Nightmare Magazine, Issue 55 (April 2017)

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Issue 55, April 2017

FROM THE EDITOR Editorial, April 2017

FICTION Red Hood Eric Schaller The Adventurer’s Wife Premee Mohamed Figs, Detached Jenn Grunigen But Only Because I Love You Molly Tanzer

NONFICTION The H Word: Powerful Visions of Suffering and Inhumanity John Langan Interview: Stephen Graham Jones Lisa Morton

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS Eric Schaller Premee Mohamed Jenn Grunigen Molly Tanzer

MISCELLANY Coming Attractions Stay Connected Subscriptions and Ebooks Also Edited by John Joseph Adams

Welcome to issue fifty-five of Nightmare! We have original fiction from Eric Schaller (“Red Hood”) and Jenn Grunigen (“Figs, Detached”), along with reprints by Premee Mohamed (“The Adventurer’s Wife”) and Molly Tanzer (“But Only Because I Love You”). In the latest installment of our column on horror, “The H Word,” John Langan discusses the influence of Shirley Jackson on the genre. We also have author spotlights with our authors, and a feature interview with Stephen Graham Jones.

Coming Soon: Cosmic Powers My new anthology, Cosmic Powers, will be available from Saga Press on April 18. It’s a collection of epic-scale science fiction, inspired by movies like Guardians of the Galaxy and Star Wars, featuring brand-new stories from Dan Abnett, Jack Campbell, Linda Nagata, Seanan McGuire, Alan Dean Foster, Charlie Jane Anders, Kameron Hurley, and many others. To learn more, or to pre-order, visit johnjosephadams.com/cosmic. You can also read one of the stories appearing in the anthology in this month’s Lightspeed: “Infinite Love Engine” by Joseph Allen Hill.

Awards News In case you missed the news, the first of the major awards have announced their lists of finalists for last year’s work, and we’re pleased to announce that “Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea” by Sarah Pinsker and “Welcome to the Medical Clinic at the Interplanetary Relay Station│Hours Since the Last Patient Death: 0” by Caroline M. Yoachim are finalists for the Nebula Award this year. Congrats to Sarah and Caroline and to everyone else on the Nebula ballot! That brings Lightspeed’s lifetime Nebula nomination total to eighteen since we launched in June 2010. Lightspeed has currently lost sixteen in a row, so here’s hoping Sarah and/or Caroline breaks the streak! (Though of course, Alyssa Wong’s story, “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers,” from Nightmare won the Nebula last year, making us 1-for-1.) You can find the full slate of nominees at sfwa.org. The Nebulas will be presented at the 2017 Nebula Awards Conference, held this year in Pittsburgh, PA, May 18-21. “The Bad Hour” by Christopher Golden, from my horror anthology co-edited with Douglas Cohen, What the #@&% is That?, made the final ballot of the Bram Stoker Awards, so big congrats to Christopher for that honor. You can find the full slate of what made the final ballot at horror.org. The Stoker Awards will be presented at StokerCon 2017, which is being held in Long Beach, CA, April 27-30. In art award news: Galen Dara’s illustration of Kat Howard’s story “Seven Salt Tears” (Lightspeed, Jan. 2017) has been nominated for the Spectrum 24 Awards. Congrats to Galen and all of the other nominees! You can see the full list of nominated works at fleskpublications.com.

Locus Recommended Reading List / Locus Awards Voting Locus Magazine released their annual recommended reading list, and we’re pleased to report Lightspeed has fifteen stories on the list, Nightmare has five stories, and my anthology What the #@&% is That? has two stories:

“I Was a Teenage Werewolf” Dale Bailey (Nightmare) “Fifty Shades of Grays” Steven Barnes (Lightspeed) “Salto Mortal” Nick T. Chan (Lightspeed) “Ghost Pressure” Gemma Files (What the #@&% Is That?) “Little Widow” Maria Dahvana Headley (Nightmare / What the #@&% Is That?) “Red Dirt Witch” N.K. Jemisin (Fantasy) “The One Who Isn’t” Ted Kosmatka (Lightspeed) “The Finest, Fullest Flowering” Marc Laidlaw (Nightmare) “Sparks Fly” Rich Larson (Lightspeed) “A Good Home” Karin Lowachee (Lightspeed) “Those Brighter Stars” Mercurio D. Rivera (Lightspeed) “Angel, Monster, Man” Sam J. Miller (Nightmare) “Unauthorized Access” An Owomoyela (Lightspeed) “The Red Thread” Sofia Samatar (Lightspeed) “Vulcanization” Nisi Shawl (Nightmare) “Wednesday’s Story” Wole Talabi (Lightspeed) “Dragon Brides” Nghi Vo (Lightspeed) “Secondhand Bodies” JY Yang (Lightspeed) “Welcome to the Medical Clinic at the Interplanetary Relay Station | Hours Since the Last Patient Death: 0” Caroline M. Yoachim (Lightspeed)

Congratulations to our authors, and to everyone who made the list! The release of the Recommended Reading List also means that voting for the Locus Awards is now open. Anyone is eligible to vote. Visit locusmag.com to cast a ballot or learn more. Voting closes April 15, 2017.

Locus Feature Speaking of Locus, in their March 2017 issue, there’s a long feature interview with yours truly, in which I discuss my origins as an editor, editing my first anthologies, launching Lightspeed and John Joseph Adams Books, and all manner of things. (Surprisingly, I somehow got through the whole thing without once mentioning death metal.) If you’d like to check it out, you’ll need to buy the issue, but they’ve got some extended excerpts up on their website. To investigate either option, visit locusmag.com.

Best-of-the-Year Reprints Several stories from Lightspeed, Nightmare, and the Destroy special issues have also been selected for reprint in several best-of-the-year volumes. They’re listed below, with the original venue and then the best-of-the-year editor(s)’s name following in parenthesis:

1. “RedKing” by Craig DeLancey (Lightspeed | Horton, Dozois) 2. “I’ve Come to Marry the Princess” by Helena Bell (Lightspeed | Horton) 3. “A Good Home” by Karin Lowachee (Lightspeed | Clarke) 4. “Those Brighter Stars” by Mercurio R. Rivera (Lightspeed | Dozois) 5. “Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea” by Sarah Pinsker (Lightspeed | Clarke) 6. “The Jaws That Bite, The Claws That Catch” by Seanan McGuire (Lightspeed| Guran) 7. “Fifty Shades Of Grays” by Steven Barnes (Lightspeed | Horton, Dozois) 8. “Red Dirt Witch” by N.K. Jemisin (Fantasy | Strahan, Guran) 9. “Whose Drowned Face Sleeps” by An Owomoyela & Rachael Swirsky (Nightmare | Guran) 10. “Wish You Were Here” by Nadia Bulkin (Nightmare | Guran, Datlow) 11. “The Finest, Fullest Flowering” by Marc Laidlaw (Nightmare | Guran) 12. “The One Who Isn’t” by Ted Kosmatka (Lightspeed | Dozois) 13. “The Bad Hour” by Christopher Golden (What the #@&% is That? | Datlow)

This month’s list now incorporates selections from Ellen Datlow’s The Best Horror of the Year anthology, and one story (“The One Who Isn’t”) which we previously neglected to include. We’ll update this list if we uncover any additional such honors!

John Joseph Adams Books News I’m pleased to announce a new novel acquisition for John Joseph Adams Books: Upon a Burning Throne and The Blind King’s Wrath, the first two books in a new epic fantasy series by Ashok K. Banker, about a group of siblings battling for control of a vast empire while a powerful demonlord pits them against each other. Regular Lightspeed and Nightmare readers might recognize Ashok’s name from the stories of his we’ve published recently—and you’ll see his name several more times in the near future, as we have several works of his in inventory—but though Ashok is new to our pages, he’s a bestselling author in India, and, indeed, pioneered the entire fantasy genre in Indian publishing. So I’m super excited to be helping to introduce his work to a new audience. Otherwise, here’s a quick rundown what to expect from John Joseph Adams Books in the coming months: In July, we’ll be publishing two books: (1) Carrie Vaughn’s novel, Bannerless—a post-apocalyptic mystery in which an investigator must discover the truth behind a mysterious death in a world where small communities struggle to maintain a ravaged civilization decades after environmental and economic collapse; and (2) Sand by Hugh Howey, a reissue of his acclaimed indie-published novel. In September, we’ll be publishing Retrograde by Peter Cawdron, a hard SF novel about an international colony of astronauts on Mars, who have been prepared for every eventuality of living on another planet except one: What happens when disaster strikes Earth? In October, we’ll be publishing Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories by Hugh Howey, a short story collection including three stories set in the world of Hugh’s mega-hit Wool and two never-before-published tales, plus fifteen additional stories collected together for the first time. In November, we’ll be publishing Molly Tanzer’s Creatures of Will and Temper—a Victorian-era urban fantasy inspired by The Picture of Dorian Gray, in which an épée- fencing enthusiast and her younger sister are drawn into a secret and dangerous London underworld of pleasure-seeking demons and bloodthirsty diabolists, with only her skill with a blade standing between them and certain death. A bit further out, in Spring 2018, we’ll have The City of Lost Fortunes by Bryan Camp, about a magician with a talent for finding lost things who is forced into playing a high-stakes game with the gods of New Orleans for the heart and soul of the city. That’s all the JJA Books news to report for now. More soon!

• • • •

Well, that’s all there is to report this month. Thanks for reading!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR John Joseph Adams, in addition to serving as publisher and editor-in-chief of Nightmare, is the editor of John Joseph Adams Books, a new SF/Fantasy imprint from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He is also the series editor of Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, as well as the bestselling editor of many other anthologies, including The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, Robot Uprisings, Dead Man’s Hand, Armored, Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, and The Living Dead. Recent and forthcoming projects include: Cosmic Powers, What the #@&% Is That?, Operation Arcana, Loosed Upon the World, Wastelands 2, Press Start to Play, and The Apocalypse Triptych: The End is Nigh, The End is Now, and The End Has Come. Called “the reigning king of the anthology world” by Barnes & Noble, John is a two-time winner of the Hugo Award (for which he has been a finalist ten times) and is a seven-time World Fantasy Award finalist. John is also the editor and publisher of Lightspeed Magazine and is a producer for Wired.com’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Find him on Twitter @johnjosephadams. FICTION Red Hood Eric Schaller | 4469 words

There was a young girl whose grandma loved her fiercely, and so made for her a suit of skin. Her grandma brined the skin, scraped it free of fat and flesh, and soaked it in a brainy mash until it was soft and milky as a baby’s breath. She crafted an opening in the suit with leather cords to tie the flaps. “Promise me,” said the girl’s grandma, while she adjusted the fit, “that you’ll always wear this when you go outside.” The girl shook her arm and the skin waggled. “It’s still loose.” “That way you won’t outgrow it. Now promise me . . .” “I promise,” said the girl. Her grandma then showed the girl how to smear the blood and offal of the Risen over the skin for camouflage, including onto the hairy scalp of its cowl. The girl kept to her promise. She never left home without the blood-smeared suit, and so everyone called her Red Hood. One day her mother gave Red Hood two tins of soup and a bottle of cough syrup. “Go, my darling, and see how your grandma is doing. She is sick and could use our help.” Red Hood loaded the supplies into her knapsack and put on her skin suit. Her mother applied blood from a pot they kept by their apartment door and handed her a sheathed knife, its wooden handle split and repaired with duct tape. “With luck, you won’t need this.” “It’s broken,” Red Hood said. “The worth of a knife is in its blade, not its handle,” her mother said. She then gave Red Hood a few last words of advice. “Don’t follow the road because your shadow will show in the sunlight, and don’t talk to anyone until you get to your grandma’s apartment.” Red Hood descended the stairs until she reached the sub-basement of their apartment building, and then followed the dusty trail of footprints her mother called the Lost Highway. The trail twisted and turned in the darkness, leading from one building to the next. Red Hood maneuvered past hulking furnaces, octopus-armed duct systems, and grimy cars abandoned in parking garages. Sometimes her flashlight picked out the decapitated bodies of the Risen. Sometimes the dust tickled her nose. She pressed a finger hard above her lip—a trick she had learned from grandma—so that she did not sneeze. She did not encounter anyone animated until she had completed half her journey. Tinny and wan, like the mating cry of an insect, music was the first indication that she was not alone. She swung her flashlight around. A stranger leaned against a desolate sports car. He wore a squirrel-fur hat and had kindly eyes. He held a tiny machine in his hands and cranked its handle with the tips of his thumb and forefinger. “What’s that?” Red Hood asked. Then remembering her mother’s admonition against strangers, she added, “Who are you?” “A friend.” The music stopped and was replaced by a silence that felt like loneliness. Red Hood looked longingly at the tiny machine. “It’s called a music box. A genie lives inside and he sings when I poke his ribs.” He cranked the handle, and Red Hood heard the startled genie’s tune. This time the stranger sang along with it. His voice was rough, but the words were pretty: Away upon a rainbow way on high There’s a land that I learned of once from a butterfly Away upon a rainbow bluebirds sing Of warmth and food and all the love that you can dream. Red Hood had never heard anything so wonderful. She clapped her hands. “Please play it again.” She said please and so the kindly stranger obliged. “Would you like my music box for your own?” the stranger asked. “Oh yes,” said Red Hood. “I can’t give it to you, but you can earn it.” “How?” The stranger’s forehead wrinkled. He stroked his naked chin. Then his eyebrows shot up. “I have it. We’ll have a race to the next apartment building. First one to tag the EXIT sign wins.” Red Hood had visited her grandma many times and knew the Lost Highway well. She knew its dangers and obstructions: the cave-ins, the flooded levels, and, most importantly, where a Risen might lurk at a dark intersection. She gained two full steps on the stranger before he even knew the race had begun, but her skin suit slapped and dragged at her ankles. She slowed and the stranger passed her like she was a rooted in the concrete. He wasn’t even panting by the time she caught up with him at the EXIT sign. “My suit tangled in my legs,” Red Hood said. “Otherwise I could have beaten you.” The stranger looked so sorrowful it was surprising his eyes were dry. He placed the music box on the floor and ground it beneath his heel until it squealed. Nothing was left of it but a mess of crushed metal and plastic. “See what you made me do,” he said. “That’s the music box and the genie also.” There was a spot of rust on the floor that might have been genie blood. “I’m sorry,” Red Hood said. “Will you pay the forfeit?” “Forfeit?” He had said nothing of this before. “I’m not asking for anything of value. Just a kiss.” Red Hood had kissed family members, even a few boys. This kiss was different, hungry, and just when she thought it over, the stranger bit her lip. She gasped, tasted blood. “Now,” said the stranger. “I have something that your mother would like.” He rummaged through his pack and exhumed a plastic comb, pink and with a floral design. “Will you race me for it?” “To the next apartment building?” “Yes.” Why dwell on the details of this race? All happened as before. Red Hood took a head start but the skin tangled in her legs and she slowed. She would have cried over her failure but for the sympathy of the stranger. “See what you made me do,” he said. He cracked the comb across his knee and threw the splintered pieces away as if to hide these from their sight. “Is there another forfeit to pay?” Red Hood asked. He nodded. “The same as before?” He nodded again. In truth, this kiss was nothing like the first. The stranger’s tongue pummeled her lips and teeth and, when she relented, pursued her own tongue like a hungry salamander. He only withdrew after he had wrestled her tongue into bruised submission. The stranger wiped spittle from his lips and smoothed his eyebrows. He removed a crystalline flask from his pack. “If you can beat me to the next building,” he said, “I’ll give you this medicine for your grandma.” He uncorked the bottle, swirled the amber liquid inside, and let her smell its honeyed aroma. “I can’t win,” Red Hood said. She fought back tears. “Of course you can. You just have to set aside your suit. Without it, you’d be as swift as the North Wind.” This was the best comparison the stranger could make, for the North Wind is the liveliest and cruelest of the four cardinal winds. “Hang your suit on this nail where it will be safe.” Red Hood stripped off her suit and hung it on the basement wall. She felt naked without it, but won the race easily. The kindly stranger had been morose in victory but accepted loss like a champion. “You do not need a suit if you are quick,” he said. He rummaged once more through his pack and found a flask that looked much like the one he had shown her. “Take this to your grandma. It will assist her health.” “Thank you,” Red Hood said. The medicine was murkier than she remembered. She wondered about the forfeit she had missed. Would it have been like a rat, or a salamander, or another animal altogether? She started to retrace her steps. “Where are you going?” “To get my suit.” “But you are almost at your grandma’s.” Red Hood was tired from the races, but knew she shouldn’t leave her suit behind. Luckily, the stranger was as wise as he was kind, and proposed a solution. “I’ll watch over your suit and keep it safe. We mustn’t keep your grandma waiting.” “But you might have to wait a long time.” “I won’t be lonely.” The stranger squeezed his pack and it rattled merrily. Perhaps it contained miracles more entertaining than anything he had yet shared. Red Hood glanced back once after they parted, just long enough to see the kindly stranger tip his squirrel-fur hat. If she had followed him, she would have seen him give a little skip as if he had just won a lottery. If she had followed him still further, she would have seen him take her skin suit down from its nail and try it on for size. And lastly— although of course she did not, for she continued on to her grandma’s apartment—she would have seen that the suit fitted the stranger so perfectly that he, not she, might just as well be called Red Hood.

• • • •

Red Hood found her grandma shivering in bed, although her apartment was roasting hot. A fire crackled in the wood stove. Red Hood sat beside her grandma and, using the hem of her undershirt, daubed at the chill sweat on her forehead. “Where is your suit?” her grandma asked. Red Hood flushed. “There was a tear in its sleeve and I had to leave it behind.” “Couldn’t your mother repair it?” “She’s doing that now.” Red Hood’s excuse felt too much like a lie and she evaded her grandma’s eyes by fumbling inside her knapsack. “I brought you soup and cough syrup.” She set these on the bedside table. “And something better.” She added the crystalline flask of medicine. It sparkled with light stolen from the fire. Grandma reached toward the flask as if it were a source of warmth. “That’s beautiful. What is it?” “Medicine.” Red Hood thought back on the kindly stranger and how he had given her the flask so freely. “From a friend.” “A rare gift.” Red Hood used her knife to break the seal of sticky stuff that adhered to the cork. “Smell this,” she said. “Doesn’t it smell just like a summer’s day?” Grandma sniffed the opened flask and jerked away as if slapped. “My mother used to tell me the best medicine tasted foul. But sometimes evil cannot hide its fangs. Dump that down the sink.” Red Hood did as commanded. The medicine bubbled and fumed and its stench hung in the air. Red Hood opened a can of soup and heated it on the wood stove. It was tomato soup and it smelled wonderful. Her grandma stirred the soup, inhaled its aroma, and thanked Red Hood for her kindness. But she only sipped at her spoon, and the soup cooled in its dish. “Will you be better soon?” Red Hood asked. “I will never be better.” Grandma pulled her nightgown down to reveal a wound that was wet and red and shaped like a mouth. It pained Red Hood to look at the wound, but she did not turn aside. Her grandma reassembled her clothing and sank back into her pillows. “You brought me three gifts from home and so I will tell you a story of three’s. While I am talking, you will know that I’m alive. When I stop, you will know that I am dead. When that happens, you must take your knife and stab me through the temple.” Red Hood nodded. This was one reason her mother had given her the knife. She fetched it from her knapsack and set it on the table close at hand. “I’m cold. Please add a log to the fire.” Red Hood fed the stove even though the room was stifling. “There was once a young woman who lived in a small town. She knew everyone in the town and everyone knew her. One day, a handsome stranger arrived. He told comical tales of outwitting the Risen, played a scuffed guitar, and sang songs to her. The best songs were those in which he compared her eyes to pools of starlight or oceans of violets. The stranger was canny enough to also charm her parents and, with their blessings, he took the young woman away to his distant home. “They spent the cold seasons beneath a down comforter and the following summer she gave birth to a baby boy. The baby entertained her even when her man did not. Another year passed, and the young woman gave birth to a second baby more handsome than the first. She missed her family and friends, but her man discouraged her from visiting them, sometimes with words and sometimes with blows. The young woman gave birth to a third baby boy, the prettiest of them all, and, while her man was out scavenging, she escaped with her children and began the long journey back to her hometown. “One of the Risen caught her scent, and then another, and soon it was a fearsome pack that trailed her, howling and crashing through the underbrush. She reached a river and tried to hide with her children among the rushes. The youngest began to cry and could not be quieted. The young woman knew they would soon be discovered and so she wove a basket of reeds and set her youngest in it. She kissed her baby one last time, pinched his cheek, and shoved the basket out into the current. The baby’s cries attracted the Risen and the young woman escaped with her two remaining boys. “The meal was small and the pack was many, and soon the Risen took up the chase again. This time they caught up with the young woman in the forest. The Risen gathered around the tree in which she hid and howled for the sweetness of her flesh and the richness of her blood. The young woman crawled to the end of a branch. She knit a nest of leaves and set her next youngest in it. She kissed her baby one last time, pinched his cheek . . .” The room was hot, and the voice of her grandma dwindled until it seemed the rustle of leaves itself. Red Hood had promised to stay awake but she could not keep her promise. When she awoke, her grandma’s story was long completed and the fire almost out. She fed a log into the stove and stirred the embers into flame. Grandma’s eyes sparkled. “Oh grandma, what big eyes you have.” Grandma pulled at her blankets. “Oh grandma, what big hands you have.” Grandma yawned. “Oh grandma, what a horribly big mouth you have!” Grandma stretched her stiff limbs. She was newly dead and still slow. Yet, even dead, grandma had already cast aside her blankets. She tried to speak, but the words caught in her throat, and all that emerged was a painful moan. Red Hood stumbled backward. She spotted her knife but in her haste knocked it off the table. It skittered across the floor. The Risen never laugh, not even at another’s misfortune, and that distinguishes them from true men and women. Grandma stood and sniffed the air. Her nightgown slipped down to expose the dreadful wound in her side, and she tore at the fabric as if it had attacked her. Red Hood’s horror was like a boulder in her belly. She still loved her grandma, even though she was now on level with a beast. Who knows what would have happened if there had not been a knock at the door? This knock was followed by two more, each louder than the last. Grandma hugged the tattered nightgown against her bony chest and hunched to the door. She pressed her eye against the spy hole and howled in delight. She undid the deadbolt and opened the door. The kindly stranger stood outside. One of his hands was extended in greeting, the other hidden behind his back. He wore Red Hood’s skin suit. “Red Hood,” grandma cried. The suit fooled her. Her words sounded almost human, but were not human enough to fool the stranger. The stranger swung his arm out from behind his back. He wielded a machete. The blade flashed and grandma dropped to her knees. The blade flashed again, and grandma’s head bounced across the floor. “Go to the bathroom,” the stranger said to Red Hood. “You should not see what I now must do.”

• • • •

Red Hood heard thumpings and rattlings and dragging noises, and sometimes a joyful whistling. Finally, after thirty minutes that carried the weight of hours, she heard the stranger’s footsteps approach. He knocked politely and then opened the bathroom door. He no longer wore the skin suit and once again looked as kindly and as handsome as when she had first met him on the Lost Highway. “I need your help,” the stranger said. “What must I do?” Red Hood asked. She wanted to sound brave, but her voice squeaked. The body of her grandma was nowhere to be seen. “Help me barricade the door.” The apartment door was thick, but not so thick that it could shut out the howlings of the Risen. Even more disturbing was how they scraped at the wood, as if they might peel the door apart sliver by sliver. “Help me with this couch,” the stranger said. Red Hood and the stranger wrestled the couch into position by the door. They then flipped a table upside down onto its cushions and searched the apartment for heavy objects—pots and pans and plates from the kitchen, drawers from a bureau, rolled-up rugs, anything and everything—to add to the pile. “That’s enough.” The kindly stranger wiped sweat from his eyes. “Bring me the kitchen knives.” “Why?” Red Hood’s arms ached. “This is no time for questions.” Red Hood was too tired to debate and did as commanded. The stranger dumped the knives into his pack and cinched it shut. He then smoothed the sheets of her grandma’s bed, straightened the blankets, and fluffed its pillows. “We’re safe now. Sit beside me and share the warmth of the fire.” He patted the mattress. Red Hood took a seat near the footboard. “Do you still have the bottle of medicine I gave you?” “That’s finished,” she said. “No matter. I have more.” The stranger pulled a crystalline bottle from his pack. Uncorked, its honeyed aroma was just as she remembered. “Drink this,” the stranger said. “It will restore your strength.” Red Hood took a sip and felt fire burn across her tongue and run down her throat. She coughed. “Have another taste,” the stranger said. “Each sip is easier than the last.” The stranger, as always, spoke the truth. “Do you know why I came back for you?” he asked. He had moved so close to Red Hood that she could smell the medicine on his breath and feel the heat of his body. Red Hood took another sip from the bottle. She felt warm and a little too comfortable. “Why?” she said. The stranger smiled. “Because you still owe me one last kiss.” Red Hood was confused. She licked her lips clean. Kisses, she had learned, were unpredictable. “Will it be like the others?” “It will be nothing like those.” If a smile can be said to smile, the stranger’s smile wore itself out with trying. The stranger loosened the cord that cinched his pack shut. The leather puckered around the cord like withered lips and, once parted, the entrance gaped like a mouth. Red Hood leaned forward. She could see nothing inside the pack. “For this kiss,” the stranger said, “you must climb into my pack.” The pack bulged with its hidden freight and anyway was too small to hold a person, even someone as young and small as Red Hood. Red Hood wasn’t sure if the stranger was making a joke, but she laughed just the same. The stranger dug at his teeth with a fingernail and flicked a pinkish morsel aside. The gristle hissed on the warm bricks by the stove. “Just a little kiss. You promised.” Red Hood could not have said why she thought of her grandma at that moment. Maybe it was only because memories, like ghosts, know no barriers and enter unbidden. Whatever the reason, Red Hood remembered the story her grandma had told her earlier. Red Hood had not stayed awake to hear the story’s end, but she had heard its beginning and its middle and that was enough. No matter how small the pack appeared, she knew that it could swallow her and then the stranger would take her away. “If I give you this kiss, will you carry me with you to your home?” “I live far away but, yes, I will take you with me. We will live together and you will share in all that I own.” The stranger hefted his pack and it rattled merrily, suggested the wealth contained within. There was a murmuring also, like distant voices. “What is that?” “Those are the voices of my hometown,” the stranger said. “Before I left on my travels, I stopped by the market and I listened to the laughter and chatter of the crowd and the haggling of the merchants. I gathered just a little of what I heard into my pack so I might feel less lonely on the road.” “If I give you this kiss and join you in your travels,” Red Hood said, “you will never feel lonely again.” “When you give me this kiss.” “If I give you this kiss.” Red Hood bounded from the bed. She grabbed the pack’s strap and dragged it past the stranger’s legs. She shook the pack. The first time she shook it, the voices inside came tumbling out and echoed all around her. “Run,” they cried. “Run for your life.” The second time she shook the pack, spoons clattered forth and scattered across the floor. Spoons, not the knives she had hoped for. “Run,” they cried with their blunt metallic tongues. The third time she shook the pack, bones tumbled forth. There were leg bones, rib bones, finger bones, knucklebones, vertebrae, and broken pieces of skull. Most of the bones were white but some were pink. “Run,” the jawbones cried. Red Hood now knew where her grandma’s body had disappeared. She also knew why the stranger walked the earth alone but with a full pack. The stranger laughed. He had not moved from his seat on the bed. He smiled at her indulgently, as if she were a child easily tamed. Red Hood looked about for a means of escape. The door was barricaded, the window three levels above the street. She had lost the kitchen knives to the stranger and his pack. But there was still the knife she had brought with her from home. She had set it on the table and then knocked it to the floor when her grandma woke from the dead. Where had it gone? The stranger caught her eye. He reached into his boot and brought out her knife. Its blade flickered in concert with the fire. “Is this what you are looking for?” He inserted the blade’s point between his teeth and picked loose another sliver of flesh. He licked the flesh from the metal. He then opened the door to the stove and tossed her knife into the fire. “You still owe me a kiss.” The stranger reclaimed his pack from the floor and shook it open. The mouth of the pack gaped. Its sides caved like a stomach accustomed to richness but which has gone hungry for too long. “Now climb into my pack.” The fire crackled behind its mica window, perhaps in laughter, perhaps in simple enjoyment of the knife’s wooden handle. The remains of Red Hood’s knife glowed within the heart of the fire. She remembered her mother’s words: The worth of a knife is in its blade not its handle. She dropped to her knees before the stove and swung its door open. Sparks cascaded forth. Her knife’s handle had burned to ashes, but the blade remained. She plunged her hand into the coals. The knife seared her flesh and the heel of its blade sliced into the meat of her thumb. The stink of burnt flesh filled the room. Her skin blistered but she did not drop the knife. Tears blinded her but she gripped the knife all the more tightly. She screamed and she struck. Red Hood’s first strike cut loose a hank of the stranger’s hair. He laughed and caught her by the arm, spinning her around as if he were a prince and she his princess engaged in a dance. “You owe me a kiss,” he whispered, his breath tickling her ear. He twisted her arm behind her back. She cried out in pain, but this was not the arm that held the knife. Her second strike slashed the stranger across his bicep, slicing through his sleeve and drawing a trickle of blood. He cried out in surprise and released her. “You cut me,” he said. He shook his head in disbelief. “All over a kiss.” Her third strike pierced the stranger through the eye. He stumbled back. The knife protruded from his eye socket, and he crumpled dead to the floor. Afterward, Red Hood bandaged her hand and tidied the apartment. She gathered up her belongings, not forgetting her knife, the remaining can of soup, and the cough syrup, and slipped into her suit of skin. She freshened the suit with the kindly stranger’s blood and then shoved his body out the window. She watched it tumble through the air and smack against the pavement, and continued to watch as the Risen shambled from the shadows and shredded his flesh. On her way home, she passed one of the Risen gnawing on a bone. The creature growled when she approached, and followed her. Red Hood had nothing to fear. She wore her suit of skin and the creature fawned about her bloody heels like a dog loyal to its master.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Eric Schaller’s debut collection of dark fiction, Meet Me in the Middle of the Air, was released in 2016 from Undertow Publications. His stories have appeared in various anthologies and magazines, including The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, Fantasy: Best of the Year, The Time Traveler’s Almanac, The Bestiary, Sci Fiction, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. He is a member of the Horror Writers Association and an editor, with Matthew Cheney, of the on-line magazine The Revelator.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight The Adventurer’s Wife Premee Mohamed | 3893 words

It was not till after the adventurer had been interred that we learned that the man had been married. My editor, Cheltenwick, did not even let the graveyard mud dry decently on his boots before he dispatched me to the widow’s house with instructions for a full interview, which I had no doubt he would embellish even more than his wont. “Delicate sighs, Greene,” he said, hurrying me into a cab and pushing a fresh notebook into my hands. “A crystal-like droplet that rolls down her wan face. I want that, and a most particular description of the house, and don’t botch it up!” “Do it your precious self, Wick-Dick!” I wished to shout, but it was too late, and my career would be worth less than an apple-fed horsefart if I did botch this article. Henley Dorsett Penhallick had been a living legend for fifty years; any description of a life- imperiling venture or terrifying journey was known as a “Dorsett tale” in these parts. One never knew of his comings and goings—he was either thousands of miles away, or hunkered in his house ignoring the doorknocker. Every few years, his publisher would release a booklet of his exploits, copied verbatim—at his insistence—complete with the spelling errors and lavish illustrations in his letters. I had seen a few around the newsroom, the long elegant script tipped exaggeratedly over on its side, as if racing to get to its destination. I was quite sure he had never mentioned a wife. Everyone would have gone quite mad at such a discovery. Indeed, I expected the house to be mobbed with reporters when I arrived, but the street was empty, thick oaks nodding absently in the heat. Did I have the right address? All I had had to go on was Cheltenwick’s scribbled note and a vague memory he had of visiting, once, to deliver a package. A tall, reserved, grey house, he had said. A mass of ivy. I could see the white curtains twitch as I came up the steps. I wondered if the widow could stand to stay in the empty house, or if she had gone to stay with family, as ladies often did after a death. My own mother had left us for a fortnight after her brother died and gone to stay with my aunts out west. When she returned, I recalled, nothing more had been said about it; it had been as if no death had occurred. The widow answered the door herself, petite and slender in her weeds, face hidden behind a veil so thick I doubted she could see, black silk gloves covering small hands. I felt a wellspring of guilt for intruding on her grief, but Cheltenwick’s face hovered in my mind’s eye for a moment: Don’t botch this up! “Mrs. Penhallick,” I said, stymied for a moment simply by not having a face to address. “Please, allow me to . . . let me say how very sorry I am for your loss. We all feel it keenly, I assure you. Er, my editor, Mr. Cheltenwick, corresponded occasionally with your husband and . . . I . . . I am so very sorry.” “Thank you,” she said, voice muffled by the veil. “Mr . . . ?” “Oh!” I fumbled in my pockets for my card case. Finally, I found one, lone dog-eared card in my breast pocket and shamefacedly handed it to her. “Mr. Greene, madame. Of the Tribune.” She studied it, then put her hand back to her side. “Of the Tribune.” The question she hadn’t asked, or the invitation she did not wish to extend, hung in the air for a moment and I finally dipped my head and said, “I’ve . . . been sent to interview you, Mrs. Penhallick, about your husband. May I please come in?” There was another pause so long and painful that I almost walked down the steps again, but she eventually stepped away from the door and let me in. I scraped my boots so vigorously on the hedgehog that I nearly fell, and then the door was closing behind me and there was a tremendous smell of incense, old wood, and flowers. The parlor was filled with arrangements, hiding the outlines of several bookcases and a grand piano. A few had spilled out into the hallway, red-and-yellow roses and white lilies and chrysanthemums. Ahead of us, the staircase was graced with a wooden statue on each step—an elephant, a jaguar, matched tigers, a woman carrying a jug of water. Paintings and sketches papered the exposed wall above the railing. At the landing, there was an enormous world map covered in little flagged brass pins. It took all my strength not to run up the stairs and note them down; how many dozens, hundreds of places he had been! The widow apologized as she went, in her curiously fuzzy voice, and explained that we must be inconvenienced to take tea in the kitchen, for the parlor was occupied with flowers, and she had given the house staff a week off, wishing to be alone in the house. “Oh, madame,” I said, reflexively, almost hearing my mother’s voice as I spoke. “You should not be alone in the house at a time like this. Do you have family nearby? A mother, sisters?” “No,” she said, after a moment. “No one nearby, Mr. Greene.” I watched her smoothly fill the kettle, bracing her hand with a well-worn pad, and secure pot, cups, saucers, sugar, lemon, and milk. I scribbled that in my notebook, bracing it on my thigh so she could not see what I was writing. The widow is well-versed in the little felicities of a kitchen—unusual, for a lady of good family who would have a lady’s maid making her tea. Perhaps she was a servant herself? No one nearby. Where was her family from, then? She did not speak again until after the tea had been made. I sniffed mine unobtrusively before I sipped—a very strange tea, gray-green pellets, steam redolent of smoke and grass and iron, not your average cup of Darjeeling at all. The widow picked her cup up and adjusted her veil. The house was sweltering. I made another note: She ceases not her mourning, even in the privacy of her domicile, and now that I have intruded, she wishes to not be seen weeping. I thought about Cheltenwick’s “crystal droplet” and cursed him. What would have been the harm, had we waited a month or a year? I already knew his answer, though: Someone else, some other newspaper, a loathed enemy of an editor, would have sent someone out before us and the story would not be exclusive. Damn him, for true. This poor, bereaved, dignified woman, drinking her tea with her veil on—not to mention depriving me of a good look at her face. I said, “You may be surprised to hear that no one knew your husband was . . . was your husband. Which is to say, we had become quite used to hearing of Mr. Penhallick as an affirmed bachelor.” “No,” she said, a tone not quite of surprise but resignation, which I still had to strain to hear through her headgear. “That doesn’t surprise me, Mr. Greene. He’s . . . he was a private man. To have even friends and family inquire about our marriage, let alone strangers, would have upset him greatly.” She had given me an opening; I dashed through it before it closed. “Oh, I agree, I quite agree; many of us corresponded with your husband and never met him in person. I believe he liked it that way—as you say. When were you married?” “Two years ago,” she said softly, putting her tea back down with shaking hands. “We made no announcement, although it was in the local registry, of course.” “Of course,” I said, irritated. How could we have missed that? One of the office toadies did nothing but scan the local and state registries for interesting stories. Man dies in tragic fall into river. Twins born to local industrial magnate. Marriage of world- renowned explorer to mystery . . . beauty? Damn, damn, damn. Just as I began to speak again, she seemed to come to some kind of decision, and with one swift movement, unpinned her hat and removed her veil. I froze to hide my surprise— then, to cover my obvious lack of movement, took a gulp of tea and burned my mouth. For his wife—whom he had legally married, God only knew how or where—was no purse- mouthed old bat from a leading family, but a girl with the huge, steady eyes of a deer and burnished young skin as dark and flawless as the carved mahogany jaguar on the third stairstep. Her head was wrapped in a brightly patterned silk scarf, flowers and leaves and birds, underneath the black weeds. She smiled, seeing me so clearly discomfited, and put her hat and veil neatly on the table. “We did not announce it here, Mr. Greene.” “Er . . . I . . . .” I swallowed, compounding my rudeness with a rude noise. “I did not mean to stare, madame. I only . . . .” “The story,” she said. “That’s what you want?” I nodded, half-holding my breath, as if it might break a spell. She sipped her tea and said, “Then come and look at the house with me.” We returned to the front hall and she led me up the stairs to the big map. She said, “My name is Sima. A name from my land. We met here.” She pointed to a place in Africa dense with pins where no borders had been marked. “My home is beautiful,” she went on, sitting smoothly and quite naturally on a stair; I moved down a decorous three steps. “Beautiful, Mr. Greene, and very, very old. I am not sure how old the nation of the white man is, but it was in its infancy when we had been who we were for fifty thousand years. And it was into this culture that my husband first strayed, more than ten years ago. I was young, and was not permitted to go with him and the men from my village as they explored the holy ruins nearby. But every evening when they returned, he would sit by the fire, tell stories . . . he liked to draw pictures while he spoke, and he eventually taught a few of us English. You could easily say that several of us became his friends, including myself, as silly as that may sound—a grown man, and of his age! But we were friends all, nonetheless. “All during the dry season, they made trips out to the holy ruins and the priests told him: You may draw what you see; you may copy the inscriptions, but you must take nothing. And the men from my village ensured that he did not, though Henley, you know, he’s . . . he was a very fiend for collecting things. Everywhere he went, his hands darted out, so, so, like the head of a bird, and he would pick up a little rock, or a fossil, or a feather or a flower or a seed, and put it in his pockets. How we loved to laugh at his pockets! We had none; everything we valued had a life and a place, and we would never have moved it. “He filled books and books with this trip—he showed me, later—and he waved goodbye and left, on the funny things we had finally learned to call horses, all alone. And we did not think of him much again for a few years, when he returned once again at the end of the rainy season, with photographic equipment and more blank notebooks, and even hammers and chisels and shovels. The first night, we sat around the fire as always and when he saw me, he cried, ‘My friend Sima! How have you been?’ and I said, ‘I have been well!’ “Oh, my father laughed so loudly at the English we spoke. He said I sounded like our gray local bird, who imitates the things he hears. But I was pleased that he remembered me and I begged him to let me come with them the next day. ‘I know the ruins,’ I told him. ‘Every part of them, I know. We play there so often. Let me come with you!’ ‘Oh, no, my little parrot,’ he said. ‘That I shall not allow.’ “Well, Mr. Greene, I was a wild and wilful child, if you will believe it, and when they set off the next dawn, I followed. They swiftly outpaced me, being ahorse, but I knew well where they were going. Our ruins were circular, with a great tower at each of eight points on the circle, though much tumbledown, and one tall structure in the center. We sometimes called it the Sun Stones, for the shape, like the sun. Although the walls were so beaten down by wind and rain that a man could walk through at many points if he cut away the vines, there was only one place where anything so big as a horse could pass, a great gate built of neatly cut basalt blocks, and it was for there that they made. As I followed them in, one of the men, Lemba, saw me and cried out for me to leave, but Henley said that I might stay, for I might have some use, perhaps to squeeze in the tight spaces that the grown men could not reach. “Henley was asking the men about the ruins—who had made them? How long had they been there? Well, the second question we could not answer, none of us. Until the white man came, in fact, we did not realize that we measured time differently than he did. But we could answer the first, so my father’s friend Olumbi, who knew many stories, told him it was our own men doing the bidding of the old gods who could not speak. Who were these gods? asked Henley. “Olumbi explained: All the gods of our land speak, and it was they who gave the power of speech to the lion and the jaguar, the buffalo, the eagle and the snake and the elephant. But the old gods had come before, so there had been no opportunity for them to be given this power from the gods who came after. The old gods who could not speak could still command, of course, because they were gods, so they commanded the men who lived there to build these structures, to carve them with holy words, and to bring the stone from far away. Henley had noticed that there was no basalt for many days’ walk around our village, which we had not noticed, us in the village, for of course we did not need to work stone; we had clay and wood enough. He taught us the words for basalt and granite, limestone and chalk, while we walked, and he showed us where it seemed as if the stones covering holes in the ground were also basalt, like the gate. I climbed the great tower and took rubbings for him. “The men who built the ruins did not know just what they were doing, Olumbi explained—only that they must do it. And when it was done, the old gods came through freely, in silence. The men had built a door—as if all the world, Mr. Greene, was a hut, yet it had been built with no way in, and the men had chopped a door into the hut. When the men realized that this had been done, they cried out in regret and tried to destroy what they had made, but the old gods sent forth their servants, called shoggoths, and killed some men, and enslaved some, and went breaking and eating and burning all over the wide world, for the shoggoths could not be seen by man. They were terrible—like things seen in bad dreams. Then some wise men from a different land made the necessary magicks to hurl the old gods back to their unholy realm, and everyone began to rebuild our world, and soon this door was forgotten. It is a wonderful story. “Henley was mad for it—what were the old gods? What were these magicks? But Olumbi did not answer him. These were not part of the story that he knew. Near sundown, the guides left the ruins to get wood for torches. Henley pried loose a small stone with a carving on it of a thing with snakes for a face, and slipped it into his bag. He jumped when he saw that I was watching him, for we both knew he had been told to never take anything from the ruins, never, never. “‘Say nothing, Sima,’ he whispered to me. I worried about it, what he had done, but . . . it was one little stone, just the size of his hand and as thick. There were hundreds of the snake-faced creature carvings all over the ruins. What calamity, I thought, could come from just one of so many going missing? And yet . . . as we walked to the village, I felt a cold wind at our backs, and no birds sang. “He left a few days later, promising extravagant gifts and tales the next time he returned. But his doom was already upon him. We all saw it. He was pale as the moon; he could not sleep. In the night, he walked and wandered instead, and talked to himself. During the day he seemed his normal self, and laughed and ate with us, and boasted of his adventures. But he was restless. He could not meet the eye. He avoided the fire. It was another three years before he rode back, and he was so ill I wondered how he had made the trip. He was half his weight; he looked like a drought-stricken animal about to die. At first, I did not even recognize him. I thought how surprising it was that another white man had come to us. The chief sent for the best healers he knew. Where before, Henley would have waved them away like flies, he lay in the chief’s hut without moving except to weep. “Of myself, he asked for news of the area. Nothing, I said. The hunts are well, our gardens grow. Many babies have been born. There have been dust storms, stripping away the vegetation at Sun Stones. But the old women say there have been storms like that before. ‘There have been no noises? Earthquakes? No cries in the night? No blood on your sand?’ No, no,’ I promised him. “He had come at midday. When night fell, I thought he would surely die while we slept, but he did not; in fact, he rose and dressed, and woke me. ‘Sima, my only friend,’ he whispered. ‘Help me. You must. I am cursed; I carried home a curse with me.’ I did not know what a curse was, but I knew what ‘help’ meant, and I could not say no. By the time we reached the ruins, I was nearly carrying him. It was so frightening, Mr. Greene—he weighed nothing; it was like carrying a child. We came in through one of the small side gates, moving quickly, for the trees and brush had all been blown down and killed by the wind. He directed me to the center of the ruins—it took hours, as we had not brought light with us and the moonlight was treacherous. Finally, we stopped, and he withdrew from his satchel the ugly carving I had seen him remove all those years before. He put it back in place and looked at it for a long time. I gasped as the ground moved and made a noise, like a lion’s roar, but under our feet. ‘May this end; may this end,’ he said to the wall. ‘Give me my freedom, though it is not deserved.’ “He did not recover, though he stayed for a long time. When he left, he called together my family to ask if I could come with him. ‘If it is her wish,’ said my father. ‘She has a heart, for which we do not speak.’ I had never been so excited in my life, Mr. Greene. I agreed at once; we married in Italy a short while later.” “So, he died from his affliction?” I said, astonished. “We knew him as the heartiest, the most robust of men. What was it? Malaria? Yellow Fever?” “It did not seem that way,” she said, looking up at the map. “He wrote to Miskatonic University and they sent professors to talk to him; he was on the telephone at all hours. He even made a trip up there, carrying his notes from Africa. When he returned, he had copied out great reams from one of their old books—a medical book, I took it to be, not knowing any better—and stayed up late for weeks, reciting from it. I could barely sleep, hearing his voice all night, imagining the house was shaking. But then he did recover. He began to do his exercises again. He began to eat and write letters again. He slept soundly. He even began to speak of the adventures we would have again—all the places we would go together. I felt hunted; I dismissed it. His doom was with us, though. I did not realize what he was doing until it was too late. I did not believe he would do such a thing. I learned the word penance. A word we had no concept of in my language.” “Mrs. Penhallick,” I said, when she gave no signs of speaking again, though I dreaded to ask, “. . . how did he die?” She looked down at me, her great doe eyes suddenly hard and wary. “You’ll think me mad.” “No!” “The old gods who could not speak,” she said. “He had struck a devil’s deal with them, and the cost was his life. They sent a shoggoth for him in the night. To collect payment.” I stared at her. Yes, quite mad, I thought. Her head had been filled with these stories. The old man had made it worse, for a young girl from a land far away, whose mind eventually snapped from living here, alone in the great house . . . . After a moment, I said, weakly, “I see.” “Don’t put that in your article, Mr. Greene.” I was beginning to wonder if I had an article at all now, but shrugged and said, “As you wish.” As she was showing me out, I said, unthinkingly, “What a great pity that the man died without issue; my deepest sympathies for that, in addition to your great loss.” “Why, I believe I said nothing of the sort,” she said softly, taking my hat and coat from the stand. “If you must know, part of the deal for my freedom was poor Henley’s life . . . but I was well-compensated with a child.” “But . . . .” She stepped aside just as the thing came racing down the stairs, all unseen save for the brass pins torn loose in its wake.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Premee Mohamed is a scientist and spec fic writer working out of Canada. Her work has appeared in Syntax and Salt, Metaphorosis, Alliteration Ink’s No Sh!t, There I Was anthology, Innsmouth Free Press’ 2016 World Fantasy Award-winning She Walks In Shadows anthology, the Molotov Cocktail (top 10 in Flash Phenom and Flash Fear contests), and others. Upcoming work has been accepted by Third Flatiron Press and Far Fetched Fables.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight Figs, Detached Jenn Grunigen | 2455 words

Dioscorides said to harvest the branches when they are sapful. Before they bud.

Bittermilk

I ate the child and fell in love with the mother; I didn’t want to, but I didn’t know, I was new to town. The placenta tasted like raw ahi fed only on honey and dandelion. Inside it was pomegranate, was roe, was blood orange, was lymph. If I could regurgitate his love (my love, our love?) I would, but I can’t. Lacticifer sold his children at the Tenhen farmers market. I was hungry from moving into the house on the hill and rode down on my bike, the brake pads worn thin and worthless. He was short and wore mismatched socks, clogs, and Carhartt overalls. He caught my eye as I walked my bike through the market; his look was both imp and broken- winged bird. He sat on the open tailgate of his pickup truck, legs swinging, surrounded by mostly empty plastic crates. He told me I had mud on my ass, I said I was too poor to buy a fender, too lazy to put on my rain pants; he said he liked that I didn’t bother. Lacticifer’s produce had placentas yellow like his eyes. See-through glistenflesh just enough like a peel I thought it was fruit. Some goblin fruit, but I was curious despite the cost and he only had the one left, so when Lacticifer handed me the fruit, I handed him a ten. He smiled at me, then frowned when I ate it right there at his stand. Yellow eyes, quick grin again, flat canines (liar, liar), I was gone. That night, I fucked him against a flattened stack of cardboard boxes, bubble wrap popping underknee. Three weeks later, he gave birth in my scummy bathtub.

Infructescence

When I combed vomit from his hair I was with him. At first. His sick was dark, clung, sticky flakes among the strands. He sat in the tub, I leaned my thighs against its curled rim; he was vulnerable and haggard in the washed-out dawn light. I wanted to fist my hands in his hair, I wanted him, but I knew how gentle I had to be, start at the ends; how brass his locks, how tired his eyes. His sockets shadowbent. Tapioca pudding and black cherry cordial made a fine vomit. I worked it willingly from his hair. He leaned into my touch, I leaned toward his warmth. We met, somewhere. And though I was there, wanted to be, my mind was drawn to the time of year, the grocery store and the heaps of figs that would soon be there, leaking clear fluids down their rinds. I wanted to be there with him, I didn’t. I couldn’t help either of those things. I know that now. Lacticifer got drunk that evening. I didn’t realize how drunk until I woke up beside him in bed and he was moaning and limp on his side, retch spewing weakly from his mouth. I didn’t realize how pregnant, I didn’t realize pregnant, until he was in the tub (me combing) and his belly and chest opened up, his ribcage hinged back, and the fruit came out.

• • • •

First-tamed and first of the harvest. Before grain, wine, and olives. Years later, dried and stuffed into sows. Treaded and packed in jars with fennel, anise, sesame and cumin. Bacon glazed in fig syrup. The table is set. I fill myself, fill and fill my glass with Ficus latex. I feed like Anchimolus and Moschus.

Phytalus

Once, I watched a woman eat one of his children. She came to his stall, a coffee mug full of damp, crumpled tissues in one hand, a fresh baguette from The Rising Sun Bakery under her arm. “I’d like to feel happy today,” she said. “Just a little.” Lacticifer gave her two dollars off a piece of fruit and she had it with the bread and a small wheel of brie she took from her purse. She ate slowly, with limp hands. When the fruit was gone, she sat for a while in the sun, on the grass outside his stall. Ten minutes passed, then Lacticifer went and checked on her. He asked her how she was doing. He gave her a piece of the cookie he’d just bought from the same bakery as her bread. She grinned at him and ate it with a smear of brie. He grinned back, yet looked more grim and sad than she had before.

Sykophantes

When I saw what came out of him, I understood what he had done to me. Best as I could. I believed it because I saw it happen, because I’d eaten his child and all that followed had followed. I believed because he told me. The morning after giving birth, he sat on the couch for a long time. He was quiet, clean. He wore a pair of marigold sweatpants. His children filled all the shelves in the fridge. Finally, he said I’m so sorry and I thought it was because he’d been drunk. I thought this will be the thing between us, the thing that will make us stronger, the thing that will make us, us. I was wrong. Though he was sorry for the drinking—he apologized for it too many times later on for me to think otherwise—his apology was meant doubly. “I didn’t mean to,” he said. Later on, I heard something else beneath those words: you shouldn’t have eaten it. And beneath those ones, my own: it’s your fault.

• • • • The sea has fruit. It looks like bones. Snail egg-casings, rising from wet sand like stacks of thin vertebrae.

All Go Mellow to Bed

I couldn’t stand being away from him, so he moved in with me. My house is dark, the floors and walls planked in black mesquite, but Lacticifer brightened it up with his jackal eyes and collection of sunflower-patterned boxers mixed among my dresserful of black, grays and reds. We made love for the first time in a bed (before, mine wasn’t set up, and he lived in his friend’s garage, sleeping on a cot too narrow for us to bother with). He lay back against the dirty sheets and spread his legs. He has no cock or scrotum, just a flushed spongy ridge, wet and porous when he’s aroused, that starts as a thread below his navel, widens to its fullest at his crotch, and thins again toward his anus. I rubbed against it until I came.

Calchas Versus Mopsus

Every weekend, we filled Lacticifer’s truck with crates of fruit for the farmer’s market. Not all of them produced love, though all were encased in that sulfur crystal placenta. I wondered who had seeded Lacticifer with the melancherry. Not me, obviously. I was not sad, just restless, distracted. I knew the angerdrupe was mine (who would ever want to buy that?), but where did the peaceable fruit for rejuvenation come from? I was not peaceful, though I could have done with rejuvenation. I worked at Tenhen Beanbrewers. I rose at four a.m. to ride my bike down the road, beneath the dripping hemlocks, to ochre my hands with the acid and oil of coffee. At night I sent out applications, first to the University’s Long-Term Ecological Research Site at the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest, then to the biology department, admin positions in both the Classics and Romance Languages—then to nurseries, Edible Arrangements, flower shops, the local feed and seed. The produce section at the grocery store. Meanwhile, Lacticifer’s belly grew full. He never touched it tenderly or rubbed circles across it, though he always washed the mucus from his newborns so gently. Sometimes I wrapped myself around him while he cleaned the fruit, put my hand in his pants while streaks of afterbirth dried on his arms.

Caprifig

No one from town, no one I knew, ever bought what he called the worship fruit, but the people who came and purchased what I had planted in his belly still annoyed me. What did they do with Lacticifer’s children? The love I’d put in him. Make it into jam? Spread it on buttered toast to feed to their lovers the morning after? But it wasn’t just them. It was me. I’d eaten the fruit, too. I wondered who had given him love before. Whose love had I eaten?

• • • •

On the Nones of Caprotina come dreams of a house with a fig tree.

Fig

One night, Lacticifer skipped dinner and drank a bottle and a half of pomegranate wine instead. I ate my green beans and quiche, and asked him who he fucked for the other fruits, the ones I couldn’t help him make. He said it’s not always fucking, that it’s rarely fucking, and led me to our bedroom, where he knelt on the floor before the dresser and pulled out the bottom drawer. There were vials underneath a jumble of holey wool socks. He lifted a few bottles, smaller than the others. “I’m out of lust and hate,” he said, sighing. “I’ll need to find more.” “I don’t hate you,” I said. “But I can do lust.” “I know,” he said, kissing me, clumsy in his drunkenness, utterly besotted just for a moment. I held onto the kiss as long as I could. He pulled away, frowning, and added, “Hate will be hard, though. People don’t want to sell—they keep it close to themselves, then give it out for free.” He smiled, rummaged around, found a few more. He held up a vial that was nearly full. “Boredom. Not really in demand.” He shook it. “Mostly drool.” “Gross,” I muttered. Another bottle. He handed it to me uncorked. It was empty, but I smelled stale sex. “Love,” he said. “One of the few I need cum for.” “Is it really love?” I asked. I sank onto the corner of our bed, thumbing the vial round and around in my hands. Lacticifer looked up at me from his hunch on the floor, through his eyelashes, pale but profuse, like the legs of a house centipede. “I don’t know,” he said. “Is it?” I ignored his question, because I didn’t know. It felt like love, but I didn’t know. How could I know? My love for him had been induced. Instead of answering, I said, “Are any of these anything?” “What do you mean?” I narrowed my eyes. How could he have not thought of this? “I mean, just because we all call it love doesn’t mean your love is my love is their love. Or maybe it does. I don’t fucking know.” “They’re approximations,” he said, reaching for my leg, petting it, trying to calm me. “They’re—” But I had stopped listening.

• • • •

Ficus roots can break stone. Can they break a story?

Give a fig

“Do you still love me?” Lacticifer asked me. I said, “Still.” “I’m sorry,” Lacticifer said. I should have known. I didn’t listen.

Blastophaga psenes

A local dulcimer player performed during one of my few closing shifts. Lacticifer knew I would get home late, but when I got off, my bike had a flat. A coworker gave me a ride, dropped me at home an hour early. “You finally get a car?” she asked, noting the extra vehicle parked in our driveway. “Why didn’t you drive today?” “I like riding at night,” I lied, got my bike and walked to the front porch. The car wasn’t mine. In our bedroom, someone I only recognized from Lacticifer’s old photo albums was fucking him with the light on. His ex. Neither of them looked happy, but they were still getting off. I broke every glass in the house and slept crying in a synconium of shards.

• • • •

Fig jam. Figwort. Fig newtons. Figment. Figure. Figuring. Figures. Figurist. It figures. Figure you out. Obsolete: feague (liven up, whip). German fegen (thrash). Faire la figue, dar la higa.

The Breba Crop

Over the next three weeks, while Lacticifer grows pregnant, we don’t speak. We still share our bed and wake up in the mornings wrapped round one another.

• • • • The giant didn’t want to go to war, but it was necessary. He would have starved, otherwise. Still, you can’t beat the gods; he lost and they hunted him. It is said his mother took care of him, but that isn’t true; he had no mother. But he ate the last of the dried figs he had in his pocket before he laid down for the last time. He died with them in his belly. The scavengers left Sykeus for the rot and dirt, and from the compost of his body, a tree grew. The gods never found him.

Hemiepiphyte

A poultice of figs, ripe and honeyed and leaking rose, spread over his swollen stomach. It’d never been like that, that bloat, those purpled veins long and thick, reaching all the way up to his throat. Nothing worked, so I filled the tub with Epsom salts and warm milk and water to soothe his pregnant ache. He moaned and arched when his rib-doors swung back. A single fruit sloughed out. It bobbed in the bathwater. A placenta dark as plum skin bled out into the white water. There was something red, beating, trembling, at its core. Lacticifer shut his ribs. He picked up the fruit and held it out to me. “It’s hate,” he said, his sweaty hair like golden spider webs sticking to his face, “For you, my love.”

