Today, quick extracts from a raft of new greydog stories coming out this year -this site has been far too quiet recently. We blame Mr John Linwood Grant, who has been neglecting his duties in favour of writing and editing stuff. Pure selfishness. Where are the tales of lurchers leaping and other riters riting? Or even artists arting?
We’d better provide a catch-up. In our last episode, Nurse Imelda had discovered that Brett’s half-brother, Dirk, had cut through the brake cables of all three orthopaedic surgeons, and made it look like the work of Imelda’s twin sister Maureen, whose affair with the hospital administrator Susan had caused so many arguments among the junior X-Ray staff…
No, all right. It’s just been work. Endless deleting of apostrophes in other people’s stories, and adding them to greydog’s own. Boring, you say – how are the little donkeys? Well, Django and Chilli are happy but older. This means that Django is slightly stiff after he’s been laid in the same odd position for ages, and Chilli can’t be arsed to go out if she doesn’t like the look of the weather. Walks are regular, but a touch slower (which suits ancient greydog, if not Herself, the much fitter Editor-in-Chief).
When not lurching, there has been writing. Lots of writing. The much expanded edition of JLG’s collection A Persistence of Geraniums, is now available in print (an e-format is under construction). This includes additional stories, a brand new cover created by the award-winning artist Alan M Clark and an additional interior illustration by Yves Tourigny, as well as Paul Boswell’s original interiors. Tales of murder, madness and the supernatural – and sometimes all three.
“Grant brings to mind P.G.Wodehouse gone hopelessly mad and hiding in a cupboard with a long sharp knife. Oh, and by the by, have you met Edwin Dry? No? Then you’ve not yet encountered one of the most ghastly characters in modern strange fiction.” Matthew M Bartlett, author of Creeping Waves
“A series of supernatural tales distinguished both by their elegance and by their wit.” John Langan, author of The Fisherman
“What stands out throughout is John Linwood Grant’s skill of description and humour. With a minimum of words he makes these characters alive. A passing mention of one item of clothing or a small but telling personality trait and somehow their essence is captured. Tales with dark edges and at times a dark humour to match.” Jackie Taylor, Folk Horror Revival
The Chromatic Court anthology is also out now, edited by Pete Rawlik and including my novelette ‘Songs of the Burning Men’, a dark story of ochre fire and the Flanders trenches of the Great War.
THINGS TO COME
So, here’s a taste of eight John Linwood Grant short stories and novelettes which should be coming soonish – details will follow, whether wanted or not. Hopefully the next greydogtales post will be about someone else…
THE YUGGOTH CLUB
No one talked about the Yuggoth Club. The club was tolerated as it didn’t get in anyone’s way or annoy the care home manager. Or cost anything. The Seaview Rest Home had a list of approved hobbies, which included crochet, knitting, and gin rummy. A book club wasn’t on the list.
It didn’t help that the group read little but works by H P Lovecraft, a name which the manager of the home regularly confused with pornographic movies from the seventies. “At their age,” she would mutter, before returning to her office to see which residents had the most ambiguous wills.
There were only three permanent members, and even they used the word ‘permanent’ with caution these days. There had been four of them up until a month ago, when Janet Fowles choked on a chicken nugget and had to be rushed up to Scarborough Hospital.
Janet, seventy eight years old, was not expected back, but the remaining members continued to meet twice a week in the old day room, a dumping ground with a cracked ceiling and one window blind hanging at a peculiar angle. All around lay a clutter of boxed incontinence pads, unfinished knitting and dead bees. They had comfy chairs which were no longer comfortable, and an orthopaedic seat which Marigold rather liked, despite the protruding bolts. “Frankenstein’s chair,” she would say repeatedly, and was ignored by all…
THOSE WHO STAY
The Langton Hotel is nowhere. Outdated and forgotten by most, it stands alone on a headland well away from the main roads, and its ornate, many-eyed face is set towards the North Sea, which does not care. There are no nearby services or delights for the tourists, no long sweet-sanded beaches, and the cliffs are stark, uninviting.
