Trigger Warning

‘I never liked him,’ said Doreen, and she sniffed. ‘Too full of facts for my liking, and he never knew when to stop talking. Just kept wittering on. Like he was trying to cover something up.’

‘Your backpack and your laundry are in Doreen’s car,’ said Moira. ‘I thought we could give you a lift somewhere, if you needed one. Or if you want to get back to rambling, you can walk.’

‘Thank you,’ said Shadow. He knew he would never be welcome in Moira’s little house, not any more.

Moira said, urgently, angrily, as if it was all she wanted to know, ‘You said you saw Cassie. You told us, yesterday. That was what sent Ollie off the deep end. It hurt me so much. Why did you say you’d seen her, if she was dead? You couldn’t have seen her.’

Shadow had been wondering about that, while he had been giving his police statement. ‘Beats me,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe in ghosts. Probably a local, playing some kind of game with the Yankee tourist.’

Moira looked at him with fierce hazel eyes, as if she was trying to believe him but was unable to make the final leap of faith. Her sister reached down and held her hand. ‘More things in heaven and earth, Horatio. I think we should just leave it at that.’

Moira looked at Shadow, unbelieving, angered, for a long time, before she took a deep breath and said, ‘Yes. Yes, I suppose we should.’

There was silence in the car. Shadow wanted to apologise to Moira, to say something that would make things better.

They drove past the gibbet tree.

‘There were ten tongues within one head,’ recited Doreen, in a voice slightly higher and more formal than the one in which she had previously spoken. ‘And one went out to fetch some bread, to feed the living and the dead. That was a riddle written about this corner, and that tree.’

‘What does it mean?’

‘A wren made a nest inside the skull of a gibbeted corpse, flying in and out of the jaw to feed its young. In the midst of death, as it were, life just keeps on happening.’

Shadow thought about the matter for a little while, and told her that he guessed that it probably did.

October 2014

Florida/New York/Paris

Credits

Some of the pieces appearing in this collection were first published elsewhere, permission and copyright information as follows:

Introduction copyright © 2014 by Neil Gaiman.

‘Making a Chair’ copyright © 2011 by Neil Gaiman. First appeared on the CD An Evening with Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer. Biting Dog Press limited edition, Broadsheets, 2011.

‘A Lunar Labyrinth’ copyright © 2013 by Neil Gaiman. First published in Shadows of the New Sun: Stories in Honor of Gene Wolfe.

‘The Thing About Cassandra’ copyright © 2010 by Neil Gaiman. First published in Songs of Love and Death.

‘Down to a Sunless Sea’ copyright © 2013 by Neil Gaiman. First published in the Guardian.

‘“The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains . . .”’ copyright © 2010 by Neil Gaiman. First published in Stories.

‘My Last Landlady’ copyright © 2010 by Neil Gaiman. First published in Off the Coastal Path: Dark Poems of the Seaside.

‘Adventure Story’ copyright © 2012 by Neil Gaiman. First published in McSweeney’s Issue #40.

‘Orange’ copyright © 2008 by Neil Gaiman. First published in The Starry Rift.

‘A Calendar of Tales’ copyright © 2013 by Neil Gaiman. First published online as A Calendar of Tales.

‘The Case of Death and Honey’ copyright © 2011 by Neil Gaiman. First published in A Study in Sherlock: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon.

‘The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury’ copyright © 2012 by Neil Gaiman. First published in Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury.

‘Jerusalem’ copyright © 2007 by Neil Gaiman. First broadcast by BBC Radio 4. First published in A Little Gold Book of Ghastly Stuff.

‘Click-Clack the Rattlebag’ copyright © 2013 by Neil Gaiman. First published in Impossible Monsters.

‘An Invocation of Incuriosity’ copyright © 2009 by Neil Gaiman. First published in Songs of the Dying Earth.

‘“And Weep, Like Alexander”’ copyright © 2011 by Neil Gaiman. First published in Fables of the Fountain.