• • • •

If only Dionysos had chosen figs over ōmophagy. If only my satyros’ liver had been a fig, and I a maenad to eat it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jenn Grunigen is a writer and a drummer. She plays in the neofolk metal band Felled, has an MA in folklore, and is a graduate of the 2016 Clarion Writers’ workshop. Her writing has appeared in/is forthcoming from Strange Horizons, Shimmer, Hunger Mountain, and elsewhere. Her post-apocalyptic SF novel, Skyglass, a wild tale of sex, elves, and rock ‘n’ roll, is available now from Chromatic Press.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight But Only Because I Love You Molly Tanzer | 7786 words

The sky above is impossibly blue, striped with bright bands of clouds tinged pink and orange with the coming sunrise. There are a few stars still sparkling in the heavens, and the moon, bigger than it looks beyond the borders of this land, hangs low and near. The pack of spotted jackals is also near. Their baying is a goad. If we do not find some shelter, some escape, we are done for. The wind whips our scent into their long noses, maddening them. They will tear us to pieces if they catch us. I am not worried. I have no reason to be. Not yet. We are all gasping as we run up the side of a low hillock, even me, long used to ascents. I am weighted down with most of our gear and our water reserve, and that, I am less used to, though the last month has hardened me considerably. “Come on, Bridget!” shouts Dr. Sangare, pelting pell-mell down the side of the hill, nearly slipping on the waving grasses. One hand keeps her tattered, dusty bowler in place against the gusts, the other windmills her back into balance as her pack slams hard on her hip. Her tweed jacket flies open, revealing the knives strapped across her chest. She is good with them, but not good enough to stop a pack of ravenous dogs from rending us limb from limb. “We must get to that . . . thingy!” The thingy is a rocky prominence in the distance. If we were closer to home, I would think it was a cairn to mark the path for travelers. But we are not close to home, and here there are no marked paths. Or travelers, for that matter. “I don’t think,” gasps Bridget, “we’ll make it.” She is struggling too, nearly tripping as her skirts whip and snap around her ankles like a prayer flag. The leather-and-bronze hip holster glimmers bright as her flaming hair; she is an excellent shot, but the dogs are too many, too quick to make her superb marksmanship useful. “We must make it,” says Dr. Sangare. Her fierce determination steadies Bridget. They are a good team, they complement one another. Neither calls to me. Why should they? I have proven myself strong and reliable time and again, and besides, I cannot return their encouragement. Anyway, I was not hired to cheer them onward. I was hired to carry into Leng what they could not manage by themselves, and haul back what they raided from the barrows of her ancient queens. As we keep running, the spire in the distance takes on new details. To my surprise, it does appear to be a cairn—but an enormous one. Vaguely pyramidal in shape, wind and rain has smoothed away the rougher edges of the piled boulders; some have tumbled from the heights and lie scattered about the base. “It’s too far.” Bridget is lagging behind her companion; I can see her legs are shaking with fatigue. “Dily . . . I . . . I don’t think we’ll be dying rich.” “What’s our plan once we’re there?” Dr. Sangare’s question distracts Bridget from her worries; she is already assessing the tactical possibilities, and runs the faster for it. “To the top,” she says. “High ground. We’ll each take up a station, pick off as many as we can with boulders, rocks, my pistol, whatever we can find. Maybe if we keep them at bay for long enough, they’ll get bored.” “All right,” says Dr. Sangare. Sweat gleams on her dark forehead, it glistens like stars against the night sky. “Got that, Krishna?” She looks back. I nod. “He’s smiling,” observes Bridget, as we redouble our pace. “The fuck is he smiling about? Doesn’t he know we’re in danger?” “Try asking him,” says Dr. Sangare. “Right,” says Bridget. If I could, I would tell them that we are in danger . . . but not in danger of dying. I would know. But I cannot tell them, so I do not, and we run on in silence. Though they carry less than I, they have more trouble than I climbing up the slippery rocks when we reach them. Well, neither grew up trekking from village to village over dangerous passes, or scrambling up escarpments to get at berries or birds’ eggs. As the jackals bound closer, a slavering, yipping, howling mass of furry and toothy hunger, Bridget slips a second time. I sling off my pack and go down to help her up. “Thanks, Krishna,” she wheezes, as she clambers up beside me, now marginally safer. Unlike many visitors to my home village, Bridget and Dr. Sangare have always been polite. I nod in response to her thanks, and shouldering the pack, I point higher. Dr. Sangare has gotten above us, squatting on the top of the rock pile. The sun has risen, and she tips up the brim of her bowler, squinting in the dawn light. “There’s an awful lot of them,” she observes. “We’ll do what we can. I mean, we’ve made it this far.” Bridget hauls herself onto a flattish boulder and sets to looking over her pistol. “Krishna, anything to add?” I shrug. “Even facing down death, still silent as the grave?” Bridget shakes her head. The handful of ruddy curls that have escaped her tight bun bounce. “Here they come,” says Dr. Sangare. Her black eyes glint as she raises a boulder the size of my head over her own. Hurling it down upon the jackals, it bounces once, twice, then strikes one in the face. Its jaw is torn off, and the resulting red spray mists those next to it. The jawless jackal runs another step, then falls over twitching. The dead jackal’s companions pause for a moment to look at the ruined corpse of their companion, then turn to look at us. One growls. “Woo!” cries Dr. Sangare, pointing at the dogs. “That’s right, you mangy mongrels!” Dr. Sangare turns around, looking this way and that for another rock. She spies a candidate, resting at the meeting point of two large boulders. She steps out onto the flatter, lower of the two. It wobbles beneath her foot, and tips inward. “Dily!” cries Bridget, leaping to her partner’s side, but the doctor is already sliding, slipping into the black chasm. She screams, once, and then we hear a terrible thump. Bridget is there, kneeling, peering down, calling Dr. Sangare’s name. There is no response. I peek over the edge; it’s impossible to see anything. A growl turns my attention behind me. Three jackals have gained the top of the mound. One barks. Another snarls. I think about what color the snarl might have been, in my mind, before my color-sense changed. Before I could only see one color in my mind. One color that meant one thing. They advance. I make my decision. I push Bridget into the blackness. She screams as I jump in after. But of course, I do not make a sound as I fall.

• • • •

I used to hear in color, and count and smell, too. The sound of Mother patting out parathas was warm golden yellow, the smell of our yak a fresh green; a pile of five stones was maroon, but a pile of seven, pale purple. I didn’t see these colors, not exactly . . . Zopa, our yak, was creamy white and warm brown, and stones were . . . stone-colored. Just the same, I knew the colors were there, hovering at the edges of my understanding of the world, but vital to it. When I thought hard about certain things, I could sense the color with it in my mind. It was never distracting; in fact, it often helped me remember things, like how many sheepskins I’d last seen in the barn. All that changed when I went to see where the star struck near the base of Chomolungma, Mother of the World, which visitors call Mount Everest. The night before, we all had seen it streaking through the sky, its tail redder than the War God’s skin. Everyone was curious, of course, but some people in our village refused to go see what had fallen—the old-timers in particular said that if it had been cast out of Heaven, it was not for man to look upon. Those of us who would go went anyway, laughing at them, and at their children, sour-faced and resentful at being kept at home. The crater was smoking like a cup of su cha on a cold morning when we came upon it, but in spite of all the dead trees and blackened stones, the earth was not too warm to walk on. Still, the strangeness of it put off many of our party, and they stood well away from the lip of the depression. Something did seem wrong . . . it was the shadows, as if the sun shone differently upon that place than elsewhere. My sister begged me not to go nearer, and many agreed we should turn around. I would not listen, and went to see, walking over the hot earth until at last I saw what lay at the center. It was a rough, vaguely spherical stone, not much smaller than a wagon-wheel. I approached the steaming boulder, and saw a long fissure ran along it. I am not sure what I thought I might see if I gazed into its depths, but gaze I did. What lurked within was of such a strange nature! I would call it a color . . . but it was not a color I knew. No one else looked within, in part because I am told once I saw this sight, I uttered a wordless cry and staggered back before collapsing. And the next day, when others from our village went to inspect the place, the object, and whatever had lurked within it, had unaccountably disappeared. This was all told to me afterwards; I lay unconscious for nearly a week. And when I awoke, I found that either I or the world had changed. Whatever it was, color or something else, I had been blinded by it, in part. I still saw, but from that day forth, I no longer felt the blue-green comfort of the number nine, or knew the crimson warmth of the sound of cattle lowing. It had also taken my voice from me. I could not say a word after waking from that strange, dreamless slumber. Before I got used to silence, I would try, only to become so overwhelmed with the memory of what I had seen that it seemed to me the world spun faster under my feet, and I was in danger of falling off it. I quickly trained myself to not speak—or think about speaking, and not long after that, I found I would rather keep silent . . . for I discovered that seeing what I had seen had not only taken something from me, but given me something in return. I first noticed it when grandmother passed me my plate of dal bhat one night. Her hand shook in a strange way, spilling the hot lentils on my lap. Later, when I was resentfully scrubbing out my chhuba, I thought about her, and how the color, that color, had infused the memory, clinging to her as a butterfly clings to a flower in a stiff wind. I did not understand the significance, but as long as I thought of her, the color was there. A day later, a spasm shook her. She messed herself, and then she started making a sound halfway between a groan and a cry. There was nothing anyone could do. She wailed and grunted all night. When the dawn broke, she finally stopped, but it was because she had died. For a time, I worried I had killed her. I carried the weight of it like a faggot of wood until I saw the color again, in my mind, when my father’s brother by marriage went to another village to trade, and stayed away longer than expected. A day later, a party was sent out to find him, only to discover he had been crushed beneath a falling tree while camping for the night. It was not clear when the accident had occurred, but I thought it unlikely I had caused it. Just the same, I felt no relief, for I knew then the awful truth about what it meant to see that color in my mind. It was a terrible thing, and I felt I would almost rather die than live among those I loved, knowing when they must die. When Dr. Sangare and Bridget arrived in our village, asking for a guide to Leng, it surprised my family when I volunteered to escort the two strange women to that dangerous land from whence few ever returned. I helped them to understand as best I could that I wanted to go—made the point that my knowledge of English would be a boon to their little expedition. In the end, they accepted my gestured explanations, and let me go, though reluctantly. For the first time since I was struck dumb, I was grateful that I could not communicate the truth. How could I explain that I would rather focus my attention on those whom I did not care if they died? • • • •

The expedition started off well enough. Dr. Sangare and Bridget were excellent travelers, willing to wake up early, help fix meals, and best of all, they kept to a reasonable pace and therefore never suffered from the altitude or the distance. They had packed more than necessary, but everyone always does; I knew that from hearing my cousins talk about guiding hikers. But my companions hadn’t taken all that much more than they needed, and they always carried some of their own gear. They were kind and friendly, always making sure I was eating and drinking enough, and never making fun of me when they did something I found bizarre, or vice versa. I knew that trekkers were often rude to their guides, so I felt lucky. It made the journey much more enjoyable than I expected. They knew about me only what the other English-speakers in my village had told them —that I had learned English from a monk who had come to our monastery all the way from Kathmandu, that I had often trekked through the Himalayas, and knew the pass that would take them through to Leng. They told me similarly little of themselves, but I put together a kind of history from their conversations, so I knew that Dr. Sangare had traveled to England from a country called Mali in order to study medicine. But, as women were not allowed at the university, she had learned to dress and act like an Englishman in order to earn her degree, and liked it so much she retained her suits even after she left. Or rather, was asked to leave. After only a year. Pretending to be a man had gotten her in the door, but she could not pretend away the color of her skin. The other students had made life difficult for her, stealing her books, humiliating her in class, preventing her from accessing the various laboratories open to the student doctors. In order to get enough experience in dissecting corpses, she’d ended up needing to exhume her own. When she was caught, instead of seeing her dedication for what it was, her college had shown her the door. Dr. Sangare was of the opinion they’d been only too glad to see the back of her; almost grateful to her for giving them a reason to do so, so early in her career. Bridget was possessed of as checkered a past. She had had many trades, most of them involving some degree of law-breaking, and was possessed of many skills, the majority of them illegal. She was a survivor, cunning and wise, but kind and cheerful too. Dr. Sangare had opened an unlicensed women’s clinic after being dismissed, helping working women with illnesses picked up in any number of common ways, as well as providing family planning services. It was there that she’d met Bridget, and while one was dark and the other fair, one educated and one world-wise, each had seen herself in the other. The capital Dr. Sangare used to open her clinic had come largely from the sale of certain personal effects she had claimed from those bodies she had procured while still in medical school. Unfortunately, given her chosen clientele’s lack of solvency, she didn’t make enough to keep herself in medicine and meals and to also bribe the lawmakers into looking the other way when they realized what she was doing. Bridget stuck by Dr. Sangare even after the scandal, offering her a place to stay when her clinic was shut down and her assets were all seized. While living together, they discussed the sensational news regarding a Dr. Carter’s recent expedition to Egypt—as well as the estimated value of what he had discovered. Dr. Sangare knew how to rob a grave, and Bridget knew how to get by on not a lot, even in unfamiliar places, so they decided almost that very night to try something similar. The pockets of the unwary and the graves of the damned supplied everything they needed to get to someplace with deeper pockets and more fabulous graves. And in order to make the most from their efforts, they decided that they would keep the expedition to just the two of them. How they settled on Leng, I never did find out. All I heard was that they had “obtained” a map allegedly showing the burial valley of Leng’s ancient warrior queens; after we made it over the pass, it was toward this we headed. I was never as convinced of its existence as they were, but I hoped it was real. Though I was appalled by Dr. Sangare’s grave-robbing, and alarmed by Bridget’s nonchalance about having been a hired killer, thief, and prostitute at various times in her life, I came to respect them both for their determination and passion. I came to like them. I like to think they came to respect me and like me, too.

