My legs were so unsteady that I feared I’d collapse. I reached for something to support me. Becky’s shoulder. She held me up.
“The police caught the two guys who did it,” the constable said.
I wanted to get my hands on them and—
“Bob came to see me after you drove back to New York,” Becky said. “As you know, he needed an attorney.”
“What are you talking about?”
Becky looked puzzled. “You aren’t aware he changed his will?”
“His will?”
“He said you were the kind of man he hoped that his sons would have grown up to be. He made you his heir, his literary executor, everything. This place is yours now.”
Tears rolled down my cheeks. They rolled even harder an hour later when the firemen let Becky and me onto the property and showed us where they’d found Wentworth’s body in the charred kitchen. The corpse was gone now, but the outline in the ashes was vivid. I stared at the blackened timbers of the gazebo. I walked toward Wentworth’s gutted writing studio. A fireman stopped me from getting too close. But even from twenty feet away, I saw the clump of twisted metal that was once a typewriter. And the piles of ashes that had once been twenty-one manuscripts.
Now you know the background. I spend a lot of time trying to rebuild the compound, although I doubt I’ll ever regain its magic. Becky often comes to help me. I couldn’t do it without her.
But The Architecture of Snow is what I mostly think about. I told March & Sons to go to hell, with a special invitation to my assistant, my boss, and the head of marketing. I arranged for the novel to be privately printed under the name Peter Thomas. A Tipton artist designed a cover that shows the hint of a farmhouse within gusting snow, almost as if the snow is constructing the house. There’s no author’s biography. Exactly as Wentworth intended.
I keep boxes of the novel in my car. I drive from bookstore to bookstore throughout New England, but only a few will take the chance on an unknown author. I tell them it’s an absolutely wonderful book, and they look blank as if “wonderful” isn’t what customers want these days. Is there a serial killer or a global conspiracy?
Wade has dozens of copies in his store. His front window’s filled with them. He tries to convince visitors to buy it, but his tourist customers want books that have photographs of ski slopes and covered bridges. He hasn’t sold even one. The townspeople? The waitress at Meg’s Pantry spoke the truth. She isn’t much of a reader. Nor is anybody else. I’ve tried until I don’t know what else to do. I’m so desperate I finally betrayed Wentworth’s trust and told you who wrote it. Take my word—it’s wonderful. Buy it, will you? Please. Buy this book.
About the Contributors
Rebecca Allred lives in the Pacific Northwest, working by day as a doctor of pathology, but after hours, she transforms into a practitioner of macabre fiction, infecting readers with her malign prose. Her work has appeared in several anthologies including Vignettes from the End of the World, A Lonely and Curious Country: Tales from the Lands of Lovecraft, and Gothic Fantasy: Chilling Horror Short Stories. When she isn’t busy rendering diagnoses or writing, Rebecca enjoys reading, drawing, laughing at RiffTrax, and spending time with her husband, Zach, and their kitty, Bug. You can keep up with Rebecca on Twitter @LadyHazmat.
David Annandale writes Horus Heresy and Warhammer 40,000 fiction for the Black Library, most recently The Unburdened and Yarrick: The Pyres of Armageddon. He is also the author of the horror novel Gethsemane Hall and the Jen Blaylock thriller series. He teaches English literature and film at the University of Manitoba, and is a co-host of the Skiffy and Fanty Show and Totally Pretentious podcasts. Find him at www.davidannandale.com and on Twitter at @David_Annandale
Michael Bailey is a multi-award-winning author, editor, and publisher, and the recipient of over two dozen literary accolades, including the Benjamin Franklin Awards, Eric Hoffer Book Awards, Independent Publisher Book Awards, and the Indie Book Awards. His nonlinear novels include Palindrome Hannah, Phoenix Rose, and Psychotropic Dragon, and he has published two short story and poetry collections: Scales and Petals and Inkblots and Bloodspots (illustrated by Daniele Serra and introduced by Douglas E. Winter). Through Written Backwards, an imprint of Dark Regions Press, he is responsible for Pellucid Lunacy, the Bram Stoker Award-nominated Qualia Nous, The Library of the Dead (illustrated by GAK), three Chiral Mad anthologies (the last illustrated by Glenn Chadbourne), and a series of illustrated novellas. In his spare time he is also the Managing Editor of Science Fiction for Dark Regions Press, where he is hard at work on a few novels and an anthology called You, Human. “Michael Bailey’s become one great editor. Rock-solid.”—Jack Ketchum
On a cold winter’s day in 1970, John Boden was born. The years since have been filled with Star Wars action figures, cartoons, books, family, life, and love. He currently resides in Pennsylvania, between the capital and Three Mile Island. A bakery worker by day, his evenings are spent with his beautiful wife and sons and working with Shock Totem Publications. He writes when he can and reads all the time, working sleep in wherever.
