Best British Horror 2014

by Johnny Mains

  The labour was protracted and terrible. Two hours later, the midwife delivered Karen’s stillborn baby. It was a girl. By then, the mother was fully conscious. ‘Can I hold her?’ she asked. The midwife wrapped the small corpse in a strip of cloth and placed it in Karen’s arms. She looked at the baby, then looked up at me. There was something worse than grief in her face. I looked down at what she was holding. Marked on the dead baby’s forehead and cheeks like vaccination scars were the prints of tiny human fingers.

  Contributors

  LAURA MAURO was born in Elephant & Castle but was forced to move to Essex, where she now lives with a multitude of cats. Additional to writing, she collects tattoos, dyes her hair interesting colours and gets emotionally attached to fictional characters. Her work has appeared in Shadows and Tall Trees and Black Static.

  IAN HUNTER was born in Edinburgh and is the author of three children’s novels, and the alternative guide to Glasgow called Fantastic Glasgow. His short stories and poetry have appeared in magazines and anthologies in the UK, USA and Canada. Apart from being a member of the Glasgow SF Writers Circle, a Director of the Scottish writers collective Read Raw, he’s also poetry editor for the British Fantasy Society, and a book reviewer for Interzone. Sometimes he can be found at www.ian-hunter.co.uk and right now, he’s working on too many ‘somethings’.

  ANNA TABORSKA was born in London, England. She studied Experimental Psychology at Oxford University and went on to gainful employment in public relations, journalism and advertising, before throwing everything over to become a filmmaker and horror writer. Anna has directed two short films (Ela and The Sin), two documentaries (My Uprising and A Fragment of Being) and a one-hour television drama (The Rain Has Stopped), which won two awards at the British Film Festival, Los Angeles, 2009.

  She has also worked on seventeen other films, including Ben Hopkins’ Simon Magus (starring Noah Taylor and Rutger Hauer).Anna worked as a researcher and assistant producer on several BBC television programmes, including the series Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution and World War Two: Behind Closed Doors – Stalin, the Nazis and the West.Anna’s feature length screenplays include: Chainsaw, The Camp, Pizzaman and The Bloody Tower. Short screenplays include: Little Pig (finalist in the Shriekfest Film Festival Screenplay Competition 2009), Curious Melvin and Arthur’s Cellar.Recently published short stories include: ‘Buy a Goat for Christmas’ (Best New Werewolf Tales Vol.1, 2012), ‘Etude’ (This Hermetic Legislature: A Homage to Bruno Schulz, 2012), ‘Tea with the Devil’ (Strange Halloween, 2012), ‘Cut!’ (The Screaming Book of Horror, 2012), and five stories published in The Black Book of Horror, volumes 5-9 (2009-2012).Anna’s short story ‘Bagpuss’ was an Eric Hoffer Award Honoree and was published in Best New Writing 2011, and her story ‘Little Pig’ from The Eighth Black Book of Horror was a runner up for the Abyss Awards 2011 and was picked for The Best New Horror of the Year Volume Four (2012).Poems include ‘Mrs. Smythe regrets going to the day spa’ (Christmas: Peace on All The Earths, 2010), ‘Song for Maud’ (No Fresh Cut Flowers, An Afterlife Anthology, 2010) and three poems in What Fear Becomes: An Anthology from the Horror Zine, 2011.Anna’s debut short story collection, For Those Who Dream Monsters, was published in November 2013 by Mortbury Press, with a novelette collection planned for release in late 2014.

  The Oxford Companion to English Literature describes RAMSEY CAMPBELL as ‘Britain’s most respected living horror writer’. He has been given more awards than any other writer in the field, including the Grand Master Award of the World Horror Convention, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Horror Writers Association and the Living Legend Award of the International Horror Guild. Among his novels are The Face That Must Die, Incarnate, Midnight Sun, The Count of Eleven, Silent Children, The Darkest Part of the Woods, The Overnight, Secret Story, The Grin of the Dark, Thieving Fear, Creatures of the Pool, The Seven Days of Cain, Ghosts Know and The Kind Folk. Forthcoming are Think Yourself Lucky and Thirteen Days at Sunset Beach. The Last Revelation of Gla’aki and The Pretence are novellas. His collections include Waking Nightmares, Alone with the Horrors, Ghosts and Grisly Things, Told by the Dead, Just Behind You and Holes for Faces, and his non-fiction is collected as Ramsey Campbell, Probably. His novels The Nameless and Pact of the Fathers have been filmed in Spain. His regular columns appear in Prism, Dead Reckonings and Video Watchdog. He is the President of the Society of Fantastic Films.

