Celestial Shores

by Sarah Day and Tim Pratt

Britt drove silently while Ray gazed past her at the beauty of the rock-strewn ocean, beyond the sheer drop-offs and flimsy guardrails that separated the coast road from the end of the continent. They were farther north than he’d ever been in California, heading for Celestial Shores, a stretch of property that began life in the ‘70s as an intentional community and was now full of wealthy retirees with strong opinions about quiet hours and the evils of artificial light… and a few vacation rentals, one of which he’d snapped up at a reduced price on short notice as a way of apologizing for certain things without having to actually say he was sorry.  (Continue Reading…)

The Goatkeeper’s Harvest

By Tobi Ogundiran

The wind shrieks its displeasure as it rattles the house, rattles it like a child in the throes of a tantrum, and we, little gnats in this container of brick and mud, tumble from our huddle by the table. The awful shriek reaches a peak of fury, and within it I hear the abominable voices of Eleran’s children.

Ebun buries her face in my breasts, breath hot and moist against my skin. “I’m scared, Mama.”

I’m scared too. I’m scared of the wind and what it means, the dark and what it brings. I’m scared for the last bit of wood in the oven and how quickly it burns, the smoke thick in the air like an oppressive blanket, smothering us and smelling strangely of goat.

We all hear the sound: the frantic scratching of nails (or hooves?) on wood. Ebun stiffens against me; Teju’s eyes grow wide in his skull, and as one we swivel towards the door. (Continue Reading…)

Stinkpit

by Liam Hogan

John Arnold’s traps were full; too many rabbits for one man’s needs. He could try selling a few down The Lamb for a fiver or maybe just a pint, though if he did he’d have to suffer the taunts of “gamekeeper turned poacher”.

It wasn’t accurate. It had been his dad, Bob Arnold, who had been the gamekeeper, for the estate that was now lorded over by a know-nothing Yank. Technically, Jack wasn’t poaching either, because Jack was a landowner himself. Only the gamekeeper’s cottage and its postage-stamp kitchen garden, passed down from father to son, having been unexpectedly bequeathed in the previous estate owner’s will. Unexpected, because who knew Old Man Farrington had a heart, let alone a soft spot for a long serving employee?

The local wags said Bob must have known where the bodies were buried, the Old Man’s second wife in particular. But she’d been thirty years her husband’s junior, so maybe she’d grown tired of waiting for him to die, something he always seemed on the cusp of doing, some ghastly wasting disease with an impossible to remember name. Little wonder the Old Man had become obsessed with the occult, or so the rumours said, when more practical remedies eluded him. (Continue Reading…)

The Green Scarf

By A.M. Burrage

When the Wellingford family became extinct the days of Wellingford Hall as one of the great country homes of England were already numbered. The estate passed into the hands of commercial-minded people who had no reverence for the history of a great house. The acres around the old Hall became too valuable as building sites to be allowed to remain as a park surrounding a country mansion. So the fat Wellingford sheep were driven elsewhere to pasture, and surveyors and architects heralded the coming of navvies and builders.

All this happened many years ago. The old park became crossed and criss-crossed by new roads, and perky little villas with names like ‘Ivyleigh’ and ‘Dulce Domum’ sprang up like monstrous red fungi. Even these have since mellowed, and grown their own ivy and Virginia creeper, and put on airs of respectable maturity. The Hall itself, forlorn and abandoned, like some poor human wretch deserted in his old age, began slowly to crumble and decay. (Continue Reading…)