2nd Spectral Book of Horror Stories Read online

  Table of Contents

  The 2nd Spectral Book of Horror Stories

  INTRODUCTION

  HOUSE OF THE HAG

  FLOTSAM

  TOYS FROM THE GINGERBREAD COUNTRY

  SUGARED HEAT

  A GIRL AND HER DOLLS

  THE LARDER

  THE VEILS

  JOE IS A BARBER

  LITTLE TRAVELLER

  BEHIND THE WALL

  MARY, MARY

  THE MEANTIME

  MARROWVALE

  SCRAPING BY

  WHERE THE FOREST ENDS

  WRONG

  LUMP IN YOUR THROAT

  HORN OF THE HUNTER

  WHO WILL STOP ME NOW?

  CONTRIBUTORS

  The 2nd Spectral Book of Horror Stories - A SPECTRAL PRESS PUBLICATION

  All stories and biographical notes are Copyright © 2015 their respective authors

  All other text and Spectral Press logo is Copyright © 2011 - 2015 Spectral Press

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, including electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the copyright owners.

  The rights of all authors contained herein to be identified as the Author of their work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  First edition, December 2015

  Editor: Mark Morris

  Publisher: Simon Marshall-Jones

  Cover art by Vincent Chong © 2015

  Ebook created by Graeme Reynolds of Horrific Tales Publishing

  Spectral Press, 13 Montgomery Crescent, Bolbeck Park, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK14 6HA

  Website: spectralpress.wordpress.com

  Email: [email protected]

  THE 2ND SPECTRAL BOOK OF

  HORROR STORIES

  Edited by

  MARK MORRIS

  DEDICATION

  This book is dedicated to the memory of my dearly missed friend Graham Joyce (1954-2014), and also to the memory of Tanith Lee (1947-2015) and Tom Piccirilli (1965-2015). All luminaries of the genre, and all taken far too soon.

  INTRODUCTION

  Mark Morris

  Well, volume one made quite an impact, didn't it?

  When we launched The Spectral Book of Horror Stories at the British Fantasy Convention in September 2014 I had no idea of just how popular it would turn out to be. I hoped, of course, for great things. I hoped to discover there was still a dedicated market for an annual non-themed horror anthology. I hoped that the book would be well-received by readers and well-reviewed by the press. I hoped it would fulfil my vision as a showcase for the very best short fiction that this fantastic genre of ours has to offer.

  I hoped… but I couldn't be sure. And I was nervous on the morning of the launch, wondering whether, despite the positive feedback I had received on Facebook and Twitter, people would support the project when it came to the crunch by putting their hands in their pockets and buying a copy of the book.

  I needn't have worried. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the response at the launch was phenomenal. The room was packed with people, the queue to buy books never dwindled, and the contributors who were there to sign copies were kept busy throughout the entire sixty minutes.

  Since then the feedback has been phenomenal too. Reviews of volume one have been almost overwhelmingly positive and The Spectral Book of Horror Stories has been nominated for both a Shirley Jackson Award and a British Fantasy Award (at the time of writing the British Fantasy Award winners are still to be announced). Additionally Alison Littlewood's story from the anthology, 'The Dog's Home', won the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Short Story, whereas Stephen

  Volk's story 'Newspaper Heart' was nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award in the Best Novelette category, and has also been nominated for a British Fantasy Award in the Best Novella category.

  Several of the book's individual stories have also been picked up to be reprinted in 'Best Of…' anthologies - notably 'The Night Doctor' in Best New Horror 26 edited by Stephen Jones, 'The Dog's Home' by Alison Littlewood and 'Outside Heavenly' by Rio Youers in The Best Horror of the Year Volume 7 edited by Ellen Datlow, 'Eastmouth' by Alison Moore, 'The Slista' by Stephen Laws and 'Something Sinister in Sunlight' by Lisa Tuttle in Best British Horror 2015 edited by Johnny Mains, and 'Outside Heavenly' by Rio Youers (again) in Imaginarium 4: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing edited by Sandra Kasturi and Jerome Stueart.

