What Fears Become Part 7

Once up on the top level, he realized to his dismay that the penthouse was completely ravaged by fire. Even so, Daniel searched the wreckage for a sign of anything familiar: an antique chair, an expensive painting, a photograph of anyone he knew. Or more importantly, any sign of life. After a while he stopped. If Vincent was alive, I would've run into him by now, he muttered to himself.

He missed Vincent terribly. Not the most handsome or debonair of his kind, but perhaps the most accomplished, Vincent was cursed with remaining in his current physical shape upon his turning. Still, being saddled with an unattractive and portly sh.e.l.l never seemed to bother the man. In fact, nothing ever really did. And what a teacher! Never hesitant to share the tricks of the trade to an inexperienced whelp like Daniel and always conducting himself as a true gentleman, Vincent was definitely one of the best.

Daniel peered into the empty swimming pool and was surprised to see the skeletons of what must have been two young females, probably in their early twenties. Poor Vincent had most likely been entertaining when the bombs. .h.i.t, Daniel thought with a shake of his head. If Vincent had fed on these humans right before detonation, he'd still be around. And then it would just be us, two degenerate blood-suckers ruling the world.

Daniel mused on this as he strolled to the penthouse ledge. He sighed at the city, his beloved metropolis reduced to a disgusting ashtray. He looked around and finally settled upon on an old subway station, covered with debris from adjacent buildings.

A wave of happy memories overtook him as his eyes followed the station to the old clubbing district, where there had once been a collection of discos and singles bars. He remembered gallivanting there with Vincent and especially loved his companion's various little quirks while on the hunt, particularly his fondness of a heavy metal rock club that only catered to white skinheads. According to Vincent, feeding on these wretches was sending an important message: Hey Skinheads, no matter how supreme you may deem yourself to be, you are still merely cattle to us.

Then suddenly, Daniel felt miserable. For all these months, he had been alone, but until now he'd never felt lonely. He took one last look at the penthouse and leapt off the building, but this time he didn't try to fly. He just sank through the heavy air, closing his eyes as he waited to hit the ground.

He was surprised at how much it hurt. He used to be able to do these things and emerge unscathed. He lay there, feeling his body as it went about the lengthy process to heal itself after his "fall." Paralyzed with pain, Daniel clenched his jaw and sprawled on the cracked pavement, feeling his broken bones set themselves and the sc.r.a.ped skin regenerate. It was because he hadn't fed in so long that his body was slow to react to trauma.

Finally, the torture ended and when he was able, Daniel stood. He retrieved his box and continued on. He walked through every borough of the city, dragging his coffin behind. He found himself picking out a stray memory here and there as he pa.s.sed a men's clothing store, a university campus, and even a deplorable strip joint on the east side, an establishment earmarked for when he and Vincent wanted to go slumming.

Eventually, Daniel found himself on the outskirts of the city and wandered into a gated community distinguished by so-called posh homes and large plots of land. He stopped at one mansion, a charming Victorian-style building in which the owner, most likely a pompous architect, must have wanted to re-fashion into something he deemed eclectic. Daniel felt drawn to this residence because it was startlingly intact considering the demolition of the rest of the city, and he wanted to explore it.

So after dropping his box off by the front door, Daniel quietly entered, a thrill of excitement coursing through him. He first made his way to the ruined kitchen and began to rummage through the few cupboards that remained upright, finding nothing but expired cans, most likely fruit c.o.c.ktail or dog food. For a wild moment, he considered opening one and blindly consuming its contents, but thought better of it. It'd probably make me deathly ill, he reminded himself. I can't eat human food.

He continued to search the house, poking through every drawer and closet he could find. He did this often when he came across an interesting dwelling, although he detested feeling like a lowly scavenger. He reconciled this by noting it was just curiosity as he rarely kept anything he found.

