Nightmare Magazine Issue 11, August 2013

Nightmare Magazine Issue 11, August 2013 Table of Contents Editorial, August 2013 How Far to Englishman’s Bay—Matthew Cheney Nightcrawlers—Robert McCammon All My Princes Are Gone—Jennifer Giesbrecht Lost Souls—Clive Barker The H Word: “Nightmare Horror”—Richard Gavin Artist Gallery: Lena Yuk Artist Spotlight: Lena Yuk Interview: Joe Hill (Part 2) Author Spotlight: Matthew Cheney Author Spotlight: Robert McCammon Author Spotlight: Jennifer Giesbrecht Author Spotlight: Clive Barker Coming Attractions © 2013, Nightmare Magazine Cover Art and Artist Gallery images by Lena Yuk. Ebook design by Neil Clarke. www.nightmare-magazine.com 2 Editorial, August 2013 John Joseph Adams Welcome to issue eleven of Nightmare! If you’re a fan of horror movies as well as horror fiction, you might want to check out your humble editor’s podcast, The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy. We did a couple of recent episodes that may be of interest to horror aficionados; the first was Episode 85, which featured our interview with Joe Hill (a two-part transcript of which you can find in this month’s and last month’s issues of Nightmare) along with an in-depth discussion of recent horror movies. Then, in Episode 89, we interview Lauren Beukes, whose new novel is about a time-traveling serial killer, and we follow up that chat with a panel discussion on “psycho killers” in fiction and film. You can learn more about the podcast, and find those episodes, at geeksguideshow.com. And now onto this month’s issue . For our August offerings, we have original fiction from Matthew Cheney (“How Far to Englishman’s Bay”) and Jennifer Giesbrecht (“All My Princes Are Gone”), along with reprints by living legends Robert McCammon (“Nightcrawlers”) and Clive Barker (“Lost Souls”). We also have the latest installment of our column on horror, “The H Word,” plus author spotlights with all of our authors, a showcase on our cover artist, and part two of our two-part feature interview with bestselling author Joe Hill. (Part one can be found in our July issue and on our website). That’s about all I have for you this month, but before I step out of your way and let you get to the fiction, here are a few URLs you might want to check out or keep handy if you’d like to stay apprised of everything new and notable happening with Nightmare: Website: www.nightmare-magazine.com Newsletter: www.nightmare-magazine.com/newsletter RSS feed: www.nightmare-magazine.com/rss-2 Podcast feed: www.nightmare-magazine.com/itunes-rss Twitter: @nightmaremag Facebook: www.facebook.com/NightmareMagazine Subscribe: www.nightmare-magazine.com/subscribe Before I go, just a reminder: Our custom-built Nightmare ebookstore is now up and running. So if you’d like to purchase an ebook issue, or if you’d like to subscribe, please visit nightmare- magazine.com/store. All purchases from the Nightmare store are provided in both epub and mobi format. And don’t worry—all of our other purchasing options are still available, of course; this is just one more way you can buy the magazine or subscribe. You can, for instance, still subscribe via our friends at Weightless Books. Visit nightmare-magazine.com/subscribe to learn more about all of our current and future subscription options. Thanks for reading! 3 John Joseph Adams, in addition to serving as publisher and editor of Nightmare (and its sister magazine, Lightspeed), is the bestselling editor of many anthologies, such as The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, Oz Reimagined, Epic: Legends of Fantasy, Other Worlds Than These, Armored, Under the Moons of Mars: New Adventures on Barsoom, Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, The Living Dead, The Living Dead 2, By Blood We Live, Federations, The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and The Way of the Wizard. He is a six-time finalist for the Hugo Award and a four-time finalist for the World Fantasy Award. He is also the co-host of Wired.com’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Find him on Twitter @johnjosephadams. 