Fiction

Published short fiction:

The Peacock House in Secret Stairs from Silver Empire
The Well Wisher in Respectable Horror from Fox Spirit
What We Caught in September in Elemental Foundations from Zimbell House Publishing
Small Sacrifices in The Last Diner from Knightwatch Press.
‘Purgatory Junction’ and ‘Chalk Marks’ in Microtext One from Medusa’s Laugh Press.
‘The Samson Museum’ in The Little Magazine of Magnificent Monsters from The Were-Traveller.
March Hays in Death’s Realm from Grey Matter Press.
The Snout in Strangely Funny 2½ from Mystery and Horror, LCC.
Joe and the Dead in Zombies in Japan from Dreamscape Press.

‘The Vessel’ won 1st prize in the 6th Great Lake Drabble Contest from Alban Lake Publishing

In the list above, wherever possible the title of the story is a link to an extract, the title of the book links to where you can buy it, and the name of the publisher is a link to their website.

The Peacock House
(Extract)

“It started when I was young.” Peter rubbed his fingers across the Formica table. Cold plastic, slightly greasy. “Me and my sister Rebecca.”

“Rebecca was younger?”

“Yes. I was about nine at the time. She was six.” He kept his eyes cast down. Blue Formica sea, flecked with darker marks, shadows in the depths. He tried to remember, cast his mind back like an angler, fly fishing for the past, hooking at the damp, soft images, dragging them back into the cold light, poor delicate things, scraps of torn, moist tissue.

“Where we lived then, well it was in the country but it wasn’t that remote. It was at the end of a lane off an A road. And the Motorway was to the East, the M1 it must have been. You could hear the lorries at night, when you lay in your bed and couldn’t sleep. The canal was to the north through Little Wood. So it felt remote but it wasn’t really.”

“Why couldn’t you sleep?”

He shrugged, looked up at her. She wore a half smile. What was she talking about? What was she thinking? She didn’t blink. He returned his gaze to the grubby table top.

“So it was country, but tame county, bound in. We lived in an old farmhouse. Rented. You could rent much more easily back then. And it was cheaper than buying. Much cheaper. Not like now.”

“Go on.” She was still smiling. The other one, the man, leaned against the wall by the door. He looked bored. Probably wanted a fag or a coffee, Peter thought. He was older than the woman, hard bitten.

“So this one day we decided to go for a walk. It was safer in those days. Or people thought it was. Our parents didn’t worry about us wandering off for hours across the fields. Or maybe it was just me who wanted to go for a walk and Becky tagged along.”

“Go home Beck!”

“Don’t want to.”

“You can’t hang around with me.”

“I’ll tell Mum.”

Pete stuck his hands in the pockets of his shorts and stomped away past the barns that lay across the lane from their house. Becky followed, the tiny victor in their spat.

“Where we going?”

“Wait and see.”

Across the field lay Little Wood and then there was the canal, green and murky, and beyond that Big Wood. Pete had only been to Big Wood once or twice, once with Dad, when he was little and they were exploring, riding on his father’s shoulders as they walked down the tow path, ducking so that low sweeping willows didn’t knock him from his perch. The other time he’d been alone and he couldn’t remember much apart from running and a curdled smell, mould or damp.

They cut through the fields, sticking to the edges so as not to trample the wheat. Bees buzzed around cow parsley in the hedgerows and a heavy scent enveloped them like honey and flowers. The sun shone like it always did in the long slow summers of the past. They dawdled through Little Wood, where the ferns were taller than Becky and stinging nettles lurked. Pete showed Becky how to pull the white flowers from the nettles that bore them, and suck at the end of the tiny trumpets, a hint of nectar on the tongue.

“They’ll sting me.”

“No they won’t” he grabbed the nettle to show her. “The kind with white flowers don’t have stings.”

She was reluctant, it could be a brotherly trap, but found he was right. “Why don’t they sting?”

