Black Static 9
As usual, cover and all original art is by David Gentry
Stories:
The Lonely Heart by Aliette de Bodard
It was towards mid-afternoon that Chen became aware of the girl. She stood before Chen’s stall, watching the fake-jade effigies of the Buddha and the coloured incense sticks, her eyes wide in the sunlight. She was no more than thirteen or fourteen, with the gangly unease of that age. To her left, children shrieked as they passed the Bridge of Impossibility, holding each other’s hands, and went into the temple complex.
The Plain by Tim Lees
“It was the dinner, I suppose. That’s when I noticed. Though it must have gone on for a while by then, or it wouldn’t have been so…advanced. So, um…so obvious. You know?” Nick Balchin shuffled on the couch, aware of a slight lift in pitch, a wheedling that had come into his voice. You’re pleading now, he warned himself, and made a show of trying to clear his throat, resuming in – he hoped – more manly tones.
Haunt-Type Experience by Roz Clarke
The hooded shadow emerged from the larger, jagged shadow of the building and shuddered across the rough ground where the forecourt had once been laid. Megan glanced behind her, looking for its source, then shivered as she realised it was her own, made eerily penumbral by the spots they used for setting up the kit in winter, shining out above the broken walls. After this site they would shut the project down for the winter, analyse their data, see if there was anything worth reporting. “Maybe tonight’s the night,” she whispered to her shadow, and the sound of her voice in the lonely woods made her hair stand on end. “Come on out, you ghosts, I’m just another spectre, just like you.” Nobody answered; the ruins brooded behind her and the woods talked only to themselves.
The Pain of Blue Eyes by Daniel Kaysen
“How was school?” asks my mother. Oh, same as ever: fear and pain, mostly. Fear and pain. Sometimes I think I can’t stand it any more. “Fine,” I say. My mother looks at me. “Really?” No, of course not. “Yes,” I say.
Changeling by Al Robertson
One night, drunk, my wife Elizabeth had forgotten herself, and whispered secrets of her childhood to me. She’d taken me into the forest, and shown me where the Old Friends had first come to her and her sister Laura. The girls had pretended to play with them for hours, lost to all who searched for them. Elizabeth told me that the door to their kingdom was over the brook, but we couldn’t find the crossing place in the darkness.
Fear by Stephen Volk
In Japan, at the time of the Heisam era, there was no further point from Kyoto than the town of Orobi, in the old province of Ema. And it came to the ears of the Emperor that this town was besieged by ghosts to such an extent that the hapless residents were at the end of their tether. It is said they appealed to their monarch to come to their aid before the township was entirely wiped out by their spectral, and cunning, enemy.
Features:
White Noise by Peter Tennant
news
Interference by Christopher Fowler
comment
Electric Darkness by Stephen Volk
comment
Night’s Plutonian Shore by Mike O’Driscoll
comment
Blood Spectrum by Tony Lee
DVD/Blu-ray reviews, including Brotherhood of Blood, The Mummy Trilogy, Eden Lake, Resident Evil: Degeneration, Memories of Matsuko, Kamikaze Girls, Sukiyaki Western Django, The Rage, Bad Biology, The Midnight Meat Train, The Guard Post, Tooth and Nail, Death Race, Roadkill 2: Dead Ahead, Hit and Run, Alien Raiders, Splinter. Plus a few recently received titles and draws to win many of the above
Case Notes by Peter Tennant
books, including Tony Richards feature (reviews, interview, sidebars), Shaun Hutson, Gary McMahon, Douglas Smith, Rebecca Levene, Ryu Murikami, Frode Grytten, Graham Masterton, Stephen Solomita, the anthologies Subtle Edens, The New Uncanny and Premonitions
Section items by date:
