by Steve Haynes
Mrs. Pitchford went back to the laundry room and found a scrubbing brush, detergent, and a bucket. She filled the bucket with hot water from the tap in the laundry, then went back to the boy’s room and scrubbed the rest of the muck out of the carpet. While she was doing this, Harold had become impatient outside in the car and sounded the horn. ‘Hold your bloody horses,’ she’d said to Harold, who couldn’t possibly have heard her.
When she was finally back inside the car and seated, a pillowcase in her lap, the contents wet and heavy, plus three Tupperware containers inside a brown paper bag clutched in her other hand, she asked Harold, ‘You want to check the creek?’
‘Nah. She’ll be right. Long gone. She’ll be up in them caves by now, mother.’
Mrs. Pitchford smiled, wistfully. ‘She got carried away again, my love.’
Smiling with a father’s pride, Harold said, ‘She’s a big girl, mother. You’ve got to let them suss their own way in this world. Be there for them from time to time, but still . . . we’ve done what we can for her. She has her own family now. She’s just providing for them the best way she knows.’
‘We’ve been very lucky with her, Harold. To think of all them sheep Len and Audrey lost last year with their girl.’
‘You’re not wrong, mother. But when you let a child run wild . . .’ Harold rolled his eyes behind the thick lenses in the tortoise-shell frames of his glasses that he’d taken off the old Maori boy they’d found fishing too far downstream last summer. ‘It’s all about pace, mother. We showed our girl how to pace herself. A chook or two. A dog. A cat. And if dags like these Poms are still around after that, well it comes down to who was here first. And who was here first, mother?’
‘We was, dear. We was.’
CONTRIBUTORS’ BIOGRAPHIES
Simon Bestwick short fiction has been published in the UK and the States, collected in two volumes; A Hazy Shade Of Winter (Ash Tree Press, 2004) and Pictures of the Dark (Gray Friar Press, 2009). He’s also written for radio. He has written two novels: Tide of Souls and The Faceless.
Joseph D’Lacey is best known for his novel Meat, which prompted Stephen King to say, ‘Joseph D’Lacey rocks!’. Other published works include Garbage Man, Snake Eyes, The Kill Crew, The Failing Flesh, Blood Fugue and Splinters – a collection of his best short stories. He won the British Fantasy Award for Best Newcomer in 2009. His most recent novel, Black Feathers, is out now. He lives in Northamptonshire with his wife and daughter.
Cate Gardner is a horror and fantastical author with over a hundred published short stories. Several of those stories appear in her collection Strange Men In Pinstripe Suits (Strange Publications, 2010). She is also the author of two novellas: Theatre Of Curious Acts (Hadley Rille Books, 2011) and Barbed Wire Hearts (Delirium Books, 2011).
Carole Johnstone is a Scot living in Essex. Her first published story appeared in Black Static #3 in early 2008, and she has since contributed stories to PS Publishing, Night Shade Books, Gray Friar Press, Morrigan Books, Apex Book Company and many more. She has been reprinted in Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year and her first novella, Frenzy, was published by Eternal Press/ Damnation Books in 2009. Her second, Cold Turkey, is to be published by TTA Press in 2013, as is her debut short story collection from Gray Friar Press, titled The Bright Day is Done. She is presently at work on her second novel while seeking fame and fortune with the first.
Tyler Keevil grew up in Vancouver, Canada, and currently lives in Mid Wales with his wife and son. His genre fiction has been published in a variety of magazines and anthologies, including Black Static, Leading Edge, Neo-Opsis, and On Spec. His debut novel, Fireball, was longlisted for Wales Book of the Year and received the Media Wales People’s Prize 2011. He has a new novel, The Drive, due out in August this year. Fearful Symmetry was inspired by the work of documentary filmmaker Sasha Snow.
Kim Lakin-Smith’s first novel was Tourniquet: Tales From The Renegade City and her 1950s’ gaspunk short story, ‘Johnny and Emmie-Lou Get Married’ was published in Interzone #222 and shortlisted for the 2009 British Science Fiction Association short story award. She has had many short stories published in anthologies and a variety of magazines, leading to the publication of her second novel Cyber Circus which was shortlisted for the 2011 British Science Fiction Association Best Novel award and shortlisted for the 2011 British Fantasy Society Best Novel award. Kim’s Young Adult novella, Queen Rat was published in 2012.
