Book Review: An English Ghost Story by Kim Newman

The promise of a sparkling new life for Kim Newman's 'dysfunctional British nuclear family' lures the reader in with teases as to what has led the Naremores to occupy The Hollow - far away from the troubles and influences of their past.

I'm not the first reviewer to mention the similarity to James Herbert's The Magic Cottage, and although I read that book back in 1986, An English Ghost Story instantly evoked very similar emotions in me of delight and fear in equal measure.

It's a credit to the author that his writing can entrance the reader for quite some time before the darkness slowly starts to set in. From then on the writing style subtly changes as we progress - from poetic descriptions to a sharper, staccato delivery which matches the tension.

The house is a metaphor for the story itself. It is not just a place occupied by ghosts and more sinister entities, it is home to diverse personalities with banal and extreme human traits, where strengths and weaknesses are tested - to the limit. Newman toys with the psychology of his characters, as does The Hollow, treating them as playthings in this place where memories are warped and misconceived solutions create more problems than they solve.

Overall, I was enraptured by An English Ghost Story and completely drawn in, making the book difficult to put down. The only reason I haven't given it five stars is that the Naremore characters repeat the justification for their actions a little too often and it feels like the reader is being reminded, just in case we might have forgotten what each of them has been through. But I can overlook this.

4 stars. Highly recommended.

Buy An English Ghost Story by Kim Newman from Amazon

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The House of Three, Phobophobias and digging up old Bones

And now for the latest news (shuffles papers)...

THE HOUSE OF THREE:
A Short Story by Lily Childs

To be released in late July on Amazon, in both paperback chapbook and ebook  formats. This short ghost story has a rather personal connnection - the 'house' of the title is loosely based on my own little abode, and for that very reason I've never felt able to let it go out to another publisher. I'm finally allowing it to break loose through Ganglion Press.

Here's the back cover blurb:

An ordinary Victorian house in an ordinary English town. A house that smells of roses. A house that stinks of death.

32 Cherry Street is rotten to the core after years of neglect. When its owner dies in a freak accident successful entrepreneur Sarah Bayliss wastes no time in coming up with the cash to buy the small terraced property - her former childhood home.

Reunited with her estranged younger brother Johnny, Sarah summons the courage to unveil the secrets the house has kept hidden for so long, but nothing can prepare the siblings for the horrors they are about to uncover. Or who they're going to meet.

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• Keep your eyes peeled for a Facebook competition to win a signed copy of THE HOUSE OF THREE chapbook
• Ganglion Press is now on Twitter! Why not pop by and follow: @GanglionPress

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PHOBOPHOBIAS - Cover Reveal

I'm very excited that my story, BAD EXPOSURE (or 'I' is for Ipovlopsychophobia) is included in Dark Continents Publishing's forthcoming Phobophobias anthology. 

The excellent cover, by uber-talented artist James L. Powell has now been revealed!

Compiled and edited by Dean M. Drinkel, this is the second in the Phobias series and includes stories from Barbie Wilde, Tim Dry, Phil Sloman, Raven Dane, Sam Stone, Mark West, David Youngquist, Jan Edwards, Nerine Dorman, Andy Taylor, Mike Chinn, Christine Morgan, John Prescott, Daniel I Russell, Rakie Benett, Peter Mark May, Amelia Mangan, John Palisano, John Gilbert, David T Griffith, Adrian Chamberlin, Lisa Jenkins, Christopher L. Beck, Christine Dougherty, Emile-Louis Tomas Jouvet and Dean M. Drinkel.

The book is due out in August. For a taste of the horror you'll discover in this new anthology, you can still buy the first in the series, PHOBOPHOBIA in ebook or paperback from Amazon UK and Amazon.com

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OLD BONES

Lastly, in 2013 my story THE OSSILLATRICE SHIFT won the Editor's Choice Award in James Ward Kirk Publishing's anthology, BONES.

James is now compiling his 'Best Of 2013' anthology and has kindly asked if he could include The Ossillatrice Shift. Unsurprisingly - I said yes! More details as soon as I hear news.

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SHELF LIFE

This 200-word flash fiction piece was runner-up in the 'One Word Challenge' on the UK's Writing Magazine online forum Talkback.

SHELF LIFE  by Lily Childs

She kept it in a jar.

Every day, Cecile held her breath and snuck into the larder whilst Madame Severin took a nap. The thing was safely hidden behind three rows of Duck Confit, indeed it resembled the meat that wallowed in pale yellow fat, barely distinguishable.

Cecile stopped to wipe the condensation away, as had become tradition. The warmth beneath her fingers grew as she stroked, and she smiled.

“Not long now, little one.”

The jar juddered on the shelf causing a minor kilner cacophony.

“Sshhh.” Cecile leant in and patted the container’s lid. “Don’t let Cook hear you, or she’ll serve you up for supper.”

The jar’s contents shrunk away from the sides. Its flesh quivered, bones poked at the glass in accusation. Cecile stared at the ceiling as the bare bulb flickered and sparked.

“Don’t!”

Her call came too late. The pantry disappeared, drowned in darkness. Cecile ran for the door. Glass smashed and metal erupted all around her. She slipped in a mess of preserved meat and vegetables, her knees slamming onto hard quarry tiles.

Tentacles tore at Cecile’s throat.

Madame Severin arrived. She cursed, scooped up her child, and left Madamoiselle Cecile to flounder in fat.

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STARING AT THE PINK - Cabaret of Dread stories revealed

Every Saturday I’m revealing the tale behind the tale of Cabaret of Dread Vol.1’s main stories, together with a short excerpt of each to whet your appetite.

STARING AT THE PINK

The final 'previously unpublished' story of the collection.

One death; two souls departed. How many versions of ourselves are housed in this thing we call a body? What happens if they are released before the corporeal shell has finished with them? Perhaps I should have called this "Giving Up The Ghost". Perhaps not.

I wrote Staring At The Pink for a Daily Telegraph competition but it got nowhere, neither did the other two magazines I sent it to want to publish it. Well, I like it - and that's why I've included it in Volume 1 of Cabaret of Dread so that it has somewhere to rest - amongst friends.

So – what’s Staring At The Pink about?

A young woman dealing with the agony of watching her grandmother die slowly in a hospital bed is shocked to see not one spirit depart, but a second, dark mirror image of her lovely Pink Grandma. Fighting off a spectral assault, the narrator escapes with her own soul still intact. But years later, as she is about to give birth to her own child the grandmothers return - and they're not alone.

Inspiration

Sadly, this story is inspired by a friend whose grandfather was seriously ill, but no matter how sick he became - he wouldn't give up. A medium, who didn't know anything about my friend, told her that part of him had already left and was waiting on the other side for the two parts to become one again.

It struck me that this was a dangerous situation that potentially happens a lot. What would happen if the two parts became permanently split - and which parts of one's personality would sit with which broken soul? The thought still chills me.

Excerpt

Her hand rests over my heart, forcing me to study the transparent fingers. I question everything; how can this possibly be? Yesterday she was here, solid and alive in a hospital bed. Today – she’s alive – solid and just about living in a hospital bed. But she’s changed. Last night, she died.

I saw it all. Moments after the green line ran straight and my grandmother began her journey towards the mythical light the doctors snatched her back; breaking the laws of death. I cried at first with fear and premeditated grief, and then again with a relief full of guilt for my selfishness. I didn’t want her to leave. I needed her. I wallowed in my own self-pity - until I saw what they’d done, the damage their interference had caused and I knew without understanding why or how, that from one perfect grandmother another - her dark side, her nemesis, was torn.

Do we spit out our demons as filth when we pass over, purifying ourselves on the way to an unknown place of rest? In the natural process does that shadow-self quickly dissipate and die? I don’t have the answer because I am not so spiritually minded to have considered it before now. But sitting here, staring at the pair of them – both revived, both breathing – I believe we should leave well alone, and that we are wrong to play God.

Pink Grandma rests beneath the sheets whispering laboured breaths into a clinical pillow. It’s the Pale Grandma that sits beside her who leans forward to stroke my chest.

“I’ll have it,” Pale Grandma says in a voice I struggle to recognise. Her bony claws grasp at my small breast, and I feel her ice in my soul. I do nothing, not out of fear but from teeth-gritting anger.

Pale Grandma has black eyes, not the wistful blue of Pink Grandma’s. They stare at me, those vaulted chasms, expecting me to give in. I return her gaze - defiant. I shake my head.

“No.”

She roars frustration back at me with foetid breath. And is gone.

Pink Grandma - Nana - stirs from her slumber, unaware of the nocturnal separation. She smiles without seeing, squeezes my hand without knowing I’ve clutched it back. I move to embrace her, lingering a while, careful not to damage her frail frame.  When at last she sighs I know it is the end and I hug her closer. Pink Nana dies, for the second time, in the safety of my arms.

***

We planned to call our daughter Rosa...

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Like the excerpt? The full tale is waiting for you in Cabaret of Dread! By visiting the book's 'Look Inside' feature on Amazon you can also read the opening tale DRESSING-UP BOX, a few pages of SMILING CYRUS and a handful of mini-tales.

Of course, the best way to read this - and the many other stories in Vol.1 of Cabaret of Dread, is to download it. If you do, I am ever thankful...

Buy/Download Cabaret of Dread from

Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

WRAITHS AND STAYS - Cabaret of Dread stories revealed

Every Saturday I’m revealing the tale behind the tale of Cabaret of Dread Vol.1’s main stories, together with a short excerpt of each to whet your appetite.

WRAITHS AND STAYS

This ghostly horror is set in a medieval-like, dystopian future where darkness, depravity and death threaten men. I wrote it for a small press anthology which sadly never happened, but in 2011 I was interviewed by fellow dark fiction writer Erin Cole and offered the story to accompany the interview. 

Subsequent to its appearance in Cabaret of Dread, Wraiths and Stays was published in print, in Dreams of Duality by Red Skies Press. It is a short, short - at only 663 words.

So – what’s Wraiths and Stays about? 

The narrator is self-imprisoned in a rotting tower with hundreds of other men, all living in fear of a plague of spectral wraiths haunting the once green and fertile land. Staring from a window slit, he recognises wives and mistresses, mothers, daughters, sisters... The women sweep the earth and skies in half-dead hunger whilst the men find solace in each others' flesh. While the narrator reminisces his own sexual encounters over the years, can he resist the base urges being played out all around him?

Inspiration

The opening sentences came to me on the walk down the hall from my bedroom to the bathroom (no 'ensuite' for me sadly). This happens a lot - no soul-seeking, no begging with the muse, just out-of-the-blue stories delivered into my head and begging to be written.

Excerpt

We didn’t speak of it, for how could we? A blessing bell, the priests said but we knew the clanging peel sounded the death knell in our midst, announcing the journey to hell for the fairest and most sweet. Not even the healthy amongst them were saved from the buboids, eruptions and pox. And now, with them fallen like God-forsaken flies - daughters of Beelzebub – I tried to forget what my own looked like. Mother, frail but proud. My girls – a beguiling trilogy - unwed, unbetrothed. Even my wife, traitor that she was and bringer of plague to this island; she played still in my mind, a rotting wretch. Here we wallow, barely buoyant in the floods of death she has left in her wake, in this place that once drowned in roses and where trees dripped with pungent medlars and cider apples. All gone.

Out of high windows we stared at the seething, spiralling mass of living decay. They ruptured below us, then flew to our rooftops to snatch with sharp teeth at our desperate gazes. With every attack we fell to the floor, eyes closed in fear as our only protection.

It is days now; weeks. Food is on ration. Unseasonal snow hardens the ground making crops, seeds and grain inaccessible. Taunting voices steal through stone walls making whispers of love and a promise of more. Around me the weak seek solace in each others’ arms and between the hard legs of fighters and labourers. I don’t want to give in... Can I resist temptation? An intimacy only hinted at amongst the dandiest of types now seems so warmly and wantonly inviting....

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Like the excerpt? The full tale is waiting for you in Cabaret of Dread!  By visiting the book's 'Look Inside' feature on Amazon you can also read the opening tale DRESSING-UP BOX, a few pages of SMILING CYRUS and a handful of mini-tales.

Of course, the best way to read this - and the many other stories in Vol.1 of Cabaret of Dread, is to download it. If you do, I am ever thankful... 

Buy/Download Cabaret of Dread from
Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com