Furnace

by Wayne Price

  He woke suddenly, heart racing, from a dream of speaking with the ghost of his wife. He knew it had grown late. A solid darkness filled the gap in the drape curtains where earlier he’d stood. Aware of a presence behind him he arched his neck and saw the girl’s face looking down at him. She smiled faintly as their eyes met and he slumped back into the cushions.

  You were whimpering, she said, and he understood that she had woken him.

  Leyden bowed his head. In the wake of his dream he felt a sense of renunciation and calm, though he had no clear understanding of what it was he might have renounced. The gas fire was still hissing at his feet. He tried to speak, but his dry tongue felt heavy and dead as sun-warmed wood or stone. Looking up again, he saw the silent bulk of the girl’s father framed by the light in the kitchen doorway. Was he watching them? His expression was empty as a carved Buddha’s. The eyes were open but it seemed the face of a sleeping man, face of all sleeping fathers. Leyden closed his own eyes, wearily, and knew he would not be leaving.

  Acknowledgements

  I am grateful for the suggestions of several careful readers of some or all of these stories, including Ali Lumsden, Brian McCabe, Alan Spence, Adrian Searle and Alan Warner. I would also like to thank the editors of the following publications where the stories first appeared, sometimes in different versions: The Aberdeen Review, Causeway/Cabhsair, Carve Magazine, Edinburgh Review, The Fish Anthology (2007), Gutter, New Writing Scotland (10 & 18), Route Publishings Book at Bedtime and Bonne Route anthologies, and Shorts: The Macallan/Scotland on Sunday Short Story Collection (1999 & 2000).

  ‘Everywhere Was Water Once’ was a prize-winner in the Fish International Short Story Competition in 2007; ‘Underworld’ was shortlisted in the Bridport International Short Story Competition in 2007; ‘Rain’ and ‘There Is a Saviour’ were shortlisted for the Raymond Carver Short Story Prize in 2006; ‘A Piece of the Moon’ and ‘Dead of Winter’ were runners-up in The Macallan/Scotland on Sunday Short Story Competitions of 1999 and 2000 respectively.

  My grateful thanks are also due to the Scottish Book Trust for providing me with a New Writer Award in 2010/11.