The Pier - Thana Niveau"The pier exists," explains Thana Niveau, "and yes, it is decorated with strange plaques and cryptic memorials, although none are quite as morbid as I've invented."It's mostly Clevedon Pier, which is where the story was born. I was reading the plaques one day and a couple of the quirkier ones made me wonder. What if they weren't written by the living to remember the dead at all, but were instead a channel for voices from somewhere else?"Somerset is the original Wicker Man country, after all. It's a place rich in pagan tradition and many of its strange rituals are lost to time. Or are they?" Fallen Boys - Mark Morris"Porthellion Quay, which features in this story, is a real place - only the name is different," says Morris. "My family and I spent a lovely, sunny day there one summer a few years ago during a Cornish holiday."I love Cornwall not only because it's breathtakingly beautiful, but also because it is wild and rugged and desolate, and because past echoes and ancient legends seem to seep out of the very rock. It's a landscape which lends itself perfectly to the kinds of ghost stories I love, of which it seems there are far too few these days - stories which are not cosy and comforting and familiar, but which are dark and insidious, and evoke a crawling sense of dread." Lavender and Lychgates - Angela Slatter"'Lavender and Lychgates' is the second last story in Sourdough and Other Stories," recalls Slatter. "I had ideas I wanted to continue to explore - consequences of actions in an earlier story in the collection - and I had a picture in my head of a young girl in a graveyard."Many years ago, a friend had told me a garbled tale of lilacs and lychgates, the details of which I cannot remember. I managed to garble it even more, and I couldn't get the words 'lavender and lychgates' out of my head, nor the image of shadows swirling in the apex of a lychgate roof above the heads of people passing out underneath. I also wondered what happens when you hang onto a memory too tightly." With the Angels - Ramsey Campbell"My fellow clansman Paul Campbell will remember the birth of this tale," he reveals. "At the Dead Dog party after the 2010 World Horror Convention in Brighton, someone was throwing a delighted toddler into the air. I was ambushed by an idea and had to apologise to Paul for rushing away to my room to scribble notes. The result is here."
Release date:
July 26, 2012
Publisher:
Little, Brown Book Group
Print pages:
160
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THANA NIVEAU LIVES IN the Victorian seaside town of Clevedon, where she shares her life with fellow writer John Llewellyn Probert, in a Gothic library filled with arcane books and curiosities.
Her short fiction has appeared in The Seventh Black Book of Horror and The Eighth Black Book of Horror, Delicate Toxins and the charity anthology Never Again, as well as the final issue of Necrotic Tissue. Her Jack the Ripper giallo, “From Hell to Eternity”, won first place in the Whitechapel Society’s short story contest and appears in an e-book collection of the same name.
“The pier exists,” explains the author, “and yes, it is decorated with strange plaques and cryptic memorials, although none are quite as morbid as I’ve invented.
“It’s mostly Clevedon Pier, which is where the story was born. I was reading the plaques one day and a couple of the quirkier ones made me wonder. What if they weren’t written by the living to remember the dead at all, but were instead a channel for voices from somewhere else?
“Somerset is the original Wicker Man country, after all. It’s a place rich in pagan tradition and many of its strange rituals are lost to time. Or are they?”
THE SEA WAS FLAT and grey, mirroring the leaden sky, yet offering no reflection of the Victorian pier that marched into the water on spindly legs. The charred remains of the central pagoda gave little hint of the pier’s former grandeur. Jagged bits of timber lay scattered across the pierhead where frock-coated gentlemen and wasp-waisted ladies once strolled. Alan glanced at the informational sign showing a sepia photograph of the pier in its heyday. It was hard to believe that this was the same place.
Across the channel he could see the mountains of South Wales and to the south, Cornwall. A ferry was said to have once run tourists across to Cardiff, but the docking platform collapsed in a storm and had never been repaired.
A derelict hotel crouched on the rock face beside the pier. Alan could just make out enough faded letters on its façade to supply the rest of the name: The Majestic Hotel. It was one of those ostentatious gothic palaces that would have been decorated with plundered Egyptian artefacts and overseen by an army of servants. Now it was just a hulking ruin held together by scaffolding and protected by razorwire.