Even the bird-watchers avoid us. All we have here are gulls, grey-backed horrors which eye children and small dogs with the yellow gleam of hunger. They tear binoculars from people’s hands, stabbing at the leather straps with their beaks, and more appealing birds won’t come within the range of their patrols. The gulls have known the hotel for many generations, and it knows them, from the first fall of the egg out of an oily cloaca to the last flap of ragged wings.
Thus it was that the two women who appeared with the storms of autumn were unexpected. We hadn’t seen any new arrivals since Benedito, who was now our doorman, waiter and general factotum, came to us, at least a year ago…
ELK BOYS
Abbot’s Elk, when we arrived, was much as the gazeteer said – small and unimportant. I’d read up on it before I caught the train. It’s only oddity was the name, which had apparently been Abbot’s Encester until the seventeen eighties, when a number of carvings had been unearthed whilst a well was being dug. A few were crude stone figures – Neolithic – but some were carved from antlers and bone, and according to the book I had, rather fine examples. The Elk part had gradually replaced the Encester, the result of over-imaginative Victorian collectors. Those digging vicars have a lot to answer for.
Emilia was at the bar in the Grey Horse, which was old in a tired rather than historic way. When she saw me, she abandoned her gin and tonic to rush over and hug me.
“I have fragile ribs,” I said, and gave her a peck on the cheek.
“Let me get you a drink, Justin.”
I wanted to confirm the driver’s suspicions and have a campari, but I hated the stuff, so I paid him off and agreed to sample the wine list. The Puglian red turned out to be a surprise, in that they had it, and that it was drinkable. I’d expected the usual half-empty bottle of overpriced Nuits-Saint-Georges behind the pumps, so symbolic of the seventies.
“I think,” I said as we settled down in one corner of the room, “That you had better explain what this is all about.”
MARJORIE LEARNS TO FLY
The kitchen is so quiet now, with Kenneth and the others gone. So orderly. I play my fingers across the rack of spice jars, over the slight unevenness of the plastered walls, no longer marred by the clutter of calendars, photographs, and notes about the current contents of the freezer. Everything is as it should be, where it should be.
I think I shall make a cup of tea.
Warm the pot; switch off the kettle just before the water boils. Don’t want to drive all the oxygen out. Loose tea, never teabags. Oolong, woody but slightly sweet. Let it sit for seven or eight minutes, and then pour.
I add a dash of milk – not too much – and sip. Perfect.
This is how Marjorie likes it. She deserves this. She has plans, wonderful plans, and I am so very pleased to have her back…
THE WITCH OF PENDER
(Audio version)
“A long night coming,” said the Dark Man. He stood easy on the edge of a field, red earth between his toes as he sucked on a piece of sugarcane.
Mamma Lucy didn’t hold much with visions. And as visions went, this wasn’t greatly encouraging her. She didn’t recognize the place her left eye was seeing. A great field spread across the valley bottom, and that field was sown with fingers, knuckle-end in the deep soil. Most were black fingers, waving without a breeze, though here and there a white one grew. Some had cracked, hard-worked nails, and some had none at all. Near to where she stood, one finger had died where it was planted; a crow was tearing strips of rancid flesh from the small, pale bones.
“How long?”
The Dark Man pushed back his straw hat.
“Long as a mule kicks; long as cane is sweet.”
She reached across the floor of the lean-to shack and took up the largest candle, her grip marking the soft wax.
“Don’t you game me now, boy,” she said, a husky rattle in her throat. “This ain’t New Orleans, and I ain’t one of your mamaloi, Sant-eria ladies, liftin’ their skirts when you come callin’.”
STRANGE PERFUMES OF A POLAR SUN
Now that the old water tank has gone, I have the whole attic space across two houses. Until the landlord who owns next door manages to sell it – or finds out that I’ve knocked through. I don’t expect either for a while. The housing market’s quite depressed, and these Victorian places need a lot of work.
