel alive by walling off a room in the house and imagining that he was there behind it, still writing. In the dream the idea was both creepy and comforting and we were about to start work on it when I woke up.

It wasn’t at all my usual kind of dream (mine tend to be both more surreal and overtly threatening) and I had the strangest notion that it was a gift from Joel. I don’t believe in god or heaven but I do believe that we have souls, an essence that is uniquely “us”. That essence has to go somewhere when we die. Perhaps it simply gets re-absorbed into the universe. Or perhaps it gets dispersed among your loved ones. If so, I hope everyone who loved Joel has a part of him with them always.

What’s the first horror story you can remember making a big impact on you?

That would have to be Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”, which my mom first read to me when I was very little. I loved it and made her read it to me again and again. It made me want to be a writer. Some 20 years later, I read Clive Barker’s “Dread” and felt insanely jealous that he’d got there first with the idea!

Name your three favourite horror writers.

Shirley Jackson, Ramsey Campbell and Stephen King.

Is your writing generally firmly in the horror arena or do you do occasional jaunts into other areas of speculative fiction?

I’ve recently fallen back in love with SF, so I’ve been both reading and writing a lot of that lately. I was thrilled to place my story “The Calling of Night’s Ocean” in Interzone last year.

I’ve also done some fun Lovecraft crossovers, including a story called “Tentacular Spectacular” for Steampunk Cthulhu and a high fantasy one for Sword & Mythos. I had a blast writing them and they’re both genres I’d happily return to, with or without tentacles!

I also read crime fiction, but I don’t think I’d enjoy writing it. I would love to attempt an old-school mystery, though – ideally set in space! And I’ve got one pet project that’s been fermenting for decades which is either fantasy or magic realism, although of course I can’t keep the horror out of it.

What’s in your to-be-read pile at the moment?

I tend to have several books on the go at once and I’m buried in 4 novels right now: Creatures of Light and Darkness (Roger Zelazny), Ringworld (Larry Niven), Neuromancer (William Gibson) and Hellstrom’s Hive (Frank Herbert), as well as the current issues of Interzone and Black Static and a couple of horror anthologies. (I tend to dip in and out of story collections and anthologies rather than reading them straight through.) On my teetering TBR pile is a ton of mostly SF, including Armada (Ernest Cline), Mother of Eden (Chris Beckett) and Helliconia Summer (Brian Aldiss).

The 2nd Spectral Book of Horror Stories can be pre-ordered here.

The Sourdough Posts: Sister, Sister

“Sister, Sister” has its roots in my childhood: one of the books we had to read was an old collection of my mother’s, called Norwegian Folk Tales. I suspect it was an old book when Mum first got it as a kid, it was a thin tome with a forest green cover and silver lettering – it’s long since disappeared, though I found a later edition earlier this year and bought it (still not the same, just saying). In it was all sorts of tales of hulders and trolls, of women whose back side was hollowed out like a tree trunk, and yet others who looked perfectly normal but for their cow tale … but the bit of information that most appealed to me and stuck with me over the years was that trolls were known to steal away human babies and leave their own nasty, mewling offspring in the cradles.

Even at a young age I loved the idea of the changeling child – and even more I loved to torment my younger sister that she wasn’t really my true sibling, but a troll’s daughter left in the crib to cause trouble. All this probably says more about me than my sister, but when I began to think about new stories for Sourdough I knew I wanted a troll tale and I knew I wanted to use the changeling child as a motif.

The first image that came to me was that of the interior of the Golden Lily Inn and Brothel; I knew who the inhabitants were, I knew many of them had previously appeared in Sourdough, such as Bitsy, Kitty, Fra Benedict, Rilka, Faideau, Livilla – and my beloved Patience Sykes in her old age (her middle years are covered in Of Sorrow and Such out from Tor.com in October this yea). One of the things that really comes to the fore in this story is how well we do or don’t know our friends, how rumour and gossip colours what we know of their history, and indeed how many of these characters have already become the stuff of legend to some small degree. Theodora, my narrator is new, though, and we see through her eyes how she’s fallen from Princess of Lodellan to an employee at the Golden Lily. That she’s been replaced by her sister as First Lady, that she dreams of escape and being free, and that the being she loves most in the world is her little daughter Magdalene. But Lodellan isn’t safe anymore and when Theodora treads the streets she once ruled she comes to the attention of something she’d really rather have avoided.

