Nightmare Magazine, Issue 79 (April 2019)

TABLE OF CONTENTS Issue 79, April 2019

FROM THE EDITOR Editorial: April 2019

FICTION The Girl and the House Mari Ness The Ballad of Boomtown Priya Sharma The One You Feed Dennis E. Staples Shepherds’ Business Stephen Gallagher

NONFICTION The H Word: Funny as Hell Kevin J. Anderson Media Review: April 2019 Adam-Troy Castro

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS Mari Ness Dennis E. Staples

MISCELLANY Coming Attractions Stay Connected Subscriptions and Ebooks Support Us on Patreon or Drip, or How to Become a Dragonrider or Space Wizard About the Nightmare Team Also Edited by John Joseph Adams

Editorial: April 2019 John Joseph Adams | 108 words

Welcome to issue seventy-nine of Nightmare! Our first new original short is from Mari Ness: “The Girl and the House.” It’s a story guaranteed to make you think differently about gothic novels. Dennis E. Staples gives us a most unusual heart condition in his new short story “The One You Feed.” We also have reprints by Priya Sharma (“The Ballad of Boomtown”) and Stephen Gallagher (“Shepherds’ Business”). Kevin J. Anderson talks about the marriage between humor and horror in the latest installment of our column on horror, “The H Word.” We also have author spotlights with our authors, and a media review from Adam-Troy Castro.

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, an science fiction and fantasy imprint from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He is also the series editor of Best American Science Fiction and 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 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 eleven 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.

The Girl and the House Mari Ness | 1774 words

She is a girl, coming to a house. Not just any house: a large, sprawling mansion, built up from the remains of a ruined abbey, or a shattered castle. One that stands on the edge of a cliff, overlooking the seas, or lost in fog-swept moors, or deep within a rugged forest. A house of secrets, a house of ghosts and haunts. She is alone, or nearly alone, or thinks she is alone. This is not quite as strange as it might sound. In her world, parents die young. Most of her remaining relatives are indifferent, or poor. She has spent some time in a girl’s school, or an orphanage, where for some reason, she has made very few friends—or at least, not the sort of friends that she can ask to help her against ghosts, or murderers. She knows that sometimes girls are locked away. Sometimes they are tossed out into the streets. The ones locked away are often fed. She could be a governess of some sort. Or a companion. Perhaps a distant relative. Not one of the servants, of course—these sorts of stories, she knows, never seem to be about them. Which is odd, in itself. She knows full well that maids and cooks can also be haunted by ghosts, can find themselves in love with the troubled owner or the heir. And the maids are more likely to hear gossip, and to be able to explore the house more openly, as part of their cleaning duties. Especially in a house like this, where the rough tongue of the cook gives them plenty of reasons to avoid the kitchen. Yes, she could almost make this work, as a servant. But she needs a position on the boundaries, where she is not quite part of the household, and yet not quite part of the staff, where her position with the man will be as uncertain as those boundaries. For of course, this house has a man, one of endless fascination and uncertain moods, with a past that no one will talk about—at least, not at first. Indeed, more than one man—at least two, perhaps three. You may well find yourself wishing that she will choose the happier, more stable man, or at least a man less associated with the house. Or a man who tells jokes, though men who tell jokes somehow find themselves avoiding the house, so it is harder to see much of them. Or, when they do not, the joking men visiting houses like these turn out to be murderers, their charm and seeming stability concealing their thirst for blood. It happens, in a house like this. Perhaps she is better off with the moody man trapped by ghosts. Or with one of the women. For the house also has women—some mad, some not. She will find it hard to know who to trust (in part because she will find herself discounting the maids, who are more observant and intelligent than she knows), in part because she will not know, really, which of the women are sane, and which are not. And because she will not meet all of them at once. Some are locked in the attics above, some in the crypts below. Some have locked themselves in. Some do not want to meet her. But she will meet them, one by one. She has secrets to uncover, ghosts to quiet, a house to transform. She cannot—will not—become one of the women locked in the attic, or locked in the crypt. Tempting though that idea is. After all, the hope of finding a room of her own—a room where she could lock the door behind her—was half the point of coming to this house. Again and again, she will find herself fumbling with the keys in her pocket, thinking of locking the door behind her, of breathing air that she can call her own, and never unlocking that door again. But no. She has a house to explore, people to save (that murderer again, not to mention the impatient ghosts), a decision about a man (or, the more she explores the house, and considers the people inside, a woman) to make. She needs to run her hands along its walls and feel its stones, learn which parts are the ruins, and which parts the new stones. She needs to coax out every secret, every ghost, every drop of blood. None of the residents, alive or dead, will help her, of course. Or even can help her, beyond dropping mysterious hints over tea. A tea, she notices, with an odd taste—though no one will want to mention this to the cook, given the difficulty they all had getting any cook to come here at all. Some, certainly, will tell ghost stories, or gossip about others in the house, or mention the various women the brooding man has known. (He has known many. That, the maids will claim, is why he broods—though the opposite, that he has known many because he broods, is equally possible.) The children, adorable though they might be, are too troubled, too fond of weapons. The villagers will tell her of curses, and ask searching questions that she will have trouble answering. The women hidden in the crypts and the attics will not say anything at all. At least, nothing of importance. Nothing recognizable. Not while they remain inside their crypts and attics. No, she will not take any of them on her expeditions. She does not want to be held back by their fears, their eccentricities—all caused, they assure her, by the house. Or by their blood. It happens, in old families, and in houses like this. And she certainly cannot explore with any of the men. Not the cheerful ones, who might be murderers, and certainly not the brooding man, who needs to keep his secrets hidden, and will steer her away from where she must go. Besides, she is spending too much time with the brooding man as it is. The butler is not the sort willing to explore beyond the wine cellars. The other manservants have far too much work to do— the cook keeps increasing the demands on them. Even more, now that she has arrived, apparently convincing the residents that they should, perhaps, consider overlooking the curse on the house and hold a party or two. Perhaps. If the ghosts don’t return. (A pointless if: you can’t return if you’ve never left, and the ghosts never left.) What are the chances, after all, that a dead body will be found at the party, or just afterwards? Surely that sort of thing only happens in books. Yes, a party might well be advisable, of the sort that the house used to have, back before . . . before . . . before the whenever happened, which is so long ago that even the women locked away in the crypts cannot remember it, or when. She can feel the house trembling beneath her fingertips at the thought. Soon, she whispers to the house. Soon. She does not need, of course, to be told to be careful at this party. To be careful of the man of uncertain moods, of the laughing man who has garnered an invitation (is he carrying a dagger? Poison?) Of the nervous looks of the servants, who fear she will ask disconcerting questions about what, exactly, can or should be done about the howls of the ghosts at the party. The moody man suggests hiring more musicians to drown out the sound. Others take it as a sign that perhaps—perhaps—he is throwing off the long shadow of the house at last. Perhaps. She cannot spend too much time pondering that—or even the increasing amount of time she is spending with the brooding man. (Necessary, she tells herself, as well as increasingly enjoyable.) The party is a distraction, she reminds herself. A distraction. Even if a few of the guests drop some tempting bits of gossip. Even if the dead body (they all should have known this was coming; indeed, the shock on most people’s faces is not entirely convincing) is topped with three small silver bells, just like the bells left in her room every Thursday, the bells that no one, and in particular the women locked in the crypts, wish to discuss. Perhaps especially because of the bells. The house is anxious, after all. She can feel it. It has been waiting for someone like her for a long time, longer than most of the residents know. It wants its secrets released, its concealed bodies removed to other places. It wants to live. She needs to use the bells to uncover its secrets, to find its ghosts. To show that yes, one of the cheerful men is a murderer—though not of anyone in this house. To explain the whispers of the ghosts. To let the children know that monsters—true monsters—are not creatures only of their imaginations, or even of this house. To reveal that the women in the attics and the crypts are not mad, only women who have known too many monsters. To prove that just possibly, everyone—particularly that corpse still resting in the garden, covered in silver bells—should have been paying considerably more attention to the cook, to show that this is a story, after all, that did involve the servants. When—not if, she will not think in ifs—this is done, she can let herself change. Let herself grow. Let her fingers sink directly into those stones, into those walls. Let her feet send tendrils down through the floors, down to the crypts below (quite startling the occupants, dead and living alike, giving them a chance to flee). Let parts of the house in turn sink deep into her skin. And when she leaves, as she inevitably will—the city where she grew up still calls to her, after all, and always will—she will take the house and its residents with her. All of the residents, that is, who did not seize the earlier chance to flee: sane, mad, living, dead. All, by then, part of her heart, her bones, her skin, all ready for her to unleash on the world. She will be haunted, yes, and she will never look at silver bells in quite the same way again. But she will have a house set deep within her skin, a strong guard against loneliness—and monsters. And the wisdom to always pay attention to the cook.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Mari Ness worships chocolate, words and music, in no particular order. Her work has previously appeared in Tor.com, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Fireside, Apex, Uncanny, Daily Science Fiction, Strange Horizons and several other publications, including previously here in Nightmare. Her poetry novella, Through Immortal Shadows Singing, is available from Papaveria Press. She lives in central Florida. For more, check out her occasionally updated blog at marikness.wordpress.com, or follow her on Twitter at mari_ness.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight The Ballad of Boomtown Priya Sharma | 6634 words

It’s estimated that in 2011 there were 2,881 semi or unoccupied housing developments in Ireland. There was a time when we put our faith in euros, shares and the sanctity of brick. A time when we bought our books from stores as big as barns and ate strawberries from Andalusia, when only a generation before, they’d been grown on farms up the road. The wide avenues of Boomtown were named for trees when there was grand optimism for growth. Now nothing booms in Boomtown. It’s bust and broken. I miss you. You were a lick of cream. I can still taste you. I walk to the village on Mondays. I pull my shopping trolley the three miles there and back along the lanes. I used to drive to the supermarket, just for a pint of milk, without a thought to the cost of fuel. It doesn’t matter now. I like to walk. Sheela-na-gigs look down on me from the church walls as I pass by. These stone carvings are of women with bulging eyes and gaping mouths, displaying their private parts. These wantons are a warning against lust. Or a medieval stonemason’s dirty joke. The shop’s beside the church. Deceased, desiccated flies lie between the sun-faded signs. There’s a queue inside. I’ve heard all their grumbling about prices and supplies. They decry the current government, the one before, the banks and then apportion blame abroad. Despite the orderly line and polite chatter, I can imagine these women battling it out with their meaty fists if the last bag of flour in Ireland was at stake. We’re not so poor as yet that we can’t afford a veneer of civilised behaviour. I put my face to the glass as the shop owner takes the last slab of beef from the chilled counter and wraps it. I wish I’d got up earlier. I would’ve spent half my week’s grocery allowance to smell the marbled flesh sizzling in a pan. The bell jangles as I push the door open. A few heads turn. A woman leans towards her companion and whispers in his ear. I catch the words blow in. I’m a Boomtown interloper, buffeted by changing fortune. There’s a pause before the man looks at me. His salacious glance suggests he’s heard scandalous stories. I’ve no doubt a few of them recall me from before, when I first came here to talk to them about my book. There was a certain glamour in talking to me. I take my time considering the shelves’ contents while the others pay and leave. There are budget brands with unappetising photos on the cans. Boxes of cheap-smelling soap powder and white bread in plastic bags. I tip what I need into my basket. “I want freshly ground coffee.” I can’t help myself. I’m the Boomtown Bitch. It’s cruel. The shop owner’s never done me any harm. She always offers me a slow, sweet smile. It’s fading now. “We only have instant.” “Olives then.” I want my city living, here in the country. I want delicatessens and coffee bars. Fresh pastries and artisan loaves. She shakes her head. “Anchovies, balsamic vinegar. Risotto rice.” The world was once a cauldron of plenty. “I only have what’s on the shelves.” She’s struggling to contain herself in the face of my ridiculous demands. I sling the basket on the counter where it lands with a metallic thud and slide. There’s a dogged precision in how she enters the price of each item into the till. She doesn’t speak but turns the display to show me the total, waiting as I load my shopping into the trolley. Her refusal to look at me isn’t anger. There’s glimmer of unshed tears. It’s not her fault. It’s yours. It’s mine. I feel sick. Yet another thing that can’t be undone. I try and catch her eye as I hand her a note but she’s having none of it. I want to tell her that I’m sorry. It’s shameful that I don’t even know her name, and now she’ll believe the worst she’s heard and won’t ever smile at me again. She slides my change over the counter rather than putting it into my hand. The bell above the door jangles as I leave.

• • • •

The chieftain stood before the three sisters, flanked by men bearing swords and spears, and said, “This is my land now.” “We lived here long before you came,” they replied. “By what right do you claim it? Where’s your army?” “You can’t own the land, it owns you.” That was the eldest sister. “Rid yourself of such foolish desires.” “No. Everything you see belongs to me.” “Do you own that patch of sky?” the middle born said. The chieftain was silent. “Is that water yours?” That was the youngest. “See how it runs away from you.” “I want this land.” The chieftain stamped his feet. “Look at my torque. Even metal submits to my will.” “You’ll be choked by that gold around your throat.” The eldest stepped forward. “You’re master of ores and oxen, wheat and men alike, but not us. We’re like the grass. We only bow our heads to the wind.” The chieftain looked at them, pale witches in rags with swathes of dark hair, and there were the stirrings of a different sort of desire. The chieftain and his men raped the sisters, one by one. “See,” he said, “I possess everything.” “We are ancient. We are one and we are three.” The youngest covered herself with the tatters of her clothes. “We were there at the world’s birth. We are wedded to the earth. We don’t submit. We endure.” A cold wind came in carrying rain even though it was a summer’s day. “We curse you and your greed.” The middle sibling swallowed her sobs and raised her chin. “It’ll grow so large that it’ll devour you and your kind.” Thunderbolts cracked the sky. “We’ll dog your children’s steps from womb to tomb.” The eldest had the final word. “When their fortune’s in decline we’ll rise again. No one will be spared our wrath. Then we’ll to heal what you’ve rent.” The eldest gathered up the other two and retreated to a place where the hills were at their backs and enfolded themselves in stone.

