The Outcast Hours
Page 1
First published 2019 by Solaris, an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd, Riverside House, Osney Mead, Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK
www.solarisbooks.com
ISBN 978-1-78618-198-5
Introduction copyright © 2019 Mahvesh Murad & Jared Shurin.
“This Book Will Find You” copyright © 2019 Sam Beckbessinger, Lauren Beukes & Dale Halvorsen.
“It Was a Different Time” copyright © 2019 Will Hill.
“Ambulance Service” copyright © 2019 Sami Shah.
“Blind Eye” copyright © 2019 Frances Hardinge.
“Sleep Walker” copyright © 2019 Silvia Moreno-Garcia.
“Bag Man” copyright © 2019 Lavie Tidhar.
“Gatsby” copyright © 2019 Maha Khan Phillips.
“Swipe Left” copyright © 2019 Daniel Polansky.
“MiDNIghT MaRAuDERS” copyright © 2019 M. Suddain.
“Everyone Knows That They’re Dead. Do You?” copyright © 2019 Genevieve Valentine.
“The Collector” copyright © 2019 Sally Partridge.
“The Patron Saint of Night Puppers” copyright © 2019 Indrapramit Das.
“Tilt” copyright © 2019 Karen Onojaife.
“In the Blink of a Light” copyright © 2019 Amira Salah-Ahmed.
“The Dental Gig” copyright © 2019 S. L. Grey.
“One Gram” copyright © 2019 Leah Moore.
“This Place of Thorns” copyright © 2019 Marina Warner.
“Not Just Ivy” copyright © 2019 Celeste Baker.
“Dark Matters” copyright © 2019 Cecilia Ekbäck.
“Above the Light” copyright © 2019 Jesse Bullington.
“Welcome to the Haunted House” copyright © 2019 Yukimi Ogawa.
“Rain, Streaming” copyright © 2019 Omar Robert Hamilton.
“Lock-In” copyright © 2019 William Boyle.
“The Night Mountain” copyright © 2019 Jeffrey Alan Love.
“A Partial Beginner’s Guide to The Lucy Temerlin Home for Broken Shapeshifters” copyright © 2019 Kuzhali Manickavel.
Microstories 2-8 first appeared in The Apology Chapbook and are copyright © 2013 China Miéville. Microstories 1 & 9 copyright © 2019 China Miéville.
The right of the authors to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.
“We like to think we live in daylight, but half the world is always dark; and fantasy, like poetry, speaks the language of the night.”
Ursula K. Le Guin
Contents
Introduction, Mahvesh Murad and Jared Shurin
This Book Will Find You, Sam Beckbessinger, Lauren Beukes and Dale Halvorsen
It Was a Different Time, Will Hill
Ambulance Service, Sami Shah
Blind Eye, Frances Hardinge
Sleep Walker, Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Bag Man, Lavie Tidhar
Gatsby, Maha Khan Phillips
Swipe Left, Daniel Polansky
MiDNIghT MaRAuDERS, M. Suddain
Everyone Knows That They’re Dead. Do You?, Genevieve Valentine
The Collector, Sally Partridge
The Patron Saint of Night Puppers, Indrapramit Das
Tilt, Karen Onojaife
In the Blink of a Light, Amira Salah-Ahmed
The Dental Gig, S. L. Grey
One Gram, Leah Moore
This Place of Thorns, Marina Warner
Not Just Ivy, Celeste Baker
Dark Matters, Cecilia Ekbäck
Above the Light, Jesse Bullington
Welcome to the Haunted House, Yukimi Ogawa
Rain, Streaming, Omar Robert Hamilton
Lock-In, William Boyle
The Night Mountain, Jeffrey Alan Love
A Partial Beginner’s Guide to The Lucy Temerlin Home for Broken Shapeshifters, Kuzhali Manickavel
Microstories by China Miéville 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9.
About the Authors
Also From Solaris
Introduction
Mahvesh Murad and Jared Shurin
One of the commonalities of human existence—something we all share—is the fundamental, inescapable presence of time. Night comes for us all: wherever we are, whoever we are, however we delay it—or, indeed, embrace it—there is an inevitability to the darkness that has framed the entirety of human existence.
That’s no small theme, and, as you can imagine, the idea of ‘night’ prompted a free-ranging discussion with contributors. The stories, accordingly, are diverse: not only in how, and why, and where the ‘night’ falls, but in the authors themselves. The Outcast Hours includes contributions from authors and artists and screenwriters and illustrators; creators drawn from crime, fantasy, young adult fiction, historical fiction, romance and literature. The night comes to all of us; everyone has a say in how we embrace it.
Night is inevitable, but it is also paradoxical: it is private but shared; beautiful but terrifying; soothing but scary. It is where we are free from social gaze, or when we are most daring. It is when we hide, or when we venture forth. It is when we are most exposed; most hidden and most vulnerable. The night is simply—illogically, ironically, however you take it—a reflection of ourselves. It is an opportunity to be who you are, to do what you want, under the cover of darkness. It is the security of secrecy, and the knowledge of the hidden. The night is what we make of it.