Alison Littlewood is a writer of dark fantasy and horror fiction. Her first novel, A Cold Season, was selected for the Richard and Judy Book Club, where it was described as ‘perfect reading for a dark winter’s night.’ Alison’s short stories have been picked for the Best Horror of the Year and Mammoth Book of Best New Horror anthologies for 2012, as well as featuring in genre magazines Black Static, Crimewave and Dark Horizons. Her new novel, Path of Needles, is out now.
Cheryl Moore spent part of her childhood in Iran and has one son and four cats. She is writing / illustrating a speculative series of micro stories called Unbound Boxes Limping Gods: Disconnected Stories, an experimental series based on the lives of characters in her speculative fiction manuscript. These are published on her website: cherylmoore.wordpress.com.
Mark Morris is the author of over twenty novels, among which are Toady, Stitch, The Immaculate, The Secret of Anatomy, Fiddleback, The Deluge and four books in the popular Doctor Who range. His short stories, novellas, articles and reviews have appeared in a wide variety of anthologies and magazines, and he is editor of both Cinema Macabre, a book of horror movie essays by genre luminaries for which he won the 2007 British Fantasy Award, and its follow-up Cinema Futura. His recently published or forthcoming work includes the official tie-in novel for zombie apocalypse computer game Dead Island, a novelisation of the 1971 Hammer movie Vampire Circus, and The Wolves of London, book one of the Obsidian Heart trilogy, which will be published by Titan Books in 2014.
Adam L. G. Nevill was born in Birmingham, England, in 1969 and grew up in England and New Zealand. He is the author of the supernatural horror novels Banquet For The Damned, Apartment 16, The Ritual. Last Days and House of Small Shadows. He won the August Derleth award for Best British Horror Award 2012 for The Ritual.
Sam Stone is best known for her award-winning Vampire Gene Series and the Steampunk Novella Zombies At Tiffany’s. Stone is an eclectic horror/fantasy writer who loves to blur the genres. Her work can be found in bookstores all over the world and recently her short story horror collection Zombies in New York and Other Bloody Jottings was recorded and released by AudioGo as an audiobook. She has received many awards for her work, including Stone’s the silver award for Best Horror 2007 for her debut novel Gabriele Caccini with ForeWord in the USA and and Best Short Story Fool’s Gold in the British Fantasy Awards in 2011.
Steph Swainston has been writing stories set in the Fourlands since she was eight years old. She was the winner of 2004 IAFA Best New Fantasy Writer award (global award) and has published four novels in the Fourlands sequence: The Year Of Our War, No Present Like Time, The Modern World and Above The Snowline.
E. J. Swift’s debut novel Osiris is published by Night Shade Books and Del Rey UK, and is the first in a trilogy, The Osiris Project. Book 2 – Cataveiro – and Book 3 are forthcoming in 2013 and 2014, and will explore the world outside of Osiris. She has a short story in the upcoming anthology The Lowest Heaven.
Lavie Tidhar grew up on a kibbutz in Israel, lived in Israel and South Africa, travelled widely in Africa and Asia, and has lived in London for a number of years. He is the winner of the 2003 Clarke-Bradbury Prize (awarded by the European Space Agency), was the editor of ‘Michael Marshall Smith: The Annotated Bibliography’ (PS Publishing, 2004) and the anthology ‘A Dick & Jane Primer for Adults’ (The British Fantasy Society, 2006), and is the author of the novella ‘An Occupation of Angels’ (Pendragon Press, 2005). His stories appear in SciFiction, ChiZine, Postscript
s, Nemonymous, Infinity Plus, Æon, Book of Dark Wisdom, Fortean Bureau, and many others, and in translation in seven languages. His novella Gorel and the Pot Bellied God won the Best British Fantasy Award in 2012 and he is the World Fantasy Award winning author of Osama. His new novel The Violent Century will be published by Hodder in Oct. 2013.