 

Sister, Sister [extract]

The final hymn is being sung off-key and I suspect the choir-master will not be pleased. I smile, imagining his scowl as he tries to locate the culprit amongst those angel-faces. Imagination is all I have at this distance, there’s very little to see from the arse-end of the Cathedral.

Pillars, posts, baptismal fonts, and other members of the faithful all ruin the landscape. My kind are tolerated in church, but only just. This is not the view I used to have; once, I sat in the pews up front, those with little gates on the side to let everyone know how special we were.

Once, I was on show.

I still am, I suppose, but now it’s looks of pity, occasionally of contempt. Always curiosity. I’d have thought that after six months it would have died down, but apparently not. I hold my head high, meeting cold stares with one even frostier until they turn away. But I tolerate this, continue coming back once a week for my daughter’s sake. Just because I’ve lost faith doesn’t mean Magdalene should be denied the possibilities of its comfort; besides she loves the theatre of it as only a child can. When she is older she can decide for herself whether there is something genuine to be had.

The Archbishop lifts the chalice, makes his final flamboyant gestures, bows his head and  bids those within range of his voice to go in peace. This much I know from memory. Those in the front rows rise and I think I see the flash of Stellan’s golden hair and a hook twists in my gut; but I could be mistaken. No sign of the other one though. The flock rises with the rhythm of a wave. One advantage of our lowly seating is its proximity to the door. We, the inhabitants of the inn, are out in the sunlight before the exulted few have managed to move two yards.

Magdalene’s hand creeps up to twine fingers with mine, her grip tight and clammy. In the shade of the portico at the top of the steps sit the Archbishop’s six hounds. Grey and silver in the shadows, insubstantial until someone with ill intent crosses the threshold, then they become suddenly-solid, voracious and vicious. No one wants a resurrected wolf hunting them down. I have explained, over and over, to my little girl that they will do her no harm, but there is a core of fear in her that not even her mother can touch.

From across the square comes the sound of a carriage and four. It is the white ceremonial one I rode in on my wedding day. The sheer curtains are drawn but I think I see pale blonde hair as the occupant peeks out. Polly, who has yet to attend a church service in all her time in this city. My sister makes no pretense of religious zeal.

Behind us the wolf-hounds growl and Magdalene wails, climbing up my skirts like a terrified monkey. She holds me so tightly I can barely breathe. Grammy Sykes pats her back and talks in a low voice to the wolf-hounds. They react to her tone, settle back to sit in the shadows, the exiting crowd giving them a wide berth. I look at them, wondering who among the press of bodies set the beasts off. Grammy pokes me to move along and we head for home.

*

The inn is old, so old that if you cut into the walls you might find age rings like those in the great trees of the forest beyond the city walls. The wood panels have been darkened by years, hearth smoke, sweat, tears and alcohol vapour. If you licked them (as the children sometimes do), you’d taste hops as well as varnish.

The bar itself, where Fra Benedict serves the drinks, is pitted with the marks of drinking vessels slammed down too hard, the irresistible will of dripping liquid, and the musings and graffiti carved by the bored, the drunk and the lonely when the barman is distracted. The glassware gleams, though, as do the metal fixtures and the bottles behind the bar are kept clean (although it’s not as if they stay undisturbed long enough for dust to settle). There are booths with seats covered in balding velvet, and the hiss-hum of the gas lamps (lit low for daytime) is a constant comfort.

Things are quiet at the moment, Sunday afternoon, most of our clients still pretending their piety after Mass this morning. There’s only Faideau in a corner booth, his breeches slung low and his shirt stained with wine. He’s a poet, he says; drinks like one at any rate. He snores loudly. Fra Benedict will go through his pockets soon for the money he owes, then roust him to move on, to spend at least a few hours out in the sunshine.

In one corner is the crèche, where we whores and wenches leave our children (those of us who have them) under the tender, watchful eyes of Grammy Sykes and her half-wolf, half-something-or-other, Fenric. The small space is scattered with books and toys, which miraculously stay within a reasonable radius. Two little boys, and three girls, one of them Magdalene, three years old and still clad in her red Sunday robe. My little girl, the only reminder that I was once loved.

