Year's Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 4 Read online

  The topic under debate was the rise of a new type of writing that seemed to have links with the past—a writing to which critics had begun to apply the label “New Weird”—but the forum conversations were riven with arguments from critics and authors alike. M. John Harrison succinctly summed up the problem. A lively figure who emerged as part of the New Wave in the 60s and 70s, he had seen the dangers of labelling a movement. He felt as if the energy of the writing might well be diminished through successive waves of commercialization:

  ‘ … once the New Wave parameters were codified, there was a general softening-off as second generation writers stripped out the edgier stuff. I mean, I think it’s inevitable that people seeking to understand a movement select the similarities rather than the differences between exponents. That drives you towards the mean—the main stream. New writers imitate that, & before you know it, the energy’s gone, because it lay in the creative tensions between the different exponents.’

  His response shows a distinct suspicion of the rise of both the conventional and commercial frameworks which have tended to define new “waves” of writing historically and which would go on to attempt to define the so-called “New Weird”. He felt that if he didn’t speak up then he would have left it to others to describe what exactly it was that he was writing. And he believed that in and of itself would enervate the work.

  But in describing the discussions that took place on that message board, Jonathan McCalmont said something that struck me as a sort of remedy to this:

  ‘Every cultural entity (be it a genre, a sub-genre, a scene, a movement, or a school) is born of a particular place and time … a sudden awareness that the wider culture has changed and that the old tools are no longer up to the job.’

  McCalmont suggested that the New Weird encapsulated one of those moments.

  But where are we now?

  Much has happened in the years since those debates and there are signs that weird fiction has been codified in exactly the way Harrison feared it would be. This anthology by definition is one of those forces for codification, attempting to sum up what weird fiction is in order to assess what is “the best.” The best of what? The best of that which is mixed and hybrid, the best of that which defies easy categorization, the best of what ought to remain unnamed. So—no new labels. No New New Weird or Post New Weird. Just weird.

  A year ago, I would have said there was a danger that weird fiction will—or has already begun to—lose its edge, moving from innocence, to plausibility to decadence, according to the formulation of Joanna Russ, in which originally distinct ideas and voices have become assimilated to the point of stale repetition.

  And yet I believe we are in one of those moments of rapid re-imagining when the old tools of writing no longer seem up to the job.

  The language of weird fiction speaks to the irrationality of our present, floundering systems. Whereas these stories have typically looked outward to generate their horror, from the undeniable xenophobia of some of Lovecraft’s writing to the misogyny embraced by the slasher flicks of the 70s; but it could just as easily look inward. To be horrified by one’s self, to feel a disconnection from what is labeled “traditional” or “natural” or “essential” is a vital step toward embracing a radical empathy with what might have heretofore been labeled as Other. This is work that weird fiction can do.

  The stories within this volume were published in 2016. Many of them were almost certainly written before the upheavals which I have been talking about, yet each in my mind embodies the spirit of upheaval and revelation, madness, despair, horror and also, sometimes forgiveness, accommodation and change that seem to mark our apocalyptic moment. Among these writers are many names you may not recognize, and this is, to my mind, a good thing. They are writers from different countries, different languages, and different traditions. Many of these writers may not consider themselves to be weird writers in the strictest of terms and that as well is a good thing. As the editor of a volume that sets out to define the genre I confess I have the same reservations that M. John Harrison had in 2003: that weird fiction has on the one hand become too stable, too easily recognizable, and on the other so diffuse that the term no longer has any meaning at all. There is a danger with labels, but also an opportunity.

  We are living in weird times. As I write, a snap election in the UK has just shocked the nation with another upending of the pollsters’ predictions and the future seems very uncertain. In moments such as this, time itself seems out of joint. We need new tools to interrogate our present moment. We need a new language to understand it, to articulate our concerns, our hopes, our dreams—our possibilities. The writers within this volume have been, first and foremost, witnesses to their world. Their stories suggest a new language, not only for weird fiction, but for a contemporary fiction that looks for new answers in unexpected places.

