TABLE OF CONTENTS Issue 61, October 2017

FROM THE EDITOR Editorial: October 2017

FICTION Don’t Turn On The Lights Cassandra Khaw Click Brian Evenson We Are Turning on a Spindle Joanna Parypinski Suffer Little Children Robert Shearman

NONFICTION The H Word: What Comes at the End Kristi DeMeester Interview: Josh Malerman Lisa Morton

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS Cassandra Khaw Joanna Parypinski MISCELLANY Coming Attractions Stay Connected Subscriptions and Ebooks About the Nightmare Team Also Edited by John Joseph Adams

© 2017 Nightmare Magazine Cover by Alexandra Petruk / Fotolia www.nightmare-magazine.com FROM THE EDITOR Editorial: October 2017 John Joseph Adams | 711 words

Welcome to issue sixty-one of Nightmare. We have original fiction from Cassandra Khaw (“Don’t Turn on the Lights”) and Joanna Parypinski (“We Are Turning on a Spindle”), along with reprints by Brian Evenson (“Click”) and Robert Shearman (“Suffer Little Children”). Over on “The H Word,” Kristi DeMeester shares her thoughts on horror. Plus, we also have author spotlights with our authors and a feature interview with Josh Malerman.

John Joseph Adams Books News for October 2017 This month, we’re 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. You can read “The Walk Up Nameless Ridge” in the October issue of Lightspeed to get a feel for the kind of stories that appear in the collection.

“I devoured this book! The wildly imaginative tales in Machine Learning tackle everything from AI and aliens to video games and VR, and Howey infuses each one of them with the perfect mix brains, bravado, and heart. Reading the stories in this collection is like discovering an entire lost season of The Twilight Zone in which every episode was written by either Rod Serling or Richard Matheson. They’re that good.” —Ernest Cline, bestselling author of Ready Player One “Like a knapsack of compact grenades, exploding insight, unexpected innovations, and sci-fi heat. Each one the core of something larger.” —Kevin Kelly, founding executive editor of Wired “Hugh’s stories keep me turning pages not just to find out what happens, but because of the deep common threads of humanity within. I don’t just want to know the ending, I care about every moment.” —Annie Bellet, USA Today bestselling author of The Twenty-Sided Sorceress series Next month, 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.

“Tanzer mixes Oscar Wilde’s The Portrait of Dorian Gray with queer romance and demonology in this subtle, beautiful Victorian-era fantasy novel. [. . .] The perfectly depicted relationship between the sister [protagonists] takes center stage in a complex (though never overplayed) web of art, swordplay, romance, and, much to the sisters’ surprise, actual demons. Gorgeously portrayed three-dimensional characters and sensual prose propel this smoothly entertaining story to an emotionally affecting end.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “An artful, witty, Oscar Wilde pastiche with the heart of a paranormal thriller.” —Diana Gabaldon, bestselling author of Outlander “A delightful, dark, and entertaining romp with serious intent behind it. The writing is so smart and sharp—Molly Tanzer is at the top of her form in this beautifully constructed novel. Sure to be a favorite of readers and critics alike.” —Jeff VanderMeer, bestselling author of the Southern Reach trilogy “There has never been a better time for a spirited, feminist reinvention of The Picture of Dorian Gray. Molly Tanzer has taken a wickedly sensuous classic and transformed it into a lively supernatural tale featuring lovestruck teenagers, diabolical botanicals, mysterious paintings, and—oh, yes—demons. Creatures of Will and Temper is a wild ride from start to finish, beautifully and boldly written, and a most worthy successor to Oscar Wilde’s scandalous novel.” —Amy Stewart, author of Girl Waits With Gun “Decadent Victorians clash with dueling demon-hunters in this page- turning reinvention of Oscar Wilde’s classic tale. I loved it!” — Charles Stross, award-winning author of The Delirium Brief

That’s all the JJA Books news for now. More soon!

• • • • Well, that’s all there is to report this month. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy the issue!

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 Don’t Turn On The Lights Cassandra Khaw | 2236 words

Stories are mongrels. It don’t matter whether they were lightning-cut into stone or whispered over the crackle of a dying flame; no story in the world has pedigree. They’ve all been told and retold so many times that not God himself could tell you which one came first. Yes, every story in creation. Including this one. Especially this one. You might have heard it before. There was a girl once. Her name was Sally. It could have been any other name, really. But let’s go with Sally. It’s solid. Round- hipped and stout, the kind of Midwestern name that can walk for hours and don’t mind it much when the sun burns its skin red. Anyway. Sally was, maybe, about eighteen or nineteen, some freshman at a local college. And like every teenager, she sometimes got behind on her school work. So one night, she took all her books and went down to her dormitory’s basement, telling herself she’d study till the dawn brindled the sky in gold and claret. Halfway through, she realized she’d forgotten a book. And back up she went, feet making no sound at all on the old carpet. (Was it thick? Yes. Lush like nothing else. It had to be, or what happened next would make no sense.) Silent, she padded along until she reached her room and opened the door. Click. It was black inside. No lights at all. The curtains were drawn. You couldn’t see the glow of the distant town. But that was okay. Sally knew the room like the map of her palms. Slowly, she felt her way along the walls to her bed. Slowly, she realized— There was a smell in the air: pennies and salt. There was a sound in the air too: breathing, rasped and ragged, heavier than anything she’s heard. Sally knew the beat of her roommate’s breath. This wasn’t it. And maybe, she might have said something if it wasn’t for the itching under her skin, something that whispered, “This isn’t alright.” So, Sally didn’t. It was late and she was tired and it was probably just her imagination. Thus decided, she got what she needed and clicked the door shut behind her as she left, just as something began to drip, drip, drip. “Damn faucet,” she mumbled as she swayed back down to the basement. The next day, Sally went for her exams. How did she do? Truthfully, it didn’t plain matter. She took her examinations and then she went home, feet crunching across dried autumn leaves and cobbled stones. Into the dormitory, she went up the spiral staircase, unease laving its way down her spine. There were far too many people out and about, their faces bright and afraid, but that wasn’t Sally’s problem, no sir. Someone else could go worry about that. All she wanted was to sleep. Sleep wasn’t in the cards, though. Hell, I don’t know if she ever slept again. I know I wouldn’t be able to. Because when Sally finally walked all the way to her room, pushing past co-eds in their flower-printed pyjamas, she found police tape and policemen. And a smell in the air: pennies, salt, a stink of dried urine and shit. And a sound in the air: a drip drip dripping, oozing between the noise of the walkie-talkies. And a sight like nothing anyone should see: her roommate, cut up like beef, words scrawled on the wall above her head: “Aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the lights?”

• • • •

That’s the popular version. The socially acceptable one, as they like to say in polite company. After all, it’s one where no one really is at fault. Not Sally, not the roommate, not even the butcher who sliced up that poor girl. (You can’t pin a sin on a thing with no face, can you?) But there are other retellings, crueler ones. Or truer ones, I guess, depending on who you’re asking. And since you asked, one of them goes something like this:

• • • •

Sally was eighteen, maybe nineteen, but she might as well have been seventy- two. Hers had not been an easy life, although it isn’t for me to explain how. That’s another story, and also not mine to tell. But she survived it, or at least some of her did; the girl that shambled into college was one part Sally, three parts grit, and nine-tenths rage. The world hadn’t been fair to the poor child. It could have been worse. It could have been Sally who’d taken a murderer to her bed, Sally who’d been pushed down onto the covers with a palm over her mouth, Sally who’d laid there twitching as someone carved a smile under her chin. Now, I bet you’re wondering: how’d Sally know about all that? Because she was there, of course. As with every variant of this story, Sally was out too late for one reason or another. Realizing she’d forgotten something, she stumbled upstairs to her room. In the popular version, all she heard was breathing, a drip drip dripping to tell her that something was wrong. In this one, her roommate whispered: “Sally, help.” And she froze. There was a smell in the air: pennies, salt, an ammonia reek. There was a sound in the air too: a gurgling noise, a shlick of steel peeling through skin, someone kicking against a bulk too big to move. I don’t know why she walked away, why she didn’t flick on the lights, and scream for the police. Maybe, she was scared. Maybe, it was late and she was tired and certain that it was all her imagination. Maybe, Sally thought to herself, ““I ain’t dying for someone I barely know.” Whatever the case, she left. And well, you know how the rest of this tale goes, so I won’t bore us both with its end.

• • • •

Was that one of the meaner tellings? Hell no. See, no one likes much talking about it, but everyone’s got a little blood on their hands. Most of the time, it’s metaphorical. That little lie that gets our siblings in trouble. The broken heart we blame on someone else’s lacks. Everyone is guilty of a few small sins. What Sally might have done? It wasn’t evil, per se. A little selfish, maybe. But can you blame her for being frightened? Imagine being on the cusp of freedom, full of hope for the first time in your life. Would you give that up for a stranger? Would you lay down and die for them? Yeah, I thought as much. I digress, though. Stories are defined by a beginning, a middle, and an end. In more literary circles, people talk about denouements and layers, textures, the way a word can transcend to a synesthetic experience. But at the end of day, it all comes back down to those three things. A beginning, a middle, an end. You’d be amazed as to how much detail gets lost in between, how a good storyteller can make you forget the bits that don’t make sense.

• • • •

What happened that night? What drove Sally down to a drafty basement when she could have found sanctuary in the library? If you think about it, none of that makes sense. Every college has its reading rooms, its communal spaces. So why a basement, exactly? Did she really go there of her own accord? It’s possible. It’s possible too, that someone decided that it’d be a mighty fine way to terrify the freshman. No better method for earning respect than kidnapping someone from their beds and throwing them into the waiting dark, a hood over their heads, the concrete cold against their legs. Maybe, that someone was Sally’s roommate. It’s possible. Maybe, this incident wasn’t the first of its kind. It’s possible. Maybe, as Sally sat crying in the basement, too afraid to call out, something wormed out of shadows. Something old, hungry, smelling of salt and pennies, like the taste of blood in the back of your mouth. Maybe the thing said to Sally, “What’s your heart’s desire?” And Sally, too full of grief to think straight, replied with something that she would regret. That’s possible too.

• • • •

Is that what really happened? Don’t ask me. There are only two people who really know, and one of them might not even be called Sally. Truth is, I don’t think anyone gives a shit either. With stories like this, all people want are their bones. People like putting their own spin on things. It could have gone any number of ways, this tale. A lot can happen between the main events. Did Sally run straight out of the room? Did she listen for a while? Did she tell her roommate to be wary, to lock the doors and watch out for strange faces? Did she know the assailant? Was there an assailant? Who knows. Still, before you go, let me tell me the version I like best. It’s one that few know and fewer care for, but it makes the most sense to me. Or maybe, I just like my stories bloody.

• • • •

Sally was eighteen, maybe nineteen, a freshman like any other, full of hopes and newborn dreams. The future had never seemed so bright. There was just one problem. Because of circumstances, she had to share a room with someone she knew, someone she didn’t rightly like. It might have been her sister. The records aren’t clear on that. A cousin, possibly, or her mother’s best friend’s favorite daughter. Who the hell knows? One way or another, it was someone with whom Sally just had to play nice. And she tried. Oh, she tried. In the beginning, Sally did her absolute damndest to be civil with that other girl, but you’d only drown that poor horse if you forced it to drink. Their relationship took no time at all to ripen to hate, soured by the need to suffer each other’s proximity, both of them jostling for space neither could afford. Still, it was almost bearable for a while. Then, Sally’s property started to disappear. Her food, her clothes, research texts, little odds and ends. Then, Sally’s father died, and her roommate used the news of his suicide against her, ransoming Sally’s reputation. It got worse from there. Sally stayed quiet, but you know what they say about people like that. And this wouldn’t be so bad if Sally was ordinary, but she wasn’t, no sir. She had a bit of witch in her blood, which is to say that she had a little too much. Sally had just enough power to talk to things the wise leave well alone. So she did. One day, Sally decided she had enough and went down into the dark, carrying the hairs from her roommate’s brush. True enough, there was something there waiting. She fed it those long black strands, one a time, saying nothing throughout. Only smiled when the thing politely asked for more. The next day, she came back with nail clippings. This went on for a time. One night, the thing, taught to hunger for one specific taste, asked Sally, “Where’d you get all that fine food?” “Upstairs,” she said. “Upstairs in the light?” “Yeah,” Sally replied, licking her dry lips. “I could show you where.” “Huh,” the thing said. “I’d like that. But I don’t like it much when someone watches me eat. It’s one thing when it’s little nibbles like this, it’s another when you’re talking about a feast.” (Do such creatures really talk with so much eloquence? Who knows. They do in this story, though.) “That’s fine,” Sally said, rising to her feet. “You can keep the lights off.” Thus decided, the two left the basement. Sally followed the thing up the spiral stairwell, her footsteps quiet, its footfalls silent. She followed it into her room and sat down on her bed, quiet as a mouse as the thing began its work. Sally stayed true to her word. She kept it pitch-dark. Not even the glow of the distant town to light their way. Thankfully, her imagination was enough. When the sound of chewing stopped, when the air was the stink of piss and flayed meat, when there was nothing left to do but leave, Sally got up and walked away. The thing followed behind. The next morning, she came back to find her room transformed into a slaughterhouse, the air thick with button-black flies. There was an apology scrawled in her roommate’s blood. Sally had to hide her smile. “Aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the lights?” No, she thought. It would have been fun to watch. ©2017 by Cassandra Khaw.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Cassandra Khaw writes horror, press releases, video games, articles about video games, and tabletop RPGs. These are not necessarily unrelated items. Her work can be found in professional short story magazines such as Clarkesworld, Fireside Fiction, Uncanny, and Shimmer. Cassandra’s first original novella, “Hammers on Bone”, came out in October 2016 from Tor.com. To her mild surprise, people seem to enjoy it. She occasionally spends time in a Muay Thai gym punching people and pads.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight Click Brian Evenson | 6767 words

I.

He had been given a notebook to write in, and the lawyer had loaned him a brushed-steel mechanical pencil with golden accents that he claimed were real gold. “I am loaning you this,” his lawyer told him when he handed it over, “so you will know how important and serious the matter is, and so you will do your best to remember everything you possibly can and write it all down as it actually happened.” The lawyer leaned down close and looked at him without blinking, his eyes steady. He doesn’t blink as much as normal people do, the man thought. Sometimes he felt as if the lawyer was not even a person at all, as if he was simply pretending to be a person, and not very well. “Life and death,” the lawyer said. “That’s how important this is.” All right, he told the lawyer. He would do his best. He would try to remember. And that is exactly what the man is trying to do. Anything that you remember, the lawyer had said. If he felt compelled to write down something but didn’t understand why, he shouldn’t try to figure out what the thing meant, he should just write it down. They could sort it out later. I’m your friend, the lawyer insisted, I’m on your side. Other people, the lawyer claimed, might try to insinuate things, to convince him that certain things had happened. It was better to let the real things come back on their own instead of making up things that never happened. “I don’t know why I’m here,” the man had admitted. “All right,” the lawyer said. “That’s just what this is going to help us figure out,” he said, tapping the notebook. “Write. And don’t show it to anybody but me.” The doctor has told him that it is common for individuals with head trauma not to remember what happened to cause it, nor even to remember the days surrounding the trauma. But then sometimes something suddenly just clicks and it comes flooding back. Maybe not everything, maybe not even most of it, but some of it, anyway. It would be nice if he could remember at least some of it. From what he knows about the rest of his life, he doesn’t see how he could have done anything wrong. If he did, he’s sure it must have been by accident. He has said this over and over to whoever will listen. They just nod as if they want to believe him, but don’t. Sometimes they even seem a little afraid of him. When he said this to the lawyer, the lawyer didn’t even bother to nod. He can’t tell what the lawyer thinks. “Don’t tell me. Just write it all down,” the lawyer insisted. “Whatever you can remember.” And what if he really did do something wrong? Does he really want to know? He thinks so. Even if he did something very wrong indeed, like, say, murder. Even then, he thinks he would rather know than not know. Right now, the man doesn’t even know who he is. They tell him who they think he is, they pronounce a name, but it doesn’t sound right to him. It is as if they’ve written a name on his forehead that doesn’t belong, and they can see it and he can’t. His life was apparently going along like normal, then suddenly there came a black patch. After the black patch everything seemed wrong, as if he was leading someone else’s life. As if he was possessed. Or maybe had taken possession of someone else.

• • • •

The doctor also warned him that sometimes things never click. Sometimes you never know what really happened. He tried to feel something about that, some worry or anxiety, but he was still medicated enough to make it hard to feel things when they were happening. He only starts to feel things later, once it’s too late.

II.

When he first woke up, he didn’t even know where he was. His eyes had a hard time focusing. His jaw hurt and his throat was sore. He tried to swallow a few times, gagging before he realized there was a tube running down his throat and he couldn’t swallow, not really. He remembered—if he is remembering correctly now and not making just a little of it up—that he was staring up into a round, blurred light that slowly went from a bright white to a pale orange red, like a dying filament. Then he blinked and his vision cleared, more or less. There was a ring of faces all around him, but the bottom halves of these faces were gone—all he could see were their eyes. A whole circle of eyes, intense, intent, all staring at him. Maybe, someone prompted later, these were doctors, and their faces were just covered by surgical masks? Who suggested that? He wonders now. And why did they want me to believe it? In any case, at the time he didn’t think of them as doctors. At the time, he thought of them as men who were missing the bottom halves of their faces. This terrified him. And then these half-faced men started to make sounds. Which terrified him even more. He fainted. The next time he awoke, it was a little better. There were not so many half- faced men, not so many eyes. No eyes, in fact, none at least that he could see. He was alone. He was lying on a bed of some kind, but it was not his own bed. There was a curtain on a fixed track around the bed, but it was mostly pulled open. He could see things: white walls and a metal tray and a shiny floor. It was as if there was a whole world around him again. Not just a half world full of half-faced men.

