Black Gate

Michael Shea, one of the most acclaimed sword & sorcery and horror writers working today, brings us a chilling novelette of Lovecraftian horror.

Maureen had fallen asleep in her barcalounger, snug in quilts with the clicker at hand and Muffin curled on her lap. It was Muffin’s gentle movements in her lap that awakened her. She had a vague sensation of small, light forms dispersing across her thighs…

Her wakening was hazy and slow, for she’d had one of her nice pills before she and Muffin settled down. She raised her head, so comfy and heavy. Yes, there he was in her lap, his adorable little muzzle thrust up inquiringly towards Maureen’s face, and his little fawn-colored flanks so fluffy. But…

Maureen hoisted herself a little higher. Muffin blinked calmly back at her. But Muffy had no legs. No legs at all. Muffin was only his head, his fat fluffy little torso, and his tail. He looked perfectly sleek, like he’d never had legs… !

Maureen was utterly, albeit groggily, astonished.

And just then she felt a delicate movement across the slipper on her right foot.

Michael Shea is the World Fantasy Award-winning author of A Quest for Simbilis, The Color Out Of Time, Nifft the Lean, In Yana, The Extra, and the new Assault on Sunrise, among other novels. His collections include Polyphemus (1987), The Autopsy and Other Tales (2008), and Copping Squid and Other Mythos Tales (2010).

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Ryan Harvey, Peadar Ó Guilín, Dave Gross, Mike Allen, Vaughn Heppner, Aaron Bradford Starr, Martha Wells, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, E.E. Knight, C.S.E. Cooney, Howard Andrew Jones, and many others, is here.

“Tsathoggua” is a complete 12,000-word novelette of weird horror. It is offered at no cost.

Warning: This story involves mature themes. Reader discretion is advised.

Read the complete story here.

Ryan Harvey returns to Ahn-Tarqa, setting of “The Sorrowless Thief,” for another heroic fantasy packed with adventure, swordplay, and weird magic.

Jelmez, the lookout, waved to them from his perch over the ravine.

“What is it?” Guyuk yelled. “The Sorghul?”

“I don’t know. You’ll have to see this for yourselves. Only an old tale-spinner could describe such a thing.”

A hundred feet along they reached a stretch of sheer limestone wall. Centuries of erosion from winter storms had caused a landslide that ripped a wound in the mountains’ roots.

Even the oppressive Dubun-Geb could not diminish the majesty of the forty-foot giant revealed inside that gash. It had the outlines of a man, but there was nothing of warmth or life to its gargantuan frame of bronze and steel. A flattened oval served as a head, and the rain washed over an obsidian visor that covered the place where eyes should be. Like any creation of the Art, it exuded the Sorrow. None of them had felt it so potently before; it crushed the breath from their lungs.

“A colossus,” Khasar exclaimed.

Ryan Harvey won the Writers of the Future Contest in 2011 for his story, “An Acolyte of Black Spires,” part of his science-fantasy series set on the continent of Ahn-Tarqa. His previous Ahn-Tarqa story for Black Gate, “The Sorrowless Thief,” appeared here on April 7th. Ahn-Tarqa is also the setting for Ryan’s e-book novelette, “Farewell to Tyrn,” and his upcoming novel, Turn over the Moon. His work has appeared in Every Day Fiction, Beyond Centauri, Aoife’s Kiss (upcoming), and the anthology Candle in the Attic Window. He writes science fiction, fantasy, and the shadowy realm between both, as well as a long stint writing a column at Black Gate.

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Peadar Ó Guilín, Dave Gross, Mike Allen, Vaughn Heppner, Mark Rigney, Aaron Bradford Starr, Martha Wells, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, E.E. Knight, C.S.E. Cooney, Howard Andrew Jones, and many others, is here.

“Stand at Dubun-Geb” is a complete 5,500-word short story of heroic fantasy. It is offered at no cost.

Read the complete story here.

In which the young lover Fiachra learns it is unwise to seduce a wizard’s daughter… particularly in a wizard’s garden.

Fiachra woke on a bed of straw surrounded by snuffling animals and a melange of stenches that made his eyes water. A boy of maybe eight crouched at a safe distance under a flickering rush light.

“My eyes,” thought Fiachra. He tried to rub them, but could not. Color had leached from his vision, as though he were still under moonlight in the wizard’s garden. The boy, the straw, even the rush light seemed grey to him.

He tried to speak, to ask where he was. Only a whine emerged.

The boy approached and gingerly extended a hand. “Good doggy,” he said, “nice doggy.”

It was then Fiachra realised the awful truth. The garden! What had he done? How had he been so stupid? He howled and howled until a man came to whip him. After, he spent the night whimpering with only the boy’s arms around him for comfort.

Peadar’s first story for us was “The Mourning Trees” (Black Gate 5), followed by “Where Beauty Lies in Wait” (BG 11) and “The Evil Eater” (BG 13), which Serial Distractions called “a lovely little bit of Lovecraftian horror that still haunts me to this day.”

Peadar’s first novel, The Inferior, was published to terrific reviews in 2008; it was followed a sequel, The Deserter, in 2012.

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Dave Gross, Mike Allen, Paul Abbamondi, Vaughn Heppner, Mark Rigney, Aaron Bradford Starr, Martha Wells, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, E.E. Knight, C.S.E. Cooney, Howard Andrew Jones, and many others, is here.

“The Dowry” is a complete 4,700-word short story of adventure fantasy offered at no cost.

Read the complete story here.