Shadows & Tall Trees (31 page)
Read Shadows & Tall Trees Online
Authors: Michael Kelly
The whole time I felt eyes watching us, like we were doing something we were not supposed to do.
Annie and I sat tearing off pieces of the house and crumbling the dirt away between our hands. I looked at Annie and saw the whole lower-half of her face black with mud, hard to look at—saw her staring back at me and realized I must look the same to her.
AUGUST 22
Annie refused to eat the grass from the walls of the house today. When I asked her why, she whispered,
Because. They won’t like it
.
AUGUST ?
Woke up before dawn again from another dream and looked out the door at the stars. They looked different, like some were missing. Then I saw a few stars go out, one after another, from left to right across the sky. Then I realized. Something was moving across the doorway. Something huge, as big as a mountain, was blocking out the stars. Frozen with terror, I closed my eyes and waited. When nothing happened, I opened my eyes and all the stars were back again.
I think I know why we’re still here. We’re not ready yet. Whatever is going to happen is waiting for us to be ready.
AUGUST ?
The car is gone. I went looking for it this morning to see if there might be anything left inside that we can use and it wasn’t there. No tire-tracks, no oil stains, no marks on the ground at all.
When I told Annie that the car was gone, she looked me right in the eye and said,
What car?
AUGUST ?
Last night Annie lay down on the ground looking up at the stars, and told me everything. The secrets I was afraid to hear and the ones she was afraid to tell. She told them all until there was nothing left.
When we were through we both lay there on our backs, not looking at each other, not touching. I heard Annie say,
I’m ready now
.
AUGUST ?
Couldn’t find Annie this morning. Thought about the car vanishing and started to panic. Heard a scraping sound and followed it till I found her high on a ledge with a rock in her hand, scratching something into the cliff. I saw the first four letters of my name and tore the rock out of her hand, screaming at her like a crazy man until she ran away crying. I didn’t care. I had to stop her before she finished, because I knew what would happen if she did.
Found the rock she’d been using and started scraping away what she’d begun. I scraped and scraped until there was nothing left.
AUGUST ?
My name is James Thomas Franklin. I was born on January 12, 1962 in Frankfort, Kentucky. My mother was Sarah Johnson from Paducah and my father was Mitchell Franklin from Virginia Beach. I have a younger sister named Katherine who grew up to be a social worker in Washington. I met Annie Robbins in college, married her and moved to New York City when I was twenty-four. I worked as a dishwasher, office temp, bookstore clerk, and part-time teacher and I have written and published five short stories and seven poems. I have tried to be a good husband, a good son, and a good brother. All those things will still be true when I am gone. They will not vanish with me, because that is not how things happen. Things do not simply vanish, even though they may appear to. Just because something looks like it’s gone doesn’t mean it really is. Nothing is ever really gone. Nothing.
Climbed to the ledge right before sunset and used my knife to carve our names into the rock, adding them to all the others, weeping as I did it because I know what it means, even though I still can’t say it out loud.
They are coming. I have seen them.
Climbed to the top of the rock this morning for one last look, for one single sign of humanity that might tell us where to go, and I saw them. Annie is waiting for me below but I don’t want to go down and face her. She’s going to ask me what I saw and what’s going to happen to us. What am I going to say? What am I going to tell her now?
I can see them. Coming from far away. They are running toward us on all fours. They fill the horizon like a swarm. Some of them are riding and the creatures they are riding on have human faces.
Please. Help us.
ONTRIBUTORS
Tara Isabella Burton’s
fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in
Arc, Shimmer, PANK
, and more. Her nonfiction writing on French decadence and the “weird tale” can be found at
Strange Horizons
and
Wormwood
(Tartarus Press), and
Los Angeles Review of Books,
among other places. She also writes for
The Atlantic, National Geographic Traveler, Salon, Guernica
and more. In 2012 she received the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize for travel writing. An earlier draft of her first novel, now on submission, was long listed for the 2013 Mslexia Novel Competition.
S. M. Beiko
is the author of the YA novel
The Lake and the Library
. When not writing, she attempts to stay warm in the Winnipeg winters, and does editorial and design work.
Based in Buenos Aries,
Santiago Caruso’s
surrealist-gothic art has graced many book and CD covers. Visit him at: www.santiagocaruso.com.ar
This is
Ray Cluley’s
third appearance in
Shadows & Tall Trees
. He has also been published in
Black Static
,
Interzone
and
Crimewave
from TTA Press, and there is a story forthcoming in
Icarus
from Lethe Press. His work has featured in a variety of anthologies, including as reprints for Ellen Datlow’s
Best Horror of the Year
and Steve Berman’s
Wilde Stories 2013:
The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction.
