HWA Italy: The Raven - News From Hell #4

Maman Brigitte: Il Web Magazine del Posto Nero è online

Il primo numero di Maman Brigitte, il nuovo Web Magazine del Posto Nero è online, scaricabile gratuitamente in formato pdf. Una nuova pubblicazione del Posto Nero Free eBooks, che segue a breve distanza di tempo la raccolta di racconti horror Arkana - Racconti da Incubo. Maman Brigitte è un nuovo progetto che ho condiviso con altri due discepoli della Dea delle Tenebre, Daniele Bonfanti e Daniele Serra. Potrete calarvi nell'oscurità di cinquanta pagine di porte, storie, visioni, sonde, apparizioni, sogni, guidati dalla nostra divinità vudù dai capelli rossi, ritratta da Daniele Serra nella splendida illustrazione di copertina, e da altre divinità minori, come Azeto e Damballa, che hanno momentaneamente posseduto il fragile corpo terrestre di alcuni redattori.

Intervista Dieci Coltelli con Rio Youers

Intervista Dieci Coltelli con lo scrittore inglese dark e horror Rio Youers:

Ten Knives Interview with Steve Rasnic Tem

Ten Knives Interview with Steve Rasnic Tem:

Knife 1: Please name at least three contemporary authors who write generally better than you do and why.

[Steve Rasnic Tem] Wow - I'm embarrassed to say there are so many. Allow me to list three who write better than almost everyone: Cormac McCarthy, who can make a description of a character merely walking across the room interesting, Toni Morrison, whose prose is as perfect as her handling of character, Lorrie Moore, perhaps our greatest living short story writer, who combines humor with serious content seemingly effortlessly. What keeps me going, and which I often tell students who feel discouraged when they compare themselves to better writers, is that you are the best person to tell your own stories, and that in fact if you don't tell them no one else will. I want to write the best Steve Rasnic Tem stories I can, and that's enough for me

Knife 2: Has ever something happened in your life that made you think give up writing?

[Steve Rasnic Tem] I've played with the idea, as a kind of thought experiment, when I've felt burned out, and especially after our son died in 1988, when just the sound of my own voice inside my head was unrecognizable to me. But the idea has never seriously taken hold, perhaps because writing is so central to how I function within the world, and to how I deal with life's contradictions

Knife 3: Which compromises did you have to accept for commercial reasons?

[Steve Rasnic Tem] As a short story writer, very few, because you can always find another market. And I have a day job as a technical writer - which shields me from the financial need to compromise. Occasionally I've played in someone else's playground, however, using someone else's characters on a work-for-hire basis, and in those cases you have to play by their rules and their vision of the character. Novels are a bit more problematic in that you know there are some ideas which are going to simply be too difficult to sell, so some initial filtering of the imagination takes place. But you have to be careful about that. Most writers, I think, censor themselves unnecessarily.

Knife 4: Is it very important to win literary prizes? Does it help to sell?

[Steve Rasnic Tem] I've won a few, and I treat them as nice surprises, events which help you keep going through all the dissappointments, but they are certainly nothing to plan for, and making them your goal can distort your process I think. I don't think the average reader cares whether you've won an award or not. Some major awards - the Hugo, the Pulitzer - do help sales, especially to libraries, but I believe most of the awards do not

Knife 5: When you have no ideas for writing, how do you bring down yourself and whom do you phone to?

[Steve Rasnic Tem] I can't think of a time I had no ideas. Usually it's an issue of having too many, and choosing the most promising one. Sometimes I try to generate ideas at random, however, throwing disparate words together, in order to break myself out of a rut.

Knife 6: What do you think when you read your country's best seller rankings?

[Steve Rasnic Tem] I'm just glad that people are still reading and buying books. Some people become upset because they think the best work isn't reflected by the sales rankings, but that's always been true. Good writing sometimes contributes to popularity, but it's not the major factor involved. It's about how people's buttons are pushed, and that process is still largely a mystery.

Knife 7:  What do you reproach to American publishing? What are its limits?

[Steve Rasnic Tem] While publishing is a business, it's often a rather dysfunctional one. The returns system in the US has never made much sense, we still understand book promotion poorly, and writers work very hard for too little pay, on average. There is at least an impression of confusion in publishing, in part because there's disagreement over the final impact of electronic books, and editors seem to be rather cautious at the moment. If I have a major complaint it is that book publishers and editors now often take much too long to get back to authors about submissions - it's making it almost impossible for some freelancers to make a living writing anymore

Knife 8: How many times have you refused to participate to a no-profit project?

[Steve Rasnic Tem] If you mean work for free it's something I almost never do, unless it's a very special project I want to be a part of or if it's for a charity I particularly believe in. But charity anthologies often have a hard time making enough money in a timely fashion to actually benefit their cause - so I'm more likely these days to donate a signed item for an auction than to write a story for a charity anthology. As for working for no pay or next to no pay - generally I believe people shouldn't become publishers until they can afford to pay writers a decent wage. Claims that they are giving authors "invaluable exposure" are usually nonsense, and more than a little arrogant. There are some justifiable reasons to work for very little, but at the same time writers have to be careful to preserve their resources, both financial and intellectual. Use up too much of either one and it's difficult to continue

Knife 9: What did you do right after signing major book deal?

[Steve Rasnic Tem] I might go to a movie, and spend a little extra at a bookstore. Nothing extravagant. I've crossed that age 60 line - have to preserve my resources (of all kinds).

Knife 10: Final question: Whom to (or to what) would you throw a knife?