• • • •

He closed his eyes. Probably he slept. When he opened them again he saw, past the end of the bed, a guard near the door. He seemed to have a whole face. He was sitting in a chair, his arms folded across his chest. Half asleep but still stiff as cardboard. The man tried to speak, but no words came out, only strange, half-choked sounds. The tube, he only then realized, was still down his throat, his cheeks stiff where they had taped the thing to his face to hold it in place. The guard was awake now and staring at him and speaking into his shoulder radio. Everything started to blur. The last things that happened before the man’s eyes rolled back into his head were that the guard’s radio crackled, and the bottom half of his face started to fade away, and then, mercifully, the man passed out.

• • • •

Probably between those times, between when he awoke a first time and when he awoke a second time and then when he awoke a third time, there were dreams. But if there were dreams, he doesn’t remember them now. Not a one. But he’s sure that if he could remember them, they would be nightmares.

• • • • A little later, someone was touching him softly. Then, very gently, they began shaking him. “Honey,” said a woman’s voice. “Honey, wake up.” It was his mother’s voice. For a moment he thought he was back in his bed at home, asleep, and she was waking him up for school. That was how she always used to wake him up. A gentle touch at first and then gently shaking him awake. But why wasn’t she calling him by his name? And what was his name again? “Honey,” she said again, more insistently, and he opened his eyes. Only he was not at home. He was in the hospital room, and it was not his mother. It wasn’t even a woman. In fact, there was no one there at all. He lay there, head wrapped in gauze, almost anonymous, afraid.

• • • •

If he squinted his memory enough, he seemed to remember the chief of police standing beside the bed and reading charges to him. Murder, was it? Several counts? Four, say? He was not sure when that had been exactly, where it fit with everything else that had happened. But he remembered it. He was almost certain he did, anyway. Unless it had been something he had seen on TV. If you feel compelled to write it, write it. “Murder?” the man had said when the police chief finished. His voice didn’t sound like his voice anymore, still hoarse from the tube they had snaked down his throat. “Are you sure you have the right person?” The chief just nodded grimly, his lips a thin line. The man heard his mother start to cry. His dad awkwardly put his arm around her shoulder, tried to comfort her. Of course that last part was all in his head, since his parents both had been dead for years now. But he was almost certain the rest of it could have been real. Murder? he thought. No, it didn’t sound right. Even now it still doesn’t. But what else does he have to cling to?

• • • •

Another early memory. A man parted the curtain and came close to the head of the bed, pulling up a chair so close that it was almost as if he was in the bed too. “Who the hell are you?” the man in the bed asked. “Language,” the other said. “Make a good impression. Every little bit counts. I’m your lawyer,” he said. “Your parents hired me.” “My parents are dead,” the man said. The lawyer ignored this. “I will be representing you,” he insisted. “What’s this all about?” the man asked. “Is this the way it’s usually done?” “Not usually,” the lawyer said. “But you’re a special case.” “What’s this about murder?” “A murder? Why don’t you tell me?” the lawyer said. But he couldn’t tell the lawyer anything. Which is why he now has the mechanical pencil and the notebook and is trying to write, trying to make things click.

• • • •

There is a guard. Sometimes he can see the guard and sometimes he can’t. He doesn’t know if the guard is here to protect him, or to keep him from escaping. When the guard is here, he sits in a chair just outside the curtain. Sometimes he reads or talks into his shoulder radio or cleans his gun. Mostly he just sits and waits or sleeps. Sometimes, if the curtain is open, the guard glances over at the man.

• • • •

“What’s this about murder?” the man said. “A murder? Why don’t you tell me?” the lawyer said. But he didn’t remember anything about it. Nothing at all. He just looked at his lawyer helplessly. “All right,” said the lawyer after a while, low enough that the guard couldn’t hear. “Maybe you don’t—” No, wait a moment, the guard wasn’t there when that conversation was going on. That was before the guard was there. He is getting confused again. He and his lawyer were alone. The lawyer must have just said it in a normal voice. “Maybe you really don’t remember,” the lawyer said, in a normal voice. “You’re accused of killing four people. Who do you think they were?” He was too stunned to say anything at all. “How old do you think they were?” the lawyer asked. “Wait a minute,” the man said. “Four people? Me?” The lawyer didn’t answer. “How old do you think they were?” he asked again, as if he were following a script. “How do I know?” the man said. “Normal age?” “What’s normal age?” “These are weird questions,” the man said. “Why are you asking me them?” “Do you know how you allegedly killed them?” the lawyer asked. “Gun? Knife? Poison? Bare hands?” “I don’t even know that I did kill anyone,” the man said. The lawyer nodded. “That’s good. Keep that for when they question you,” he said. “Don’t you believe me?” The lawyer looked at him again with those flat, unblinking eyes, as if he neither disbelieved nor believed. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Why not?” the man said, confused. The lawyer gave him a grim smile. “Why do you think?” And that’s exactly the problem, isn’t it? He hasn’t the faintest idea.

• • • •

“At least tell me how I did it,” he said. “With a gun,” the lawyer said. “You allegedly shot four people and then tried to commit suicide by shooting yourself.” He gestured to the side of the man’s head, to the bandages there. “You apparently didn’t succeed in the latter,” he said. “Do you think you were trying hard enough?” The man took a deep breath. His mouth was dry. I am finally getting somewhere, he thought. “Who,” he asked, “did I kill?” “With a knife,” the lawyer said. “You allegedly stabbed four people and then tried to slit your own throat.” He gestured to the man’s neck, which was, the man realized, also wrapped in gauze. “Wait,” he said. “You said it was a gun.” The lawyer smiled. “With your bare hands,” he said. “You beat four people to death and then tried to commit suicide by striking your head repeatedly against a cement wall.” He gestured again to the side of the man’s head. “Wait,” the man said. “I thought you were here to help me. Why are you trying to confuse me?” “With poison,” the lawyer said. “You allegedly poisoned four people, one after another, and then tried to commit suicide by swallowing poison yourself.” He gestured to the man’s throat again. “It hurts to swallow, doesn’t it?” “Stop it!” the man said, closing his eyes. “Stop!” When he opened them again, he was alone.

III.

Sometimes the lawyer does help. The lawyer, for instance, warned him that the doctor would be coming to see him. If the man passed an examination, he would be moved. Where? the man wondered. “Are you sure you’re ready to be moved?” the lawyer asked. But anywhere, the man had to believe, was better than here. “Just remember not to go along with everything they suggest to you,” the lawyer said. “Resist. No might haves. No could haves. Stick to what you remember, and if you don’t remember just say you don’t.” “But I don’t remember anything,” the man said. “All the better,” the lawyer said. Then he held his hand out for the notebook. The man almost couldn’t give it up. Even when he managed to hold it out to the lawyer, the lawyer had to pry it out of his hands. The lawyer began to read. Watching him, it seemed to the man that the lawyer could read quicker than anyone the man had ever met—either that or morphine or some other drug the man had been given was accelerating the world around him. Almost as soon as he had begun, the lawyer had reached the end. When he closed the notebook and looked up, the lawyer’s face was so distorted and angry that it was hard to think of it as a face. “No! No!” he cried. “Not ‘he’! Call yourself ‘I’!” “Yes,” the man said. “I’m sorry.” “What’s wrong with you?” the lawyer said. “I don’t know what the rules are,” the man said. But something in his head immediately translated it into: He doesn’t know what the rules are. The lawyer is going to speak when there comes a noise from the hall. The lawyer shakes his head. He hands the notebook back. He presses his finger to his lips and backs slowly out of the room, leaving the man alone.

• • • •

I need to think about what really happened. I need to try to remember instead of making up situations in his head. My head. I— No, I doesn’t sound right. I can’t do it: he. • • • •

He needs to try to remember instead of making up situations in his head. But it’s hard not to, especially when he’s alone. Now is the time, he thinks, when the voices should start, when faces and half faces should start to well up. Now is the time for him to see himself, pale and washed out as if in a dream, and either see what he did or see some false version of the same, offered to him by whatever devil or god has brought him here to suffer. But nothing’s coming. Not a thing.

• • • •

“Who can say?” he heard the doctor report in the hall. “Head injuries aren’t predictable.” The man couldn’t hear how the person the doctor was saying this to responded. “I wouldn’t recommend it,” he heard the doctor say, then “I could stop you, but I won’t.”

• • • •

A moment later someone who looked like a policeman came in. He placed a tape recorder on the bedside table and turned it on. “Shall we begin the examination?” he asked. “Examination?” the man echoed. “State your full name,” the policeman said. The man tried to say something, but his mouth wouldn’t move. “Let the record show the subject has no name,” the policeman said. But no, the man insisted, it wasn’t that he didn’t have a name, only that he was having difficulty locating it. The officer smiled, ignored him. “Would you like to confess?” he asked. “Confess what?” “We have two witnesses who saw you,” he said. “A man and a woman.” “Shouldn’t my lawyer be present?” the man asked. “Your lawyer?” the officer asked. “What good would he do?” “I just thought—” “You can’t seriously believe that both witnesses, credible people in their own right, would have cause to lie, can you?” “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe they just got it wrong.” “We’re just talking here,” the officer said. “An informal chat. We’re all friends here. Aren’t we?” “If you say so,” the man said. “I do say so,” the officer said. “They saw it happen. They hid under a table, but you found them anyway. Fortunately for them, you found them after the others.” “I don’t remember any of this,” he said. “It doesn’t sound like me.” The policeman’s eyes tightened slightly. “What they say,” he said, “was that you made them come out. You looked at your gun and laughed. ‘Only one bullet left,’ you said. ‘How do I choose?’ Ring any bells?” “No,” he said. “So it was a gun?” “Eenie, meenie, miney, mo. Still nothing?” “No.” “It was the male witness who ended up ‘it.’ You pointed the gun at him, and he thought he was a goner. Do people of your generation still say that, goner?” “I don’t know,” said the man. “How would that feel? To have a gun pointing at you? Can you imagine how that would feel?” The man didn’t say anything. “As it turns out, you can,” the officer said. “Since a moment later, you turned the gun away and pointed it at your own head and pulled the trigger.” The police officer stayed looking at him, watching his expression. The man held his face slack and still, but inside his brain was spinning. “Officer, I’d like to speak with my lawyer,” he said. “Officer?” the officer said and laughed. “Just who do you think I am?” “The police,” he said. “The police?” he said, and laughed again. He laughed so hard his lower jaw disappeared, leaving only the upper half of his face. “Ah,” he said hollowly, “you’re killing me.” Upon which the man fainted.

IV.

The doctor shined a tiny light into his eyes. “How are you feeling?” he asked. “Are you getting plenty of rest?” “People keep interrupting,” the man said. “They keep waking me up.” “Oh?” the doctor said. “People? Who, the orderlies? I’ll have a chat with them.” “Everybody,” the man said. “The police. My lawyer. Everybody.” “The police? And why would you have a lawyer?” “Because of what they think I did,” he said. He knew he’d made a mistake when the doctor stopped shining the light into his eyes and peered at him closely. “And what would you say they think you did?” the doctor asked. His voice, the man noticed, had changed. Before it had been offhand, ordinary. Now it was casual, but deliberately casual—as if he was trying not to startle the man away while he crept closer. For a moment the man didn’t say anything. Then he said, “You’re a doctor, right?” The doctor nodded. “Technically, yes,” he said. Technically? “And I’m in a hospital,” he said. “Yes,” the doctor said, frowning a little. “You could call it that.” “And I’m ill.” The doctor smiled. “I don’t think there can be any question but that you’re ill,” he said.

• • • •

“You still don’t remember anything?” his lawyer asked. “The doctor told me to rest,” the man said. “I’m not supposed to talk to anyone. I don’t even know how you got in here.” The lawyer waved the statement away. “Tomorrow we take out all the stops,” he said. “Deploy everything we can.” “Please leave me alone,” said the man. “Please go away.” “Go ahead, keep it up,” said the lawyer. “See if it does you any good.”

• • • •

His head was starting to ache. When he reached up to touch the bandages covering it, his fingers came away bloody. He should have paged the doctor, but he wanted to write more down first, even though his fingers were shaking and the blood was dripping onto the paper. He was afraid of dying, but he was more afraid of forgetting. He had dreams just before the bleeding started. He was dreaming but he was still awake, hunched in the bed. He saw people rushing out of a building, people hurling chairs through windows and throwing themselves out, the sound of an alarm going off. It wasn’t right. It was as if he was watching a bad TV set. There were jerky black-and-white images of people running, and he was there among them. In the dream, he was panicked. Why does his head hurt so badly? Who is doing this to him? Did someone take his place for a few days and then depart again, leaving him to take the blame? Is he mad? Is it the world itself that’s starting to come apart at the seams?

• • • •

He was still sitting there holding his special borrowed pencil, clicking it to make a little more lead appear so he could write, and suddenly it was as if the whole world started to dissolve. There was a humming in his head, and the notebook seemed too far away to be in his lap, miles away now, and had begun to be eaten away by threads of darkness. And then suddenly it all disappeared, just blinked out. He woke up having fallen partway out of the bed, the notebook lying on the floor. The guard was still in his chair just outside the door, still sleeping. He hadn’t woken up. How was it possible he hadn’t woken up? The man didn’t know how long he had been there on the floor like that. Enough time for the bandages on the left side of his head to become sodden with blood and for blood to form a small puddle on the hospital floor. He managed to retrieve the notebook. The pencil too, though reaching for them made a lump of darkness clot his vision for a moment. A numbness oozed out into his arm. He managed to slide the notebook under the covers and pulled himself down lower in the bed until he was lying down mostly flat, his head bloodying the pillow. Then he reached out for the call button, but his fingers found the morphine release button first. So he pressed it. He wasn’t thinking all that clearly. His head felt as if it was muffled in cotton. He knew he needed to press the call button, that he was still bleeding, but he could never quite find it. And then he thought, okay, he’d just close his eyes for a minute, he’d just catch his breath. The last thing he wanted to do was lie in his bed and bleed to death. The last thing he wanted was for blood to slowly puddle around his brain until he died. • • • •

He felt as if he was drowning. Or maybe choking. He still had his eyes closed, but he was starting to wake up, groggy but still alive. He opened his eyes and found something covering them. Something was draped over his face. No, pressed hard against it, smothering him. He tried to shout but could only make a muffled noise, hardly even human. He couldn’t breathe. Blood pounded slower and slower in his ears. He was barely there, blood in his throat now too. For a while, it was all he could do to breathe. And then he couldn’t even do that.

• • • •

Perhaps hours later, he awoke to see a doctor’s face. “What happened?” the man asked. “You tried to die,” the doctor said. “Where are the police?” he asked. “Where’s the lawyer?” The doctor looked at him strangely. “The police are where they’re supposed to be,” he said. “And what lawyer do you mean?” But this can’t be true. He has a lawyer, his lawyer’s been coming to visit him. “No,” the doctor explained, “nobody has come to see you since you were admitted.” But, but, but, he said, maybe they came and nobody saw them. Yes, that must have been what happened, yes. The doctor shook his head. “No,” he said. “We have a very serious protocol here. Nobody could get in or out without our knowing.” Once again, he knew then he should have been quiet, that he’d said too much. “Language,” scolded his lawyer, who was suddenly there beside— Wait, maybe that was from the same conversation or maybe from a different one. Everything mixes with everything else, and he’s so groggy he has a hard time keeping things straight. How is he to know where one thing starts and another ends? The doctor paid the lawyer no attention. Which means he probably wasn’t really there. But since I am telling the story, I am going to keep him there. He, I mean. Since he is telling the story, he is going to keep him there. If he’s the man’s lawyer, well, he should have been there. The doctor paid the lawyer no attention. Instead, he stared at the man. “Where are my parents?” the man asked. The doctor looked at him quizzically, started to thumb through his file. “I thought your parents were dead,” he said. “That’s exactly what I’ve been telling him,” the man said, nodding toward the lawyer. “Don’t listen to him,” said his lawyer, but the man wasn’t sure if the lawyer was speaking to him or to the doctor. The doctor, in any case, didn’t seem to hear him. “Telling who?” he asked. “Your parents are exhausted,” the lawyer said. “I told them I’d stay with you as long as the hospital let me. They’ll come when they’re feeling better.” “How can they feel better if they’re dead?” But wait, how had he gotten confused? It had not been his lawyer after all, but a nurse, and she wasn’t talking about his parents but making him follow her moving finger with his eyes. “Good,” she said. “Good. Good.” The doctor had withdrawn to one side, scribbling on a pad—the doctor at least was still there. The man looked closely at the nurse to make sure she wasn’t his lawyer in disguise, but if it was a disguise, it was good enough that he couldn’t see through it. A liquid touched his lips, and it felt as if his tongue was on fire. Then he was half asleep and half awake and watching a long procession of people who looked as if their bodies had been bled dry. He knew he was observing a battalion of the dead, a long line of ghosts. They nodded to him with their missing jaws. They beckoned and opened their arms wide.

• • • •

The doctor was there beside him, in his shiny white coat. A nurse was with him too, either the same nurse or a different one. “How are we feeling?” the doctor asked. “Let’s take a look at that head.” Which head? the man couldn’t help but wonder, and he kept expecting the doctor to pull one out, but then the doctor reached out and touched him. A wave of pain ran through him, and he realized the head in question must be his own. Finally the doctor stopped prodding it. “Could be worse,” he said. He began to unwind the dressings from around it. They were sopping with blood. The nurse collected them as they came off, in an enameled bedpan. They made a wet sound as she slopped them in. The doctor stared at the exposed wound for a while, his brow furrowed. Then they wrapped the head back up again, and the doctor began to write on a clipboard. “What happened?” the man finally managed to ask. “Hmmm?” he said. “Problems with blood pooling. And your brain was swelling. We had to cut a hole and put a shunt in, to take the pressure off. You should be all right in a few days.” He smiled. “Then we’ll install a plate.” “A plate?” He nodded. “Sure,” he said. “Nothing to worry about. We’ll graft skin over it. Nobody will even know it’s there.” He turned to the nurse. “Let’s let him rest for a while,” he said. Then he gave the man an injection of something. But I’ll know it’s there, he thought as he drifted off. And the doctor will know, and the nurse too. And anybody who reads this notebook. How can that constitute nobody?

