Dead Water

July sees the release of Dead Water, the latest in the 'PentAnth' series from Peter Mark May's Hersham Horror: mini-anthologies containing stories from five different authors. This will be the fifth, the other four being Fogbound from 5, Siblings, Anatomy Of Death and Demons And Devilry.

The series has showcased some brilliant talent: Alison Littlewood, John Llewellyn Probert, Stuart Young, Thana Niveau and Stephen Volk to name but (appropriately) five.

The fifth anthology in our PentAnth range brings you five more stories chilled tales of watery terror. We all need water to live, but what if that life-giving body was not so friendly after all..?

Dead Water is guest-edited by the formidable writing duo Maynard and Sims, who also contribute one of the tales. Also present and correct are Daniel Boucher, Alan Spencer, and apocalyptic horror king David Moody.

My own contribution is a Welsh terror tale, 'The Lowland Hundred,' and here's a free sample:

'It was naked but sexless, without genitals or breasts. Fins ran up the sides of its arms and legs; its long, taloned fingers and long splayed toes were webbed. The face was minimal, almost featureless. Glistening black eyes, like a shark’s, that flickered white as nicitating membranes darted across them. Two small bloodlness slits, like tiny parallel stab-wounds, where the nose should have been. A row of gill-slits each side of the neck, and a mouth curved in a wide, ear-to-ear – except that it had no ears – grin, lipless and filled with thin, sharp, needle teeth...'

You can buy the paperback here, or download the ebook if you're in the UK, or here and here if you're in the US.

Black Mountain #6: The House By The Cemetery

My apologies, first of all: the latest instalment of Black Mountain is a couple of weeks late. There was some sad news in our family, and the work train got a tad derailed. But here is the sixth episode, The House By The Cemetery and the seventh, The Master Of The House, is almost finished, and should be out on schedule at the end of June (fingers crossed.)

Yes, the title The House By The Cemetery is a nod to the great Lucio Fulci. No, the title The Master Of The House has nothing to do with Les Miserables. Although a recent one-star Amazon review of The Faceless complained that it was 'depressing and dreary', so perhaps adding musical numbers to my stuff to liven things up would be a good thing.

As ever, The House By The Cemetery boasts fantastic cover art by Neil Williams. Here's a taster of what you can expect...

The watcher by the lake...

It began with a dream; it ended in obsession, insanity and death.

The fire in the woods...

The old farmhouse stood on high ground near the mountain of Mynydd Du. Long-abandoned though it was, Ronald Ashington still saw potential in it.

The dancers in the pines...

The Ashingtons had a vision: a luxury hotel, a hidden gem tucked away in the wilds of the Welsh countryside, a home away from home for couples looking to get away from it all. Yes, this house was perfect, except for the name: Ty Mynwent.

The house by the cemetery.

What you’ve got to understand, doctor, is this. If I told you in detail everything that happened at the farm, everything I saw, you’d call me mad. You’d say it was a delusion, that I saw things that weren’t there, heard voices that didn’t exist. But it’s not like that...

I have experienced, I have witnessed, things, phenomena, so… removed from the normal run of human experience that they have brought about a fundamental change in my understanding of the nature of reality. In how I… interact with the world. And with others. This places me at odds with the majority of people, and even with society as a whole. But this is not because of illness. Not because of chemicals in my brain or any stupid shit like that. It’s because while I was up I saw and heard and understood things. And I can’t carry on as I did before, as if the old things matter. Because they don’t...

Money. Conformity. Family. Marriage. All the sacred cows. They’re meaningless. Compared to what’s up there.