  Ramsey Campbell lives on Merseyside with his wife Jenny. His pleasures include classical music, good food and wine, and whatever’s in that pipe. His web site is at www.ramseycampbell.com.

  JOHN LLEWELLYN PROBERT won the 2013 British Fantasy Award for his novella The Nine Deaths of Dr Valentine and 2014 will see the publication of its sequel, The Hammer of Dr Valentine (both from Spectral Press). He is the author of over a hundred published short stories, several novellas (including his latest, Differently There from Gray Friar Press) and a novel, The House That Death Built (Atomic Fez). His first short story collection, The Faculty of Terror, won the 2006 Children of the Night award. His latest stories can be found in Psychomania (Constable Robinson), Exotic Gothic Volume 5 Part II (PS Publishing), Cthulhu Cymraeg (Screaming Dreams), World War Cthulhu (Cubicle 7), Demons and Devilry (Hersham) and The Tenth Black Book of Horror (Mortbury Press). Endeavour Press has published Ward 19 and Bloody Angels - two crime novellas featuring his pathologist heroine Parva Corcoran, and there is a third Parva adventure, Suicide Blondes, due imminently. He is currently trying to review every cult movie in existence at his House of Mortal Cinema (www.johnlprobert.blogspot.co.uk) and everything he is up to writing-wise can be found at www.johnlprobert.com. Also forthcoming is The Little Book of House of Mortal Cinema - a book of his film reviews from Pendragon Press. Future projects include a new short story collection, a lot more non-fiction writing, and a couple of novels. He never sleeps.

  MURIEL GRAY was born in Glasgow and graduated in Graphics and illustration from the Glasgow School of Art. She was a professional illustrator and later senior exhibition designer in the Museum of Antiquities, before her playing in a punk band led her into a career in broadcasting via Channel 4’s flagship music show The tube, which she presented with Jools Holland and the late Paula Yates.

  During her many successful years continuing as a broadcaster, producer and production company director, she pursued her main passion which was horror, publishing three novels, The Trickster, Furnace, and The Ancient, as well as continuing to contribute many short stories to a variety of anthologies.

  Muriel’s first and abiding love is all things supernatural. Except for religion. Which she firmly believes could use a bloody good editor.

  GARY FRY lives in Dracula’s Whitby, literally around the corner from where Bram Stoker was staying while thinking about that legendary character. Gary has a PhD is psychology, but his first love is literature. He was the first author in PS Publishing’s ‘Showcase’ series, and none other than Ramsey Campbell has described him as ‘a master.’ He is the author of more than 15 books, and his latest are the Lovecraftian novel Conjure House (DarkFuse, 2013); the short story collection Shades of Nothingness (PS Publishing, 2013); the highly original zombie novel Severed and novellas Menace, Savage and Mutator (DarkFuse, 2014). Gary warmly welcomes all to his web presence: www.gary-fry.com

  ADAM NEVILL was born in Birmingham in 1969 and grew up in England and New Zealand. He is the author of the supernatural horror novels Banquet for the Damned, Apartment 16, The Ritual, Last Days, and House of Small Shadows. In 2012 The Ritual was the winner of The August Derleth Award for Best Horror Novel, and in 2013 Last Days won the same award. Adam lives in Birmingham, England, and can be contacted through www.adamlgnevill.com.

  THANA NIVEAU is a Halloween bride who 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.

  She is the author of From Hell
to Eternity, which was shortlisted for the British Fantasy award for Best Collection 2013. Her stories have been reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror (volumes 22–24) and other stories appear or are forthcoming in Exotic Gothic 5; The Burning Circus; The Black Book of Horror(volumes 7–10), Whispers in the Dark; Sorcery and Sanctity: A Homage to Arthur Machen; Demons and Devilry; Night Schools; The 13 Ghosts of Christmas; Magic: an Anthology of the Esoteric and Arcane; Terror Tales of Wales; Terror Tales of the Cotswolds; Steampunk Cthulhu; Sword & Mythos; Bite-Sized Horror 2; Death Rattles and Delicate Toxins.