V.

Morning again, a pale light streaming in through the window, motes of dust whirling in the air. A nurse moving about the room, smiling. She changed the bedpan and then, with the help of an orderly, moved him from his bed to a new, clean one. It hurt a little, was a little jarring, but it didn’t kill him. He only began to relax as they set the brakes of the new bed and wheeled the old one out.

• • • •

It was starting to get dark when the sound of voices in the hall woke him. Soft at first, then growing louder. Soon, his lawyer opened the curtain and came in. The guard was back. Now that the curtain was open, the man could see he had retreated to the doorway and stood in the hall. He leaned awkwardly against the wall, stiff as a board. “Hello,” the lawyer said. “Feeling better?” “Not really.” “We won’t have long,” the lawyer said. “Did you look at the file?” “File?” “Yes,” he said. He lost just a little of his composure. “I told you I was leaving it. I asked if you understood. You said you did.” “I don’t remember any of that,” he said. “I never saw any file.” The lawyer regarded him silently. “Well,” he finally said. “We don’t have anything to talk about, then. Not yet. It’s tucked under the mattress,” he said. The man made a move to pull it out, but the lawyer shook his head no. Not until after he was gone.

• • • •

When the guard still hadn’t moved, the man snaked his arm out from under the sheet and slipped it over the side. He pushed his fingers under the mattress, poking around for the so-called file. But nothing was there. All right, he thought at first. The lawyer had pushed the file in too far. No problem. He scooted over to the very edge of the bed and made sure his arm was sunk in to the elbow and wiggled his fingers around. But he still didn’t feel anything. All right, he thought. Just because the lawyer was seated on that side in his last visit didn’t mean he wasn’t on the other side the visit before. So the man labored his way to the other edge of the bed and slipped the other hand in. Still nothing. He lay there for a while staring at the ceiling in the slanting light of evening. Someone took it, he thought. But who? The police? A guard? His doctor? The orderly? The nurse? Or maybe his lawyer didn’t leave it after all. Maybe he’d forgotten to. Maybe he just wanted the man to think he had.

• • • •

All those thoughts spun about in his skull, slowly starting to consume him. Until he remembered that they had changed his bed. They had moved him from one bed to the other and wheeled the first bed out. The file must have been under the mattress of the other bed. He pressed the call button. He would call the nurse and have her find the bed and get the file for him. He needed the file. He needed to see what he had done. He pressed the button and waited, but nobody came. He pressed it again. Still nobody.

• • • • Was the guard there this time? Sure, why not? Let’s put him there. Let’s say that the man could see the edge of his shoulder just past the edge of the curtain. “Hello?” the man called to the guard. “Can you help me?” The guard didn’t move. He stayed exactly where he was. “Hello?” the man called again. When the guard still didn’t answer, the man very carefully moved his feet to the edge of the bed and then let them slip off. He pushed himself up with his arms until he was sitting. It was almost too much—his brain was sloshing like wet sand. He could feel the blood pounding in his skull and imagined the dressings wrapped around it beginning to saturate. He managed to get his legs onto the floor, and a wave of nausea went through him, only slowly ebbing back. And then suddenly he was standing, walking, feeling as if his feet were impossibly far below him. It was all he could do to stay upright.

• • • •

He made his way around the curtain and there, just on the other side, he found not a guard at all. What he had thought was a guard was only a crude figure made out of cardboard. The word Guard had been written in the middle of the blob that was its head, the letters like the features of a deformed face. Panicked, he stumbled out of the room and found only a dimly lit hall, dusty and impossibly silent. Only a few of the ceiling lights still functioned well. Others glowed a dull red and still others had gone completely out. Stacked against one wall were more cardboard figures. Some seemed well used, others almost untouched. Nurse said one. Chief of Police said another. Lawyer said a third. Orderly. First Reporter, and on its reverse side, Second Reporter. Almost everyone he had met and a few he hadn’t, not yet. Near the back of the stack, one said Mother and another Father. But both of these figures had had their heads torn mostly free. Behind these were four more figures, each of them with a quarter-sized hole burned in their cardboard heads.

• • • •

He looked for a door out, but there was nothing but hall, seemingly going on forever. He started down it and before he knew it was back at the stack of cardboard figures without any sense of how he had gotten there. Lawyer was on the top now, though he hadn’t moved it. This, he thought, must mean something. And where was Doctor? he wondered. Overwhelmed, he tried to return to his room but found only a piece of cardboard pasted to the hall wall where his room had been. He pushed at it, but it was just a piece of cardboard with a word on it, the word Door. Other than that, it was nothing at all.

• • • •

“Hello?” he heard a voice say, and when he turned he saw the doctor—flesh and blood it seemed, not cardboard. How had the doctor gotten here, and why hadn’t he seen him before? The man felt the doctor touch him on the arm, but the touch felt wrong somehow. “What are you doing out of your room?” the doctor asked. “How did you get out?” He tried to respond, but when he did nothing came out. He tried to gesture with his hands to show the doctor that something was wrong, but they were flat and stiff and wouldn’t move. “Come on, then,” said the doctor. “Come with me.” When he hesitated, the doctor reached out and effortlessly gathered him under one arm. He carried him toward the word Door and somehow—the man couldn’t see how—opened it up and brought him back into his hospital room. The doctor set him upright. For a moment the man saw his reflection in a brown square labeled Mirror and realized that he too was a crude figure in cardboard, a name scrawled on his insubstantial chest, the word scratched out and half effaced, illegible. “There now,” the doctor said. “Isn’t that better?” But he couldn’t say if it was or wasn’t, because he didn’t understand what was happening. He couldn’t move.

• • • •

He listened to the doctor chatter on a bit, and then the doctor checked his watch and said, “Let’s let you get some rest.” He allowed himself to be placed flat on the piece of cardboard labeled Bed because he could think of no way to prevent it. The doctor went out, and when he did the world around the man became even more impoverished. He lay there, hoping the world still had some tricks left up its sleeve, and that some, at least, would fall his way. After a time, an hour, a day, a month, perhaps longer, he could move again. He was holding a notebook in his hands. Someone was holding out a pen to him, telling him to write. This is the extent of his report. He has done as you asked and kept a record of everything he can remember. He has kept it to himself and shown it to nobody but you. Now, we need you to tell us what we should make of it.

©2016 by Brian Evenson. Originally published in A Collapse of Horses. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Brian Evenson is the author of more than a dozen books of fiction, most recently the story collection A Collapse of Horses. His story collection Windeye and his novel Immobility were both finalists for a Shirley Jackson Award. His novel Last Days won the American Library Association-RUSA award for Best Horror Novel of 2009. His novel The Open Curtain was a finalist for an Edgar Award and an International Horror Guild Award. He is the recipient of three O. Henry Prizes as well as an NEA fellowship. His work has been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Japanese and Slovenian. He lives and works in Southern California, and teaches at CalArts. We Are Turning on a Spindle Joanna Parypinski | 2411 words

After years of searching, he found the castle on a remote forgotten world in an abandoned corner of the unknown universe. Castles littered the cosmos like dead stars, relics of the ancients. Each one of these monuments to Ozymandias divulged the secrets of its womb with labyrinthine corridors or arresting garrets, grown mausolean with the passing of ages. A bloated sun swelled over a third of the enflamed sky, casting vegetation and ruins alike in ominous red. The legend suggested that once this had been either a blue or yellow sun, if the legend were true, but now it lay dying over an elapsed world whose mountains had burned to ash and whose seas had boiled away to craters of salt. He found the entrance to the castle, a great wooden door as if made for a giant, and he pushed it inward, thinking only of the Beauty of the Night.

• • • •

As the legend goes, the magnificent castle was built from shining stone that reflected the light of morn, fortified to protect the noble blood that ran through its veins. At the time of its building, lords lived in the keep and soldiers manned the battlements, maintaining a barrier of defense through the crenellations in the curtain walls to keep out human enemies. As the legend goes, such enemies, when captured, were housed in a dungeon beneath the earth—dank as a dead womb and lightless. There are mysteries in this dungeon. As the legend goes, he who is swallowed by that black abyss shall never return. Over the many thousands of years it has existed in the solitude of neglect, the castle has grown hungry. The dungeon, however, is reserved for those who are able to first make it through the bitter forest with its ages of overgrowth, where only the deadliest florae has thriven in the eye of the hostile red sun.

• • • •

First, he had to pass that untrodden and silent wood. Castle turrets emerged provocatively from the canopy of the forest grown wild and fecund around the derelict estate. As he fought his way through the forest, brambles and thorns grown razor-sharp and dense closed around him, biting his flesh until blood welled in angry spherules. “It is worth it,” he said to himself, “to find the Night’s Beauty.” There was no beauty left in the known cosmos, as far as he could see, and so he had ventured to the unknown cosmos—the unexplored edges of reality, places where time might run backward or light and shadow reverse. These are strange worlds that lie on the fringes, so old they may have existed before physics settled down with its proper rules. And still, somehow, the forest remained. A snarl of brambles ensnared his wrists and ankles, held him in a thorny cage, and he wondered how many skeletons remained thus, trapped within the intractable wood. How many had gotten this far? He tugged on his bindings, held nearly aloft by the scratching, whispering wood, and after some great exertion he let himself slump, panting and winded. Was it worth it, he wondered, to find the Beauty of the Night? Men and women of the modern age seemed to him ugly creatures, but he had seen glimpses of the alluring ancients. Woe betide he who has never found a wormhole to bring him into the past. He will have to bring the past to the present, instead. He was not the first to make this voyage, but perhaps he would be the one to succeed. As soon as he had seen it, he’d known that this was the castle—the one sought by men since the earliest legends had flown and settled like dandelion seeds across the universe. He found it on a world that should not be, from a time so far removed as to seem magical in its antiquity. It would have been very long indeed since any other traveler had found his way here. The forest sighed around him, lonesome and oscitant. No other living creatures existed here any longer. No birds called in the sky; no rodents crept through the earth. It was only him and the vast empty forest and the vast empty world. Sleep, the forest seemed to suggest. Sleep. Sleep. Over exhausting lightyears he had traveled to arrive here, and indeed the forest lulled him now, cradled him. He closed his eyes. The rustling sounds around him intensified and shadows moved in the distance and he knew he could not sleep. For how did he know, truly, that nothing else living existed on this world? It seemed to him there was something just behind him, watching unseen. At last he struggled his way free and ran through the endless tangle of spindly branches on which no leaves would grow, and he arrived at the castle.

• • • •

He had only to give the door a gentle push for it to swing inward with a grinding moan, whereupon it crumbled into dust before his eyes. It was so old, whatever held it together so tenuous, that the merest touch had disrupted its careful equilibrium. The portcullis was open, although he suspected that even its iron would crumble away, were he to push against it. The interior of the castle was likewise ruined and decrepit, its diseased antediluvian stone like a scabbed wound. Walls loomed above and around him with rotting regality. It seemed strange that such a Beauty could lie sleeping for so long in this dead place. And so a moment of terror gripped him—for what if the legend were false? What if she did not exist? What if this was just another empty castle and he was chasing mythic ghosts? First he found the dungeon. Stone-hewn stairs led down into a deeper darkness, like a remote pocket of space. He descended several steps and peered down, tried to see what lay within, but nothing there had been visible for thousands of years, and he wondered if perhaps the dungeon had quietly slipped out of existence itself, without eyes to behold it. If he descended fully into the darkness, he might find himself lost in an inescapable void, transported to beyond the fringes of the universe. The darkness reached up for him as he slowly crept back up the stairs, caressing his ankles, and he turned back briefly to gaze into the mystery of nothing. How was it that he could not seem to look away? How was it that the darkness reached out for him, came closer as he watched? Sleep, it seemed to say in a sibilant hiss, like wind pushing itself through hairline cracks in weathered stone. Sleep. Sleep. And darkness was a kind of sleep to which he could so easily succumb, if only he took one more, then another step into its cool embrace. And darkness was a kind of beauty, too, in its ineffable void, for not to see at all would be not to see the ugly in the universe. Even while the darkness touched the nape of his neck and pulled back gently on his clothing, he climbed back up and out and resumed his search for the tower where love slept on.

• • • •

As the legend goes, there was a lord and his beautiful daughter, and she was more beautiful than the sunlight streaming in rainbows through a glass, more beautiful than the first birdsong in spring, more beautiful than the ballet of planets around the sun. But she lived on a world where the modern rules of science did not yet apply, so long ago is the tale, and so in this world there was such a thing as magic. As the legend goes, her beauty was so captivating to the people of the castle that her father ordered her to come out only at night, when the darkness softened her radiance and made her bearable to look upon without weeping, or going mad, so wonderful and terrible is such a thing as beauty. Yet it was not enough. Men still fell in ecstasy when they beheld her features by moonlight, and her beauty was so great, it blinded the stars and turned them to burnt-out husks. Out of spite, perhaps, a timecurse was placed upon her and sent her into deepest sleep. Years, decades, centuries passed while she lay in a high room of the castle, in eternal ageless repose, able to be awakened only by a touch or a kiss. Perhaps they forgot about her, those people of the castle going about their daily lives. Perhaps after an hundred years they knew nothing of what lay in the tower room, and perhaps after a thousand years the castle was vacated, and perhaps after another thousand the world was vacated. And still she lies sleeping, waiting, in eternal repose, for the kiss that will awaken her to the unrecognizable post-apocalyptic world.

• • • •

In the courtyard, black vines grew up out of the dirt. Inside the castle, scabrous and crumbling arched corridors groaned ominously, threatening to collapse and bury him in stone. He found a stairway that corkscrewed up through a tower and he ascended the narrow passage. That he could not see what lay beyond the curved stone gave him a passing dread as he followed it up and around. At every moment he expected to reach the top of the tower, but like an endless train of thought that delivers one nowhere, the stairs continued interminably. Though he knew logically there must be an end, in his heart he began to believe that he had entered a rupture in the space-time continuum and that there was no end, that the tower simply went on forever, he in its throat. At last, he had to stop and sit upon the stair, the infinite spiral descending below him, the unknown above. Slitted windows opened to the outside, but each time he gazed out into the blood-red dying world, he seemed to be always at the same height. “It is worth it,” he reminded himself emphatically, “for the Beauty of the Night.” All was worth it. The years he had given to the search, the woman he had left behind, the currency he had paid to make his dreams come true. It had to be worth it. He stood and continued. For another hour or more he climbed, dreading with each step that he would find only more stairs above him, that he might never leave the gullet of this tower, this mad endless tower. And then, at last, when a dull sort of dismay had begun to germinate within his weary steps, the staircase ended at an arched doorway. At last, he thought. At last, he would behold the Beauty of the Night, and that beauty would be his and his alone to gaze upon. His treasure. To own such beauty in an ugly cosmos—he would be the richest man alive. He crept inside the room and saw that it was a bedchamber, cobwebbed with accumulated dust. Furniture still sat within—a nearly unrecognizable armchair, a dresser—but were so faded with age that he dared not touch them. Upon the four-poster bed beside a window, bathed in the crimson light of day, lay a woman. Unlike the ruined room, the woman was pristine as a newborn. No dust had touched her pearly flesh over the eons she had slept. He wondered if she dreamed. She looked very little like the humans of today. Flaxen hair unspooled around her pallid face, although her lips retained their rubicund hue, and spidery brown lashes extended from her closed eyelids. She was almost too perfect to disturb, and he thought perhaps he could be happy simply to gaze upon her sleeping form for the rest of his days. But then he imagined how lovely she must be with her eyes open—what those eyes might look like. Two shining sun-glistened lakes? A golden amberwood? And what music might he hear in her voice? And besides, once he awakened her, she would be his and his alone. He bent down over her prostrate sleeping form, thinking to himself at last, at last, and laid a gentle kiss upon her flower-petal-soft lips. At last, at last, he leaned back and beheld eyes which had been closed for millennia creak open, and he had been wrong for they were neither azure lakes nor amberwood, but milky gauze. On bones as brittle as the ages, she sat up in bed, turning her head blindly and twitching with the surprise of awakening. Despite the eyes which had lost their use, she was the loveliest creature he had ever beheld. He reached forward again to touch her, and his fingers brushed her soft, smooth cheek. At the sensation she flinched, drew back her lips in a hideous smile, and began to scream. Before his eyes, her flesh turned black and sour, decayed, and sloughed off gangrenous chunks in patchwork disarray. Still shrieking in agony, she brought a hand to her face and came away with a portion of scalp trailing strings of hair like evil tentacles. Hastily he backed away from the creature decomposing before his eyes as time finally caught up with her. Sinewy tendons burst through atrophied muscle; a puddle of wet excretion soaked the collapsing bed; she was now a skeleton, now her eyes had liquefied from her ancient skull, now her clothing fell away in tatters to reveal the ribs and spine beneath, and now even the bones disintegrated, turned to dust, and blew away shrieking on the air. That dust flew into his face—his nose, his mouth, his eyes—and burning with pain, half-blinded, he turn and stumbled for the doorway and the staircase where he fell ...... and fell ...... and fell ...... and fell ...... and fell . . . And as the legend goes, he is still falling down the spiral of that endless tower, for here on a planet so ripened like a wasted prune that something prior to physics once existed here, something we can only call magic, we might conclude that a kind of black hole opened up in that spindle of a tower and swallowed the lone traveler, who, in his eternal fall and blinded by the ashes of the dead, may take comfort in having witnessed, if only for the briefest of moments, timeless beauty.

