New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird by Kim Newman, Neil Gaiman, China Miéville, Charles Stross, Cherie Priest, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Sarah Monette, Michael Marshall Smith, Paula Guran Read Free Book Online Page B

cannot forget a line from the suicide note of the screenwriter, Joseph Chapman— how does a man forget, deliberately and wholly and forever, once he has glimpsed such sights. How, indeed. And, too, I cannot forget that woman’s eyes, that stony, sea-tumbled shade of gray. Or a rough shadow glimpsed in the final moments of a film that might have been made in 1923 or 1924, that may have been titled The Hound’s Daughter or The Necrophile .
    I know the dreams will not desert me, not now nor at some future time, but I pray for such fortune as to have seen the last of the waking horrors that my foolish, prying mind has called forth.

The patterns and traceries all hinted of remote spaces and unimaginable abysses, and the aquatic nature of the occasional pictorial items added to the general unearthliness.
Discarded Draft of “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”
(written circa 1931) · H.P. Lovecraft
    • FAIR EXCHANGE •
    Michael Marshall Smith
    We were in some bloke’s house the other night, nicking his stuff, and Bazza calls me over. We’ve been there twenty minutes already and if it was anyone else I’d tell them to shut up and get on with it, but Baz and I’ve been thieving together for years and I know he’s not going to be wasting my time. So I put the telly by the back door with the rest of the gear (nice little telly, last minute find up in the smaller bedroom) and head back to the front room. I been in there already, of course. First place you look. DVD player, CDs, stereo if it’s any good, which isn’t often. You’d be amazed how many people have crap stereos. Especially birds—still got some shit plastic midi-system their dad bought them down the High Street in 1987. (Still got LPs, too, half of them. No fucking use to me, are they? I’m not having it away with an armful of things that weigh a ton and aren’t as good as CDs: where’s the fucking point in that?)
    I make my way to Baz’s shadow against the curtains, and I see he’s going through the drawers in the bureau. Sound tactic if you’ve got a minute. People always seem to think you won’t look in a drawer— Doh! —and so in go the cheque books, cash, personal organizer, old mobile phone. Spare set of keys, if you’re lucky: which case you bide your time, hoping they won’t remember the keys were in there, then come back and make it a double feature when the insurance has put back everything you took. They’ve made it easy for you, haven’t they. Pillocks. Anyway, I come up next to Baz, and he presents the drawers. They’re empty. Completely and utterly devoid of stuff. No curry menus, no bent-up party photos, no ball of string or rubber bands, no knackered batteries for the telly remote. No dust, even. It’s like someone opened the two drawers and sucked every thing out with a Hoover.
    “Baz, there’s nothing there.”
    “That’s what I’m saying.”
    It’s not that exciting, don’t see Jerry Bruckheimer making a film of it or nothing, but it’s odd. I’ll grant him that. It’s not like the rest of the house is spick and span. There’s stuff spilling out of cupboards, kitchen cabinets, old books sitting in piles on the floor. The carpet on the landing upstairs looks like something got spilled there and never cleaned up, and the whole place is dusty and smells of mildew or something. And yet these two drawers, perfect for storing stuff—could even have been designed for the purpose, ha ha ha—are completely empty. Why? You’ll never know. It’s just some private thing. That’s one of the weird bits about burglary. It’s intimate. It’s like being able to see what color pants everyone is wearing. Actually you could do that too, if you wanted, but that’s not what I meant Not my cup of tea. Not professional, either.
    “There was nothing in there at all?”
    “Just this,” Baz says, and holds something up so I can see it. “It was right at the back.”
    I took it from him. It’s small, about the size and shape of the end