Shadows & Tall Trees 7 Read online

  Shadows and

  Tall Trees

  7

  edited by michael kelly

  Also by Michael Kelly

  Songs From Dead Singers

  Scratching the Surface

  Ouroboros (With Carol Weekes)

  Apparitions

  Undertow & Other Laments

  Chilling Tales: Evil Did I Dwell, Lewd I Did Live

  Chilling Tales: In Words, Alas, Drown I

  Shadows & Tall Trees

  Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 1 (With Laird Barron)

  Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 2 (With Kathe Koja)

  Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 3 (With Simon Strantzas)

  Also available from Undertow Publications

  Skein and Bone, by V.H. Leslie

  Meet Me in The Middle of The Air, by Eric Schaller

  Almost Insentient, Almost Divine, by D.P. Watt

  Singing With All My Skin and Bone, by Sunny Moraine

  “Michael Kelly’s Shadows and Tall Trees is a smart, soulful, illuminating investigation of the many forms and tactics available to those writers involved in one of our moment’s most interesting and necessary projects, that of opening up horror literature to every sort of formal interrogation. It is a beautiful and courageous series.”

  - Peter Straub

  First Edition

  Shadows and Tall Trees, Vol. 7 copyright © 2017 by Michael Kelly

  Cover artwork (trade edition) copyright © 2017 Yaroslav Gerzhedovich

  Cover artwork (hardback edition) copyright © 2017 Vince Haig

  Cover design copyright © 2017 Vince Haig

  Interior design, typesetting, layout © 2017 Alligator Tree Graphics

  Proofreader: Michael Kelly

  Introduction © 2017 Michael Kelly

  “We Can Walk It Off Come the Morning” © 2017 Malcolm Devlin

  “Line of Sight” © 2017 Brian Evenson

  “Curb Day” © 2017 Rebecca Kuder

  “Shell Baby” © 2017 V.H. Leslie

  “The Cenacle” © 2017 Robert Levy

  “Sun Dogs” © 2017 Laura Mauro

  “The Water Kings” © 2017 Manish Melwani

  “The Voice of The People” © 2017 Alison Moore

  “The Triplets” © 2017 Harmony Neal

  “The Attempt” © 2017 Rosalie Parker

  “Everything Beautiful Is Terrifying” © 2017 M. Rickert

  “Dispossession” © 2017 Nicholas Royle

  “The Swimming Pool Party” © 2017 Robert Shearman

  “Engines of The Ocean” © 2017 Christopher Slatsky

  “In the Tall Grass” © 2017 Simon Strantzas

  “The Erased” © 2017 Steve Rasnic Tem

  “Root-Light” © 2017 Michael Wehunt

  “Slimikins” © 2017 Charles Wilkinson

  “The Closure” © 2017 Conrad Williams

  www.undertowbooks.com

  Table of Contents

  Introduction — Michael Kelly

  Line of Sight — Brian Evenson

  Everything Beautiful Is Terrifying — M. Rickert

  Shell Baby — V.H. Leslie

  The Attempt — Rosalie Parker

  The Closure — Conrad Williams

  The Water Kings — Manish Melwani

  In The Tall Grass — Simon Strantzas

  The Erased — Steve Rasnic Tem

  The Swimming Pool Party — Robert Shearman

  We Can Walk It Off Come The Morning — Malcolm Devlin

  The Cenacle — Robert Levy

  Slimikins — Charles Wilkinson

  The Voice of The People — Alison Moore

  Curb Day — Rebecca Kuder

  Engines of The Ocean — Christopher Slatsky

  Sun Dogs — Laura Mauro

  Root-Light — Michael Wehunt

  The Triplets — Harmony Neal

  Dispossession — Nicholas Royle

  Contributors

  INTRODUCTION

  Michael Kelly

  OF ALL THE BOOKS I’VE EDITED OR published, the Shadows & Tall Trees series is, unabashedly, and unreservedly, my favourite. The first volume was my attempt at an answer to the various mediocre and dreadful (in the worst sense) volumes of horror that I felt were being published. There are still too many bad books being published; as Series Editor for the Year’s Best Weird Fiction I see them. And that will never change. But since the first volume of Shadows & Tall Trees was published there has been a steady increase in the number of quality presses. Presses that value literary quality, and have a unique artistic aesthetic.