After awhile, Daniel found himself in the master bedroom, a high-ceilinged chamber laden with wooden beams, perhaps to showcase a rustic look. He tested the bed and coughed as a puff of dust whorled into the air. He then pulled off the covers, surprised to see the mattress was still relatively clean. How had this place survived a nuclear attack? Without hesitation, he laid his tired body down and peered over to the only window of the room, concluding that if he did fall asleep, the sun would narrowly avoid him. I'll just lay here for a second and catch my breath, he sighed wearily. It's been a long night.

Then Daniel heard something. It was a kind of frantic rustling downstairs, which caused him to quickly sit up and focus his senses. Someone was making their way up to the second floor and Daniel, who had only heard his own noises in the last year, was suddenly very frightened.

To compensate, he slowed his breathing to calm his nerves and quickly leapt to the ceiling, hiding next to one of the beams. He concentrated so that he could relax. What was there to fear? He had done this sort of thing so many times.

Letting his senses do the work, he surmised that the person was a child, based on weight and movement. As he sniffed the air, a mental image of a small person began forming in his mind. Definitely female, he smiled to himself as the hibernating thirst slowly reawakened in him.

He closed his eyes and listened as the girl climbed the stairs. Antic.i.p.ation almost overcame him as she entered the room. How lucky he was that out of all the rooms in this house, she had chosen the one in which he waited for her.

Her movements were quick and almost hyperactive, but Daniel didn't make much of it, as she was probably half-crazy from a world gone awry, just as he was. He figured she was unaware of his presence, and he wanted to bide his time and do this just right.

She finally stopped, resting almost directly beneath him and he felt his dormant fangs go long and sharp. It had been a long time since they had last come to life and he was relieved that they still could.

I can't wait any longer, he thought, as he felt the sweat on his hands. The hunger wracked his body, but he welcomed the pain.

Without hesitation, he dropped from the ceiling, his eyes tightly closed, and savagely fed. He clamped down with all his teeth, the blood filling his mouth, the kill better than any he could remember. He even became feral for the first time in his life, eagerly ripping at the flesh with his fingernails as his prey collapsed and died noiselessly. He continued to suck hungrily and kept his eyes closed as to further savor this meal that he had waited so long to find.

Eventually, Daniel stopped, exhausted by the effort. He sprawled on the floor, feeling giddy as he felt the blood travel to his stomach. This had always been the best partthe antic.i.p.ation of the supernatural strength that a new feeding would give him.

Then suddenly he recoiled, as if he had swallowed a vial of acid. He painfully retched and vomited until his meal was completely expelled from his body. He continued to vomit long after his stomach was empty and the dry heaves wracked his body and wrenched his guts.

Finally his spasms subsided. Weakly, he opened his eyes, expecting to see a p.r.o.ne human girl, and what he saw instead shocked him. Once he saw it, he wished he hadn't.

The c.o.c.kroach was immense, mutated by radiation. It lay dead in a puddle of black blood and yellow ooze, although a spindly leg still kicked out furiously. Looking at this slaughter horrified Daniel and he felt like vomiting again, but his body had nothing left to expel.

Instead, he wiped his mouth and groaned, frantically brushing his face to remove all of the insect's remains. Then he rose, swayed a bit, and desperately stumbled out of the house and into the nuclear aftermath that was the night.

About Jagjiwan Sohal.

Born and raised near Toronto, Canada, Jagjiwan Sohal holds a BA and MA in Political Science, but upon graduation, he (to his parents' chagrin) entered the world of film and television. Now an up-and-coming screenwriter, he spends his time bombarding his agent with new material and is currently developing all kinds of projects, including cartoons, sitcoms and films. "Wandering Daniel" is Jagjiwan's first stab at horror fiction. http://www.facebook.com/jagjiwansohal.

NEXT TIME YOU'LL KNOW ME.

by Ramsey Campbell.

Not this time, oh no. You don't think I'd be taken in like that now, do you? This time I don't care whose name you use, not now I can tell what it is. I only wish I'd listened to my mother sooner. "Always stay one step ahead of the rest," she used to say. "Don't let them get the better of you."

Now you'll pretend you don't know anything about my mother, but you and me know better, don't we? