On this All Hallow’s Eve, TAC’s Fiction Review brings stories from today as follow up to last week’s issue which presented haunting stories from the Victorian Age. Stories below come from two small press publishers, Subterranean Press and Cemetery Dance, and a website, Fantastic Horror, all three of which should be well known by fans of horror fiction. This week’s issue closes with the Great Man of Letters, W.S., who did not think genre work (granted folks didn’t use that term in the 17th century) was beneath him and was not afraid to give his audiences what they wanted when it comes to things that go bump in the night. Short Fiction:
- “Road Dogs” by Norman Partridge, originally published at Subterranean Magazine Online.
- “Pleasing Evil” by Erin Cole
- “The Uncanny Deaths of Nathan MacLeod” by Edmund Siderius
- “The Horror in the Traquair Maze” by Jerome Banks Brown
- The Painted Darkness by Brian James Freeman, a free e-book from Cemetery Dance. Includes interview with Stephen King.
Author Interviews and Reflections
- From John J. Miller’s “Between the Covers”:
- A Sample of Thomas F. Monteleone’s M.A.F.I.A. (“Mothers and Fathers Italian Association”) column, published in Cemetery Dance Magazine
News, Reviews, and Commentary:
- Vaclav Havel Receives Kafka Prize
- Memoir Reveals Prisoners’ Reading Choices
- Is Digital the Future of Textbooks?
- Print Books are Still Big Man On Campus
- Why E-Books aren’t Scary – Stephen King on publishing’s changing technology
- Mark Twain’s Marketing Genius
Poetry Corner
The Witches’ Spell
Act IV, Scene 1 from Macbeth (1606) by William Shakespeare
A dark Cave. In the middle, a Caldron boiling. Thunder. Enter the three Witches.
1 WITCH. Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d.
2 WITCH. Thrice and once, the hedge-pig whin’d.
3 WITCH. Harpier cries:-’tis time! ’tis time!
1 WITCH. Round about the caldron go;
In the poison’d entrails throw.-
Toad, that under cold stone,
Days and nights has thirty-one;
Swelter’d venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot!
ALL. Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
2 WITCH. Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg, and owlet’s wing,-
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
ALL. Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
3 WITCH. Scale of dragon; tooth of wolf;
Witches’ mummy; maw and gulf
Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark;
Root of hemlock digg’d i the dark;
Liver of blaspheming Jew;
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse;
Nose of Turk, and Tartar’s lips;
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver’d by a drab,-
Make the gruel thick and slab:
Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron,
For the ingrediants of our caldron.
ALL. Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
2 WITCH. Cool it with a baboon’s blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.