• • • •

The Three Sisters are a group of three stones that occupy a small plateau on the eastern side of the _____ hills in County Meath. Their history has been retold for generations in the local village of _____. There are several variations of the tale. The one I’ve included here is the most detailed.

• • • •

—Songs of Stones: Collected Oral Traditions of Ireland’s Standing Stones by Grainne Kennedy

• • • •

I drove us from Dublin. You directed. You kept glancing at my legs as they worked the pedals, which excited me. It felt like you were touching me. Sliding your hand between my knees. “Turn right.” The indicator winked. We were on Oak Avenue. “Does this all belong to Boom Developments?” “Yes.” I whistled, wanting you to know I was impressed. “Left here.” Then, “This is Acacia Drive.” There were diggers, trucks, the cries and calls of men. We bumped along the unfinished road. Stones crunched under the tyres and ochre dust rose around us. “Pull over here.” You buzzed, happy amongst the evidence of your success. “I asked the lads to complete some of the houses up here first.” You ran up the road towards a group of men in jeans and T-shirts. The men looked at me when you’d turned away and I could tell they’d said something smutty from the way they sniggered. You returned, carrying hard hats and keys. “Put this on.” I refused to be embarrassed by our audience. I piled up my hair and put my hat on, back arched in mock burlesque. You took my elbow with a light touch, as if unsure of yourself. I liked that you weren’t adept with women when you seemed so proficient at the rest of life. You guided me towards a house. “Here.” You unlocked the door. Our feet rang out on the bare boards. Fresh plaster dried in shades of pink and brown. “This model’s the best of the lot. It’ll be done to the highest spec.” I followed you upstairs. “Huge master bedroom. Nice en-suite too.” It was the view that I admired most. The hills, the open sky was spread out for us. I couldn’t tell you that I’d been here before your burgeoning success scarred the land. That I’d trekked for miles under rotten skies that threatened rain, across open fields carrying my notebook, cameras and a tripod. I didn’t want to spoil the moment by making it anything but yours. You should’ve known though. If you’d looked at the copy of the book I’d given you, my own modest enterprise, you’d have seen. You weren’t interested in history, not the ones of Ireland’s standing stones, not even mine. I was a woman of the past. You were a man of the future. “We could lie in bed together and look at this view.” Your tone had changed from business to tenderness and I was beguiled by the use of we. “Don’t feel pressured. Just think on it. You said you wanted to move somewhere quiet to write.” “I can’t afford this.” “You’re looking to buy outright. This would be yours at cost price.” “Can you do that?” “I’m the MD,” you laughed, “of course I can.” “I couldn’t accept it.” “Grainne, you’d be helping me. Selling the first few will help to sell more. Things snowball. This property will treble in value over the next ten years, I promise.” I didn’t enjoy this talk of values and assets. I did like the prospect of us sharing a bed that was ours. “I’ll think about a smaller one, at full price.” I’d always been careful not to take anything from you. Need’s not erotic. “It’s cost price or nothing. Please, Grainne, it’s the least that I can do for you.”

• • • •

The estate looks normal from this approach. There are cars on drives and curtains at windows. I can see a woman inside one of the houses. She bends down and comes back into a view with an infant on her hip. The portrait makes me wince. Madonna with child. She turns her back when she sees me. I stop at Nancy’s on Oak Avenue, the main artery of the estate. “Have a drink with me.” She ushers me in and shuffles along behind me. Water rushes into the metallic belly of the kettle. I unload her groceries. UHT milk. Teabags. Canned sardines. “Pay me next time.” Nancy snorts and forces money into my palm. “I’ll come with you next week, if you don’t mind taking it slow.” “It’s a long walk.” “Don’t cheek me.” Her spark belies her age. She must’ve been a corker in her time. “I need to take the car out for a run. I’ll drive us somewhere as a treat.” I wonder how long it’ll take the village shopkeeper to forget my tantrum. Longer than a week. Steaming water arcs into one mug, then the other. “Grainne . . .” Her tone changes. “Lads are loitering about up here. Be careful.” When Nancy bends to add milk to the tea, I can see her pink scalp through the fine white curls. “I’m just going to come out and say this.” She touches my hand. Her finger joints are large, hard knots. “You’re neglecting yourself. You’re losing weight. And your lovely hair . . .” I can’t recall when I last brushed it. “You’re not sleeping either. I’ve seen you, walking past at night.” “You’re not sleeping either.” “That’s my age.” Nancy sips her tea. I gulp mine down. It’s my first drink of the day. “You’re all alone up at that end of the estate.” I can’t answer. I’ve been too lonely to realise that I’m alone. “Life’s too sweet to throw away.” Then why does it taste so bitter? She tries again, exasperated by my silence. “What happened up there isn’t my business, but I can’t bear to watch you punishing yourself.” I should be pilloried for my past. I should be stricken with shame, but I can’t tell Nancy that it’s not remorse that’s destroying me. It’s pining for you. “You’re full of opinions.” It comes out as a growl but there’s no bite. “You can stay here anytime. God knows I’ve room enough to spare.” She opens a pack of biscuits and makes me eat one. “Be careful out there on the hills, Grainne. You could turn your ankle and die up there and no one would know.”

• • • •

I kept a well-made bed, dressed with cotton sheets. Worthy of the time we spent upon it. Sunlight moved across our bare bodies, which moved across one another. Hands and mouths roamed over necks, chest, breasts, stomachs, genitals and thighs, stoking a deep ache that only you could sate. Afterward, we lay like pashas on piles of pillows. “I loved you from the first moment I saw you.” “That’s a cliché.” I meant to tease you, but it sounded bitter. “You don’t believe me. You don’t believe anything I say.” “I do.” I did believe you because I felt it too. From that first moment I wanted to open my arms to you. I wanted to open my legs to you. I promise it wasn’t just lust because I wanted to open my heart to you, too. “I’m just someone you sleep with.” “Dan, don’t play games to make yourself feel better.” “You don’t need me, not that way I need you.” “Of course I do.” You thought yourself the more in love of the two of us. Not true. I hated sharing you. I hated not knowing when I’d see you or when you’d call. “You’ve never asked me to leave her.” “Do you want me to?” “Yes.” You paused. “No.” Then: “I don’t know. I don’t love her. I did once. I can’t leave her now. Ben’s still so young. But wait for me, Grainne. Our time will come. I promise.” “Don’t make promises.” “I wish I’d met you first.” I wish it all the time, for so many reasons.

• • • •

The shortcut to Acacia Drive goes through Boomtown’s underbelly. There’s a square that would’ve been a green but now it’s the brown of churned mud. It should’ve been flanked by shops. Some are only foundations, others have been abandoned at hip height. A few have made it to the state of squatting skeletons. Piles of rotted timbers and broken breeze blocks litter the verges. An upturned hard hat is full of dirty rainwater. A portable toilet lies on its side, and I get a whiff of its spilled contents. I flip over a tin sign lying in the road and it lands with a clatter. I clean it with the hem of my shirt. Boom Developments, it exclaims. The symbol’s a crouched tiger, its stripes orange, green and white. I go straight to bed when I get home, leaving my shopping in the hall. The once pristine sheets are creased and grey. I push my nose against the pillowcase but can’t smell you there, only my own unwashed hair. Frustrated, I strip the bed and lie down again. I touch myself in a ferocity of wanting, but it’s a hollow sham that ends in a dry spasm. I’ll not be moved. Not without you. I put my walking boots and coat back on. I feel the reassuring weight of my torch in my pocket. My premium property backs onto open country. I open the gate at the bottom of my garden and walk out to where the land undulates and settles into long summer grasses that lean towards the hills. Out here, away from the estate, nothing’s inert. Buzzing insects stir the grass. The wind lifts my hair and drops it. A chill settles in and I wish I’d worn another layer. I cross the stream, sliding on wet stones and splashing water up my jeans. The stream’s unconcerned. It has places to go. The sun’s sinking fast. The sky is broken by a string of emerging stars as night arrives. The ground rises and I have to work harder until I’m climbing on all fours onto the plateau. The hills crowd around to protect the Three Sisters. This trio of stones are eternal, bathed in sun and rain, steeped in the ashes of our ancestors. They’re more substantial than our bricks and mortar. They’ll sing long after our sagas are exhausted. They outshine our light. The Sisters cluster together. They’re not angular, phallic slabs. Their Neolithic design looks daringly modernist, each shaped to suggest woman-hood. The smallest, which I think of as the youngest, has a slender neck and sloping shoulders. The middle one has a jutting chin and a swell that marks breasts. The eldest has a narrow waist and flaring hips. I touch each in turn. They’re rugged and covered in lichen. I put my ear against them, wanting to hear the sibilant whispers of their myths. I kiss their unyielding faces but they don’t want my apologies for ancestral wrongs. There’s only silence. They wait, of course, for us to abate. I walk back home, not looking down, playing dare with the uneven ground. My torch stays in my pocket. You could turn your ankle and die up there and no one would know. Death comes for me. It’s a white, soundless shape on the wing. A moon-faced barn owl, dome headed and flat faced. I’m transfixed. It swoops, a sudden, sharp trajectory led by outstretched claws. How small have I become that it thinks it can carry me away? I’ve read that owls regurgitate their prey’s remains as bone and gristle. I laugh, imagining myself a mouse sized casket devoid of life. The owl swoops low over the grass and heads for Boomtown. I press my sleeve to my cheek. Dizziness makes me lie down. The long grass surrounds me, reducing the sky to a circle. I don’t know how long I’m there, but cold inflames my bones. Eventually I get up and walk home, coming up Acacia Drive from the far end where the houses are unfinished. The street lamps can’t help, having never seen the light. I’m convinced it’s whispering, not the wind that’s walking through the bare bones of the houses. Now that I’ve survived the menace of the hills and fields, I allow myself my torch. What should be windows are soulless holes in my swinging yellow beam. The door frames are gaping mouths that will devour me. I don’t look at the house but I feel it trying to catch my eye. There’s something akin to relief when the road curves and I see the porch light of my home. It looks like the last house at the end of the world.

• • • •

You were in the shower sluicing away all evidence of our afternoon. Your clothes were laid out on the back of a chair. You were careful to avoid a scramble that might crumple your shirt or crease your trousers. The gush of water stopped and you came in, bare, damp, the hair of your chest and stomach darkened swirls. You’d left a trail of wet footprints on the carpet. You weren’t shy. I enjoyed this view of you. The asymmetry of your collarbones and the soft, sparse hair on the small of your back. My fascination for you endured, as if I’d never seen a man before. “When will they start work again?” By they I’d meant the builders. The estate had fallen silent. No more stuttering engines, no more drills or shouting. You’d been drying your chest. The towel paused, as if I’d struck you in the heart. I cursed my clumsiness. “Soon. There’s been a bit of a hiatus in our cash flow. People are just a bit nervous, that’s all. Everything moves in cycles. Money will start flowing again.” “Of course it will.” My optimism had a brittle ring. You wrapped the towel around your waist in a sudden need to protect yourself, even from me.

• • • •

I wake in the afternoon, having lost the natural demarcations of my day. My cheek smarts when I yawn. I pick at the parallel scabs. My mobile’s by my bed. I’ve stopped carrying it around. You never call. It’s flashing a warning that its battery is low. I ignore its pleas for power and turn it off. I did get through to your number once. There was the sound of breathing at the other end. It wasn’t you. “Kate,” I said. The breathing stopped and she hung up before I could say I’m sorry. You haunt me. I see your footprints on the carpet where you once stood, shower-fresh and dripping. I catch glimpses of you in the mirror and through the narrow angles of partially closed doors. These echoes are the essentials of my happiness. For that fraction of a second, I can pretend you’re here. It’s rained while I slept. Everything drips. The ground’s too saturated to take all the water in. It’s not cleansed Boomtown, just added another layer of grime. From the spare bedroom I can see the street. I put my forehead against the window, savouring the coolness of the glass. I tilt my forehead so I can see Helen’s house, further along the opposite side of Acacia Drive. The other house, the one where it happened, is out of sight, at the incomplete end of the road. It’s defeated me so far. I slip on my boots and snatch up my coat. I shut my front door and freeze, the key still in the lock. Something’s behind me, eyes boring into my back. It waits, daring me to turn. I can feel it coming closer. I make a fist, my door key wedged between my ring and forefinger so that its point and ragged teeth are protruding. It’s a poor weapon, especially as I’ve never thrown a punch in my life. I turn quickly to shock my assailant, only to find it’s a cat shuddering in an ecstatic arch against the sharp corner of the garage wall. It’s not like other strays. The uncollared, unneutered, incestuous brood that roam around Boomtown are shy. This ginger monster’s not scared of anything. It fixes me with yellow eyes and hisses. It bares it fangs and postures. I hiss back but it stands its ground, leaving me to back away down the drive. I find myself at Helen’s, which is stupid because Helen doesn’t live there anymore. The For Sale sign’s been ripped down and trampled on. I walk around the house, looking through windows. It’s just a shell without Helen and her family, but evidence that it was once a home remains. The lounge’s wallpaper, a daring mix of black and gold. Tangled wind chimes hang from a hook by the kitchen door. There’s a cloth by the sink, as though Helen’s last act was to wipe down the worktops. We used to stand and chat as her brood played in the road. When they got too boisterous she’d turn and shout, “Quit your squalling and yomping, you bunch of hooligans! Just wait until your dad gets back.” Then she’d wink at me and say something like, “He’s in Dubai this time. Not that they’re scared of him, soft sod that he is.” I used to get the girls, Rosie and Anna, mixed up. Tom squealed as he chased his sisters. Patrick rode around us on his bike in circles that got tighter and tighter. Patrick. I’m sick of thinking about that day. I’m sick of not thinking about it. Today, I decide, today I’ll go inside the house where it happened. It’s about twenty doors down from Helen’s. The chain link fence that was set up around it has long since fallen down and been mounted by ivy intent on having its way. The Three Sisters are reclaiming what’s theirs by attrition. There are lines of grass in the guttering of Boomtown, wasps’ and birds’ nests are uncontested in the eaves. Lilies flourish in ditches and foxes trot about like lonely monarchs. The Sisters will reclaim us too, our flesh, blood and bones. I stand on the threshold of the past. A breeze moves through the house carrying a top note of mould and piss, then the threatening musk lingering beneath. The house is gutless. One wall is bare plasterboard, the rest partition frames so I can see all the way through, even up into the gloom above. There used to be ladders but they’ve been removed. From the doorway I can see the stain on the concrete floor. It’s a darkness that won’t be moved. The blackest part gnashes its teeth at me. I put a foot inside and then the other. I realise my mistake too late. I’ve already inhaled the shadows. They fill up my nose and clog my throat. I can’t move. I can’t breathe. My lungs seize up. Something’s there. The darkness is moving. The shadow rushes at me and takes my legs from under me. The ginger cat. It watches with yellow eyes as I land on my back. Everything goes black.