  In order to make as big an impact as possible with The Spectral Book of Horror Stories I contacted around sixty of my favourite short fiction writers in the genre and invited them each to contribute a story. With volume two, though, I decided to open the anthology up and give everyone a chance to contribute. I was excited by the prospect of discovering and publishing new writers-new to me anyway-and of hearing some fresh, unique voices.

  I admit I didn't quite know what to expect when, in early January of this year, I duly announced an open submissions policy for The 2nd Spectral Book of Horror Stories. It wasn't long, though, before I was given a good idea of what I had let myself in for, because no sooner had I made the announcement than the stories began to flood in.

  And for the next few months the flood continued pretty much unabated, until, by the time the submissions window closed on May 31st, I had received over 800 submissions.

  Needless to say, it was an overwhelming task reading through them all, but ultimately it proved worthwhile. If it hadn't been for the open submissions policy The 2nd Spectral Book of Horror Stories would not contain three fantastic stories by a trio of writers I'd never heard of before this process began-Richard Jay Goldstein, Kurt Fawver and Sean Logan; it would not contain the first ever adult horror story (a novella no less!) by acclaimed YA writer Cliff McNish; it may not even have contained a great new story from seasoned veteran (I hope he doesn't mind me calling him that!) Adrian Cole, for the simple reason that I wasn't aware Adrian was, after an absence of some years, back writing short stories again until 'A Girl And Her Dolls' popped into my inbox.

  I'm very proud of The 2nd Spectral Book of Horror Stories. Personally I think this year's anthology contains a varied and beautifully balanced array of truly brilliant tales. The horror genre has very wide parameters, as evidenced by the cornucopia of wonders displayed within these pages. The only criticism levelled at last year's anthology by one or two reviewers was that some of the stories weren't really 'horror' at all - but may I respectfully suggest to those critics that they remove their blinkers and embrace the notion that horror has no limits, that it can be found anywhere, at any time, in any situation.

  All human-and inhuman-life is here. There is horror to be found in each and every one of these stories, no matter how ambiguous or how mundane it may sometimes appear.

  And now, having been warned, please feel free to continue on your journey.

  As ever, tread carefully.

  - 31st August 2015

  HOUSE OF THE HAG

  Paul Finch

  Sarah had always been the level-headed one. The one who didn't miss the wood for the trees. The one who took stuff on the chin because she knew that to flip out could make bad situations worse. But she and Phil had only been in Scotland half a day before he realised his wife had actually bottled up all the angst Michaela had introduced to their lives, rather than dispensed with it, and that despite her usual composed ex
terior, she wasn't okay with this thing at all, but felt wounded and abandoned.

  In that respect, maybe it had been an obvious solution: try and get away from it all.

  Book the first nice place you found online, get in the car, drive.

  But some problems only festered if you tried to hide from them. And striking out blindly, not really knowing where you were going, or why, might be a bad idea too.

  ****

  Perhaps Sarah's choice of destination should have suggested a problem.

  Normally when they took 'long weekend' breaks, they opted for short-haul escapes like the New Forest, the Cotswolds or the West Country. But The Shieling, a cottage at the foot of Meith Bheinn, on the shore of Loch Morar in the Northwest Highlands, was a two-day journey from London and an extremely remote location even for committed outdoor types. On top of that it was only April-early April, in fact-and the forecast was for typically squally weather, moments of bright sunshine offset by a cold north-westerly wind, interspersed with intense, protracted downpours.

  One such tempest broke while Sarah and Phil were trekking across the mountain's lower slopes.