  Horror and weird fiction has seen a definite upswing in regards to literary quality, and respect among genre readers.

  Which brings us to volume 7 of Shadows & Tall Trees, which you hold in your hands.

  It has been three years since the last volume of Shadows & Tall Trees. That volume had many stories reprinted in various ‘Year’s Best’ and ‘Best Of’ anthologies, and was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award, and the Shirley Jackson Award. All the volumes have been very well received. And all told, of the 55 stories published in the first 6 volumes, 18 have been reprinted in ‘Year’s Best’ volumes. All this to say that I believe this current volume may be the best one yet. That’s no disrespect to the previous volumes. The quality of submissions for each successive volume has increased steadily. I’ve seen several stories that I had to regrettably turn down for this volume get picked up for other publications. There is exemplary material being published in the Weird Horror field. It is a good time to be a reader. And it’s a good time to be an editor.

  Thank you to all the writers who submitted work. And thank you to the writers who grace the pages herein. As always, you make me look good.

  Finally, thank you, dear reader, for supporting this endeavor from day one. Maybe, just maybe… there will be an 8th volume of Shadows & Tall Trees.

  LINE OF SIGHT

  Brian Evenson

  1.

  THE SHOOT HAD GONE WELL—ALMOST too well, in fact. So much so that Todd, by the end, was just waiting for something to go wrong: for production to come crashing to a halt, for the union to try to shut them down with some bullshit excuse, for the lead to have his face torn halfway off in a freak accident. The longer things continued to go well, the more strongly he could feel something roiling below the surface, preparing to go badly. And the longer it didn’t, the worse he felt.

  He was tempted to hurt himself, just to relieve the pressure. Cut off his thumb, maybe. But he knew this wouldn’t go over well with the studio. By the time they wrapped, he was jumping at every little thing: he couldn’t have lasted another day. But then, suddenly, it was over, the production a wrap, and instead of being relieved he was flustered, unbelieving, still waiting for something to go wrong.

  And yet, even in the early stages of post-production, it never did. No issues with sound, no problems with editing, no problems when the footage was processed: nothing wrong. The film came out, so everybody claimed, better than expected. Even though the studio had been a little standoffish with the rushes, they now claimed to love where Todd had gotten to. Unaccountably, nobody had any final notes.

  “Really?” said Todd, bracing himself.

  “Really,” said the studio exec. “It’s great just as is.”

  “And?” said Todd.

  “No ands,” he said. “No buts.”

  Todd folded his arms. “So, what do you think needs to be changed?” he asked.
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br />   “I don’t think you understand,” the studio exec said. “We don’t want anything changed.” And then a moment later, his brow creased. “What’s wrong with you? You should be celebrating.”

  But Todd couldn’t celebrate. He was still waiting for something to go wrong.

  Nothing wrong, nothing wrong, he told himself, but he still felt like he could feel the exec’s eyes on his back all the way to the door, watching him go. He imagined how he would shoot that scene: a quick shot first of the exec’s face, then Todd’s back as he walked toward the door, then the exec’s face again, expression slightly changed. He should be grateful, he knew he should—there was nothing wrong and everything right, the film was a success. But didn’t that just mean that something was likely to go hideously wrong for him on a personal level? But he wasn’t married, not even with anybody, didn’t even own a pet: what could go wrong that hadn’t already? Okay, so maybe his next film would be an utter disaster? How could he enjoy this success before he knew how much it would cost him down the line?