[Steve Rasnic Tem] Unless you're an expert knife-thrower, the likelihood of having the blade actually stick into something is pretty small, and you've just given your assailant a weapon. Better to use a baseball bat, I think, if your grip is strong. If you're a writer, I suppose you could throw a book, or a stapler. But only in self-defense, of course

Leggi l'intervista in Italiano

Guest Profile

Steve Rasnic Tem (1950 Jonesville) studied creative writing at Colorado State University, is an horror and fantasy fiction writer. His 300 plus published pieces have garnered him several international awards, such as Bram Stoker Award, the British Fantasy Award, The World Fantasy Award, International Horror Guild Award and many others. Among his works: Excavation (1986), The Man on the Ceiling (2000 with Melanie Tem) In These Final Days or Sales (2001) Book of Days (2002), Invisible (2005). His latest book is DeadFall Hotel (Centipede Press 2011), now available in illustrated and signed limited edition hardcover, that will be released for mass market for Solaris Books in paperback and ebook edition  in April 2012. Web Site. Sito Web

DeadFall Hotel by Steve Rasnic Tem (Centipede Press)

Reminiscent of Ray Bradbury with the atmosphere of Edward Gorey, Deadfall Hotel guides you through a season spent in the ultimate haunted hotel. Told through the story of a widower who takes the job of manager at a remote hotel where the guests are not quite like you and me, Deadfall Hotel chronicles what happens when nightmares seek a place of sanctuary. This literary exploration of the roots of horror in the collective unconscious may be the Bram Stoker, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy award-winning author’s finest creation to date. This is an original publication: a new novel, published for the first time. The book is illustrated with ten new artworks created by Danish artist John Kenn Mortensen. His drawings evoke the spirit of Edward Gorey but have a sardonic sense of humor all their own. The book has illustrated endpapers, a full printed cloth binding, ribbon marker, head and tail bands, and a reinforced binding. In addition to the novel, there is an afterword by Tem, the original story Bloodwolf, published in Shadows, and a new story, Skullbees, which will not be reprinted anywhere. The story was written specifically for one of the Mortensen illustrations. Each numbered copy signed by Steve Rasnic Tem and John Kenn Mortensen. The edition is limited to 300 copies for sale. Publisher Link

Buy "Deadfall Hotel" by S. R.Tem on Amazon

I Fantasmi di Arkana: Canzone d'amore di John Everson

Per chi non ha ancora scaricato Arkana-Racconti da Incubo (Il Posto Nero Free eBooks)  la raccolta eBook free di racconti horror di autori internazionali curata da me e Daniele Bonfanti, questa è l'occasione per leggere direttamente online uno dei racconti inclusi in Akana, Canzone d'amore di John Everson (Lovensong) tradotto da Luigi Milani. Ma anche per chi ha già scaricato l'eBook e già letto questo bellissimo racconto, si tratta di una occasione per poter ascoltare la musica che è una dei protagonisti del racconto, pervadendolo dal'inizio alla fine. Alcuni video inseriti ci consentono di ascoltare la colonna sonora immaginata da John Everson, grande appassionato di musica. Un viaggio tra le note degli anni '70 e '80, verso l'orrore e l'amore, un binomio che in questo racconto l'autore riesce a fondere mirabilmente, con una prosa ricca e elegante. Leggete, e ascoltate.

Gli incubi a occhi aperti di Alfred Kubin

Alfred Kubin (1877-1959), pittore illustratore e scrittore, possiede una vista speciale in grado di materializzare i suoi incubi a occhi aperti, le sue spettrali visioni, l’umanità travolta dal destino e dalla follia. La sua opera, nella quale la morte e gli scenari apocalittici si rendono oscuri protagonisti, rientra nella corrente simbolista, e precorre per molti versi l’espressionismo.

Maman Brigitte: In attesa del Novilunio

In attesa del prossimo novilunio, il 25 novembre, quando Maman Brigitte, il nuovo Web Magazine del Posto Nero, uscirà dall'oscurità per mostrarsi e affondare i denti nella nostra angoscia, ho pensato di rendere noti in anteprima alcuni contenuti, come gli incipit dei racconti inediti che saranno pubblicati in questo primo numero, alcune immagini, frammenti, insomma quello che sono riuscito a portare via di nascosto dalle stanze della nostra Dea delle Tenebre. Quindi, rimanga tra noi e leggete senza fare troppo rumore, Maman Brigitte ormai lo avrete capito, è un tipo difficile, da prendere con le molle, non mettetemi in difficoltà. Già si è fatta attendere più del dovuto, capricci divini, non vorrei che ci lasciasse a bocca asciutta anche il prossimo novilunio, perchè Maman Brigitte può mostrarsi solo in quella particolare occasione, nella notte più oscura, con farfalle tra i capelli rossi e una bottiglia di rum in mano. Tra le cose che sono riuscito ad afferrare, troverete anche qualche pagina completa: si, sto rischiando davvero molto. Il primo appuntamento ufficiale con la nostra dea, se non sarò rinchiuso in una tomba su una strana isola, sotto fiori viola e luminosi serpenti, è per il 25 novembre. Novilunio.

Queen Anne's Resurrection - Journey V - The Abyss and the Kraken - Stories by T. Waggoner, A. Bird and S. Nicholson

Queen Anne's Resurrection - Journey V - The Abyss and the Kraken - Stories by Tim Waggoner, Allyson Bird and Scott Nicholson. Read the complete version in italian (part 1) (part 2)

Surface Tension

by Tim Waggoner

You’re sitting at a window-side table in your favorite coffee shop. You’ve been here for – you check your cell phone for the time – almost three hours. You’ve had three cups of coffee (half-caff, two sugars, three creams) and two scones (one cinnamon, one blueberry). You brought a book with you, the latest volume in your favorite mystery series, but it lies on the table, unopened.

You stare out the window, as you’ve done for the last two-and-a-half hours. Since the rain began. You checked a weather report on the Internet before you left home. Forecasters called for only a twenty percent chance of showers. Hardly a chance at all, you figured. Certainly low enough to risk a trip out. But somewhere along the line twenty percent began a hundred, and showers became a downpour. Now you’re trapped. It’s not the rain itself that you’re afraid of, not really. It’s the water covering the parking lot. So much of it that you can’t see the asphalt at all. It looks like the surface of a pool, a pond, a lake, an ocean. Raindrops hitting with enough force to cause constant eruptions on the surface. And you think, anything could be beneath the water. Anything at all.

