The editor with friends
ABOUT THE EDITOR
Marjorie Sandor is the author of four books, most recently The Late Interiors: A Life Under Construction (Skyhorse/Arcade, 2011). Her story collection Portrait of My Mother, Who Posed Nude in Wartime (Sarabande Books), won the 2004 National Jewish Book Award in Fiction, and an essay collection, The Night Gardener: A Search for Home (The Lyons Press), won the 2000 Oregon Book Award for literary nonfiction. Her work has appeared in such journals as The Georgia Review, AGNI, The Hopkins Review, and the Harvard Review and has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, Pushcart Prize, Twenty Under Thirty, and elsewhere. She lives in Corvallis, Oregon, and is on the faculty of the Oregon State University MFA Program in Creative Writing, and Pacific Lutheran University’s low-residency MFA Program. She has been teaching courses on the uncanny in literature for the past decade. Sign up for email updates here.
Also by Marjorie Sandor
The Late Interiors:
A Life Under Construction
Portrait of My Mother, Who Posed Nude in Wartime:
Stories
The Night Gardener:
A Search for Home
A Night of Music:
Stories
Thank you for buying this
St. Martin’s Griffin ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content,
and info on new releases and other great reads,
sign up for our newsletters.
Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup
For email updates on the editor, click here.
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Unraveling: An Introduction
The Sand-man / Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann
Berenice / Edgar Allan Poe
One of Twins / Ambrose Bierce
On the Water / Guy de Maupassant
Oysters / Anton Chekhov
Pomegranate Seed / Edith Wharton
The Stoker / Franz Kafka
Decay / Marjorie Bowen
The Music of Erich Zann / H. P. Lovecraft
The Birds / Bruno Schulz
The Usher / Felisberto Hernández
The Waiting Room / Robert Aickman
Paranoia / Shirley Jackson
The Helper / Joan Aiken
The Jesters / Joyce Carol Oates
The Devil and Dr. Tuberose / John Herdman
Phantoms / Steven Millhauser
On Jacob’s Ladder / Steve Stern
The Panic Hand / Jonathan Carroll
Moriya / Dean Paschal
The Puppets / Jean-Christophe Duchon-Doris
Old Mrs. J / Yoko Ogawa
Whitework / Kate Bernheimer
Stone Animals / Kelly Link
Tiger Mending / Aimee Bender
The Black Square / Chris Adrian
Foundation / China Miéville
Gothic Night / Mansoura Ez Eldin
Reindeer Mountain / Karin Tidbeck
Muzungu / C. Namwali Serpell
Haunting Olivia / Karen Russell
Notes
Copyright Acknowledgments
About the Authors
About the Translators
Acknowledgments
About the Editor
Also by Marjorie Sandor
Copyright
These short stories are works of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in these stories are either products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously.
THE UNCANNY READER. Copyright © 2015 by Marjorie Sandor. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Cover design by Ervin Serrano
Cover photograph by Balounm/Shutterstock.com
eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
The uncanny reader: stories from the shadows / edited by Marjorie Sandor. — First U.S. edition.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-250-04171-5 (trade paperback)
ISBN 978-1-4668-3868-0 (e-book)
1. Horror tales. 2. Paranormal fiction. 3. Fantasy fiction. 4. Uncanny, The (Psychoanalysis), in literature. I. Sandor, Marjorie, editor.
PN6071.H727U53 2015
808.83'8738—dc23
2014034217
e-ISBN 9781466838680
First Edition: February 2015
1 For as Jove, during the winter season, gives twice seven days of warmth, men have called this clement and temperate time the nurse of the beautiful Halcyon.—Simonides
* Persephone, daughter of Demeter, goddess of fertility, was abducted and taken to Hades by Pluto, the god of the underworld. Her mother begged Jupiter to intercede, and he did so. But Persephone had broken her vow of abstinence in Hades by eating some pomegranate seeds. She was therefore required to spend a certain number of months each year—essentially the winter months —with Pluto.
The Uncanny Reader Page 56