The night is when we are able to imagine everything and anything without bounds. It is when we can explore not just the shadows, but ourselves—our limits and possibilities.
The Outcast Hours is about those people who make the very most of it. It is about lovers and lurkers and thieves and trolls and police and predators and so many more. It is about those people who seek what the night has to offer, whether in a moment of passion or as a lifetime’s pursuit. Whether it is dreams or a dream, they are glimpsing the truth buried in the darkness. These are the night-people: the seekers, the dreamers, and the outcasts.
As Le Guin notes, “half the world is always dark”, and The Outcast Hours is a tour of this forgotten half of the world. In the following stories, the night is a border, an experience, an excuse, a home, a battlefield, even a character in its own right. Ultimately, the night is about possibilities. It is about that chance to be who we want to be—who we desperately long to be—and to rediscover or reinvent ourselves.
When the sun goes down, our imagination runs free. In the dark, we let go of our inhibitions and free our inner selves, be they monstrous or magical. The night is when even the best of us can live our worst lives… and the worst of us our best.
(You’ve long had this belief that this is what will happen when you’re at last to descend. It will take your sphere a long time to go down. At first, at the surface, it’ll snap and pitch, ungainly, and every wave will fuss it. But when the pumps start and the whirr of engines begin it’ll move urgently down, out of the light. The window will sweat condensation as visibility diminishes.
You’ve long felt that, in a fashion, you will be met. That is to say this:
If you’re lucky or have a say the journey will be close enough to the flank of some submerged cliff, that with the occasional blast of cold arc lights you’ll see the face of earth and the corals close to you. Perhaps the attentions of cold unstartled animals. So you’ll go down into this notional trench whispering into your recorder so you can later hear what a voice sounds like half a mile down. Descending beyond the level of the seafloor thereabouts towards
a crack. But what will happen is something other than that swell behind the ribs occasioned by first arrival that you’d have thought you’d be expecting, your heart soon to stir instead because of having been preempted.
At the limits of your light, a few metres before the journey ends, you’ll glimpse a figure on a ledge. A dark-glassed helmet and segmented limbs. Armour, metal and rubber and thick glass, of antique design. Tubs of old air, or airlessness now, strapped to a barrel-broad chest. Complex filigree of decorative details on the porthole. A style of which you recognise nothing but its age. Legs sitting straight-kneed looking out into the black like a child at rest after a game. It will have been thus for many lifetimes.
You’ll see it below your window on your way and then beside you and then above, quickly, but you’ll still be sure of what you saw. Without a word, so as not to alert your companion in the craft—this being a communion you’ll claim for yourself—you’ll salute that vanguardist who in their death has made you a promise and told you a secret. You and only you will know of a prehistory of women and men committed to the descent.
Maybe what you’ll have seen is empty, dropped and fallen to rest in a chance attitude of placidness. But there’ll more likely be bones within, pioneer bones. You’ll know that.
More: you’ll know without proof that the person stopped at their overlooking point not on the way down but the way back up again. Surely that was perhaps a grappling hook beside them? Rope and chains on their shoulder, already worn? When you watch the hagfish worry at the base of the world, they’ll do so on striae of slime and silt themselves layered above the print of a caulked hobnailed boot.)
This Book Will Find You
Sam Beckbessinger, Lauren Beukes and Dale Halvorsen
I reach over for my phone to cut the alarm, knocking over an empty wine bottle in the process. I was awake anyway. Or, as much as someone can be if they haven’t actually slept in five days.
Twenty minutes to three. Nearly time. It has to start at three, that’s what the book says. I’ve read the words so many times they play in my head.
3AM is the witching hour. The dreaming souls around you build a bridge to the demon world. Start your ritual then. If you call for your lover, they might hear you, even in hell.
What’s the point, even? I should just stay in bed. I should just keep staring at the ceiling. I have become intimate with its pits and contours, the mould that’s established a colony in the corner, slowly expanding its territory. If I lie still enough, perhaps it will float down spores that can take root in my pores, dissolve my flesh, melt me away. R v. Stone and Dobinson—if you rot to death in a bed of your own filth, the person responsible for you is guilty of culpable homicide through negligence.
But the person responsible for me is already dead.
And she needs me.
I grope the bedside table, my fingers reading an assortment of variously shaped items. Adderall. Xanax. Trazodone. Grief salad. I stop when my fingers reach a round Adderall tablet and chug it down with a mouthful of wine from an open bottle next to the bed. It’s like flooring the accelerator in a car that’s out of petrol, but it’s all I’ve got. I feel my heart flutter weakly as the drug hits my system. Come on, buddy. I drag myself out of bed, grab the wine and stumble through to the kitchen.
