Tag: Matt Dovey

Posted on

Vincent’s Penny on Podcastle

I’m delighted that Episode 628 of the splendid fantasy podcast Podcastle features my story ‘Vincent’s Penny’.

You can get the podcast here, or wherever you normally get your podcast fix. Subscribe while you’re at it – you’ve got hundreds of back episodes to catch up on.

‘Vincent’s Penny’ was first published in issue 16 of Australian online magazine Dimension 6, in April 2019. You can still get that copy of the magazine, free to download here.

I was pleased with the story in print, but I’ve got to say it gains an extra dimension read by the tall and talented Matt Dovey. This is the third time I’ve had one of my stories interpreted by Matt. Previous outings were both on the Tales to Terrify podcast – for ‘Ravello Steps‘ (May 2019) and ‘Looking After Shaun‘ (July 2018). I thought those were good, but I was bowled over by the way he handled ‘Vincent’s Penny.’ Check out Matt’s website for more of his work.

Here’s a taster of the story. Head over to Podcastle for the rest of it, should the mood take you…

Vincent’s Penny

May 1941

I’m a child this time. Five or six years old.

Fully clothed under a bed, on a wooden floor. I touch a hand to my throat, but there is nothing there. I examine my hands and arms, astonished by the smoothness of the skin. At last, I crawl out from beneath the bed and leave the room.

Light from a jagged hole in the roof, blue sky beyond, streaked with horsetails of cloud.  The floor is dusted with splinters of wood and brick. The window at the end of the hall has daggers of glass clinging to the frame.

Over the banister, more rubble and destruction below. Some of the stairs are broken, but I pick my way downstairs, helped by the fact that I am so light now, in this child’s frame. I could skip across a field of grass and barely disturb the dew. There is a door at the foot of the stairs. I turn the handle and push, but at first it does not move. Maybe the wall has shifted in the raid. I try again, ramming my tiny shoulder against the wood.

The door releases its grip and tumbles me outside.   

The Previous Day

Before they take me out, they put a hood over my head. A hand on my arm guides me down a flight of stairs. On the flat, they shove me forward. Hands pull me to a halt and there is the sound of a car door, before someone pushes down on the top of my head, pressing me inside. As the car engine starts, I hear a loud wailing in the distance.

“Air-raid siren,” I say. “Are you sure we should be going for a drive?”

“No need to worry about Hitler’s bombers,” a familiar voice says. “Nothing he can do to you that’s worse than what Vincent’s got in mind.”

The car gathers speed. The sirens fall away and another sound comes; a strengthening growl high above. I can picture the swollen metal bellies of the Heinkel bombers, stuffed with high explosives. With the motion of the car, I feel the ancient metal disc move on its chain beneath my shirt. Vincent’s penny; maybe it can bring me luck again.

“You can let me go. Who will ever know?”

“Why would we do that?”

“If you let Vincent do this, who will stop him doing worse in the future?”

The car stops, doors open and close. As they lead me away from the car a succession of explosions in the distance makes me flinch. A sound like a giant striding towards us, wading through houses and shops.

The hood is snatched away, revealing a large empty space, an abandoned warehouse. A table and three chairs in the centre of the room.

I know I will never leave this place…

(Continue reading…)

Posted on

New Podcast: ‘Ravello Steps’ in Tales to Terrify out now

Following closely on from the recent story on Starship Sofa, my horror story “Ravello Steps” features in the latest podcast from Tales to Terrify. You can download it free from the Tales to Terrify website, or on iTunes.

The story is narrated by Matt Dovey, who did a super job on an earlier story of mine (Looking After Shaun Tales to Terrify 336). He does an equally fine job this time, too. Thanks, Matt. You can check out Matt’s own writing, and other news at https://mattdovey.com/

Ravello Steps first appeared in the UK’s premier horror magazine, Black Static, which is well worth subscribing to. If you like Ravello Steps, you might like my dark fantasy novel, Among the Living, with which it shares a significant amount of story DNA (and quite a few words!). You can find Among the Living here.

Here’s a taster for the story (but you really need to hear Matt reading it!)

RAVELLO STEPS

“You look like shit.”

I cleaned myself up in the room and rinsed my mouth with some whisky from the mini-bar, but I obviously show signs of the afternoon.

“Like you care.”

I get myself a Peroni and sit at Elizabeth’s table. She pushes her bag under the table with her foot. She looks fantastic again; dark hair pulled back and tied with a jewelled clip, lips full and dark, as if she has eaten cherries. This morning’s faint lines around her eyes are gone and she is spray-painted again with youth.

“Seriously.” A cool hand on my wrist. “What’s wrong?”

“When you left this morning, I thought maybe you were gone for good.” The hotel bar has a view over the bay and through the window behind Elizabeth, light is fast draining from the sky, turning the sea below a deep impossible blue.

“I decided to take a drive.”

The coast road twisted like a lunatic ribbon along the cliff tops. I barely noticed the sumptuous views of sapphire sea and small towns perched above the water. My mind was full of Elizabeth’s bizarre behaviour, and the way she walked out before breakfast.

The other times, back in London, it was easier to ignore what she was doing. In a city of millions of strangers she could disappear for days while I lost myself in work. She didn’t say where she went and I didn’t ask. Over the years, whenever she came back it was always good between us. She returned refreshed and revived, always with enough energy for both of us to apply jump leads to our flagging romance. 

Here in Italy it was different. It brought into focus the things I could ignore back home. The gaps in our relationship, the lack of common ground, the absence of family or friends or anyone who could tell me what she did and where she was before I met her, or what she did those times when she disappeared without explanation.

I stopped in a small town called Atrani and sat on the grey beach of volcanic sand. High crags on either side pinned the town beneath a pale blue vee of sky.   

Fifty yards away a woman walked rapidly along the street. It looked like Elizabeth but the glare of sun on windows made it hard to see. The woman turned a corner and disappeared. I ran up the beach and crossed the road. A narrow street led under an arch into a small square. There was no sign of the woman. To my left a narrow set of stone steps led upwards for a few yards and then disappeared around to the left. A sign on the wall said ‘Ravello Steps’.

Elizabeth had once said something about Ravello, when we were planning the holiday. She spent some time in Italy in her youth, she said. An aunt lived here.

I started to climb the steps.