All nightmare long, p.39
All Nightmare Long, page 39
Embers (Nightmare Magazine, 2014, Ed. John Joseph Adams)
I guess in some ways this is another story about ageing, but it’s also about ghosts from the past, and revisiting old haunts, and old memories of happier times. It’s one of those stories that is informed by a couple of separate ideas or inspirations—that happens a lot, and it’ll often bring a cool, staid idea alight. Part of this tale is about me and my cousin Andy tearing it up in our childhood village, having adventures, scrumping apples, getting sunburnt, riding our bikes and causing trouble, and having the sort of fun that just seems to stick with you, and is the sort of fun you don’t seem to have enough of as you get older. I don’t know why that is—maybe it’s the power of nostalgia giving memories that tantalising gleam—but I honestly think that even at the time we knew what was happening. Each day stretched out before us, each week was an eternity, and the six-week summer holiday lasted forever. I still have a sense of returning home whenever I revisit that village, even though I haven’t actually lived there in over forty years. Another aspect to the story is more local—the several pillboxes scattered around the countryside where I live now*. They always interest me, probably because of their age and intended use. It’s as if they are automatically inhabited by ghosts simply because of these factors. “Embers” is another gentle ghost story. Or is it? I’m not even sure myself.
(*Tens of thousands of pillboxes were built during WW2, constructed from bricks and concrete and intended to form lines of disruption in case of a German invasion. Thrown up quickly, thousands still remain to this day).
Flotsam (The 2nd Spectral Book of Horror Stories, 2015, Spectral Ed. Mark Morris)
I write about grief and loss a lot, but never really understood it until my mother died. This story is about loss, and also the mysteries of the sea. I love the ocean, enjoy swimming in it, but there’s always the tingle of fear and doubt about what else is in the water with you. I’m also fascinated with the idea of messages in bottles, and how long they can bob about on the sea, carried by strange currents around the globe until they’re delivered, eventually, into the hands of the person they were always intended for.
Into The Death Zone (Slices Of Flesh, 2012, Dark Moon Books Ed. Stan Swanson)
Since I’ve been more into outdoor exercise, I’ve become more and more interested in extreme adventuring such as climbing Everest. There was even a brief time a few years ago when I thought about how great it would be to have a go at it myself! But that idea was never serious and didn’t last too long, and I certainly don’t want to add to the problems of mountaineering tourism. And one of those problems is...a lot more dead mountaineers. I’ve read plenty of books about mountaineering and watched documentaries, and I’ve always found it shocking and haunting that there are still scores of bodies up on Everest. Many of them are in inaccessible areas, so it’s too dangerous to bring them down. Some even provide navigation points for those climbing the mountain. Just a few years ago there was news of a team’s efforts to bring down some of these bodies, and I instantly saw a story in that. This is a very short story, but it’s one of my favourites, and it’s gathered together in this book with “Embers” and “Flotsam” because it has that same ambiguous haunting tone that I love so much.
Emergence (New Fears 2, 2018, Titan Books Ed. Mark Morris)
This is another story influenced by the area where I live. I’m lucky enough to live close to Abergavenny in Monmouthshire, and all around us is gorgeous countryside. One of my favourite local mountains to walk and run (and occasionally cycle) around is the Blorenge. There’s an easy way up this mountain, and a hard way, and sometimes I’ll run, walk and crawl up the hard way, trying to beat my previous times and always with the gorgeous views at the top as reward. Halfway up the woodland ascent there’s an old brick tunnel built into the hillside. It doesn’t go far, at least not that I can see—I’ve never been far inside to check, because it’s very old and looks pretty damn precarious. But I just can’t imagine why it was built where it is, and what might once have been on the other side! Well, actually I can imagine...and that’s where “Emergence” came from.
Land of Many Seasons (The Dreaming Isle, 2018, Unsung Stories Ed. Dan Coxon)
This is another story set on the Blorenge mountain, and another tale of ambiguous hauntings, beautiful countryside, and a painter falling in love with that enticing place. If you’ve read this far in the book or story notes you’ll have gathered that I love the countryside over the urban sprawl any day of the week, and more often than not my fiction reflects that. The Blorenge really is a lovely place, and those culverts and brick tunnels really do exist. There are also leftover mine workings, and places on the mountain where it can sometimes feel no one has ever been. Who knows what else is up there?
The Lonely Wood (Letters To Lovecraft, 2014, Stone Skin Press Ed. Jesse Bullington)
This was an interesting anthology concept from writer and editor Jesse Bullington (check out his brilliant novel The Sad Tale of The Brothers Grossbart). We were asked to read Lovecraft’s essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature” and pull a quote that might inspire and inform a short story. This resulted in a very varied anthology, and my piece was inspired by this quote:
“But the sensitive are always with us, and sometimes a curious streak of fancy invades an obscure corner of the very hardest head; so that no amount of rationalisation, reform, or Freudian analysis can quite annul the thrill of the chimneycorner whisper or the lonely wood.”
