“Get on with it,” came the voice from the audience.
They got on with it. Lucy climbed inside the cabinet. She looked so tiny there suddenly, you could have fitted five Lucys inside, more maybe. He closed the doors on her. One didn’t shut properly, the rain water, the warping – and there was laughter again, and this time they were definitely mocking him. He had to hold the door to keep it flush.
“Goodbye,” he said to her. And he liked to imagine that inside she mouthed a goodbye to him too.
He tapped on the box three times with his wand. “Abracadabra,” he said. He stepped away from the box, the warped door swung open and revealed that the cabinet was now empty.
“Can you bring her back?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Bring her back.”
“No,” he said. “I’m not bringing her back. Not to this place.”
They came up on to the stage then, and took him by his arms, and bent him over backwards so his spine hurt, and held him tight. He saw that they were demons and angels, both – that they had little lumps for horns, and lapsed haloes, both.
“Bring her back,” they said.
And he felt such a power surging through him, the magic was back, even in a world as cracked as this. And he thanked them, sincerely – he thanked them that they had helped him give his best performance, that they had made his act at last mean something. The fear had gone. The fear had gone forever, and they could now do what they liked to him.
THEY BIT HIM, and punched him, and pulled at his skin and hair. And he didn’t cry out, he laughed, he barely felt a thing, he was so full of magic now, he was invincible. This enraged them still further. They shut him inside his box, and they set fire to it, and he didn’t cry out, not once, and he looked deep into the flames and fancied he saw in them what Lucy had found so fascinating, and it didn’t hurt, not very much, right up until the end.
AND LUCY TURNED about, and opened her eyes, and there was noise, and people, and the buildings stood intact, and the smell in the air may not have been clean but at least it wasn’t sulphur.
Her sequined dress was ripped, and spattered with mud.
There was a pack of playing cards in her hand.
There was a tongue in her head.
She began to speak, and the more she said the better she got, and the better she got the louder she became.
She fanned out the playing cards to the world.
“Roll up, roll up,” she said. “Prepare to be dazzled by the Great Zinkiewicz!”
For a while no one paid any attention. But then, even in a world so cracked, the magic began to hold.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Dan Abnett is a multiple New York Times bestselling author and an award-winning comic book writer. He has written more than forty novels, including the acclaimed Gaunt’s Ghosts series, the Eisenhorn and Ravenor trilogies, volumes of the million-selling Horus Heresy series, The Silent Stars Go By (the 2011 Christmas Doctor Who novel), Triumff: Her Majesty’s Hero, and Embedded. In comics, he is known for his work on The Legion of Super-Heroes, Nova, the Guardians of the Galaxy and the Vertigo series The New Deadwardians. A regular contributor to 2000 AD, he is the creator of series including Grey Area, Kingdom and the classic Sinister Dexter. He has also written Insurrection, Durham Red, Judge Dredd, The VCs and Rogue Trooper. He lives and works in Maidstone, Kent. Dan’s blog and website can be found at www.danabnett.com and you can follow him on Twitter @VincentAbnett.
Storm Constantine is the author of over 30 books, both fiction and non-fiction, as well as numerous short stories. Her fiction titles include the best selling Wraeththu trilogies and stand-alone novels, Hermetech, Thin Air, and the Grigori Trilogy. Her esoteric non-fiction works include Sekhem Heka and Grimoire Dehara: Kaimana. Storm lives in the Midlands of the UK with her husband and four cats.
Award-winning horror author Gemma Files is currently best-known for her Hexslinger novel series (A Book of Tongues, A Rope of Thorns and A Tree of Bones, all from ChiZine Publications), but has also published two collections of short fiction (Kissing Carrion and The Worm in Every Heart, both from Wildside Press) and two chapbooks of poetry. Five of her stories were adapted by The Hunger, an erotic anthology TV series co-produced by Tony and Ridley Scott’s Scott Free Productions. She lives in Toronto, Canada with her husband and son.
Christopher Fowler is the multi-award-winning author of over thirty novels and twelve short story collections including Roofworld, Spanky, Psychoville, Calabash, Hell Train and ten Bryant & May mystery novels. He recently wrote Red Gloves, 25 new stories to mark his first 25 years in print, the War of the Worlds videogame for Paramount with Sir Patrick Stewart, and won the Green Carnation prize for his memoir Paperboy. He currently writes a weekly column in the Independent on Sunday and reviews for the Financial Times.
Will Hill is the author of the critically-acclaimed Department 19 series, which have been translated into eight languages and sold in more than fifteen countries around the world. The first book in the series was the best-selling YA debut hardback of 2011. He grew up in the north east of England, and now lives in east London with his girlfriend.
Alison Littlewood is the author of A Cold Season, published by Jo Fletcher Books, an imprint of Quercus. The novel was selected for the Richard and Judy Book Club, where it was described as “perfect reading for a dark winter’s night.” Alison’s short stories have been picked for the Best Horror of the Year and Mammoth Book of Best New Horror anthologies for 2012, as well as featuring in genre magazines Black Static, Crimewave and Dark Horizons. Other publication credits include the anthologies Terror Tales of the Cotswolds, Where Are We Going? and Never Again. Visit her at www.alisonlittlewood.co.uk.
Sarah Lotz is a screenwriter and pulp fiction novelist with a fondness for the macabre and fake names. Among other things, she writes urban horror novels under the name S.L. Grey with author Louis Greenberg and a YA zombie series with her daughter, Savannah, under the name Lily Herne. She lives in Cape Town with her family and other animals. She can be found at slgrey.bookslive.co.za, deadlandszombies.com and sarahlotz.com.
Gail Z. Martin’s newest series, The Ascendant Kingdoms Saga (Orbit Books) debuts with Ice Forged in 2013. In addition to Ice Forged, she is the author of The Chronicles of The Necromancer series (The Summoner, The Blood King, Dark Haven and Dark Lady’s Chosen) from Solaris Books and TheFallen Kings Cycle from Orbit Books (Book One: The Sworn and Book Two: The Dread). For book updates, tour information and contact details, visit www.AscendantKingdoms.com.
Sophia McDougall is a novelist, playwright, artist and poet. She is the author of the bestselling Romanitas trilogy (twice shortlisted for the Sidewise Award for Alternate History) set in a contemporary world where the Roman Empire never fell. Beside modern Romans, she has also been known to write about fish robots and ghost Nazis. You can find her at sophiamcdougall.com.
Born in Wales in the UK, Lou Morgan studied medieval literature at UCL and now lives in the south of England with her husband, son and obligatory cat. Her first novel, Blood and Feathers, was published by Solaris Books in August 2012, and her short stories have appeared in several anthologies. She has a weakness for pizza, and for cathedrals (but probably not at the same time) and can be found on Twitter at @LouMorgan... usually when she’s supposed to be doing something else.
Audrey Niffenegger is a writer and artist who lives and works in Chicago. When she was a child she was convinced (due to an unfortunate encounter with a faux biography) that Sherlock Holmes was a real person. Years later she was perplexed to realise that his creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, believed that fairies were real. Some years after that she discovered The Doyle Diary by Charles Altamont Doyle, Arthur’s father; it is a sketchbook he kept while he was an inmate at an insane asylum. ‘The Wong Fairy’ owes a great deal to The Doyle Diary’s introduction and detective work by Michael Baker. It is always gratifying when reality is stranger than fiction; many thanks to Mr. Baker for inspiring this story.
&n
bsp; Thana Niveau lives in the Victorian seaside town of Clevedon, where she shares her life with fellow writer John Llewellyn Probert, in a gothic library filled with arcane books and curiosities. Her stories have appeared in Best New Horror 22 and 23, Terror Tales of the Cotswolds, The Black Book of Horror 7, 8 and 9, Death Rattles, Delicate Toxins and the charity anthology Never Again, in addition to the final issue of Necrotic Tissue. She has just published her first collection, From Hell to Eternity.
Robert Shearman is probably best known for writing that episode that brought the Daleks back to the revived series of Doctor Who, but he started out as a theatre and radio dramatist, writing strange comedy plays for the likes of Alan Ayckbourn, about people falling in love with their younger selves, or imaginary friends magically coming to life; his two series of the interactive BBC radio series Chain Gang both won Sony Awards, with a third series due in 2013. He has written three collections of short stories, Tiny Deaths, Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical, and Everyone’s Just So So Special, and collectively they have won the World Fantasy Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Shirley Jackson Award and the Edge Hill Short Story Readers Prize; individual stories have been selected by the National Library of Singapore for the Read! Singapore campaign, and nominated for the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Award. A fourth collection, the horror-themed Remember Why You Fear Me, is published by ChiZine in Canada later this year. His ongoing quest to write one hundred new short stories can be found at justsosospecial.com. He is currently writer in residence at Edinburgh Napier University.
Melanie Tem’s recent and forthcoming stories include ‘Corn Teeth’ (Asimov’s,Aug 2011), ‘The Classmate’ (HorrorZine anthology edited by Jeanie Rector) and ‘Timbrel and Pipe’ (Dark Fantastic edited by Jason V. Brock & William Nolan). Her play Comfort Me with Peaches was produced in May 2011 at the Academy Theatre in Pennsylvania. She is currently at work on a science fiction story set in a world in which writing and music have been lost, as well as a novel that, so far, defies categorization.
Steve Tem’s newest collection is Ugly Behaviour (New Pulp Press), gathering the best of his noir fiction. This will be followed in 2013 by Celestial Inventories (ChiZine) collecting his recent contemporary fantasy, and Onion Songs (Chomu) collecting his more off-beat and experimental work.