  There had never been any question about the scenery up here. Wherever you went, you were confronted by rolling summits and granite crags; the cork-brown moors speckled with golden gorse as they soared upward to ice-clad massifs and deep, shadow-filled corries. Morar itself was a picture of natural beauty, its fathomless waters a steely blue-green, but never flat, never still-ruffled always by the Atlantic breeze, frothing along its pebbly, tree-lined shores. Of course, under heavy cloud-great purple masses tearing their pregnant bellies wide as they passed over jutting peaks, pouring out their contents in colossal cataracts- he whole place took on a wilder, gloomier aspect, which seemed to act on Sarah as a kind of trigger.

  She had first begun talking about Michaela shortly after lunch.

  They'd had a picnic-cold chicken, scotch eggs and slaw, with hot, rum-laced coffee to wash it all down-on the banks of a burn overlooking Morar from its central south shore, the vista stretching all the way past Swordland Lodge, through Tarbet Glen to the tidal surface of Loch Nevis. Initially, Sarah was silent as she ate, apparently not noticing any of this. Only as they finished, had she started letting forth, and forth, and forth-endlessly, feverishly. This continued even as the rain commenced. Now, two hours later, it was falling in torrents, but this didn't stop her; her only response was to adjust her pack and tighten her hood. Her discourse flowed on uninterrupted, her eyes almost glazed.

  "I mean what have we actually done, Phil… to earn such disdain? You bring a child into the world and do everything you can, often to your own disadvantage. You bathe them, feed them, tend to them when they're poorly. You give them parties on their birthdays and presents at Christmas. You share their heartbreak on the first day they go to school… you do everything in your power to help them, advise them, guide them. And you don't expect anything in return-that's not why you've given up so much of your life. But is it really too much to expect that a day actually doesn't arrive when all of a sudden this unconditional love is taken for weakness… when in the blink of an eye you've ceased to be a human being and are suddenly a human doormat?"

  Phil agreed. Long before his own domestic life had been so disrupted, he'd reviled that whole teen rebel thing. Certain adults were amused by it; others viewed it as a rite of passage. But he'd always felt it had the potential to inflict severe damage on the family home. He wondered if the rebels themselves were genuinely so blinded by self-interest that they truly never considered how much ill will their hurtful behaviour might be storing up for the future. Sarah, for example, was the least vengeful person he knew, but in her own words: "I suppose eventually I'll come to pretend it's all unimportant because life has to go on. But I don't think I'll ever actually forgive Michaela for this. Never… and I mean that, Phil. Never."

  Again he grunted in agreement, though at present he was more worried about the intensity of the wind as they made their way down the steepening brae, and the lashing rain, which had now transformed the footpath into a stream of slurry. This was more than just a brief damp interlude, he realised.

  "You know she called me a fucking bitch?"

  "Yeah, I know about that, Sarah… I was there."

  "Her own mother… a fucking bitch! And all because I wouldn't stump up the first two months' rent on a dump of a flat, which neither she nor the Parasite will be able to afford long-term anyway because neither of them could keep a job if they could even get one!"

  Phil knew all about this too. In fact, he probably knew more about 'the Parasite' than Sarah did, he being the one who'd risen at five o'clock one Sunday morning two years ago to check Michaela had come in, to discover she had but that she'd also brought someone with her: an odious individual, tall and bone-thin, wearing remnants of black eye make-up and with a mop of dyed-black hair-who at the time was wandering their landing in a daze, searching for the lavatory but unashamedly naked, his emaciated body covered in scars and tasteless tattoos. That Michaela had only been seventeen at the time and had taken a boy into her bedroom had broken one of their strictest house rules, though it turned out to be even worse than that because Shozzer-Phil had never got to know his full name, even though Michaela had dated him on and off ever since-had been twenty-four. The explanation that he was "a drummer in a really good band, and this is just the way he does his stuff" hadn't cut much ice with Phil, but he'd still felt it politic not to mention the incident to Sarah.

  On today's evidence, that had clearly been a sensible move. But as before, they currently had more important matters to contend with.