* * * * *

“Have you ever stopped to look at a rain puddle? I mean really look at it?”

You’re four years old and you’re walking down the sidewalk with your grandfather. He’s an old man, older than Time itself, it seems, thin and bony with baggy elephant skin and tufts of wispy white hair dotting his liver-spotted scalp. He walks slowly, which is good because your legs are so short. You don’t need to run to keep up with him.
Grandpa’s taking you to the playground at the recreation center near where you live. Your parents are both at work, and he’s watching you today. It rained overnight and there are puddles on the sidewalk, in the gutters and street. You’ve never given them much thought, other than to avoid stepping in them. Other children like to splash in puddles, but not you. You don’t like to get your shoes and socks wet, don’t like the way the sodden cloth feels next to your skin – thick, cold, heavy.
Grandpa crouches next to the puddle, the joints in his knees making soft popping sounds. He motions for you to join him, and you do, although you stay farther from the puddle’s edge than he does.
“The wonderful thing about a body of water is that you can’t tell how deep it is just by looking at the surface.” He smiles. “Not unless the water’s crystal clear. And this isn’t.”
 You look at the puddle. It’s not clear, not at all. It’s black and smooth as glass.
 “If you put your finger in it, you might find it’s so shallow, there’s hardly any water there at all. But sometimes . . .”

Grandpa holds up his hand and extends his index finger toward the sky, and then – with motions as precise and deliberate as any stage magician – he turns it downward and moves it toward the puddle.

You hold your breath as his finger descends, the top of it touching the surface so gently it doesn’t make a ripple. He pauses then, and you think that’s all there is, but you’re astonished when he continues to push his finger into the puddle up to the first joint, the second, all the way to the knuckle. You will think of this moment many times throughout your life, and as an adult, you’ll tell yourself that it was just a trick, that Grandpa simply bent his finger bit by bit as he lowered his hand, creating the illusion that his finger was sinking into a puddle deeper than the level of the sidewalk. You were only four, and therefore easy enough to fool. But at this moment, it looks so real, and you have no trouble imagining Grandpa’s hand sinking all the way into the puddle and continuing on up to his elbow, his shoulder. The puddle isn’t all that wide, but you’re skinny, with a narrow waist, hips, and shoulders. You wonder if you step onto the puddle if you’ll sink, and if so, how deep you’ll go.

A startled cry escapes Grandpa’s mouth and he yanks his hand away from the puddle. Droplets splash your face and you want to scream, but all you do is make a little mewling sound.

Grandpa grins. “Something nipped me. Probably a little minnow or something.”

He looks at your expectantly, waiting. He wants you, his audience of one, to let him know you’ve enjoyed the show. You do your best to fake a smile for him.

“Let’s go, sweetie. The playground awaits.”

He stands with a little oof of effort and holds out his hand – the one that touched the puddle – for you to take. You hesitate, but you stand, take his hand, and allow him to lead you away from the puddle. You’re grateful for this, but you can’t help thinking about his words.
Probably a little minnow . . .
 . . . or something.

* * * * *

That night your mom makes you popcorn, and your parents and you sit down to watch the Disney version of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. It’s kind of a slow movie, and your attention wanders. You don’t like the idea that so much of the movie takes place underwater. At one point, the crew of the Nautilus find themselves battling some kind of monster – a huge, sea-dwelling beast with long tentacles, plate-sized eyes that appear to have no intelligence, and a sharp parrot-like beak for a mouth.
That night you dream of tentacles hiding within an endless expanse of water, stretching upward, ever upward, reaching for you. It’s the first time you have this dream. But unfortunately, it’s nowhere near the last.

* * * * *

The rain shows no sign of letting up. You wish you’d parked closer to the coffee shop’s entrance, but those spaces were taken when you arrived, and you were forced to park on the far side of the lot, and if you want to get to your car, it’ll mean a sprint across a body of water that could be as shallow as a quarter of an inch or untold fathoms deep. And anything could be swimming within those depths, waiting for someone foolish enough to step outside.
You know this is ridiculous, that your fear is a delusion bordering on the psychotic, and you force yourself to take deep, even breaths until your pulse slows. You check the time again. You have places to be, things to do, important things. You can’t afford to sit here all afternoon scared of water, for godsakes!
It takes another five minutes for you to work up the nerve to stand. You throw away your empty coffee cup and walk toward the exit. You leave your mystery novel on the table, forgotten. When you reach the door, you there stand there a moment, your hand on the metal bar. You can do this, you tell yourself. If anyone notices you running, they’ll just think you don’t want to get wet.
You take another deep breath, hold it, and then you open the door.
The wind hits you first, bringing with it a cold misty spray that coats your face. You shudder, but you step all the way outside and start running across the parking lot toward your car. You didn’t bring an umbrella, don’t even own one. You never go out when it’s raining. Except, unfortunately, today.

Rain pelts onto you like ice shards, and the sound of it striking the ground envelops you. You can feel the vibrations from hundreds, thousand of individual tiny impacts, but it’s not enough to muffle the sound of your pounding heart. As you run, your feet send up splashes of water, and while the asphalt at first feels solid enough beneath you, halfway across the lot it seems that the water level is rising, and the ground begins to feel like mud. Your shoes and socks are soaked, and you could swear the water has risen past your ankles. Or perhaps, you think with a sting of panic, you’re beginning to sink.
The wonderful thing about a body of water is you can’t tell how deep it is by looking at the surface.
Grandpa’s words echo through your mind, but the falling rain is so damned loud you can barely hear them.
Two-thirds of the way there.
Your car is a gray shape half-hidden by streaming curtains of rain. You focus all your attention on it and tell yourself to keep going, just keep going, no matter what.
The water feels as if it’s up to your calves now, and you’re not so much running as slogging forward. Still, you keep your gaze fixed on your car, although it’s hard to see it with so much water running down your face and into your eyes. You think you see movement in your peripheral vision, and you tell yourself it’s an illusion caused by the rainwater in your eyes, but you look anyway, can’t stop yourself even though you know you should.

