Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories

by Clive Barker

  Lisa lives in New York in the 100 year old house she originally grew up in with two wily (mostly) black twin cats named Harry and Theo Houdini.

  Visit her author website: www.lisamannetti.com. Visit her virtual haunted house: www.thechanceryhouse.com.

  Neil Gaiman was born in Hampshire, UK, and now lives in the United States near Minneapolis. As a child he discovered his love of books, reading, and stories, devouring the works of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, James Branch Cabell, Edgar Allan Poe, Michael Moorcock, Ursula K. LeGuin, Gene Wolfe, and G.K. Chesterton. A self-described “feral child who was raised in libraries,” Gaiman credits librarians with fostering a life-long love of reading: “I wouldn’t be who I am without libraries. I was the sort of kid who devoured books, and my happiest times as a boy were when I persuaded my parents to drop me off in the local library on their way to work, and I spent the day there. I discovered that librarians actually want to help you: they taught me about interlibrary loans.”

  Christopher Coake is the author of the novel You Came Back (2012) and the story collection We’re in Trouble (2005), which won the PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship for a first work of fiction. In 2007 he was named one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists. His short fiction has been anthologized in Best American Mystery Stories 2004 and The Best American Noir of the Century, and published in journals such as Granta, The Southern Review, The Gettysburg Review, Five Points, and The Journal. A native of Indiana, Coake received an MA from Miami University of Ohio and an MFA from Ohio State University. He is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he directs the new MFA program in creative writing.

  Mercedes M. Yardley is a dark fantasist who wears red lipstick and poisonous flowers in her hair. She writes short stories, nonfiction, novellas, and novels. She is the author of Beautiful Sorrows, Apocalyptic Montessa and Nuclear Lulu: A Tale of Atomic Love, Nameless, Little Dead Red, and her latest release, Pretty Little Dead Girls: A Novel of Murder and Whimsy. Mercedes lives and works in Sin City, and you can reach her at www.abrokenlaptop.com.

  Paul Tremblay is the author of the novels A Head Full of Ghosts, The Little Sleep, No Sleep Till Wonderland, and coming in June 2016, Disappearance at Devil’s Rock. He is a member of the board of directors of the Shirley Jackson Awards, and his essays and short fiction have appeared in the Los Angeles Times and numerous “year’s best” anthologies. He is tall, hates pickles, and has no uvula. www.paultremblay.net.

  Damien Angelica Walters is the author of Paper Tigers (Dark House Press, 2016) and Sing Me Your Scars (Apex Publications, 2015). Her short fiction has been nominated twice for a Bram Stoker Award, reprinted in The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror and The Year’s Best Weird Fiction, and published in various anthologies and magazines, including Nightscript, Cemetery Dance Online, Nightmare Magazine, and Black Static. She lives in Maryland with her husband and two rescued pit bulls. Find her on Twitter @DamienAWalters or on the web at http://damienangelicawalters.com.

  Richard Thomas is the award-winning author of seven books—Disintegration and The Breaker (Random House Alibi), Transubstantiate, Herniated Roots, Staring Into the Abyss, Tribulations and The Soul Standard (Dzanc Books). His over 100 stories in print include Cemetery Dance, PANK, storySouth, Gargoyle, Weird Fiction Review, Midwestern Gothic, Arcadia, Qualia Nous, Chiral Mad 2 & 3, and Shivers VI. Visit www.whatdoesnotkillme.com for more information.

  A visionary, fantasist, poet and painter, Clive Barker has expanded the reaches of human imagination as a novelist, director, screenwriter and dramatist. An inveterate seeker who traverses between myriad styles with ease, Barker has left his indelible artistic mark on a range of projects that reflect his creative grasp of contemporary media—from familiar literary terrain to the progressive vision of his Seraphim production company. His 1998 “Gods and Monsters”, which he executive produced, garnered three Academy Award nominations and an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. The following year, Barker joined the ranks of such illustrious authors as Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Annie Dillard and Aldous Huxley when his collection of literary works was inducted into the Perennial line at HarperCollins, who then published The Essential Clive Barker, a 700-page anthology with an introduction by Armistead Maupin.