  By Phil's estimation, it was six miles back to the cottage, but it wouldn't even be that simple. They'd first found their way to this point by a circuitous, meandering route, which they hadn't really been paying attention to because they were too engrossed in the issue of Michaela. This meant they couldn't just head back the way they'd come, especially as the heavy pulses of all-enveloping rain were now doing their damnedest to obliterate all recognisable landscape features. In normal times of course they'd have a detailed map and/or a compass, but they'd come up here at too short a notice to acquire the former, and hadn't expected to ramble so far that they'd need the latter. Their main reference point was the loch, spread out majestically below them. But even that was problematical, as the more they walked, hunched against the elements, the more often the loch vanished from sight, either absorbed by the shimmering cascades of rain, or because the path had dipped into hollows or around hillocks or down long, enclosed ravines. It nearly always reappeared again, though it never looked any closer… until they finally emerged onto another sodden hillside from which weather-worn landscapes ranged off in every direction, but from where there was no view at all of the lower country, and therefore no sign of the loch. They pressed on regardless, still confident they could navigate their way back down by instinct, though Phil was increasingly concerned that they were too new to this geography to trust to that indefinitely. If all else failed, they had their mobile phones. There was no signal at present, but it might just be a matter of yomping until they got one-though how long that would take, he didn't know.

  If all that wasn't bad enough, what made things even worse was that the storm showed no signs of abating. The ice-edged wind battered them with increasing force, the bitter rain washing over them in waves. They plodded doggedly on for another two hours. By now their waterproofs leaked in half a dozen places, freezing water seeping through their clothes, filling their boots, clutching them in a merciless and unrelenting chill.

  Outdoors folk, they were both of them reasonably fit. Sarah was particularly light on her feet, being small and petite, though Phil, while taller and burlier, had developed good stamina for his forty-eight years. In pure physical terms, they were able to cover plenty of ground, but that was no use if they were going the wrong way-and anyhow, fatigue was at last catching up with them, much earlier than it should have done. This worried Phi
l more than anything, because he knew it meant their bodies' core temperature was reducing. Their age was against them in this. Despite the physical exercise, they were increasingly unable to regenerate lost heat, which meant they were suffering mild hypothermia. Confusion and weakness would result, further hampering their ability to get off the mountain. What they needed was shelter-even rough and ready shelter like a bothy. Of course, they knew there was nothing like that behind them, so at least in that regard it made sense to keep pushing on.

  The ground now slanted up towards a saddle-back ridge. They ascended with leaden limbs and aching joints, finally arriving on a small plateau. Both to left and right, barren slopes soared skyward, their footings strewn with colossal boulders. However, a few dozen yards in front, the ground fell away again. They moved to the edge of it and peered down a deep but gently sloping glen. Its furthest extent was again lost in rain, but this was the first downward slope they'd encountered that actually looked manageable. The question nagged, however: was this the right way?

  "I know visibility's poor, but surely we'd be able to see if the loch was down there?" Sarah said, breathing hard. Damp golden straggles poked from under her hood; her pink cheeks were stained by mascara.

  "I think it's more important now that we just get to lower ground," Phil replied. "We're way too exposed up here. And the further down we go, the more likely we are to find a croft or a shepherd's hut, or something."

  She nodded. They started down on tired, trudging feet, but after only a couple of minutes, Sarah shouted and pointed. Some sixty yards to their right, vaguely visible in the deluge, a box-like tent had been tucked into a fold in the hillside. It was a miracle she'd even seen it. It was a dull olive green, which had blended well into the sopping foliage. It was also a bit of a puzzle. In outline, it was a spacious 'dome'; the kind of tent families took to organised sites. If anyone normally pitched up here, it would be a triangular one-man affair. Even so, they headed towards it with vigour. Whoever the campers were, they had to be kindred spirits in this wilderness. It didn't seem likely they'd refuse Phil and Sarah entry, or deny them a hot cuppa. If nothing else, they ought to be able to provide directions.