The Best Horror of the Year. Volume 4

Then. Then. With the utmost tenderness, singing the deep tuneless music at the heart of the ancient world, We gather up what remains of Ballard and Sandrine, armless and legless trunks, faces without features, their breath clinging to their mouths like wisps, carry them (in our arms, in baskets, in once-pristine sheets) across the deck and permit them to roll from our care, as they had always longed to do, and into that of the flashing furious little river-monarchs. We watch the water boil in a magnificence of ecstasy, and We sing for as long as it lasts.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Atkins, Peter “Dancing Like We’re Dumb,” Rumours of the Marvellous.

Ballingrud, Nathan “Sunbleached,” Teeth.

Barron, Laird “The Carrion Gods in Their Heaven,” Supernatural Noir.

Barron, Laird “The Men From Porlock,” (novella) The Book of Cthulhu.

Barron, Laird “The Siphon,” Blood and Other Cravings.

Baxter, Alan “Punishment of the Sun,” Dead Red Heart.

Bear, Elizabeth “Needles,” Blood and Other Cravings.

Bowes, Richard “Blood Yesterday, Blood Tomorrow,” Blood and Other Cravings.

Braunbeck, Gary A. “And Still you Wonder Why Our First Impulse is to Kill You,” The Monster’s Corner.

Carroll, Jonathan “East of Furious,” Conjunctions: 56, Terra Incognita.

Colangelo, Michael R. “Blacklight,” Chilling Tales.

Cowdrey, Albert E. “The Bogle,” F&SF January/February.

Davidson, Craig “The Burn,” The Cincinnati Review, April.

Dowling, Terry “The Shaddowesbox,” Ghosts by Gaslight.

Fowler, Christopher “An Injustice,” House of Fear.

Frost, Gregory “The Dingus,” Supernatural Noir.

Gresh, Lois “Wee Sweet Girlies,” Eldritch Evolutions.

Hand, Elizabeth “Near Zennor,” (novella) A Book of Horrors.

Hand, Elizabeth “Uncle Lou,” Conjunctions 57: Kin.

Harwood, John “Face to Face,” Ghosts by Gaslight.

Hirshberg, Glen “After-Words,” The Janus Tree and Other Stories.

Hodge, Brian “Hate the Sinner, Love the Sin,” Picking the Bones.

Hodge, Brian “Scars in Progress,” Demons.

Johnstone, Carole “Electric Dreams,” Black Static 23, July/August.

Jones, Stephen Graham “Little Monsters,” Creatures: Thirty Years of Monsters.

Kiernan, Caitlín R. “The Maltese Unicorn,” Supernatural Noir.

King, Stephen “Under the Weather,” Full Dark, No Stars.

Langan, John “The Third Always Beside You,” Blood and Other Cravings.

Langan, John “The Unbearable Proximity of Mr. Dunn’s Balloons,” Ghosts by Gaslight.

Lees, Tim “Durgen’s Party,” Black Static 22, April/May.

McMahon, Gary “What They Hear in the Dark,” chapbook.

Miéville, China “Covehithe,” Guardian, May.

Nate Southard “The Blisters on My Heart,” Supernatural Noir.

Oliver, Reggie “A Child’s Problem,” (novella) A Book of Horrors.

Oliver, Reggie “Dancer in the Dark,” Mrs Midnight and Other Stories.

Oliver, Reggie “Hand to Mouth,” Haunts: Reliquaries of the Dead.

Partridge, Norman “Vampire Lake,” Subterranean Tales of Dark Fantasy 2.

Piccirilli, Tom “But For Scars,” Supernatural Noir.

Pinborough, Sarah “The Screaming Room,” The Monster’s Corner.

Shearman, Robert “Alice Through the Plastic Sheet,” A Book of Horrors.

Shepard, Lucius “Ditch Witch,” Supernatural Noir.

Smith, Michael Marshall “Sad, Dark Thing,” A Book of Horrors.

Stalter, K. Harding “A Summer’s Day,” Black Static 24.

Tem, Melanie “Afraid of Snakes,” Portents.

Thomas, Lee “Comfortable in Her Skin,” Supernatural Noir.

Travis, Tia V. “Still,” Portents.

Tremblay, Paul G. “The Getaway,” Supernatural Noir.

Valentine, Genevieve “Bufonidae,” Phantasmagorium #1.

Wall, Alan “The Salt of Eliza,” Black Static 22, April/May.

Warren, Kaaron “All You Can Do is Breathe,” Blood and Other Cravings.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

LAIRD BARRON is the author of two collections: The Imago Sequence, and Occultation. His work has appeared in many magazines and anthologies. His novella, “The Light is the Darkness,” was recently published in a limited edition by Infernal House. His first novel, The Croning is being published June 2012. An expatriate Alaskan, Barron currently resides in Upstate New York.

“Blackwood’s Baby” was originally published in Ghosts by Gaslight, edited by Jack Dann and Nick Gevers.