“They just don’t.”

Little Wood was no more than a hundred yards wide, scarcely more than a copse. They came out the other side onto the canal tow path. Left lay the main road and the lock and the little shop that catered for holiday makers in narrow boats. They went right. Becky was getting tired but since she’d argued to come with her brother she couldn’t turn back now.

“Can we go home?”

Pete didn’t answer. He turned right. His sister followed…

The Well Wisher
(Extract)

In my dream I was in the study, lying on the polished wooden floor, gazing up at the plaster ceiling. I was in my nightdress. I couldn’t move, pinned like a butterfly on a board. I heard slow footsteps. A grey figure moved into sight, veiled and clothed in cobweb and smoke. It peered down at me. I couldn’t make out any features though I strained to see clearly. Dust drifted down from its rags and burned my throat as I breathed in.
The figure held something in its hand, a familiar object, a black glass inkwell. It tipped it slowly until black fluid trickled out, spattering my face and filling my mouth, tasting of iron and something sweet. I choked and coughed up ink; it flowed over my chin, soaked my collar and puddled in the base of my throat. My eyes became black pools, light was blotted out. Ink filled my lungs and my chest heaved as I tried desperately to take in air. The room was flooded and I was drowning in a sea of blackness. I awoke with the sheets soaked in my perspiration and the first rays of daylight bleeding through the curtains. I told myself that it was just a dream, that it was all over. And I almost believed it.

It had begun on a bright spring morning. The sun shone through the tall windows of the schoolroom, dust danced in its beams like motes of gold. I studied my charges: Edward, industrious, scribbling, head bowed over his Latin, Rupert distracted by something he had seen through the window, mouth agape and Emily chewing the end of her pencil thoughtfully as she considered some knotty problem in her textbook.

‘As it is such a fine day,’ I said, ‘I propose that we take our paints into the gardens.’ This suggestion was met with general approval. We consigned Virgil to the cupboard, collected watercolour boxes, pencils and paper, left the Hall and decamped to the grounds, to sketch the lake and the faux Temple of Apollo set among beech trees on the hill.

Simon Montague found us there an hour later. ‘Miss Andrews!’ he cried as he trotted down to where we sat, ‘I’ve been sent to fetch you.’

Simon Montague was half brother to my charges, the sole issue of Lord Montague’s first marriage. Recently returned from a scientific expedition to the South Seas, he was tall, very brown and as ugly as any man I have ever seen. His face was long, his nose too prominent, his hair an indeterminate colour and his mouth too wide. I had met him for the first time on his return five days previously and found myself staring at him whenever we met, in wonderment that such disparate features could sit together on one face.

The two boys dropped their brushes and pencils and ran to meet Simon who horsed around with them good naturedly, pretending to be winded as they tried to wrestle him to the turf.

‘Come and see our pictures!’ said Rupert. Simon looked at their efforts and praised them both. ‘Is that a shark in the lake,’ he asked Rupert.

‘Yes it is. It’s just eaten Edward.’

‘No it hasn’t!’ said Edward.

‘Yes it has. It’s my picture and if I want a shark to have eaten you in it then I shall have it.’

‘Then I shall have elephants trampling you to death on the lawn.’

All the while Emily had been absorbed in her own painting. Leaving the boys to chase each other, Simon looked over her shoulder.

‘That’s wonderful Em,’ he said.

‘It’s not quite right yet,’ she said, chewing the end of her brush.

‘I think you’ve really captured something,’ he said.

I was pleased. My own watercolour skills were indifferent. The boy’s paintings were what you might expect: Edward’s competent but overly careful and blocky, Rupert’s careless and full of detail inferred but not actually seen, and of course sharks. But Emily had real promise. Her painting of the lake transformed it into a mysterious landscape of lambent water, reflecting spiny trees and turbulent clouds.

‘When you have finished may I have it?’ Simon said, ‘I will put it on the wall in my room.’