You see a slender undulating shape uncoiling toward you, dark and smooth, an oily sheen on its rubbery flesh. Sucker pads on the underside like small circular mouths gape wide as the tentacle stretches closer, quivering with excited hunger. It’s joined by a second, then a third. More appear, too many to count, and then they all reach for you.

You find the scream that eluded you so many years ago when you were a child, and you give voice to it now.

* * * * *

Back inside the coffee shop, you stand before the smooth surface of the bathroom mirror. Your clothes are soaked, your hair’s a stringy sodden mess, and your tears aren’t making your any drier.

You failed to walk across a parking lot in the rain, something so simple anyone could do it. You turned and ran when you saw the tentacles, rushing back through the door is such a panic that everyone looked up, startled. You ran to the bathroom and locked yourself in, with a vague idea of trying to dry yourself off somehow. But in truth, all you wanted was to get away from the rain, put a few extra walls between you and them . . . it . . . whatever.
You look at your reflection.
“You’re pathetic,” you say.
The surface of the mirror ripples like water then, and when the glass becomes still once more, your image has changed. In the mirror you’re naked, skin rubbery, dark, and glistening. Your eyes are large, unblinking, emotionless. Instead of hair, a nest of tentacles extends from your head, waving back and forth slowly, as if stirred be an underwater current. Your mouth is a hooked parrot beak, and when it opens to speak, the sound that comes out is a high-pitched ululation, but you understand it nevertheless.
You’re tired of it. The fear. I can help you. You will never be afraid again. All you have to do is take my hand.
A tentacle stretches forth from the mirror, one terminating in five small tendrils. They wriggle like a clutch of baby snakes, and while the sight of them should cause you to question your sanity, they seem natural somehow. Almost normal. And you’re surprised to find yourself reaching out to clasp them. But as your trembling fingertips brush the tendrils, you draw your hand back, uncertain.
There’s so much I can show you. I can take you deeper than you ever imagined possible. So deep that we’ll leave everything else behind. Worry, pain, sorrow, fear . . . We’ll go so deep that there won’t be anything but us and vast endless Nothing. And there you will at last know peace.
New tears fall from your eyes. Tears of terror, yes, but there’s hope in them, as well as joy.
Still trembling, you take your other self’s hand, her finger-tendrils wrap tight around your flesh, and she pulls you forward, in, and down, down, down . . .

Author ProfileTim Waggoner wrote numerous novels, two short story collections, and over one hundred published stories, novellas  and nonfiction in the  Horror, Fantasy and Thriller genres. He graduated from Wright State University in 1989 with a Master of Arts in English with a Creative Writing Concentration. He has worked as an editor and a newspaper reporter. He currently teaches creative writing at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio, and in the MA in Writing Popular Fiction program at Seton Hill University. Some of his Novels: Dying for It (2001) The Harmony Society (2003) Dark Ages: Gangrel. (2004) Nekropolis (2004) Defender: Hyperswarm (2004) Like Death (2005) Exalted: A Shadow Over Heaven's Eye (2005) A Nightmare on Elm Street: Protege (2005) Pandora Drive (2006) Darkness Wakes (2006) Cross County (2008) Last of the Lycans (2010) Web Site

Beneath

by Allyson Bird

His suit was made of vulcanised rubber and his lead-weighted boots dragged up the silt from the bed at the depth of 30 metres. The copper helmet was very heavy, secured by rivets, and Thomas had never really worried about the water leaking in. 

He needed more oyster shells. Pinctada Maxima. Genera of bivalve molluscs. Thomas wanted the large pearls. His hope was to find one like La Peregrina -discovered in the Gulf of Panama in the sixteenth century and given to kings and queens thorough the centuries. He knew that a Roman general called Vitellius had raised the money for a war with the sale of his mother’s pearls. Caligula had adorned his horse with them. Roman women once had pearls sewn to couches where they sat and drank wine from glistening goblets encrusted with them. Thomas could almost taste the wine -almost. Buttons had been made from mother-of-pearl. He knew everything there was to know about pearls whether from oyster or abalone and admired the South Sea ones in all their colours…white, cream, gold and silver, and also the green, blue, grey, purple and peacock mix of the Tahitian pearl.

As he harvested the shells off the seabed and placed them in his rope basket which hung around his neck he thought of the stories that the pearl divers had told each other around the campfire at night -tales of the kraken with tentacles strong enough to drag down sailing ships beneath the waves and of sharks that could rip a man in two with one bite. Blood flooding the water turning from red to pink to nothing in the current. The same current which threatened to sweep Thomas off his feet but he kept going -determined to fill his basket. It never seemed to fill. He’d tried to find the largest oysters and shunned the smaller.

As he worked on his imagination did so too. Thomas thought, through the gloom, that he saw a pale, flabby, hand try to grab his, and he jumped back. He looked around him out of the side of the three faced helmet. Nothing -nothing but the semi-dark and the silence. He looked up and peered through the front, glass window of his helmet, across the ocean bottom, into the foggy distance and he wondered about what could dwell there. He stopped looking for oysters.

Dragging himself on, the sea pushing him back one step for every two forward, he then saw a figure, half covered by sand, lying on the seabed. He stooped and moved his gloved hands around the head of it, sweeping away until the sand spiralled around them both. Suddenly the water became clearer and he found himself looking down at a woman, her bloated white face -no eyes. Small fish had been nibbling at her arms and had darted away when they first felt the movement of him in the water. She hadn’t been there long. She clutched something to her breast that the sea, storm, or creature hadn’t managed to take from her. It gave itself up for Thomas. As he touched her arm whatever she was holding slid from her. He snatched at it but the current took it quickly out of reach. He was just too slow in the heavy boots. But he saw what it was. Its dark hair a sombre halo around its head as it rose above him. There would be no funeral for that lost soul -nor for its mother. Why didn’t she float to the surface? He felt beneath her body and found a chain. Followed that and uncovered it. It was an anchor. An odd shape though. Like a cross. Then he noticed the chain around her waist. He fumbled awkwardly but saw that it was padlocked. He could do nothing to free her. Thomas looked up to see if he could still see the child and was surprised to find he could. He saw a dark shape above it and hands dip into the ocean to try to rescue it. A futile act. That sight touched his soul and he wept. He wept for the child, its mother and himself.