  ELIZABETH STOTT worked in industry as a scientist and is a STEM ambassador. She has published a collection of short stories, Familiar Possessions, and her fiction and poetry has appeared in various places. She is working on novels and collections of fiction and poetry.

  KATE FARRELL lives in Edinburgh. Formerly an actress, the scope of her career spanned everything from Chekhov to Chucklevision. She now writes contes cruels wherein bad things happen to good people and has stories featured in the Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Black Book of Horrors, Terror Tales of the Seaside, and Screaming Book of Horror. Her first novella My Name is Mary Sutherland is due out this year, from PS Publishing.

  STEPHEN VOLK is the writer behind the notorious BBC Halloween hoax Ghostwatch and the ITV drama series Afterlife. His other screenplays include The Awakening (2011), Ken Russell’s Gothic, and The Guardian co-written with director William Friedkin. His first short story collection was Dark Corners(Gray Friar Press, 2006) and he has been a finalist for the HWA Bram Stoker, British Fantasy and Shirley Jackson Awards. In 2013 he published the acclaimed novella Whitstable (Spectral Press), featuring horror star Peter Cushing, as well as his second collection, Monsters in the Heart (also Gray Friar Press). www.stephenvolk.net.

  Born in 1947 TANITH LEE began to write at age 9. Though often interrupted by school and later, various jobs, her professional writing career was launched in 1975 by excellent DAW Books of America. Since then she has published around 97 novels and collections, had 4 plays broadcast by the BBC, and 2 episodes of the SF series Blake’s 7 on TV. Of her 320 short stories, some get regularly read on Radio 4 Extra. She has won several awards including, in 2009, Master of Horror and, in 2013, the Lifetime Achievement Award. Lee lives in Sussex with her husband writer/artist John Kaiine, under the stern paw of 2 cats.

  D.P. WATT is a writer living in the bowels of England. He balances his time between lecturing in drama and devising new ‘creative recipes’, ‘illegal’ and ‘heretical’ methods to resurrect a world of awful literary wonder. His collection of short stories An Emporium of Automata was reprinted by Eibonvale Press in early 2013, a recent novella Memorabilia was published in The Transfiguration of Mr Punch, and his latest collection, The Phantasmagorical Imperative and Other Fabrications, was published in February 2014 with Egaeus Press. You can find him at The Interlude House: www.theinterludehouse.webs.com.

  MARIE O’REGAN is a British Fantasy Award-nominated author and editor, based in Derbyshire. Her first collection, Mirror Mere, was published in 2006, and her short fiction has appeared in a number of genre magazines and anthologies in the UK, US, Canada, Italy and Germany. She was shortlisted for the British Fantasy Society Award for Best Short Story in 2006, and Best Anthology in 2010 and 2012. Her genre journalism has appeared in magazines like The Dark Side, Rue Morgue and Fortean Times, and her interview book, Voices in the Dark, was released in 2011. An essay on ‘The Changeling’ was published in PS Publishing’s Cinema Macabre, edited by Mark Morris. She is co-editor of the bestselling Hellbound Hearts, Mammoth Book of Body Horror and A Carnivàle of Horror – Dark Tales from the Fairground, plus editor of bestselling The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women.

  V. H. LESLIE’s work has appeared in Black Static and Interzone, Weird Fiction Review and Shadows and Tall Trees. She also writes academic pieces for a range of literary publications, as well as a monthly column for an online horror website, focusing on the roots of the genre. She was recently awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship and won the Lightship First Chapter Prize. For more details on her work please visit www.vhleslie.wordpress.com

  REGGIE OLIVER has been a professional playwright, actor, and theatre director since 1975. Besides plays, his publications include the authorised biography of Stella Gibbons, Out of the Woodshed, published by Bloomsbury in 1998, and six collections of stories of supernatural terror, of which the fifth, Mrs Midnight (Tartarus 2011) won the Children of the Night Award for ‘best work of supernatural fiction in 2011’ and was nominated for two other awards. Tartarus has also reissued his first and second collections The Dreams of Cardinal Vittorini and The Complete Symphonies of Adolf Hitler, in new editions with new illustrations by the author, as well as his latest (and sixth) collection Flowers of the Sea. His novel, The Dracula Papers I - The Scholar’s Tale (Chomu 2011) - is the first of a projected four. Another novel Virtue in Danger was published in 2013 by Zagava Books. An omnibus edition of his stories entitled Dramas from the Depths is published by Centipede, as part of its Masters of the Weird Tale series. His stories have appeared in over fifty anthologies.