I climb out of the Pikachu onesie I’m wearing. There is a major practical drawback to the onesie as a mourning garment, compared to your traditional black dress and veil: you can’t pee without getting totally naked. I step out of it, crouch over a bucket in the corner of the room and empty my bladder. I tip the bucket into the sink and run the tap. The whole house stinks of shit, but I barely smell it any more. It’s been me and the bucket for a week, now. I haven’t been able to confront the bathroom, where…
(Shanaaz is lying on the tiles, blood pooling around the side of her face. Her eyes lock on mine, and they’re huge in panic. I lift her up and prop her sitting against the edge of the bath. “Ssh, baby, ssh, it’s okay.” She splutters, her mouth and chin covered in bloody foam. Her cheek is swelling up like a sack; the broken bones have become a one-way valve and she’s trying to breathe, but every time she inhales, her cheek swells more and she’s gasping and…)
I shove the memory down. Climb back into the onesie, ignore the smell of sweat and the various other body fluids that are making it so crusty. I make my way to the living room, stepping over empty take-away cartons as I go. Really keeping it together, aren’t you, Kara.
The book is there. Perched on the edge of the tea crate used as a coffee table. A plain black hardcover, A4, the pages dog-eared. The stupid title written on the cover in permanent marker. The Demon’s Knock: A spell to bring back a dead lover. Like a school exercise book. The kind of thing teenage girls would use to dare each other at a sleepover. And yet here I am, 30 goddamned years old, staring at it like it’s got teeth.
I have no idea how I got this book. Is it possible that it just appeared, that night? Didn’t I just find it…
(in the drawer in the kitchen crammed full of probiotics and vitamins, and I’m digging through frantically, calling to her, “hold tight baby, I’m coming, hold tight,” but what am I looking for, a fucking plaster? Aspirin? Maybe if we had some bandages, if I could get the blood to stop I could fix it, but we don’t have bandages because I’m useless and never buy the right things, I’m not prepared for this, and suddenly there’s the book, right at the bottom of the drawer, like it’s always been there…)
lying there innocently. I crouch in front of the tea chest and pick it up. It’s heavier than it should be. Or maybe my whole body is just tired. I reach for the bottle, gulp a slug of wine and open to the first page, where someone has handwritten the rules in a cramped black script:
The rules
Only love can raise the dead.
You may not make a copy of this book. This will ruin the magick.
This book will find you when you need it. It has found you for a reason, and it will find someone else who is ready for it after you are done.
3AM is the witching hour. The dreaming souls around you build a bridge to the demon world. Start your ritual then. If you call for your lover, they might hear you, even in hell.
You have 66 minutes to complete the spell. Do not tarry. Demons get impatient. They get angry. They are devious.
There are six steps. Each one is a way for you to prove your love is true.
Wait for the knock on the door. You’ll know if you failed, because something will come to find you, but it won’t be your lover.
The book reads like a ‘Six Ways to Know if They Really Love You’ article ripped from Teen Vogue: Hell Edition. But fine: sixty-six minutes overall, six steps. Eleven minutes per step. I set the timer on my phone. It’s nearly three. Showtime.
I turn the page to Step One.
Step 1: Set the Mood
Music connects souls. Play their favourite song, loud enough to wake the dead. Put it on repeat.
Their favourite song. Easy enough.
(We’re tangled in blankets on the single bed in Shanaaz’s dorm room. We’ve just started dating, and everything stinks of sex. Her laptop is perched on the bookshelf, playing one of her carefully curated playlists filled with early-2010s emo. That song comes on—“Death” by White Lies. She leans over to turn up the volume: “I love this song! It’s from Vampire Diaries.” I keep forgetting how young she is.
I look at her incredulously. “You mean, from A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.”
She shrugs, looking sheepish.
“Oh my god. Three words: Iranian Vampire Western. We’re watching it tonight. No buts.” I pull her towards me, sliding my hand into the curve of her waist. “Well, maybe some butts, after.”
“You can’t be serious. I’m writing my exam tomorrow. The one you were supposed to help me study for, remember? As my actual lecturer?”
“Please. You already know it all,” I say, letting my hand slip down and under the elastic of her panties. “Actus reus: t
he guilty act.” I bring my lips to her collarbone and taste her. “Mens rea: the guilty mind.”
She tangles her fingers in my hair, pulling my lips to hers. “And when I fail first-year law…” she mumbles, through breathless kisses.
“I plead intoxication,” I say, as I stroke my thumb over her.
Harry McVeigh breaks into the chorus. And she wraps her fingers in my hair and pulls me down where we are all touch and skin and wetness. And from that moment, “Death” is our song.)
Seems pretty ironic now, really.
I bring the song up on my phone, casting it through the Bluetooth speakers, loud enough to wake the dead. I tap the ‘repeat’ icon. Sorry, neighbours.
There’s a crash from the other side of the flat. I nearly fall over. It’s three in the morning and I’m trying to resurrect the dead and there’s a crash in our fucking kitchen. What is happening to me?
I creep into the kitchen. A pair of reflective predator eyes stare at me from the sink. I flick the lights on to reveal Squirtle, Shanaaz’s geriatric Persian, crouching on the microwave, licking one of the matted knots out of his fur. I make a move towards him, bring my bare foot down onto a shard of ceramic from the mug he’s knocked onto the floor. I yelp and he hisses at me, drops onto the floor and zooms past my legs.
“Come here, you little shit!”
I hobble after him, trying to keep my weight on the side of my foot. He’s crouched in front of the bathroom, hackles raised, growling at the door.
“Oi! Get away from there.”