Perhaps he should return to the surface himself now? How long had he been down? He looked for the pipe which fed him air and saw that it had come away from its anchor and floated a few feet above him and he faced what he had fought to dismiss from his mind. He had known the line had broken. He didn’t need anyone to tell him that. He had known for many years. He had looked up many times at that broken lifeline and tried to think. Reality always receding into the dark water. 

At the edge of the abyss he hesitated for one moment and then stepped out. He thought that he would sink faster -the lead boots and all but he didn’t. Thomas felt awe rather than fear. He was dead but was fully aware of that now. It grew darker. Down through the black sea he sank. An anglerfish swam in front of him. The tiny light lure teasing -and then the fish wandered lazily off towards easy prey. 

Finally, with a thud, his boots hit the bottom. How many kilometres down? He wasn’t sure. The deepest part of the ocean, Challenger Deep was about nine. Thomas was nowhere near there though.

Through the cloudy sea he saw a shimmer of gold.  Another fish? The latter was likely. He had seen many strange things in the sea. As he drew closer he wondered why, if alive, it did not move. The nearer he got the brighter the light became although it seemed to disappear at regular intervals. 

The he saw it. Far taller than he had ever seen it on land. Broad at the base and tapering up to where the light intermittently shone as it reached out to him. 

When he reached the lighthouse he looked up at the immense height of it. Over the old oak and worm-ridden door hung a shroud of deep green seaweed and for a moment thought he felt it brush his cheek. He pushed at the door and heard the creak. Impossible.  

As he ascended the stairs he could hear his heavy, iron boots on the stone steps and as he wound his way upwards and looked down he could see not the seabed boots but his old walking boots. He could see the scruffs on the side and the old laces reaching out in the water like the arms of a sea anemone. The rail was made of coral, twisted and purple in colour. Tiny sea creatures had made their home there and they darted in and out as he went by. He saw flashes of orange and turquoise and a magnificent red. His suit and helmet disappeared and he wore the trousers and navy blue jumper he kept at home -something warm to come back to.

When at the top of the stairs he opened another wooden door and stepped into the room. Through the glass windows he could see emerald green water and he marvelled at the colour of it. A woman looked up -she had been reading a book, and smiled at him. A child wrapped in a soft blanket lay asleep on the red rug at her feet. There was, at the table, an empty chair for Thomas. 

Profile

Allyson Bird is the author of two collections: Bull Running for Girls and Wine and Rank Poison. She has co-edited with Joel Lane the anthology, Never Again. Her debut novel, Isis Unbound, is due out in the summer from Dark Regions Press. She won The British Fantasy Society award for best collection, for Bull Running for Girls, in 2009. You can find out more about Allyson Bird on her Web Site

Last Writes

by Scott Nicholson

I wasn’t always like this. When I was alive, I walked the beach in search of shark’s teeth and pretty shells. In bare feet, dawn fast and pink on the horizon, the water licking at my ankles with a gentle, foaming tongue. The lighthouse was a marker, a means to measure the distance I had walked from the cottage I shared with my doting, deaf parents.

Usually, I turned back when the lighthouse window was clearly visible, though on foggy mornings I might not see the towering structure until I was nearly upon it. On those days, a single bright lantern would burn in the uppermost window, serving as a guide for ships that might be daring the narrow passage. I was a ship myself, a vessel with an empty hull, as lost as any rudderless cutter.

On the day I died, I decided to keep walking, though the tide had run out and my parents would be waiting for me to sweep sand from the floors, cook mackerel, and air the mildewed blankets. The lighthouse towered before me that day, bright as sand as it stretched higher and higher into the sky with my every step. It was capped with copper that had long ago turned dull green. The masonry that from a distance had seemed solid revealed itself to be covered with spidery cracks, iron bands girding the base. As I grew

nearer, I detected rust on the hardware of the single oaken door set in the rounded base of the structure.

The door had a large metal knocker in the center. The keyhole in the door handle was like the black eye of a dead shark. Sand skirled in the breeze around the base of the door, and cool, fetid air oozed from the cracks between the oak planks. I touched the wood, wondering about the man behind. I tapped the door and a hollow echo sounded inside. The only sound in reply was the reverberation inside the base of the lighthouse, the whispering of the surf, and the distant cry of a gull.

But at last there came a turning in the works of the door, and it creaked open. I found myself facing a man of dark countenance, with black, haunted eyes and a large, pale forehead. He was perhaps twenty, though his eyes looked far older than that, as if he had witnessed tragedies in abundance. His hair was swept away from his brow in a wild manner, like a tangled tuft of sea oats. He wore a vest and a white shirt, both stained and rumpled. The smell of drink hung about him like a mist.

“Do you know how many steps I had to climb?” he said.

I gave him my sweetest smile, though I’d had little practice in that art. Despite his grave expression, he was handsome. 

“I live around the point,” I said, “Since we’re neighbors-”

“I have no need of neighbors,” he said. “I wish to be alone.” But I caught him staring past my shoulder at the shoreline. The beach was empty, for the coral was sharp and discouraged bathers, and the currents here were too rough for putting out fishing boats.

“I was wondering if I could see the view from up there,” I said, leaning my head back to look at the windows far above. “I’ve lived here all my life but I scarcely know what the place looks like.”

“I have my duties,” he said. “I’ve no time for guided tours.”

