• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1735 0

the room was dark, save for a band of moonlight streaming through the French windows opposite, which were, I realised, open. An icy draught caught at my own candle and, before I could shield it, blew out the flame. But the moonlight falling across the floor had already shown me what I most dreaded finding. Maurice lay sprawled upon the carpet, with his head by the open window and the moon shining full upon his face. For a moment I thought he might be safe, for his eyes were closed and his expression perfectly peaceful; he looked, as sleepers often do, far younger than his years, and in that pure white light the seared mark seemed to have been quite erased. But as I knelt beside him I saw all too plainly that he was not asleep. The freezing wind rose and ruffled his hair, but he did not move. Instead, something stirred and rustled in the darkness on my right, rearing up, as it seemed, from behind a table no more than two feet from where I knelt, something that flapped and swooped above me in a serpentine rush and went howling out upon a sudden gust that flung those terrible pages into the moonlit sky, scattering upon the wind and away into the night.

Afterword to “Face to Face”

“Face to Face” grew out of my fascination with the “fatal book”: the anonymous manuscript, hedged with dire warnings, which destroys anyone (usually an aspiring author) foolhardy enough to read it. The story came almost by inner dictation; I didn’t know how it would end until I arrived at the closing image. It was partly inspired by Flaubert’s remark that when he was composing the final pages of Madame Bovary, he could hear the rhythms of the still unwritten sentences approaching like footsteps before he knew what the actual words would be: I realised as “Face to Face” unfolded that the idea could be given a distinctly sinister twist.

—JOHN HARWOOD

Richard Harland

Richard Harland was born in England but has spent most of his adult life in Australia. He lives in Figtree, south of Sydney, with his wife, Aileen, between golden beaches and green coastal escarpment—and, incongruously, the biggest steelworks in the southern hemisphere.

In 1993, he broke the curse of writer’s block and finished his first gothic fantasy. Published by a small press, The Vicar of Morbing Vyle became a cult favorite. Richard took up writing full-time in 1997, and since then has had fifteen novels published, ranging from fantasy to science fiction to horror, and from adult to YA to children’s. He has won five Aurealis Awards, including the Golden Aurealis for Best Novel in any genre of science fiction, fantasy, or horror.

His recent steampunk fantasy, Worldshaker, has been published in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, France, Germany, and Brazil. The sequel, Liberator, is due to appear in the same countries, starting with Australia and the United Kingdom in May and July 2011. The American edition comes out in April 2012. Richard’s websites are www.richardharland.net and www.worldshaker.info.

RICHARD HARLAND

Bad Thoughts and the Mechanism

NO, YOU MUST not expect me to describe my nightmares. That I shall never do. As a respected and respectable gentleman of business, I have my regular armchair at White’s, I sit with my cigar and brandy-and-soda—and my fellow club members never suspect that, up until the age of thirteen, I suffered from the most appalling nightmares imaginable. No one knows there was a time when my heart stopped beating, and I almost died in my sleep from pure terror.

It was after I almost died that my parents—you need not know our family name—began to talk about Dr. Kessel. The Harley Street specialist who examined me must have mentioned the new experimental treatment to them—at least, I deduce that connection in retrospect. You should understand that large portions of my life in that period took place as if in a fog. I existed under such oppression of the spirit, such constant weight of fearful anticipation, that many things were confused and ambiguous to me. I remember mainly in flashes—luminous moments of clarity shining