  He went home. He looked at the wall of his apartment for an hour, maybe more. It grew dark outside, then darker still. Finally, hands shaking, he drove back to the studio.

  It was later than he thought. Still, he had no problem talking his way through the gate, or getting himself into the building. He got the night watchman to let him into the editing bay, then queued up the film and began to watch, pretending that he was seeing a movie directed by someone else.

  It was good, he grudgingly had to admit. If he considered it objectively, he had to agree with the studio. The camerawork was excellent, startling even, the film saturated with shadow in a way that made the slow mental unraveling of the lead seem as if it were being projected all the way across the screen and even spilling off the sides a little. The effect was panicked and anxious, and he began to think that his own anxieties about the imminent collapse of the project had filtered down to everybody participating in the shoot, but in a way that paradoxically served the film. The lead, when he began to unravel, seemed not only like himself unraveling, but almost like a different person. It had become the kind of film that brought you close to a character and then, once that character was going mad, brought you closer still.

  He stared at the empty screen, the film continuing to work inside his head. He should be happy, he told himself. Everybody was right. He should be completely happy, but there was something nagging at him. What was it? The acting was excellent, the blocking and staging and camerawork just as good. Lighting was superb, sound editing was precise. What did he have to complain about?

  He sighed, stretched. He should accept that the film was a success, he told himself, go home, go to bed. Instead, he queued the film up and watched it again.

  The third time through, he began to sense it, began to realize what the problem was. In the interior scenes, the eye lines were a little off. Not all the interior scenes, just the ones set in the lead’s childhood home, before and after he dismembered his parents. Not off by much, just slightly, not enough for anyone to notice consciously, at least not on first viewing. But who knew what it was doing subconsciously? People noticed things, it didn’t matter if it was conscious or not. It needed to be fixed.

  And yet, he remembered the cameraman lining all that up carefully—he’d fired the script supervisor at the cameraman’s request, because the cameraman had insisted he wasn’t meticulous enough about just that: eyelines. He had a vivid memory of the cameraman blocking it, and then re-blocking it, making micro-movements of the camera to get it right every time they shot a scene.

  He went onto the computer, pulled up the digital files of the rough footage in the editing bay. Was he right? Even staring at a frame of the lead looking next to a frame of what, ostensibly, he was seeing, he could hardly tell. Was he imagining it? At first he thought so, but the longer he stared at it the more he thought, no, the eye lines were off.

  Maybe the cameraman had a slight vision problem so that what looked right to him didn’t look right to anybody else. Or maybe Todd was the one to have the vision problem and there wasn’t anything there.

  He toyed and tinkered with a frame a little, seeing, if he cropped and adjusted it, whether the problem could be corrected. But no matter how much he torqued it, it didn’t seem to help.

  It wasn’t until after he had already dialed that he realized how late it was—midnight or one in the morning now. He hung up. He could wait until morning.

  But, a few seconds later, his phone began to ring.

  “Misdial?” the cameraman asked when he answered.

  “Ah,” Todd said. “You’re awake. No, I meant to call. Sorry to call so late.”

  The cameraman didn’t bother to answer, just waited.

  “It’s just,” said Todd. “I’m … the eye lines,” he finally managed. “They’re wrong.”

  For a long time, the cameraman was quiet, and Todd thought maybe he’d offended the man.

  “Just in the house,” Todd added, as if that made it better somehow. “Everywhere else they’re fine.”

  “Where are you?” the cameraman finally said. His voice sounded strangled.

  Todd told him. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  The man gave a laugh, part of it cut off by static from the connection. “I am now,” he said. “Now that somebody else has finally noticed.”

  2.