“Please, sir, I will only be a moment. Just one look. And I came all this way.” I smoothed the lap of my dress, a gesture I had seen women use in church when speaking to men they wished to flatter.

He seemed to reflect for an instant, and his eyes grew softer. “Hmm. You remind me of someone I once knew. Perhaps I can spare some time. But you must promise to be careful. These stairs are wretched.”

“I will take care, sir.”

The base of the lighthouse was hollow, with a well perhaps forty feet deep. The metal stairs wound up into the gloom, and I could see why he thought them treacherous. His lantern threw long, flickering shadows up the curved wall of the lighthouse. We navigated upwards, his shoes thundering on the narrow metal steps.

“It’s difficult the first few times, but it gets easier,” he said.

“You haven’t told me your name,” I said.

“Poe,” he said. “From Baltimore. And yours?”

I wasn’t prepared to tell him yet. I was still wary of what the villagers might think if he went around reporting that I had visited him alone. Word would also get back to my parents, and while I resented their control of me, I still loved them and wished them no additional worries on my behalf.

“Mary,” I said, the first name that came to mind. Only later, after my death, would he know my true name.

“Mary. One of my favorites.”

We continued our climb and eventually reached a small trap door at the top. Poe’s watch chamber was sparsely furnished. A table and a chair were on one end of the round room, a logbook of some type on the table, a quill pen and inkwell beside it. Papers were piled beneath the logbook, and a collapsed telescope lay across the open pages of the book. A bunk sat low to the floor at the other end of the room, a walnut trunk at its foot, presumably to contain his clothes. A cabinet stood near the trunk, filled with bread, dried meat and fish, apples, and several rows of corked bottles filled with amber liquid. A chamber pot, covered indiscreetly with a board, was off to the side. Empty bottles were scattered beneath the bunk, and the cramped room had the same spirited aroma that surrounded the man, combined with the cloying stench of the chamber pot.

Poe waved one florid hand to the three windows facing the seaside. “There’s your view,” he said, then sat in the chair by the logbook.

The flat, gray water stretched for miles, the horizon farther than I had ever seen it. The ocean seemed to curve, and distant full-sheeted masts protruded from the water like tiny clusters of white flowers. The shoreline stretched in either direction, the north sweeping more gently, the south broken by crags and cays. The natural breakwater of which ships’ captains were afraid was black and sharp, gleaming like wet teeth. I took in the view for some minutes, not remarking.

“One gets bored with it after a while,” Poe said. He uncorked one of the bottles and poured some of the liquor into a glass. He drank without offering me any.

“Are you not a lover of the sea?” I said. “I would have thought someone taking a post such as this-’
“-must be as mad as a hatter,” he said, looking glumly into his glass. “Four months here, and I’ve barely even started.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

He gestured toward the papers on the table. “My work.”

“You keep a record of the currents, tides, and ships?”

“Not that work. I meant my writing.”

“You are a writer, then?”

“Yes. I used to be a newspaper reporter. But I’m driven to write of false things. I thought with a change of scenery, and blessed isolation . . .”

“You have plenty of both here, I imagine. I know something of isolation myself.”

He gave a grim smile, as if his loneliness were the deepest in all the world and weighed most heavily on his shoulders. He drank more liquor, in gulps instead of sips, and refilled his glass. My legs were trembling from the long climb, but the only place to sit was his bed. I had never been in a man’s bed.

“Isolation is the devil’s tool,” Poe said. “I want to concentrate on my work, but one hears things in this damnable cylinder. The rush of high tide sounds like voices in the chamber below, like the soft cries of those who have been pulled under the water. Think of all those ships lying on the ocean floor yonder, and the white bones of those who went down with them. Where do you suppose they go?”

For the first time, I had an inkling of the man’s instability. His brooding good looks became sharper and fiercer, his eyes flashing with a morose anger. Beyond the

windows, the clouds had gathered and grown darker as if to match Poe’s mood. A squall was pushing in from the sea, and the cutters spread across the sea had taken down their sails as the wind increased.

“A storm is blowing in,” I said. “Shouldn’t you light the lamps?”

He said nothing, just wiped at his chin. Wanting to pull him from his mood, not yet ready to trouble him to lead me back down the stairs, I asked what he was writing.

“It’s about a shipwreck.”

“Shipwreck?” 

“A ghost ship. With a morbid crew.”

I laughed. “One hears plenty of those tales. I found a paper in a corked bottle once, washed up on the beach.”

His eyebrows arched. “What did it say?”

“The water had gotten to it.”

“It always does,” he said, with the air of one who had floated many futile messages.

“Can I hear the story?”

“It’s no good,” he said. He tapped the rumpled pages beneath the logbook. “This may be the last thing I ever write.”

“Please, read me one.”

“It’s not fit for ladies,” he said, and I wondered how much of his gallantry was due to drunkenness. He closed the logbook and passed it to me. I opened it to the first page. I’d had some schooling in the village, but could read little. He had started entries on

January first. His handwriting was florid and bold, the words scrawled with an intensity that matched his features.

He took it from me. “’January two,’” he read. “‘I have passed this day in a species of ecstasy that I find impossible to describe. My passion for solitude could scarcely have been more thoroughly gratified. I do not say satisfied; for I believe I should never be satiated with such delight as I have experienced today. The wind lulled about daybreak, and by the afternoon the sea had gone down materially. Nothing to be seen, with the telescope even, but ocean and sky, with an occasional gull.’”

“That’s lovely,” I say. I know nothing of poetry.

“January three,’” he continued. “ A dead calm all day. Towards evening the sea looked very much like glass. A few seaweeds came in sight; but besides them absolutely nothing all day, not even the slightest speck of cloud.’”

“Much like this morning, only now the wind is picking up and there’s a swell rising.”

He closed the book and stared out at the sea for a moment. “What do you know of murder?” he asked, appraising me, his eyes gleaming.

“Very little,” I said. “I can’t imagine such a horrid thing.”

“I can,” he said. “Far too easily. The mind of man is a foul, corrupt thing. And when a man is alone with his thoughts . . .”