  Barker began his odyssey in the London theatre, scripting original plays for his group The Dog Company, including “The History of the Devil,” “Frankenstein in Love” and “Crazyface.” Soon, Barker began publishing his The Books of Blood short fiction collections; but it was his debut novel, The Damnation Game that widened his already growing international audience.

  Barker shifted gears in 1987 when he directed Hellraiser, based on his novella The Hellbound Heart, which became a veritable cult classic spawning a slew of sequels, several lines of comic books, and an array of merchandising. In 1990, he adapted and directed Nightbreed from his short story “Cabal.” Two years later, Barker executive produced the housing-project story Candyman, as well as the 1995 sequel, Candyman 2: Farewell to the Flesh. Also that year, he directed Scott Bakula and Famke Janssen in the noir-esque detective tale, Lord of Illusions.

  Barker’s literary works include such best-selling fantasies as Weaveworld, Imajica, and Everville, the children’s novel The Thief of Always, Sacrament, Galilee and Coldheart Canyon. The first of his quintet of children’s books, Abarat, was published in October 2002 to resounding critical acclaim, followed by Abarat II: Days of Magic, Nights of War and Arabat III: Absolute Midnight; Barker is currently completing the fourth in the series.

  As an artist, Barker frequently turns to the canvas to fuel his imagination with hugely successful exhibitions across America. His neo-expressionist paintings have been showcased in two large format books, Clive Barker, Illustrator, volumes I & II.

  In 2012 Barker was given a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Horror Writer’s Association, for his outstanding contribution to the genre.

  John F.D. Taff is a Bram Stoker Award-nominated author with nearly 30 years experience in all sorts of writing . . . public relations, marketing, sales, journalism and creative. He’s a published author with more than 75 short stories and soon to be six novels in print. His writing tends to be categorized as “horror,” though most of it has a weird, pulpy Twilight Zone vibe to it. He also writes fantasy, suspense and some science fiction. Over the years, six of his short stories have been awarded honorable mentions in Datlow & Windling’s Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror.

  John is a fascinating human being (yes, he’s writing this), with diverse interests in history (ancient Egypt and the Civil War, particularly), spiritualism, the paranormal, cooking, movies, music and reading. He resides in a lovely house down by a river that likes to, every so often, overflow its banks and spread alarmingly over the countryside, sweeping aside mobile homes, swine and meth labs. He shares the house with his three wonderfully cute pugs, Sadie, Tovah & Muriel. He shares his life with his wonderful wife, Deborah, who puts up with a great deal from him.

  Amanda Gowin lives in the foothills of Appalachia with her husband and son. Her work has appeared in a variety of print and online publications, including everything from Warmed and Bound and the Burnt Tongues anthology to NAILED magazine. She co-edited the Cipher Sisters anthology, and her first collection, Radium Girls (Thunderdome Press), is now available. More can be found at her blog: www.lookatmissohio.wordpress.com. She has always written and always will.

  Kevin Lucia is the reviews editor for Cemetery Dance magazine and he writes the quarterly column, “Horror 101,” for Lamplight Magazine. His short fiction has appeared in several anthologies. He is the author of Hiram Grange & The Chosen One, Things Slip Through, Devourer of Souls, Through A Mirror Darkly and A Night at Old Webb. He’s currently working on his first novel.

  Maria Alexander’s debut novel, Mr. Wicker, won the 2014 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel. Her short stories and nonfiction have appeared since 1999 in critically acclaimed anthologies and publications such as Chiaroscuro Mag
azine, Nightmare Magazine, Paradox: The Magazine of Historical and Speculative Fiction and many others. Champlain College uses her nonfiction to teach about female warriors in popular culture. Since 2010, she’s been studying samurai swordsmanship. Don’t ask her which is mightier. You’ll probably regret it. Instead, visit www.mariaalexander.net.

  Josh Malerman is the author of the novel Bird Box and forthcoming novella A House at the Bottom of a Lake. He lives in Ferndale, Michigan with his fiancée Allison Laakko and their two cats, Dewey and Frankenstein.