His work has appeared in 52 Stitches, Metazen, Black Ink Horror 7, Weirdyear, Necon E-Books, Shock Totem, Blight Digest, Splatterpunk, the John Skipp-edited Psychos, Once Upon an Apocalypse, Robbed of Sleep, and most recently Lamplight. His “not-really-for-children-even-though-it-looks-like-it” book, Dominoes, is a thing that’s out there and people seem to dig it.
Gary Braunbeck’s work has garnered seven Bram Stoker Awards, as well as an International Horror Guild Award, three Shocklines Shocker Awards, a Black Quill Award, and a World Fantasy Award nomination. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Cedar Hill series, which includes In Silent Graves, Keepers, and the forthcoming A Cracked and Broken Path. This marks his third appearance in a Borderlands anthology. He lives in Worthington, Ohio, with his wife, four-time Bram Stoker Award-winner Lucy A. Snyder who, despite having lived with him for nearly fifteen years, has yet to smother him in his sleep. Find out more about him at www.facebook.com/groups/4988614289
Sean Davis wields a drill by day and writes scary stories by night. His stories have appeared in the anthologies Silent Screams and Amanda’s Recurring Nightmares; and in The Best of Dark Eclipse and Bete Noire #10. He’s a member of the Great Lakes Association of Horror Writers and the Horror Writers Association. He lives in Detroit with his partner, Kate, and a growing number of animals. Visit him at seanmdavis.wordpress.com.
Louis Dixon is an author and an artist. His fiction has appeared in Maynard and Sims’s Darkness Rising 2005, Horror Library Anthologies 1 and 2, and Cemetery Dance’s Bad Dreams, New Screams. He was once the editor-in-chief for Dark Recesses magazine, as well as its art director and contributor. He currently resides in Austin, Texas, with his wife and two children. From nine to five, he is a technology infrastructure architect. You can reach him at his website: www.mlouisdixon.com
Darren Godfrey, a former explosive ordnance disposal technician in the air force, now frays his nerves through the exploration of bizarre human behavior. He has published a collection of his short fiction, Apathetic Flesh, published by Books of the Dead Press, with an introduction by Kealan Patrick Burke
Daniel Gunn is the author of Destroyer of Worlds and the novella Nightmare in Greasepaint (with L.L. Soares). He’s also the pseudonym for Daniel G. Keohane, Bram Stoker-nominated author of Solomon’s Grave, Margaret’s Ark, and Plague of Darkness. His short fiction has appeared in Cemetery Dance, Shroud magazine, Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, and many more. He and his family live in Massachusetts.
Carol Pierson Holding writes as a lapsed capitalist about the tension between business and the environment. Her commentary appears on the Huffington Post and 200 news websites and publications; her essays have been published in Stratus, San Francisco Chronicle, and the Carnegie Council’s Policy Innovations. Previously, she ran a brand consulting firm in New York and San Fr
ancisco, where she developed the first measurement of corporate social responsibility’s impact on brand value, and wrote and spoke about it extensively.
Carol spent her early childhood on a Missouri cattle farm with a frustrated writer father. Her family moved to Los Angeles, where, at Marlborough School for girls, she met her first writing mentor and the first teacher who didn’t tell her she was “wasting her potential”. Encouraged to go to Smith College to study English, Carol’s writing career was derailed when she experienced the joy of lucrative employment and pursued more of it with an MBA from Harvard. The market crash of 2008 flattened her consulting firm and her faith in the capitalistic system, rekindled her drive to write full-time and gave her great material for her novel in progress. She currently lives in Seattle and Camano Island.