In the kitchen I can hear Bitsy dropping pans. A few seconds later Rilka chases her out, swearing mildly, which is about as angry as anyone can get with Bitsy, who now stands in the middle of the room, unsure what to do next. Fra Benedict makes his particular peculiar noise to catch her attention, jerks his head for her to come and sit at the bar. He is mute, his tongue having been torn out many years ago in some monastery brawl. Bitsy hoists herself onto one of the high stools and sips at the weak ale and blackberry shandy he pours for her.

Bitsy is a little older than me: her face bears the blankness of youth and her long straight hair is a white blonde. She used to be a doll-maker. Not all of them go the same way; she made a special kind of doll, putting tiny pieces of her soul into them. Beautiful dolls, they were (I saw some in a museum, once), but each one left her emptier.

Now she’s touched, little more than a doll herself, with just enough wit to sometimes take drinks to tables, wash dishes, and lie still when a client with no need for a real response climbs aboard and lets her giggle beneath him. Fra Benedict is kind to her; I think they are distant cousins.

Rilka’s dark head pops out of the kitchen. ‘Finished with them peas yet, Theodora?’

I shake my head. ‘Soon, Rilka.’

She disappears with a profanity. Rilka was a nun, in her better days.

Now she’s just like us. Some men pay extra for her to lose her spectacular temper and hurt them. Her special gentlemen callers, she says with a laugh. Tall and muscular, cedar-skinned Rilka doubles as cook.

Kitty thinks Rilka killed someone, tells how she talks in her sleep.

Kitty mends our dresses, sitting in the corner, working on one of those I brought with me, taken apart and made over to fit others. I had no further need of finery. Kitty pulls hard on her final stitch, makes a knot then cuts the thread with her teeth, etching more deeply the tailor’s notch in her left front tooth. Her hair is brassy-bright, a touch of red, a touch of gold; it’s beautiful and distracts clients from the scars on her face: two running parallel across the bridge of her nose before dropping down her left cheek like deep gutters, relics of an unkind husband. Her eyes are blue and sad.

She holds the dress up for me to see: the green and gold brocade is now short enough to show off Livilla’s fine legs, and tight enough around the waist to push her breasts up so they will spill from the top of the bodice. I nod approval just as we hear one of Livilla’s loud sighs floating down from an upstairs room. A few seconds later there is a satisfied, bellowing grunt from her client. She has earned her fee for the day.

Fra Benedict and Grammy Sykes, his common-law wife, don’t make us take all comers. Most of the men are regulars who know Fra and Grammy keep a fair house with clean, cared-for girls. Sometimes there are women, too, anxious for something soft and gentle as a welcome relief from their husbands’ violent prongings. We need only bed one client each day, any after that are up to our discretion. The fee here is high enough and the need for us to work as bar wenches outweighs the pull of the money to be made in excessive bed-sports. One of the advantages of Fra and Grammy’s lax policy is that men are anxious to have what might be refused them, so we always have clientele, banging on the doors, hoping to pay for our favours.

Grammy Sykes was a whore once herself; she remembers what it was like, the constant line of hard, demanding cocks. I think she prides herself on being kinder to us than anyone ever was to her. Livilla whispers that Grammy was a great beauty in her day, although there is scant evidence of it now.

Grammy and Fra will both tell you how many of their girls have gone on to better places, indeed, so many of their old girls are now the wives of rich and influential men that upper-class dinner parties sometimes resemble a whores’ reunion; can’t throw a silken shoe without hitting some woman who used to earn her living horizontally. The comfort of a prosperous future is for the other girls. They don’t tell me this story.

I finish shelling the peas then turn to polishing the silverware Grammy keeps for the private parlour. I hear the front door open behind me, see the sunlight flare in momentarily before the door closes and the cool dimness is restored. I don’t turn around until Fra nods to indicate that the customer is waiting for me.

Prycke was, still is, the Prime Minister. He wanders the capital with minimal guards as if he is still as unimportant now as he was when he was born in the lower slum areas, out near the abattoirs in the furthest, poorest quarters of the city. He’s not overly tall, has a stern sallow face, but his eyes are kind. Clad in dark colours, you might not realise how fine the fabrics of his breeches and frock coat are unless you look carefully. The buckles on his shoes catch the light of the gas-lamps and it seems he has stars on his feet.