He drained his glass again, refilled it, spilling a few drops on the table. “But forgive me,” he said, louder. “I forget my manners. You are a guest and I have made you stand.”

I shivered, though the room was warm. “I must be getting home,” I said. “My parents are waiting, and I dare not get caught out in this storm.”

“Why don’t you stay until it blows over?” he said, leaning back on the bunk a little.

“They’ll be expecting me,” I said. I took a tentative step toward the trap door, loathe to negotiate those many steps again without a lantern.

Poe grabbed my arm, and his eyes were dead as coal. “I can’t be alone anymore,” he said. “Don’t you hear them?”

I tried to pull away, but his was the grip of a lunatic. “Please,” I implored, silently cursing my recklessness in coming here. A barren life on a lonely strip of shore was better than no life at all, and the excitement I had craved was now full upon me, but I wanted it no more.

“The voices,” he said with a hiss, his face clenched, sweat clinging to that high, broad forehead. “With every storm they come, the souls of the shipwrecked and lost at sea.”

As the wind picked up, I thought I could hear them, but perhaps it was only the roaring heartbeat in my ears. I wrenched free, desperate and afraid. He grabbed at me again, and I dodged away. He howled, the mad sound blending with the wind until it filled the watch chamber.

“Don’t leave me,” he shouted, diving toward me. I stepped backward, into the space of the open trap door, falling to the top step and then into the yawning black abyss, toward those tormented voices at the base of the lighthouse.
I stayed with Poe for the remainder of his term. He disposed of my body, of course, weighed me down by slipping scrap iron into my dress, and set me out to sea in the early morning dark of high tide. I came back with the tide the next night, watched as he brooded with his bottles and occasionally scrawled barely legible words on his papers. I read his logbook over his shoulder, what I could of it.

I waited until he fell into a restless sleep before I began whispering. Poe was right, those voices in the well of the lighthouse were of the dead, and I both imitated and joined them. Poe tossed in his sleep, sweated like driftwood, and finally woke. “Who’s there?” he asked.

I told him my name, as I told all of them my name in the years and centuries to come. He finished his story, wrote poetry, and drank to forget me, though he could not forget the one who was his constant companion. He had come to the lighthouse to be alone, but in the end, that was the last thing I allowed him. He read to me from his journal: “It is strange that I never observed, until this moment, how dreary a sound that word has: ‘Alone.’”

And though Poe left at the end of the year, I imagine I haunted him for the remainder of his days. I longed to be the last thing of which he ever wrote.

And he made me immortal. Me, his Annabel Lee.

Profile

Scott Nicholson: His first novel The Red Church inspired by an actual haunted church near his home, was released as a mass market paperback in 2002. It was selected for three book-of-the-month clubs and was a Bram Stoker Award finalist. His other novels are The Harvest, The Manor, The Home, The Farm, They Hunger, Disintegration, Drummer Boy, the sequel to The Red Church. Nicholson won the grand prize in the international Writers of the Future contest in 1999. That same year, he was first runner-up for the Darrell Award and his work was recommended for both the Stoker and Nebula Awards. He’s published over 40 stories in six different countries, some of which appear in his collection Thank You For The Flowers. 

Web Site

Kraken Revenge

by Daniele Serra

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Daniele Serra is a professional illustrator. His work has been published in Europe, Australia and the United States, and displayed at various exhibits across the U.S. and Europe. He has provided illustrations for authors such as Brian Stableford, Rain Graves and Steven Savile. He has also worked for DC Comics, Image Comics, Cemetery Dance, Weird Tales magazine, PS Publishing and other publications. Web Site

Read the complete version in italian

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Horror Street: Interview with Mary SanGiovanni

Interview with horror writer Mary SanGiovanni:

[Alessandro Manzetti] I read that you have an irrational fear of masks and mannequins, faceless things. The thing struck me. Is what is hidden behind the appearance, or within us, to scare you? Or you imagine a new reality that comes to life out of nothing, from simple materials and objects? Are your stories inspired by these fears?

[Mary SanGiovanni] I think what it is that scares me is that faces are the first thing humans use to size each other up, to determine if someone is a potential threat or potential mate.  Masks and faceless things blind that sense, in a way.  I think it's the not knowing, the idea that something alien and hostile could be masquerading as one of us.  And I think that monsters masquerading as people we want so desperately to love and trust finds its way into my fiction all the time.

[Alessandro Manzetti] You have earned a Masters degree in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University, Pittsburgh,  you studied under authors like Gary Braunbeck and Tom Monteleone. What has added and what has taken off this experience to your writing?

[Mary SanGiovanni] My time at Seton Hill was invaluable.  In addition to the support and inspiration, we looked in depth at the different elements that make a story work, not just from the experience and point of view of our own genre, but from other genres as well.  If horror is the genre of atmosphere, then romance can teach us about relationships between characters and sf can teach us about research and technical accuracy, just as suspense teaches us tighter plotting and fantasy teaches us seamless world-building.  I feel my writing improved immensely because of my experience at Seton Hill.

[Alessandro Manzetti] Your first work was the collection Under Cover of Night (2002), from the horror genre you move into science fiction and fantasy themes. Can you tell us the plot of the story you care about most and tell us something about that period in your life?

[Mary SanGiovanni] I guess my favorite story in that collection was Skincatchers a noir mystery/horror story that takes place in the early sixties involving a detective investigating a series of brutal homicides.  He comes to discover that these homicides are part of a very specific ritual centuries old.  This story was one of my first pro sales (it sold to the Best of Horrorfind II anthology originally).  I was still very much in the experimental phase of my early writing career, trying out different styles, trying to find my own voice. I wanted to write about the kind of religion that might be developed by entities we would come to think of as monsters. 