  “It was awful,” Conrad claimed, as he and the director sat over coffee in a deserted diner at two or perhaps three in the morning. “I would set the eye lines, then look and think, yes, that’s it exactly, but the whole time another part of me would be thinking, no, not quite.” And so I would frame it again, would check everything again. Each time I would think when I looked through the viewfinder, yes, perfect, and then, a moment later, but…”

  It had been like that through the whole shoot. Most days he just thought it had something to do with the feel of the shoot as a whole, the tension present on the set for some reason. You felt it too, said Conrad to the director. I could tell. But at night, back at home, lying in bed, Conrad kept thinking back through the shots, wondering why the eye lines still didn’t feel right.

  “I’ve never felt that way,” said Conrad. “I’ve been in the business for two decades and I have never felt that way.”

  As the shoot went on, it became not better but worse. Not outside, not in the other locations, just at the house. Conrad began to think of the house as a living thing, expanding and contracting, breathing, shifting ever so slightly. As he told this to the director he believed from the look on the man’s face that he felt it too. Being in the house was like being in the belly of something. It was like they’d been swallowed, and that the house, seemingly inert, was not inert at all. It was always shifting ever so slightly, so that even in the time it took to go from a shot of a face looking at something to setting up a shot to reveal where that face was looking, everything was already slightly wrong, slightly off.

  “It sounds crazy,” said the director.

  “Yes,” Conrad agreed. “It sounds crazy. But you felt it, too.”

  And it was even worse than that, Conrad claimed. For when he had stared, really stared, it seemed like something was beginning to open up, like if he stood just right he could see a seam where reality had been imperfectly fused. He had stood there on the balls of his feet, swaying slightly, not caring what the crew around him might think. And then, for an instant, he even managed to see it just right, not so much a threadlike seam as a narrow opening, as well as a someone—or something rather—gazing out.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” asked the director.

  Conrad shrugged. “You’ve said it yourself,” he said. “It sounded crazy. And you didn’t say anything either. The film editor didn’t notice it at all. But then, he wasn’t on the set, was he?”

  The director hesitated, then nodded. Both men sat in silence and sipped their coffee. Finally the director said, “What was it?”

  “Excuse me?” asked Conrad.r />
  “Gazing out,” said the director. “What was it?”

  Conrad shook his head. “I don’t know for certain what it was,” he said. “All I know is what it looked like.”

  “And what did it look like?” the director asked, but you could tell from the look on his face that he didn’t want to know.

  You had to understand, Conrad claimed, that what it looked like was probably not what it was. That if he had to guess, it was the sort of thing that took on aspects of other things that came close to it, a kind of mimic of anything it could manage to approach. In a house like that, in a place where the seam of the fabric of reality was wrongly annealed, it would take on the appearance of whatever it had the chance to observe, to study through the gap in the seam. “At first I thought I was wrong,” said Conrad, “that I was seeing some sort of odd reflection or refraction, that I couldn’t be seeing two things that looked the same. But when they each moved they moved in a way that couldn’t be seen as either the same or as mirroring one another. No, even though they looked identical, they were anything but the same.”

  The director struck the tabletop hard with his open palm. “Goddamit,” he said, “what did it look like?”

  Conrad looked surprised. How was it the director hadn’t guessed? “Why, the lead, of course.”

  3.

  The whole production Steven Calder (née Amos Smith) had had the feeling that something was wrong. Not with him, not with his acting, no, that was good. As good as it had ever been in fact, for reasons that he wasn’t sure he could understand. Not with the director either, though the man was an odd one, jumpy as fuck. Cameraman was okay, too, if a bit anal, and so were the rest of the crew. No, nothing visibly wrong anywhere, nothing he could place the blame on. Just a feeling.

  He shrugged it off and kept going, acting like everything was fine. Or, rather, acting like he was losing his mind, which was what the film was about, him losing his mind, his character losing his mind, but when the camera wasn’t rolling yes, then, acting like everything was fine, even racking his brains for stupid jokes he’d heard back in high school—or rather, things that the Amos Smith he’d used to be had heard back in high school—things he could throw out to lighten the mood, things meant to demonstrate that he was at ease and nothing was wrong.