An English Ghost Story
Page 30
And, as they had just learned, they were protected. Some things would never bother them again.
Jordan was excited about college. She had seen so few people outside the family these last months.
The Hollow was wonderful, but was not enough.
Louise had been so enchanting and enchanted that she’d spent her whole life here, never marrying, never having children, with few living friends. Jordan understood how perfect a life that had been for her, but also sensed – in the corners of the room she’d inherited from Weezie – the ghosts of regrets. She would be different.
The Hollow would always be here for her, to replenish her, mend her heart, shelter her. The Hollow was her home.
But, eventually, she would leave.
* * *
They would mature in the Hollow, like apples in jam. Mother, father, daughter, son; warmed by the glow, their inescapable – and recently proved – love would thicken. As for years to come, the family were a whole, united by fiercely shared feeling. Things that had seemed important were trivial, and things that had seemed negligible were potent.
The Hollow enfolded the family with its welcome. It needed them. Populated, it was fixed. With people, it could withstand the winds. That evening, the place was on its best behaviour, autumn red promising winter white.
About the Author
Kim Newman is a novelist, critic and broadcaster. His fiction includes The Night Mayor, Bad Dreams, Jago, the Anno Dracula novels and stories, The Quorum and Life’s Lottery, all currently being reissued by Titan Books, Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D’Urbervilles published by Titan Books and The Vampire Genevieve and Orgy of the Blood Parasites as Jack Yeovil. His non-fiction books include the seminal Nightmare Movies (recently reissued by Bloomsbury in an updated edition), Ghastly Beyond Belief (with Neil Gaiman), Horror: 100 Best Books (with Stephen Jones), Wild West Movies, The BFI Companion to Horror, Millennium Movies and BFI Classics studies of Cat People and Doctor Who.
He is a contributing editor to Sight & Sound and Empire magazines (writing Empire’s popular Video Dungeon column), has written and broadcast widely on a range of topics, and scripted radio and television documentaries. His stories ‘Week Woman’ and ‘Ubermensch’ have been adapted into an episode of the TV series The Hunger and an Australian short film; he has directed and written a tiny film Missing Girl. Following his Radio 4 play ‘Cry Babies’, he wrote an episode (‘Phish Phood’) for Radio 7’s series The Man in Black.
His official website can be found at www.johnnyalucard.com
AVAILABLE NOW FROM TITAN BOOKS
Life’s Lottery
by KIM NEWMAN
At six years old you’re asked to make a choice, the first of many in a multitude of possible lives.
If you make the right decision, you may live a long happy life, or be immensely powerful, or win the lottery. If you take the wrong path, you may become a murderer, die young, make every mistake possible, or make no impression on life at all. The choice is yours. And by making the choices you do, you will change forever the lives of your family, your friends, your enemies, and your lovers. You can even change the fate of the world; all you have to do is choose…
An adult role-playing novel where small decisions have monumental consequences.
“As rich and as revealing as you care to make it.” Time Out
“Unsettling but always gripping… like nothing you have ever read.” The Times
TITANBOOKS.COM
Jago
by KIM NEWMAN
In the tiny English village of Alder, dreams and nightmares are beginning to come true. Creatures from local legend, science fiction and the dark side of the human mind prowl the town.
Paul, a young academic composing a thesis about the end of the world, and his girlfriend Hazel, a potter, have come to Alder for the summer. Their idea of a rural retreat gradually sours as the laws of nature begin to break down around them. Paul and Hazel are soon drawn into a vortex of fear as violent chaos engulfs the community and the village prepares to reap a harvest of horror.
A brand-new edition of the critically acclaimed novel. Th is edition also contains the short stories ‘Ratting’, ‘Great Western’ and ‘The Man on the Clapham Omnibus’.
“Newman’s prose is sophisticated and his narrative drive irresistible.” Publishers Weekly
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The Quorum
by KIM NEWMAN
In 1961, Derek Leech emerges fully formed from the polluted River Th ames, destined to found a global media empire. In 1978, three ambitious young men strike a deal with Leech. They are offered wealth, glamour, and success, but a price must be paid. In 1994, Leech’s purpose moves to its conclusion, and as the men struggle, they realize the truth of the ultimate price.
A brand-new edition of the critically acclaimed novel featuring five short stories by the award-winning author.
“This well-told tale is peopled with a fascinating array of characters and offers much witty and sage commentary on our materialistic society.” Library Journal
“Newman’s postmodern morality play puts him into the first rank of current horror novelists.” Booklist
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Johnny Alucard
by KIM NEWMAN
In Transylvania, the vampire Kate Reed is on the set of Francis Ford Coppola’s troubled movie production of Dracula. When Kate meets a young vampire called Ion Popescu, she is compelled to help him escape and begin a new life in America, where he reinvents himself as Johnny Pop. He makes his name—and his fortune—selling a new, dangerously addictive drug that confers vampire powers on its users, and becomes a hit on the decadent New York art scene.
As he stalks the streets of Manhattan and Hollywood, haunting the lives of the rich and famous, from Sid and Nancy to Andy Warhol, Orson Welles to Francis Ford Coppola, sinking his fangs ever deeper into the zeitgeist of 1980s America, it seems the past might not be dead after all…
Kim Newman returns to one of the bestselling vampire tales of the modern era in this brand-new novel in his acclaimed Anno Dracula series.
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