• • • •

I roll onto my side and retch. Acidic vomit burns my nose and throat. When I put a hand to the back of my head I find a boggy swelling. My hair’s matted and stuck to my scalp. I stand, test my legs and find them sound. I get away from the house, to the middle of the road, but looking around I see I’m not alone. Company’s coming up the street. A trio of creatures that are neither men nor boys. One throws his empty beer can away and fingers his crotch when he sees me. “You,” he says. He’s skinny, grown into his height but yet to fill out. It occurs to me that he expects me to run. His face is hard. He’s gone past being abused into abusing. “You’re the Boomtown Bitch.” I turn my back and walk away at a deliberate pace. “I’m talking to you.” I know without looking that he’s lengthening his stride to catch me. “Pull down your knickers and show us what all the fuss is about.” My heart’s a flailing hammer. He’s done this before and is looking to initiate his friends, who seem less certain of themselves. I can see him reach out to grasp my shoulder in the far corner of my vision. I strike before he can touch me. I jab at his eyes and rake at his face with dirty claws. I’m a moon-faced owl. I’ll regurgitate his carcass. I’m the feral feline who’ll jab his corpse with my paws. The boy’s screaming now, but I don’t stop. Even a chink of fear will let the others in, and I can’t fend off all three. My would-be rapist retreats. I must put him down before he gathers his wits and tries to save face. I advance, hissing and spitting like the ginger cat. I am crazy, scarred and unkempt, a bloodied scalp and big eyes in the dark hollows of my face. I pick up a brick and run at him and to my relief, he sprints away. They shout from a safe distance, taunts that I’m happy to ignore. I don’t look back as I walk away in case they realise I’m weak.

• • • •

I saw your outline through the glass of my front door. You were wearing your suit, even though it was a Saturday. You weren’t alone. A boy stood before you. Even though you had your hands on his shoulders it took me a moment to realise it was your son. Ben. You were there in the shape of his mouth and chin. The other parts must’ve been your wife. I resented this child, this scrap of you and her made flesh. “Miss Kennedy—” you mouthed sorry at me over Ben’s head “—I’ve come to see you about your complaint over the house.” I wanted to laugh. You were a terrible actor. “That’s good of you.” “Apologies, I had to bring my son. Say hello, Ben.” “Hello.” He squirmed in your grasp. “I had to let you know I’d not forgotten you. Shall we make an appointment for next week?” “Would you both like a drink?” I knelt before Ben, hating him because he was getting in our way. “Would you like to play outside? It’s a lovely day.” I stood up and raised a hand, a plan already formed. “Patrick, over here.” Helen’s brood were on their drive. Patrick cycled over. The bike was too small for him and his knees stuck out at angles. “Meet Ben. Can he play with you?” “Sure.” Patrick sat back on the saddle. He’d no need for deference, being older than Ben and on home turf. The other children stood on the far pavement, waiting to take their cue from their brother. “As long it’s okay with your father, of course.” I couldn’t look at you. Please say yes. My longing was indecent. Even the children would see it. You hesitated. Please say yes. “Ben—” you put a hand on his head “—stay with the other children on this road. Don’t stray.” I could tell that you were proud of Ben and wanted me to see him, but a dull, creeping jealousy stole over me because of the trinity of Dan, Kate and Ben. “This way,” Patrick beckoned and Ben followed, glancing back at you. “I can’t stay long,” you said as I closed the door. We raced upstairs. “Won’t your neighbours wonder when they see Ben? Won’t they guess?” “Who cares?” I didn’t. I was too busy with your belt. There was a sudden shriek of laughter and I stopped you from going to the window by snatching at your tie and pulling you into the bedroom. “Leave them. They’re enjoying themselves. So are we.” You hesitated again and then undressed, your ardour cooled by the tug of parental love. I shoved you, ineffectual considering your size. Your carefully folded clothes enraged me. You’d brought your son to my door. You’d been honest about your life when you could’ve lied, but you’d been a coward and made the decision mine. I shoved you again. You picked me up and threw me on the bed. We grappled and when you understood I meant to hurt you, you held my wrists so I couldn’t mark you with my nails. You didn’t kiss me for fear I’d bite. I wish I’d known it was the final time. I wish we’d taken it slow. I’d have savoured the slip and slide, then the sudden sensation of you inside. You dozed. I watched. Your breathing changed to slower, deeper tones. I treasured the minutiae of you, the banal details that made you real, like how you took your coffee, brushed your teeth, the slackness of your face in sleep. The doorbell rang, a sudden sequence of chimes that struggled to keep up with the finger on the bell. A fist hammered at the door, followed by shouts. It went through my mind that it was your wife, that she’d followed you here spoiling for a fight. Then I recognised Helen’s voice. Its urgency boomed through the hall and up the stairs. Silence. There’d been silence during our post-coital nap. No squeals or calls. I snatched up my blouse, fingers stumbling over the buttons. “Dan.” I reached for my skirt. “Dan, wake up.” You sat up, dazed. “What is it?” Helen, even in panic, saw the flagrant signs. The buttons of my blouse were done up wrong and I was bra-less beneath the sheer fabric. You’d followed me down the stairs with your tousled hair and bare feet. “You’d better come. I’ve called an ambulance.” You pulled on the shoes that you’d discarded by the door. You and Helen were faster than I as she led us to the empty houses. Three of the children were outside one of them. Rosie and Anna were red-faced from crying. Tom sat on the step beside them, staring at the ground. “Stay here,” Helen ordered them, even though it was clear they weren’t about to move. I followed you from light into the shade of the house. It took a few moments for my eyes to readjust. The coolness inside felt pleasant for a second, as did the smell of cut timber. You and Helen squatted by the shattered body on the floor. Ben’s silhouette didn’t make sense, and I had to rearrange the pieces in my mind. His arms had been flung out on impact, but it was his leg that confused me. It was folded under him at an impossible angle that revealed bone, so white that it looked unnatural against the torn red flesh. Ben was a small vessel, his integrity easily breached. “He must’ve fallen from up there.” We looked up towards the eyrie that was the unfinished loft where Patrick perched astride a joist. A ladder spanned the full height of both floors, which is how they must’ve climbed so high. Helen’s husband was at the top, reaching for the whimpering boy. A dark stain crept out from beneath Ben’s head. His eyes stared at nothing. There was an appalling sound. A dog’s howl, the scream of an abandoned child. The keening of something bereft and inconsolable. It grew until it filled the room. I realised it was you. I put a hand on your shoulder and said your name. You shook me off. I wake up on the sofa. It’s early and the grey light of dawn creeps through the parted curtains. Sleep’s not healed me. I smell of spoiling meat. There’s a dull throb in my head, but I can’t locate whether it’s in my eye, my teeth, or somewhere in between. I’m cold and clammy, as if in the aftermath of a drenching sweat. I go to the mantel mirror. There’s enough light now to see that the marks on my cheek are raised, the scabs lifted by lines of pus. I touch one and it gives under gentle pressure, bringing relief and yellow ooze. The back of my head feels like it belongs to someone else. I eat a dry cracker, drink a pint of water and then vomit in the kitchen sink. There’s a pounding now, at a different rate and rhythm to my headache. A drumming that escalates. It’s outside the house. Hooves thunder on the earth. Something’s racing through the grass, running towards the rising sun as if about to engage it in battle. I go out to the road. Someone, perhaps my failed assailants from yesterday, have spray painted filthy graffiti across the front of my house. It doesn’t matter. The wind’s changed and is bringing something much fouler with it. Things left too long without light or laughter. Things nursing grudges and dwelling on outrages for too long. My heart pauses and restarts. The horse’s gallop makes me gasp. Its cadence changes as it hits the tarmac. This nightmare is gleaming black. Its rolling black eyes are wild. It tosses its head about and snorts. I can’t look away. The mare slows to a canter as it approaches, circling me in rings that get tighter and tighter. It’s big, a seventeen hander, heavily muscled. It hits my shoulder on its next pass. When it turns and comes again I have to dodge it to avoid being knocked down. Adh Seidh. A bad spirit. I’d be safe from its malice if I’d led an upright life. It flattens its ears and flares its nostrils, then rears up before me and paws at the air as if losing patience. I try to edge to the safety of my open door but it kicks out again, forcing me to retreat. It follows at a trot. Each step jolts my head but I turn and run. When I shout for help my voice is faint from lack of use. There’s no one to hear it anyway. I try and dart up Helen’s driveway but the horse isn’t confused by my sudden change in direction. It comes around me, right, then left. Lunging at me, kicking out if I stray. Herding me. I’m panting. My chest’s tight and the stitch in my side’s a sharp knife. I want to lie down and die. To let it dance on me until I’m dust beneath its hooves. I’m at the house now. The horse waits beyond the fallen chain link fence in case I try to bolt. I’ve been brought here to atone for my crimes. The only place I can go is that cold, dark hole. Broken beer bottles and rubble crunches underfoot. Kids have been in here since my last visit. I feel hot again. Sweat stings my forehead. The past is too heavy. I can’t carry it anymore. The stain accuses me. It rises from the floor and spreads itself across the wall. It’s absolute, sucking all the light from the room. It smells my guilt and swells, emboldened. Its waiting is over. It’s Ben. It’s Kate. It’s you. It’s all the people I can’t face. It’s the Sisters, taken to the wing. They have hooves and paws studded with claws. They’re done with waiting. They’ve risen up to smother us. They’re not out there on the hills. They’re not walking through the dying summer grass. They’re not lingering by the streams, fingers stirring the water. They’re not out there. They’re in here.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Priya Sharma’s fiction has appeared in venues such as Interzone, Black Static, Nightmare, The Dark and Tor. She’s been anthologized in several of Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year series, Paula Guran’s Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror series, Jonathan Strahan’s The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2014, Steve Haynes’ Best British Fantasy 2014 and Johnny Main’s Best British Horror 2015. She’s also been on many Locus’ Recommended Reading Lists. “Fabulous Beasts” was a Shirley Jackson Award finalist and won a British Fantasy Award for Short Fiction. She is a Grand Judge for the Aeon Award, an annual writing competition run by Albedo One, Ireland’s longest-running and foremost magazine of the fantastic. A collection of some of Priya’s work, All the Fabulous Beasts, was released in 2018 from Undertow Publications. Her website is priyasharmafiction.wordpress.com. The One You Feed Dennis E. Staples | 3896 words

There’s an old Indian saying. And I’m an Indian woman who’s worked at an Indian casino as a waitress for almost ten years. My first and only job, right after I turned eighteen. I’ve flirted with old Indian men to get tips and I’ve put on my most tactful, phone operator voice with old Indian women. The old men couldn’t resist hitting on me or smacking my ass and the old women called me a slut for it. So I don’t give a fuck what old Indians have to say. The talk is all over the casino diner. In between plates of eggs and potatoes drizzled in bacon grease, the patrons are talking about Rose Downwind’s disappearance. The sheriff’s department found her body this morning. The whole town has been watching this case for months, and now there was a collective dread that overtook the hope that so many had clung to against all odds. Hope rarely works in Indians’ favor, but this time felt different because the police were actually doing something about it. Even now, justice could still turn a blind eye to Rose’s murderer, just like Beverly’s. Before I can get back to the breakroom and look up the article, my customers have told me everything I need to know. How Rose’s ex- partner killed her and tried to cover up her death. How he and his cousin tried to dispose of her body by burning her in a shallow grave. I gather a few plates, say thank you to the patrons, and run back to the kitchen with a knot in my chest. There’s an old Indian saying about wolves who live inside us, and every day I feel them pounding in my heart. This news, it’s made my darlings angry.

• • • •

When I work out, I try to get my heart rate to at least 190. Google tells me this is fine when I click on the first article. I know I could push myself harder, well over 200 bpm, but that could be dangerous. And it could kill my darlings. I’ve never liked running in this town. I see women my age jogging all the time, running through the downtown park. Is it safe? Maybe for them. This is a white town, no matter how many Ojibwe or Spanish words they paste on their doorways. When you’re Indian, every neighborhood is gentrified. I don’t jog in Half Lake because I’ve never seen another Native woman like me jogging, and I take that as a warning. Even at the University Fitness Center, I don’t always feel comfortable around the college athletes. I do walk around a lot though, and honestly, the only time I’ve felt unsafe was when a drunk, homeless woman asked me for change. I gave her a dollar. “How about fifty more cents?” she slurred. “I need a buck fifty.” “I’m sorry, ma’am,” I said. “That’s all I had on me.” “God bless you,” the woman said, but she took a step closer to me when she said it. Word to the wise, if I can smell you, you’re too close. If you’re too close, my darlings won’t like it. “God bless you too.” I put on my angelic waitress voice and stared into her eyes. They grew wide and she turned away, said another quiet thank you, and hurried down the sidewalk. I smiled, patted my chest, and said “there, there, my darlings. It’s okay.”

• • • •

The Ojibwe word for strawberry is ode’imin. Heart Berry. It’s related to the Ojibwe word for drum; dewe’igan. Because the beat of the drum is the heartbeat of our nation. Coincidentally, if you do a Google search for heart-healthy foods, you’ll get a picture of various berries in a bowl. I eat Cheerios with ode’iminan almost every morning, after my run. I eat two small bowls, side by side, equal amounts of cereal, milk, and berries as I can manage. I’m eating for three, and I’m not a mom that shows favorites. I love both of my darlings equally. You see, my heart isn’t my own. Inside my ventricles are two beautiful little wolf pups. I imagine them using the walls of my heart as mattresses and that, despite the usually constant flow of blood every second of every day, they are comfortable in there. I tried to be vegan once, but the pups resented me for it and threatened to give me a murmur if I didn’t feed them raw meat. We compromised, and I started to order my steaks medium-well instead of well. They say red meats are bad for your heart, so I try to eat as much Cheerios and strawberries as I can. My piss is practically pure green tea because the label on the box of green tea said antioxidants help the heart, and I drink gallons every day. One time I seasoned a steak with the bag of green tea leaves, though when I told my doctor, after a long pause he said it probably doesn’t work that way. All this to say, I must balance a lot of my choices because there are wolves living inside the mass of tubular flesh that is the hub of my circulatory system.