In this tale I take a trip to St Paul’s Cathedral and play with belief and doubt, and what happens when the two collide.
In The Dust (The New Dead, 2010, St Martin’s Press Ed. Christopher Golden)
I love zombies. One of my favourite novels I’ve written is Coldbrook, a multiverse zombie apocalypse novel which I’m currently working on developing as a TV series, in collaboration with a good friend of mine. Wouldn’t that be lovely? So, when Chris Golden asked me to write a zombie tale for his anthology The New Dead, of course I jumped at the chance. “In The Dust” is set in my local town of Usk, and it plays around with the whole zombie tropes—when the plague happened, how it ended, how far it spread. My characters are desperate and contained, struggling to survive and wondering whether they even should. I wrote the story over a long weekend in a cottage in Wales with a few other writers, and some mornings after the night before we resembled those shambling, pale creatures. You can’t beat a good zombie story, and The New Dead is full of them.
May The End Be Good (Seize The Night, 2015, Gallery Books, Ed. Christopher Golden)
I’ve been tinkering for a while with a trilogy of historical fantasy novels collectively called The Lords of Stone, each set in one of the Norman castles built in efforts to quell the Welsh uprisings after William the Conqueror’s invasion of 1066. I like the idea, have written a good portion of the first novel, but it’s one of those projects I drift away from. I’ll get back to it one day and hopefully finish the first novel...but in the meantime there’s this story, inspired by a famous and desperate quote of the time following the Harrying of the North. An unknown monk said,
“Things went ever from bad to worse. When God wills, may the end be good.” My idea for the trilogy is that in those awful times of plague, famine and pestilence, there were plenty of opportunities for unknown creatures to exist in the land and prey on the helpless. This story was written for a vampire anthology, and the theme seemed to fit well with the period I was researching. It’s one of the grimmest stories I’ve written. I love it.
Sleeper (Appalachian Undead, 2012, Apex Publications Ed. Eugene Johnson)
Back to Coldbrook, and zombies. I set that novel in the Appalachians, even though I’d never visited. I did a lot of research about the place and I was told by a few readers that I’d carried it off OK. So I was pleased when I was asked to contribute to Appalachian Undead! Perfect...a zombie antho set in Appalachia. It was almost as if it was meant to be.
The Gleeful Ones (Barbers & Beauties, 2013, Hummingbird House Press, Ed. Michael Knost & Nancy Eden Siegel)
I never thought I’d write a superhero story. I’m still not sure I have. That’s how odd this one is. This is also a great example of how a particularly narrow theme can make your imagination work harder. “Write a story set in or around a barbershop” I was asked. Anyone who knows me will realise I haven’t visited a barber’s in several decades, and I think that probably helped me think laterally on this one. And so of course I wrote something about maybe-superheroes and killers and plenty of other weirdness. Like the first story in this collection “In Stone”, I took inspiration from the city of Newport where I used to live, trying to capture that edgy feel of potential danger that the nighttime streets of the city centre sometimes exude. This one stands out as one of the stranger stories I’ve written, and
I love it because of that. Sometimes focussing the mind on a tight theme really works wonders!
The Flow (Terror Tales of Wales, 2014, Gray Friar Press, Ed. Paul Finch)
I’ve always been fascinated at the idea of villages emptied of people and belongings and flooded to make new reservoirs. Who isn’t? Not only are these places that once thrived and bustled now empty of humanity—like the best of post-apocalyptic fiction set in empty towns—they’re also in an utterly changed and alien environment. I love the idea of walls still standing, roofs still on, and the phantoms of previous inhabitants wandering those watery rooms. Wales has several such places, and when my mate Paul Finch asked for a story from me for his excellent Terror Tales Of...series, this was the first idea that appealed to me about Wales. I combined it with another favourite theme of mine—going home. Of course, in a horror story it’s never quite obvious what you’re returning home to, and whether past sins might still be rich and raw, however long they’ve been forgotten or drowned from your memory.
The Protector (Peel Back the Skin, 2016, Grey Matter Press Ed. Anthony Rivera & Sharon Lawson)
This was a tough one to write. As a writer it’s my job to put myself in other people’s shoes, and to experience and even try to understand things I’ve never experienced, and have trouble understanding. I tried that here with a story about domestic abuse. But really it’s about something deeper—the power of the imagination, strength of character, the ability of a child to adapt and change, and survive. I think it’s a pretty powerful story, and ultimately upbeat. And while it has monsters and beasts and bloodied victims and fantastical terrors, its real horror is much closer to home. I’m lucky that I’ve never experienced anything like this story, but even so it was very difficult to write and live with for a while. I was glad when it was finished.