©2017 by Joanna Parypinski.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Joanna Parypinski is a writer of dark speculative fiction by night and a college English instructor by day. Her work has appeared in The Burning Maiden Vol. 2, Dark Moon Digest, and NewMyths.com with forthcoming work in an anthology edited by Ellen Datlow and Lisa Morton. When she isn’t writing or lecturing on the virtues of good grammar, she plays cello in a community orchestra and finds her muse in the foothill cemeteries north of Los Angeles. She has an MFA from Chapman University and is a member of the Horror Writers Association. Find more at joannaparypinski.com.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight Suffer Little Children Robert Shearman | 10563 words

Everything she taught she’d learned from the books in her father’s study—and even then, only from the bottom shelves—she couldn’t have reached the top shelves without the ladder, and the ladder’s wooden rungs were lined with cracks that looked like spider webs. So, no geography, then (but her pupils would be English, so how much did they need to know about foreign lands?). Plenty of history—she liked the way the past could be packaged into neat little romances; they were like fairy tales but the difference was, these fairy tales were true. A smattering of French. A smaller smattering of Latin. Poetry. Fine art. She liked simple mental arithmetic, something about its solid rightness made her happy. But what she taught didn’t matter; she was left under no illusions about that. Her task was to ensure the children were occupied and well-behaved, and that their wits were kept sharp to prepare them for proper education later. Children liked her, and that was the main thing. Adults didn’t, much; adults never quite knew what to say to her. She was unfailingly polite, but somehow always at one remove, everything she said sounded too considered and deliberate. But children seemed charmed by her. In part, perhaps, that may have been the way she looked. She had such a very young face. Her cheeks were full and red like a baby doll’s. Her eyes, wide and innocent. The children instinctively might have recognised her as one of them, that for all the authority bestowed on her, she belonged to their world, not the world of their parents. It was true that she always looked so serious and thoughtful, and she only rarely smiled. But that didn’t mean she ever looked disapproving, or in judgement of them. She seemed to be a little girl who wanted to be all grown up. Children understand that. They want the same thing. It was only natural that Susan Cowley would be a governess. Even as a girl she’d had a calming effect on the other children playing around her; she didn’t seem to have any friends amongst them, not as such, but what of that? And Susan seemed to accept that role with incurious equanimity. Her little sister would be given all manner of pretty clothes; Susan, more and more, would get formal dress, bordering even upon uniform in its austerity, all befitting her future career. She never complained. When she reached seventeen, her great aunt found her a placement at Exley Hall, to look after two young children of friends of hers. It was impossible to judge how responsible Susan Cowley was for the Exley Hall scandal. Certainly, she never tried to offer any defence, and that may well have been her undoing. She seemed only too willing to take the blame, and so the blame was put squarely on her shoulders. And maybe that was right. The children were in her care. Whether or not she had done anything directly to influence events, that, surely, cannot be disputed. There were no criminal proceedings, for it was hard to see how anything that had happened could be called a crime. The Exleys did not want any muck clinging to their son’s name. They did not want any word getting out. That said, Susan Cowley was unable to find herself another position afterwards, so someone must have talked. Mr. and Mrs. Cowley did not know what to make of it all. Susan had always been such a quiet child, the reliable one, the boring one, truth be told. They did not discuss the matter. They tried to pretend nothing had happened. Mr. Cowley only lost his temper the once, and that was not even with Susan; at the dinner table the little sister began asking how it was that Susan was home again, didn’t she like being a teacher?—and at that, without a word, Mr. Cowley had got up and slapped the girl around her face. The child was so shocked she even forgot to cry. One night, when he couldn’t sleep, Mr. Cowley found Susan in his study. She was sitting on the floor, a stack of books by her side, and she was leafing through them slowly. All her old favourites—Arthurian legends, a Latin primer, and tomes and tomes of rudimentary calculus. “Susan?” he asked softly, “are you all right?” It was the gentlest thing he had said to her since her disgrace; Susan looked up at him, but her face registered no surprise at his new tenderness. She nodded. Mr. Cowley stood there in the doorway, and he knew that this was the moment he should reach out to her, try to talk to her, maybe find out what had happened. This was his chance. And he couldn’t take the chance, or didn’t, at any rate; he nodded back, quite formally, turned, and went back to bed. There came in the post one morning a letter for Susan. Inside there was a newspaper clipping advertising for young teachers at H___ Priory. There was no letter, no indication who it might have been from; Mr. and Mrs. Cowley wondered whether the great-aunt was offering some help, just as she had done before. She hadn’t spoken to the family since the incident but maybe she had relented. It was not a governess’s position; it was not ideal; it was to teach a class of young children of no discernible means or background, and the wages offered were meagre. But, as Mr. and Mrs. Cowley said, beggars could not be choosers. They looked for H___ on the map. It took them a while to find it; it was far away, and seemed very small, tucked away at the edge of the page. Susan replied to the advertisement. She did not expect an interview. By return of post she received notice that the job was hers. There was no direct railway line to H___. Susan was obliged to make no fewer than four connections, and each train she boarded was smaller and slower than the last—and emptier too, so that by the last service Susan was the only person in the carriage. It fell dark. It began to rain hard. No one came to inspect Susan’s ticket, and as the train crawled on she began to fear that the driver would just decide to stop, that he’d feel the journey wasn’t worth the effort, and that she’d be stuck there in the blackness and the wet forever. And she had the absurd desire to start shouting, to chivvy the driver on, to assure him he had a passenger and that he mustn’t give up, for her sake. Of course, she did nothing of the sort. She kept her composure, and only by hugging her suitcase close would she have given any outward sign that she was afraid. She sat still, looked out of the window into the pitch black, and hoped that soon she would reach her destination. And, at length, she did. She hauled her suitcase onto the platform. The station was dark, and she could not see an exit. The rain sliced through her. “Over here!” she heard, and she realised that the platform wasn’t deserted after all; it was a woman’s voice, low in pitch, and she was gesturing at Susan to come and take shelter beneath her umbrella. The woman was large, and Susan couldn’t quite fit under the umbrella beside her; generously, the woman sidestepped and stood out in the rain to keep Susan dry. “You’re Miss Cowley?” she said. “Yes,” said Susan. “Good! Follow me!” And the woman marched on into the night, still holding out the umbrella for Susan, but she was striding away so fast that both of them got soaked. “It’s not always like this; sometimes the weather is quite nice!” And soon they were outside the station, and there was a little jalopy waiting for them. “Hop right in, the door’s open!” Susan took the passenger seat, and watched as the woman struggled against the wind and the pelting rain to get the umbrella shut. And then the woman was in the car beside Susan, and so drenched through that she couldn’t help but spray Susan with water as she shifted into her seat, like a dog shaking itself dry without worrying about the soaking it will give its owner. She beamed at Susan. She offered her hand, and Susan took it, and the woman pumped it up and down like a piston. “I must say, I’m glad you’re you,” she said, and then blushed. “Are you?” asked Susan. “I thought you might be one of those dreadful old women! The school always gets dreadful old women, they never last long. Stay a term or two, and then go off to die somewhere, I’ll bet. Ha! Miss Susan Cowley, you must admit, the name sounds a bit elderly and a bit dreadful.” “I had never thought,” said Susan. “Like some Godforsaken spinster! Not that I’m judging. I mean, Valerie Bewes. That sounds shocking, doesn’t it? That sounds positively decrepit! I’m Valerie, by the way.” And she offered her wet hand again, and Susan had to take it. “I’m just so pleased you’re young, like me! We can be proper girls together!” Susan didn’t think that Valerie looked especially young, she must have been thirty if she were a day. “Is the school very far?” asked Susan. “Lord love you, you’ve travelled all day, and here I am jabbering! Yes, it is quite far. About nine miles, which isn’t too bad, but it’s uphill and this old girl doesn’t like climbing hills, and it’s dark and it’s wet—we’d better go slow. We should get moving, we can chat along the way!” But they didn’t chat much. Valerie pointed at the hills and countryside (“Really, it’s quite nice when it’s daylight, and dry.”), and talked all about herself, and Susan quickly realised that the information offered was neither interesting nor pertinent. When Susan declined to join in the conversation, even Valerie at last ground to a halt. “You’re tired, poor darling, I’ll let you have some peace!” And—“Here we are!” said Valerie, at last. And there was the school in the distance. Ever since she had accepted the post Susan had wondered what the school might look like, and the reality of it was that it was small and flat and rather unassuming. She felt some relief, and also a little disappointment. Valerie explained that, its name notwithstanding, the school had really very little to do with H___. It was simply the closest town, and no one could agree what the name of this bit of countryside precisely was. The children were taken from the various villages and hamlets around, sometimes to a distance of fifteen miles—all the communities who didn’t quite belong to anyone else, they could fit in here. Most of the children boarded; it was simply too much effort for them to go back to their parents very often. There were never more than a hundred pupils in the school at any one time, and they were divided into three classes. The youngest, and largest, were the eight to ten year olds, who’d be taught by Miss Cowley. The middle class was for the ten to twelves, taken by Miss Bewes herself. The remaining class ranged all the way from twelve to seventeen, and Mrs. Phelps was in charge of them. That said, very few of the children were seventeen; in fact, very few of the children stayed at the school once they were teenagers. “And what happens to them after that?” asked Susan. “Oh, Lord knows. They probably go off and marry each other! I don’t think there are any pupils from H___ Priory who have ever amounted to much. They come from the countryside, they just drift back into it again.” Valerie laughed. “No, they’re fine, they’re good kids, mostly.” Bordering the school was the little cottage that Susan and Valerie would share. Valerie seemed to think Susan already knew and had agreed to this arrangement, and Susan had no desire to disabuse her. “It’s nice and homely,” said Valerie. “Shared bathroom, shared kitchen, shared personal area, you know, all mod cons. Separate bedrooms. Let me show you your bedroom.” The bedroom was plain. It was not as pretty as her bedroom at Exley Hall, or even her bedroom at home. The bed looked hard, the single pillow lumpy. The walls were bare. “It just needs to be lived in a bit,” said Valerie. “It’s wonders what you can do with a few pictures around. I’ll show you my bedroom, later, if you like.” Valerie offered to make them both some supper, she had soup on the stove. Susan declined, but thanked her. Valerie said that she would introduce her to Mrs. Phelps the next day, and then to the children. “All right,” said Susan. “Thank you. Good night.” Valerie laughed, and said, “My darling, whatever must you have done to end up here!” “I beg your pardon?” “Oh, I don’t mean anything by it! I’m sorry. But as if anyone would choose to come here. Most of them can’t get away from the place fast enough. Like Miss Fortescue, good riddance, the miserable old trout. Oh, I tell you, my darling, it’s going to be so much more fun living with you than it was with her!” The Bewes woman left her then, mercifully, but not before once more offering Susan her hand to shake. And Susan got undressed, and lay on her bed, and propped her head up on the pillow as best as she could, and stared up at the ceiling, and listened to the rain, and tried not to dream about Edwin this time. In the morning it was still raining hard, and Susan and Valerie had to run from the cottage to the school, Valerie whooping with joy as if it were some great game. Susan was introduced to Mrs. Phelps. Mrs. Phelps did not shake her hand. Mrs. Phelps had no interest in her hand whatsoever. “The headmaster and I are sure you’ll be most suitable, Miss Cowley,” she said. “I doubt we’ll have much cause to speak again, we’ll be in different classrooms, of course.” “Of course.” Susan wondered whether she was going to meet the headmaster as well. Valerie laughed, and said she hadn’t seen Mr. Phelps in simply ages; he stayed in the house, bedridden most likely, and passed on instructions through his wife. “Or maybe he’s run away,” she joked. “Or maybe he’s dead! Anything rather than live with that old dragon.” Valerie took Susan to her own classroom. The children were already inside. “Just don’t let them know it’s your first time,” she said. “How do you know it’s my first time?” “Oh, my dear, it’s so obvious! To me, I mean, not to them. Just try to keep them occupied. There’s a whole stack of books in the cupboards, get them reading, that eats up the time. And if anyone misbehaves, just strike them with the cane.” “Oh!” said Susan. “No, I couldn’t!” “You’ll be doing them a favour,” said Valerie. “That way they’ll know you’re in charge. You’ll be doing me a favour too, I’ll be inheriting some of these kids next term! The cane is your friend. Miss Fortescue, she got through half a dozen of them, we had to get in a fresh supply!” “Yes,” said Susan. “All right.” “Don’t you worry, you’ll be wonderful. You’ve got just the face for it! The children will adore you. And tonight I’ll make us some nice supper, and you can tell me all about your adventures.” Susan entered the classroom then, and shut the adult world out. She immediately felt calmer. She looked out across the children, all of them eyeing her warily. Little girls in pretty blouses, boys big before their time with dirty faces and dirty fingernails. “Good morning, class,” she said. And they all got to their feet then, and mumbled good morning back. She hadn’t expected that. She rather liked it. She hoped she’d kept it off her face, that surprise, and that pleasure. She was sure she had. “My name is Miss Cowley,” she told them. “And I’m here to look after you.” She looked through the cupboards. The children helped her. There were the books, as Miss Bewes had promised. There was also a map, as big as the blackboard. There were drawing pads. There was a whole colony of wooden abacuses. She put the map up on the wall. It was an old map, and she knew some of the countries didn’t exist anymore, not since the war. The children were still able to point out some of the better ones, like France and Spain, and show her where England was. Afterwards, she set the children on to the drawing pads, told them they could draw whatever they liked, and use crayons to colour the pictures in. Some of the drawings were really rather good, and she took the map down and put the drawings in its place. After lunch she asked the children what subjects they most liked, and they all said they liked stories, and that meant history. So she told them an Arthurian legend. The children listened, quite spellbound, as if they’d never even heard of Sir Gawain or his green knight, and at one point the realisation that these thirty young strangers were hanging on her every word made Susan freeze with stage fright; they waited patiently; she recovered; she began to enjoy herself. Already in her head she was planning other stories she could share with them the next day, and the day after that, and all the days following. It only went wrong towards the end of the afternoon. Susan suggested they move on to mathematics. She was pleased that none of the children groaned, or looked unhappy at the prospect; by this point, it seemed, they would have followed her anywhere, even into the realms of simple arithmetic. “Why not show me what you already know?” she said. “Who here would like to stand before the class, and recite the times tables with me?” No one volunteered. But then, no one resisted either. “How about you?” she asked a little girl sitting near the front, and the little girl got to her feet quite happily. “What’s your name?” she asked the girl. But the girl just shook her head. “Don’t be shy,” said Susan. “We’re all your friends here. Do you know the five times table?” The little girl looked at her blankly. “I’ll demonstrate,” Susan said. And she began to recite. “Once times five is five. Two times five is ten. Three times five . . .” “Fifteen,” said the little girl. “That’s right.” “Four times five is twenty. Five times five is twenty-five.” And on the girl went, all the way to a hundred. Susan gave her a little clap. “Well done,” she said. “Does anyone else want to . . .?” The little girl took a deep breath. And then she started on the six times table. “Yes,” said Susan. “All right.” “Ten times six is sixty. Eleven times six is sixty-six.” “That’s very good. Well done!” “Fifteen times six is ninety. Sixteen times six is ninety-six.” “Big numbers now! Can you go any further?” But the girl stopped dead, looked at Susan, frowned. “That’s very good,” said Susan once more. “Yes. I shall give you a merit point. What is your name, again . . .?” And the little girl, once again, was taking a breath of air. A deeper one this time. The effort of it meant she had to clutch on to the teacher’s desk, and her face turned red. A great wheeze there was, and Susan thought it sounded like it came from an old man, an old man close to death, and the girl’s face was contorted with the force of it—she hunched over, gripping at her stomach, and Susan reached out for her, and the little girl just pushed her away. She steadied herself. She calmed. She looked her teacher right in the face. “One times seven is seven,” she informed her. It was almost conversational. “Two times seven is fourteen.” “Yes,” agreed Susan. And onwards. “Thirteen times seven is ninety-one. Fourteen times seven is ninety-eight.” Susan felt the question rise within her—does she know the eight times table? “Thank you,” she said, and she hoped from her tone it was clear that the thank you was conclusive. But the little girl had gone back to the beginning. She was reciting the seven times table again, and this time it was faster, more confident. “Three times seven is twenty-one, four times seven is twenty-eight, five times . . .” “You need to sit down now,” said Susan. “. . . ninety-one, fourteen times seven is ninety-eight, one times seven is seven . . .” There was no pause for breath this time. Two times seven, three times, four, and there was a smile on her face, as the pace began to accelerate still further. “You need to sit down now,” said Susan. “That’s enough.” “Ten times seven is seventy, eleven times seven is seventy-seven, twelve . . .” “I said, enough!” Susan looked at the class, to see how they were reacting to this open display of mockery. They didn’t seem amused, and that was good, she supposed—they didn’t seem shocked, or even interested. They stared out at the little girl with frank indifference. And still the girl was tearing into the seven times table, so fast now that the words were starting to blur, the numbers running into each other and in the collision causing bigger numbers yet to appear, and Susan had her hands around the girl’s shoulders and she was shaking her, “Stop!” she said. “Stop this instant!” She looked at the class. “Fetch me my cane.” No one moved. “I said, the cane!” And a few of the children exchanged glances, and one boy at the front got to his feet, walked slowly to Susan’s desk, so slow it was nearly insolent, but not quite, nothing quite so obvious; he pulled open a drawer, and took out an ugly thin wooden stick. The little girl was babbling out the words now, but she didn’t look afraid, she was exultant. “Don’t make me do this,” said Susan. “I don’t want to hurt you. Do you hear me? Stop. Stop. Hold out your hand. Hold out your hand.” And, without pausing, the numbers still spilling forth, the little girl did so, she opened her palms ready for punishment. Susan hit her. She didn’t want to hit her hard. But the stick was designed to hurt, and as it swung down it made the air crack, and the explosive pop it made against the little girl’s hand seemed too loud and too too angry, and Susan at once regretted it, but it was too late. The girl stopped immediately, somewhere between forty-two and forty-nine. She looked at Susan in bewilderment. Then down at her hand, and Susan could see that the blow had broken the skin. She looked back up at Susan, and there were tears in her eyes, and there was disappointment too. “That’s enough now,” said Susan quietly. “Sit down.” The little girl did so. “I will not,” said Susan, “tolerate insubordination. Not in my class. I’m here to help you. I want to help you.” She added, “And I read to you all about Sir Gawain!” It didn’t come out too plaintively, she hoped. For the rest of class she had them read to themselves. There was only another fifteen minutes to go. The children were all perfectly silent, but Susan felt relieved when the bell sounded. She dismissed them, and smiled at them as they filed out, to show that everything was forgiven and forgotten. And the children seemed to hold no grudges, quite a few of them smiled back, even the little girl she’d beat. Valerie Bewes made stew for them that evening. Susan did not want to discuss the incident with her, but there was no one else she could tell. Valerie laughed at the story, and told her not to worry. “They’ll always try something,” she said. “It was your first day, and they have to find out how hard they can push you. I say you made it perfectly clear! Well done, you!” She helped Susan to another helping of stew. Susan didn’t like it much, the vegetables were nearly raw, the chunks of beef too stringy. “I must go to bed,” said Susan. “I’m tired.” Valerie looked disappointed, just for a moment, and then she smiled. “Of course. First day of term is the worst, you know! It’ll be easier tomorrow, you’ll see!” Susan thanked her for supper, and went up to her room. The room had changed. Susan stood in the doorway and stared at it. And then she heard Valerie chuckle, she hadn’t realised she’d come up the stairs behind her. “I did a bit of furnishing for you!” she said. “Miss Fortescue left all her pictures behind. She’ll probably come and collect them at some point, but until she does, you may as well benefit from them . . .! She liked natural history. Natural history was her favourite subject.” “Yes,” said Susan. There were a dozen different paintings on the wall, and all of birds. Some of them were life studies, some of them were anatomical examinations. But even the skeletal bodies still had their wings intact, jutting out the sides, and that gave Susan the oddest impression that the poor creatures had had their skin and organs only selectively removed. She didn’t know what type of birds they were. She recognised an eagle. “It makes the room feel more lived in, doesn’t it?” “It does indeed.” “Do you like it?” “Very much.” Valerie was pleased by that, and seemed about to start another conversation. “Good night,” said Susan, quite firmly, and Valerie nodded, gave a flash of a smile, and closed the door behind her. Susan lay on the bed. No matter how tightly she drew the curtains, enough light got in to pick out the birds. The eyes seemed to follow her, and if they had no eyes, then the eye sockets followed her instead. When shadows passed over the feathers it made them come alive, to flex and ripple; the rain spattered hard on the windows, and sounded like the flutter of a thousand wings. When Valerie knocked at the door, maybe half an hour later, Susan was almost grateful. “I’m sorry,” said Valerie. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to disturb. I’m sorry. May I come in, my darling?” “Just a moment,” said Susan, and she put on her dressing gown, turned on the light, and answered the door. Valerie was smiling at her, but it was a brave smile; she had been crying. She came with a bottle of brandy, and two glasses. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “What’s the matter?” Valerie came in, and sat upon the bed. In her beige dressing gown, with her hair loose and messy over her shoulders, she looked even older than she had by day. She smelled of brandy, and Susan supposed she’d had rather a lot of it. “Sometimes I have bad nights,” said Valerie. “May I confide in you? Can I trust you enough so I can confide?” “I imagine so,” said Susan. Valerie then burst into tears, and told Susan some ghastly little story about how she’d once worked as a governess, many years ago now, and how she had been seduced by her employer—or perhaps she had seduced him, the story wasn’t very clear. She had fallen pregnant, much to the horror of the man, who had thrown her out of his house and away from his children, denouncing her as a slut. She had tried to lose the baby, she really had, she’d drunk gin, she’d even thrown herself down the stairs once. But it was no good, the baby had been born, and had been taken away from her. “Would you drink with me?” “No, thank you.” “Please drink with me! So I’m not drinking alone . . .!” Susan sipped at her brandy, and it didn’t sit well with the stew, and she felt a little sick. “My life was over,” said Valerie. “Until I found this place. The school took me in. They forgave me.” “Yes.” “Did something like that happen to you, my darling? Do you need to be forgiven?” “No,” said Susan. “Absolutely not.” If Valerie was offended by the vehemence of this, she didn’t show it. She just nodded, poured herself another glass. “I’m sorry,” she said. “The first day of term does this to me. Seeing the children again. And thinking, one of them could be mine! Do you see? Any one of them, how would I ever know? I’ve never told anyone this before,”—and Susan rather doubted that, Susan imagined Valerie Bewes told the same story to every new teacher who arrived, maybe that’s why Miss Fortescue had fled H___ Priory as soon as she got the chance—”but you’re like a little baby, aren’t you? You look just like a baby doll. You could be my daughter. You could be. I know you can’t be, you’re too old, but. You could be mine.” She stroked at Susan’s cheek. “Yes,” said Susan. “May I stay here tonight?” “No.” “No. Of course. You need to sleep. Yes. I’ve been selfish. I’ll see you in the morning. Yes.” Susan didn’t think Valerie was all that drunk, she got up from the bed and made it to the door steadily enough. Before she put out the light, Susan removed every bird picture from the wall, and put them, face down, under the bed. Most nights Susan dreamed of Edwin. And sometimes they weren’t nightmares. Sometimes she actually missed him. Susan hadn’t much liked Edwin Exley at first. She preferred his little sister, Clara. Clara was six, and shy, and not very pretty, and Susan’s heart went out to her. At eight years old Edwin was already tall and arrogant; Mr. Exley told Susan on her first day that Edwin was going to have a stellar career in the army, and that there was no limit to what the boy would achieve for his country. Edwin himself certainly seemed to believe that. His father had already taught him a lot of the basics of being a soldier, and when he met his new governess he stood to attention, and gave her a salute that Susan suspected was a little too clipped and far too ironic. Mr. and Mrs. Exley were kind to Susan. They let her eat with them of an evening, and treated her quite like she was an elder daughter rather than an employee. They gave her a comfortable bedroom, with a soft bed, and drapes, and lots of pretty pictures on the walls. When the family took a few days in the south of France during the autumn, they wanted Susan to come with them; she still was required to teach the children in the mornings, but the afternoons were her own, and they encouraged her to sit on the beach with them and enjoy the sun. The nursery at Exley Hall was turned into a little classroom. All the toys and games were put away each morning before lessons started; for a few hours, at least, this was to be a place of learning. Susan directed most of her classes towards Clara in particular; Edwin was not exactly bad mannered, but he made it clear he wasn’t much interested, and any attention he gave was bestowed upon his teacher as if it were a great gift for which she should be grateful. He was not very good at mathematics, he enjoyed history only when it was something he’d already heard about from his father. He discovered he had an aptitude for Latin, which delighted him, and his face lit up like a little boy when Susan complimented him upon it. Both Clara and Edwin would listen when their teacher told them ancient stories of heroism and derring-do. Edwin liked the tales of King Arthur, but only when there were quests and fighting; he didn’t like Guinevere or Lancelot, he didn’t want to bother with all that mushy stuff. One night Susan couldn’t sleep, and she went downstairs to Mr. Exley’s study. It was even better furnished with books than her father’s, and she thought something to read would help her rest. She was surprised to find a light burning. There on the floor was Edwin, and all about him were texts he had taken from the shelves. He started when he realised Susan was there. “Don’t tell my father,” he said. “Your father wouldn’t mind,” Susan told him. “He’d be pleased you want to learn things!” “No,” said Edwin. “He wouldn’t.” Susan often found Edwin in the study at night times. They never discussed their secret rendezvous during the day, and Susan tried not to go down there too often—maybe no more than once, say twice, a week. Edwin would show her new books he had found; sometimes they were geography, and as he enthused about Africa and the colonies she rather got the impression that he was teaching her. He was taller than she was; he had no problem reaching the higher shelves. And he had no fear of the step ladder; he’d race up to the very top of it to fetch books that were brushing at the ceiling, with a fearless speed that sometimes made Susan’s heart stop. She showed him some poetry. He was resistant at first. She made him read it out loud to her, and he began to like it more, he began to enjoy the rhythm of it. On his birthday she bought him a little notebook in which he could write his own poetry. She bought him a sketchpad, so that he could draw. One day Mr. Exley put down his newspaper at the breakfast table, and the rare act of that caused his wife to stop her chatter. Mr. Exley said to Susan, “And how are the children getting on? Learning things, are they?” Susan told him they were both doing admirably. Mr. Exley nodded at this. “That’s good,” he said. “What they learn now, they’ll never forget. I’ve got such stuff in my head, all the kings and queens from William the Conqueror, times tables, things like that. Useless, of course, but it’s nice to have.” Mrs. Exley said that the children seemed very happy. Mr. Exley said, “We should have a demonstration some evening. Nothing too fancy. Just you and the children, showing us what they’ve learned.” Mrs. Exley looked quite excited by that. Susan told them she’d make preparations. Edwin could soon list all the kings and queens, just like his father, and as an added bonus Susan felt he should also indicate the dates of famous battles they had fought; Hastings, Agincourt, the Boyne. Clara could read some poetry; for all her shyness and plain features she had such a sweet voice. And both children could conclude with a recitation of their times tables, five, six, seven and eight, all the way to a hundred. The evening went very well. Both the parents looked proud and indulgent as their children stood tall and parroted out all the facts they knew. Clara read three poems; one by Keats, one by Shelley; the final one was by Edwin Exley, although the author’s name was not mentioned, Susan thought it would be a charming little secret. It wasn’t necessarily a very good poem, and was rather cruelly exposed beside the Victorian Romantics that had inspired it, but Mr. and Mrs. Exley couldn’t tell the difference. Mr. Exley gave the children a round of applause, and a shilling each, and told Susan that they would have to have a similar soiree at some point. Maybe at Christmas, when all their friends were there? That night Susan visited Edwin in the study. “I love you,” said Edwin, suddenly. “Well, I love you too.” Susan thought nothing of this: Clara was always telling Susan she loved her, and putting her arms around her, she was such a needy girl. And Edwin was studying a book at the time, he wasn’t even looking at her. “Will you marry me one day?” Susan laughed. “Oh, I shouldn’t have thought so!” “Why not?” “Because you’re a little boy.” “I won’t be a little boy forever. I’ll get older soon. And I’ll go and fight. I’ll be brave and defend my country, and I’ll never be afraid. Do you believe me?” “Yes. Yes, I believe you.” “I’ll be fighting for you.” Edwin had put aside the book now, he had abandoned cover, and he was staring at Susan, and he was beginning to cry, but he didn’t seem sad, he seemed fierce. Susan didn’t know what to say. “You’ll marry someone else, Eddie. You’ll see. Someone better than me.” “And when I do, will you come to my wedding?” “Of course I will!” “Good. I want you there. I want you to see my bride. I want you to know that I shan’t love her. That I’m marrying her out of spite. That I’ll be cruel to her, and punish her, because she’ll never be you. I want you to know it’ll be your fault.” “That’s a wicked thing to say,” said Susan. Edwin didn’t care. He shrugged. “I pray to God each night that you’ll love me,” he said. “God can’t answer prayers like that.” “Not the God of Jesus,” he sneered. “There are older gods. The things I’ve read. The things that are in the books on the top shelf.” Christmas Day, Mr. Exley said, would be for the family alone. Cook and the two maids were given time off. Susan was put right at the heart of the celebrations, and it was tacit proof of acceptance that she found very touching. Mrs. Exley gave her as a present a pink dress—”You don’t seem to have anything nice, my dear,” she said, and the dress fitted perfectly. Clara gave Susan a piece of embroidery she had stitched herself. Edwin didn’t give Susan anything, but he was a boy. And in the evening they all went to a carol service at the church, and sang hymns together. Mr. Exley sang with particular gusto. Edwin sat at the end of the pew, away from Susan, and barely even mouthed any of the hallelujahs to Christ. On Boxing Day, Cook and the maids came back, and everyone prepared for the party. Lots of Mr. Exley’s old friends came with their twittering wives, and in honour of this Mr. Exley wore his regimental uniform. There was a turkey dinner, and crackers, and cigars, and a game of charades: Susan didn’t join in, but she enjoyed watching all the grown-ups play. Before the children’s bedtime they were presented, newly dressed in smart clothes; the Exleys said Clara and Edwin would perform for them. Edwin stiffly recited the crowned heads of England once more, and the men especially gave hearty applause. Clara performed from memory a short poem by Keats. As a grand finale, the children would chant the seven times table. It began well enough. Everyone looked on kindly, knowing that it would all be at an end soon, and they could get back to their sherries and jokes and fun. No one even appeared to notice how Edwin’s delivery was somewhat forced and sarcastic; Clara, at least, was a perfect angel. Somewhere in the middle Edwin broke rank, and began to deliver a poem of his own. Clara didn’t know what to do, she floundered on for one more calculation, then came to a stop, and stared at her brother open-mouthed and dumb. It wasn’t a love poem. That was the first thing to say. There was really very little about love in it. It was a wonder Edwin got as far through it as he managed. He told, in doggerel verse, how he and his governess would meet regularly at night and have sex in his father’s study. There was nothing tender to it. It was blunt and pornographic. And it was something more too. There was something animal about it. Not merely the sex itself, as rough and primal as it was. But a suggestion too in the act of congress, that as Edwin performed acts he should not have known about, and that surely most humans weren’t even capable of, there was something monstrous being born, that these writhing creatures were no longer simply boy and woman but something not of this world; there were beaks, and scales, and talons, and tongues that were impossibly, terrifyingly, long. Mrs. Exley just said, “No, no, no,” over and over again, as if her quiet denial of it could really matter a jot. Mr. Exley roared at his son to stop, and when he didn’t, he got up, marched over to him, and clipped him hard around the head. At that point only did Edwin fall silent; he glared at his father, glared at the room, and glared at Susan most particularly. Then he ran from the room. Susan ran too. She didn’t know where to go. She went to her room. She sat on the bed, numbed. She wasn’t there for long. Mr. Exley banged upon the door, told her to get out, and come with him. She had never been to Edwin’s room before. Now she saw that all over his bed were pages and pages of scribbled verse, ripped out of the notebook she’d bought him, and sketchpad drawings. The drawings were of her, she recognised herself at once. In most she’d been given claws and wings, it was her head on the body of wild beasts—lions, dogs, birds. In all she was naked. Human breasts, obscenely large, grew out from trunks of fur and scales, and dangled. Edwin stood there, frightened, but acting brave, acting like a man. Mr. Exley picked up some of the writings, looked them over briefly. Threw them on the floor. “Filth,” he said. He turned to Susan. “I do not believe. I cannot believe. Any of the things he writes here are true.” “No,” she said. “No.” “But how,” he said. “How?” And in that moment he looked at her so imploringly, like a little child himself, begging her to make things all right again. The face clouded; his teeth clenched; he was an adult once more. He said to Susan, “I want you to beat him. You must beat him. To within an inch of his life.” And she saw then that in his hand, lying almost nonchalantly against the seam of his regimental uniform trouser leg, was a cane. “No,” she said. “If you don’t beat him, I will,” said Exley. “And it will be easier on him if it’s you.” “I can’t. I can’t. I’m sorry.” “Very well. But you will watch.” She did watch. And just before Edwin bent over there was still something of the man in him, staring down his father defiantly, staring down the world. But it didn’t last long. And as he struck his son, again, and again, and again, Mr. Exley would glance at Susan to check she was still watching, to check she appreciated what her bad teaching had forced a loving father to do—and she could see that he wished he could beat her as well, that he could put her over his knee and beat her senseless. Susan left Exley Hall the first thing the next morning. She left behind the pink dress, taking it now seemed wrong. She didn’t see any of the family. It was one of the maids who saw her off. She’d never really spoken to the maids, but this one was kindly enough. “And Miss Clara still hasn’t spoken,” she said. “Not a single word, though they do try and coax ’em out. Shock, I shouldn’t wonder.” A taxi took her to the nearest railway station. Because it was Christmas, she had to wait some hours for a train, and she was cold. She found in her coat pocket a letter. Miss Cowley, it said on the envelope, and she recognised the handwriting as Edwin’s. She opened it with strange excitement. She didn’t know what to expect. An apology. Or some words of new tenderness? Inside there were just two words. Something’s coming. In her dreams, the rain stopped. Or, rather, in her dreams she could make it stop. If she only gave up struggling. If she just let things be. But when she woke to her second day at H___ Priory, the rain was still battering hard against the windows. Even Valerie took no pleasure in it today, and when they ran for the school they were drenched from head to foot in an instant. The children in the class were neat and dry, of course. And Susan feared that they would laugh at her when she came into the room looking like a drowned rat. Not a bit of it; and if they harboured any grudge towards her for what had happened yesterday, there was no indication of it at all. They stood to attention when she addressed them; one of them had even left an apple on her desk. “Where is the little girl from yesterday?” Susan asked. She didn’t know what she wanted to say to her. She knew she mustn’t apologise, or show weakness. The little girl wasn’t there. No one seemed to know where she might be, or gave her answer at any rate. Perhaps it was just as well. For the morning they drew pictures and sang roundelays. Before lunch she told them another Arthurian legend; Edwin might have thought that Guinevere and Lancelot was mush, but it was a lovely story, and Susan saw to her satisfaction that even some of the boys’ eyes watered at the telling. She knew she could not avoid the matter forever. And in the afternoon she fetched from the cupboard all the abacuses they had, and distributed them liberally about the room. “Mathematics,” she said. That was all it took. Some boy, some wag, suddenly piped up with the seven times table. He sang it out, bold and confident. Susan opened her mouth to stop him, and then decided she’d have more power if she let him proceed. If only for a little while. Maybe if she’d spoken up then she could have stopped it. Maybe she missed her chance. But as the numbers grew bigger, so more of the children picked up the mantra. By the time they reached fifty-six, all of the boys were at it—by the time they reached ninety-eight, all the girls were at it too. “All right,” she said. “Very clever. That’s enough.” But it wasn’t enough, was it? Because numbers don’t stop at one hundred. “Fifteen times seven is one hundred and five. Sixteen times seven is one hundred and twelve.” And for a moment Susan was floored, it was almost as if she’d forgotten you could get any higher than the little abacuses allowed her! “Nineteen times seven is one hundred and thirty-three. Twenty times seven is one hundred and forty.” And by now the voices were in utter concert, all keeping the same pace exactly. “Please stop,” she said. They didn’t stop. She got out her cane. “You know I can use this,” she said. They didn’t care. Susan stared at them in silence. She put the cane down. The numbers reached seven hundred, and showed no signs of stopping, chuntering on towards the first millennium. Susan left the room and went to get help. She didn’t know whether the nearest classroom would be Miss Bewes’s or Mrs. Phelps’s. On the whole, she was glad that it was Miss Bewes’s. She could at least trust her to want to help, and when she saw Susan through the glass panel door she beamed in delighted surprise and was quite prepared to abandon her own class in an instant. Susan’s pupils were no longer sitting down. By the time Susan and Valerie got to the classroom, they had pushed all the desks and chairs to the back, and now stood in a rough circle. Susan could no longer pick out boys’ voices or girls’ voices—it seemed to her more like a sexless chant, something almost monastic; indeed, there was a cool emotionless to it all that made it sound strangely reverent. Valerie strode into the room, Susan trailed behind her. The children turned to them. “Two hundred and forty-one times seven is one thousand six hundred and eighty-seven,” they informed the teachers. “Sit down! Sit down, all of you, and shut up!” Valerie Bewes raged at them. Susan hadn’t realised Valerie had such fire in her, and for a second she was quite impressed. Only for a second, though; it was quite clear that that the children weren’t going to obey her, or even take any notice of her—they all turned away, and looked back into the circle. Valerie had no further fire to offer. She was spent. “Which one started this?” she asked Susan. “There’s always a ringleader.” It was a boy, Susan knew, but she couldn’t remember which one. Now they were standing up, uniformed from head to foot, they all looked eerily the same. She pointed vaguely at one boy, thought he would do. “Right,” said Valerie. “You’re coming with me.” She grabbed at the boy. He might have struggled, but Valerie’s fat piston arms were strong, and she pulled him out of the circle, pulled him out of the classroom. As soon as he was free, the boy stopped chanting. He looked baffled by this turn of events, and then frightened; he jerked in Valerie’s grasp like a fish on dry land. “What are you playing at?” Valerie demanded to know. But the boy looked at Susan, and gave her one long despairing glance—help me, it seemed to be saying, but help him with what?—and then the boy lashed out, he kicked at Valerie’s shins. Valerie grunted with surprise, and let go. In a trice the boy had rushed back into the classroom, and slammed the door behind him. “The little bastard,” Valerie muttered, and rubbed at her legs—but Susan had no time to waste on her. She was looking through the window at the boy. He was back in the circle now. He was starting to chant. But he’d lost his way. The other children were up to two hundred and eighty-three times seven, he was still only at two hundred and sixty. He croaked and stopped. He looked about, confused, as if woken from a dream. He walked slowly into the middle of the circle. Without missing a beat, as one, the children closed in on him. Susan couldn’t make him out through the press of bodies. And then, soon, too soon, the children parted once more, they stepped back and let the circle widen—and the boy was gone, and no trace of him was left. “Two hundred and ninety-nine times seven is two thousand and ninety-three,” they intoned. “Three hundred times seven is two thousand one hundred.” If three hundred were any sort of landmark they didn’t show it, there was no hint of achievement. On they marched to three hundred and one, and beyond. “Go and get Mrs. Phelps,” said Susan. “You don’t want to involve Mrs. Phelps,” said Valerie. “Not on your second day!” “Go and get her.” Mrs. Phelps looked angry when she arrived. “What is the matter, girl?” And then she looked through the glass door, and listened to the children, and frowned. “One boy has already gone missing,” said Susan. “They ate him,” said Valerie. And that seemed such a ludicrous thing to say that Susan wanted to laugh—but then she realised Valerie was perfectly right. Mrs. Phelps peered at the circle of cannibals coolly. “What would be interesting,” she said at last, “is finding out how high a number they reach.” Susan didn’t know what to say to that. “If you can, make a note of it,” said Mrs. Phelps, and then she walked away, and was gone. Valerie tried to open the door to the classroom again, but pulled away with a cry. The handle was burning hot. And now, yes, they could see there was a certain haze to the room, as if the children were standing at the heart of an invisible furnace. Presently, another boy lost his place. He seemed to stumble, and then couldn’t find his way back into the chant. He gave a sort of smirk, as if to accept the fun was over—and it was such a human thing for him to do, and cut clean through all the madness, and Susan felt that it was going to be all right, whatever this was, it was just a children’s game after all. He walked into the centre of the circle, and he was eaten alive, the jaws of his killers bobbing up and down as the seven times table reached ever higher numbers, they tore into him with mathematics on their lips and not a single one of them broke rhythm and the sound of their calculations was loud and crisp and clear. Some fifteen minutes another child perished: a girl, clearly weaker than the rest, she’d been hesitating for a while, Susan was amazed she had lasted that long. After that, there were no more casualties for several hours, not until it was dark. And the numbers kept on growing, into the tens of thousands, into the hundreds of thousands. She watched the numbers. She watched how beautiful they were, she could hardly tear her eyes off them. Valerie came back for Susan. “We have to go,” she said. “There’s nothing to be done here.” “No.” “You don’t understand! Mrs. Phelps has gone. Her class has gone, my class, all gone. We’re the only ones left!” Susan didn’t know what she meant by gone, she didn’t want to think about that—didn’t need to, they weren’t her class, weren’t her responsibility. “These are my children,” said Susan. “I won’t leave them, not this time.” And until she said those words she hadn’t realised how true that really was. “Then I shan’t leave you either.” And Valerie took her by the arm, hard. “Let go of me,” said Susan, flatly. “Let go, and leave me alone. Or I’ll hurt you.” Shocked, Valerie released her grip. Her bottom lip wobbled. Susan turned back to the classroom window, watched her children play. She heard Valerie go, didn’t see her. Once the children began to tire, then they fell in quick succession. They’d put in a good effort. They had nothing to be ashamed of. And as the numbers continued to multiply, so the children seemed to divide; the greater the number chanted the fewer the children left alive to chant it. They became expert at eating the stragglers without losing time. Swallowing the frail down in the little gasps taken between words, and in three bites. Three bites, that’s all you need, even to consume the very fattest child. The boys were long gone. Four girls were left—then, in a minute, one faltered, and another faltered in response. The two survivors continued to chant in unison for hours, one as soprano, the other’s alto playing descant and giving the song such depth. And the numbers were so vast now, Susan had never dreamed numbers could get so big, or so wonderful—before them mankind seemed like crippled fractions, vulnerable and so very petty and so very very easy to crush. Those numbers—each one took a full ten minutes even to enunciate. The alto stopped. Just stopped. She didn’t seem in any difficulty, one moment she was enumerating, the next she’d had enough. The last little girl ripped her apart. And still, impossibly, she kept the circle, now just a circle of one. She had her back to Susan, and she was still staring into the heart of that circle she was creating, a void at the very heart of herself. Still singing out the numbers—and Susan wanted to tap on the glass and let her know she had won the game, let her know she wasn’t alone if nothing else. But it was still so hot, and the glass had warped with the heat, through it the little girl was distorted and inhuman. At length she reached the final number in the world. And when Susan heard it she knew that it was the final one—ludicrous, but true, she had reached the limit of the seven times table, there was no higher she could go. The handle to the door was cool to the touch. Susan pulled at it. She entered the classroom. The girl didn’t seem to hear her, and it was only when Susan touched her shoulder that she turned around. “Hello, Clara,” Susan said. Clara didn’t reply. “Where’s your brother, Clara?” And Clara didn’t reply, Clara didn’t reply—and of course, she couldn’t reply, could she? She couldn’t speak. Once shy, now struck dumb. But—she had recited all those numbers, the long numbers, all that weight of mathematics had come out of her mouth—she must be able to talk, she would talk, she would tell Susan what she needed to know. Clara gestured that Susan lean forward. She wanted to whisper in Susan’s ear. It came out like a hiss. It was one word. It was an impossible word. It could not be spoken aloud. It had too many consonants, not enough vowels, it was a hateful word, it could not be spoken. It was spoken. It was spoken, it was in Susan’s head now. It was there in her head, and the head tried to fight it, tried to expel it, this word that no human being was ever meant to know, a word that had nothing to do with humanity or any of the physical laws that make up their universe. She felt the ground rush up to meet her, and that was welcome. When Susan awoke she was safe, and lying on her bed, and Valerie Bewes was looking down at her. “Oh, my darling!” said Valerie. “My poor child! Your breathing was very strange, I was worried sick!” Susan’s breathing did feel a little shallow. Breathing was something she’d always done without thought, but now she seemed to have to want to do it. How odd. She sucked air into her mouth, tasted it, blew it out again. “How did I get here?” “Oh, I carried you! Carried you in my arms! If anything had happened to you, I . . . I’ll go and get you some brandy.” “What about the girl?” “I shan’t be long, you just rest,” said Valerie. She left the room. “What about the girl?” Susan called after her, and then realised the girl didn’t matter anymore. She had delivered the message. The girl was done. She did another one of those breaths. It seemed such unnecessary effort. She decided to stop breathing for a while. That felt better. She got up from her bed, went to the window. Through the heavy rain she could see, standing in front of the house, Edwin. He was looking up at her. He raised a hand in salute. She raised hers back, and it clunked awkwardly against the glass. He spoke to her. She couldn’t hear what he said. But it was just one word, and as his lips moved she knew precisely what it was. She whispered it back, that impossible word, the name of her new god. She dimly heard Valerie return. “What are you doing out of bed?” she asked from the doorway. Susan didn’t even look at her, she thrust her hand out somewhere in her direction. She was too far away to reach her, but as her arm moved she was aware of wings and claws as sharp as knives. Valerie gave a quiet little croak, and then shut up at last. She wondered at her arm. Looked at from one angle, it was thin and fleshy and weak. From another, it was something glorious, something of power and great age. She tilted her head from side to side, so she could see it one way then another. It made her laugh. Her laughter was silly and girlish. Her laughter was a roar. She could hear the flutter of wings under her bed as the birds flapped their excitement. Susan left the room, stepping over the spilled brandy, the smashed decanter, the body, and went downstairs. She stepped out into the rain. There Edwin was waiting for her. He was a little boy, but he looked so grown up, she felt so proud of him. He was a little boy, trying to look big before his time. He was a creature of scales and horns and misshapen flesh. She took him by the hand. And, as the dream had promised, she made the rain stop. Or maybe it rained, but she just didn’t feel it any more. Susan looked down at her hand in his, and saw that it was dripping with blood. She saw that Edwin’s hand was sticky with blood too. And slowly, they walked into town.