• • • •

I awaken, tasting dirt and blood. I spit out a tooth, which bounces away and disappears. It is black down in the pit; I see nothing but a patch of sky through the hole we tumbled through. I feel around in the darkness, and cut myself before discovering our lantern, shattered in the fall. Were I able, I’d curse, for the hot gush between my thumb and forefinger makes me aware of the sticky blood on my face, in my eyes; the scrapes all over my body. I find some bit of ragged cloth and wrap my hand, which makes it easier to get one of our emergency candles lit. The brightness sets my eyes watering, but eventually I can see enough to look around. We are in a conical cave. Cobwebs cling to everything, and the floor is littered with dusty chunks of masonry. The most interesting thing is the staircase, spiraling to the hole above along the side of the structure. I frown at it, as I feel my aches and pains from the fall. My two companions are slumped on the floor. I trot over to them. They are both breathing, but Bridget’s arm is twisted under her body in a way that sets my stomach rolling. She will need medical attention. Fortunately, there’s a doctor close at hand. I drizzle some of our precious water onto Dr. Sangare’s face, getting a little in her mouth. She sputters and licks her lips, then gingerly pushes herself to a seated position. “Krishna!” She looks around. “Are we safe?” I nod. “How did you get down here?” I point skyward. “You jumped?” She seems annoyed. “Now we’re all stuck!” I point at the stairs. Her eyes widen. “You knew?” I shook my head. “What a damn fool thing to do!” I raise an eyebrow, folding my arms over my chest. She sighs. “What I mean is thank you.” She winces, stretching out her legs. The knee of her trouser has been ripped away, and her black flesh beneath is red and pink with blood. “At the very least we’re safe from those jackals in here.” I point at Bridget. Dr. Sangare gasps, and pulls herself over to her partner. “She’s still out cold! We need to get her up.” I pour water into Bridget’s mouth. She does not stir. Dr. Sangare frowns. She looks worried. I am not. If Bridget were in real danger, I’d know. “Bridget!” She shakes the girl. “Come on!” “Gngh,” says Bridget, eyelids flickering. “Ow.” We get her up, and take a look at her arm. It is definitely broken. “We’ll have to set it,” Dr. Sangare says, frown deepening. I can see how much pain Bridget is in already, and hold up a single finger. While they watch, mystified, I pack a chillum with hash. I pantomime how to smoke. “What . . .” Bridget winces. “I suppose I can’t ask why.” I consider this and point to my arm, making a wracked expression, as if I’m in pain. “I see.” She looks to Dr. Sangare, who shrugs. “Well, I suppose I’ll try it . . .” I help her get the pipe lit off the candle, and encourage her as she hacks and coughs on the thick smoke. When we see the relaxation on her face, we know it’s time. Dr. Sangare puts her belt between Bridget’s teeth, a wise precaution. It is my job to hold her as Dr. Sangare sets the bone. She screams, but recovers quickly, as Dr. Sangare splints the arm and then constructs a makeshift sling from a scarf. When she’s finished, I pass out some goat jerky. “Well, that’s done,” mumbles Bridget, through a mouthful, “but even if the jackals are gone, I’m afraid I’ll need to rest a bit.” “I suppose I’ll do some exploring,” says Dr. Sangare, finishing her portion with one enormous bite. “This place must have been made by people for some purpose. Let’s see if they left anything behind.” She grabs a piece of firewood and makes a torch of it, tearing Bridget’s petticoat into strips to wrap around one end and dousing it all in the last of our lamp oil. Bridget giggles, watching this, but I make the concerned Dr. Sangare understand that this is normal, a side effect of the hash. Dr. Sangare begins to wave her torch about. We see there is a cavernous door in the wall; a corridor that slopes downward. We must be beneath ground level, but we can go yet deeper. She looks from the door to me. “Krishna—want to come?” I look from Dr. Sangare to Bridget. The girl nods. “I’ll be fine,” she says vaguely, helping herself to more jerky. Before I go, I wrap the remainder and tuck it out of sight. If the hunger comes on her, as it can with hash sometimes, I don’t want her eating everything we have left. The ceiling is much lower in the tunnel. Dr. Sangare and I pad along, her hunched over; me upright with my head only a few inches from the rock, winding our way deeper as we go. Our path is a spiral, curving in on itself, a continuation of the staircase leading out of the conical chamber above. I see Dr. Sangare checking her pocket watch every so often. She’s timing our descent. It occurs to me that this is a woman used to sneaking around in unfamiliar places. In unfamiliar graves. “I wonder what this place is,” she mutters. “It wasn’t on our map . . .” I cannot muse with her, but having looked at that map, which had only the vaguest markings, I am hardly surprised it left a few things off. Eventually the tunnel bottoms out. A low gate has been built into the living rock, two stone slabs topped with a third. There is a chamber beyond the portal, and Dr. Sangare immediately squats down, thrusting the torch within and peering about. I am more concerned by the hideous carving of a jackal-headed monster that sits atop the portal. Wings curve from its shoulder blades and teeth from its maw. It is hideous, sinister, and Dr. Sangare’s torchlight glints off the polished stones of its eyes in a way that makes it look almost alive. I find it strange that no door blocks our passage. There is only this silent stone guardian protecting what lies within. I note there is some kind of writing carved at its cruel feet. “Coming?” asks Dr. Sangare. She seems excited. I point to the statue; the unfamiliar script. Dr. Sangare shrugs impatiently. “There’s gold in there,” she says, and darts inside. I consider whether I will go in after her, and that’s when I see it. The color. Like the halo of flames surrounding the glorious goddess Palden Lhamo, the color is all around Dr. Sangare in my mind’s eye. I cannot say anything, and when I think about trying, the blackness appears behind my eyes with that telltale sensation of faintness. Something about this place has doomed her. She does not know it, but I do. I dart inside after her. Perhaps it isn’t too late. Once I’m through, I can’t think of the color in my mind, for I am overwhelmed with all the very real gold. It limns the cave and every object in it, red-gold and yellow-gold and orange-gold, depending on where Dr. Sangare’s torch is burning. She is running to and fro, staring at everything, mouth open. “Krishna!” she calls. Her voice is pitched higher than usual. “This is it! Look at it all!” I am looking. Heaps of coins, diadems, bangles, cloth of gold, gold and jewel- encrusted weapons, even mirrors; the golden backing riming the reflective glass like early ice along the edges of a frozen puddle. It is a queen’s barrow, such as my companions dreamed of finding. Dr. Sangare whoops and sings, racing from one pile to the next, selecting baubles and shoving handfuls of coins in her pockets. I sit back, dismayed, wondering what here could spell her doom. Is there a trap? A curse? Everything and nothing seems possible in that glimmering grave. She slings a heavy chain of gold links around my neck before I can stop her. “Very handsome!” she hoots, before going deeper to see what else she can see. I am still squatting near the entrance when I hear, “Krishna!” I lope quickly after her, worried, but when I find her amid the splendor, I see that she is excited, not upset. She has found the queen—or at least a queenly-looking skeleton, perched upon a throne. She holds a sword in one hand, and some sort of idol in the other. The weight of a heavy crown has caused her clean white skull to list forward. The crown comes to two strange points. They look like long ears. “I want it.” Dr. Sangare is transfixed not by the crown or the sword, but by the golden object clutched in the queen’s left hand. It is a miniature version of the guardian I saw above the tomb’s entrance. “Hold this,” she says, thrusting the torch into my hands. The color in my mind is brighter than ever, and I realize the idol is the source of the danger. I pluck at her tweed sleeve, urging her to leave it be, come away. “What?” she asks, annoyed. I point at the statuette and shake my head. She rolls her eyes. I tighten my grasp on her wrist. I shake my head again. I wish I could tell her something, anything, but I cannot, so I do not. “Don’t be so superstitious,” she snaps, wresting herself free. I step back. I have never heard a tone like that in her voice. It frightens me. I point at it, and her, but I know not how to tell her without words that the gilded thing means death. “I didn’t hire you to lecture me,” she says, turning back to the idol. She lifts it gingerly enough, but the skeleton comes unbalanced once the weight is gone, and falls forward with a rattle of dry bones. The head bows, the sword clatters to the ground in a puff of dust, and the free hand jerks forward. A finger points directly at Dr. Sangare. She takes no notice; she is too entranced by her find, the tiny model of a winged snarling jackal now cradled in her hands. She leans in to the torchlight, studying its intricate details. “Bridget,” she breathes, “oh, Bridget . . . don’t you worry. We’ll die rich, yes we fucking will.” I resist the urge to knock it out of her hands, cast the thing away. What good would it do? She is resolved upon having it, was resolved before she even picked it up. I see it in her eyes, and in her posture. The way she touches it. “Just think of what the British Museum will pay for it.” She grins at me. “Eat your heart out, Lawrence of Arabia! Dily of Leng is about to eclipse your fame!” I carry an armful of riches back up the spiraling corridor, but my heart is heavier than the gold. I can share none of their joy over the find, though I know it is extraordinary. They do not notice my mood. They are too busy delighting in their fortune. Dr. Sangare shows it all to Bridget, piece by piece. I notice she gives every item to her partner to fondle, save for the idol. That, she holds before Bridget’s eyes, keeping it in her own hands. “How much can we carry back, is the question?” Bridget and Dr. Sangare look over at me. “Krishna, what do you think?” What I think and what I can communicate are two very different things. I look at their gear, and think about the volume of gold below our feet. Assuming they are willing to leave behind everything that is not essential to our survival, I imagine I can carry back quite a bit of splendid treasure. In order to get this across, I rummage through a bag. I find Dr. Sangare’s favorite teacup and Bridget’s two spare corsets. I show them to my companions, mystifying them, and then set them away from the pile of gold. I point to one, then the other, and shake my head. “We’ll have to downsize.” Bridget gets it first. “Of course! I can help with that, while you and Dily pick out the choicest keepsakes.” She sighs. “I see now why expeditions always have a dozen or more people, camels, horses, carts . . . too bad we couldn’t afford all that, eh Dily?” “Next time,” she says. Dr. Sangare and I spend the next few hours down in the queen’s vault. I do not fail to notice the bulge in her coat pocket as she sifts through the treasure. She did not leave the idol above; it is with her, with us, in the cave. I wonder if she put it down if the color would retreat from my mind, but I have little hope of this. Dr. Sangare’s hand finds the object often, checking to make sure it is there as she selects other items of varying size and varying value. I am flattered by how strong she must think me, but eventually I must protest, when the pile grows to unreasonable proportions. “What?” I make a motion that I hope conveys my desire that she stop. She gets it after a moment, and sighs. “All right,” she says wistfully. “But I can carry some too, you know.” I glance at the heap of treasure. It is more than three men could carry comfortably, and while Dr. Sangare is strong, Bridget has never been particularly robust, and now she has a broken arm. But, I know it will be easier to object when she realizes she may risk tearing the canvas of our pack and taking nothing back at all. Even with her broken arm, Bridget has not been idle. She has significantly reduced their gear. I return a few crucial items, and then set to loading our spoils. “Let’s eat and go,” says Dr. Sangare, eyeing the stairs and the patch of light above. “I want to be out of this hole.” “All right,” says Bridget. “I suppose there’s no advantage to waiting around.” There is, but I cannot explain they should sleep, that both look vaguely maniacal after all the excitement. I just pack, and pack, and pack, occasionally checking the weight and then packing more. When I feel I have loaded the bag sufficiently, I alert my companions. Bridget has been dozing, but Dr. Sangare is awake, staring at the winged jackal, watching it as if it might fly away at any moment. “No room at the inn?” asks Dr. Sangare, pointing at the remainder. I have no idea what she means, not really, but I shake my head. “Ah well, it can’t be helped,” she says, hefting the bag. Her eyes widen. “You’ve packed it so heavy I’ll be amazed if you can make it down from here, much less carry it back to some place where we can hire a cart. You sure this is all right?” I nod. “You never fail to impress, Krishna,” she says. I smile, but it feels strained. The color is still around her, and I cannot feel like a triumphant adventurer with that hanging over me. I follow Dr. Sangare and Bridget up the curving steps to the top of the cave. They are in a fabulous mood, and agree there is no way the jackals will have lingered as long as we were unconscious. I have no idea how long we were really out, but I too hope it was long enough for the pack to lose interest and hunt some other game. It appears so. We are the only living things to be seen on that windswept, forgotten plateau when we emerge, save for a few bees buzzing in the tall grasses. “Can I help you? Do you need help getting down?” Dr. Sangare is already halfway down from the top of the rock spire, but Bridget remains with me. “I know I only have one arm, but . . .” I smile; shake my head no. I am touched that in her condition she would think of me, but I am more worried for her than for myself. She takes it slowly, and is able to clamber down without incident. Afternoon fades to evening as we descend. Dr. Sangare waits for us near the bottom, sitting cross-legged on a boulder. “All right!” she says brightly. “Time to go home!” I step off the rock. My feet sink into the springy turf, going deeper than normal due to the weight on my back. “Home,” says Bridget. “Fancy that. And far sooner than we expected!” I help her down beside me, and she favors me with a smile. “I like this buttered cha we’ve been getting,” says Dr. Sangare as she jumps down beside us, “but a cup of builder’s tea sounds like—” A distant rumble as her feet touch the ground stills her tongue. At first I think it is thunder, but then the rumbling grows louder, and louder, and the rock spire begins to shake. I back away quickly, and my companions follow me as the structure collapses in on itself with a tremendous roar of stone pounding stone; earth falling onto earth. We watch in shock, getting dust and dirt in our open mouths. When it is over, Dr. Sangare spits, rubs her eyes and whistles. “Glad we took so much with us,” she says. Bridget gawps at her. “We almost died,” she exclaims. “I thought you didn’t want to die poor.” Dr. Sangare grins at her. “No, but—” This time, it is a howl that interrupts their banter. It appears we are not the only ones who noticed the disturbance on the plateau. “Where are they?” asks Bridget, glancing about. “Where’s it coming from?” Dr. Sangare looks to me, as if I might have an answer. I shrug. The wind makes it difficult to tell. We wait, tense, and watch. The first black shape on the horizon answers the question. Bridget spies them first, points. Dr. Sangare draws her knives. “You want to make a stand?” she asks. “Where can we run?” is Dr. Sangare’s answer. I see her point, dump my pack, and draw my khukuri. Bridget already has her pistol in hand. It seems like there are more of them than before as they bound closer to us, their shadows long in the fading light. The jackals fan out and surround us, circling us as we stand back to back, the pack with all our loot at the center of our triad. They snarl and growl and snap, some even dart in momentarily to see if we will break and allow ourselves to be swarmed. I am frightened for the first time, for I never can tell when a person will die once the color touches them, and I do not know whether my talent extends to myself. Bridget seems safe, for now, so perhaps this is not the end for us. I cannot imagine how she alone would escape. The dogs circle us. Up close, I see their pelts are ragged; their bones show through the skin. Starvation makes them vicious. “Flea-bitten mutts,” hisses Dr. Sangare. “Come closer, I dare you!” “They have no reason to keep back,” says Bridget, her mind whirling. “They’re waiting for something.” “They’re waiting for us to flinch,” says Dr. Sangare. “They want an opening.” “Do we give them what they want?” “I think it’s time. I’ll fire a shot into one, see what they do.” I clutch my khukuri a little tighter as the rapport echoes across the plateau. A howl is cut short, and then they mob us. My khukuri is sharp, and I know how to use it. I slice downwards across the throat of the first jackal that springs at me, and the blade glints red in the last of the light. As the jackal falls dead, another leaps; I kick the first away and raise my knife again, this time chopping straight down through the skull of the beast. As I jerk the blade out of its brains, two come at me. I drop low, use the pommel to stick one in the eye and then bring it back around to stab the other. I get it in the side, and it takes a second strike to finish it off. By the time I’m done, the first has bitten me on the calf and is worrying at the meat there. I yelp but keep my head and stab it in the side of the neck. Its jaws tighten as it dies, and I fall back, coming down hard on my ass as the beast shits itself in its death throes. I crane my neck see how my companions fare. Bridget has felled a pile of them with her pistol but is now frantically trying to reload in the twilight, standing behind Dr. Sangare, who is holding her own with her two knives, their long straight blades dripping wet. As ferocious as we three are, there are more of them than there are of us, and I fear for our survival even as I avoid trying to see if Bridget now falls here. “Got that bang-stick reloaded yet?” asks Dr. Sangare, stumbling back after kicking away the corpse of another jackal. “Not quite,” says Bridget. “Sorry, I just need a bit more time!” Time is what we don’t have. I turn back to see more jackals approaching, three this time. I cannot stand, my bitten leg buckles under me when I try, so from a crouch I use one leg to propel myself at one. I stumble, off balance, so the slash of my knife takes its ear off, and cuts another on the bridge of the nose. This just makes them mad, and they shake off the pain to lunge at me. Sensing the third has gotten behind me, I roll out of the way. Two collide with one another, but the third jumps over them and is on me. Its heavy paws pin my arms, it slavers in my face, teeth inches from my nose. Then it is off me, jumping high in the air like a startled cat. I sit up, knife in hand, but it is slinking away, tail between its legs. They all are—the bloodied and the whole are drawing together, bristling but submissive. I get unsteadily to my feet and hop to Bridget and Dr. Sangare, who are bitten and scratched, but alive. “Something’s spooked them,” says Dr. Sangare. “They would have overwhelmed us, why —” A sound makes us turn to the rock pile, where a shadow looms, dark against the darkening sky. Slowly, it pulls itself from the rubble, like some awful newborn crawling from its dead mother, and even though I can see the moon through its hazy form, it seems heavy, weighted, misshapen. “What the hell is that?” breathes Bridget, as transfixed as I. I have no answers until the lumpy mass that appears to be its back bubbles and writhes, unfurling into two great wings. I am not the only one that recognizes it. “Run!” shouts Dr. Sangare, as she turns and takes off. Bridget follows, slower, but slowest of all am I, limping behind with my injured leg dragging through the grass. Where they are headed, I cannot say. They are not thinking those kinds of thoughts. They are only eager to be gone, and I cannot blame them. Unlike the last time we were all running together, Dr. Sangare says nothing to encourage Bridget; does not look back at me. She is fleeing from the horrible looming thing. She does not seem to think its ephemeral nature will make it any less dangerous. Neither do I—my khukuri cannot cut smoke and shadow. “Dily!” calls Bridget. She is struggling, the jolting of her broken forearm is taking its toll, but Dr. Sangare is not listening. She only slows momentarily when the idol falls out of her coat pocket, bouncing several times and rolling to a stop, gleaming bright in the grass. Turning on her heel, she looks at it only a moment before leaving it there. In my mind, the color does not leave her. She is still marked for death, and as I hear a terrible flapping behind us, I sense it will come from claws as sharp as they are insubstantial. Bridget does not have to turn back to retrieve the cursed thing. She reaches; I see the color. Her hand draws closer. I am too far behind her to stop her. Time seems to slow; before her fingertips brush the gold I see the color brightening, resolving, spreading over her. I muster my courage, and though my vision begins to swim and the colors of that twilit field grow duller, I shout at her not to touch the cursed thing. I cannot sit by a second time, let it happen again. Her fingers close on it as the beating of wings grows louder.

• • • •

When I wake, it is night. The moon hangs huge and low above me. The first thing I feel is astonishment that I am alive. The next thing I feel is pain, all over, in my arms and legs and chest, and especially in my calf, where the jackal bit me. I sit up, carefully, and look around. It is quiet. No shadow looms anywhere, winged and terrible. A crumpled thing lies in the grass several yards from me. I drag myself over and see it is Bridget. She is dead, torn to pieces. The golden jackal is nowhere to be seen. I apologize to her, in my mind, for not being braver sooner. Tears roll down my cheeks as I pray she will pass quickly through the bardo and be reborn. As I cry, I hear a sound, and I see a second figure lying in the grass. I pull myself away and limp over to find Dr. Sangare. She is no better off—worse, really, because she is still alive and clearly in great pain. She too has been torn and worried by whatever came for the idol. She looks up at me, and smiles. “You were right,” she says. “I’m sorry.” I shake my head. I do not want an apology. It is I who should apologize—if I had mustered the courage to speak before she touched it the first time, perhaps we would not be here. “Krishna . . .” she coughs. “I’m in so much pain. I know we asked you to bear so many of our burdens. Can I ask you to carry one more?” I have never killed, never wanted to kill, but I know it would be a kindness to oblige her. I know too that it was not the idol, nor the demon thing we saw that was destined to kill Dr. Sangare. It was me. I damned her with my inability to speak . . . or was it unwillingness? For the fear of a few moments’ dizziness, I failed to say what needed to be said, and that knowledge feels heavier than the pack I bore to Leng, the gold in the tomb . . . even the task that now falls to me. I push these questions away. There is work to be done. I smile at her, trying to apologize without words, and unsheathe my khukuri.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Molly Tanzer’s debut novel, the steampunk weird western Vermilion, was an NPR Best Book of 2015. She is also the author of the British Fantasy and Wonderland Book Award-nominated collection A Pretty Mouth, the cocktail- themed collection Rumbullion and Other Liminal Libations, and the historical crime novel The Pleasure Merchant. She is also the co-editor (with Jesse Bullington) of the forthcoming anthology Swords v Cthulhu (summer 2016) and the co-editor (with Nick Mamatas) of the forthcoming flash fiction and cocktail recipe gift book Mixed Up!, due out in late 2017. Molly lives in Boulder, Colorado, where she tweets @molly_the_tanz, and blogs — infrequently — at mollytanzer.com, where her full bibliography can be found.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight NONFICTION The H Word: Powerful Visions of Suffering and Inhumanity John Langan | 1511 words

The Transformations of Shirley Jackson

In the run up to the 2016 World Fantasy Convention, an interesting conversation took place online. 2016 marked one hundred years since the birth of Shirley Jackson, author of “The Lottery,” The Haunting of Hill House, and other stories and novels. The convention seemed an appropriate venue at which to celebrate her life and work. Despite this, when the preliminary schedule for the convention was released, it included only one panel on Jackson. In contrast, some eight or nine panels addressed the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft and his circle. Confronted about this disparity, Darrell Schweitzer, who had put together the schedule, explained the difference by arguing that, fine a writer as Jackson undoubtedly was, Lovecraft had exerted a transformative effect upon the horror field. By offering a dramatically different approach to the genre, Lovecraft’s was one of those bodies of work that permanently alters what follows it. As such, it would always be worth returning to— and at length—because its impact had been and continued to be so wide-ranging.

(Which begs the question of whether a writer’s impact on their field should be what decides how much critical attention we pay them. Spenser, Scott, and Byron all shaped their cultures and their contemporaries, yet we devote more study to those contemporaries because we judge their accomplishments to have been greater. Closer to home, as it were, Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto pretty much spawned the Gothic novel, but we prefer to focus on its literary offspring—in no small part because it’s a terrible novel.)

III

I didn’t disagree with Darrell’s assessment of Lovecraft’s impact. How could I? It was the late Robert Bloch who estimated that his former correspondent and mentor had influenced more writers than anyone this side of Hemingway. In part, this was because, as Ramsey Campbell has said, with Lovecraft, so much of his technique is visible on the surface. At the same time, I thought that Darrell had underestimated Shirley Jackson’s impact on the horror field, and severely, at that.

IV (This is not to attack Darrell Schweitzer, by the way, with whom I’ve had a collegial relationship for going on fifteen years. Since it was his opinion that led to this essay, however, I can’t think of a way into the topic that does not acknowledge his original argument.)

Part of my reason for thinking that Shirley Jackson’s influence has been significant is anecdotal. It comes from my role on the Board of Directors for the Shirley Jackson Awards. Since the awards’ creation a decade ago, they’ve been given out annually at Readercon. Each year, the Board has contacted the convention’s guests of honor to ask if they’d like to participate in the award ceremony, perhaps offer a few words at its beginning. Without exception, they have said yes, and enthusiastically, at that. In some cases—say, Caitlín Kiernan and Peter Straub—this hasn’t been a surprise. In others—you can check the complete list of guests of honor at the Readercon website—it has. Of equal significance has been the substance of those assorted remarks, which have spoken of the varied ways in which Jackson’s fiction has been important to these writers. It’s a sentiment which has been expressed in brief by the award’s winners and nominees. When she won the award for “Near Zennor,” Elizabeth Hand said, “I think all of us, here, are Shirley Jackson’s children.” It was a memorable line, a measure of Jackson’s influence as both extensive and deep.

VII

(I know, I know: what else is someone going to say about an author whose name graces the award they’ve just been given? I’m sure this has been the case in a couple of instances, but what conversations I’ve had with the guests of honor and the winners and nominees have convinced me, by and large, of the authenticity of their responses. Still, to make the case for Jackson’s importance to subsequent writers, you need to be able to offer proof of a more technical nature, don’t you? Cases where the relationship between her fiction and that of another writer can be examined and analyzed.)

VIII

Granted, Shirley Jackson did not make her creations available to fellow and subsequent writers in the same way as Lovecraft. Nor did she inspire the same type of fervent imitation. If this makes her influence less obvious, it does not render it invisible. As an example, consider Richard Matheson’s 1971 novel, Hell House. The name of the eponymous dwelling is one letter removed from Jackson’s Hill House, and if that seems a slender enough similarity from which to argue a connection, then take a look at the plot of Matheson’s novel, in which a group of researchers assembles to investigate a notorious haunted house. They include an academic, a medium, and a middle-aged con man, all of whom are recognizable as recastings of similar characters in Jackson’s novel. (Indeed, the con-man figure also incorporates aspects of her protagonist, Eleanor Vance, into himself.) Both narratives give us histories of their haunted dwellings, which were constructed by powerful, sinister fathers. Strange and frightening occurrences plague the investigators. Cryptic messages are written on the walls of the houses. Not all the characters survive their respective expeditions.

VIII

(Of course, Richard Matheson’s novel is more than a simple rewriting of Shirley Jackson’s. In fact, from this perspective, one of the most interesting things about Hell House is the dialogue it enters into with The Haunting of Hill House. It’s a conversation that has much of the character of an argument. Jackson’s novel treats spiritualism with almost complete skepticism, while Matheson’s wants to take it seriously, continue its project of approaching the supernatural as comprehensible through scientific means. Jackson plays coy with sex and sexuality; Matheson is explicit. Many of the phenomena that afflict Jackson’s characters are auditory or tactile; Matheson’s characters are plagued by visual events. Increasingly, the plot of Jackson’s novel veers toward her protagonist’s interior, setting up for catastrophe; whereas the plot of Matheson’s swings in the direction of the exterior, setting up a climactic confrontation for his protagonist.)

One novel does not a profound and lasting influence prove. However, there are others. Stephen King, for instance, has returned to Jackson’s work throughout his long career. In Carrie, there is a description of the young Carrie White having experienced a rain of stones very much like the one that precipitated upon the young Eleanor Vance. (And the novel’s portrait of the relationship between Carrie White and her mother probably owes something to the maternal conflict hinted at in The Haunting of Hill House.) King also invokes The Haunting of Hill House in the early chapters of Salem’s Lot in order to establish the mood of his novel. As he acknowledges in Danse Macabre, The Shining engages Jackson’s The Sundial in its plot of a family confined to a large, old building while a storm rages outside. King’s script for Rose Red, in which a group of researchers gathers to investigate an infamous haunted house, began as a deliberate response to The Haunting of Hill House. Among recent works by other writers, Sarah Langan’s Audrey’s Door incorporates a rewriting of the opening paragraph of The Haunting of Hill House into a late chapter to signal its conversation with the novel, particularly at the nexus of mental illness, maternal anxiety, and uncanny dwelling places. Paul Tremblay’s A Head Full of Ghosts mirrors the sibling relationship at the heart of We Have Always Lived in the Castle to add resonance to his story of a family under pressure from forces from without and within.

(All these descriptions are cursory. Each of them could—and should—be developed. Together, though, they help to lay the foundation for my argument for Jackson’s influence.)

Some writers are influential while they are alive—this was the case with Lovecraft. Some writers exert their influence posthumously—this seems to me to be the case with Shirley Jackson. Already, her effect on the horror field has been substantial, and it continues to grow with the passage of time. Some transformations are obvious, glaring. Others are more subtle, unnoticed until they have enveloped you. For Fiona

ABOUT THE AUTHOR John Langan’s latest collection of stories, Technicolor and Other Revelations, is forthcoming from Hippocampus Press. He is the author of a novel, House of Windows (Night Shade 2009), and a collection, Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters (Prime 2008). His short fiction has appeared in several of John Joseph Adams’s anthologies, including Wastelands, The Living Dead, and By Blood We Live. He’s also published stories in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and in other anthologies including Ellen Datlow’s Poe, Supernatural Noir, Blood and Other Cravings, and Jack Dann and Nick Gevers’ Ghosts by Gaslight. With Paul Tremblay, he co-edited the anthology, Creatures: Thirty Years of Monsters (Prime 2011). He teaches courses in creative writing and gothic fiction at SUNY New Paltz, and lives in upstate New York with his family. Interview: Stephen Graham Jones Lisa Morton | 5395 words

Mongrels may be the first Stephen Graham Jones novel published by a major house (William Morrow) and his first Bram Stoker Award nomination in the Novel category, but to those who have followed the author’s work for years it’s a natural step for one of the horror genre’s most unusual voices. Jones, a native of West Texas who now lives and teaches in Colorado, has authored over 250 short stories; his earlier novels include Demon Theory, Zombie Bake-Off, The Last Final Girl, and Growing Up Dead in Texas. Forthcoming in June from Tor.com is the novella Mapping the Interior. Jones is also the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Literature: Fiction, 2001; a Writers League of Texas Fellowship in Literature, 2002; and the Independent Publishers Award for Multicultural Fiction, 2001 (he is a Blackfeet Native American).

Mongrels adds a lot of new spins to werewolf lore (like dewclaws!). Given your love for films like Scream and Cabin in the Woods—both of which are often described as “postmodern”—do you think Mongrels is postmodern? Or do you see it more as extending the mythology of werewolves?

Yeah, my heart’s forever in 1996 with Scream. And in 1986 too, with all the good happening then. And Cabin brings it all back, plus some—with a pretty cool werewolf. If the postmodern stance or, I don’t know, “agenda” or “aesthetic” or whatever is going to be coming from a place of irony, though—at least a distrust in the ability of a story to be in any way honest—then, no, at least the way I read Mongrels, it’s not going for that. That’s not to say that the way story works in Mongrels is straightforward, either. But there is always a kernel of truth inside the fiction. Story isn’t hollow, in Mongrels. Just, it’s the best we can do.

One of the things I love about Mongrels is that it also works as the coming-of-age tale of a young boy in an impoverished family (they can stuff everything they own into trash bags and move in ten minutes). What influenced the choice of making the werewolves poor?

Whenever I’m reading werewolf or vampire fiction, money’s never any concern. So, what I’m being asked to believe with a story like that, it’s both that these werewolves and vampires exist, and that they’ve invested well. Which is a lot to ask me to believe. So, when I sat down to write about werewolves, I figured I wanted to make them as real to the reader as I could. What this meant was asking them to maybe just believe one big thing, instead of two. And, of those two—money, werewolves—there was only one I could lose and still get to be in a werewolf story. Too, growing up, money was the big concern. We’d always be worried about stuff like if the rental place was going to come take the furniture away again, or how we were . . . not going to make this or that payment, but what it was going to mean when we didn’t. What I’m getting at is that, if my werewolves had daily money issues—as they do in Mongrels—then that would require zero research on my part. I could focus all that thinking on building the most perfect werewolf I could.

Mongrels was inspired in part by a werewolf course you were teaching. How often does your teaching work inspire your fiction work?

Back when I was teaching my zombie course pretty regular, I put out Zombie Bake-Off. And I did Growing Up Dead in Texas as a result of a grad fiction workshop where we were talking about the shadings between fiction and non-fiction. And my American Thriller course definitely informed All the Beautiful Sinners and Seven Spanish Angels. The Last Final Girl pairs right up, year-wise, with a slasher course I taught. So, it happens a lot, I guess. But, usually? It’s not that either really comes first. What happens is that I get to really thinking about werewolves, and my life is all werewolves here, werewolves there, werewolves everywhere. So of course I teach a course on them. And of course I write a novel about them. They’re both just ways I think about werewolves. I don’t guess I know where Flushboy comes from, though—oh, wait, I kind of do. I was teaching a Young Adult graduate seminar. Well, I taught it right after writing Flushboy. But I taught it because I couldn’t stop thinking about the genre, the mode. And I’m still always thinking about it. There’s a magic there, and I want to touch it.

As a college professor, do you find young people are generally interested in genre? Do they sometimes take your classes because they know your work?

Yeah, I often get students as kind of refugees from spaces where they haven’t been able to talk about Spider-Man or horror. Years back—man, probably for my first twelve years of teaching—the first story you had to turn in for one of my workshops, it was always a randomly-assigned genre story. Fantasy, western, romance, erotica, horror, crime, just however many genres we needed for how many people we had in class. One semester recently we had polar bear erotica. Last few years, though, I’ve been able to scratch that genre requirement. Just because the students are coming in wanting to write genre. Every submission will be genre. Part of that’s that they know my tastes, I imagine, and write to them a bit, but a bigger part of it’s just that genre’s making inroads into the academy. And it’s the students who are bringing it. I feel like I’m plugged into the whole system at just the right time. You attempted two werewolf novels (Bloodlines and Lord’s Highway) before Mongrels. Why did Mongrels work for you whereas those two didn’t?

Bloodlines was the third novel I ever wrote. 1999 or 2000, I think. I wrote it coming right off Demon Theory, so I was kind of cocky, thought I could do anything—that I was ready to put my real and actual heart on the page. Which is to say, I thought I was ready to write about werewolves. I was wrong. Bloodlines, to me, it’s kind of this West Texas version of Philip K. Dick’s Galactic Pot-Healer. Just, with werewolves. I kind of forced the end, too, instead of just letting it happen. And, I guess I was twenty-seven or so then, but I could still tell this wasn’t what I’d meant to do. So I shelved it. Then in 2013 I kind of partially unshelved it—I took the basic premise, made it what I thought was better, and burned a lot of what I was calling The Lord’s Highway down. But, a hundred, hundred- and-twenty pages in, I kind of cued in that, first, I had too many characters happening— that, to do them justice, this was going to be a seven-hundred-page novel, and, second, I was spending too much time just looking at werewolves. It’s what I like to do. But that’s indulging. And a novelist should never indulge him or herself on the page, where everybody can see. We should always do the most in the least amount of space. And I wasn’t doing that. So I quit that novel. It’s one of only two or three I’ve ever quit. But then I wrote Mongrels, so I guess it all worked out.

You wrote the first draft of Mongrels in fourteen days. Doesn’t that break down to about 6,000-7,000 words a day? How do you do that?

It was more like six or seven thousand every afternoon, I guess. I like to go out and do stuff in the morning—gym, errands, biking around going nowhere—then around six I like to watch some Star Trek: The Next Generation or something, eat some dinner, maybe cue up a horror movie or two. All work and no play, man, that impacts the work in a bad way, I’ve found. I used to do that three-day novel contest, and I found that I wrote a much better novel when I made time for basketball, and Star Trek, a lot of hackysack, and just walking around doing nothing. Doing nothing is so, so important, especially in a world where you’re always supposed to be doing something. Sitting at the desk for hours in a row, that doesn’t do anybody any good. Just now, in November and December, I wrote a big slasher novel, Lake Access Only. Which, the end of the year, that’s my absolute busiest time of the year. Just thing after thing after thing: hunting, a low-residency program I teach in, finals, theses, holidays, snow. But I figured why not slip a hundred-thousand-words in if you can, yeah? I started November fifth, seventh, somewhere around there, then took a week off, and then jumped back on, jammed it down fast. My goal was Christmas, but I came in on the twenty-third, in time to see some movie I’d been wanting to see, I forget which one. For me, if the novel’s real, then it’s always fast. If it’s slow, then that means I’m having to force it, that it’s not happening on its own, and, man, writing, it shouldn’t be work, should it? It’s playing with dragons. It’s not mowing the lawn. It’s hiding from the world. Let’s keep it fun, I say. Let’s make it an escape. I’ll build my fort, you build yours, and tomorrow we can trade.

After publishing nearly two dozen novels and collections with small presses, Mongrels is your first book published by a major house (William Morrow). Has the experience been different for you? Do you foresee both major and smaller publishers in your future?

Morrow’s distribution and marketing’s been nice, yeah. And, man, who knows where I’ll be next. I’ve already been with, I don’t know, probably seventeen publishers, maybe? Fourteen or fifteen, anyway, I’d guess. The big reason for that, it’s that I always do a different book from the last. Writing just in one genre, one mode, on one shelf, that’s not for me. That’s not how I read, so why should I make myself write like that? So, maybe I’ll be with a commercial house again next, or maybe not. Either way, I’ll write the best books I can. It’s always about just putting my whole heart into it, and believing it real. Lately I’ve been seriously considering writing a western, an anthropological thriller, and a sixth-grade rollerskating novel. I’ve got a possession one I kind of don’t want to do at all, since just thinking about it terrifies me, makes me leave the lights on. But maybe I’ll dive into it, who knows. And my model for all this, it’s Joe R. Lansdale. He never let anybody put a label on him, he just did what he wanted and did it right and then did it some more. It doesn’t always make things come out smooth, either career-wise or money-wise, but at the end of the day you’re still yourself, I figure. And that’s what I’m going to care about more in twenty years than my checking account.

The first short story you wrote in college won an award. What do awards mean to you?

They’re always an honor. They mean that enough people cared about this book to put a checkmark in a box, and what that means is that the book’s reached those readers. And that’s what it’s all about. What media is—and fiction is a media—is me having a thought, a feeling, and wanting to share it. So I encode it on the page, or in a sculpture, or a melody, or the routine I do on my BMX bike, and then someone out there, they engage with that art, they decode it, and that thought or feeling I had miles and years and lifetimes away, they have some version of it as well. And that’s just pure magic. I’m so glad we don’t all have telepathy. If we did, there’d be no art, there’d be no lying towards the truth. Your novel The Last Final Girl paid homage to slasher films. What is it about slashers that continues to thrill us?

What I forever love about the slasher is the closed cycle of justice. We get the slasher we deserve. We get the slasher we created. And the final girl, she’s a model for us all. She rises above herself to stand up against the monstrous, and insist that it back the hell off from her and hers. The final girl shows us that we each have a better self curled up inside us. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no purer story than the slasher. It’s where story begins and ends. My novel Growing Up Dead in Texas? That one that’s about a kid with my name growing up in West Texas, or trying to? That everyone always calls a memoir? I built that on the dramatic scaffolding of the slasher. Because I wanted to tell a true story. And the slasher is the most true story I know.

Demon Theory was described as an entry in the new “intelligent horror” field. Has horror been so typically considered in the past as non-intelligent that we need a label like this?

I don’t think we do, no. I also resist “literary horror,” because that kind of classification pushes a lot of other, real horror to the side, as suddenly non-literary, where “literary” is all synonymous with “good” or “quality.” Too, I worry a bit that a term like literary horror can become an excuse of sorts for a story that, I don’t know, moves slower, or is all about the atmosphere instead of the transgression—that prizes different things than what’s conventionally been prized. I prefer just the good old term we’ve always had, “Horror.” Sure, there’s good and bad horror. There’s permanent horror—horror we return to again and again—and there’s disposable horror, which we read once and toss. The important thing, though, it’s that we don’t allow those two to separate into a hierarchy. Except that that’s practically built into those terms, I know. Man. There’s a place for each, though, and neither is easier to create, or in any way better. But, yeah, with Demon Theory, I guess I was kind of, and very much on purpose, taking aim at all the people looking down their nose at the other side. Both the so-called literary readers and the horror fans. Neither characterizes the other very well. I figured that by co-opting the content of one and the method-of-delivery of the other, I could maybe suggest that we can all stand around at the same party, and not have to step out to the parking lot to settle things. But that parking lot, it’s dark and inviting, isn’t it? I always ended up out there in high school. Stands to reason I’m still there.

You’ve talked about writing to make sense of the world. Does horror literature help us make sense of the world . . . or reassure us that parts of the world will never make sense? Nicely asked, wow. Both. I mean, for me, story makes the world make sense . . . at least for these eighteen pages, or for this one book, or even this one series—I’m looking at you, Harry Potter. But, horror in particular, it does reassure us that parts of the world will never make sense, emphasis there on “reassure.” What horror does when it’s working well is that it forces the door of the possible open just a little bit. And, sure, there’s tentacles oozing through, there’s wet teeth snapping back in the darkness, there’s clawing and scraping and moaning and hunger, and that’s all terrifying. But when that door cracks open, then the wondrous also becomes possible. The world and this life is boring if all that exists is just what we consensually see. It’s all so much more exciting if we don’t know everything that’s out there. That’s the world I want to live in. The one with aliens and Bigfoot, with angels and demons, with vampires and really cool werewolves. So we don’t have skulls or forensic evidence or verifiable photographs. Who cares. It’s not about the facts, it’s about our faith, our insistence in the face of facts. That’s our defining human characteristic, I think. We want to believe. We need to. Otherwise Cthulhu wins, and we’re just meaningless specks in the vastness of the All. How much meaning we have is exactly how much meaning we insist upon. I choose to believe I’m part of the tapestry of some vast, wonderful story. And if I do everything just right, it can all work out.

You have a wife and kids, a teaching job, a lot of old trucks, and yet you still produce a great deal of writing. What do you say to would-be writers who complain about not being able to find time to write?

First, I guess, disabuse yourself of the romantic notion that novels only result from years and years of blood and sweat and toil. That’s just a myth we’ve bought into, as a means of establishing the worth of what we produce: I put this much into it, so you should be able to get a lot of that back out. It’s some old way of thinking, where there’s guilt associated with producing something in an easy manner instead of a difficult manner. Really? It doesn’t matter if it takes you two weeks or two years or whatever—it’s the product that matters. Is it sincere? Is your whole heart in these pages? That should be what writers get asked in the big media junket. But, instead, we all get asked how long it took us to write this, which is a way of telling the audience that this writer gave this X time, maybe you should give it Y time. Second, about carving out time to write—my rule is just that I choose writing over everything but family and health. Which is to say, I don’t go to the bar, I don’t watch reality television, and I try not to do things that are just killing time, that are just keeping me busy and awake. My job is to write. My calling is to write. When I’m not writing, I’m stealing air. That’s the only way I know to be.

You once advised writers to walk away from “broken stuff.” How often do you do that?

I used to do it a lot more. My old directories are stuffed with stories that started to fall apart. Rather than taking a week to try to get them back on course, I’d just consign them to the bin, go write something else. I’ve never been afraid of running out of ideas, or words. But those were all stories I was just writing to write them, and maybe sell if they came together right. Nowadays, nearly every story I write has been solicited. So, what that means is I’ve told an editor, yeah, I’ll have a story with these parameters done by that date. And I do that. I’ve never not made a deadline, or come up empty on a story. That’s not professional. That puts other people in a bind, when they’ve been kind enough to take a chance on you. I have started a story for an editor, had it go south, so started another, and then another, but I still made the deadline. With novels, it’s of course harder to throw away forty or sixty or eighty thousand words. You usually convince yourself that this can be resuscitated. But? I mean, I consider The Lord’s Highway thrown away, and that’s from pretty recently. Before that, I think I’d only ever scrapped-in-process one other novel, Scotoma Mon Amour. This is from about 2002, I’d guess. Maybe 2001. Right around when I wrote Bloodlines—it was supposed to be the sister book. I was having a lot of fun writing it, but then I realized that it was a kind of fun so particular to me that I’d be the only one to ever have that kind of fun with it. And I don’t just write for myself. So I bailed out, wrote something else. I do have a few novels that I saw through to the end then decided they weren’t good enough, so they just live on my hard-drive, and in my file cabinets. Bad thing is that one of those has the best ending I’ve ever done in anything. But it’s tied to a novel that’s broken—The Hedonist Chronicles—that I can’t figure how to fix. I was a different person when I wrote it, and I can’t get back into the headspace anymore. It’s right around the time I wrote The Bird is Gone—another novel I’ll never be able to approach again.

Is one reason you write quickly and are so prolific that you feel the weight of passing time?