Carried Away on a Sunbeam (original to this collection)
This is one of two original stories I wrote for this collection. I’m fascinated with the idea of generation ships—huge vessels laden with millions of sleeping people, built to travel for hundreds of miles through space in the search for a new home for humanity. My novella Rime (also from PS Publishing) is set aboard one such ship, and I’ve also tinkered with the idea of a TV series toying with a similar idea. For this story I decided to remain on Earth and spend some time in the lives of two people left behind. It’s an upbeat story in many ways, and though the ending is ambiguous—sit down with me over a pint one day and we’ll talk about it, but I can’t guarantee I know exactly what this story or its ending really means—I’m very satisfied with how it turned out.
Searching For The Room You Can Never Find (original to this collection)
This story came from a couple of places, and it shows how sometimes a couple of ideas, often decades apart, will meld to form an idea. First, an experience I had in a convention in New York maybe fifteen years ago (I think it might have been when I was a guest at the World Horror Convention, or perhaps one of the Stokercons I attended in NY). I’d had a few drinks and decided to head back to my hotel room. The hotel lobby was quiet, and I ventured along corridors and up staircases until I found my floor, and saw room numbers on the wall signs. I tracked along to my room, and already I was noticing that the corridor seemed...tatty. I hadn’t noticed this previously. Strange. So, I tried getting into my room but the key wasn’t working. I tried again. Concentrating. But nope, no joy.
I wasn’t drunk. Squiffy maybe, so I concentrated harder, still unable to open the door. I headed back along the corridor to the staircase, frustrated that I’d have to go all the way back to reception to check my key. Once I arrived there and explained my predicament, the receptionist smiled and said, “Oh you’ve been to our shadow hotel, it’s being upgraded so no one’s staying there right now.” Shadow hotel, I thought, and that was really bloody weird. I went to my room—directed by the receptionist this time—and that strange experience really stuck with me. Much more recently, an episode of Black Summer (a great zombie series on Netflix) featured an abandoned ski lodge which seemed untouched by the flesh-eating apocalypse. These two ideas collided, and this story was the result. It follows a recent gentler pattern in my work, and I’m very pleased with where it went, even though as with the previous story I’m not quite sure where that was.
STORY CREDITS
“In Stone” (Dark Cities, 2017, Titan Books Ed. Christopher Golden)
“Trick of the Light” (House of Fear, 2011, Solaris Ed. Jonathan Oliver)
“Clown’s Kiss” (Blurring The Lines, 2015, Cohesion Press Ed. Marty Young)
“Relics” (Streets of Shadows, 2014, Alliteration Ink Ed. Maurice Broaddus & Jerry Gordon)
“Sole Survivors” (Scaremongrel, 2015, Pigeonhole Ed. Anna Jean Hughes)
“Skin & Bone” (The Doll Collection, 2015, Tor Ed. Ellen Datlow)
“Strings” (Adam’s Ladder, 2017, Written Backwards Ed. Michael Bailey & Darren Speegle)
“Strange Currents” (Innsmouth Nightmares, 2015, PS Publishing Ed. Lois H Gresh)
“A Man Walking His Dog” (Phantoms, 2018, Titan Books Ed. Marie O’Regan)
“Embers” (Nightmare Magazine, 2014, Ed. John Joseph Adams)
“Flotsam” (The 2nd Spectral Book of Horror Stories, 2015, Spectral Ed. Mark Morris)
“Into the Death Zone” (Slices of Flesh, 2012, Dark Moon Books Ed. Stan Swanson)
“Emergence” (New Fears 2, 2018, Titan Books Ed. Mark Morris)
“Land Of Many Seasons” (The Dreaming Isle, 2018, Unsung Stories Ed. Dan Coxon)
“The Lonely Wood” (Letters to Lovecraft, 2014, Stone Skin Press Ed. Jesse Bullington)
“In The Dust” (The New Dead, 2010, St Martin’s Press Ed. Christopher Golden)
“May the End Be Good” (Seize the Night, 2015, Gallery Books, Ed. Christopher Golden)
“Sleeper” (Appalachian Undead, 2012, Apex Publications Ed. Eugene Johnson)
“The Gleeful Ones” (Barbers & Beauties, 2013, Hummingbird House Press, Ed. Michael Knost & Nancy Eden Siegel)
“The Flow” (Terror Tales of Wales, 2014, Gray Friar Press, Ed. Paul Finch)
“The Protector” (Peel Back the Skin, 2016, Grey Matter Press Ed. Anthony Rivera & Sharon Lawson)
“Carried Away on A Sunbeam” (Original to this collection)
“Searching For the Room You Can Never Find” (Original to this collection)
ALL NIGHTMARE LONG
Copyright © 2022 Tim Lebbon
INTRODUCTION Copyright © 2022 Sarah Pinborough
COVER ART Copyright © 2022 Daniele Serra
First published in May 2022. This eBook edition is published in July 2022 by PS Publishing by arrangement with the Author. All rights reserved by the author.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Story credits appear at the end of the book.
ISBN 978-1-78636-962-8
PS Publishing Ltd
Grosvenor House
1 New Road
Hornsea, HU18 1PG
England
editor@pspublishing.co.uk
www.pspublishing.co.uk
Tim Lebbon, All Nightmare Long