©2014 by Robert Shearman. Originally published in Fearful Symmetries. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Robert Shearman has written five short story collections, and collectively they have won the World Fantasy Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the Edge Hill Readers’ Prize and three British Fantasy Awards. He began his career in theatre, both as playwright and director, and his work has won the Sunday Times Playwriting Award, the Sophie Winter Memorial Trust Award, and the Guinness Award for Ingenuity in association with the Royal National Theatre. His interactive series for BBC Radio Four, The Chain Gang, ran for three seasons and won two Sony Awards. However, he may be best known as a writer for Doctor Who, reintroducing the Daleks for its BAFTA winning first series in an episode nominated for a Hugo Award. NONFICTION The H Word: What Comes at the End Kristi DeMeester | 1011 words

I am seven and my fingers are streaked with dark earth. With my right hand, I am using a spoon to cut an earthworm into smaller and smaller bits and wondering what it would feel like to be taken apart. I am in our tiny backyard, behind the tinier rental house that could get away with not being called a house at all, and I am digging a hole with a spoon from our silverware drawer. It is one of four spoons, and my mother has given it to me. There are no toy spades, no toy buckets. We are poor, and so I dig my hole with a spoon and pluck worms from their hiding places. The earth is one of the first things to teach me of death. I dig the hole large enough to step inside, but I cannot lie down the way I want to, cannot press my back into the soil and stare up into the sky and forget the shouting coming from inside the house. I don’t understand that my mother’s shrill voice carries its own indiscretions, its own abuses, that it isn’t only my father who has committed sins in the name of abandonment and apathy. I scrape at rocks, turning them over to examine the pill bugs underneath before I mash them flat under my spoon. Here I can control how the horrors play out. I understand the earth, understand how it pushes against me and then finally gives under pressure, parting to let me through. I feel no remorse for the insects I kill, only a kind of cold fascination in the thought that the membrane separating life from death can break so easily. I teach myself how to view horrific things, how to take ownership of them so that the pain I feel in my waking life becomes somehow lessened.

• • • •

I am older, but not old enough yet to understand the world I inhabit. I am waiting for my mother to pick me up from school. One by one, the other children climb into their parents’ cars or minivans. A few toss me sympathetic or confused glances, and I stare hard at the horizon, determined not to show them that I’m embarrassed, that I’m afraid. It will not be the last time my mother forgets about me. Another twenty years will pass before I am angry, before I question how a mother can forget her child. No one sees me when I walk away from the school. No one sees me when I walk to the end of the road and kneel in the dirt. No one sees me crush ants under my palm and dig into the dust until my fingernails break and my fingers bleed. I imagine that my mother is dead. I imagine that she is not. I am not sure which is worse. No one sees me when I start to cry.

• • • •

I am twenty-seven, and I write stories about things under the earth. It has been many years since I discovered my love for horror, but it took me a long time to allow myself to write the things I had carried with me since I went digging for the first time. My fears are all covered in a thin film of earth. What lies under the soil—those unknown possibilities—is bound up with loss. To lose yourself or the ones you love to those dark things you could never understand even though you stood just over them; this is the only fear that squeezes my heart, my lungs, so I cannot breathe. Readers point out these repeated motifs to me, and at first I am surprised. I don’t realize what I am doing. I am only writing the things I’ve kept buried for so long, pulling them up from the dark places of my childhood and examining the truth of them. I weigh out my belief that horror hides inside the fears we’ve carried with us since we were small, and at thirty, I accept it as truth and learn to abide with it. There are other horrors, other childhoods that are not mud-slicked and filled with grit. We read horror, we hold up the mirror, and we peer deep and wonder if what looks back will resemble something we know, if perhaps, it will be worse, but when we find the fear we know, we let it settle like a hard stone in our bellies, and we dare ourselves to look again, to take ourselves a bit further in, a bit further down. This, I feel, is what draws us, inexplicably, to horror. This recognition. We come back again and again to find ourselves and to offer a kind of balm to the shaking children we once were. Then the meaning shifts and changes again. Our worldview expands and the events around us spin into the horror we try to tackle with our fiction. Those old fears, the ones you’ve tried to cover the best you can, become less than the horror we see unfolding in the news or in our political climate. Here, again, I turn to horror to try and make sense of the insensible, and in that way, horror can become more powerful a tool than we ever imagined it to be. It does not simply unearth what we’ve tried to forget, but gives us the means to shed light on the larger things we should fear in the future. And so I lay the girl I once was down in the dirt. I cover her in dust and breathe stories into her ear and tell her that if she wants to close her eyes, that it’s okay. Nothing bad will happen. This is how we come to our horror stories. Quietly. Carefully. Believing that perhaps everything will be fine in the end. But it is a story I am writing, and this, of course, is a lie. There will be horrible things.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kristi DeMeester is the author of Beneath, a novel published by Word Horde, and Everything That’s Underneath, a short fiction collection forthcoming this year from Apex Books. Her short fiction has appeared in Ellen Datlow’s The Year’s Best Horror Volume 9, Year’s Best Weird Fiction Volumes 1 and 3, in addition to publications such as Pseudopod, The Dark, Black Static, and several others. In her spare time, she alternates between telling people how to pronounce her last name and how to spell her first. Find her online at kristidemeester.com. Interview: Josh Malerman Lisa Morton | 7313 words

In 2014, a horror novel by a young writer named Josh Malerman was released by HarperCollins’ Ecco Press imprint to starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews; both publications compared the book—about survivors in a post-apocalyptic America decimated by something that kills those who glimpse it —to the work of Stephen King. Malerman had never been published before, because (talk about dream day jobs!) he’d been touring for years as frontman for the band the High Strung, who scored when their song “The Luck You Got” was chosen as the theme song for the Showtime series Shameless. Since Bird Box, Josh has published an impressive array of short stories, novellas, introductions, and—just released in May—his second novel, Black Mad Wheel (which received a starred review in Library Journal), about a 1950s rock band as they undertake a government assignment to identify a sound that can kill. Forthcoming later this year is the novella collection Goblin, and his next novel Unbury Carol will be released by Del Rey next April. Malerman lives in Michigan with his fiancée Allison Laakko, and he still makes music with the High Strung.

When you were a kid, did you want to be a rock star, a writer, or something else?