  The Oxford Companion to English Literature describes Ramsey Campbell as “Britain’s most respected living horror writer”. He has been given more awards than any other writer in the field, including the Grand Master Award of the World Horror Convention, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Horror Writers Association, the Living Legend Award of the International Horror Guild and the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2015 he was made an Honorary Fellow of Liverpool John Moores University for outstanding services to literature. Among his novels are The Face That Must Die, Incarnate, Midnight Sun, The Count of Eleven, Silent Children, The Darkest Part of the Woods, The Overnight, Secret Story, The Grin of the Dark, Thieving Fear, Creatures of the Pool, The Seven Days of Cain, Ghosts Know, The Kind Folk, Think Yourself Lucky and Thirteen Days by Sunset Beach. He is presently working on a trilogy, The Three Births of Daoloth. Needing Ghosts, The Last Revelation of Gla’aki, The Pretence and The Booking are novellas. His collections include Waking Nightmares, Alone with the Horrors, Ghosts and Grisly Things, Told by the Dead, Just Behind You and Holes for Faces, and his non-fiction is collected as Ramsey Campbell, Probably. His novels The Nameless and Pact of the Fathers have been filmed in Spain. His regular columns appear in Dead Reckonings and Video Watchdog. He is the President of the Society of Fantastic Films.

  Ramsey Campbell lives on Merseyside with his wife Jenny. His pleasures include classical music, good food and wine, and whatever’s in that pipe. His website is at www.ramseycampbell.com.

  ABOUT THE ARTISTS

  Cover Art

  Caitlin Hackett’s passion for the natural world has inspired her art since she first put pencil to paper as a child. She grew up on the northern coast of California, between the cold Pacific Ocean and the redwood forests. It was there that her love for nature and wilderness flourished. As she has grown, she has combined her love for animals with her interest in both wildlife biology and mythology to create artwork that speaks to the current biological mythos that constructs the barrier between what is considered Human, and what is considered Animal.

  Mirroring ancient myths of transformation in often grotesque ways, we find in contemporary times that animals are being transformed biologically due to interactions with human pollutants; there are frogs with triplicate legs and blind eyes, cows with shriveled sets of legs growing out of their backs, two-faced piglets being born on factory farms and radioactive fish rotting from the inside in poisoned seas, the list goes on. She is interested in the power of these mutations both for their mythological allusions as well as their dire environmental implications. She hopes to remind those who view her artwork that we, too, are animals, embedded in this fragile world even as we poison it.

  Her work alludes to the boundaries that separate humans from animals both physically and metaphysically, and the way in which these boundaries are warped by science, mythology, and religion alike.

  Like the gods of so many myths, Humanity has warped the world into our own image, and it is this often frightening image she hopes to reflect in her work.

  Learn more at https://caitlinhackett.carbonmade.com.

  Interior Art

  Luke Spooner currently lives and works in the South of England. Having graduated from the University of Portsmouth with a first-class degree, he is now a full-time illustrator working under two aliases; Carrion House for his darker work and Hoodwink House for his work aimed at a younger audience. He believes that the job of putting someone else’s words into a visual form, to accompany and support their text, is a massive responsibility as well as being something he truly treasures.

  Learn more at www.carrionhouse.com.

  IF YOU ENJOYED THIS BOOK, I’M SURE YOU’LL ALSO LIKE THE FOLLOWING TITLES:

  The Final Cut by Jasper Bark—Follow the misfortunes of two indie filmmakers in their quest to fund their breakthrough movie by borrowing money from one dangerous underground figure in order to buy a large quantity of cocaine from a different but equally dangerous underground figure. They will learn that while some stories capture the imagination, others will be the death of you.

  Blackwater Val by William Gorman—a Supernatural Suspense Thriller / Horror / Coming of age novel: A widower, traveling with his dead wife’s ashes and his six-year-old psychic daughter Katie in tow, returns to his haunted birthplace to execute his dead wife’s final wish. But something isn’t quite right in the Val.

  Devourer of Souls by Kevin Lucia—In Kevin Lucia’s latest installment of his growing Clifton Heights mythos, Sheriff Chris Baker and Father Ward meet for a Saturday morning breakfast at The Skylark Dinner to once again commiserate over the weird and terrifying secrets surrounding their town.

  Tales from The Lake Vol.1—Remember those dark and scary nights spent telling ghost stories and other campfire stories? With the Tales from The Lake horror anthologies, you can relive some of those memories by reading the best Dark Fiction stories around. Includes Dark Fiction stories and poems by horror greats such as Graham Masterton, Bev Vincent, Tim Curran, Tim Waggoner, Elizabeth Massie, and many more.