Emily glowed with pleasure and nodded her assent. ‘I should like to be a painter when I’m grown up.’ she said to him confidingly.

‘Girls can’t be painters!’ shouted Rupert as he raced past.

‘Miss Andrews says that girls should do whatever they wish.’ Emily shouted back…

What We Caught in September
(Extract)

“Come help empty the nets tomorrow,” says Da to me and Tom.

“It’s too dangerous,” says Gran, by the fire with her knitting on her knee, like she is most times now.

“They’ve got to know how,” says Da, “So they can do it after me.”

Gran grumbled and rocked on her chair but she couldn’t argue ‘cause she knows it’s true. Since Ma upped and died we must learn to fix for ourselves.

I’d never helped with the nets before on account of being thought too young to see some things. My name is Ivy Toogood. I’m twelve years old, and next summer I will be grown up and fit for all sorts, and afore long I’ll be married and be away. Afore long. Two or three years. I dun’t know married to who yet. But I shall have a big say in that, to be sure.

My Da makes nets proper, by hand, for the places where they will lie. Some in the village think it ‘aint worth the trouble. If you’ve a mind you can buy nets ready made up, from the market in Dunnock Mylton. But hand tied is better and that is why we have a copper pot for cream and good mattresses that are not full of straw and, wonder of wonders, a spit over the fire with a clockwork winder that turns for ten minutes on its own: ‘cause my Dad is the best catcher in the village. But we dun’t have a Ma. Not anymore.

We were excited, me and my brother Tom, who’s a year and a bit older but behaves like a great child most of the time. And we went to bed and I lay thinking of tomorrow and I was only a tiny bit afraid.

I have seen lots so far that they say I shouldn’t because I’m too young. I seen when they killed the pig we’d raised for a year, which was sad. They cut it up for bacon and chitterlings and made the blood into sausage. I asked Ma if they used every bit and she said, “You can have the squeak Ivy!” and laughed. Tom took the tail and ran round whirling it to fright the girls. And Cissie Foster screamed when he put it down her neck.

So I seen all sorts but not the nets emptied. Not until tomorrow.

Da woke us next morning. We kept extra quiet so as not to wake Gran who snored on her truckle in the corner of the big room. Tom put on his sheep coat with the fleece inside and I wore my thick dress and Ma’s red cloak that was long on me but the warmest we have. Da looked sad to see the cloak but he dun’t say, “Tek it off girl and don’t touch your mother’s things!” He just nodded and we walked out the door and shut it behind us. So that was alright.

The mist had rolled off the marshes and though the sun was nearly up there was not much to see of anything. All was hazy grey and it made you damp as you walked through it. In the village we saw Tolmondley going out to his fields but no one else and he waved to my Da who waved back.

“Tekkin’ them out to the nets,” said Da.

“Good huntin’,” said old Tol.

We went out of the village, through Big Meadow and Little Wood. Tom whistled and picked up a stick and whacked the heads off cow parsley and thrashed the dock as we walked but I felt strange walking through the mist with the smell of the night still in the air and the damp grass soaking my shoes. I was not afeared, not exactly that but I had jitterings in my stomach. My Da gave me an apple to eat as we walked but it tasted sour and made me feel worser not better and I imagined the lumps of apple tumbling together in my inside. I threw the core into the ferns and it might be another apple tree when I am an old lady, or just dinner for wood mice and ants.

We came out on the other side of Little Wood, and went down the slopes and across the stream, which I thought was a great river when I was small. Trees loomed up from the mist like great grey men, that you might think were alive and walking about when you weren’t looking.

The sun started to break through as we got close to Da’s patch in the forest.

Nets are always set at the start of autumn, when the ‘things we must not name’ go north, like birds go south. They fly to the cold places and nobody knows what they do there. That’s when you can trap them. In Spring they come back south but maybe another way because there’s never any catching them then. We only see them in the autumn.