  —Helen Marshall

  Cambridge, United Kingdom

  AKI SCHILZ

  Beating the Bounds

  HANWELL UNREMEMBERED

  Hana (cockerel)

  Weille (stream)

  or;

  Han-créd (a cock’s crow, or the border between night and day)

  Han-créd-welle (well upon the boundary; a wish caught like a dandelion seed in a mouth; the fading call of a rooster in crepuscular no-man’s-land’; a slipspace where dreams emerge from the subliminal)

  or;

  Han (boundary stone, Saxon) next to a welle

  There is a boundary stone near to the old Rectory in Hanwell, and near to the old well that springs from the River Brent which cuts through the township on its way from Dollis Brook in Hendon through to Brentford with its moored shipwrecks, then out into open water. The river brings gravel south and spits out great drifts of stones just beyond the bounds of Hanwell, as if to provide a physical demarcation to slice it from its neighbouring parishes. It used to feel like the end of the world here. Looking out from the backs of neatly terraced houses onto the rows of railway workmen’s cottages, all you could see at one point was the river and endless green fields. It was certainly the end of London. Beyond that, who knew?

  In 2014, the gravel deposits on the southern borders of the Brent increased in size, and flowerings of yellow broom on the banks also proliferated, which in turn inspired a spate of enthusiastic daytime couplings by younger Hanwell residents along the length of the canal; especially by the Flight of Locks. The police eventually stopped intervening and instead advised canal-ramblers please not take photographs and post them on social media, but instead to walk at a brisk pace and ignore any grunts from the undergrowth. Neighbourhood teams printed alternative canal-path maps in a bid to avoid angry run-ins between young families or elderly residents and horny teens at key hot spots. The copulating couples, it seemed, considered two drowned girls—who went missing here in 1912—their patron saints, and dutifully whitened the small cross carved into the canal path wall in their honour, before fucking wildly in the grass and flowers. Other, small white crosses have since begun to appear along the canal, and a local jeweller has started to make white cross pendants which at last count were selling well from her eBay shop (‘w7babe1968’) and at the car boot up at Drayton playing fields. Hanwellites suspect this strange madness may have something to do with the imminent arrival of Crossrail; a short panic-induced swelling of local pride before the town is dragged into the bowels of the City via West Ealing, Hayes & Harlington, Greenford, Acton Mainline … This is likely to be nonsense, but investigations into changes in river currents and water levels where the Brent pours into the Thames, mineral content in riverbed soil, and libido levels in the younger Hanwell population are ongoing.

  Hanwell is small, and rumours are important. They tell us who we are, so we can echo this back whenever we find ourselves somewhere other than here. But somehow, it’s never really where any one of us is from. We say ‘Ealing’. Or, laughingly, ‘West London’, accompanied occasionally by a kiss of teeth or a half-hearted hand gesture we immediately
regret making. Occasionally a boy from the White Flats gets a small ‘W7’ tattoo on his hand, on that triangle of skin between the thumb and forefinger, and slings it across the handlebars of his L-plated moped for a few weeks, but postcode pride is hardly a premium and there are no good tattoo artists here (unless you have a direct line to George Bone). Hendrix didn’t even visit, though he owned a shop here. Bastard. We missed out on a chance for some crazy stories, parties that spilled onto Cuckoo Dene, rockstars stripping naked and running up and down the Greenford Avenue, the customary Christmas Day walk through the locale decorated with drunken celebrities waving at you from between pyracantha shrubs: like a live-action board game.

  It was Ronnie Wood, with a cucumber, by the reptile enclosure.

  That’d have put us on the map. Maybe then there’d be a few—more interesting—tattoos on display. If people felt real pride in being a Hanwellite. Of the Wharncliffe Viaduct, maybe, along a bicep, or a stylised rendering of Church Walk which no one calls Church Walk because it’s just the entrance to the Bunny Park, once a repository for unwanted pets and now a place to get drunk on cheap beer and break up with your first life partner before pulling away on your roller skates. Maybe someone would go so far as to commission the once-maligned Clock Tower as an impressive thigh piece, the old windmill with blades fanning out across an expanse of shoulders, ‘89.6FM’ along the wrist bone, Charlie Chaplin, old Jonas Hanway with an umbrella—someone could write a PhD thesis on Tattoo Culture as Aesthetic Body-Centric Commentary on Hanwell Through The Years, referencing the workhouse and the ophthalmia that smeared melancholy like blue smoke across our eyes for a time, the counterpoint of shelled ears vibrating with music pumping out of the Marshall amps sold to rockstars before they became famous. The town broadcasts its stories at a precise frequency; you just have to learn to tune in.