  MARK MORRIS has written over twenty-five novels, among which are Toady, Stitch, The Immaculate, The Secret of Anatomy, Fiddleback, The Deluge and four books in the popular Doctor Who range. He is also the author of two short story collections, Close to the Bone and Long Shadows, Nightmare Light, and several novellas. His short fiction, articles and reviews have appeared in a wide variety of anthologies and magazines, and he is editor of both Cinema Macabre, a book of horror movie essays by genre luminaries for which he won the 2007 British Fantasy Award, and its follow-up Cinema Futura. His script work includes audio dramas for Big Finish Productions’ Doctor Who and Jago & Litefoot ranges, and also for Bafflegab’s Hammer Chillers series, and his recently published work includes an updated novelisation of the 1971 Hammer movie Vampire Circus and a short novel entitled It Sustains for Earthling Publications. Upcoming is a new, as yet unnamed, short story collection from ChiZine Publications, a novel called The Black from PS Publishing, the official novelisation of the Darren Aronofsky-directed movie Noah, and The Wolves of London, book one of the Obsidian Heart trilogy, which will be published by Titan Books in 2014.

  MICHAEL MARSHALL SMITH is a novelist and screenwriter. Under this name he has published eighty short stories, and three novels — Only Forward, Spares and One of Us — winning the Philip K. Dick, International Horror Guild, and August Derleth awards, along with the Prix Bob Morane in France: he has been awarded the British Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction four times, more than any other author.

  Writing as MICHAEL MARSHALL, he has published six internationally-bestselling thrillers including The Straw Men, The Intruders — currently in production as a miniseries with BBC America — and Killer Move. His most recent novel is We Are Here.

  He lives in Santa Cruz, California with his wife, son, and two cats.

  — www.michaelmarshallsmith.com

  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.

  His background is in the theatre, resident dramatist at the Northcott Theatre in Exeter, and regular writer for Alan Ayckbourn at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough; his plays have won the Sunday Times Playwriting Award, the Sophie Winter Memorial Trust Award, and the Guinness Award in association with the Royal National Theatre. He regularly writes plays and short stories for BBC Radio, and he has won two Sony Awards for his interactive radio series, ‘The Chain Gang’.

  He’s probably best known for reintroducing the Daleks to the BAFTA-winning first season of the revived Doctor Who, in an episode that was a finalist for the Hugo Award.

  He has taught short story writing at Middlesex Universit
y and for Arvon, and gives lectures and workshops on the form around the world. In 2013 he was judge for both the National Student Television Awards and the Manchester Fiction Prize; from 2011 to 2012 he was writer in residence at Edinburgh Napier University.

  JOEL LANE was the author of four collections of supernatural horror stories, The Earth Wire, The Lost District, The Terrible Changes and the Word Fantasy Award-winning Where Furnaces Burn. He also wrote two novels, From Blue To Black and The Blue Mask; a novella, The Witnesses are Gone; a chapbook, Black Country; and three collections of poems, The Edge of the Screen, Trouble in the Heartland and The Autumn Myth. Joel edited an anthology of subterranean horror stories, Beneath the Ground, and co-edited (with Steve Bishop) the crime fiction anthology Birmingham Noir. He also co-edited the British Fantasy Award nominated anthology Never Again. In 2013, Joel died in his sleep, aged 50.

  Acknowledgements

  Jen and Chris at Salt for giving me the go ahead, what an honour! Nicholas Royle for advice given before I accepted the job, Robin Ince, Charlie Higson, Simon Bestwick for his intro, Conrad Williams for saying that the In Remembrance section should be a yearly thing. Peter Crowther and Mike Smith for giving me the word file to Joel’s story. To my family for putting up with the long stretches in my office either reading or editing, and to all of the publishers, editors and authors who made this book happen. Finally, as always, my dog Biscuit, best foot warmer in the world.