His story ‘Shark! Shark!’ recently won the British Fantasy Award for Best Short Story. ‘Within the Wind, Beneath the Snow’, a limited edition novelette, will appear later this year from Spectral Press, while a collection,
Probably Monsters
, is due from ChiZine Press in 2015. Ray also writes non-fiction but generally he prefers to make stuff up. You can find out more at
probablymonsters.wordpress.com
F. Brett Cox’s
fiction, poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous publications, most recently in
Eclipse Online, New Haven Review
, and the anthology
Manifest West: Even Cowboys Carry Cell Phones
. With Andy Duncan, he co-edited the anthology
Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic
(Tor, 2004). He currently serves as Vice-President of the Board of Directors of the Shirley Jackson Award. A native of North Carolina, Brett is Associate Professor of English at Norwich University and lives with his wife, playwright Jeanne Beckwith, in Roxbury, Vermont, where cell phone service remains unavailable.
Myriam Frey
is a Swiss writer, translator and occasional illustrator. A trained architect, she recently rolled up the tracing paper and abandoned the profession in favour of her old love, language. She’s currently preparing to go back to university to study Applied Linguistics. Her short stories have appeared in Ambit Magazine, on Paraxis.org and in
Still
, an anthology by Negative Press, London. Myriam lives in Olten, Switzerland, with her husband and two children. You can find some of her work on
www.myriamfrey.ch
.
Christopher Harman
lives in Preston in the UK and is a librarian.
Since his first story in 1992, his work has appeared in magazines such as
Ghosts and Scholars, Supernatural Tales, Dark Horizons, New Genre, All Hallows
and
Postscripts
, and also in books such
as Acquainted with the Night, Shades of Darkness, Strange Tales from Tartarus, Unfit for Eden, The Ghosts and Scholars Book of Shadows, Rustblind and Silverbright: A Slipstream Anthology of Railway Stories
and three volumes of the
Terror Tales
series (“Cotswolds”, “East Anglia” and “the Seaside”).
The Heaven Tree and Other Stories
is a collection of his work that has recently been published by Sarob Press.
Michael Kelly
is an anthologist, publisher, and writer based near Toronto, Canada. His fiction has appeared in a number of journals, magazines and anthologies, including
Black Static, The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror,
and
Weird Fiction Review
. As editor, he’s been a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award, and the British Fantasy Society Award. He runs Undertow Publications, an imprint of ChiZine Publications.
This is
V.H. Leslie’s
second appearance for fiction in
Shadows & Tall Trees
. Her other stories have appeared in
Black Static
,
Interzone, Weird Fiction Review
and recently in
Strange Tales IV
. Her story ‘Namesake’ has also just been selected for
Best British
Horror
. She also writes non-fiction for a range of literary publications and is a columnist for
This is Horror
. She was recently awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship and the Lightship First Chapter Prize. For more details on her work please visit:
Robert Levy
is a screenwriter and playwright whose work has been seen Off-Broadway. His dark fantasy/horror novel,
The Glittering World
, is set in Cape Breton and will be published in 2015 by Gallery/Simon & Schuster. Shorter work has recently appeared in
Icarus: The Magazine of Gay Speculative Fiction
and Harper Perennial’s anthology
The Moment: Wild, Poignant, Life-Changing Stories from 125 Writers and Authors Famous and Obscure
.
Alison Moore’s
first novel,
The Lighthouse
, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012 and the National Book Awards 2012 (New Writer of the Year) before winning the McKitterick Prize 2013. Her second novel,
He Wants
, will be published in August 2014. Her shorter fiction has been published in
Best British Short Stories
anthologies and in her debut collection
The Pre-War House and Other Stories
, whose title story won first prize in the novella category of The New Writer Prose and Poetry Prizes. Born in Manchester in 1971, she lives near Nottingham and is an honorary lecturer in the School of English at Nottingham University.
Ralph Robert Moore’s
fiction has been published in America, Canada, England, Ireland, India and Australia in a wide variety of genre and literary magazines and anthologies, including
Black Static, Shadows & Tall Trees, Midnight Street, ChiZine,
and others. His short story ‘The Machine of a Religious Man’ was included in Ellen Datlow’s nineteenth edition of
The Year’s Best Horror and Fantasy
; ‘Our Island’ was one of four stories nominated for Best Story of 2012 by The British Fantasy Society. SENTENCE at www.ralphrobertmoore.com contains a wide selection of his writings, both fiction and non-fiction. Moore lives with his wife Mary in Texas.