• • • •

When I’m not working or walking through the town, I’m playing darts with my girlfriend Jeanine at a local dive bar. It’s called Old Fashioned’s, after the drink, and can’t make it for shit. At least, Jeanine says so. I can’t drink, or my darlings will get heartburn. “Just one?” She circles her glass in front of my nose. “You already told me it tastes like shit.” “Shh!” She feigns embarrassment and looks around. “If they hear you, the next one will be even worse.” “I don’t know how that can get worse.” I wrinkle my nose at the smell that wafts from her glass. The smell of alcohol has never appealed to me. Halfway through a game of cricket, two white men walk up to Jeanine and ask if they can join us. The first, a tall and burly guy with a red polo and cargo shorts, I don’t recognize. What I do recognize is the way he is ogling my girlfriend, and then me, and then both of us. The second man, shorter and dirtier, an unkempt beard, a greasy man- bun, and farmer’s flannel, I recognize. The sight and scent of him quickens my heart. My darlings are awake, and they are angry. I am angry. About seven years ago, an older Ojibwe woman named Beverly Besiga was walking home in the early evening on the outskirts of Half Lake. She was out getting a pack of cigarettes and lotto tickets when a young man struck her with his car. She was killed instantly. That man—Andrew, now standing mere feet away from me—was strung out on meth that he bought with money stolen from his grandfather, who just so happened to be a pastor for a local church. His lawyer made sure the court knew that. For the next five years, the man would have to spend a month in jail on the anniversary of the woman’s death. Basically, he got a time-out to think about what he’d done. “Sure!” Jeanine says. “We can end this game, I was winning anyway.” She winks at me and resets the machine. If she hadn’t agreed so quickly, I would have tried to signal her that I didn’t want to play. That I refused to play with a murderer. That I hate when she assumes things are okay with me, like dangling a drink in my face or agreeing to a game before I can say no. I’m sorry, my darlings. Jeanine is right about the Old Fashioned. It tastes disgusting, but I drink two of them before I can bring myself to make small talk with the two men. “Do I know you?” Andrew asks me. “Should,” I say without looking at him. “We went to school together.” My dart hits the triple ring on thirteen. “What’s your name again?” “Beverly.” Jeanine gives me a confused look, knowing I gave him a fake name but not knowing the significance. “Ah that’s it,” Andrew said. “Sorry I forgot.” Me too. For the rest of the game, I avoid talk as much as possible and when we leave, Jeanine tries to understand. “Are you okay?” “No.” I explain why. She struggles with a response, her half-word stutters a mix of anger, disgust, guilt, or something else. “I wish you would’ve told me. I wouldn’t have said yes.” “I know, it’s okay. You couldn’t have known.” Inside my heart, my darlings snarl and bark and pound against their flesh prison and try to get me to attack my girlfriend. I give her a kiss good night at her car, and walk home in the moonlight, wishing that just once, I could let them out.

• • • •

The rumor mill at the diner brings devastation to everyone in the casino. Except the white men. “There’s another pipeline coming through,” an old man says to me while reading the paper. “And we won’t make a damn thing from it!” Back in the mid-aughts, a pipeline was built across Leech Lake and our rez got paid big bucks to let it happen. Now, another is crossing through, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it but protest again. I never made it to Standing Rock. There were too many tales of abuse and brutality. Too much blood, too many tears for me to go. I wasn’t brave enough. Plus, Jeanine didn’t understand and didn’t want me to go. I never expected her to. She’s a daughter of neo-liberal, gun-loving northern Minnesotans. The kind who are nice, sweet, and ignorant in everything except how to make a cream of mushroom casserole and call it a hotdish. Every autumn, Jeanine wears hunter’s orange, kills a deer, and shares her thoughts-and-prayers on Facebook when a school shooting happens, while affirming her beliefs in the second amendment. I gather the customer’s plate and nod along with his comments. “That’s a shame,” I say, not wanting to risk being rude with my true thoughts, even to someone as angry as me. “We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.” But I know what will happen. Every Native woman on this reservation knows what happens. Another rumor from this town, one I know is true. A woman who walks around, mostly near the train tracks where the pipeline was laid, with her shirt tied in a knot below her breasts, sticks out her stomach, and flaunts her large figure in tight leggings. She is mocked by children of the local school. Jokes about her being the Town Hoe, about her weight, about her intelligence. I know this because I heard it in my last few years of high school. Maybe I even joined in with the crowd. This woman has a name. She has a family. She has children. But to the town, she doesn’t even have a face. She only has her body, and the town has overwhelmingly judged her guilty of it. What no one likes to talk about is how she has not been mentally okay since a group of men who worked for the pipeline got her drunk and took her to their hotel room. The first time I heard this story, the person telling it, while sympathetic, said “no one knows what they did to her in there . . . but she’s been like that ever since.” But we know. All the women on this reservation know. When we say no to pipelines, it’s because we are scared for our women.

• • • •

I’m ashamed to admit this, but I love Grey’s Anatomy. It started in high school, when my friends in class wouldn’t stop gushing about someone named McSteamy, but when I finally watched, I only had eyes for the beautiful Latina woman, who in turn was also just learning about her attraction to girls. I cried when she kissed a girl on screen the first time, and cursed loudly when that selfish jerk just up and left her. I’ve been watching ever since. When I get too stressed with the awful world we live in, I like to kick back with some good old-fashioned melodrama. In the middle of an episode about a complicated surgery, I had a sudden idea. When I told my physician about it, he gave me the usual “this woman is out of her mind” stare. “You want . . . open heart surgery . . . to abort two wolves who live in your heart?” “Abort? Who said abort? I said I wanted to take my darlings out.” “Ms. Watersong, have you ever had a psychiatric evaluation?” “No. I care about my darlings too much to risk that.” The doctor inched toward the emergency phone next to the hand sanitizer dispenser. “Doctor,” I said, hoping to distract him before he called security or something. “Have you ever heard this old Indian saying? There’s two wolves that live inside us. One is evil and one is nice. The one you feed is the stronger of the two, something like that?” He slowly shook his head. “Well, it’s a load of bullshit. Probably some mythopoeic men’s movement platitude that some douche on the internet attributed to the Cherokees. But that being said, I’d really like to remove my darlings.” I held my hands over my heart and smiled at him. “Get out.”

• • • •

When I first got my job, I signed up for payroll deductions into a 401(k). $15 from each weekly paycheck, and then $25 on my one-year anniversary. I don’t pretend to be an expert in this shit. A lot of it doesn’t make sense to me. But what I do understand is that after eight years, I’ve built up somewhere like fifteen thousand dollars or more, and because our casino is tribal-owned, I can take out a loan at a 1% interest rate. Just enough to pay for an elective surgery. Jeanine doesn’t come to Fargo with me to meet with the surgeon. She could never understand, even though I explained it to her thoroughly. “Look, I get it.” As if. “You’re upset about the pipeline . . . I know this can’t be easy for you, and I’m going to be here for you no matter what. Just please come to the counselor with me, okay?” The surgeon and his staff don’t believe me, not even when the angiogram shows an irregularity. “It’s my darlings.” “It’s probably just some plaque, Ms. Watersong. We’ll have it out in no time. But can you breathe in and tell me more about your darlings?” “Well,” I say, taking the first inhale of the anesthesia. “There’s this old Indian saying . . . Inside every one of us is two wolves . . .” I hear them all laughing as I mumble out the rest and lose consciousness. When I wake from the surgery, I see a crew of horrified faces and two nurses holding dark blue towels in front of me. “Um . . . Here’s your wolves . . .” the lead surgeon says, just as he falls backward in shock. I hold the bundles in my arms and see my darlings for the first time. They are the size of plastic army men, but full-furred and breathing. Everyone in the room stares at me, either in disgust or amazement, and my darlings let out howls that sound like the whisper of distant wind.

• • • •

Back at home, Jeanine packs her bags and cries hysterically. “I never wanted this! How could you not tell me? What’s wrong with you?” My darlings are the size of baby kittens and have the appetites of full grown pit bulls. I feed them small strips of soft jerky, dipped in a mixture of baby formula and Greek yogurt. “I tried to. You wouldn’t listen.” “You were talking nonsense! How was I supposed to listen to that?” “With your ears. With your heart. I don’t know, with some compassion and understanding?” “I can’t do this!” Jeanine turns around and walks away from me and the wolves. They look up from their meal and turn to the empty door way. The red wolf whines and the white wolf growls. I’ve decided not to give them names. Since I was a kid, society has tried to teach me to the see the world in black and white. In labels and judgements. But I’m an Indian, and that means anything white was probably bad, and judges were corrupt unless you were white. My darlings turn back to their meal and finish. The wolf from my left ventricle is the white wolf. Evil. The wolf on the right is red, with some flecks of gray and black. Good? Depends on who is measuring, I guess. Good for a wolf isn’t necessarily good by human standards. They grow at an alarming rate. Only a week passes by after Jeanine leaves, and by then they are more than half my height when on all fours, and tower over me when standing up. I guess twenty plus years of waiting to grow is catching up to them. I no longer fear jogging in Half Lake now that they are at my side. I know they can run much faster than me, but they don’t change course to chase the geese on the waterfront or chipmunks in the park. Other dogs flip out when they get near, but a slight smile and lowering of ears from the red wolf calms everyone down. The white wolf bows his head when people or dogs pass by, knowing his face might just upset someone. But he never fully lets his guard down. Instead of just the waterfront and downtown, I begin to jog through many neighborhoods, some I’d never have thought to go before. I pass through the rougher parts of town as easily as the gated community and the mini-suburbias on the north side. It could just be my imagination, but I feel like this town is so much safer now that I take long daily runs and walks everywhere. Even the cops are on edge when I’m around, which is admittedly very entertaining. Now that I don’t have to worry about my heart so much, I’ve taken up drinking beer and eating burger baskets on the regular. Unfortunately, most bars don’t allow wolves, so they scurry away into the darkness of the town while I order myself a pint. In the same bar, now single and uninterested in darts, I hear his voice again, loud and clear, coming from the crowd of drunken dart players. I ignore it best I can until I can sense footsteps approaching and his hand taps my shoulder. “Hey. Wolf bitch.” “Excuse me?” I turn to face Andrew. He has the same farmer’s shirt, the same ugly man-bun, the same look of undeserved pride. The air in the bar is thick with the scent of beer, but were it not, I know that the air around me would reek of unwashed everything and motor oil. “The crazy Indian woman going around town scaring kids,” he says. “Gotta tell you, I think it’s fucked up you think you can have those things around just because some old treaty. Why do you people always get special treatment?” I take a sip of my beer, not breaking eye contact with him. “Say her name.” “What?” “Say her name.” “What the hell are you talking about?” “Beverly. Besiga. Say the name of the woman you killed.” The man’s pale face fills with greasy pink rage, and he raises his hand to his chest. He grasps the crucifix around his neck. “That was years ago, you cunt. I’m a different man than I was and I don’t think it’s fair throwing that shit in my face.” I take a large drink of my beer and turn my full attention to him. “There’s this old Indian saying. At least, some claim we said it first. Don’t judge a man without walking a mile in his shoes. If I put on your shoes, Andrew, I think that it can’t be easy having killed someone while high on meth. That must really be hard for you.” A group of men, presumably Andrew’s group, begins to crowd around us. “But then I think about the old woman whose shoes I could never walk in because you killed her. And then I don’t care how you feel. I just know that you’re a piece of shit who got off on a bullshit sentence.” Andrew raises his fists to strike me. I don’t flinch. My heart doesn’t even speed up. But outside, somewhere in the dark of the town, I know they can sense what’s going on. His friends grab his arms and pull him back, try to calm him down, she’s not worth it, bro, and I finish my beer and burger in peace. When I leave around midnight, the wolves join my side again. Both are happy, having caught a rabbit or squirrel in the nighttime. At least, I hope the tufts of fur on their muzzles are small critters and not neighborhood pets. A few blocks from the bar, my darlings growl and turn around. Unsurprisingly, Andrew waited for me to leave and is in the shadows, following. “What do you want?” “I’m not a bad person just because you say I am,” he says. “You got no right to judge anyone.” “You’re certainly more experienced with judges than I am.” “Maybe I think you’re a bad person. I think you’re a danger to the public and someone needs to stop you.” He raises his arm and there’s gun in his hand. The wolves are snarling at my sides, legs bent, ready to attack, but they do nothing without my say so. “Andrew, before you shoot me, can I tell you something?” “You got ten seconds, bitch.” “There’s an old Indian saying. There is a battle between two wolves in every person. One is evil and one is good. And sooner or later, one of them will win.” He points and waves the gun back and forth between the wolves. “Which is which?” I put my hands on my darlings’ foreheads and they stop their growling. “If you value your life, you don’t need to find out.” He hesitates, takes a breath, and lowers the gun. The red wolf lunges forward and rips out his throat.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dennis E. Staples is an Ojibwe author from Bemidji, Minnesota. He is a graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop and the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. His short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction and Yellow Medicine Review. He is an enrolled member of the Red Lake Nation.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight Shepherds’ Business Stephen Gallagher | 6727 words