[Alessandro Manzetti] Your first novel was The Hollower (2007), nominated for the Bram Stoker Award. It is a dark and disturbing story: an entity, or paranormal creature, called the Hollower, fighting against a group of people who from victims become hunters. You dig into the character humanity, The Hollower seems to be the faceless trigger of our deepest fears, the one that is already within us. You convince us that the demons of the unconscious may be the pure fear without return. A fear without boundaries, always lurking behind the door. Who is The Hollower for you? Is the human psyche really more shocking the Hell?

[Mary SanGiovanni] For me, the Hollower is that little voice I think most of us experience that tells us not to bother, that we can't do something, that we're not good enough, that we should just give up.  It's the worst in us trying to tear down the best in us, and honestly, I think that's exactly what hell is - an eternity of inescapable derision of our own making.  I think nothing can hurt us psychologically so much as the way we can hurt ourselves. The Hollower is that, in essence; it feeds on our being broken down by our own weaknesses, fears, and insecurities.

[Alessandro Manzetti] Is there a place or an event related to your childhood that inspired your stories? What are the sources of your imagination?

[Mary SanGiovanni] For reasons I'm only recently fully exploring, there are woods on the far side of my neighborhood which, when I think of basic, primal fear, I picture. To the best of my recollection, nothing bad ever happened to me there, but all the places in my childhood which were creepy and threatening don't seem to encapsulate fear the way those woods do, for some reason.  When I'm looking for inspiration, I look to the visual, because I think in very visual terms.  I find art often triggers ideas.

[Alessandro Manzetti] In an interview you say that your favourite novels are the classics like The Shining by Stephen King, The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, and maybe The Audrey's Door by Sarah Langan, even though you haven’t finished reading the book at that time. So, the novel has convinced you? What struck you about the Sarah Langan’s writing, do you think there are points of contact with your writing?

[Mary SanGiovanni] I think Sarah's an amazing writer; she has a firm control of her voice and a musical subtlety which I admire and aspire to refining my own writing like. I'd like to think I'm progressing in a more literary vein, but I think Sarah can write circles around me.

[Alessandro Manzetti] Your second novel, Found You (2008), is the sequel to The Hollower. What shall we discover in this book about this evil entity, which is fed by our fears? And how many other new dimensions of ourselves shall we find?

[Mary SanGiovanni] This book introduces a stronger kind of Hollower, and delves a little further into the Hollowers' origins and beliefs, although not so much as the forthcoming third book.  I think this book is darker, and is bleaker than the first one.  There's a heavier, despairing quality to it.  I wrote it during an incredibly busy and stressful time in my life, and I think that shows through.

[Alessandro Manzetti] How do you build a character, where does the creative process start?

[Mary SanGiovanni] I always start with characters, and as I get to know them, a situation drops into their laps.  I get to know a character in my head for a while before I write.  I like to know what the character looks like, sounds like, what music he or she listens to, what quirks he or she has.  And the story always seems to arise as a "let me tell you about this one time I was almost killed" sort of thing.

[Alessandro Manzetti] Your last novel is Thrall (2011), a living city immersed in a supernatural fog, with mysterious statues that watch as a terrible guardians .. once again humans will have to deal with the Evil, which is never extinguished.  This book is your best novel? How much were you inspired by Stephen King’s stories and settings?

[Mary SanGiovanni] I believe it's my best novel, yes. It's certainly my favorite.  I'd say maybe The Mist might have been a subconscious influence, but really, what i find most pleasurable and inspiring about King's work is the creation of very real, sometimes very flawed characters, who manage to find a wellspring of strength inside them, no matter how deeply buried.

[Alessandro Manzetti] You recently published a novella, For Emmy (2011), which tackles a sensitive topic, such as missing persons, especially children. Why did you choose this theme? Where will take us your story, shall we find or lose something?

[Mary SanGiovanni] I'm told For Emmy is the darkest and possibly the scariest thing I have ever written, and I think that's because my own deep fear of children going missing must come through.  This story includes real statistics about the number of people who go missing in this country. Many, many people are never found, and it's really pretty scary how easy it is for people to simply vanish without a trace.  I wrote it during a very dark and painful period, and so I think I tapped into a fear that matched that level of darkness.  I wanted to write about where those people go, and why they don't come back, and what might happen to them wherever they go.

And now two Horror Street classic questions:

[Alessandro Manzetti] In this heading we try to learn about new landscape of horror literature, through direct experience of the authors. What are the new trend of horror? Could you name some new authors who are conducting original projects?

[Mary SanGiovanni] I think women are coming into their own this last decade, and they're bringing with them a unique and sensual perspective to horror.  I think we're starting to see a shift from the visceral back to the cerebral, and even into the surreal.  I think horror literature (movies still have a ways to catch up) is being more seamlessly blended into other genres, especially suspense.  Some new authors running the full range of the horror subgenres include Kelli Owen, Bob Ford, and Nate Southard; I've also heard great things about Lee Thompson and John Jacob Horner.

[Alessandro Manzetti] We leave the reader to imagine of walking along a dark and lonely road going back home, and having to turn the corner. Who (or what) does he find around the corner?

[Mary SanGiovanni] A man who looks exactly like he does, only devoid of those things that make a man human.  A reflection faded in color, a man left-handed where he is right-handed.  A man who walks backward and moves wrong and unhinges his jaw to wail.  A doppleganger bent on swallowing the man whole and absorbing his essence and taking over his life and all that he loves.

Interview by Alessandro Manzetti

HWA Coordinator Italy

Leggi in Italiano

Guest Profile

Mary SanGiovanni is the author of the novels The Hollower (nominated for the Bram Stoker Award), Found You, and Thrall, and the novella For Emmy. Her fiction has appeared in periodicals and anthologies for the last decade. She has a Masters degree in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University, Pittsburgh, where she studied under Gary Braunbeck, Tom Monteleone, Mike Arnzen, and others. She is currently a member of The Authors Guild, The International Thriller Writers, and Penn Writers, and was previously an Active member in the Horror Writers Association. Web Site

Diramazioni

Buy "For Emmy" by M. Sangiovanni on Amazon