C. M. Muller
lives in St. Paul, Minnesota with his wife and two sons—and, of course, all those quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore. He is distantly related to the Norwegian writer Jonas Lie, and draws much inspiration from that scrivener of old. In addition to writing, he enjoys the fine art of bookmaking, and has produced three volumes in just that manner. This is his first published story. More information can be found online at:
chthonicmatter.wordpress.com
John Oakey
is a U. K.-based graphic designer. Some of his work can be seen at
www.johnoakeydesign.co.uk
R.B. Russell
is an English publisher who runs Tartarus Press with his partner, Rosalie Parker. He has had three collections of his own short stories published,
Putting the Pieces in Place
(2009),
Literary Remains
(2010) and
Leave Your Sleep
(2012), a novella,
Bloody Baudelaire
(2009), and a collected edition,
Ghosts
(2012). He is also, occasionally, an illustrator and songwriter, and enjoys making videos. Two new novellas by Russell have been accepted for publication in 2014/15.
Eric Schaller’s
fiction has appeared in such magazines as
Sci Fiction
,
Postscripts, Shadows & Tall Trees,
and
Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet
, and been reprinted in
The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror
,
Best of the Rest
,
Fantasy: Best of the Year
, and
The Time Traveller’s Almanac
. His illustrations can be found in Jeff VanderMeer’s
City of Saints and Madmen
and Hal Duncan’s
An A to Z of the Fantastic City
. He is co-editor of
The Revelator
Robert Shearman
has written four short story collections, and between them they have won the World Fantasy Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the Edge Hill Readers Prize and three British Fantasy Awards. A fifth collection,
They Do The Same Things Different There
, is to be published by ChiZine later this year.
He writes regularly in the UK for theatre and BBC Radio, winning the
Sunday Times
Playwriting Award and the Guinness Award in association with the Royal National Theatre.
He’s probably best known for reintroducing the Daleks to the twenty-first century revival of
Doctor Who
, in an episode that was a finalist for the Hugo Award.
David Surface
lives and writes in Sleepy Hollow, NY. His stories have appeared in
Supernatural Tales, Shadows & Tall Trees Volume 4, The Six-Fingered Hand
, and
The Tenth Black Book of Horror
. He writes a blog on the many sides of horror in writing, film, and life,
Poe’s Doorknob
at
dsurface.wordpress.com
. He is thrilled to be appearing along with so many fine writers in
Shadows & Tall Trees Volume 6
.
Shirley Jackson Award winner
Kaaron Warren
has lived in Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and Fiji, She’s sold many short stories, three novels (the multi-award-winning
Slights
,
Walking the Tree
and
Mistification
) and four short story collections. Her most recent collection,
Through Splintered Walls
, won a Canberra Critic’s Circle Award for Fiction, two Ditmar Awards, two Australian Shadows Awards and a Shirley Jackson Award. Her stories have appeared in Australia, the US, the UK and elsewhere in Europe, and have been selected for both Ellen Datlow’s and Paula Guran’s Year’s Best Anthologies.
You can find her at
kaaronwarren.wordpress.com
and she Tweets @KaaronWarren
Michael Wehunt’s
fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in such publications as
Cemetery Dance
,
Shock Totem
, and
One Buck Horror
, among others. He spends his time in the lost city of Atlanta. Please visit him at
www.michaelwehunt.com
Charles Wilkinson’s
publications include
The Snowman and Other Poems
(Iron Press, 1978) and
The Pain Tree and Other Stories
(London Magazine Editions, 2000). His stories have appeared in
Best Short Stories 1990
(Heinemann),
Best English Short
Stories 2
(Norton),
Midwinter Mysteries
(Little, Brown),
Unthology
(Unthank Books),
London Magazine, Able Muse
(U.S.A.) and in genre magazines/ anthologies such as
Supernatural Tales,
Horror Without Victims
(Megazanthus Press),
The Sea in Birmingham
(TSFG),
Sacrum Regnum
,
Rustblind and Silverbright
(Eibonvale Press) and
Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction
.
Ag & Au,
a pamphlet of his poems, has come out from Flarestack. He lives in Powys, Wales.
Conrad Williams
is the author of seven novels:
Head Injuries, London Revenant, The Unblemished, One, Decay Inevitable, Loss of Separation
and
Blonde on a Stick
. He has also written four novellas and over 100 short stories, some of which are collected in Use Once Then Destroy and Born With Teeth.
In addition to his International Horror Guild Award for his novel The Unblemished, he is a three-time recipient of the British Fantasy Award, including Best Novel for
One
. His debut anthology,
Gutshot
, was shortlisted at both the British Fantasy and World Fantasy Awards. He has also been a finalist for the Shirley Jackson award on two occasions. He lives with his wife, three sons and a big Maine Coon in Manchester.
