Windeye; Stories
Brian Evenson
Language: English
Pages: 188
ISBN: 1566892988
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
"Brian Evenson is one of the treasures of American story writing, a true successor both to the generation of Coover, Barthelme, Hawkes and Co., but also to Edgar Allan Poe." —Jonathan Lethem
A woman falling out of sync with the world; a king's servant hypnotized by his murderous horse; a transplanted ear with a mind of its own—the characters in these stories live as interlopers in a world shaped by mysterious disappearances and unfathomable discrepancies between the real and imagined. Brian Evenson, master of literary horror, presents his most far-ranging collection to date, exploring how humans can persist in an increasingly unreal world. Haunting, gripping, and psychologically fierce, these tales illuminate a dark and unsettling side of humanity.
Praised by Peter Straub for going "furthest out on the sheerest, least sheltered narrative precipice," Brian Evenson is the author of ten books of fiction. He has been a finalist for the Edgar Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the World Fantasy Award, and the winner of the International Horror Guild Award, and the American Library Association's award for Best Horror Novel. Fugue State was named one of Time Out New York's Best Books of 2009. The recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and three O. Henry Prizes, including one for the title story in "Windeye," Evenson lives in Providence, Rhode Island, where he directs Brown University's Literary Arts Department.
Harbison had gone to bed himself, or at the very least had settled into a chair. And I lay there staring at nothing, feeling that encroaching darkness of vision that is an indication that one is about to be swallowed by sleep. I may well have fallen asleep too, had I not begun to feel, very far back in my mind, that I was hearing another noise, something I was having trouble placing. At first I thought it was a scuttling of some kind, a rat maybe, but at some distance. Or the sound of coughing,
she simply gave in. She went from drinks with Robert-cum-Bob to a fluttering and frightened journey to an old motel. Maybe this will help, she thought all the way over. Maybe it will shake things up a little. And indeed it must have had some effect, for some things seemed to slow down and others to speed up. Only they were all the wrong things. By the time they had gotten her clothes off and she had wedged herself under him in the bed, his lips were moving but she wasn’t hearing anything at
the pencil until the creature too could read it. What I wrote was in essence an offer of help. I did not know where the other creature had gone, I claimed, but if anyone could find out, I said, it was I, someone with a foot in both worlds. I was willing to search, willing to try to find out. I was, I lied, a sort of detective. If he would only agree to aid and assist me, he had my promise that I would dedicate my life to finding the answer to his questions, questions that I privately figured
have left something for me therein. The man pursed his lips, mustache puffing like a cat. How, he wanted to know, was he to be sure I was his brother? But surely, I said, he could see the family res— —and in addition, he said, there was the little matter of the unpaid … I briskly offered to pay it. Shortly thereafter he saw the resemblance and proffered the key. This I remember clearly: to reach the room, I stepped off the front porch and followed a narrow path made of flaked stone around
asking. “I already answered that question,” said Dierk, and smiled. But he didn’t answer, thought Leppin. Did he? What’s happening? “I found you,” said Dierk after a long pause. “Isn’t that enough?” Leppin closed his eyes, covering his face with his hands. He stayed like that for a while, gathering himself, but when he lowered his hands and opened his eyes, Dierk was still there, calm, attentive, still waiting. “Tell me a story,” said Dierk, his voice little more than a whisper. His eyes,