Picture me on an island supply boat, one of the old Clyde Puffers seeking to deliver me to my new post. This was 1947, just a couple of years after the war, and I was a young doctor relatively new to General Practice. Picture also a choppy sea, a deck that rose and fell with every wave, and a cross-current fighting hard to turn us away from the isle. Back on the mainland I’d been advised that a hearty breakfast would be the best preventative for seasickness and now, having loaded up with one, I was doing my best to hang onto it. I almost succeeded. Perversely, it was the sudden calm of the harbour that did it for me. I ran to the side and I fear that I cast rather more than my bread upon the waters. Those on the quay were treated to a rare sight; their new doctor, clinging to the ship’s rail, with seagulls swooping in the wake of the steamer for an unexpected water-borne treat. The island’s resident Constable was waiting for me at the end of the gangplank. A man of around my father’s age, in uniform, chiselled in flint and unsullied by good cheer. He said, “Munro Spence? Doctor Munro Spence?” “That’s me,” I said. “Will you take a look at Doctor Laughton before we move him? He didn’t have too good a journey down.” There was a man to take care of my baggage, so I followed the Constable to the Harbourmaster’s house at the end of the quay. It was a stone building, square and solid. Doctor Laughton was in the Harbourmaster’s sitting room behind the office. He was in a chair by the fire with his feet on a stool and a rug over his knees and was attended by one of his own nurses, a stocky red-haired girl of twenty or younger. I began, “Doctor Laughton. I’m . . .” “My replacement, I know,” he said. “Let’s get this over with.” I checked his pulse, felt his glands, listened to his chest, noted the signs of cyanosis. It was hardly necessary; Doctor Laughton had already diagnosed himself, and had requested this transfer. He was an old-school Edinburgh-trained medical man, and I could be sure that his condition must be sufficiently serious that “soldiering on” was no longer an option. He might choose to ignore his own aches and troubles up to a point, but as the island’s only doctor he couldn’t leave the community at risk. When I enquired about chest pain he didn’t answer directly, but his expression told me all. “I wish you’d agreed to the aeroplane,” I said. “For my sake or yours?” he said. “You think I’m bad. You should see your colour.” And then, relenting a little, “The airstrip’s for emergencies. What good’s that to me?” I asked the nurse, “Will you be travelling with him?” “I will,” she said. “I’ve an Aunt I can stay with. I’ll return on the morning boat.” Two of the men from the Puffer were waiting to carry the doctor to the quay. We moved back so that they could lift him between them, chair and all. As they were getting into position Laughton said to me, “Try not to kill anyone in your first week, or they’ll have me back here the day after.” I was his locum, his temporary replacement. That was the story. But we both knew that he wouldn’t be returning. His sight of the island from the sea would almost certainly be his last. Once they’d manoeuvred him through the doorway, the two sailors bore him with ease toward the boat. Some local people had turned out to wish him well on his journey. As I followed with the nurse beside me, I said, “Pardon me, but what do I call you?” “I’m Nurse Kirkwood,” she said. “Rosie.” “I’m Munro,” I said. “Is that an island accent, Rosie?” “You have a sharp ear, Doctor Spence,” she said. She supervised the installation of Doctor Laughton in the deck cabin, and didn’t hesitate to give the men orders where another of her age and sex might only make suggestions or requests. A born Matron, if ever I saw one. The old salts followed her instruction without a murmur. When they’d done the job to her satisfaction, Laughton said to me, “The latest patient files are on my desk. Your desk, now.” Nurse Kirkwood said to him, “You’ll be back before they’ve missed you, doctor,” but he ignored that. He said, “These are good people. Look after them.” The crew were already casting off, and they all but pulled the board from under my feet as I stepped ashore. I took a moment to gather myself, and gave a pleasant nod in response to the curious looks of those well-wishers who’d stayed to see the boat leave. The day’s cargo had been unloaded and stacked on the quay and my bags were nowhere to be seen. I went in search of them and found Moodie, driver and handyman to the island hospital, waiting beside a field ambulance that had been decommissioned from the military. He was chatting to another man, who bade good day and moved off as I arrived. “Will it be much of a drive?” I said as we climbed aboard. “Ay,” Moodie said. “Ten minutes? An hour? Half an hour?” “Ay,” he agreed, making this one of the longest conversations we were ever to have.

• • • •

The drive took little more than twenty minutes. This was due to the size of the island and a good concrete road, yet another legacy of the Army’s wartime presence. We saw no other vehicle, slowed for nothing other than the occasional indifferent sheep. Wool and weaving, along with some lobster fishing, sustained the peacetime economy here. In wartime it had been different, with the local populace outnumbered by spotters, gunners, and the Royal Engineers. Later came a camp for Italian prisoners of war, whose disused medical block the Highlands and Islands Medical Service took over when the island’s cottage hospital burned down. Before we reached it we passed the airstrip, still usable, but with its gatehouse and control tower abandoned. The former prisoners’ hospital was a concrete building with a wooden barracks attached. The Italians had laid paths and a garden, but these were now growing wild. Again I left Moodie to deal with my bags, and went looking to introduce myself to the Senior Sister. Senior Sister Garson looked me over once and didn’t seem too impressed. But she called me by my title and gave me a briefing on everyone’s duties while leading me around on a tour. It was then that I learned my driver’s name. I met all the staff apart from Mrs. Moodie, who served as cook, housekeeper, and island midwife. “There’s just the one six-bed ward,” Sister Garson told me. “We use that for the men and the officers’ quarters for the women. Two to a room.” “How many patients at the moment?” “As of this morning, just one. Old John Petrie. He’s come in to die.” Harsh though it seemed, she delivered the information in a matter-of- fact manner. “I’ll see him now,” I said. Old John Petrie was eighty-five or eighty-seven. The records were unclear. Occupation, shepherd. Next of kin, none—a rarity on the island. He’d led a tough outdoor life, but toughness won’t keep a body going for ever. He was now grown so thin and frail that he was in danger of being swallowed up by his bedding. According to Doctor Laughton’s notes he’d presented with no specific ailment. One of my teachers might have diagnosed a case of TMB, Too Many Birthdays. He’d been found in his croft house, alone, half-starved, unable to rise. There was life in John Petrie’s eyes as I introduced myself, but little sign of it anywhere else. We moved on. Mrs. Moodie would bring me my evening meals, I was told. Unless she was attending at a birth, in which case I’d be looked after by Rosie Kirkwood’s mother, who’d cycle up from town. My experience in obstetrics had mainly involved being a student and staying out of the midwife’s way. Senior Sister Garson said, “They’re mostly home births with the midwife attending, unless there are complications and then she’ll call you in. But that’s quite rare. You might want to speak to Mrs. Tulloch before she goes home. Her baby was stillborn on Sunday.” “Where do I find her?” I said. The answer was, in the suite of rooms at the other end of the building. Her door in the women’s wing was closed, with her husband waiting in the corridor. “She’s dressing,” he explained. Sister Garson said, “Thomas, this is Doctor Spence. He’s taking over for Doctor Laughton.” She left us together. Thomas Tulloch was a young man, somewhere around my own age but much hardier. He wore a shabby suit of all- weather tweed that looked as if it had outlasted several owners. His beard was dark, his eyes blue. Women like that kind of thing, I know, but my first thought was of a wall-eyed collie. What can I say? I like dogs. I asked him, “How’s your wife bearing up?” “It’s hard for me to tell,” he said. “She hasn’t spoken much.” And then, as soon as Sister Garson was out of earshot, he lowered his voice and said, “What was it?” “I beg your pardon?” “The child. Was it a boy or a girl?” “I’ve no idea.” “No one will say. Daisy didn’t get to see it. It was just, your baby’s dead, get over it, you’ll have another.” “Her first?” He nodded. I wondered who might have offered such cold comfort. Everyone, I expect. It was the approach at the time. Infant mortality was no longer the commonplace event it once had been, but old attitudes lingered. I said, “And how do you feel?” Tulloch shrugged. “It’s nature,” he conceded. “But you’ll get a ewe that won’t leave a dead lamb. Is John Petrie dying now?” “I can’t say. Why?” “I’m looking after his flock and his dog. His dog won’t stay put.” At that point the door opened and Mrs. Tulloch—Daisy—stood before us. True to her name, a crushed flower. She was pale, fair, and small of stature, barely up to her husband’s shoulder. She’d have heard our voices though not, I would hope, our conversation. I said, “Mrs. Tulloch, I’m Doctor Spence. Are you sure you’re well enough to leave us?” She said, “Yes, thank you, Doctor.” She spoke in little above a whisper. Though a grown and married woman, from a distance you might have taken her for a girl of sixteen. I looked to Tulloch and said, “How will you get her home?” “We were told, the ambulance?” he said. And then, “Or we could walk down for the mail bus.” “Let me get Mister Moodie,” I said.

• • • •

Moodie seemed to be unaware of any arrangement, and reluctant to comply with it. Though it went against the grain to be firm with a man twice my age, I could see trouble in our future if I wasn’t. I said, “I’m not discharging a woman in her condition to a hike on the heath. To your ambulance, Mister Moodie.” Garaged alongside the field ambulance I saw a clapped-out Riley Roadster at least a dozen years old. Laughton’s own vehicle, available for my use. As the Tullochs climbed aboard the ambulance I said to Daisy, “I’ll call by and check on you in a day or two.” And then, to her husband, “I’ll see if I can get an answer to your question.” My predecessor’s files awaited me in the office. Those covering his patients from the last six months had been left out on the desk, and were but the tip of the iceberg; in time I’d need to become familiar with the histories of everyone on the island, some fifteen hundred souls. It was a big responsibility for one medic, but civilian doctors were in short supply. Though the fighting was over and the Forces demobbed, medical officers were among the last to be released. I dived in. The last winter had been particularly severe, with a number of pneumonia deaths and broken limbs from ice falls. I read of frostbitten fishermen and a three-year-old boy deaf after measles. Two cases had been sent to the mainland for surgery and one emergency appendectomy had been performed, successfully and right here in the hospital’s theatre, by Laughton himself. Clearly I had a lot to live up to. Since October there had been close to a dozen births on the island. A fertile community, and dependent upon it. Most of the children were thriving, one family had moved away. A Mrs. Flett had popped out her seventh, with no complications. But then there was Daisy Tulloch. I looked at her case notes. They were only days old, and incomplete. Laughton had written them up in a shaky hand and I found myself wondering whether, in some way, his condition might have been a factor in the outcome. Not by any direct failing of his own, but Daisy had been thirty-six hours in labour before he was called in. Had the midwife delayed calling him for longer than she should? By the time of his intervention it was a matter of no detectable heartbeat and a forceps delivery. I’d lost track of the time, so when Mrs. Moodie appeared with a tray I was taken by surprise. “Don’t get up, Doctor,” she said. “I brought your tea.” I turned the notes face-down to the desk and pushed my chair back. Enough, I reckoned, for one day. I said, “The stillbirth, the Tullochs. Was it a boy or a girl?” “Doctor Laughton dealt with it,” Mrs. Moodie said. “I wasn’t there to see. It hardly matters now, does it?” “Stillbirths have to be registered,” I said. “If you say so, Doctor.” “It’s the law, Mrs. Moodie. What happened to the remains?” “They’re in the shelter for the undertaker. It’s the coldest place we have. He’ll collect them when there’s next a funeral.” I finished my meal and, leaving the tray for Mrs. Moodie to clear, went out to the shelter. It wasn’t just a matter of the Tullochs’ curiosity. With no note of gender, I couldn’t complete the necessary registration. Back then, the bodies of the stillborn were often buried with any unrelated female adult. I had to act before the undertaker came to call. The shelter was an air raid bunker located between the hospital and the airfield, now used for storage. And when I say storage, I mean everything from our soap and toilet roll supply to the recently deceased. It was a series of chambers mostly buried under a low, grassy mound. The only visible features above ground were a roof vent and a brick- lined ramp leading down to a door at one end. The door had a mighty lock, for which there was no key. Inside I had to navigate my way through rooms filled with crates and boxes to find the designated mortuary with the slab. Except that it wasn’t a slab; it was a billiard table, cast in the ubiquitous concrete (by those Italians, no doubt) and repurposed by my predecessor. The cotton- wrapped package that lay on it was unlabelled, and absurdly small. I unpicked the wrapping with difficulty and made the necessary check. A girl. The cord was still attached and there were all the signs of a rough forceps delivery. Forceps in a live birth are only meant to guide and protect the child’s head. The marks of force supported my suspicion that Laughton had been called at a point too late for the infant, and where he could only focus on preserving the mother’s life. Night had all but fallen when I emerged. As I washed my hands before going to make a last check on our dying shepherd, I reflected on the custom of slipping a stillbirth into a coffin to share a stranger’s funeral. On the one hand, it could seem like a heartless practice; on the other, there was something touching about the idea of a nameless child being placed in the anonymous care of another soul. Whenever I try to imagine eternity, it’s always long and lonely. Such company might be a comfort for both. John Petrie lay with his face toward the darkened window. In the time since my first visit he’d been washed and fed, and the bed remade around him. I said, “Mister Petrie, do you remember me? Doctor Spence.” There was a slight change in the rhythm of his breathing that I took for a yes. I said, “Are you comfortable?” Nothing moved but his eyes. Looking at me, then back to the window. “What about pain? Have you any pain? I can help with it if you have.” Nothing. So then I said, “Let me close these blinds for you,” but as I moved, he made a sound. “Don’t close them?” I said. “Are you sure?” I followed his gaze. I could see the shelter mound from here. Only the vague shape of the hill was visible at this hour, one layer of deepening darkness over another. Against the sky, in the last of the fading light, I could make out the outline of an animal. It was a dog, and it seemed to be watching the building. I did as John Petrie wished, left the blinds open, and him to the night. My accommodation was in the wooden barracks where the prisoners had lived and slept. I had an oil lamp for light and a ratty curtain at the window. My bags had been lined up at the end of a creaky bunk. The one concession to luxury was a rag rug on the floor. I could unpack in the morning. I undressed, dropped onto the bed, and had the best sleep of my life.