I think I was mostly concerned with remaining a kid as long as I could. And while that sounds a bit like something to say, I think most writers of horror and dark fiction probably have maintained their childhood, in some way, for a much longer time than any Fate or Father Time would normally allow. But I am seeing fleeting scenes . . . moments . . . in answer to your question . . . like when I was riding in the car with Dad at midnight and Michael Jackson came on the radio and Dad casually said, “Man, I wish I coulda done something like this.” My heart just sank. Because here Dad was saying he wished he coulda done something other than what he ended up doing. It was the first time I can remember in which either of my parents removed their mask and cape, accidentally or otherwise, and proved themselves to be human. I said to Dad, “Why couldn’t you? Why couldn’t you still?” So, while I may struggle to pinpoint exactly who or what told me that I, like anybody, could grow up to be a writer or a rocker or both, I’m able to recognize that at a very early age I believed any path/goal/ambition was possible for whoever wanted to take it. I once considered myself a militant optimist, back in the days when the High Strung lived on the road, six years and more, with no home base, playing odd gigs, small venues, scant crowds, because I believed I had to be. I somewhat foolishly thought I had to maintain a leviathan optimism in order to keep writing, both books and songs. But a friend, a poet, in Chicago changed that for me when I told him I wanted to write an optimistic horror novel and he responded with, “Isn’t the act of writing at all, every time, optimistic?” And I understood what he meant from top to bottom straight away. And yet . . . that optimism . . . that’s something like maintaining childhood, isn’t it? I’m seeing other moments . . . scenes . . . in answer to your question . . . like when my neighbor friend Dan Baum and I drew comic books . . . like when I tried to write short stories that were more like single paragraphs . . . like when I walked around summer camp counting the books I had to one day write. There’s the one about the woods, I remember thinking, counting on my fingers. And the one about the lake. As if the woods and a lake couldn’t both be in the same story! Ha. You know, it was through writing poems and stories that I ended up in the band in the first place. One day my friend Mark started singing some of my poems while I screwed around on an old organ and that was it, really. I can still smell that day, just like we can all still smell the unbelievable days we’ve had, as if a seismic shift in our self-images actually give off a scent. From there, Mark and I wrote dozens of songs that would eventually become the backbone of the High Strung with Derek, Chad, and Jason. So, while the writing came first, they’ve been entwined since I was about 19, and I’m better for it. And because of that mesh, along with an innate belief that any of us can do anything we want to, it’s almost impossible for me to say that, as a kid, I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. I just wanted to be it all.

At what point did you realize you could make a living doing something creative?

So, the band had been living in New York for a couple years, learning songs, recording them, but only playing a handful of shows. In those days, we were so wrapped up in making albums, or trying to, that playing actual shows wasn’t the main priority. Then we did a small run of three shows in Ohio, that area. On the way back to New York we started talking about how amazing it was, out on the road, even for that short a time. This led to us booking our first real tour, a two- month circle of the country. In those days we didn’t have cellphones and I booked the whole tour from a landline in the loft space we all shared (our “rooms” were divvied up by hanging tapestries . . . still $725 a month each, can you believe that?) I didn’t know what I was doing. Not at all. I would sometimes call a town’s sub shop and ask the punk who answered where the rock bands played when they came to town. The kid working the sub shop would name a place and I’d try to get us a show on or about the time we’d be passing through. It was like building a tower out of toothpicks. The whole enterprise felt real flimsy. But I did it and we did it and once we were out on the road for a couple months, as we were driving back to New York again, we decided to just keep going. At that point it became more like building a bridge as you’re walking across it. And we more or less stayed out on the road for the next six-plus years. Got rid of our apartments, all that. Jumped in with both feet. And it was somewhere in the early days of that run that we understood, hey, we might not be making much money, but we could technically live off the shows. Soon we set it up where we each lived off $10 a day. That was our per diem. You had to make it stretch. Make it work. And as fucked up as that sounds, those days, the Ten Dollar Days, with no cellphones and really no place to be until show time, those days were some of the brightest of my life. I don’t know why exactly, but I’ve never looked at the books or songs with dollar signs in my eyes . . . never felt desperate about selling the pile of books that was growing, growing taller than me, in the van or the bus or eventually in my apartment or home office. Even when I was the brokest guy you’ve ever met (that period lasted for what felt like forever). But at the same time, I blindly believed it was going to work out. I imagined all the books I was writing on the shelves in the bookstores and that was somehow enough for me to not entirely freak out and walk away from a life of so much writing. Writing for me has never been a hobby (that word sounds so frighteningly lazy, so unrelatable), no more so than love is only a feeling or family is just some people that you know.

You wrote more than a dozen novels during the years you were touring with the High Strung. Describe writing a novel while on tour with a rock band.

First things first: whoever is driving gets dibs on the radio, so some days you may have to write that book to the Grateful Dead or The Bangles and it ain’t easy writing a scary scene while Jerry Garcia plays guitar and Bob Weir sings about smiling. But Derek loves to drive and Chad loves to read rock bios and so I pretty much had the passenger seat as a regular gig and I either wrote freehand (I did four books this way, wanna do another one now) or used the computer, hammering away, as we crossed from Illinois to Iowa, from Nevada to California. It wasn’t easy. But I had been trying to write novels for ten years and kept failing; meaning, I hadn’t finished one yet. I even made it 300 pages into one . . . just didn’t know how to end it back then. But I had a breakthrough during a two- month stretch when the High Strung were off the road, after Mark left the band. I was living at Dad’s place for those two months and there was an all-night coffee shop nearby and every night, once Dad and co. fell asleep, I headed out there to write. Maybe I was trying to work through something. Probably I was. And it was at that all-night place that I had my breakthrough, theee breakthrough we all pine for: I finished my first book. Wendy. It remains the most electrifying feeling I’ve ever known. And just because the band was about to hit the road again, I wasn’t about to lose my grip on what I’d learned how to do. So I really had no choice but to write the next one and the next partially or entirely in the van. It was a little bit crazy. But at the time it made a lot of sense: when you’re not driving the van and you don’t have a cellphone to distract you, what are you going to do? You could read, talk, or . . . write a dozen novels. Up to you.

How did Bird Box become the first novel published?

So I started posting online every time I finished another book. I didn’t know anything about publishing or really anything at all other than writing the books and posting, hey, I finished another one, every time I did. A friend of mine from high school and college contacted me, told me he knew of a lawyer who represented authors. Could he send him a book of mine? Yeah, sure, of course he could. But which one? Well, I nervously settled on one and Dave sent it to the lawyer he knew and the lawyer called me and said he’d like to represent me. Told me he had a manager in mind for me, too. I got stoned that night, with the intention of just feeling good about it all. Instead I lost my shit. Freaked out. Felt a freezing cold wave of horror . . . unsure whether or not I was ready for what all would follow. I imagined myself tongue-tied and writer-blocked and useless and ugly and an imposter. And then . . . that feeling passed. And when the stone wore off, I actually got to work. We all did. We worked on a book for about a year and a half together. I rewrote it according to their notes and my own. And just about when they thought it was ready to shop to agents, I stopped the whole process and told them I thought this other book of mine, Bird Box, was a better debut, a better “hello,” a cleaner way to introduce myself to the world. Now, the lawyer and manager, they have nothing to do with the band, and like I said, we’d been going back and forth on another one for eighteen months, but I’ve always seen Bird Box as a black and white book, a Twilight Zone episode, a straight drink. While writing it I didn’t think of it as an apocalyptic story . . . it was more like “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street.” One street, one river, one house . . . something bad is outside. But in order to compress things for Malorie and the housemates, I kinda had to make it a worldwide event. Yet, it was always about Malorie and the kids; I didn’t want to write about the armed forces or the world’s communal reaction to the problem, none of that. For me it was meant to be a very simple, streamlined, black and white experience. That felt like a stronger, more direct, “hello.” So, my manager and lawyer read it and we spent another eighteen months going back and forth on her as well. When we thought she was ready, we shopped her to a literary agent, Kristin Nelson, and a few days later I had my first ever conversation with any agent of any kind. Kristin shopped her shortly thereafter, and here we are.

One of the things I loved about Bird Box was the way it felt like an allegory about how hard it is to live one’s life being afraid of things that can’t be seen (a theme that also appears in the short story “Danny” from the anthology Scary Out There). What inspired that?

In hindsight, Bird Box reads like an inkblot to me. What do you see in the amorphous shape presented to you? What do YOU think the creatures are? While writing it I hadn’t totally planned whether or not to “show” the creatures, but about a third of the way deep, maybe halfway, I finally told myself not to do it. Just don’t do it, Josh! Once that decision was made, I realized that I do have an affinity for movies and books in which the “monster” doesn’t get much screen time. We all reference Jaws and Silence of the Lambs for this and rightfully so . . . Hannibal and the shark feel more like they’re performing in the corner of our eyes, like they’re just out of sight, because we want to see more of them, but aren’t given that. So what might happen if Hannibal wasn’t shown . . . at all? If the shark wasn’t shown . . . at all? Well, now it’s easy to say that would make both those movies suck! Ha. But it’s a fun thing to think about. In “Danny,” when Charles (the “dad”) tells Kelly (the babysitter) that Danny likes to “peer around the corner of doorways . . . make a face at you,” he’s pretty much telling me that, no matter what face a kid might make in reality, the one you’re gonna imagine Danny making by the doorway is a helluva lot worse. I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I once shouted at my mother’s bathroom mirror, shouted for the ghost in the house to show itself, the ghost Mom said was there, and maybe it’s because the ghost didn’t show itself that I’ve got a few stories where the unseen weighs more than the seen. But, you know, there are many tales over here in this office . . . and most of them show the damn monster.

What was the first experience of working with an editor (on Bird Box) like for you?

Glad you asked this. It was incredible, really, as Lee Boudreaux is a brilliant southern spitfire who just added and added to the whole thing. I loved it. I didn’t encounter anything close to a moral dilemma with Bird Box (Why not have the book take place in Taco Bell, Josh!!) Here’s an example of how she helped: in the first draft there were fourteen housemates, rather than the seven we’ve got now. This was good because I liked how little we got to know each of the other characters. They came off like a gallery of freaked out, sad faces, emerging and disappearing into the hallways, the bedrooms, the kitchen, the cellar. It was disorienting, trying to keep track of who was who, and I thought, well, Malorie’s whole world is upside down . . . so why shouldn’t the house be even more so? But Lee explained to me why she thought otherwise, what it could do for Tom, for Felix, for Olympia and Don. I thought about it for all of a few hours and said, yeah, she’s right. Then I set to cutting the number of characters in half. She just did all the things great editors do. And I couldn’t have known that before meeting her.

Now that Bird Box has been optioned for film, will you have a hand in the screenplay? Or even (Bird Box producers, take note!) the soundtrack?

The script is already written. I think it’s five drafts deep? I’m not sure. The fella who wrote the screenplay for Arrival wrote it. Eric Heisserer. Great guy. I met up with him in Los Angeles last time I was out there. We had lunch, talked, said how excited we’d be if the movie got made. And here we are, and the movie’s scheduled to begin shooting next month (mid-September.) I also met up with the director who used to be attached, Andres Muschietti (Mama, It) and he actually did ask me if I was interested in doing the soundtrack. I was kinda floored. So I nervously asked him who else he had in mind and he told me Mica Levi, who did the soundtrack for Under the Skin. Well that happens to be one of the greatest scary movie soundtracks ever and I was like, “Um, look . . . go get her. Definitely go get her first. If you can’t get her . . . then yes, I’d love to.” But Andres is no longer the director and I haven’t heard anything about the soundtrack since. (Note: I’m extremely excited and optimistic about Susanne Bier directing Bird Box. She isn’t from the horror world, and oftentimes, a non-horror artist can do something incredible, unthinkable, with the genre. So, eyes crossed, as we say over here for good luck, and I’m sending her every good vibe I’ve got.)

What are your expectations—and your fears—in regards to seeing your work adapted to film?

The more horror I watch, the more I think the real meat of the matter is in the cinematography and the music. Almost every scary movie I love took real care of both. The look. The music. So . . . I hope these two things are done well with Bird Box. My only real fear, or anything like that, is the concern with whether or not the creatures are shown. Just about anything else can happen but that. I knew when I signed the film rights over that it was all out of my hands at that point, that I was a complete unknown writer with no leverage, and that I’d have to hope it comes out as close to the book as possible. And if it doesn’t mirror the book, well that’s okay too if it’s scary as hell. And now here we are, maybe less than a month out from principal photography, and I’m very optimistic. Thing is, I just can’t wait to see it. And I’m doing my best not to be too precious with it; let them make their movie. I wrote my book. And let’s hope both are great. (Eyes crossed!)

Speaking of film, who were the inspirations for the late ‘50s/early 60s horror filmmakers Gordon Ghastle and Allan Yule in your novella Ghastle and Yule?

At the time I was reading a lot of history of horror films. One book in particular really thrilled me: Italian Horror by Jim Harper. I loved reading all these titles of movies, some I’d seen, some I hadn’t. It struck me that, in the name of liking Harper’s book, it didn’t matter if I’d seen the movies or not! Just reading about who did the makeup, the music, how it was received, that was enough for me on its own. So, that naturally led to writing a novella about fictional films, presented in a nonfiction way. As if the films themselves are the main characters. Goblin is like that, too. The city is the main character. And with Bird Box I might argue that the Unknown stole the spotlight from Malorie and the kids. Come to think of it, to enlarge the answer to one of your earlier questions, I don’t think I’m as interested in the “unseen” as I am the angles by which we might view a horror story. Okay, so recently I wrapped the rough draft for a book about two friends, kids, who are always sent down into the one kid’s basement to play. Through the ceiling they overhear Chris’s parents dealing with what is revealed to be a ghost in the house, something Mom and Dad are obviously very afraid of. Eventually the book becomes an exorcism off-camera, all heard through the basement and, later, other off-camera vantage points. So, like Allan Yule made movies with nary a human being in them, it’s the angle that interests me most. As if we readers are the camera . . . and the narrative tells us what to focus on. In this way, that Italian Horror book really had a big impact on me. Cause it confirmed for me that nonfiction or fiction, real directors or not, I could be thrilled by the lens either way.

Near the beginning of Ghastle and Yule are these paragraphs: “Horror for you isn’t funny. You don’t love horror because you think it represents the fears of the society you live in. You don’t love horror because it excites the imagination. You love horror because you believe it’s possible.” How would you answer a horror fan who responds to this by saying, “But I know it’s not possible”?

I’d say, hey man! Don’t ruin it for me! I believe in this shit! Every word of it. But you know, the narrator, the mutual cinematographer, he’s the one doing the talking, so I’m not sure what he’d say. But I can guess: You say you don’t believe it, but there’s a part of you that still does, when you get scared, truly scared, when the scare reaches that point where it’s no fun anymore . . . that’s the part of you that believes it, still, after all these years, after all the things you’ve heard people say, all the eyes you’ve seen rolled. That deep fear is the proof that reveals, no matter how many times you say otherwise, that you haven’t . . . completely . . . ruled . . . it . . . out . . .

In a 2014 interview you talked about writing a story called Nurse Ellen, which you described as “the story of a soldier in the Korean War who chances upon a place in the woods where all the wars of history are fought at the same time” (the soldier is named Philip). Was that Black Mad Wheel? If so, how did that evolution happen?

Yeah, it sure was. Nurse Ellen was originally written as one of five novellas that made up a book called On the Other Hand, Five Fingers. Ghastle and Yule was plucked from that same book. (I have plans for my favorite of the batch, Merry Impresario.) You know, after Bird Box came out, I had some nineteen novels and a pack of novellas to pick from as the follow up, as book two. I’m always writing something new, too, and I just wasn’t sure which story should come next. So I sent my agent an email with a bunch of briefs. In hindsight, this was the wrong thing to do. I’m a terrible pitcher and every brief I send her sounds like a child describing a “scary” dream he had where maybe something kinda scary happened. But there’s so much more to a book than its brief. If someone pitched you and me some of our favorite books we might not be into the idea. Cause it’s the voice, the mood, the colors, THE WAY IT’S DONE, all that, that’s what blows our minds. But Kristin liked Nurse Ellen and she pitched the idea to Ecco/HarperCollins and they liked it, too. I love ’em all so I said alright, but what I’d accidentally done was set myself up to work in a way I never had before, That is, expanding a novella into a novel. Well, shit, silly me figured, no problem! I got it! I write books after all! But it was hard. The first draft was really just a bloated novella. Then it got better, you know, with each round. It went through many titles (The End of Bright Colors, A Juggernaut’s Sandbox, and F were my favorites) and settings (woods, desert, Korea, Africa) and band mates, too. For me, for a guy who’s written a stack of books, the whole process took way too long. Started to freak me out. I saw a couple articles about Bird Box in which writers asked if “Josh Malerman was ever gonna write another book.” You can imagine how frustrating that was, writing two or three a year for a decade or more now. A House at the Bottom of a Lake helped bridge releases for me, but it was a struggle. Allison kept me grounded, reminded me that this is all incredible, writing books, writing scary books, and that, hey man, you’re at the beginning of a career, Josh, it can’t all be waaa-hooo down a water slide, right? And she was right. And by the end of the process I was glad as hell to have a book that, aside from the present tense and alternating timelines, wasn’t much like Bird Box at all. I’ve always thought that, with albums, a band can either do what they did on the previous album, just with new songs, or they could record something different enough where it sets them up to do whatever they want to on the next one and the one after that. I think Black Mad Wheel opened a door for me, in that way. Made it so that Goblin and Unbury Carol and others that have yet to be written make a lot more sense when viewed as pieces of a canon, a body of work, rather than what a sequel to Bird Box would’ve done.

The pacing in Black Mad Wheel feels very different from that in Bird Box— faster and more frantic. You’ve mentioned listening to horror soundtracks while writing. Did you listen to more rock music while working on Black Mad Wheel?

I pluck albums from the same seemingly endless collection of soundtracks for every book I write now, but that collection changes often, as I’m always walking into UHF and Found Sound here in my neck of the woods, looking for anything new that might’ve come in. That’s all to say that it’s possible I was listening to more amped up soundtracks throughout Black Mad Wheel than what I listened to with Bird Box. I listened to some 50s stuff, too, early rock n’ roll, but I don’t quite see Black Mad Wheel as a 50s book (like, say, Diner is a 50s movie) or even a rock n’ roll book for that matter. Black Mad Wheel is squarely an anti-war anthem to me, a small song but an anthem all the same, and I’ve no doubt that the dark violins I listened to while writing her helped set whatever mood made it onto the page.