“The ticket office is shut,” said Claudia, panting as though she’d exerted herself in going to look, “and there’s nothing in the gift shop.”
“I didn’t want postcards,” Alan said with a trace of annoyance. “I wanted to go out on the pier.”
She gave him a flat look. “I mean there’s nothing in the gift shop. It’s empty. Deserted. Like this eyesore.” She gestured dismissively.
“It’s not deserted. Look, there are fishermen on the promenade.”
“Well, I don’t like it. It doesn’t look safe.”
He rolled his eyes. “It looks perfectly safe. There’d be ‘Keep Out’ signs if it wasn’t.”
“But the fire—”
“It’s not on fire now, is it? Come on, I want to see.”
Without waiting for her he walked out onto the pier. The boards were warped but they looked sturdy enough. Not bad at all considering the damage salt and the sea could do. Below him the water was silky smooth but peering down through the slats threatened to make him dizzy.
“It must have been nice once,” Claudia said.
“I think it’s nice now.”
“It’s depressing. Like that rotting hotel over there. Probably crawling with rats and God knows what else.”
Alan bit his tongue. There was no point in starting the tired old “eye of the beholder” argument. She’d never been able to appreciate the strange beauty of graveyards or abandoned buildings. Junky antique shops made her nervous and she couldn’t stand the smell of old books.
He’d spent the past few days suffering in silence. His shrill in-laws had kept him constantly on edge with their paranoid Daily Mail rants about immigrants and foreigners. A week was more than anyone should be expected to endure his wife’s family and he’d congratulated himself on making it through without killing one or all of them.
“How could they let it fall into disrepair like this?” Claudia continued. She had clearly inherited her parents’ need to find someone to blame.
He sighed. “I’m sure they didn’t do it on purpose.”
“Are you going to patronise me all day? Because if so—”
“I’m not patronising you,” he said carefully, trying hard to mean it. “You’re just so . . . unadventurous.” It was the kindest word he could manage.
“But it’s old and ugly. Why can’t we look at country houses and museums like normal people? Why do we always have to go slumming in places that ought to be condemned?”
“‘Always’? Hey, we go to plenty of places you like. And they’re always heaving with tourists and families with screaming babies. Isn’t it nice to get off the beaten path once in a while? See something with real character?”
“I just don’t like this place, Alan. It gives me the creeps.”
He was about to tell her she didn’t have to stay when he noticed the plaques. All along the promenade were little brass memorials, set into the wood of the decking and the railing.
OUR DEAREST ISABELLA, TAKEN TOO SOON
GRANDPA GEORGE, GONE FISHING
TOO MUCH OF WATER HAST THOU, POOR OPHELIA
“Look at these,” he said.
But Claudia had already spotted them and was eyeing them with disapproval.
MY BELOVED JOHN, LOST AT SEA, HOME AT LAST
ANNA, YOU GOT THERE FIRST
HOW DOES IT FEEL NOW, DARLING?
Claudia grimaced. “Is this for real?”
“They’re just commemorative plaques.”
She advanced several uncertain steps, shaking her head in response to what she read. “There’s something not right about them. I mean, look at this: ‘You reap what you sow’. What the hell kind of memorial is that?”
Alan chuckled at the one he’d just found. “‘If you can read this, you’re next’.”
“Ugh! That’s in such bad taste.”
“Not as bad as this one: “‘Go on, push her in’.”
“Alan, that’s not funny.”
“Don’t blame me. I didn’t write it.”
“No, but you obviously don’t see anything wrong with it.”
“As a matter of fact, I don’t. It makes a refreshing change from that clichéd ‘in the arms of the angels’ crap.”
“Well, I think it’s horrible.”
“You think everything is horrible,” he muttered. No matter where they went it seemed she was determined to have a lousy time. And to make sure he did too.
DO IT, YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO
The plaques were certainly unusual. Did the town just have a weird sense of humour? He read as he walked, fascinated by the universally morbid tone.
“Alan?” Claudia had stopped a few paces behind him.
“What is it now?”
“Haven’t you noticed something?”
“Noticed what?”
“They’re all memorials.”
“Yeah, so?”
She stared at him as though waiting for him to catch on. He shrugged, oblivious to whatever it was s. . .
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