I mean, yeah, I’m forty-five now, which is a whole lot different from the twenty-three I was when I got my first story published in a decent place—thank you, Black Warrior Review—but it’s not so much fear of running out of time that makes me go fast. It’s that, when I’m writing something, for me to believe in it in the way I need to in order to make it real on the page, that requires a commitment out of me that’s . . . I don’t know: it’s not really right, I don’t think. I lose the line between what’s this and what’s that, and I lose it fast. I’m dreaming the novel, I’m breathing the novel, and, when I go to the store for Frosted Flakes, I’m walking through the novel. When I remember things, I can’t remember if I’ve written them or if they really happened. Not just saying that. I really and truly lose my grip on which tether is tied to this world, which is tied to the made-up one. It’s not a good way to try to navigate a day, or a week, or a life. So, each time I duck into a novel, it’s like a tunnel, and I just race through to that speck of light as fast as I can. Otherwise I might not make it out at all. As for volume, I mean, way I look at it’s like darts. You throw enough of them, you’re going to hit the bullseye one time or another, just from stupid luck. So I try to keep as many darts in the air as I can. Too, since I write to pretend that the world makes sense, then I write a lot, yeah. Because this world, man, it makes very little sense to me. But I can trap it on the page in a way I can track, sometimes. Some days.

You’ve spoken in past interviews about your love of genre fiction. Can a badly written genre novel still be better than a well-crafted non-genre book?

Hard call. Say I read a novel about a cybernetic werewolf, but the characters are flat, the pacing’s off, the writing is hamfisted. Still, I got to think about a cybernetic werewolf, right? That’s not all bad. If I read a non-genre novel with poor pacing and characters and prose, then I didn’t get to see anything cool. So, in that situation, I’ll choose the cybernetic werewolf, please. But that’s not what you’re asking. You’re asking is a poorly done horror novel still better than, say, Ian McEwan’s Atonement, or Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina. No, I don’t think so. Good story always trumps whatever content. And that’s what I’m after, on whatever shelf I’m peeling through. I just want the story to grip me, to make me want to turn the pages, to stir my imagination, to make my heart swell. You know that Sandor Marai novel Embers? It synopsizes down as the single most boring story ever: two old dudes sitting around, remembering the old days. But, man, when you get into the meat and the muscle of it, that story sings, man, and you become functionally incapable of setting the book down. Still? Peter Straub’s Ghost Story is basically that, right? And it sings as well, and it has scary stuff going on. Given a choice like that—great writing, solid story, well told—then I’ll choose the one that also has scary stuff, thank you. Because that makes my world bigger. And I want to live in a big place.

You’ve written ghost stories (“After the People Lights Have Gone Off”), a zombie novel (Zombie Bake-Off, which also includes wrestlers!), a werewolf novel, a slasher tribute, stories about horror movies and mysterious boxes and Halloween and mad professors . . . is there any horror trope you haven’t tackled yet that you’d still like to visit?

I haven’t done vampires, long form. Well, I have, this novel No Rest for the Wicked, in about . . . 1999, 2000? And I really liked it, and still do, but then, before I could mail it out, Thirty Days of Night happened, and the way it ends is exactly what I did in No Rest. Which happens. Happened with Demon Theory—I skipped hunting in 1999 to finish it over Thanksgiving, and then in January 2000, House of Leaves hit and hit big. Not trying to say that either my vampire novel or my footnote-horror novel were in any way better than those others. Certainly they weren’t. Certainly Niles and Templesmith and Danielewski earned their acclaim. Just, saying that lots of the time you’re not the only one with your good idea. It’s a race, always. As it should be. Sometimes you win, sometime you don’t. Trick is, you line up again, and again, and you keep running until your feet are nubs. But, I haven’t really answered you yet. Possession. I haven’t done possession. Because it terrifies me senseless. I mean absolutely. But a couple months ago I kind of accidentally sketched out this possession novel. It’s one I’ve been dreaming about since I was about twelve. I’ve got all these bad memories tied up with it, all these weird little behaviors that I think come from this story, this name. So maybe I should just write it. Except? I used to think that if I got the scary stuff on the page the right way, that would mean it was out of my head. That’s what I was trying with The Least of My Scars. That’s what I was doing with this one story “The Darkest Part.” That’s what I did with Mapping the Interior, out here in June. Turns out that all that really does is give a lot more detail to the scary stuff, while making you live in it for a little bit more.

What about young adult? You’ve often mentioned an admiration for young adult literature, so will we be seeing that from you in the future?

Paul Tremblay and me did that Floating Boy and the Girl Who Couldn’t Fly, from Chizine, and that’s young adult. My Flushboy . . . it sorta kinda maybe counts? But the message at the end isn’t very young-adult-ey, I suppose. Well, unless you believe in love. But, yeah, the other day I stumbled into a pretty cool premise. Not that premises mean anything—it’s about voice, it’s about character. But the characters are starting to take shape around that premise, it feels like. So, who knows. Maybe. I do really dig that genre.

Do you really type hard enough to go through a lot of keyboards?

Yep. Currently got the last broken one behind me in the closet. It’s missing a key or two, but, when this one I’m on now goes down, I can fall back on that not-completely- broken one for the afternoon, anyway, until I can get to Best Buy. I Kickstarted my dream keyboard about a year and a half ago. It was supposed to have been delivered a year ago, I think. But I keep getting updates. Maybe someday the thing’ll be real, and I can hammer words into it. Too, here’s a good trick I chanced upon. Do a lot of hand-grinding one day, like, really using that wheel up, cutting through stuff you should really be using a torch for, then come inside and immediately start writing. Because your fingers are numb from the shaking, you won’t be able to feel the keys. You remember where they are, though. Then, just watch. When the words fizzle onto the screen, it’s like direct transmission from your brain. You just think it and the words are there. It only lasts a few minutes, but it’s more than worth whatever metal and blades you have to destroy to get those minutes. I’ve also had to write when all my fingertips were destroyed from climbing to the top of a warehouse and trying to ride a rope down. I had to throw that keyboard away, because of all the blood. I’m usually pretty good with blood, but this was all down in the cracks and everywhere. Keyboard kept going, though. I probably should have kept it. Talking blood: used to, when the only time I had to write was about ten at night until four in the morning, when I’d have to be at work again, the way I figured out to stay awake, to keep from coming-to to eighteen pages of the letter n, it was to get all my knives and balance and wedge them point-up around my keyboard, so that if I nodded off, I’d get woken up immediately. It works, too. You don’t sleep, when sleep means getting a blade shoved into your skull.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Lisa Morton is a screenwriter, author of nonfiction books, award-winning prose writer, and Halloween expert whose work was described by the American Library Association’s Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror as “consistently dark, unsettling, and frightening.” Her most recent books include Ghosts: A Haunted History (which The Times Literary Supplement said “excels at presenting us with instances of the persistence of belief, across all times and cultures”), and the short story collection Cemetery Dance Select: Lisa Morton. A lifelong Californian, she lives in North Hollywood, and can be found online at lisamorton.com. AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS Author Spotlight: Eric Schaller Traci Castleberry | 1693 words

So, out of all the fairy tales to retell . . . why Little Red Riding Hood?

As with most stories, you don’t necessarily set out to tell it, but the story finds you at a particular point in time when you’ve subconsciously accreted the necessary ingredients. These suddenly meld and almost will themselves to take shape. A key element in the gestation of “Red Hood” was a 2013 article by Jamshid J. Tehrani, titled, “The Phylogeny of Little Red Riding Hood” (bit.ly/1Nky1XZ). Tehrani analyzed fifty-eight different versions of the tale and used seventy-two plot variables to create an evolutionary tree that related all these different versions to each other. This article was revelatory, as it made it suddenly clear that the same story template I knew so well from Perrault and the Brothers Grimm also has Asian and African analogues, and that the villain is not necessarily a wolf but might be a tiger, an ogre, or a crow. Anything, really. Moreover, as a scientist, I also just plain got a kick out of the idea that you can use evolutionary theory and computational approaches to characterize the relationships between all these alternative versions of the same tale which extend back for over 1500 years.

What do you think is the appeal of retelling fairy tales, and do you find it freeing or constricting to play with such a well-known story?

Fairy tales and folk tales seem to embody primal story templates—the Cinderella plotline has almost become a cliché—but they also lend themselves to constant reinterpretation. Children still love Little Red Riding Hood although few will ever encounter a truly wild and dangerous wolf. That was true even when Perrault retold the story, and so he included a final clarification, warning that there are various kinds of wolves and that “well-bred young ladies” should never talk to strangers. Also, when considering Little Red Riding Hood, there are the many awesome reworkings by Angela Carter, exploring and indeed reveling in the sexual undercurrents of the tale. The fact that she was able to retell the tale in so many different ways, rather than restricting interpretation, suggests how each teller can make the tale their own. That possibility is further reinforced by Emily Carroll’s recent and beautiful collection, Through the Woods, a “graphic novel” for lack of a better term, which is composed of five stories inspired by Little Red Riding Hood.

Some of the descriptions—especially of the skin suit—are particularly visceral and realistic. How does your background as a biologist affect your choice of details and plot elements?

Even though I’m a plant biologist—my victims only bleed green—my father is a zoologist. I grew up with firsthand knowledge of predators and prey. I saw dead animals from a young age. I pickled mice and bats in formaldehyde. And I don’t shy away from graphic detail if it makes the story come alive in some manner. I strive for accuracy when writing, but I don’t necessarily think of the reader’s response to such descriptions in an initial draft. I just try to get it down in a compact but sensory manner. It’s only later, with some distance from the story, that I can respond more like a reader and edit from that perspective. That being said, I’ll add that the priorities of scientific writing don’t necessarily align with those of fiction. Science is more about finding the elements that repeat, an average response in a population, rather than what is unique to the individual. Science establishes reproducible patterns such as Tehrani’s seventy-two plot variables for LRRH. I do care a lot about these patterns, and I strive for a satisfying structure in a story. But this is more like a skeleton, and I need to flesh it out if I want to give the story life. The skin suit preparation, to get back to the specifics of the question, comes from the ancient practice of brain tanning hides, as practiced by the Ojibwa and other Native American tribes. Brain tanning derives from the concept that every animal has sufficient brains to tan their own hide, and is a method by which one can achieve a soft and supple hide without the use of chemicals. I learned about this practice from my wife, who documented craft traditions in northern Wisconsin, and so it was one of those elements that was there in the back of my mind and fell into place when the story took shape.

In this story, the characters seem to accept the horror as an everyday occurrence and don’t react to it except out of necessity, yet that same indifference makes the horror pop all the more for the reader. Is that a conscious choice in telling the story? Why or why not?

I’ve always loved fairy tales and folk tales, but it’s only with the recent passing of Richard Adams and in responding to your question that I now wonder how much of an influence his novel Watership Down had on me as a storyteller. I first read it in high school, but I’ve reread it many times since then, including right after his death. I was struck by how Adams integrated folk tales into the novel’s narrative. Most significantly, these were rabbit folk tales, told by them and expressing their point of view. If you read these alone, you still understand a lot about the rabbit culture, their hopes, fears, and value system. That’s an approach I’ve taken with several stories I’ve written: telling a folk tale, but not explicitly describing the narrator to the reader. In “Three Urban Folk Tales” (Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet) and “The Three Familiars” (The Dark), I created new tales that were primarily derived from our urban culture, although the latter story is told from a witch’s perspective and morality. “Red Hood” is actually the first time that I took an established folk tale and reworked it, evolving it to reflect the priorities of a dark future. Looking back over my initial notes for the story, I see that I listed the classic SF story, “The Cold Equations” by Tom Godwin, as one touchstone, so the idea for a brutally logical reaction to their world was present right from the start.

I listened to your recent interview where you talked about how, when you start a story or a piece of art, you don’t necessarily know what the end piece is going to be. Can you elaborate a little more on your creative process?

This varies a lot story by story. Paul Bowles once wrote about how he had written several stories with absolutely no idea as to where they would go. This is a freeing concept that I have sometimes employed, most recently when a fragment of a dream stuck in my head and seemed an interesting jumping off point. But most often, because a story arises from several interacting visions or ideas, and the friction from these interactions, there’s the suggestion of a story arc. I think I know the story arc and start with this, but . . . I think the simplest way to put it is that I edit a lot and often the part that needs the most editing is the endgame. This is often because I have a preconceived notion as to how the final act will go. Thankfully, my wife Paulette, who is always my first reader, cannot hide her disappointment when, after building up her expectations in the first two-thirds of a story, I shatter them into abysmal shards by the resolution. And then, of course, I work to fix the problem area, all the while knowing that she can never experience the story fresh again, undergo the immaculate reaction of the virgin reader. I’m never sure as to how much readers want to know about the burrs and bristles involved in the writing process for any particular story. And really, these are all different to some extent. With Little Red Riding Hood, there’s the immediate suggestion of a story arc, and the story is guided in some respects by the expectations that we come to when encountering that particular plotline. But even within the European variations of the story, getting back to the evolutionary variations I discussed earlier, the ending has a lot of possibilities. There’s the simple, brutal version, in which the tale ends with the girl eaten by the wolf: a powerful lesson that emphasizes how a single mistake can be fatal. Then we get the deus ex machina version, in which a huntsman or woodsman appears to kill the wolf, slice open its stomach, and reveal our heroine and her grandmother miraculously alive and well. This version is obviously comforting to the young reader and seems to be the most popular in children’s books, but I find it problematic due to the lack of agency by Little Red Riding Hood herself. That problem is solved to some extent by another version in which she, having survived and learned her lesson, encounters another wolf that she and her grandmother trap and drown, although that ending often feels like a tag-on, a hillock encountered after surmounting the airy peak of the initial story arc. So, although there is always a story arc, the ending is not preordained.

Where else can we find your work?

There’s my recent collection from Undertow, Meet Me in the Middle of the Air, which includes three new stories. I have another story just out this year in Black Static (“Smoke, Ash, and Whatever Comes After”), and I’ve also contributed a story to the upcoming Dim Shores anthology Resist and Refuse, the necessity of which is becoming more and more apparent with each passing day.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER Traci Castleberry lives in the Arizona desert. By night, she works the graveyard shift at a hotel and enjoys catching creepy-crawlies like snakes, scorpions, tarantulas and Gila monsters. By day, she’s the willing servant of two cats and a Lipizzan mare who has a habit of arranging the universe. She’s attended Clarion, Taos Toolbox and the Lambda Literary Retreat for Emerging LGBT Writers and has been a judge for the Lambda Literary Awards. Her publications include stories in Daughters of Frankenstein, Suffered from the Night and Lace and Blade 2 as herself while her alter ego, Evey Brett, has written books including Capriole, Levade and Passage and has numerous short stories with Cleis Press, Lethe Press, Pathfinder Web Fiction and elsewhere. She can be found online at eveybrett.wordpress.com Author Spotlight: Premee Mohamed Sandra Odell | 1850 words

“The Adventurer’s Wife” opens with a touch of years gone by; hearkening to the pulp stories of old, and then slowly slides into the darker world of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos. Tell us a little of what inspired the tale.

It began with a friend sending me a link for the anthology that this story ended up in. At the time, I had actually been noodling around a Lovecraftian riff of H. Rider Haggard’s “King Solomon’s Mines” for a little while, so it was a delight to finish it as an official raspberry blown at H.P. Lovecraft! I also intended to riff or spoof Robert E. Howard and Edgar Rice Burroughs, and in somewhat the same way. The stories set in “darkest Africa” at that time are a grab-bag of identical tropes somewhat shuffled by the writers who all fan-boi’d each other and were loath to deviate from the template. I hoped to take some of those tropes and flip them while keeping that pulpy feel. In particular, I wanted to divert focus from strictly the “adventurer” himself, and onto what happens when the adventurer comes home.

The narrative is filled with wonderful sensory impressions: the world map with little flagged brass pins, the widow’s headscarf, the descriptions of the ruins, and the final, delicious encounter. When writing, how aware are you of the impact of such sensory impressions on the reader? Do you set out to build a specific sensory repertoire, or do you let the sights, smells, and sounds blossom as the words come?

Thank you! I did have a mental image of both the ruins and the house, particularly the staircase—in fact, it was so clear that for a while there I wondered if I was remembering an old photograph or something in a movie. I set out to build a specific repertoire based on that mental image, but I also wanted to cue both Greene and the reader to certain things. He enters the house and gets a precisely calibrated image: a rich, exotic, beautiful house in mourning. Then, he meets Sima Penhallick: a rich, exotic, beautiful woman in mourning. These are specific indicators to him of something not just prestigious and unthreatening, but profitable—indicators that he’s going to sell a really good story. Sima is completely aware of this, she knows the impression that she and the house make on Greene. I love seeing cues in stories that some characters get and some don’t—it feels like a secret, a wink to the reader.

“The Adventurer’s Wife” was originally published in She Walks in Shadows in 2015, a stellar collection of mythos based stories. You managed to blend mythos horror with the magic and stories of a fictional central African culture; almost Robert E. Howard meets H.P. Lovecraft. Why did you feel it was important to write such a story rather than retreat to the default settings of western culture?

Truthfully, at first I thought it would just be fun to do some trope-poking and perspective-shifting. I kept picturing how thrillingly offended Howard and Haggard and Lovecraft would be to have their heroes portrayed accurately—as semi-competent braggarts with big guns and a tendency to get in way over their heads due to ignoring the locals wherever they ventured. But as I wrote, it occurred to me that that was the biggest thing to call out: that these pulp adventurers were entering worlds so different from their own that they might as well have been in a portal fantasy, and yet they refused to listen to the locals, obey their warnings, or treat them as anything more than walking luggage and body armour. In particular, I was thinking of the oft-repeated trope of the local guide who leaps in front of the heroic main character to save him from a lion or charging elephant or something, which is not just stupid, but sloppy, bad writing. Who’s going to sacrifice himself for a boss he’s known for two weeks? Worse yet, those writers would have been patting themselves violently on the back for their perceived progressivism—portraying the loyal guide as “noble” or “a martyr,” so they could say, “See? At least I gave him some positive qualities before he died! I didn’t call him a barbarian or savage!” I mean, the only people who wouldn’t look askance at that kind of twisted literary “charity” are other pulp writers. So I wanted to make Sima and her people the main characters—not Greene, who thinks he is, and not Penhallick either. Sima knows she would be a trope in another story. That’s what gives her the power to flip it. She’s engineered the house, the clothes, the tea, the story, the entire encounter so that Greene sees her as this vulnerable young widow, a little unhinged by grief, a little too gulled by her culture’s silly fairytales: easy to take advantage of, alone there in that big house. With the default trappings of western pulp culture, this would have had a very different ending. The pulp framework is prone to the endings you get from pitting overly heroic heroes against one-note adversaries. I wanted a twistier story, a Faust tale in which they both come off as villains, a story in which you still feel awkward trying to pin down who’s guilty and who’s innocent, even as the shoggoth comes down the stairs. The story also counts on people knowing a bit about the Dunwich Horror players, but there’s no reason that the horror couldn’t have happened in a thousand other places around the world—no reason that these things keep picking on New England. I think that’s reflected well in this (cough cough—award-winning) anthology— Silvia and Paula did a tremendous job curating the selection of stories to get a variety of perspectives and settings.

In keeping with the previous question, how do you think the failings of early genre writers to make representation a core tenant of their works has impacted the make- up of the modern genre audience? What can we, both as readers and writers, do to promote meaningful efforts at creating a more diverse, inclusive genre?