  Tales from The Lake Vol.2—Beneath this lake you’ll find nothing but mystery and suspense, horror and dread. Not to mention death and misery—tales to share around the campfire or living room floor from the likes of Ramsey Campbell, Jack Ketchum, and Edward Lee.

  Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast by Jonathan Winn—where the secretly guilty go to die. All thrown into their own private hell as every cruel choice, every deadly mistake, every drop of spilled blood is remembered, resurrected and relived to feed the ancient evil that lives on Eidolon Avenue.

  Wind Chill by Patrick Rutigliano—What if you were held captive by your own family? Emma Rawlins has spent the last year a prisoner. The months following her mother’s death dragged her father into a paranoid spiral of conspiracy theories and doomsday premonitions. But there is a force far colder than the freezing drifts. Ancient, ravenous, it knows no mercy. And it’s already had a taste . . .

  Children of the Grave—Choose your own demise in this interactive shared-world zombie anthology. Welcome to Purgatory, an arid plain of existence where zombies are the least of your problems. It’s a post-mortem Hunger Games, and Blaze, a newcomer to Purgatory, needs your help to learn the rules of this world and choose the best course of action.

  Little Dead Red by Mercedes M. Yardley—The Wolf is roaming the city, and he must be stopped. In this modern day retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, the wolf takes to the city streets to capture his prey, but the hunter is close behind him. With Grim Marie on the prowl, the hunter becomes the hunted.

  Flowers in a Dumpster by Mark Allan Gunnells—The world is full of beauty and mystery. In these 17 tales, Gunnells will take you on a journey through landscapes of light and darkness, rapture and agony, hope and fear. Let Gunnells guide you through these landscapes where magnificence and decay co-exist side by side. Come pick a bouquet from these Flowers in a Dumpster.

  The Dark at the End of the Tunnel by Taylor Grant—Offered for the first time in a collected format, this selection features ten gripping and darkly imaginative stories by Taylor Grant, a Bram Stoker Award® nominated author and rising star in the suspense and horror genres. Grant exposes the terrors that hide beneath the surface of our ordinary world, behind people’s masks of normalcy, and lurking in the shadows at the farthest reaches of the universe.

  Tribulations by Richard Thomas—In the third short story collection by Richard Thomas, Tribulations, these stories cover a wide ran
ge of dark fiction—from fantasy, science fiction and horror, to magical realism, neo-noir, and transgressive fiction. The common thread that weaves these tragic tales together is suffering and sorrow, and the ways we emerge from such heartbreak stronger, more appreciative of what we have left—a spark of hope enough to guide us though the valley of death.

  If you ever thought of becoming an author, I’d also like to recommend these non-fiction titles:

  Horror 101: The Way Forward—a comprehensive overview of the Horror fiction genre and career opportunities available to established and aspiring authors, including Jack Ketchum, Graham Masterton, Edward Lee, Lisa Morton, Ellen Datlow, Ramsey Campbell, and many more.

  Horror 201: The Silver Scream Vol.1 and Vol.2—A must read for anyone interested in the horror film industry. Includes interviews and essays by Wes Craven, John Carpenter, George A. Romero, Mick Garris, and dozens more. Now available in paperback, as well.

  Modern Mythmakers: 35 interviews with Horror and Science Fiction Writers and Filmmakers by Michael McCarty—Ever wanted to hang out with legends like Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, and Dean Koontz? Modern Mythmakers is your chance to hear fun anecdotes and career advice from authors and filmmakers like Forrest J. Ackerman, Ray Bradbury, Ramsey Campbell, John Carpenter, Dan Curtis, Elvira, Neil Gaiman, Mick Garris, Laurell K. Hamilton, Jack Ketchum, Dean Koontz, Graham Masterton, Richard Matheson, John Russo, William F. Nolan, John Saul, Peter Straub, and many more.

  Writers On Writing: An Author’s Guide—Your favorite authors share their secrets in the ultimate guide to becoming and being and author. Writers On Writing is an ongoing eBook series with original ‘On Writing’ essays by writing professionals. A new edition will be launched every few months, featuring four or five essays per edition, so be sure to check out the webpage regularly for updates.