‘Have you a moment, mistress?’

I nod, feeling the precarious pile of dark curls on my head sway; one long tendril breaks free and snakes down my neck. He watches it fall. ‘My time costs nowadays, sirrah.’

He is taken aback, reaches into a pocket and draws forth two gold coins. I raise one finely plucked brow but say nothing. I remain silent until he has extracted seven gold coins, then tell him to pay Fra Benedict.

Prycke follows me upstairs. I choose the room with blue velvet curtains hanging around the four-poster bed and a view of the city, an expanse of roofs and, if you look straight down, the Lilyhead fountain and children playing in its greenish waters. I tug at the loose stays of my dress with one hand and at the single clip in my hair with the other; the russet velvet falls to the floor and torrents of hair tumble down to my waist, obscuring the jut of my breasts. I sweep the tresses back so he gets his money’s worth.

He gulps, removes his shoes first (so sensible! So practical! So strategic!), then his coat, and unbuttons his breeches, letting them drop. His legs are pale, hairy, strong. The tip of his cock peeps from under the hem of his shirt, shy, not quite ready. He didn’t expect this encounter, I’m sure, at least not this kind of encounter.

I lie on the bed, splayed like an open flower, and wait for him.

When we are finished, he avoids my eyes. He slips, calls me Majesty. I laugh long and hard at that.

‘Would you come back, Ma – madam? If you could?’

‘Even if I wanted to, I would not, could not. Another sits in my place.’ I fix him with a stare, blue and cold.

‘Your step-sister, madam, she never sets foot in . . .’

‘My sister, Prycke, neither step nor half. Only full-blood can hate so well.’

‘Your husband sent me.’

‘My husband heard me called “whore” and believed it. My husband heard his daughter called “bastard” and believed that, too.’ I hiss the words at him, spittle gathering at the corners of my mouth and curse that I still feel anything. ‘Five years together and I gave him no cause to doubt me, but the moment my sister swears to him that I had taken lovers he believed her.’

‘Madam, I was not in the city when it happened. I would have counselled him otherwise,’ he stammers. He feels badly for me. But he did nothing for me.

‘For all the good it would have done. My husband brands me whore and takes my sister to his bed. So, I embrace my new title, Prycke. I am whore to whoever pays for me.’ I sit up, step into my gown, lacing it tightly for I have earned my keep for today and tomorrow.

He dresses quickly, a handy skill. ‘Madam, your sister has a strangeness about her. She is peculiar . . . she does not attend . . .’

I raise my hand. ‘No more, Prycke. No more.’ He reaches for the door handle. ‘Prycke?’

He turns back, face hopeful.

‘Tell the Archbishop I will see him on Tuesday, at our usual time.

 ***

 

The Voice of Waters of Versailles: Kelly Robson

The lovely Kelly Robson takes some time out to talk about wine, water, and teetering on the edge of darkness.

1. So, what do new readers need to know about Kelly Robson?

When driving, I always strive to give my passengers the smoothest possible ride. No jerky stops and starts for me and mine!

Same goes for readers. My ultimate goal is to be the kind of writer whose work you can fall into effortlessly.

2. What was the inspiration behind Waters of Versailles (edited by the inimitable Ellen Datlow)?

Looking back, Waters of Versailles formed at a confluence of four wide streams: wine, water, death, and children. Several years back, I had a glorious freelance gig writing the monthly wine and spirits column for Chatelaine, Canada’s largest women’s magazine. At the same time, I was working for environmental scientists, editing and producing a 500-page book about river restoration projects. During that same year, my dad died, and a few months later I took care of my two year-old niece for 36 hours. She’s a great kid, but childcare was the most exhausting thing I’ve ever done.

But that’s just hindsight. The story originally sprouted from the image of the champagne fountain — a giant Baroque extravagance, wasteful and glorious.

3. Tell us about the cover art from the very talented Kathleen Jennings!

Kathleen Jennings is such an amazing artist — I am so lucky to have a cover by her. It’s just glorious — such a striking design!

Not only did Kathleen get all the major characters into it, she also included the monkey and the parrot, which are two of my favourite parts of the story. The cover also includes an Easter egg. If you look closely at the bottom right and left, you’ll see tiny water taps and spouts on the framing pipe design. So clever!

