Black Static 13
Art:
As usual the original art is by David Gentry
Stories:
Cuckoos by Tim Lees
Two years ago, they’d done the Swan up like a stately home: paintings, sofas, grandfather clock; even a bust of Charles II, leering down benignly from a shelf over the bar. Now the place was struggling to stay open. Mondays, there was free food; Wednesdays, pub quiz; and on Fridays, best of all, my old mate Patrick and his band, the Muscatels, billed as Good-time music for a bad-time world. And tonight, that’s exactly what I needed – good times. I’d had a pig of a week, a pig of a year; I needed all the good times I could get.
The Shadow Keeper by Kim Lakin-Smith
For two days in late October every year, the town of Burton-on-Trent becomes home to The Statutes, a bustling bazaar of laughter, fun and fortune, with bright carousels, sugar mice and candies, Ferris wheels and fairy-lights, swing-boat rides and ghost trains, dark-skinned gypsies, strong men in pantaloons and The Great Hall of Mirrors – where we are all transformed into midgets, beasts and giants.
Dead Loss by Carole Johnstone
They had made good time, at least. These days, Lachlan took his luck wherever he could find it, and a three-knot south-westerly in a cloudless January sky was just that. Never mind that the cod always waited for the kind of storm that gave Lachlan palpitations. The Relict was only two days out of port. They weren’t fishing yet.
Some of Them Fell by Joel Lane
This happened twenty-six years ago. Why I’m talking about it now isn’t clear even to me, but there’s a time when you have to offload certain things. A psychiatrist once told me that even when I’m telling the truth it sounds like a story. So make allowances for that. I’ve paid for it.
My Secret Children by James Cooper
In the middle of the night, I would lie in bed and listen to the couple arguing in the apartment above. I understood only a fraction of what they were screaming at one another, but that wasn’t the point; it was the violence of the exchange that thrilled me. They would build up to a blistering crescendo and then stop, and it was always the silence – unbroken, excruciating − that terrified me the most. This was when I would be at my most attentive, wondering what was happening up there, trying to figure out how two people driven to such extremes of cruelty could discipline themselves to suddenly stop and not say another word. It occurred to me that if they had done this in the first place, they might have spared themselves another night of pain. The fact that adults so often failed to see what seemed obvious to me was just another feature of my life I had learnt to accept.
Features:
White Noise
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 Haunted Echoes, Alone in the Dark II, From Within, 13: Game of Death, Footprints, It's Alive, Far Cry, Messengers 2: The Scarecrow, Sick Nurses, Amsterdamned, Dr Chopper, Mr Halloween, Tormented, Wasting Away, Necromentia, Pig Hunt, Rogue, Walled In, Inside, Horsemen, Staunton Hill, Drag Me To Hell, I Sell the Dead and others, including Brain Damage round up, Blu-ray round up, late arrivals such as Flick and Zombie Transfusion, plus easy to enter draws to win several of these DVDs/Blu-rays
Case Notes by Peter Tennant
reviews of books by Joel Lane + interview, Matt Venne, Rio Youers, Terry Lamsley, Peter Crowther, Joseph D'Lacey, Andrew Hook, Stephen Volk, Paul Finch, Carole Johnstone, Douglas Clegg, Jane Austen & Seth Grahame-Smith, Jasper Bark, Carrie Ryan, Christopher Fowler, Charlie Williams, D.F. Lewis
How To Buy:
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