Jack Ketchum is the recipient of four Bram Stoker Awards and three additional nominations. Many of his novels have been adapted to film, including The Girl Next Door and Red. In 2011, Ketchum received the World Horror Convention’s Grand Master Award for outstanding contribution to the horror genre
Brian Knight lives in Washington State with his family and the voices in his head. He has published over a dozen novels and novellas and two short story collections in the horror, dark fantasy, and crime genres. His works include Feral, Broken Angel, Sex, Death & Honey, and The Phoenix Girls Trilogy. Several of his short stories have received honorable mentions in Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror.
Anya Martin has always rooted for the monster and regrets abandoning her earliest career aspiration-—paleontology. She’s also half-Finnish, still likes punk rock, though now with a heavy side of blues and experimental jazz, has a bachelor’s degree in anthropology, cooks dangerously hot curries, earns her living as a journalist, and abides in Atlanta. Her fiction has appeared in such anthologies and magazines as Cthulhu Fhtagn!, Giallo Fantastique, Cassilda’s Song, Xnoybis #2, Resonator: New Lovecraftian Tales From Beyond, and Womanthology: Heroic.
David Morrell is the author of First Blood, the award-winning novel in which Rambo was created. He holds a PhD in American literature from Penn State and was a professor in the English Department at the University of Iowa. His numerous New York Times bestsellers include the classic espionage novel, The Brotherhood of the Rose, the basis for the only television miniseries to be broadcast after a Super Bowl. An Edgar finalist, an Anthony, Inkpot, Macavity, and Nero recipient, Morrell has a Thriller Master award from International Thriller Writers. He received three Stoker awards and was a finalist for two others, as well as for two World Fantasy awards. His latest works are a series of Victorian mystery/thrillers, beginning with Murder as a Fine Art. Visit him at www.davidmorrell.net.
John McIlveen is the author of the paranormal suspense novel Hannahwhere and two story collections, Inflictions and Jerks and Other Tales from a Perfect Man. He is the father of five daughters, works at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory, and lives in Haverhill, MA, with his fiancée Roberta Colasanti. John has an affinity for black licorice, whoopie pies, and good tequila. www.johnmcilveen.com
Bob Pastorella is the author of the zombie/western short story “To Watch Is Madness” and is featured in Warmed and Bound: A Velvet Anthology, the Booked anthology, In Search of a City: Los Angeles in 1000 Words, and numerous publications online and in print. Bob is a columnist, podcast host, and reviewer for This Is Horror. He lives in Southeast Texas and is working on a weird-crime series.
Peter Salomon is a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, the Horror Writers Association, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, the Science Fiction Poetry Association, the International Thriller Writers, and the Authors Guild, and is represented by the Erin Murphy Literary Agency.
His debut novel, Henry Franks, was published by Flux in 2012. His second novel, All Those Broken Angels, published by Flux in 2014, was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Young Adult Fiction. Both novels have been named a “Book All Young Georgians Should Read” by The Georgia Center for the Book.
His short fiction has appeared in the Demonic Visions series and he was the featured author for Gothic Blue Book III: The Graveyard Edition. He was also selected as one of the Ladies and Gentlemen of Horror for 2014. His poem “Electricity and Language and Me” appeared on BBC Radio 6 performed by the Radiophonic Workshop in December 2013. Eldritch Press published his first collection of poetry, Prophets, in 2014. He is the editor for the first books of poetry released by the Horror Writers Association, Horror Poetry Showcase Volumes I and II.
He was a judge for the 2006 Savannah Children’s Book Festival Young Writer’s Contest and served on the jury for the poetry category of the 2013 Bram Stoker Awards. He served as a judge for the Royal Palm Literary Awards of the Florida Writers Association. He was also a judge for the first two Horror Poetry Showcases of the Horror Writers Association and has served as chair on multiple juries for the Bram Stoker Awards.
Steve Rasnic Tem’s last novel, Blood Kin (Solaris)—a Southern gothic/horror blend of snake handling, ghosts, granny women, kudzu, and Melungeons—won the Bram Stoker Award for 2014. PS Publishing recently released his novella “In the Lovecraft Museum” and Centipede Press has scheduled Out of the Dark: A Storybook of Horrors, 225 thousand words of the best of his uncollected horror tales, for early 2016. In spring of 2017 Solaris will publish his new novel, Ubo, a dark SF meditation on violence, as seen through the eyes of some of history’s most dangerous figures.
Paul Tremblay is the author of six novels, including A Head Full of Ghosts, The Little Sleep, and Disappearance at Devil’s Rock. His short fiction has appeared in numerous “year’s best” anthologies. He is a member of the board of directors for the Shirley Jackson Awards. He is tall, hates pickles, and has no uvula. www.paultremblay.net
Shirley Jackson Award-finalist Tim Waggoner has published over thirty novels and three short story collections of dark fiction. He teaches creative writing at Sinclair College and in Seton Hill University’s MFA in Writing Popular Fiction program. You can find him on the web at www.timwaggoner.com.
Daniel Waters is the author of the Generation Dead series (Generation Dead, Kiss of Life, Passing Strange, and Stitches). He also wrote Break My Heart 1,000 Times, the film adaptation of which is scheduled to be released May 2017 from Lionsgate/Gold Circle. He lives in Connecticut with his family.
Gordon White lives in New York with his wife and their dog. He sleeps on the side of the bed farthest from the closet, just in case. His work has appeared in the Wrapped in Black anthology from Sekhmet Press, as well as in venues such as Halloween Forevermore, DarkFuse, Cease, Cows!, Punchnel’s, and others. When not writing, he also reads for Kraken Press.
Trent Zelazny is the author of several novels, novellas, and short stories in numerous genres including, but not limited to, horror, crime, thriller, science fiction, erotica, and humor. He is also a bestselling international playwright, editor of two anthologies, and has written for both television and film.
Son of the late science fiction author Roger Zelazny, Trent was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He has lived in California, Oregon, and Florida, but currently lives with his wife, Laurel, and their two dogs, Banjo and Holly, back in Santa Fe.
Bradley Zerbe has published stories in print anthologies such as Read by Dawn II and Best of House of Horror 2009. His story “Fishing with the Devil” was an honorable mention for the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 2008. He works for N. F. String & Son, Inc. in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
About the Editors
Olivia F. Monteleone was born under a lucky star (thank God for nepotism). Having graduated from University of Maryland in 2013,with a degree in English, she became quickly certain she wanted no parts of teaching (shout out to teachers: thank you!). After attending law school for a semester and several weeks, she dropped out even though she acquired some valuable knowledge—for example, the Socratic method is useless if no one is thinking
beyond what society has already constructed. Some would say she landed on her feet; but she often feels she’s probably balancing on one foot (but life is more thrilling that way). She is working on a graphic novel, a screenplay, typesets and designs books for Borderlands Press while living in Baltimore with her dog, Bean. She is a glamour troll.
Thomas F. Monteleone has published more than one hundred short stories, five collections, eight anthologies and thirty novels, including the bestseller, New York Times Notable Book of the Year, The Blood of the Lamb. A four-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award, he’s also written scripts for stage, screen, and TV, as well as the bestselling The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Writing a Novel (now in a second edition). His latest novel is a global thriller, Submerged. He lives in Maryland, near Baltimore, and loves the Ravens. With his daughter Olivia, he co-edits the award-winning anthology series of imaginative fiction—Borderlands. He is well-known as a great reader of his work and routinely draws SRO at conventions. Despite being dragged kicking and screaming into his late sixties and losing most of his hair, he still thinks he is dashingly handsome—humor him.
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
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Borderlands 6
Copyright © 2016 by Anthology
ISBN: 978-1-61923-263-1
Anton :) © 2016 M. Louis Dixon
Eye of the Beholder © 2016 John McIlveen
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