THE SINS OF OUR PAST

To mark the anniversary of William Hope Hodgson’s birth (15 November 1877), here’s one of my Hodgsonian tales again for free. It’s downloadable, designed with a cover and Author’s Note at the end. The original story, ‘A Dark Trade’, was written for Carnacki: The Lost Cases (Ulthar, 2016), and is a tale of the injustice and wickedness of other times.It hasn’t yet appeared in any of my collections.

It’s the first and only ‘traditional’ Carnacki story from me, despite what people think. I don’t do Carnacki pastiches in general, and my ‘Tales of the Last Edwardian’ series deliberately covers the period after his death, and the period when he was less well known, with the character as an aside or a passing mention.

Lost Cases included three pieces by me: i) an introductory story that was, in effect, a really bad joke; ii) ‘A Dark Trade’, which is canonical and has a very uncomfortable theme beneath it, and iii) a very different tale – ‘Grey Dog’. ‘Grey Dog’ is my quintessential comment on Thomas Merton Carnacki’s life, and may be the only, or one of the only, stories which is entirely from his inner viewpoint. That one, which is in my collection A Persistence of Geraniums, has variously been described as “the best Carnacki story Hope Hodgson never wrote”, “too downbeat”, and “tragically sad”. I saw it more as a meditation on life, and simply like its mood.

The story below has all the trappings you’d expect, but takes the Ghost Finder somewhere that ought to make monsters of the Outer Circle seem kind. Any more would sort of give it away.

This standalone version will be downloadable here for the next week.

Click the link below to access the pdf.

adarktrade

You can find many articles and interviews about Hope Hodgson or Carnacki on greydogtales using the search box. And next year should see the publication of The Book of Carnacki (Belanger Books), edited by me – an anthology of tributes, pastiches and other pieces devoted – rather obviously – to Carnacki the Ghost Finder.

In the meantime, do have a look at my recent second collection, Where All is Night, and Starless (Trepidatio 2021), which is less Edwardian but more wide-ranging…