Lisa Tuttle is an American-born author, long resident in the UK, Lisa has written novels, non-fiction and books for children, but short stories are her first love. She lives in a remote, rural area of Scotland with her family. She received the 1974 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer; 1989 British Science Fiction Award, Best Short Fiction (‘In Translation’); 2007 International Horror Guild Award for Outstanding Achievement in Mid-length Fiction (Closet Dreams); 2012 Grand Prix de L’Imaginaire (in France, for Ainsi Naissent Les Fantomes), a short story collection. During her career she has been short-listed for the Nebula Award, Hugo Award, Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the World Fantasy Award.
Simon Unsworth is a World Fantasy Award-nominated author of two collection, Lost Places and Quiet Houses, with appearances in a number of critically acclaimed anthologies including 4 Mammoth Book Of New Horrors. He Gained a World Fantasy Award nomination for Best Short Story (2008) and was on the 2012 Edge Hill Prize longlist for Quiet Houses.
Jon Wallace lives in Muswell Hill, London. He has recently been published in Interzone, Jupiter Science Fiction, Flashquake and The Fiction Desk, among many others. His first novel, Barricade, will be released by Gollancz in 2014. His hobbies include watching the cricket and listening to his wife sing her way around the flat.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The editor wishes to thank Chris Hamilton-Emery, Jen Emery and Jane Holland.
‘Lips and Teeth’, copyright © Jon Wallace 2012 was first published in Interzone (TTA Press), Mar – Apr 2012, and is reprinted by permission of the author.
‘The Last Osama’, copyright © Lavie Tidhar 2011 was first published in Interzone (TTA Press), Nov – Dec 2011, and is reprinted by permission of the author.
‘Armageddon Fish Pie’, copyright © Joseph D’Lacey 2012 was first published in Splinters (Timeline Books), 2012, and is reprinted by permission of the author.
‘The Complex’, copyright © E. J. Swift 2012 was first published in Interzone (TTA Press), Jan – Feb 2012, and is reprinted by permission of the author.
‘God of the Gaps’, copyright © Carole Johnstone 2012 was first published in Interzone (TTA Press), Jan – Feb 2012, and is reprinted by permission of the author.
‘Corset Wings’, copyright © Cheryl Moore 2012 this version was first published in Unbound Boxes Limping Gods website, July 2012, and is reprinted by permission of the author.
‘The Wheel of Fortune’, copyright © Steph Swainston 2012 is first published here by permission of the author.
‘The Island of Peter Pandora’, copyright © Kim Lakin-Smith 2012 was first published in Resurrection Engines (Snowbooks) anthology, Nov 2012, and is reprinted by permission of the author.
‘Too Delicate for Human Form’, copyright © Cate Gardner 2012 was first published in Fish (Dagan Books), Feb 2012, and is reprinted by permission of the author.
‘Imogen’, copyright © Sam Stone 2012 was first published in Siblings (Hersham Books), Sep 2012 and is reprinted by permission of the author.
‘In the Quiet and in the Dark’, copyright © Alison Littlewood 2012 was first published in Terror Tales of the Cotswolds (Gray Friar Press), Mar 2012, and is reprinted by permission of the author.
‘The Scariest Place in the World’, copyright © Mark Morris 2012 was first published in Hauntings (Newcon Press), Sep 2012, and is reprinted by permission of the author.
‘Qiqirn’, copyright © Simon Unsworth 2011 was first published in Phobophobia, Nov 2011 (Dark Continents Publishing), and is reprinted by permission of the author.
‘The Third Person’, copyright © Lisa Tuttle 2012 was first published in The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories (Robinson), Oct 2012, and is reprinted by permission of the author.
‘Dermot’, copyright © Simon Bestwick 2011 was first published in Black Static (TTA Press), Aug – Sep 2011, and is reprinted by permission of the author.
‘Fearful Symmetry’, copyright © Tyler Keevil 2012 was first published in Interzone (TTA Press), Jan – Feb 2012, and is reprinted by permission of the author.
‘Pig Thing’, copyright © Adam L G Nevill 2012 was first published in Exotic Gothic 4: A Postscripts Anthology (PS Publishing), July 2012, and is reprinted by permission of the author.