Dead Letters: An Anthology E-Book

Conrad Williams

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

The Dead Letters Office: the final repository of the undelivered. Love missives unread, gifts unreceived, lost in postal limbo. Dead Letters: An Anthology features new stories from the masters of horror, fantasy and speculative fiction, each inspired by an inhabitant of the Dead Letters Office, including tales from Joanne Harris, China Miéville & Maria Dahvana Headley, Adam LG Nevill and Michael Marshall Smith.

Leseprobe

Also available from Conrad Williams and Titan Books

THE JOEL SORRELL SERIES

Dust and Desire

Sonata of the Dead

Hell is Empty (November 2016)

Dead LettersPrint edition ISBN: 9781783294503E-book edition ISBN: 9781783294510

Published by Titan BooksA division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: April 20161 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

“Introduction” © Copyright 2015 by Conrad Williams“The Green Letter” Copyright © 2015 by Steven Hall“Over to You” Copyright © 2015 by Michael Marshall Smith“In Memoriam” Copyright © 2015 by Joanne Harris“Ausland” Copyright © 2015 by Alison Moore“Wonders to Come” Copyright © 2015 by Christopher Fowler“Cancer Dancer” Copyright © 2015 by Pat Cadigan“The Wrong Game” Copyright © 2015 by Ramsey Campbell“Is-and” Copyright © 2015 by Claire Dean“Buyer’s Remorse” Copyright © 2015 by Andrew Lane“Gone Away” Copyright © 2015 by Muriel Gray“Astray” Copyright © 2015 by Nina Allan“The Days of Our Lives” Copyright © 2015 by Adam LG Nevill“The Hungry Hotel” Copyright © 2015 by Lisa Tuttle“LONDON” Copyright © 2015 by Nicholas Royle“Change Management” Copyright © 2015 by Angela Slatter“Ledge Bants” Copyright © 2015 by Maria Dahvana Headley & China Miéville“And We, Spectators Always, Everywhere” Copyright © 2015 by Kirsten Kaschock

This is a work of fiction. Names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

To the memory of Joel Lane(1963–2013)

CONTENTS

Cover

Also by Conrad Williams

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

INTRODUCTIONConrad Williams

ABOUT THE EDITOR

THE GREEN LETTERSteven Hall

OVER TO YOUMichael Marshall Smith

IN MEMORIAMJoanne Harris

AUSLANDAlison Moore

WONDERS TO COMEChristopher Fowler

CANCER DANCERPat Cadigan

THE WRONG GAMERamsey Campbell

IS-ANDClaire Dean

BUYER’S REMORSEAndrew Lane

GONE AWAYMuriel Gray

ASTRAYNina Allan

THE DAYS OF OUR LIVESAdam LG Nevill

THE HUNGRY HOTELLisa Tuttle

LONDONNicholas Royle

CHANGE MANAGEMENTAngela Slatter

LEDGE BANTSMaria Dahvana Headley & China Miéville

AND WE, SPECTATORS ALWAYS, EVERYWHEREKirsten Kaschock

INTRODUCTION

There are many different ways, these days, of getting your message across. Quick tweet. Fire off an email. Too busy for words? Click on the thumbs-up button. As the world gets smaller so do our missives. I’ve yet to receive a kthxbai, but I’ve seen them out there. The steady dismantling of considered inked pages. A Boolean transmogrification of Dear/Yours into so many (or rather, so few) 0s and 1s.

But everyone likes receiving mail, don’t they? Physical mail, that is. I know I do. And I love writing it too. Long, meandering mind-burps committed to textured paper with a fountain pen. A handwritten letter complete with smudges and creases and crossings out. You can appraise the effort that has gone into such a thing without reading a single word. Maybe a parcel, if you’re lucky. Books, perhaps. An item of clothing. You can forgive any brief note that accompanies such things – I saw this and I thought of you – because the subtext speaks volumes.

You might detect, in the breath of air that rises from the unsealed flap, notes from the room in which it was penned, or the person who held the pen. It’s a tangible memorial. A palpable moment that can be held and read and referred to in the way that the ephemeral email or tweet cannot. In time all of that will be lost.

And yet… we’ve all sent things in the post that never arrived. We’ve all been promised items that were never delivered. The price we pay for eschewing digital postboxes is the risk of undeliverables.

In the UK, lost or misdirected post ends up at a massive warehouse, the Royal Mail’s national return centre in Belfast. If these items haven’t reached their intended location within four months much of it is put up for auction. Some things take an age to arrive. Some things never make it.

I recently received a parcel that had been sent to me from America. It had been dispatched, erroneously, to an old address. Then it had been returned to sender. Eventually it found its way to my door. But it had taken a year to get here. What dark corners had shrouded it in the meantime? How many hands had held it? How many chances did it get to become truly lost, to slip into the netherworld where so many millions of other items have passed? Such thoughts inspired the book you now hold in your hands.

But I thought there was the opportunity to play around with the theme a little bit and actually make the idea of misdirected/lost/returned mail a physical part of how the writers would put together their stories. So instead of just asking for submissions dealing with lost post, I sent the writers an actual parcel that was constructed to look like an item of mail that had done the rounds and accidentally landed on their doorstep. Inside was the prompt they would then use as a trigger for their own story. The one stipulation was that they incorporate the concept of dead letters, however tangential, into their fiction.

They all delivered.

CONRAD WILLIAMSManchester, September 2015

ABOUT THE EDITOR

Conrad Williams is the author of the novels Head Injuries, London Revenant, The Unblemished, One, Decay Inevitable, Loss of Separation, Dust and Desire and, forthcoming, Sonata of the Dead and Hell is Empty. He has also written four novellas, Rain, The Scalding Rooms, Game and Nearly People, and has two collections of short stories to his name: Use Once then Destroy and Born with Teeth. His work has won the British Fantasy Award and the International Horror Guild Award. His previous anthology, Gutshot, was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award. He lives in Manchester with his wife, three sons and a Maine Coon. For more information, visit www.conradwilliams.net, or follow him on Twitter @salavaria.

THE GREEN LETTER

STEVEN HALL

The green letter always arrives between 10.25 a.m. and 10.27 a.m. It’s true that a small percentage of the recipients believe that theirs arrived later, as late as 3 p.m. in one instance, but Research and Analysis have attributed these anomalies to the letter simply having gone unnoticed until that point. Likewise, the previously puzzling fact that some recipients claim to have received the letter as part of a regular postal delivery is now entirely dismissible, as in every case analysis of postal data shows that a standard delivery also occurred in or around the 10.25 a.m.–10.27 a.m. window, making it appear as if the green letter had been delivered with the regular mail. In fact, the green letter always arrives alone. From available CCTV data – which at this point is considerable – we may now add a further assertion, incredible as it might seem – the green letter is not delivered at all.

To be clear, this means that not only is there no footage of a green letter being posted to a recipient, it means the green letters have no poster in any conventional sense. CCTV shows empty streets, unopened garden gates, no one whatsoever approaching, and nothing whatsoever passing into the letterbox during the 10.25 a.m.–10.27 a.m. window when the green letter will inevitably land (it does land, there are audio recordings of the letter falling, and – even more curiously – the sounds of the letterbox opening internally, even as it remains undisturbed externally) on the recipient’s porch or hallway floor.

In line with protocol, Research and Analysis have proposed the full spectrum of explanations to account for this disparity. These range from the mundane but highly improbable (hoaxing, or some persistent, somehow unrecognised fault in our data-gathering processes and systems) to a range of wild, yet apparently more statistically likely causes (temporal displacement, a many worlds/quantum reality anomaly or communication attempt, a data error/smoking gun which may prove the simulation hypothesis). At present, analysis indicates that the letter does drop through the recipient’s letterbox internally, despite nothing being posted into the same letterbox externally at that time, though we are no closer to being able to select a ‘why’ from the several exotic options identified by Research and Analysis (and – as Dr Blakeson, head of R&A has postulated – from an unknown number of additional exotic options as yet unidentified by science). In the face of this, we must simply note this disparity and move forward. The green letter phenomenon is of unparalleled scientific interest, but we must also accept that we are woefully unequipped at the present time to draw even the most rudimentary conclusions.

Outwardly – and certainly by comparison to the process of its arrival and other attributes (see later) – the green letter is a fairly mundane object. The envelope is unusual, though by no means remarkable. At 216mm across it is the perfect width to accommodate a standard A4 paper sheet, but it is not very tall, with a height of only 78mm – about the height one might expect for the envelope of a small Christmas card. The envelope then, is best suited to posting perhaps one or two sheets of A4 paper that have been folded top to bottom many times. Its usefulness beyond this seems very limited. It’s fair, I think, to say it is an odd shape. It’s also bright green.

The envelope is always addressed to ‘Ethan’, the word handwritten with a sharp, B2 pencil according to R&A. Below and to the right of this name, ‘NO ADDRESS’ is written and underlined in black permanent marker. In the top right corner, the words ‘Postage unpaid’ appear in a hand-drawn circle, again in B2 pencil. All three sections of text appear to have been written by the same individual. On the reverse, in fountain pen, and the same handwriting – ‘no return address’.

So far, we have identified 674 green envelopes and their recipients through police and government referral over the last four years, and through other means, though we must imagine that the true number is significantly higher than this.

This brings us to the second phenomena: they are all the same.

We have 176 surviving green envelopes and they are all exactly the same. Actually, this statement is somewhat inaccurate. Let me be more specific, by quoting Dr Blakeson directly: ‘…these are not 176 very similar green envelopes as was initially supposed, but 176 instances of the exact same envelope’.

Not only does the handwritten text match perfectly across all the specimens, but all display identical postal damage and wear and tear. This includes what R&A refer to as ‘the anchor rip’, a small, curved, T-shaped tear on the front left of every envelope, and the same number and random pattern of white ‘rub marks’ along the envelope’s bottom edge, where the green printing has given way to the white paper stock beneath. To be clear, each envelope also contains unique damage, but this can almost always be shown to have derived from the recipient’s opening and subsequent treatment of their iteration of the envelope. At the present time, our team feel confident in stating that, at the time of arrival, every green envelope looked exactly the same because, somehow, they are all the same envelope. Research and Analysis have extracted robust data on many fronts – paper stock, inks, dyes, fibre identification and fibre displacement in the various reoccurring rips, etc. – and concluded that all specimens must somehow be one and the same specimen, or that an original was somehow copied and reproduced at a molecular level many times, to create this series of perfect ‘clones’. Again, for now we can only note this remarkable information and proceed, in the hope that our future investigations may reveal insights into how and why this should be the case.

Now we’ll progress to the contents. Every green envelope contains a single item we refer to as the List. We have only succeeded in acquiring one ‘unused’ List thus far, so have been unable to make the sort of material comparisons that had been possible with green envelope samples. That said, our tests on the List have been extensive, culminating in an experiment named Investigation Number One, the results of which you are probably aware, even if you have not been briefed on the context of the experiment or the green envelope phenomenon previously. As I have the luxury of speaking more candidly than my superiors to you in this capacity, I will not sugar coat this information and report simply that Investigation Number One was an unmitigated disaster, and responsibility for the loss of Captain Michael Wayne rests squarely with this department.

I’d like to warn you that the attached footage is very distressing. As you’ll see for yourself, Captain Wayne made fourteen requests for the test to be aborted, which were not observed despite clear and increasing levels of distress. I consider this inexcusable and will implement whatever reprimand you consider appropriate without hesitation, including my own resignation from the project and the department, if you feel this to be appropriate.

But, as time is of the essence, back to the subject at hand:

The List is exactly what its name implies – a simple list written on what is, to all intents and purposes, an ordinary yellow Post-it note. Written in black biro, in the same hand as the envelope, the list reads:

1. TO BE SUCCESSFUL

2. BE HAPPY

3. AND FOR OTHERS AROUND ME

4. PROGRESSION

5. MONEY

6. XXX A LOWERCASE ‘P’ AND ‘R’ SCRIBBLED OUT PRAISE

7. REWARDS FOR U

8. MUSIC

9. SECURITY

10. BLANK

On the day of the green envelope’s arrival, most usually around 1.40 p.m.–2.30 p.m., the recipient typically succumbs to an absentminded urge to draw a circle around one of the first nine points on the list, the selection varying from recipient to recipient (from interview data it seems that the recipient does not make a conscious choice to select one point over another, although our data suggests that the choice is not random, selection probabilities forming loose clusters in line with a number of demographic markers – see attached).

What happens next depends on the point selected. What we call the ‘List Outcome’ is solidly linked to the recipient’s selection – the same selection will always result in the same outcome 100% of the time. The List Outcomes are bizarre in many instances, but thousands of hours of interview footage along with substantial medical and site investigation work has convinced us that the below – though outlandish – are all accurately presented, and a direct result of point selection on the List. Here are the outcomes:

1. TO BE SUCCESSFUL

Outcome: Typically within 24 hours, recipients who circle this item will find that babies and small children (usually under the age of five) in close proximity to them become extremely frightened, often degenerating into outright hysteria if forced to make any sort of physical contact. The children exhibit what seems to be a panic-stricken terror that endures as long as the recipient is in the child’s sightline, and typically for some 20–30 minutes afterwards, with nightmares following an encounter in around 65% of cases (and 90% of ‘touching’ cases). The child will always outright refuse to explain their extreme reaction at the sight of a number one recipient, and even mentioning the experience is likely to cause considerable distress. There are no exceptions to the effect – we have observed a newborn baby react to her own mother in this fashion. The effect also appears to be permanent. As an addition, several recipients in this group have reported occasional feelings of deep uneasiness when catching sight of their own reflection out of the corner of their eye, though none have yet been able to put this experience into clearer terms. Physically, the recipient appears to be completely normal, and Research and Analysis can identify no physiological changes of any kind.

2. BE HAPPY

Outcome: Recipient will find a mug with the slogan ‘No. 1 Dad’ at the back of a cupboard. [Note: this outcome has only recently been discovered by our investigators, after following up this seemingly ‘blank’ outcome.]

3. AND FOR OTHERS AROUND ME

Outcome: A recipient who circles number three will have sex with a relative within 100 hours. In most instances, extreme distress and revulsion will follow, with recipients reporting a disturbing ‘coming to my senses’ moment following intercourse. Relatives are generally older than the recipient, with grandparents or aged parents being the most common partner. We are running therapy sessions with additional data mining for all known number threes. But – with the exception of number sixes – this outcome is reported least according to our records, perhaps unsurprisingly.

4. PROGRESSION

Outcome: Number fours vanish within 60 seconds of circling this point, leaving a pile of whatever clothing they were wearing behind. Where they go is unknown, as no number four has ever been seen or heard from again. Whether this disappearance relates in some way to the word ‘progression’ or is as unrelated an outcome as most of the other numbers is unknown, but relatives have been known to find some comfort in this notion, and current protocol for field officers is not to dissuade them of it.

5. MONEY

Outcome: An illness manifests in number fives within three to six weeks. Often these are withering diseases, or diseases that cause a severe reduction in brain function.

6. PRAISE

Outcome: As far as we know, no recipient has ever circled number six. This would suggest either (a) an inactive portion of the List, (b) a positive outcome that 100% of recipients would wish to keep secret from the world at large, or (c) a negative outcome which would likewise cause 100% of recipients not to contact the authorities.

7. Rewards for U

Outcome: [REDACTED FOR REASONS OF NATIONAL SECURITY]

8. MUSIC

Outcome: A rare instance of the selected word on the list having some relation to the outcome itself. Number eights develop a constant, melodic tinnitus which has been proven to accurately predict the next-but-one song on any tuned radio within thirteen metres. Research is ongoing, but early results suggest number eights are capable of developing some wider capacity for precognition if supplied with extensive training and favourable conditions.

9. SECURITY

Outcome: The next time a number nine returns home after an absence of over one hour, they will discover a pet, spouse or child living in the property who did not exist previously. The newcomer and other members of the family (if any) will believe that everything is as it has always been. Reported responses to this have been widespread, with many number nines submitting themselves for psychological evaluation in the weeks following the discovery. Some families split when the nine cannot accept the interloper, but in a few cases, the result is extremely positive. We have records of a female number nine who could not have children returning home to discover her husband and nine-year-old daughter cooking dinner. After a period of adjustment, the woman felt very happy with her altered circumstances. It may be supposed that more of these ‘happy outcomes’ occur, but few are reported.

10.

The blank. As you will see from the attached footage, Captain Wayne had been instructed to write ‘Are you trying to communicate with us?’ in this space. I repeat, I am fully prepared to submit to whatever reprimand you feel is appropriate for this experiment and the tragic loss of life, however I must state in closing – it is entirely possible that what happened to Captain Wayne might be considered to be some form of response.

 

STEVEN HALL

Steven Hall was born in Derbyshire in 1975. His first novel, The Raw Shark Texts, has been translated into twenty-eight languages, though it stubbornly refuses to be adapted for screen. In 2013, he was named as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists.

OVER TO YOU

MICHAEL MARSHALL SMITH

I didn’t go to the mailbox in expectation of finding anything worth the trip. I never do these days. There will be bills from the utility company, of course, clothes catalogues for my wife, direct mail from Comcast excitably pimping some new cable TV/Internet/home security package in which I would have no interest even if I could comprehend how it differs from their previous offering. All more meaningful forms of communication now arrive on my computer or phone. Gone are the days when you made a choice over when to encounter a missive from the universe: now they get right up in your face and ping at you. Somebody — I can’t recall who — once said that each letter is an uninvited guest, turning up on your doorstep without warning, armed with the potential to make or ruin your day. Emails can certainly do that. The stuff in the mailbox, once an iconic symbol of community and far horizons? It’s just recycling waiting to happen.

I didn’t even go to look for mail, if the truth be told. Walking down the path was cover for having a sneaky cigarette. Smoking is bad for you, it would appear. I long ago made an internal accommodation over this — by ignoring the fact — but my son, now ten, has different views. When I was his age, lots of people smoked. Now nobody does (at least amongst the middle classes) and the media and schools are full of dire warnings on the subject. Scott is extremely keen that I give up, and manifests this position in a strident campaign that includes destroying my packs whenever he finds them.

I’m working on it, kind of. I smoke less than I want to, certainly. And in secret. An occasional walk to the mailbox has become a ruse for grabbing a morning nicotine hit in relative safety, during what was beginning to feel like a somewhat endless school summer vacation.

I stubbed the butt out and rolled it into a discreet ball which I slipped in my pocket for later disposal. Then, because I might as well, I checked the mailbox. There wasn’t much inside, as I’d done the same a couple of days before. Supermarket coupons. Credit card companies urging me once again to consider getting further into debt. A small padded envelope.