Nets are strung between trees and poles set in the ground, woven back and forth and tied off to branches like a big cobweb made of horse hair and copper wires and iron rings. It takes two weeks to put up and get right. The threads are painted with blood and honey to draw the catch.

Da had hung poppets and geejaws from the trees, some were cloth stuffed with sheep’s wool and others just bits of cracked mirror or a spoon or snippets of tin strung together, because they love the strange and the shiny and they fly down to see and get caught. My mother’s necklace of blue glass beads was hanging on a bush and I thought, she wun’t have let him do that when she was here. He would have had the sharp side of her tongue and no mistake.

As we came to the nets I could hear something afore I saw it, a gabbling screeching. We came out into the clearing and we saw it tangled in the wires ten feet up, caught so well it could hardly move.

“We got one!” said Tom.

It stopped struggling and glared at us, breathing heavy. I’ve seen many catches before, of course, all shapes and sizes and colours. This one was dark, like the wood panels in Parson’s house, and wrapped all in furs, yellow and orange and spotted and striped. It had the shape of a girl, around the age I am. Its hair was short and curled tight on its head and it had big black eyes and its dark skin was all painted with white stuff in patterns.

“That’s a raree one!” said Da.

“Here’s another!” said Tom.

A smaller one was caught up near a tree. It had the shape of an old woman, with a hook nose. Its blue grey skin was scaly like a snake and it had red eyes.

“Find what they flew on,” Da said. In fireside stories they always fly on a besom but real ones use all sorts: a pitchfork, or a rake, or a mop, or a chamber pot, or a milking stool. We searched and I found a wooden staff, all carved with patterns…

Small Sacrifices
(Extract)

Layla Kovak makes the best chicken sandwich in London. See her cut the bread so precisely, bread she makes herself. Layla is a surgeon of the sandwich. Two years ago she started as a lowly counter assistant at the Forest Deli, in a side street off Tottenham Court Road, hedged in by bookshops and stage doors. Back then the bread was a loaf from Tesco Metro. Within a month Layla had scouted an artisan baker who did a good deal on fresh ciabatta, bagels, wholemeal baps, sourdough, potato farls, sodabread, and pain rustique. Proceeds went up by 20% in the next two months, which stopped her boss Judy moaning about the expense. Six months later Layla prevailed upon Judy to install a bread oven in the small kitchen behind the shop. Now the Deli sells Layla’s fresh bread as well as using it for sandwiches.

Today the loaf has a hint of caraway. Layla makes fresh mayonnaise each day. Lettuce and tomatoes are sourced from smallholdings in Kent and selected for taste over uniformity or shelf life. Layla slices breast meat from a cold roast chicken then augments it with darker thigh for taste and texture. She adds a smear of mustard and thin strips of crispy skin, then crumbles some sage and onion stuffing on top. There is nothing pretentious about the finished sandwich she sends out to the customer. It is just very, very good, hence the ‘Best Chicken Sandwich in London’ accolade from Time Out.

Five months ago Layla used the small inheritance from her father to buy out Judy, who was heading off to run a B&B in Hove. The two women embraced and promised eternal friendship before Judy drove off, never to be seen again, leaving Layla queen of all she surveyed.

Her single minded success in the world of the deli is a surprise to Layla. In every other aspect of life she is beset by fears. She once made a list of them in a notebook. The list filled four pages before she gave up the task, having developed a fear of the list itself. When she moved to London and into a small flat near Alexandra Palace, the city terrified her. She had feared her landlord, Colin, a skinny Irishman, whose gaze slithered over her cleavage and never reached her face. Eight years later she is afraid that Colin’s eyes never seem to wander anywhere other than her face. Layla has wrestled some fears into submission, but the sheer number has meant that others have had to be left alone.

Part of Layla’s list of fears:
Spiders, ants, wasps, mosquitoes.
Pandemics, eurhythmics, eugenics.
Anaesthesia, neurasthenia, necrosis, psychosis, cirrhosis.
AIDS, SARS. Any other disease with an acronym.
Clowns.
Buttons.
Cane toads.

As far as Layla knew there were no cane toads in England, but having watched a documentary about the Australian monstrosities she developed a fear of them just in case.

It is the end of the day. The last sandwich has been made and the last customer departs, clutching Sicilian Olive Oil, pesto, a jar of Polish Bigos and some blue cheese ripened on old saddles at a tiny farm in Dorset. Layla cleans her work surface and sets the dishwasher humming. She pulls apart the chicken carcass, removing remaining meat, skin and gristle. These she chops neatly and divides between plastic bowls. Then she opens the back door and steps into the alley…

March Hays
(Extract)

At first I was blind, swimming in and out of morphine-fired dreams. Again and again I saw the aeroplane bank, its engines howling as it came in to attack. I heard the explosions and the screams, saw the earth thrown up, the Jeep in front of me tracing a lazy pirouette in the air as its passengers came apart like toys hurled at a wall, felt the impact like a slap in the face and awoke trapped under a smouldering vehicle. Friendly fire. Over and over again.

For a long time, all I knew were the hands of those caring for me. Brisk and business-like they changed my dressings, washed me, checked my temperature and injected me, before letting me slip into unconsciousness once more. I was rolled over, prodded and maintained like a temperamental piece of machinery to be discarded if all else failed.

I began to recognise one particular pair of hands amongst all the others, the fingers long and delicate, as they lingered tenderly on my brow and gently teased dressings away from wounds.

Later I could see. The bandages were removed from my eyes, and I could identify the face that went with those hands. Her name was Lily. Lily’s eyes were dark and perceptive, her hair mousy blonde; not pretty but interesting, which was better. She treated me as a person, looked me in the eyes, spoke to me even though I couldn’t answer, told me about my case as if we were colleagues.

Later, when the worst was over and I was on my feet again, I learned where I was and remembered I had met Lily before.

* * *

It was when I was ten. There was a garden party. Everyone from the villages that surrounded March Hays, the big hall, had been invited. I remember the day because after a week of dismal cloud the sun broke through and turned the grounds into a blinding vision of white and green and blue and ochre. Tables had been set up on the lush lawn, covered with crisp snowy cloths and piled with food and big jugs of cider and lemonade. Adults clustered in groups, the men stiff in Sunday suits, the women in the patched and carefully preserved dresses of yesterday the colours of crocus, daffodil, pinks and clover, befitting a day straddling spring and summer. Around the adults eddied tides of children, uninhibited by their parent’s social awkwardness.

I left my mother’s side to get a drink. A harassed maid thrust a glass into my hand, and I discovered she had given me cider rather than lemonade. My first instinct was to exchange it, but I realised I had been offered a chance to experience a forbidden pleasure. So I wandered off, sipping the unfamiliar, sour-sweet liquid that formed cloudy whorls in the glass.

For a while I stood in the arch of a coach house, watching grooms saddle a recalcitrant stallion. With the cider and the sunshine making my head swim, I drifted to the other side of the hall where younger children were chasing up and down on the lawns. I decided to explore the graveyard of the nearby chapel. It was overgrown with grass, nettles and foxgloves. Slate gravestones poked up like fingers from a fur cuff.

“Who are you?” A small girl with long, fair hair tied with a plaid ribbon was perched on top of an ornate granite tomb. A little rough-haired dog sat below her in the shade, tongue lolling.

“Sam Meachum,” I said. ”You?”

“Lily Siddons.”

“You live here?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t you go to school?”

“I have a tutor. Next year I’ll go to school.”

“In the village?”

“Boarding school. Devon.” She pulled a face.

“They’re sending you away?”

“It’s where Mummy went to school. Supposed to be the happiest days of my life.” Lily spat into the nettles. That impressed me. The dog scratched himself, wheezing like an old man…

The Snout
(Extract)

It was October 1898 before I visited my friend Jon Darkness again. The Affair of the Dangling Turret had unnerved me and for some months I avoided the gatherings where he recounted his experiences in the realm of the outré. It was not until the nights closed in that I ventured out again, braving the autumn chill, to see my old friend.

A frosty breeze blew along the Bloomsbury Street where Darkness lived, sending respectable ladies and be-suited gentlemen scurrying for the warmth and safety of home and hearth.

I strode up the steps to my friend’s door and rang the bell. Moments later I heard measured footsteps approaching.

Jon’s man Broughton opened the door. A short fellow with a rotund figure, his red face was surmounted by scant, white hair that stuck up in tufts, despite Broughton’s attempts to smooth it into a respectable shape.

“What ho Broughton!” I said, attempting a cheery tone, “Is Darkness here?”

“Aye sorr,” said Broughton. He had hand-built his peculiar accent, using dialects purloined from sixteen counties. “He’s in yon liebrary. Proper mustulated he be. I cor do nuthin with him!”

“Very good, very good!” I said, pretending I had understood.

A strange scent, redolent of the seaside wafted from the doorway. I coughed and my eyes began to water.

“What is that appalling smell?” I ejaculated.

Broughton viewed me with a pained expression.

“It’s me sorr. Hair tonic exsperrymunt 65: eel guts and creosote in honey!” he explained.

“Ah, lovely. Any good.” I managed to ask.

“No good sorr. The hair has its own will as you can see. And in addition I am followed every whichplace by cats.” He shook his head in sorrow. “Wunt do nohow!” He shuffled off down the corridor and beckoned me to follow.

Broughton fulfilled the roles of butler, chauffeur, handyman, cook and maid, but sported no uniform of any kind. I was used to the chap wearing a variety of eccentric apparel depending on what he was creating for Darkness in the cellar workshop. This time he wore an all enveloping suit of some black, rubberised material. Around his neck were a pair of large goggles with dark lenses and his hands were encased in huge gauntlets. Heavy leather boots rounded off the outfit. A fluffy pink feather boa round his neck struck an incongruous note.

“Is that the reason for the exotic garb?” I enquired, “You hair experiments?”

Broughton looked down at himself as if surprised to discover what he had been wearing.

“This old thing sorr? Oh no. I jus’…. likes to wear it on occasion. For old times’ sake.” he confided. “Reminds me of my Da.”

He stopped at the library door and cleared his throat.

“Jus so you know sorr, Mister Darkness…. ain’t quite hisself at the moment.”

“Who is he?” I mean what’s wrong with him?” I asked.

Broughton shook his head. “Tisn’t not my purlace to henquire. But somethin’ is a preyin’ on his mind as you might say. Somethin’ worse than normal!”

“Is it that dashed folly business? That would shake anyone’s confidence.” (I didn’t mind admitting it had shaken mine!)

Broughton shook his head, “Somethin’ worse than normal!” he repeated.

He ushered me into the library and closed the door behind me. I heard his footsteps recede as he returned to his lair in the cellar…

Matthew Pegg – Writer and Designer.

Writing and other bad habits.

Fiction

In the list above, wherever possible the title of the story is a link to an extract, the title of the book links to where you can buy it, and the name of the publisher is a link to their website.

In the list above, wherever possible the title of the story is a link to an extract, the title of the book links to where you can buy it, and the name of the publisher is a link to their website.

The Peacock House (Extract)

The Well Wisher (Extract)

What We Caught in September (Extract)

Small Sacrifices (Extract)

March Hays (Extract)

The Snout (Extract)

Joe and the Dead (Extract)

The Peacock House
(Extract)

The Well Wisher
(Extract)

What We Caught in September
(Extract)

Small Sacrifices
(Extract)

March Hays
(Extract)

The Snout
(Extract)

Joe and the Dead
(Extract)