4 How Far to Englishman’s Bay Matthew Cheney Max had made the decision that April morning to close up the bookshop and go away for once and for all, but he hadn’t told anyone yet, and he needed somebody to take the cat, so it was a good thing Jeffrey showed up an hour before closing. “I think Carmilla wants to go home with you,” Max said, watching Jeffrey roam, as always, through the military books. Jeffrey didn’t reply. He took a tattered Shooter’s Bible off the top shelf and held it up. “Do you really think this is worth ten bucks?” “Yes,” Max said. “But you can have it for free. And the cat.” “The cat?” “Carmilla.” “For free?” “Book and cat. Hell, take anything else you want, too.” “Are you feeling okay?” “Just fine.” “I hate cats.” “It would do you good to have something to care for, something to be responsible for. And she needs a home.” “But she lives here.” “Well . ” Max sighed. If he had to tell somebody, it might as well be crazy old Jeffrey. They’d known each other since high school—thirty-five years now. Off and on, of course, as their lives took them in different directions, until they both ended up back here in the center of New Hampshire, the middle of nowhere, back where it all began. In school, Jeffrey had been an avowed socialist, class valedictorian, and a pretty good football player, but a knee injury his first year at Duke had ended everything. He left school and wandered through the Midwest for a while, doing occasional work so he’d have enough money for pot, and then somehow or other he ended up back in New Hampshire, landing a job at a machine shop in Rochester, a job he still had. He’d stopped smoking pot a long time ago, and for twenty years now he’d spent every spare cent he had on guns, ammunition, knives, and body armor. Once Max opened the bookstore, he kept his eyes out for books Jeffrey might like, just to make sure he’d come by now and then, just to make sure he’d have someone to talk to. “I’m going away,” Max said. “A vacation?” Jeffrey strolled an index finger across some bindings. “No. Permanent.” Now Jeffrey was listening. Max said, “I need somebody to take the cat. I can’t take her with me.” “What do you mean permanent?” “Today’s my birthday,” Max said. “Happy birthday. But—” “I’m fifty years old.” “No.” “I am.” 5 “No, I mean, you can’t. Happy fucking birthday, buddy, but you’re not going to do it.” “I am,” Max said. “I don’t honestly feel like I have any choice. It’s hard to explain. I feel awful leaving you behind, though. I do.” “No.” “Please take the cat.” Jeffrey threw the Shooter’s Bible to the ground and ran out the front door. Max’s apartment sat above the bookstore, a rambling series of small rooms that had been built sometime around the end of the nineteenth century. He’d bought the whole building with the inheritance he got after his parents died on Christmas Eve twenty-two years ago, when a drunk drove a pickup truck straight into their little Volkswagen Golf on their way home from church. “They’re in a better place now,” the priest told Max at the funeral. Max somehow resisted the overwhelming urge to punch the sanctimonious ass in the face. He clenched his fists, but didn’t raise them; instead, he replied, “They’re not anywhere. They’re dead,” then turned and walked into the cold night and never set foot in a church again. When he first bought the building, he’d been excited to work on it, to repair the fixtures and paint the walls and design the bookstore, which he named The Dusty Cover because he thought any used bookstore worth visiting ought not to set people’s expectations of cleanliness too high. He took great care with the few rare and valuable books that came through, but they didn’t interest him as much as the ordinary volumes did, the stray paperbacks and battered Book Club Edition hardcovers—the books that had truly been used. Loved, even. Within a few years, the store and his apartment both had a sagging, lived-in feel to them, and he had never quite finished painting or retrofitting very much of it. Now the ceilings were cracked and in some places crumbling; the walls looked like a coffee stain; the floors were scratched and soiled; and the air itself seemed to hail from another era. It was all he could have hoped for: a temple of entropy, a bell jar, a tomb. The fluorescent light in the kitchen ceiling had long ago lost its globe. When he turned it on, the light buzzed and flickered. Max opened the refrigerator: a bottle of ketchup, a jar of Dijon mustard, two different bottles of salad dressing, a few slices of turkey, a gallon of milk, a lemon. He closed the fridge door and opened a cupboard: a box of Ritz crackers, a bag of chocolate chip cookies, a granola bar. He put them all on the counter, found a plastic bag from a stash under the sink, and packed the crackers, cookies, and granola bar into the bag. A few cans of Coke sat on top of the refrigerator, and he grabbed those, too.

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