Liz Williams is a science fiction and fantasy writer living in Glastonbury, England, where she is co-director of a witchcraft supply business. She is currently published by Bantam Spectra (US) and Tor Macmillan (UK), also Night Shade Press and appears regularly in Realms of Fantasy, Asimov’s and other magazines. She is the secretary of the Milford SF Writers’ Workshop, and also teaches creative writing and the history of Science Fiction. Her novels include The Ghost Sister (Bantam Spectra), Empire of Bones, The Poison Master, Nine Layers of Sky, Banners of Souls (Bantam Spectra – US, Tor Macmillan – UK), Darkland, Bloodmind (Tor Macmillan UK), Snake Agent, The Demon and the City, Precious Dragon, The Shadow Pavilion (Night Shade Press) Winterstrike (Tor Macmillan) and The Iron Khan (Morrigan Press). Forthcoming in 2012 are Morningstar (Morrigan) and Wordsoul (Prime). Her first short story collection The Banquet of the Lords of Night is also published by Night Shade Press, and her second, A Glass of Shadow, is published by New Con Press. Her novel Banner of Souls has been nominated for the Philip K Dick Memorial Award, along with 3 previous novels, and the Arthur C. Clarke Award. Liz writes a regular column for the Guardian and reviews for SFX.
HOME IS WHERE THE HORROR IS...
The tread on the landing outside the door when you know you are the only one in the house. The wind whistling through the eves, carrying the voices of the dead. The figure glimpsed briefly through the cracked window of a derelict house.
Critically-acclaimed editor Jonathan Oliver brings horror home with a collection of haunted house stories by Lisa Tuttle, Stephen Volk, Terry Lamsley, Adam L. G. Nevill, Weston Ochse, Rebecca Levene, Garry Kilworth, Chaz Brenchley, Robert Shearman, Nina Allan, Christopher Fowler, Sarah Pinborough, Paul Meloy, Christopher Priest, Jonathan Green, Nicholas Royle, Eric Bown, Tim Lebbon and Joe R. Lansdale.
“Jonathan Oliver is the hottest new horror editor to come out of the UK since Stephen Jones, and I have high hopes for House of Fear.”
– Jonathan Strahan, Locus award-winning editor of Swords and Dark Magic
www.solarisbooks.com
THIS IS THE HOTEL WHERE OUR NIGHTMARES GO...
It’s where horrors come to be themselves, and the dead pause to rest between worlds. Recently widowed and unemployed, Richard Carter finds a new job, and a new life for him and his daughter Serena, as manager of the mysterious Deadfall Hotel. Jacob Ascher, the caretaker, is there to show Richard the ropes, and to tell him the many rules and traditions, but from the beginning, their new world haunts and transforms them.
It’s a terrible place. As the seasons pass, the supernatural and the sublime become a part of life, as routine as a morning cup of coffee, but it’s not safe, by any means. Deadfall Hotel is where Richard and Serena will rebuild the life that was taken from them... if it doesn’t kill them first.
‘Tem’s Deadfall Hotel makes The Shining’s Overlook Hotel look like Butlins. Eerie, disturbing and yet strangely touching, you’ll check in but may never check out.’
Christopher Fowler, bestselling author of the Bryant and May Mysteries and Hell Train
‘Rasnic Tem is at the height of his powers with this effort.’
Fearnet.com
‘Truly brilliant.’
Denver Post
‘Steve Rasnic Tem is a school of writing unto himself.’
Joe R. Lansdale
www.solarisbooks.com
Imagine there was a supernatural chiller that Hammer Films never made. A grand epic produced at the studio’s peak, which played like a cross between the Dracula and Frankenstein films and Dr Terror’s House Of Horrors...
Four passengers meet on a train journey through Eastern Europe during the First World War, and face a mystery that must be solved if they are to survive. As the ‘Arkangel’ races through the war-torn countryside, they must find out:
What is in the casket that everyone is so afraid of? What is the tragic secret of the veiled Red Countess who travels with them? Why is their fellow passenger the army brigadier so feared by his own men? And what exactly is the devilish secret of the Arkangel itself?
Bizarre creatures, satanic rites, terrified passengers and the romance of travelling by train, all in a classically styled horror novel.
www.solarisbooks.com
“What’s the first thing you think of when I say ‘angel’?” asked Mallory.
Alice shrugged. “I don’t know... guns?”
Alice isn’t having the best of days - late for work, missed her bus, and now she’s getting rained on - but it’s about to get worse.
The war between the angels and the Fallen is escalating and innocent civilians are getting caught in the cross-fire. If the balance is to be restored, the angels must act - or risk the Fallen taking control. Forever. That’s where Alice comes in. Hunted by the Fallen and guided by Mallory - a disgraced angel with a drinking problem he doesn’t want to fix - Alice will learn the truth about her own history... and why the angels want to send her to hell.
What do the Fallen want from her? How does Mallory know so much about her past? What is it the angels are hiding - and can she trust either side?
‘Dark, enticing and so sharp the pages could cut you, Blood and Feathers is a must-read.’
Sarah Pinborough
www.solarisbooks.com
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