• • • •

With the morning came my first taste of practice routine. An early ward round, such as it was, and then a drive down into town for weekday Surgery. This took place in a room attached to the Library and ran on a system of first come, first served, for as long as it took to deal with the queue. All went without much of a hitch. No doubt some people stayed away out of wariness over a new doctor. Others had discovered minor ailments with which to justify their curiosity. Before Surgery was over, Rosie Kirkwood joined me fresh from the boat. Doctor Laughton had not enjoyed the voyage, she told me, and we left it at that. After the last patient (chilblains) had left, Nurse Kirkwood said, “I see you have use of Doctor Laughton’s car. Can I beg a lift back to the hospital?” “You can,” I said. “And along the way, can you show me where the Tullochs live? I’d like to drop by.” “I can show you the way,” she said. “But it’s not the kind of place you can just ‘drop by.’” I will not claim that I’d mastered the Riley. When I described it as clapped-out, I did not exaggerate. The engine sounded like a keg of bolts rolling down a hill and the springs gave us a ride like a condemned fairground. Rosie seemed used to it. Passing through town with the harbour behind us, I said, “Which one’s the undertaker?” “We just passed it.” “The furniture place?” “Donald Budge. My father’s cousin. Also the Coroner and cabinet maker to the island.” Two minutes later, we were out of town. It was bleak, rolling lowland moor in every direction, stretching out to a big, big sky. Raising my voice to be heard over the whistling crack in the windshield, I said, “You’ve lived here all your life?” “I have,” she said. “I saw everything change with the war. We thought it would go back to being the same again after. But that doesn’t happen, does it?” “Never in the way you expect,” I said. “Doctor Laughton won’t be coming back, will he?” “There’s always hope.” “That’s what we say to patients.” I took my eyes off the road for a moment to look at her. She said, “You can speak plainly to me, Doctor. I don’t do my nursing for a hobby. And I don’t always plan to be doing it here.” And then, with barely a change in tone, “There’s a junction with a telephone box coming up.” I quickly returned my attention to the way ahead. “Do I turn?” “Not there. The next track just after.” It was a rough track, and the word bone-shaking wouldn’t begin to describe it. Now I understood why the Riley was falling apart, if this was the pattern for every home visit. The track ran for most of a mile and finally became completely impassable, with still a couple of hundred yards to go to reach the Tullochs’ home. Their house was a one-storey crofter’s cottage with a sod roof and a barn attached. The cottage walls were lime washed, those of the barn were of bare stone. I took my medical bag from the car and we walked the rest of the way. When we reached the door Nurse Kirkwood knocked and called out, “Daisy? It’s the Doctor to see you.” There was movement within. As we waited, I looked around. Painters romanticise these places. All I saw was evidence of a hard living. I also saw a dog tethered some yards from the house, looking soulful. It resembled the one I’d seen the night before, although, to be honest, the same could be said of every dog on the island. After making us wait as long as she dared for a quick tidy of the room and herself, Daisy Tulloch opened the door and invited us in. She was wearing a floral print dress, and her hair had been hastily pinned. She offered tea; Nurse Kirkwood insisted on making it as we talked. Although Daisy rose to the occasion with the necessary courtesy, I could see it was a struggle. The experience of the last week had clearly hit her hard. “I don’t want to cause any fuss, Doctor,” was all she would say. “I’m tired, that’s all.” People respect a doctor, but they’ll talk to a nurse. When I heard sheep and more than one dog barking outside, I went out and left the two women conferring. Tulloch was herding a couple of dozen ewes into a muddy pen by the cottage; a mixed herd, if the markings were anything to go by. Today he wore a cloth cap and blue work pants with braces. I realised that the tweeds I’d taken for his working clothes were actually his Sunday best. I waited until the sheep were all penned, and then went over. I told him, “It would have been a girl. But . . .” And I left it there, because what more could I add? But then a thought occurred and I said, “You may want to keep the information to yourself. Why make things worse?” “That’s what Doctor Laughton said. Chin up, move on, have yourself another. But she won’t see it like that.” I watched him go to the barn and return with a bucket of ochre in one hand and a stick in the other. The stick had a crusty rag wrapped around its end, for dipping and marking the fleeces. I said, “Are those John Petrie’s sheep?” “They are,” he said. “But someone’s got to dip ’em and clip ’em. Will he ever come back?” “There’s always hope,” I said. “What about his dog?” He glanced at the tethered animal, watching us from over near the house. “Biddy?” he said. “That dog’s no use to me. Next time she runs off, she’s gone. I’m not fetching her home again.”

• • • •

“A dog?” Nurse Kirkwood said. She braced herself against the dash as we bumped our way back onto the road. “Senior Sister Garson will love you.” “I’ll keep her in the barracks,” I said. “Senior Sister Garson doesn’t even need to know.” She turned around to look at Biddy, seated in the open luggage hatch. The collie had her face tilted up into the wind and her eyes closed in an attitude of uncomplicated bliss. “Good luck with that,” she said. That night, when the coast was clear, I sneaked Biddy into the ward. “John,” I said, “you’ve got a visitor.”

• • • •

I began to find my way around. I started to make home visits and I took the time to meet the island’s luminaries, from the priest to the postman to the secretary of the Grazing Committee. Most of the time Biddy rode around with me in the back of the Riley. One night I went down into town and took the dog into the pub with me, as an icebreaker. People were beginning to recognise me now. It would be a while before I’d feel accepted, but I felt I’d made a start. Senior Sister Garwood told me that Donald Budge, the undertaker, had now removed the infant body for an appropriate burial. She also said that he’d complained to her about the state in which he’d found it. I told her to send him to me, and I’d explain the medical realities of the situation to a man who ought to know better. Budge didn’t follow it up. The next day in town Thomas Tulloch came to morning surgery, alone. “Mister Tulloch,” I said. “How can I help you?” “It’s not for me,” he said. “It’s Daisy, but she won’t come. Can you give her a tonic? Anything that’ll perk her up. Nothing I do seems to help.” “Give her time. It’s only been a few days.” “It’s getting worse. Now she won’t leave the cottage. I tried to persuade her to visit her sister, but she just turns to the wall.” So I wrote him a scrip for some Parrish’s, a harmless red concoction of sweetened iron phosphate that would, at best, sharpen the appetite, and at worst do nothing at all. It was all I could offer. Depression, in those days, was a condition to be overcome by “pulling oneself together.” Not to do so was to be perverse and most likely attention-seeking, especially if you were a woman. I couldn’t help thinking that, though barely educated even by the island’s standards, Tulloch was an unusually considerate spouse for his time. Visits from the dog seemed to do the trick for John Petrie. I may have thought I was deceiving the Senior Sister, but I realise now that she was most likely turning a blind eye. Afterwards his breathing was always easier, his sleep more peaceful. And I even got my first words out of him when he beckoned me close and said into my ear: “Ye’ll do.” After this mark of approval I looked up to find the Constable waiting for me, hat in his hands as if he were unsure of the protocol. Was a dying man’s bedside supposed to be like a church? He was taking no chances. He said, “I’m sorry to come and find you at your work, Doctor. But I hope you can settle a concern.” “I can try.” “There’s a rumour going round about the dead Tulloch baby. Some kind of abuse?” “I don’t understand.” “Some people are even saying it had been skinned.” “Skinned?” I echoed. “I’ve seen what goes on in post-mortems and such,” the Constable persisted. “But I never heard of such a thing being called for.” “Nor have I,” I said. “It’s just Chinese whispers, David. I saw the body before Donald Budge took it away. It was in poor condition after a long and difficult labour. But the only abuse it suffered was natural.” “I’m only going by what people are saying.” “Well for God’s sake don’t let them say such a thing around the mother.” “I do hear she’s taken it hard,” the Constable conceded. “Same thing happened to my sister, but she just got on. I’ve never even heard her speak of it.” He looked to me for permission, and then went around the bed to address John Petrie. He bent down with his hands on his knees, and spoke as if to a child or an imbecile. “A’right, John?” he said. “Back on your feet soon, eh?”

• • • •

Skinned? Who ever heard of such a thing? The chain of gossip must have started with Donald Budge and grown ever more grotesque in the telling. According to the records, Budge had four children of his own. The entire family was active in amateur dramatics and the church choir. You’d expect a man in his position to know better. I was writing up patient notes at the end of the next day’s town Surgery when there was some commotion outside. Nurse Kirkwood went to find out the cause and came back moments later with a breathless nine-year-old boy at her side. “This is Robert Flett,” she said. “He ran all the way here to say his mother’s been in an accident.” “What kind of an accident?” The boy looked startled and dumbstruck at my direct question, but Rosie Kirkwood spoke for him. “He says she fell.” I looked at her. “You know the way?” “Of course.” We all piled into the Riley to drive out to the west of the island. Nurse Kirkwood sat beside me and I lifted Robert into the bag hatch with the dog, where both seemed happy enough. At the highest point on the moor Nurse Kirkwood reckoned she spotted a walking figure on a distant path, far from the road. She said, “Is that Thomas Tulloch? What could he be doing out here?” But I couldn’t spare the attention to look.

• • • •

Adam Flett was one of three brothers who, together, were the island’s most prosperous crofter family. In addition to their livestock and rented lands they made some regular money from government contract work. With a tenancy protected by law, Adam had built a two-storey home with a slate roof and laid a decent road to it. I was able to drive almost to the door. Sheep scattered as I braked, and the boy jumped out to join with other children in gathering them back with sticks. It was only a few weeks since Jean Flett had borne the youngest of her seven children. The birth had been trouble-free but the news of a fall concerned me. Her eldest, a girl of around twelve years, let us into the house. I looked back and saw Adam Flett on the far side of the yard, watching us. Jean Flett was lying on a well-worn old sofa and struggled to rise as we came through the door. I could see that she hadn’t been expecting us. Despite the size of their family, she was only in her thirties. I said, “Mrs. Flett?” and Nurse Kirkwood stepped past me to steady our patient and ease her back onto the couch. “This is Doctor Spence,” Nurse Kirkwood explained. “I told Marion,” Jean Flett protested. “I told her not to send for you.” “Well, now that I’m here,” I said, “let’s make sure my journey isn’t wasted. Can you tell me what happened?” She wouldn’t look at me, and gave a dismissive wave. “I fell, that’s all.” “Where’s the pain?” “I’m just winded.” I took her pulse and then got her to point out where it hurt. She winced when I checked her abdomen, and again when I felt around her neck. I said, “Did you have these marks before the fall?” “It was a shock. I don’t remember.” Tenderness around the abdomen, a raised heart rate, left side pain, and what appeared to be days-old bruises. I exchanged a glance with Nurse Kirkwood. A fair guess would be that the new mother had been held against the wall and punched. I said, “We need to move you to the hospital for a couple of days.” “No!” she said. “I’m just sore. I’ll be fine.” “You’ve bruised your spleen, Mrs. Flett. I don’t think it’s ruptured, but I need to be sure. Otherwise you could need emergency surgery.” “Oh, no.” “I want you where we can keep an eye on you. Nurse Kirkwood? Can you help her to pack a bag?” I went outside. Adam Flett had moved closer to the house but was still hovering. I said to him, “She’s quite badly hurt. That must have been some fall.” “She says it’s nothing.” He wanted to believe it, but he’d seen her pain and I think it scared him. I said, “With an internal injury she could die. I’m serious, Mister Flett. I’ll get the ambulance down to collect her.” I’d thought that Nurse Kirkwood was still inside the house, so when she spoke from just behind me I was taken by surprise. She said, “Where’s the baby, Mister Flett?” “Sleeping,” he said. “Where?” she said. “I want to see.” “It’s no business of yours or anyone else’s.” Her anger was growing, and so was Flett’s defiance. “What have you done to it?” she persisted. “The whole island knows it isn’t yours. Did you get rid of it? Is that what the argument was about? Is that why you struck your wife?” I was aware of three or four of his children now standing at a distance, watching us. “The Flett brothers have a reputation, Doctor,” she said, lowering her voice so the children wouldn’t hear. “It wouldn’t be the first time another man’s child had been taken out to the barn and drowned in a bucket.” He tried to lunge at her then, and I had to step in. “Stop that!” I said, and he shook me off and backed away. He started pacing like an aggrieved wrestler whose opponent stands behind the referee. Meanwhile his challenger was showing no fear. “Well?” Rosie Kirkwood said. “You’ve got it wrong,” he said. “You don’t know anything.” “I won’t leave until you prove the child’s safe.” And I said, “Wait,” because I’d had a sudden moment of insight and reckoned I knew what must have happened. I said to Rosie, “He’s sold the baby. To Thomas Tulloch, in exchange for John Petrie’s sheep. I recognise those marks. I watched Tulloch make them.” I looked at Flett. “Am I right?” Flett said nothing right away. And then he said, “They’re Petrie’s?” “I suppose Thomas drove them over,” I said. “Nurse Kirkwood spotted him heading back on the moor. Is the baby with him?” Flett only shrugged. “I don’t care whether the rumours are true,” I said. “You can’t take a child from its mother. I’ll have to report this.” “Do what you like,” Flett said. “It was her idea.” And he walked away. I couldn’t put Jean Flett in the Riley, but nor did I want to leave her unattended as I brought in the ambulance. “I’ll stay,” Nurse Kirkwood said. “I’ll come to no harm here.” On the army highway I stopped at the moorland crossroads, calling ahead from the telephone box to get the ambulance on its way. It passed me heading in the opposite direction before I reached the hospital. There I made arrangements to receive Mrs. Flett. My concern was with her injury, not her private life. Lord knows how a crofter’s wife with six children found the time, the opportunity, or the energy for a passion, however brief. I’ll leave it to your H.E. Bateses and D.H. Lawrences to explore that one, with their greater gifts than mine. Her general health seemed, like so many of her island breed, to be robust. But a bruised spleen needs rest in order to heal, and any greater damage could take a day or two to show. Biddy followed at my heels as I picked up a chair and went to sit with John Petrie. He’d rallied a little with the dog’s visits, though the prognosis was unchanged. I opened the window eighteen inches or so. Biddy could be out of there like a shot if we should hear the Senior Sister coming. “I know I can be straight with you, John,” I said. “How do you feel about your legacy giving a future to an unwanted child?” They were his sheep that had been traded, after all. And Jean Flett had confirmed her wish to see her child raised where it wouldn’t be resented. As for Daisy’s feelings, I tried to explain them with Tulloch’s own analogy of a ewe unwilling to leave its dead lamb, which I was sure he’d understand. John Petrie listened and then beckoned me closer. What he whispered then had me running to the car. I’d no way of saying whether Thomas Tulloch might have reached his cottage yet. My sense of local geography wasn’t that good. I didn’t even know for sure that he was carrying the Flett baby. I pushed the Riley as fast as it would go, and when I left the road for the bumpy lane I hardly slowed. How I didn’t break the car in two or lose a wheel, I do not know. I was tossed and bucketed around, but I stayed on the track until the car could progress no farther, and then I abandoned it and set myself to fly as best I could the rest of the way. I saw Tulloch from the crest of a rise, at the same time as the cottage came into view. I might yet reach him before he made it home. He was carrying a bundle close to his chest. I shouted, but either he didn’t hear me or he ignored my call. I had to stop him before he got to Daisy. It was shepherds’ business. In the few words he could manage, John Petrie had told me how, when a newborn lamb is rejected by its mother, it can be given to a ewe whose own lamb has died at birth. But first the shepherd must skin the dead lamb and pull its pelt over the living one. Then the new mother might accept it as her own. If the sheep understood, the horror would be overwhelming. But animals aren’t people. I didn’t believe what I was thinking. But what if? I saw the crofter open his door and go inside with his bundle. I was only a few strides behind him. But those scant moments were enough. When last I’d seen Daisy Tulloch, she’d the air of a woman in whom nothing could hope to rouse the spirit, perhaps ever again. But the screaming started from within the house, just as I was reaching the threshold.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Stoker and World Fantasy Award nominee, winner of British Fantasy and International Horror Guild Awards for his short fiction, Stephen Gallagher is both a novelist and a creator of primetime miniseries and episodic television. Beginning his TV career on the BBC’s Doctor Who, in the US he was lead writer on NBC’s Crusoe and creator of CBS Television’s Eleventh Hour. His fifteen novels include Chimera, Oktober, and Valley of Lights. He’s the creator of Sebastian Becker, Special Investigator to the Lord Chancellor’s Visitor in Lunacy, in a series of novels that includes The Kingdom of Bones, The Bedlam Detective, and The Authentic William James.