What an interesting question! I’m guessing it’s sort of self-perpetuating, to be honest, by the writers who came just after the earliest genre writers. They would have thought, “Oh, Celebrated Writer X wrote a popular, profitable series where all the characters were a certain way; if I want to be a celebrated writer, I must imitate him.” And then that writer creates something not materially different from Celebrated Writer X, having confused correlation with causation. When they imitate X, they believe they’re borrowing the beloved voice or turn of phrase, but instead they wake up one morning and realize that they’ve accidentally rewritten either “Dune” or “The Hobbit”—a lot of straight, white people with no major mental or physical disabilities and a confusingly large amount of income and resources, fighting either a lightly or blatantly exoticised foe. And if they don’t scrap it out of embarrassment, it gets published and the cycle starts anew—a chain as well as a net of writers who admire their predecessors and peers who are all writing exactly the same thing. So I guess as a writer, our job is to see that happening and try to prune it out of our own work, to incorporate innovative and diverse characters, settings, philosophies, religions, technologies, monsters, gods, whatever. Not just because everyone’s sick of tropes, but because innovation needs to propagate new innovation—a new chain, a new net, of writers and books to idolise and imitate. And as readers, I think the popular advice applies: If a reader finds a diverse book they love, shout about it, buy it new, pre-order it, tell everyone. Make the publishers repeatedly and consistently aware that there’s fantastic stuff outside of the status quo, stuff that reflects not just the world we live in, but the alternate worlds that we keep trying to create.

As with any talented writer, you are an avid reader. Who are some of your favorite writers? To whom do you turn when you want to get your genre on?

Favourite writers include William Faulkner, Ursula K. LeGuin, Barbra Hambly, Mary Doria Russell, Jorge Luis Borges, Umberto Eco, Martin Amis, Nick Harkaway, and Gene Wolfe. When I’m feeling fearful about form or convention, I turn to James Tiptree, Jr, or James Joyce. When I’m sick of too-taut prose, I turn to China Mieville or Mervyn Peake. When I want to write sci-fi and I feel like I can’t, I turn to Vladimir Nabokov or Margaret Atwood; when I want to write fantasy and I feel like I can’t, I turn to Neil Gaiman or Robert Graves. Lord Dunsany and Algernon Blackwood are also terrific inspiration to develop self-confidence in terrible ideas. I do a lot of re-reading, so it takes me a while to read the “it” books of the year and develop a taste for current favourites; I have about 400 books on my Want to Read list, and it increases every day because I don’t know how to stop. You recently announced you are represented by Michael Curry of DMLA, definitely an accomplishment. What can eager fans expect from you in the coming year? What projects do you have in the works?

Thank you! Actually, when I queried Michael, his reply mentioned She Walks in Shadows and that he had liked “The Adventurer’s Wife,” so it’s no exaggeration to say that this story gave me a boost when it came to getting that offer! Anyway, we’ll be working on polishing up my existing novel—a Lovecrafty race against time with lots of yelling, panicking, magic, and sand—for submission, as well as starting the sequel, which I’m really looking forward to writing. In terms of short fiction, I’m sitting on specifics till the table of contents are released, but I’ve been accepted into two 2017 anthologies that I’m very excited about! Let’s just say that if you like ancient gods and unpleasant surprises, these will be right up your alley. It’s a strange and painful time to be writing in this specific sub-genre, I have to say. The whole point of cosmic horror is that the evil is so huge, so old, and so powerful, that we are almost beneath its notice—but that if we are noticed, we are so insignificant and weak that there’s no way to hide or resist. And yet, in every story, the cosmic must become personal. The hero must gather a band of like-minded people, divide the evil into manageable monsters, and not give up the fight until it’s defeated. I’m keeping that in mind for everything I work on this year.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER Sandra Odell is a forty-seven-year old, happily married mother of two, an avid reader, compulsive writer, and rabid chocoholic. Her work has appeared in such venues as Jim Baen’s UNIVERSE, Daily Science Fiction, Crosssed Genres, Pseudopod, and The Drabblecast. She is hard at work plotting her second novel or world domination. Whichever comes first. Author Spotlight: Jenn Grunigen E.C. Myers | 2020 words

“Figs, Detached” is a superb example of a story written in the mythpunk aesthetic. Cat Valente coined this term for a “‘subgenre of mythic fiction’ in which classical folklore and fairy tales get hyperpoetic postmodern makeovers” (TV Tropes). Can you tell us a little more about mythpunk and your work in it, as a writer and academician?

I was writing odd, folkloresque poetry and stories before I knew that mythpunk was a thing, so coming across Cat Valente’s initial blog post about it (bit.ly/2m4E61D), kind of felt like coming home—to a home I’d never been to, but knew in my gut. She described this SF/F subgenre as “a weird kind of trend among a certain kind of writer these days— often young, often female, (though not always) almost always small press, something that were we older, and male, and middle-press, might be called a movement.” These writers begin “in folklore and myth,” which they then incorporate with SF/F, often using experimental techniques, such as “urban fantasy, confessional poetry, non-linear storytelling, linguistic calisthenics, worldbuilding, academic fantasy, etc.” I’ll break down the word in brief. “Myth” is the material that mythpunk draws upon to create its narratives (folklore and folkloresque material); “punk” describes what happens to those “myths.” Mythpunk does not just take folkloric/folkloresque material and retell it; mythpunk makes something new. Its folkloric or folkloresque sources are often undermined, re-imagined, or simply demolished. In doing so, normativities such as heteronormativity or anthropocentrism (among many others) are subverted. At the time I read Cat Valente’s blog post, I think I was writing a novel about a pair of pan-dimensional mythopoeisis-obsessed magpies who’d been stolen by a non-binary trickster storyteller whose pronouns sometimes changed mid-sentence. On purpose. So yes. All that mythpunk stuff sounded vaguely familiar. It really did feel like stepping across a well-worn, brand new threshold, smelling all those home-warm smells that I’d never actually smelled before. And maybe that’s a strange thing to recall, a sense of homecoming—considering that mythpunk is a lot about discomfort, breaking normativities. But it is, ultimately, about warmth and comfort—or building it, offering it, at least. More on that in a moment . . . About a year before I started my graduate program (I have a MA in Foxlore . . . er, Folklore), I noticed that SF/F writers seemed to like writing about foxes. So I started the Storyfox Database (bit.ly/2my78Eb), which eventually veered into my thesis, “Mythpunk and the Queer Fox”—a sixty page paper examining the intersections of folktales, and science fiction and fantasy literature through the lens of the queer fox figure as it appears in mythpunk narratives. I also wrote a seventy-ish page collection of short fiction and poetry called Foxeology and it was about . . . yes! Also! Queer foxes! What can I say? I try to stick to myself, do what I love in all that I do. It is not always easy, or possible, but I try. And well, mythpunk. Mythpunk I love because it’s often what I write/write about anyway (thesis, poetry, stories, database data-entry), whether or not it has a name. I feel comfortable not knowing, in the unknown, seeking and approaching and reading and writing about strange things (have I mentioned how much I like slugs? And their spherical chainsaw teeth? Or how lovely and magical sheep digestive systems are?! Radulas! Rumens!). So, mythpunk feels like home to me, because it is very often not home —but a not-home I would like to eventually feel at home in. And this gets to the heart (or, one of the hearts—because I think it has many) of mythpunk—or at least, what mythpunk is to me. There is an intimacy that characterizes the subgenre. Theodora Goss (in her post “Mythpunk”) put it beautifully: “Here are the monsters, get comfortable with them.” Mythpunk confronts the other with open arms, transforming strangeness into familiarity—a monstrous sort of intimacy. I guess I just want to sleep with all the monsters.

I loved this story, even more after reading it a second time. At times it’s simultaneously grotesque and beautiful, raw and romantic—and surprisingly sentimental. It feels both strangely familiar and deeply alien. I’m particularly interested in how you weaved in threads and echoes of mythological stories; I’m a fan of mythology, but I had to Google to catch all the references and brush up on my botany. Can you share a little about the inspiration and development of “Figs”?

Thank you for your kind words! I’ll start with two quotes. First: “Write what scares you.” Second: “No ideas but in things.” Quote one is one of the first things Kelly Link told my Clarion class this past summer. I am incredibly grateful she was our week one instructor for many reasons, but that reason is at the top of all the reasons. To be honest, I’m still not sure what really scares me. But those words were knives, cutting all (well, some of) the fucks I may have had to give. If I found myself worrying over an idea because I wasn’t sure what others would think of it, I made sure to write that idea. So, then, “Figs.” I think my initial story notes said something along the lines of “fruit babies that you eat and they make you feel things.” Still, there was a lot more of the story in mind, and a lot of that made me hesitate, and wonder what people would think, and if I should write it, and if it was too strange, and too sexual, and too personal, and also not about me at all, and, and, and. And then I thought, ah, I am scared. And then I wrote the story. Started to, anyway. The narrative still needed meat. Quote two is by William Carlos Williams. Those words, “no ideas but in things” are with me whenever I write, especially stories. Minutiae give stories grit, mucous, cum, whatever. Make them thrive. That’s where the myth comes from in the story—from the narrator, who is a lover of figs, but also a Classicist, but also someone who is both deeply intimate with, and disengaged from, their lover. And I wondered—where would they go, when they don’t want to be where they are? So while I wrote the story, I sought out as much figlore as I could. Botany, etymology, Greek myth, foodways, and on, and on. And all that became, to a great extent, the text. That meat.

What stories, books, or TV shows excite you at the moment, which you think Nightmare readers should check out?

I don’t watch much, so I’m just going to go with media in general. I will start with a film, though . . . Rams, written and directed by Grímur Hákonarson. About two estranged sheepherder brothers weathering the slaughter of their family’s livestock. A microcosm of winter, endemic, and animal. Funny and endearing. The Passing Light of Day, the newest album by Pain of Salvation. The musical fallout of the four months frontman Daniel Gildenlöw spent in the hospital with flesh-eating bacteria. It is an incredibly human album, and dirty, heartworn and heartwarming; often feral, fervent. I will always recommend Sonya Taaffe’s Lightspeed story, “A Wolf in Iceland is the Child of a Lie” (bit.ly/2mnKDoL). “Now he crouches away from me in the bedside light, a wet holly spray in his frost-rick of hair, scarlet-spattered across his winter-haunted face, his coat’s hem trailing as darkly as the shadow that whines and worries at his heels, and when at last I have gathered him trembling into my arms, all ribs and elbows, hot as a hawk, I can hear his heart hammering the black miles of Surtshellir.” I mean, really. What poetry. Finally, I’m currently adoring James Harriot’s All Creatures Great and Small, the first of a collection of memoirs written by a veterinary surgeon in the Yorkshire Dales. I grew up loving the BBC televisions series (which I also recommend . . . or, at least, my nostalgia does), and the books are—thus far—no less fantastic.

You like eating figs, but what is your least favorite fruit and/or the strangest fruit you’ve ever eaten?

Hm. I haven’t a least favorite fruit, per say—though, whoever thought the nasty white membrane in oranges and grapefruit was a good idea should be severely and immediately punished. Speaking of citruses. The oddest fruit I’ve eaten in the past couple of weeks was a finger lime. The experience was lovely: a bit like squeezing the contents of a rawhide pinkie finger into your mouth . . . if the contents of said finger were tiny, citrus- flavored fish eggs. Absolutely delightful (no, really!), would recommend.

Your first novel, Skyglass, was serialized in Sparkler Monthly from 2014-2016, and published as an eBook in June. It looks like the paperback is forthcoming . . . soon? Please tell us about it and how people can get it!

Skyglass is odd-couple, post-apocalyptic SF. That’s a real genre, promise . . . Four years after his human mother and elven father died by double suicide, Moss lives a shadow of a life. He’s an anorexic, aromantic drummer who wallows in apathy and inadvertently wooed his boss in a bathtub. But when Phoenix—a pyromaniacal popstar/would-be murderess from outspace—decides to move into his apartment, his stale life gets torched. Phoenix is on a manhunt to find and kill her father, and she has no problem dragging everyone around her into the fire. Truly, Skyglass is a strange, wild creature. On the one hand, it’s like a cyber-electric Pixy stick full of patricide and glam metal sexy-times. But on the other hand (or maybe it’s all the same hand, who knows?), it’s a quiet story about spitting in the face of whatever your existential chokehold may be, and relearning to thrive. It’s also an exploration of what sex means when you’re an essentially non-sexual human seeking physical comfort, and a rumination upon what a meaningful human relationship might look like when you aren’t exactly . . . human. Writing a serial, such as Skyglass originally was, often takes the unique ability to run on fumes and copious amounts of power metal, so it’s kind of beautiful to see the pieces of the tale collected into one. You can snag the eBook (bit.ly/2mnHpSh), or Kindle version (amzn.to/2m4EuNO). It should be out in print sometime spring 2017.

What are you working on now, and what other work should readers look for in the near future?

Currently, I’m working on two books. The first is slow-burn horror about a sex worker/seaweed farmer, his werebog boyfriend, and a snailcrone who’s got the end of the world hidden in her shell. The other book-in-progress is a feminist kick-in-the-ass to the giant robot genre, featuring orgasm-powered mecha and angry women with chainsaws. Besides “Figs, Detached”, I recently had some creative nonfiction come out in Hunger Mountain: “The Bones of What I Ate” (hungermtn.org). If you’ve ever wanted to learn how to dissect owl pellets, this is the piece for you! Finally, my neofolk metal band Felled recently put out our newest release, a four-track demo titled Bonefire Grit (cascadianalliance.bandcamp.com). We’ll be on tour this summer (keep an eye on our Facebook page for dates, facebook.com/felledband). If you live in the west half of the United States, come to one of our shows and say hi! ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER E.C. Myers was assembled in the U.S. from Korean and German parts and raised by a single mother and the public library in Yonkers, New York. He is the author of numerous short stories and three young adult books: the Andre Norton Award–winning Fair Coin, Quantum Coin, and The Silence of Six. His next novel, Against All Silence, a thriller about teenage hacktivists investigating a vast conspiracy, is scheduled to appear next spring from Adaptive Books. E.C. currently lives with his wife, son, and three doofy pets in Pennsylvania. You can find traces of him all over the internet, but especially at ecmyers.net and on Twitter @ecmyers. Author Spotlight: Molly Tanzer Lisa Nohealani Morton | 605 words

Tell us a bit about “But Only Because I Love You.” How did you come to write it?

A few years ago, this one editor mused aloud as to whether Lovecraftiana was a guy thing—otherwise, why did so few women write Mythos fiction? This question, and a lot of the equally boneheaded responses—including one genius who decided that since women have the power of creating life, we must not be able to embrace the appropriate amount of nihilism necessary for Lovecraftian fiction—left a lot of lady authors rolling our eyes as we scratched our heads. No mean feat! It was especially offensive because of course then as now there are a large number of women writing and publishing original, intelligent, and subversive Mythos fiction. Open any quality anthology and you’ll see ’em. So, as a show of solidarity, and in order to promote the (apparently) invisible women writing Lovecraftian fiction, several woman-only Mythos anthologies were proposed and then published. Dreams from the Witch House, where “But Only Because I Love You” appears, was one of them; another, She Walks In Shadows, won a World Fantasy Award. I was honored to be asked to contribute something to both of them!

What are you working on these days? Any exciting projects or upcoming publications you’d like readers to know about?

Yes! I have a new novel out this year—Creatures of Will and Temper, out through John Joseph Adams Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt this November. It’s a feminist retelling of The Picture of Dorian Gray, with fencing and demons. I’d say more, but that really sums it up pretty much entirely. I’m working on the sequel now!

I particularly noticed that you have an anthology of fiction and cocktail recipes coming out later this year. Since I’m always on the lookout for a tasty beverage (and to keep it topical), is there a cocktail you’d recommend for sipping while reading a horror novel?

Yes, I also have an editing project out this fall, Mixed Up. Part cocktail recipe book, part anthology featuring flash fiction from some of the hottest voices writing today in just about every genre, it’ll be on the shelf in time for Christmas gift-giving. I handled the cocktail recipe part, and my co-editor Nick Mamatas acquired the fiction. Thanks to his efforts we have stories by Jeff VanderMeer, Elizabeth Hand, Carmen Machado, Maurice Broaddus, and so many other great writers. I suppose I might recommend people try a Corpse Reviver #2 with a horror novel. It’s pretty thematic, and the Corpse Reviver is actually my favorite cocktail, not just because of the name. It’s gin-based, and it’s is lemony, sweet, and refreshing. Here’s my recipe:

1 1/2 oz London Dry Gin 1 1/2 oz Lillet Blanc 1/2 oz freshly squeezed lemon juice 3/4 oz Cointreau 1 tsp real absinthe Shake everything in a cocktail shaker with lots of ice. Serve in a cocktail glass with a brandied cherry at the bottom. I like to put a bit of the syrup over the cherry and then gently pour in the cocktail so you get a nicely layered effect. Drink quickly; it’s best when very cold!

What fearsome curse would you like your tomb to bear to discourage grave robbers?

Man, if only I knew the right answer to this, I’d use it to cut down on the piracy of my eBooks starting today!

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER Born and raised in Honolulu, Lisa Nohealani Morton lives in Washington, DC. By day she is a mild-mannered database wrangler, computer programmer, and all-around data geek, and by night she writes science fiction, fantasy, and combinations of the two. Her short fiction has appeared in publications such as Lightspeed, Daily Science Fiction, and the anthology Hellebore and Rue. She can be found on Twitter as @lnmorton. MISCELLANY Coming Attractions The Editors | 106 words

Coming up in May, in Nightmare . . . We have original fiction from Giovanni De Feo (“Kiss of the Mouthless Girl”) and Charles Payseur (“The Sound Of”), along with reprints by Priya Sharma (“Pearls”) and Helen Marshall (“The Vault of Heaven”). We also have the latest installment of our column on horror, “The H Word,” plus author spotlights with our authors. We’ll also have the exciting premier of our new book review column by Terence Taylor! It’s a really great issue, so be sure to check it out. And while you’re at it, tell a friend about Nightmare. Thanks for reading! Stay Connected The Editors

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If you enjoy reading Nightmare, please consider subscribing. It’s a great way to support the magazine, and you’ll get your issues in the convenient ebook format of your choice. You can subscribe directly from our website, via Weightless Books, or via Amazon.com. For more information, visit nightmare-magazine.com/subscribe. We also have individual ebook issues available at a variety of ebook vendors, and we now have Ebook Bundles available in the Nightmare ebookstore, where you can buy in bulk and save! Buying a Bundle gets you a copy of every issue published during the named period. Buying either of the half-year Bundles saves you $3 (so you’re basically getting one issue for free), or if you spring for the Year One Bundle, you’ll save $11 off the cover price. So if you need to catch up on Nightmare, that’s a great way to do so. Visit nightmare-magazine.com/store for more information. Also Edited by John Joseph Adams The Editors

If you enjoy reading Nightmare, you might also enjoy these anthologies edited (or co- edited) by John Joseph Adams.

THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH, Vol. 1: The End is Nigh (with Hugh Howey) THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH, Vol. 2: The End is Now (with Hugh Howey) THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH, Vol. 3: The End Has Come (with Hugh Howey) Armored Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2015 (with Joe Hill) Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2016 (with Karen Joy Fowler) [forthcoming Oct. 2016] Brave New Worlds By Blood We Live Dead Man’s Hand Epic: Legends Of Fantasy Federations The Improbable Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!! and Other Improbable Crowdfunding Projects Lightspeed: Year One The Living Dead The Living Dead 2 Loosed Upon the World The Mad Scientist’s Guide To World Domination Operation Arcana Other Worlds Than These Oz Reimagined (with Douglas Cohen) Press Start to Play (with Daniel H. Wilson) Robot Uprisings (with Daniel H. Wilson) Seeds of Change Under the Moons of Mars Wastelands Wastelands 2 The Way Of The Wizard What the #@&% Is That? (with Douglas Cohen) [forthcoming Nov. 2016] Visit johnjosephadams.com to learn more about all of the above. Each project also has a mini-site devoted to it specifically, where you’ll find free fiction, interviews, and more.