Fearful Implications

COVER ART Ilan Sheady

FEARFUL IMPLICATIONS collects twenty recent tales by Ramsey Campbell, ranging from the uncanny to the satirical, the disturbing to the comical, and sometimes they meet in the middle.

Can our mobile phones connect us to the afterlife? A voice from a bush tempts a child off a path, and a street performer’s routine proves to be infectious. Christmas brings its own kind of chill: a traditional rhyme is macabrely reinterpreted, and watch out who or what you meet under the mistletoe! A traveller finds reasons to regret going all-inclusive, and even delivering the mail can become a nightmare. An infamous nobleman and his dread companion turn out to be still at large, and a discussion of famous monsters grows monstrous. A bomber brings about an unintended future, while elsewhere the past sends guilt to exact a price. A Tarantino tribute is dreamed up, and a holiday resembles someone’s bad dream. You might hope it’s just a dog that you hear someone calling, and is everybody in the picture above your hotel bed staying as still as they should? Comedy can become infectious in a less than welcome way, and some playmates are best not wished for. A science fiction fan finds ways to live a different life, and a view of a problem family leads to a devastating revelation. Some needs may persist beyond the grave, and a writer does, not only in his writing.

Many things haunt these pages, and perhaps closing the book will keep them in. Or perhaps they will visit the reader in the dark.

CONTENTS

• Speaking Still
• First a Bird
• The Stillness
• The Fourth Call
• The Dreamed
• Someone to Blame (
• How He Helped
• The Bill
• Girls Dream
• A Name for Every Home
• The Run of the Town
• Fully Boarded
• The Devil in the Details
• Some Kind of a Laugh
• Play with Me
• But Once a Year
• Brains
• Getting Through
• Extending the Family
• Still Hungry
• Wherever You Look
• Afterword

Limited to 100 signed and numbered copies