  No one gives a shit that Deep Purple recorded here, that’s old news. But there are other stories, and we turn them over like pennies on table-tops at The Cuckoo or at Café Gold with weak over-milky coffee and a thousand memories in our hands, some of them ours, most of them stolen. Did you know Jay Kay went Drayton Manor? Yeah, yeah, everyone knows that. So did Peter Crouch and Steve McQueen, and that vaguely famous novelist no one can ever remember the name of because it’s difficult and foreign but she won a prize once. Then there was that guy or girl who lived in Hanwell who went on Big Brother a million years ago, blah blah.

  But did you know that Elvis once came here? Swear to God. It was all hush-hush, he fell for a painter, some relation to that bloke who painted Ophelia drowning in an oil-spill of flowers, the model posed for that just up the road, in the Brent. Apparently he was a germophobe. No, not Millais; Elvis. He flew over in 1958. For a girl, an artist. It was supposed to be a secret one-day deal, but it didn’t turn out that way. He’d met her at a grocery store in Philadelphia the year before; she was visiting America with her mother. She’d spilled milk on him and had been so charming about it he’d fallen for her instantly. Salt of the earth: she taught him that expression and it tickled him. He made just one successful trip to England to be with her, a blissful two-week period they spent together right here in Hanwell. They kept the paparrazi away but the neighbours knew. Neighbours always do. She’s moved away since, must be an old lady by now, probably in the States—there’s loads of us there—but she’s still got a couple of cousins down Trumper’s Way who tell the story to anyone who’ll listen down The Fox. Pretty, she was. Wonder if anyone knows her full name; we could Google her.

  All these goings-on in Hanwell buzz around the Clock Tower. Walk past it and you’ll hear the town giving up its secrets in a tumble that sounds like a rush of water. Careful, you know you can catch rumour like a cold.

  The Clock’s ugliness is impressive, its unashamed boxiness a source of comfort to those who drive through its shadow on their commute out of our little township. We can rely on its unchanging geometry, its wide white shoulders, the clusters of shops fanning out around it, whose faces change each time I return here (carpets permanently ON SALE on the corner; a Wickes down this road; a pub down that; two florists recreating the War of the Roses right here on Hanwell Broadway; a butcher; a Dominos; a tanning salon; a Lidl. Etc). Used to be a cinema just here on Cherington, you know. There’s a mental health unit there now. And when did the Library close down? I remember when …

  I lived on Poets’ Corner, which was destroyed in the Blitz. It’s the only home I knew; we never moved. There are rumours there is still a German bomb beneath our house on Milton Road. Split the house in half, said someone, once. No money, then, just built right over it. It was, perhaps, a man who said this, one of the old men who seem to have lived here forever, and whom you spot from time to time when you return, snapshots of the Stages of Life, the riddle of the creature with first no legs, then two, then three. Snap, snap, snap. A grandchild comes to visit. The dog that has accompanied him everywhere disappears. His hair thins and he retreats like a turtle into his jumper and sun-worn tweed jacket. Smart, still, after all these years. Creases ironed into his slacks. At some point, the old men disappear, but their stories hang around at the cemetery on the way up to West Ealing, or snag in the wiring that holds the pigeons into the underbelly of the iron bridge by the upholster’s, or catch in the feathers of the peacocks at the Bunny Park where children learn to say ‘Hello? Hello?’ to the birds that speak back from behind the bars of their huge cage, ‘Marmoset!’ when they spot the monkeys who stand wide-eyed shivering in sawdust, and ‘Ice cream!’ at the hut by the playground, warm with the smell of apple pie where there’s always ice cream and everyone’s favourite is mint choc chip.

  Back on Milton Road, the last person to remember the day the fishmonger ran out of fish at Christmas, in the same week the butcher’s was blasted to smithereens, goes to bed and thinks, well, that’s it then, I’ve had a good run. Time to go. By his bedside, a snarl of wood he has used as a walking stick. Once, many years ago, he taught a young girl to count on the knots along the length of it. They spiralled upwards, and when he turned the stick, the number of knots seemed to change. She will remember this, years later, and will smile.

