{"id":1569,"date":"2015-01-14T18:55:28","date_gmt":"2015-01-14T18:55:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stoneskin.wpengine.com\/?p=1569"},"modified":"2015-01-14T19:08:28","modified_gmt":"2015-01-14T19:08:28","slug":"teasers-to-lovecraft-angela-slatter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stoneskinpress.com\/index.php\/teasers-to-lovecraft-angela-slatter\/","title":{"rendered":"Teasers to Lovecraft: Angela Slatter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Letters to Lovecraft<\/em><\/a> is our newest genre-blending anthology of original fiction, and to ring in the new year for our readers we\u2019ll be posting excerpts from each of the stories. Today’s piece is “Only the Dead and the Moonstruck” by Angela Slatter, a haunting meditation on grief, loss, and darker things still that stalk us when all the world ought to be asleep…<\/p>\n

\n

Becky heard the clink of the beer as he tried to slide it silently out of the fridge.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cPut it back,\u201d she said, \u201cor I\u2019ll tell Mama.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Micah swore almost under his breath, but loud enough for her to hear what he thought of his little sister. The bottle made an angry sound as he replaced it; then there was the soft thud of the juice bottle and the little fermented sigh as he uncapped it that told her it was almost out of date. She knew without looking that he was drinking straight from the carton; it was the kind of thing he did nowadays. She heard him slip back onto his chair and start hacking at the fried chicken on his plate. On her lap, Riddle, the fat ginger cat, stirred and sniffed, settled again, knowing that no food escaped the boy.<\/em><\/p>\n

She tuned out the noises of her brother\u2019s meal and watched her mother, as she always did, through the sunflower gauze curtain. Becky wasn\u2019t sure if Suellan knew she was there, but she thought not; the woman was too focused on the sky. The stars were bright the night Aidan, Becky\u2019s eldest brother, had disappeared, and Suellan, by her own admission, couldn\u2019t help herself, not even two years down the track. Not even a new town, new house, new life, could stop her from going onto the narrow porch, a glass of red in hand, after she\u2019d served up their dinner (always late, always around nine) and taken a few bites of her own, to stare upwards, judging the quality of starlight, hoping that one night they\u2019d shine bright enough for her boy to find his way home.<\/em><\/p>\n

And Becky understood. She understood a lot of things: that her mother hadn\u2019t believed the police when they\u2019d said Aidan had run away, nor when they changed their story to abducted. That Suellan sure as hell hadn\u2019t believed them when they\u2019d tried to tell her that the decomposed body lying on the steel tray at the Arkham morgue was all that was left of her son after he\u2019d finally been found in the river. After all, she\u2019d said to Becky\u2019s father Buck, there was really only the right forearm with enough pale, puffy skin left to show the places where it seemed something had suckled and bit with all those tiny ring-a-ring-a-roses of sharp teeth, and that could have belonged to anyone.<\/em><\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t matter that the ragged clothes wrapped around the rotted form were identical to Aidan\u2019s. Didn\u2019t matter what they told her about DNA. Didn\u2019t matter when they said Aidan wasn\u2019t the first Essex County boy to whom this had happened. Didn\u2019t matter that she\u2019d eventually given in to Buck\u2019s pleas that they move, start again. Becky remembered her father asking Didn\u2019t the other kids deserve a future that wasn\u2019t overshadowed by their brother\u2019s passing? but she couldn\u2019t recall her mother answering.<\/em><\/p>\n

Didn\u2019t matter, Suellan told Becky and Micah more than once, coz one day their big brother was coming back, and he\u2019d know where to find them because of the starlight, because it would lead him home. To her…<\/em><\/p>\n

For the rest, get Letters to Lovecraft<\/em> from Stone Skin Press<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

Angela Slatter\"\" <\/b>writes dark fantasy and horror. She is the author of the Aurealis Award\u2013winning The Girl with No Hands and Other Tales<\/i>, the WFA-shortlisted Sourdough and Other Stories <\/i>and the new collection \/ mosaic novel (with Lisa L. Hannett) Midnight and Moonshine<\/i>. Her work has appeared in such writerly venues as The Mammoth Book of New Horror 22<\/i>, Australian and US Best Of <\/i>anthologies, Fantasy Magazine<\/i>, Lady Churchill\u2019s Rosebud Wristlet<\/i>, Dreaming Again <\/i>and Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded<\/i>. She was awarded one of the inaugural Queensland Writers Fellowships in 2013. She has a British Fantasy Award for \u201cThe Coffin-Maker\u2019s Daughter\u201d (from A Book of Horrors<\/i>, Stephen Jones, ed.), a PhD in creative writing, and blogs at www.angelaslatter.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Letters to Lovecraft is our newest genre-blending anthology of original fiction, and to ring in the new year for our readers we\u2019ll be posting excerpts from each of the stories. Today’s piece is “Only the Dead and the Moonstruck” by…<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more ›<\/a><\/div>\n

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