The H Word: Funny as Hell Kevin J. Anderson | 962 words

I like visceral, bone-chilling horror as much as the next psycho. I relish the intensity of Silence of the Lambs or The Shining, or nail-biters like Halloween or Dean Koontz’s Watchers. But one of my favorite scenes in any suspense movie comes from Pulp Fiction; John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson with a young kid hostage in the back seat of their car. Travolta and Jackson are arguing about something utterly inane, and Travolta turns around, forgetting he has a loaded gun in his hand. He asks the kid for his opinion . . . and accidentally blows his head off. Shocking, completely unexpected, and unspeakably hilarious. Even though it may be uncomfortable to admit, there’s an intimate connection between horror and humor, where complete silliness can be the spoonful of sugar to make the violent, bloody medicine of horror go down. There’s a long tradition of horror that overtly mingles chills with comedy. Think of The Addams Family or The Munsters, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Army of Darkness. As a kid, I was a big fan of the goofy animated movie Mad Monster Party, which I tried to emulate when I wrote the comic series Grumpy Old Monsters for IDW, about a toothless Dracula, a werewolf with male-pattern baldness, a decrepit mummy, and an unraveling Frankenstein monster who all break out of the Rest In Peace retirement home in order to rescue Castle Frankenstein from evil real-estate developers. It was so silly, my wife and I had a blast writing it. When the president of the Horror Writers Association asked me to develop an original HWA anthology, I chose humor and horror as my theme. No constraints other than that the stories had to be horror, and funny. The submissions poured in. Blood Lite was extremely successful, followed by Blood Lite II: Overbite and Blood Lite III: Aftertaste. While watching a succession of grim and gut-wrenching zombie apocalypse stories—The Walking Dead, World War Z, 28 Days Later, Call Me Legend—I got a little tired of the bloody and jarringly violent fare. Exhausted, I wondered if it wasn’t time for a Spaceballs equivalent in the genre. I wanted a refreshing take on zombies, even if I had to write it myself. Thus, Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I. was born. I imagined a world where all the legendary monsters returned (due to an unusual alignment of planets, with a virgin’s blood spilled on the pages of the Necronomicon, no matter that the blood came from a paper cut, and the virgin was a forty-year-old mousy librarian). In a world like that, with all the monsters just trying to get through every day, I imagined they would eventually have mundane problems like the rest of us— divorces, lawsuits, missing persons, etc . . . and that would provide plenty of job security for a private eye willing to work in the Unnatural Quarter. Dan Chambeaux hangs his shingle and takes on bizarre clients, until he is murdered during an investigation. But he comes back from the dead and goes back on the case, serving as the Quarter’s best-known zombie P.I. The situations and characters in the Dan Shamble series have intrinsic humor. I teamed him up with a bleeding-heart human lawyer who wants justice for monsters, and a beautiful, if ectoplasmic, ghost girlfriend. Then I added an abrasive human cop, Officer Toby McGoohan (McGoo), who got in trouble for telling politically incorrect jokes and was transferred to the Unnatural Quarter, where it’s okay to make fun of monsters. Together, they encounter the best and worst that unnaturals (and humans) have to offer: a mummy suing to be emancipated from the museum because he is a person, dammit!, not property; or a woman seeking a divorce from a newly turned werewolf because her husband is “not the man she married”; a skittish vampire in fear for his life because he sees pointy wooden stakes everywhere. After pages of stupid puns (“So, Shamble, you’re dead and you’re a private detective. Does that mean we should call you a ‘stiff dick’?”) and terrible jokes (“What goes Ha, Ha, Ha . . . thump? A zombie laughing his head off.”), when the reader gets to the truly horrific parts of werewolves being scalped in the streets, victims torn apart by demon-possessed feral chickens, hell demons decorating their apartments with freshly extracted human entrails, the impact is even more intense, but palatable, because the other parts are deceptively silly. The shock of the real horror is balanced out by the humor. I’ve written straight, intense horror, been nominated for the Bram Stoker Award, and I’m also well known for sprawling space operas and epic fantasies. Sometimes, though, I just like to be funny . . . even stupid. The Dan Shamble adventures are downright slapstick. He prides himself in being “well preserved” and hates those disappointing examples of rotting, lurching zombies with a craving for brains. The series gives me an opportunity for dark humor, ridiculous humor, puns and pratfalls. But when dealing with murders, prejudice, racial inequality, abuse, corporate corruption, and gross intolerance, sometimes the best delivery system is through spoofs and snickers. I’ve done five novels and two story collections so far, and I plan on many more. I like to be scared, and I like to laugh. What’s wrong with both?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kevin J. Anderson has published more than 160 books, 56 of which have been national or international bestsellers. He has written numerous novels in the Star Wars, X-Files, and Dune universes, as well as unique steampunk fantasy novels Clockwork Angels and Clockwork Lives, written with legendary rock drummer Neil Peart, based on the concept album by the band Rush. His original works include the Saga of Seven Suns series, the Terra Incognita fantasy trilogy, the Saga of Shadows trilogy, and his humorous horror series featuring Dan Shamble, Zombie PI. He has edited numerous anthologies, written comics and games, and the lyrics to two rock CDs. Anderson and his wife Rebecca Moesta are the publishers of WordFire Press. Media Review: April 2019 Adam-Troy Castro | 1174 words

This Guy Who Was, Like, Really Mindblowing and Amazing and Stuff

Clark Ashton Smith: The Emperor of Dreams Written, directed, and produced by Darin Coelho Spring October 5, 2018

If you have Netflix, you have access to a remarkable documentary that this review is not about. It’s called Struggle: The Life and Lost Art Of [Stanislav] Szukalski (2018), a Polish-American sculptor of astonishing genius, who escaped being one of the central figures of the twentieth pictures in part because of his off-putting egocentrism and in part because much of his life’s work was destroyed during the Nazi invasion of Poland. He had some problematic issues as well, but I’ll leave those for you to discover, if you follow my recommendation to the source. What is central to the documentary is that near the end of his life, the man was discovered by a group of young admirers, and sat still for many hours of interviews that captured his compelling but not-entirely- commendable personality. It also has enough of his work on hand, both sculpted and painted, to sell the premise that this is a guy whose art mattered, whose life is worth knowing about. You will find similar attributes powering Bukowski: Born Into This (2003), about the great outsider poet and novelist Charles Bukowski, which in addition to many tastes of his work had lots of footage of Bukowski being Bukowski, for better or worse; and Dreams With Sharp Teeth (2008), a portrait of Harlan Ellison that also mixed excerpts of the prose with the sight of Harlan being Harlan, also, for better or worse. It becomes a little harder when the artist in question has passed before one frame is committed to film. It can be done. Ken Burns, who excels in films profiling figures who died before he picked up his camera— sometimes, before he picked up his very first camera, or even his first rattle—does it with extensive use of stills and contemporary letters of the personalities under discussion. You watch his documentary on Mark Twain and you emerge feeling like you’ve met Samuel Clemens; you watch his documentary on the Roosevelts and you emerge feeling like you’ve known Teddy, Franklin, and Eleanor (and to some extent, Alice). This is the biographer’s function, making you feel like you’ve met these figures who you’ve never encountered, and—in the case of artists— selling you on the idea that these people are every bit as much worth your attention, if they didn’t have it before, as they were to their chroniclers. This brings us to Darin Coelho Spring’s Clark Ashton Smith: The Emperor of Dreams (2018), a profile of the seminal poet, fantasist and important contemporary of H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. Smith is a fascinating figure. Born in 1893, beset by social anxieties and other health problems, he never ventured very far from his home town in Auburn, California, and spent much of it in a cabin with no electricity or running water. He wrote fantastic poetry, receiving extravagant praise for an early collection, but with the coming of the Great Depression turned to pulp fiction, producing dense and lyrical tales suffused with otherworldly strangeness. He produced many paintings as well, illustrating some of his work and some of Lovecraft’s; but was so shattered by the loss of his parents, and by the deaths of contemporaries Lovecraft (and to a lesser extent, Robert E. Howard), that he turned away from fiction and busied himself, for the rest of his creative life, as a recreational sculptor. His reputation endures today largely due to the efforts of anthologists like August Derleth, and re-issues over the years by publishers like Ballantine and Penguin. He is no household name, but as Harlan Ellison points out in the closing moments of this documentary, so what? His circle exists. People are still discovering him. It is clearly one of the documentary’s ambitions that you will be one of them. And here is one of the problems. When you do a documentary about Bukowski, you are helped by the happenstance that he spent his life writing about himself, or aspects of himself; you get a sense of his character from his writing, and of his writing from exposures to his character. The same is true of Harlan, and of Twain (in and out of Ken Burns). Smith is a more oblique sell, and not just because his memory does not survive in so much as one frame of motion picture film. Hearing his poetry, which is excerpted at length, one does get a sense of the rhythm and flow of his language, and of the strangeness of the spell he cast; seeing his artwork both drawn and sculpted, you get a sense of that, as well. I, a virtual Smith virgin, and in that sense the target audience, walk away with the clear impression that he had an imagination and that he shore could write a good pome. The outlines of his life are fascinating, even if he emerges as a distant figure glimpsed in photographs, whose inner life is best expressed by the testimony of experts and enthusiasts like S.T. Joshi and Cody Goodfellow. Too much of these talking-head sections are, alas, taken up by the straining for metaphors, for adjectives, describing the spell cast by a Clark Ashton Smith story, without ever quite capturing it. Sure, I get the impression that he knew his way around otherworldly cosmic strangeness, and I can see how precious it is to all these enthusiasts when they convey exactly how he blew their respective minds, but they ring this bell so much that other questions are abandoned. Just based on what they said, I do not know, for instance, whether Smith’s characters had adventures, whether they had personalities, whether they had romances, whether they ever had conflicts with one another, whether they ever reflected the problematic racism visible in Lovecraft or Howard, or whether those stories were just catalogs of mind-blowing oddness. That the Smith reader encountering these words may already know the answers quite well, and may be rolling eyes at the ignorance of this neophyte, is beside the point. I know I’m a neophyte. I proclaim it. The point is that these are the elements that were not quite communicated. As the portrait of the ebb and flow of an artist’s life, Clark Ashton Smith: The Emperor of Dreams does quite well, even if it suffers from the relative remoteness of its subject. It provides a fascinating portrait of this guy who, until late in his life, was an outsider in every sense of the word, and of the relatively small footprint he left on the community where he lived. But as a hint that his fellow is worth future investigation, it falls just short of ignition. He’s on my list. But then, he was before.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Adam-Troy Castro made his first non-fiction sale to Spy magazine in 1987. His twenty-six books to date include four Spider-Man novels, three novels about his profoundly damaged far-future murder investigator Andrea Cort, and six middle-grade novels about the dimension-spanning adventures of young Gustav Gloom. The final installment in the series, Gustav Gloom And The Castle of Fear, came out in 2016. Adam’s darker short fiction for grownups is highlighted by his most recent collection, Her Husband’s Hands And Other Stories. Adam’s works have won the Philip K. Dick Award and the Seiun (Japan), and have been nominated for eight Nebulas, three Stokers, two Hugos, and, internationally, the Ignotus (Spain), the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire (France), and the Kurd-Laßwitz Preis (Germany). His latest projects are a mainstream thriller currently making the publishing rounds, and an audio collection he expects to announce early in 2019. He lives in Florida.

Author Spotlight: Mari Ness Nibedita Sen | 847 words

I loved how richly the DNA of gothic literature runs through this story. Were there any particular works you drew inspiration from?

Almost all of the clichés alluded to in “The Girl and the House” can be found in the work of the prolific Eleanor Hibbert (1906-1993), who wrote thirty-two gothic romances under the name Victoria Holt, in between churning out about 130 other novels in related genres. Hibbert’s first Holt novels attempted to stretch the genre somewhat, but afterwards, she fell into a rather comfortable, predictable pattern: girl grows up knowing that she doesn’t quite fit in with her family and society, and inevitably heads out to a mysterious house, with mysterious people (frequently including at least one older woman with the mind of a child), and a Compelling Yet Troubled Gothic Hero With a Past. Misunderstandings Abound. Mary Stewart (1916-2014) also played with these tropes in her own, generally much better Gothic work, as did Barbara Mertz (1927-2013), who wrote as Barbara Michaels and Elizabeth Peters, using the Gothic and its tropes to write New York Times bestsellers as Michaels, and poking fun of the entire genre as Peters. Her books vary in quality, especially the early books and the ones towards the end, but vintage Mertz is hilarious, and well worth checking out. Other Gothic works probably lurked in the back of my mind—I’ve read a lot of them—but those are the standouts. In turn, all of these works drew pretty heavily on Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. I like to think that twenty, thirty years after the ending of that novel, Jane woke up, realized that India would be a rather cool place to visit, especially if she wasn’t with someone as dull as St. John Rivers, conked Rochester hard over the head, and headed off to explore the world. But that’s me. The ambiguity of the characters’ identities is obviously a very deliberate choice, as is the story’s emphasis on the many shades of possibility contained within it. What was the reasoning behind maintaining that ambiguity?

That ambiguity is an echo of many characters in Gothic novels, who are deliberately kept ambiguous to prevent the girl—and the reader— from knowing exactly what is happening until the final reveal—a reveal that in some cases is also left ambiguous. Mary Stewart’s Nine Couches Waiting, for instance, deliberately keeps us from seeing a full picture of one character until the second to last page, to prevent readers from knowing if he is the sort capable of murdering a young child. It also features heavily in the Gothic works where the girl must choose between two or more men—that ambiguity can heighten the suspense. And of course, if she knew the answers—any of the answers—she wouldn’t be in a story. At least, not a Gothic story.

A theme that often seems to appear in your work is unpicking or subverting established storytelling forms, such as fairy tales, and now this. What draws you to these kinds of retellings?

I always like to explore what’s left out of fairy tales, and what happened afterwards. This story is basically just an extension of that.

What struck me about the ending was the way the unnamed narrator partially merges with the house, and carries some of it away with her. The house is a reoccurring metaphor in the Gothic, and is often aligned with femininity in its enveloping nature and possession of secrets. Can you tell us a little more about the relationship of the house with the narrator in this story, and what you were trying to evoke with that ending?

In many Gothic novels, the house isn’t merely a metaphor—it is a character and entity in its own right, more important than some of the characters. In the majority of Gothic novels, the girl ends up staying with the man—that is, the house. In some cases (Jane Eyre, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca) the house ends up getting destroyed somewhere along the way—a trope that Eleanor Hibbert, who evidently had a Thing for Houses, tried to counter, and Barbara Mertz, who had a Thing for Archaeology, liked to mock. In either case, the house itself becomes part of the girl’s story: either it was the means of introducing her to her partner, or, it is her new home. And as such, it becomes part of her—a concept I wanted to explore. But also, I wanted to explore the idea of how trauma can sometimes linger, and even become a part of us.

What’s next for Mari Ness? Is there anything we should be keeping an eye out for in 2019?

Nothing that I can really talk about yet, alas, but you can keep your eye on my twitter, @Mari_Ness, or my website (marikness.wordpress.com), for updates!

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER Nibedita Sen is a queer Bengali writer, editor and gamer from Calcutta. A graduate of Clarion West 2015, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Podcastle, Nightmare, Fireside and The Dark. She helps edit Glittership, an LGBTQ SFF podcast, enjoys the company of puns and potatoes, and is nearly always hungry. Hit her up on Twitter at @her_nibsen. Author Spotlight: Dennis E. Staples Tyhitia Green | 1037 words

In your short story, “The One You Feed,” you explore Native American folklore, racism, misogyny, etc. Are these issues something you’re interested in exploring in future works as well? And if so, to what extent? Why are they important to you?

I attended the Institute of American Indian Arts for my graduate degree, and while I was there I met a lot of Indigenous women who were putting their unique voices out there and bringing attention to an often- ignored crisis. Two of these writers, Toni Jensen and Terese Marie Mailhot, stood out to me with their commitment to addressing the reality of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. During a lecture, Terese spoke about the importance of naming these women, and she did. She mentioned Rose Downwind and Savanna Lafontaine-Greywind, two women who were murdered in the areas I’ve been living in. I wanted to write a story that spoke to the issue in a direct way, because this kind of thing isn’t new to us. I remember our teacher in sixth grade reading us excerpts from a long article in the Star Tribune about a teenage girl’s descent into drug addiction until her eventual death. That girl was a classmate’s sister. Ojibwe traditional beliefs celebrate women, and my own upbringing was somewhat close to traditional Ojibwe family structure. I was raised by a combination of my mother, grandmother, older sister, some aunts and others. We always had a big household, and you might say it was a bit of a matriarchy. I definitely had this in mind as I rendered Rose’s character, and I hope to give her more stories in the future.

Aside from Nightmare Magazine, you were also published in Asimov’s. What made you interested in writing speculative fiction? The earliest I can remember taking a specific interest in speculative fiction was in eighth grade. Our English teacher assigned us two science fiction stories, “The Foghorn” and “There Will Come Soft Rains,” both by Ray Bradbury. The former we listened to an audio version, and the latter we read on our own. The experience of hearing the lonely plight of the creature stayed with me for years, and in college I sought out places that offered speculative fiction podcasts like Lightspeed, Nightmare, and Apex among others. (My current favorite is Levar Burton Reads.) Bradbury’s use of poetry mixed with a speculative element in the latter story impressed me then and now, and I might uphold that story as exemplary of my taste in speculative fiction stories in general. Put a poem in it and there’s a good chance I’ll enjoy it.

Who are your favorite authors? What are some of your favorite works?

From an early age I took a lot of interest in Clive Barker’s works; first his young adult novels, and later his Books of Blood stories. Last summer I started a re-read of those after Ellen Datlow mentioned some of them at Clarion West. A lot of them hold up just as well now. I’m always just a little excited when I see some news of Hellraiser remakes or other adaptations. My favorite author is probably Louise Erdrich. I don’t know if anyone has given her an endearing title yet, but I’d call her the Godmother of Native American literature. I’ve made a pledge to myself to attempt to read all her published works. Same for Octavia E. Butler, though I’ve only read her short fiction at the moment. In speculative fiction, I’m enjoying a lot of writing by Ann Leckie, Suzanne Palmer, Sarah Pinsker, Stephen Graham Jones, N.K. Jemisin, Natalia Theodoridou, and many, many others. I left Clarion West with so many short story collections, it’d be impossible to name things I’ve enjoyed in the past year here. For a broad brush, I’m really enjoying many of Tor.com’s novellas, Ellen Datlow’s Best of Horror anthologies, and of course, John Joseph Adams’ Best of Science Fiction and Fantasy collections. I was twice in my life helped by Seanan McGuire’s “Every Heart a Doorway,” once after my first college graduation and once after attending Clarion West. I recommend it to anyone who is feeling the sort-of “deflated” fallout of really good times and the first little sparks of nostalgia set in. I also met Seanan last summer and heard her speak a few words about the story and where it came from, so it was interesting rereading it with that in mind.

You have short fiction published so far. Do you plan to write novels as well? Also, what else are you working on?

I have recently sold a novel to Counterpoint Press titled This Town Sleeps, which will be released in early 2020. It’s heavily influenced by my Ojibwe background. I’m currently looking into a few options for my next project. I plan on writing more novels in the future, including a sequel to my current novel, and possibly others set on the same reservation setting. Rose Watersong definitely has more stories about her waiting to be written. At the moment, I’m drafting out a science fiction story that mixes ideas of tribal sovereignty with the idea of leaving Earth. Whether Indigenous people who hold the earth sacred can ever truly be sovereign and in charge of our destinies here or if our chances might be better among the stars.

What can your readers expect from you in years to come?

I would guess further explorations of Ojibwe themes, but pushed as far as my imagination can go. My biggest love will always be fantasy, but I’m experimenting with science fiction and horror as well. Ideally, I’d like to write four books each centered on the Ojibwe teaching of the Four Hills of Life, but I don’t think it’ll be a chronological series, just very intertextual with a large mix of family stories.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER Tyhitia Green writes horror, fantasy, and science fiction. She sometimes dabbles in other genres as well. She began writing poetry as a child and ventured into fiction years later. Her fiction has appeared in Necrotic Tissue magazine, and her non-fiction has appeared in Lightspeed magazine and on Black Girl Nerds.com.

Coming Attractions The Editors | 100 words

Coming up in May, in Nightmare . . . We have original fiction from Mimi Mondal (“Malotibala Printing Press”) and Nibedita Sen (“Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island”), along with reprints by Philip Fracassi (“Fail-Safe”) and Amanda Downum (“Spore”). We also have the latest installment of our column on horror, “The H Word,” plus author spotlights with our authors, and a feature interview with Gabino Iglesias. 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

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:

Magazine Website www.nightmare-magazine.com

Destroy Projects Website www.destroysf.com

Newsletter www.nightmare-magazine.com/newsletter

RSS Feed www.nightmare-magazine.com/rss-2

Podcast Feed www.nightmare-magazine.com/itunes-rss

Twitter www.twitter.com/nightmaremag

Facebook www.facebook.com/NightmareMagazine

Subscribe www.nightmare-magazine.com/subscribe Subscriptions and Ebooks The Editors

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. All purchases from the Nightmare store are provided in epub, mobi, and pdf format. A 12- month subscription to Nightmare more than 45 stories (about 240,000 words of fiction, plus assorted nonfiction). The cost is just $23.88 ($12 off the cover price)—what a bargain! To learn more, including about third-party subscription options, 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. Support Us on Patreon or Drip, or How to Become a Dragonrider or Space Wizard The Editors

If you’re reading this, then there’s a good chance you’re a regular reader of Nightmare and/or Lightspeed. We already offer ebook subscriptions as a way of supporting the magazines, but we wanted to add an additional option to allow folks to support us, thus we’ve launched a Drip (d.rip/john-joseph-adams) and a Patreon (patreon.com/JohnJosephAdams).

TL;DR Version If you enjoy Nightmare and Lightspeed and my anthologies, our Patreon and Drip pages are a way for you to help support those endeavors by chipping in a buck or more on a recurring basis. Your support will help us bring bigger and better (and more) projects into the world.

Why Patreon and Drip? There are no big companies supporting or funding the magazines, so the magazines really rely on reader support. Though we offer the magazines online for free, we’re able to fund them by selling ebook subscriptions or website advertising. While we have a dedicated ebook subscriber base, the vast majority of our readers consume the magazine online for free. If just 10% of our website readers pledged just $1 a month, the magazines would be doing fantastically well. So we thought it might be useful to have an option like Drip and Patreon for readers who maybe haven’t considered supporting the magazine, or who maybe haven’t because they don’t have any desire to receive the ebook editions—or who would be glad to pay $1 a month, but not $3 (the cost of a monthly subscriber issue of Lightspeed). Though Lightspeed and Nightmare are separate entities, we decided to create a single “publisher” Drip and Patreon account because it seemed like it would be more efficient to manage just one page on each platform. Plus, since I sometimes independently publish works using indie- publishing tools, we thought it would be good to have a single place where folks could come to show their support for such projects. Basically, we wanted to create a crowdfunding page where, if you enjoy my work as an editor, and you want to contribute a little something to help make it easier for us to produce more cool projects, then our Drip or Patreon is the place to do that.

What Do I Get Out of Being a Backer or Patron? Well, you get the satisfaction of helping to usher the creation of cool new short fiction projects into the world! Plus, the more support we get, the better we can make the magazines and compensate our authors and staff. By becoming a supporter via Patreon or Drip, you help fund our growth and continued publication of two award-winning magazines. Of course, if you’re already one of our ebook subscribers (thank you!), you are already supporting us. This is for those who prefer to read the issues each month on our free websites, or wish to support our efforts more generally. By becoming a supporter, you are also bestowed a title, such as Dragonrider, or Space Wizard, or Savior of the World and/or Universe, thus making you instantly the envy of all your friends.

Thank You! If you’ve read this far, thanks so much. We hope you’ll consider becoming a backer on Patreon or Drip. Those URLs again are d.rip/john- joseph-adams and patreon.com/JohnJosephAdams. Thanks in advance for your time. We look forward to hopefully being able to make the magazines—and my other publishing endeavors—even better with the support of people like you.

About the Nightmare Team The Editors

Publisher/Editor-in-Chief John Joseph Adams

Managing/Associate Editor Wendy N. Wagner

Associate Publisher/Director of Special Projects Christie Yant

Assistant Publisher Robert Barton Bland

Reprint Editor John Langan

Podcast Producer Stefan Rudnicki

Podcast Editor Jim Freund

Podcast Host Jack Kincaid

Art Director Christie Yant Assistant Editors Erika Holt Lisa Nohealani Morton

Reviewers Adam-Troy Castro Terence Taylor

Copy Editor Melissa V. Hofelich

Proofreader Devin Marcus

Webmaster Jeremiah Tolbert of Clockpunk Studios Also Edited by John Joseph Adams The Editors

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

ANTHOLOGIES

THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH, Vol. 1: The End is Nigh (with Hugh Howey)

THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH, Vol. 2: The End is Now (with Hugh Howey)

THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH, Vol. 3: The End Has Come (with Hugh Howey)

Armored

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015 (with Joe Hill)

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016 (with Karen Joy Fowler)

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017 (with Charles Yu)

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018 (with N.K. Jemisin)

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019 (with Carmen Maria Machado) [Forthcoming Oct. 2019]

Brave New Worlds By Blood We Live

Cosmic Powers

Dead Man’s Hand

THE DYSTOPIA TRIPTYCH, Vol. 1: Ignorance is Strength (with Hugh Howey) [Forthcoming 2020]

THE DYSTOPIA TRIPTYCH, Vol. 2: Burn the Ashes (with Hugh Howey) [Forthcoming 2020]

THE DYSTOPIA TRIPTYCH, Vol. 3: Or Else the Light (with Hugh Howey) [Forthcoming 2020]

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)

A People’s Future of the United States (with Victor LaValle)

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

Wastelands: The New Apocalypse [June 2019]

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

The Robots of Gotham by Todd McAulty

The Wild Dead by Carrie Vaughn

The Spaceship Next Door by Gene Doucette

In the Night Wood by Dale Bailey

Creatures of Want and Ruin by Molly Tanzer

Break the Bodies, Haunt the Bones by Micah Dean Hicks

The Chaos Function by Jack Skillingstead

Upon a Burning Throne by Ashok K. Banker

Gather the Fortunes by Bryan L. Camp

Reentry by Peter Cawdron

Half Way Home by Hugh Howey

The Unfinished Land by Greg Bear

Creatures of Charm and Hunger by Molly Tanzer

A Dark Queen Rises by Ashok K. Banker

The Conductors by Nicole Glover The Chosen One by Veronica Roth

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