Are both Bird Box and Black Mad Wheel really about the horrors of trying to comprehend infinity?

Hmm. Well, Bird Box is for sure. On one level anyway. We know that much. But I think there’s enough of a difference between infinity and a cycle to say no, Black Mad Wheel does not end up addressing the same thing. I definitely see where the question comes from. Philip encounters all the dead soldiers from all the wars, there’s that bit about the soldiers riding the black mad wheel like they would a Ferris Wheel, over and over again . . . and what’s infinity if not a loop into forever? Well . . . that’s the thing. We aren’t capable of contemplating infinity, but we are capable of contemplating a horrible loop, a wheel that turns and turns, history repeating itself, all that jazz. When the man in red tells Philip that technology travels faster than philosophy does, when he goes off on that idea, to me, that’s the meat of Black Mad Wheel. That’s what the whole book is actually about. And Bird Box . . . I wanna make sure I don’t pinpoint that one too finely. Yes, it’s certainly about infinity and what being forced to encounter it might do to you. But it’s also about being afraid of the world beyond your window, and what you see in the Rorschach Test going on outside.

Your first novel centered on sight, and the second—Black Mad Wheel—on sound. Do the senses play a part in more of your novels?

No. And it’s weird that they played a part in the first two. It’s also weird to me that the first three real releases, Bird Box, A House at the Bottom of a Lake, and Black Mad Wheel all build toward seeing or not seeing the “monster.” It’s not necessarily my style, for real! And yet, here we have three stories that are similar in that way. I’ve got a book (blessedly) coming out with Cemetery Dance next Halloween (2018) in which the “monster” is revealed in chapter one and away we go. So, no, there isn’t a conscious focus on the senses, seeing/not seeing, hearing/not hearing, and I sure as shit don’t wanna be the guy to write the smell horror story. If anybody wants that they can go over to my friend Dean’s house. [smile]

When you did readings from Bird Box, you offered blindfolds to the audience and played live music as you read (an amazing feat, by the way!). What are you doing for Black Mad Wheel readings?

Oh, man, these were so exciting. It turns out that one of the perks of living with a fearless fiancée is that she’s gonna say yes to any freaked out performance idea I’ve got. I asked Allison if she’d be into playing Nurse Ellen and, if so, what did she think of doing the scene where Ellen pretends to dance with Philip, essentially dancing alone for a minute or two? Now, this may not sound like a huge to-do to some, but to me? Man, I’m not sure I’d have done it. And here Allison not only said yes, she went and found a vintage 50s nurse’s uniform (hat and all). She pretty much designed the entire stage set. And it was a set, for sure, as I’d say we’re now knocking on the door of actual theater, rather than a reading. When HarperCollins told me I was going to go on a book tour for Bird Box I asked them what I should do and they said, you know, you can stand at a podium, maybe dim the lights, and read. I was like no way and we set out to make the readings an event. With Black Mad Wheel we had props, a cot, outfits, a prepared music playlist (including the High Strung playing “Be Here” live at the book launch) and more. I’ve got a fantasy of opening a horror theater here in the Detroit area, maybe bands could play on nights there wasn’t a play, maybe a small horror bookstore at the front, stacks of scary books you gotta walk through to get to the main theater. I’m way into Grand-Guignol. I mean, we all are. Ten-minute plays, three or four a night? Come on. What horror fan wouldn’t give a foot to experience some of that? So, it’s no surprise to me that the readings are leaning that way, inching closer to straight-up horror theater. I’m thinking (and hoping) that by Unbury Carol, I’m finally just the director, as real actors act out the story across the country.

In the novella A House at the Bottom of a Lake, it’s most important to the teenage lovers—even more important than sex—to hang on to magic. If you did a sequel to that book, would they have succeeded, or would they be disillusioned adults?

Lisa, this is one of my favorite questions of the lot. I wanna say they’ve succeeded, but there’s a side of me, far from a teenager now, that knows better. Maybe, in a sequel, whatever it was that bonded them in that lake returns, and James and Amelia are (willingly) forced to reunite to get rid of the thing in their (adult) lives. I like that. But I also think that, if the novella is really about falling deeply in love (rather than deeply into a lake) then the end suggests they made it to dry land, that their relationship is no longer an amorphous, watery fantasy, that they’re here to stay.

In one interview, you talked about having a fear of losing control, but said that when it comes to writing you’re willing to “truly ‘let go.’” Do you have to clean up some out-of-control stuff in rewrites?

To say the least. The rough draft for Bird Box was close to twice as long as the version that was released. I’m working on book two for Del Rey now and I cut 50k from the rough draft. That’s almost 20k more than A House at the Bottom of a Lake, I mean, that’s a lot, you know. But I don’t mind. Lately I’ve been really taking John Skipp’s Facebook posts to heart, when he writes about not caring about a day’s word count, not wanting to blow through a rough draft, but rather giving his all to each session as they come. Forever I’ve been a full-on pantser, no outlines, go go go, and while that’s yielded some great times, it can also leave you with a rewrite so daunting you don’t get to it for a while. I don’t know. We’ll see, right? But yes, to answer your question, there’s a lot of shit that’s off the rails that doesn’t make it. Now, I’m a huge fan of off-the-rails, don’t get me wrong, but sometimes the out-of-control stuff is actually just awkward writing.

Given how much you love the actual process of writing—and how long you did it before even submitting work—is the business side hard for you?

Sometimes. I don’t love how everyone seems to be looking for that bullet- thriller right now. I realize Bird Box was something like that, but she’s only one of many stories in this office and so it’d feel real weird trying to intentionally pen a thriller. Sounds too much like advertising. Something corporate. My manager is incredible, an open minded brilliant guy about my age who sees things a lot like I do in terms of variety, color, this book or that book, and because he and my agent take care of a lot of the business, I’m somewhat shielded from the dailies on that front. And I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I sometimes even enjoy it. I like meeting with people and talking about the books, the best time to release them, the potential cover art, all that.

Is it important to you to balance novels with short stories and big houses with small presses?

Yes and yes. I’m working on a big book right now. I’m closing in on 500 pages and it’s not halfway done. Meanwhile, there’s a voice that’s nudging me to write some shorts along the way. The greedy writer in me likes shorts simply because I can get more ideas out that way. The cooler writer in me likes shorts because I love to read them. And we (all us horror fans) know how sweet a sweet spot the short story has in the genre. So, yeah, I wanna keep consistently working on a new book, but I wanna make sure I’m peppering in other stories as I go. As far as the presses part of the question: it’s not like I had some master plan heading in, alternating “big” houses and “smaller” ones. I don’t love using the terms “big” and “small” to begin with. Because here my band played for an average of twenty people a night for six-plus years and so . . . are we so “small”? Or are we actually giants for doing it? All I’m saying is, when a book comes out a book comes out and if you sell a million copies or just three, the book has a chance to reach readers once it’s out in the world. The difficulty, the thing I gotta keep my eye on (and I hope I have this “problem” for a long time) is making sure I don’t step on anybody’s toes in either direction. I gotta make sure the releases are spread out far enough so that I’m not eating into one or another. I believe they’re all gonna help each other, all the books, in the end, and I’ll never stop being thrilled when someone tells me they wanna put a book of mine out, big or small. I’m gonna do all I can to say yes to all scenarios that may come my way.

Are the High Strung really working on a double album of science fiction- themed songs? Is that a genre you’d like to write prose in?

Man, I really thought that’s what was on tap but, no . . . it’s turned out to be nothing like that. We are making an album this September, but not how I imagined it was gonna go. Part of that is because a second songwriter has rejoined the band and he and I have been putting together all sorts of songs, making an album’s worth of them. Maybe Mark and I will do the science fiction one next. I hope so. As goes prose . . . I’m not sure. I came close with The Jupiter Drop but just because something happens in outer space doesn’t mean it’s science fiction. Right or wrong, I see myself as a horror writer, it’s what I’ve always identified with, had to do, have done. And while some reviews might say Bird Box or Black Mad Wheel are on the cusp of the genre, that they don’t fit squarely into horror, I see them all, all the stories surrounding me in this very office, as blood-chilling, black-boned horror.

What can you tell us about your next release, Goblin (coming for Halloween from Earthling Publications)?

Well, she went live a few days ago and Paul Miller (the publisher) did a very cool thing in sending out some forty galleys to the first forty or so people who wrote him that they were interested in getting one. So I’ve seen some early reviews. Right now the book is in production and is set to be sent out in October, right around Halloween, which is a horror author’s fantasy, really. Goblin is “a novel in six novellas.” Six stories that take place in the city of Goblin, all in the course of one night. I’m real excited about her. And Paul Miller has been incredible to work with. He’s a horror fan first, so most of our conversations are centered around books we’ve read, books he’s put out, cover art, all that. I just really trust his judgment and I hope to do another with him as soon as I can. But Goblin has the floor for now, and Allison’s cover art pretty much reveals how the book feels to a T.

Is there an art form you haven’t tackled yet that you still want to try?

Yes. I’d love to direct a very scary movie. My manager hinted at the idea of me writing/directing the first book I wrote, Wendy. I hadn’t thought (at all) about doing that, but since Ryan suggested it, I’ve thought of little else. I can really see the movie. I can hear it, too. Cinematography and music, again . . . oh, how I’d love to have my finger on the look and feel of Wendy the movie. I daresay, it might end up requiring a warning from the ushers: Beware! A horror man made this movie! This means he hopes you lose part of your mind during the show . . . this means he hopes you go a little bit mad . . .

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER 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: Cassandra Khaw Sandra Odell | 732 words

“Don’t Turn On The Lights” is both exquisite and delightfully horrific in its variation. Every retelling is a feast of sensory impressions that add to the growing tension of a particular version of the story: “drip, drip, drip;” “the concrete cold against their legs;” “when the air was the stink of piss and flayed meat.” As a writer, what do you feel is the most difficult part of creating a framework of sensory impressions for a story?

God. That’s a, hmm, really interesting question for me. So, like, I was having a discussion with a friend about this, and I tried to explain how I react to stories. Words have textures, tastes to me. Sentences are entire literal flavour palates. Some stories clang. Others whisper. Some seethe with diamond dust, others taste like drowning. And when I’m writing, I’m almost trying to transpose a framework of a meal onto actual text? (Wow. That sounded pretentiously artsy.) But that’s kind of how my brain functions and that, in turn, is the hardest part of the whole equation for me. It’s an imprecise science; I’m trying to materialize something I don’t entirely understand. I’m building up an image out of half- remembered tastes, sounds, and kind of trying to make a diorama of it all. *paws at sky* *puts little Plasticine figures on a pastoral scene* *stares at you*

I loved the opening description of stories as mongrels without pedigree, “that God himself couldn’t tell you which one came first.” What can you tell us about the origin of this story?

I’d been rereading John Horner Jacobs’ Southern Gods for the umpteenth time, I think. And Stephen Graham Jones’ Mongrels. And between the two, I had a little bit of the Americana voice stuck in my throat like a thorn. I’d also been reading urban legends and thinking about how there is always a lot of nuance to every story, how every retelling changes a story a little bit. Every storyteller adds their own flourishes, own little tweaks. Because it’s fiction, isn’t it? No one’s gonna be the wiser. That soup of thoughts eventually came together as the beginnings of this story. I wanted to visit the same legend over and over again, see how many times you can roll it around in your hands and still find a new side, a new possibility. I was angry at the world during that time too; the story’s about how villains hide their cruelty in the foot notes, smooth it all over. How a crime can be altered by its telling and how, sometimes, when you’re angry enough, you’ll hum with its backbeat.

Even at its most gruesome, horror is subtle and often lurks in the shadows of other emotions. Each retelling of the tale calls forth a different emotional resonance: terror; the twin, fear and guilt; satisfaction laced with dark pleasure. When you sit down to write, do you have a specific emotional tenor in mind, or do you coax the story along to see how it grows?

It starts with a tone, yeah. Or rather, a tone comes around by the third sentence or so. I write when the first few lines fall into place and the voice feels “right” to me, if that makes any sense. From there, it’s chasing the dream-image of the idea (so not a plotter, so much a pantser) through its rabbit hole, shaping it as it goes.

July saw the nomination of “Hammers on Bone” for the 2017 British Fantasy Awards. How did such recognition make you feel?

Confused? Elated? Deeply and thoroughly confused and slightly horrified that more than a few people have read my book? But also validated? I’ve seen “Hammers on Bone” on the same list as people like Victor LaValle and Seanan McGuire and I’m like, “What the hell am I doing here?” I swear I keep thinking someone else carefully sent the wrong book to people and that’s how I have a nomination.

Would you have turned on the lights?

If I was mad enough to drag a thing from hell to eat someone alive? Fuck yeah. 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: Joanna Parypinski Erika Holt | 683 words

“We Are Turning on a Spindle” seems to be a retelling of Sleeping Beauty. What about that tale inspired or interested you?

I guess the first thing that struck me is that it’s a story that begs to be retold or re-framed in a less misogynist light. Here is a woman loved only for her looks, who essentially needs to be sexually assaulted in order to be saved. It’s kind of horrible, really, and I thought that horror needed to be brought out somehow, to make it clear that this is not a sweet love story. So I dove into that horror and thought, what if this whole magical situation just went really, really wrong? What if no one ever came to wake her up, for thousands of years? In the original fairy tale, she is kept magically pristine until her waking—not like, say, a coma patient who would have to go through physical therapy after waking up. That was interesting to me because it led me to wonder, what would my sleeping beauty look like, in this universe, where she’s been asleep for so long?

This story is an intriguing blend of genres including science fiction, fantasy, and horror. What is the significance of choosing a space traveler as your protagonist?

I really love speculative fiction that blends genres and plays with our expectations, like fantasy stories that take place in the far-distant future. I knew immediately that I wanted to take the fantastical elements of the fairy tale and put them into a cosmic setting, and if I wanted this place to be imbued with the kind of ancient magic that has all but disappeared in the face of modern technology and science, then my sleeping beauty would have to be dormant and undisturbed on some distant and hard-to-find world. Plus, Earth is so small, nowadays. There aren’t as many mysterious, forgotten, or uncharted pockets as there used to be. So I knew my protagonist would have to travel a lot farther to find something so old as to become mythical. And the literal lengths he’s willing to go to find this supposedly perfect specimen of beauty is a bit telling of that “grass is always greener” mindset, the willingness to give up what we have for some improbable perfection that may not exist. Do you primarily write horror and dark fantasy? What draws you to dark subjects?

Oh yes—occasionally I veer into other territory, but I always find my way back. I can’t stay away from the dark for long. I’ve always found something beautiful, poetic in the macabre, so I tend to seek that out in my writing. I tend toward the mystical, toward those places that Frost would describe as “lovely, dark and deep.”

Who are some of your favorite horror authors?

I think my answer changes just about every time I pick up something new; I have real trouble choosing favorites. For the classics, I lean toward Shirley Jackson, Ray Bradbury, Poe, Lovecraft, etc. More recent writers I’ve been greatly enjoying include Stephen Graham Jones, Josh Malerman, Laird Barron, John Langan, Dan Simmons, Caitlín R. Kiernan, etc. I’ve also been reading some amazing short story collections lately with too many wonderful authors to name —Dreams from the Witch House comes to mind.

What are you working on now?

I’m working on a novel about a decrepit manor on the edge of the Great Dismal Swamp that is haunted by echoes of the past and the future, and a scatterbrained young adjunct professor who discovers through these hauntings that her sister’s unborn son will grow up to be a violent sociopath who transcends time. I also have a completed novel that I’m trying to sell, if only to stop myself from continuing the endless cycle of “hey, maybe I should revise that one more time . . .”

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER Nightmare assistant editor Erika Holt lives in Calgary, Alberta, where she writes and edits speculative fiction. Her stories appear in several anthologies including Not Our Kind, What Fates Impose, and Evolve Two: Vampire Stories of the Future Undead. She is also co-editor of two anthologies from EDGE and Absolute XPress: Rigor Amortis, about sexy, amorous zombies, and Broken Time Blues, featuring such oddities as 1920s burlesque dancers and bootlegging chickens. Find her at erikaholt.com or on Twitter as @erikaholt. MISCELLANY Coming Attractions The Editors | 107 words

Coming up in November, in Nightmare . . . We have original fiction from Will Ludwigsen (“The Zodiac Walks on the Moon”) and Karin Lowachee (“The Summer Mask”), along with reprints by Tamsyn Muir (“The Woman in the Hill”) and Jayaprakash Satyamurthy (“My Saints Are Down”). We also have the latest installment of our column on horror, “The H Word,” plus author spotlights with our authors, a showcase on our cover artist, and the latest fiction reviews from Terence Taylor. It’s another 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. About the Nightmare Team The Editors

Publisher/Editor-in-Chief John Joseph Adams

Managing/Associate Editor Wendy N. Wagner

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Art Director Christie Yant

Assistant Editors Erika Holt Lisa Nohealani Morton

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If you enjoy reading Nightmare (and/or Lightspeed), you might also enjoy these works edited by John Joseph Adams:

ANTHOLOGIES

THE APOC​ALYPSE TRIP​TYCH, Vol. 1: The End is Nigh (with Hugh Howey) THE APOC​ALYPSE TRIP​TYCH, Vol. 2: The End is Now (with Hugh Howey) THE APOC​ALYPSE TRIP​TYCH, 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) Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2017 (with Charles Yu) [forthcoming Oct. 2017] Brave New Worlds By Blood We Live Cosmic Powers 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)

NOVELS and COLLECTIONS

Beacon 23 by Hugh Howey Shift by Hugh Howey Dust by Hugh Howey Bannerless by Carrie Vaughn Sand by Hugh Howey Retrograde by Peter Cawdron Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories by Hugh Howey Creatures of Will and Temper by Molly Tanzer The City of Lost Fortunes by Bryan Camp Upon a Burning Throne by Ashok K. Banker

Visit johnjosephadams.com to learn more about all of the above.