The latest peaks have been difficult. I use Lovecraft’s book, of course, along with maps which I’ve annotated, and the satellite photos that Misha sends me. It’s getting more dangerous for her, she says. They’re talking about vetting the staff at the UN Antarctic Survey data-stream centre again, after someone leaked blurred footage of D732, the higher of the two most north-westerly mountains. UNAS is obsessed with secrecy.
Once I had downloaded Misha’s better definition photos of D732, I could see that there is surprisingly little erosion; the almost perfect clusters of stonework on the south face are astonishing, like cubes of sugars embedded near the tip of one of those old conical sugar-loaves. I used pumice stone to model the peak – I like the rough feel of pumice, the scrape against my skin. A hardened hacksaw blade and a set of files gave me reasonable results.
So that’s most of the north-west sector done. I think the Four are pleased…
RECORDS OF THE DEAD
Another fruitless morning.
In the afternoon, while my aunt sleeps, I go through the mail from the clipping agencies. An obituary covers the death of a man who once met the director Emile Casson, in California. That would be in nineteen twenty one, during Casson’s abortive attempt to get into the West Coast industry. I already have that documented. The Frenchman’s peripheral involvement in the communist movement, and his virtual blacklisting during the Red Scare, put paid to any plans. He came back to New York after three days.
The last envelope is from the Burgess Agency. It contains a photograph, and a handwritten note.
‘Mrs Westercott, this may interest you.’
The photograph shows a group of men in black suits, and a wreath of lilies in the background. A funeral, or a wake. I turn it over, and see names scrawled in pale ink. Teddy Fleming, Joseph Karowski, Manny Goldschein, and a couple I can’t read.
Joseph Karowski.
Oh my God.
IRON AND ANTHRACITE
With relief or with grumbles, the passengers went to find their places. For most, that meant the last car, a wooden affair with a cracked window and ‘Coloreds Only’ stenciled on the side. Mamma Lucy hitched herself up and sat with her carpet bag on her knees, opposite the father and daughter. The girl, maybe thirteen, smiled at her; the man nodded.
“You play?” Mamma Lucy tipped her head to the guitar case.
“My daddy showed me how to pick,” said the girl. “He’s a Piedmont bluesman.”
“Etta here’s a fine gee-tar girl. I’m no bluesman, jes’ a working man who can carry a tune.” He hesitated. “Boone Reid’s the name, ma’am.”
“Mamma Lucy does me well enough, Mr Boone Reid.”
He surveyed the faded floral dress, the moth-eaten carpet bag and the face in front of him. She knew that he was trying to look into her clouded left eye, make out the milk-and-honey strangeness of it, but without staring.
“You from Charlotte?” she asked.
“Used to be, once. Back to see kin, but we’re Virginia people these days.”
Mamma Lucy settled on the wooden seat, and closed her eyes. As the locomotive grabbed the rails to haul north, she took in the creak of the cars. She heard the guitar case open, and the first hesitant chords; the soft murmur of the young couple and the slow, heavy breath of the big man in the corner.
Her back was itching, and she had that feeling. Should have noticed before. Greensboro was a hundred miles along the track, and now she wondered if that was maybe a few miles too many…
And there’s been a lot of editing work. With the Hell’s Empire anthology delivered to the publisher, Ulthar, next urgent job is final touches for Their Coats All Red, from 18thWall. We’d decided to include some classic weird stories written in Empire times, to add historical contrast to the anthology, and we agreed those last month. Four less well-known stories which reflect the times, avoiding the more common jingoistic or dubious ones, and a couple at least may be surprises.
On the Occult Detective Quarterly front, we’re just putting together Issue Six, due out early Summer, and planning for issue Seven, due out in Autumn. Plus mending various hangovers from last year’s litany of disasters.
After that’s delivered, back to work on Sherlock Holmes & The Occult Detectives for Belanger Books – the stories are already coming in. Further along – Room Enough for Fear, plans for an anthology of classic haunted room tales, mentioned earlier in the year – some unmissable standards, of course, but also again some far less well-known inclusions.
Pity the poor writer/editor and his foolish ways.
NEXT TIME: Something completely different. Let’s get this show rolling again…