  Nearby, Cowper’s ghost shoulders a greater loss; a low-flying bomber emptied its contents at just the right angle to penetrate a bomb shelter, detonating deep underground and uprooting an entire row of houses. All those in the shelter perished, and above ground the blast threw off the faces of the houses so they stood naked and exposed, dripping wiring into the rain-glistened street. They were pulled out like rotten teeth, dragged away by lorries as people stood by to watch the slow demolition, then went about their business as usual. Tennyson and Nightingale, just over the road, still shake their heads sometimes, and the glass in the council estate windows shimmers. I was a pub once, says one of the windows. Shut up, says another, and shakes a cloud of pollen out of the trees.

  Q&A WITH AN EX-HANWELLITE

  How do I get to Hanwell?

  Depends on what your plans are. If you are able to time-travel, I recommend a horse bus. If your intentions are nefarious or Crossrail-related, you can get here by tying a blindfold around your head and spinning really fast, then choosing the direction in which you feel least like falling. Keep walking. In fact, run. If you are trying to find your childhood, try walking the Bounds first, widdershins (May-time, join the crowd and imagine yourself a fox) then break away from the group and slowly make your way into the town, taking photographs of those things that take your fancy on a disposable camera (leave your smartphone at home). Click. No flash. St Mary’s spire. The old violin factory. The sign for ‘Hanwell and Elthorne.’ A leaf by the canal path. The gateway to St Bernard’s. An abandoned lollipop stick. You can look at them later, study their blurs and edges, and when you fall asleep you’ll be better able to visit the Hanwell you remember, not the one you see. Much has changed. It may be a shock.

  Otherwise, E1, E3, E8, E10, E11, 207, 83, 607, First Great Western (Brunel would be proud). Any of those are fine. Probabl
y a few more. Check TfL.

  How do I get out of Hanwell?

  Soul-search till you realise your soul is happier being elsewhere. Feel nostalgic for about three years, before you’ve even left. Leave. Need transport? See above. Go the other way.

  Best restaurant in Hanwell?

  You’ve got the wrong book. If you’d asked me about the Best View, however …

  What has been lost in Hanwell?

  That’s better. If you want to know about everything that’s been lost in Hanwell, just visit the old bandstand, you know the one, by the small stone in a too-large cage at the Bunny Park, the end by the viaduct just before the church where you responded to a woman who asked ‘which town are we in?’ with ‘Ealing’, and she nodded and said, ‘Ely! Wonderful’, before looking doubtfully at the church over the rim of her fogged glasses. They were gold-rimmed. You thought she was the Queen. You saw the real Queen once, at the Circus, but you can’t remember if that was in Hanwell. It all seems a long time ago. You forget where those hills lead, the ones by the old tennis courts; is there another field at the bottom? Socks have been lost here, though they’ve been lost everywhere. Here though, they are often stolen by rheas.

  We used to kick footballs onto the roof of that bandstand, avoiding the condom wrappers and occasional syringe between the scrubby bits of grass—it was better when it rained, so the earth churned everything away and the sky was wet and clean and flat. You liked it best when the ground was heavy with water, leaving the between-space light enough for you to run through at full pelt and feel like you were slicing through the world. Someone told you that children used to make money retrieving golf balls, years ago, somewhere not far from here. Which makes you think of little Jake getting fed up of kicking footballs over from Hobbayne to Drayton, so one day he lobbed the sun warmed split-open body of an adder over the fence and it splattered its guts. There followed a chorus of angry secondary school yells that made you think you were at the zoo, or in a jungle. We are dreadfully trodden into restless paths, said Lord Dunsany, and HG Wells agreed, though he was only talking about the asylum, which is really a place for the restless. All the windows shattered there, once. No one ever did find out what happened to the two lamps that disappeared from the entrance. Some say overnight they turned into flowers. Others say one of the patients took them and buried them somewhere, to get rid of all the light. “Men deny Hell, but not, as yet, Hanwell.” Who said that? There’s one for the pub quiz. If you get the answer right, light a candle at St Mellitus and leave a small yellow ribbon at the base of the pulpit. They’ll understand.