Kathleen has made the art available at her Redbubble store. I’ve bought several items, and I know Ellen Kushner and Tansy Rayner Roberts have both bought a few pieces too — T-shirts and scarves. The art looks even better printed large. I have a big Redbubble print on my bedroom wall, and I hope to be able to save up enough to buy Kathleen’s original when I see her at the World Fantasy Convention in November.

4. When did you first start writing and what made you want to do so?

Books have always been the most important thing in my life. I started young, writing my first book in grade 5 and adapting C.S. Lewis’ The Last Battle for a one-act play in grade 6. With a start like that it should have been full steam ahead, but though I wrote a few things over the years I didn’t get really serious about writing until Nanowrimo 2005. There comes a time in everyone’s life where you realize time is running out and you really should get down to it or it won’t happen. I’ve put hundreds of thousands of words in the trunk over the past ten years, and each one was necessary in learning how to tell a good story.

5. What’s your favourite short story ever?

If I had to choose just one, it has to be Connie Willis’ Science Fiction screwball comedy romance Spice Pogrom, which heavily influenced Waters of Versailles. It’s a hilarious, touching story with a cast of thousands. I love the way the plot starts snowballing downhill, taking everything with it. Genius!

6. In general, who and/or what are your writing influences?

My living gods are Connie Willis, Walter Jon Williams, and Michael Bishop. All are brilliant at both short and long form. Outside of the genre, it’s got to be Alan Bennett and Hilary Mantel.

Connie’s new novel is coming out this January. I’ve just found out that Walter is returning to his Praxis space opera universe with a new trilogy, and I’m just thrilled. Michael Bishop had a brilliant novelette in Asimov’s this February, Rattlesnakes and Men, and I hope to see more from him soon. And Alan Bennett has just released a bunch of short stories, old and new.

My dead gods are James Tiptree, Jr., Jane Austen, the Brontes (especially Anne), Thomas Hardy, Elizabeth Gaskell, and George Eliot.

7. Talk us through your amazing science fiction horror short “The Three Resurrections of Jessica Churchill”?

This is where Tiptree comes into it. “Three Resurrections” draws heavily on the Tiptree novella The Only Neat Thing to Do, which starts off as an aw-shucks space adventure and then has you sobbing uncontrollably through the last third.

“Three Resurrections” is dark. Very dark. It has to be, because it’s my attempt to convey the vast gaping horror I have stood on the edge of since the age of sixteen, when one of my high school classmates disappeared. It was foul play — she was certainly murdered — but her body has never been found. She is listed among the Highway of Tears murders, which are still ongoing along Highway 16 in British Columbia and Alberta, contributing to the epidemic of murdered and missing Indigenous women in Canada. This is a ongoing situation that the Canadian government refuses to deal with.

8. Who is your favourite villain in fiction?

I like effective villains. They’re strangely hard to come by! My favourite villain is Steerpike from Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast. He really is the worst. I will never forgive him for what he did to Fuchsia. And his rise from kitchen boy to Master of Ritual is a delicious version of the stereotypical fantasy hero’s rise from obscurity to power.

9. Who is your favourite heroine/hero in fiction?

I love unlovable heroines — the Emma Woodhouses and the Gwendolyn Harleths of the literary world. They’re vain, bossy, and sometimes quite nasty. They think far too well of themselves, but I can’t fault them for it. Healthy self-regard is no crime. And in any case, they are their own worst enemies. In my opinion, Gwendolyn Harleth doesn’t deserve the ending that George Eliot gives her in Daniel Deronda. I would very much like to rehabilitate her.

10. What is next for Kelly Robson?

My Science Fiction short story “Two Year Man” is out right now in the August 2015 issue of Asimov’s. And in November I have a novelette in the anthology Licence Expired: The Unauthorized James Bond, coming from Toronto’s wonderful ChiZine Publications and edited by Madeline Ashby and David Nickle. The Ian Fleming books have just entered public domain in Canada, so it’s open season on Fleming’s Bond. My story “The Gladiator Lie” is an alternate ending to From Russia with Love. It was so fun and gratifying to work on. I’m still cackling over it. And I’m not alone — every contributor has said that writing a Bond story was the most fun writing they’ve ever done. If the authors had that much fun, you know readers will have a blast.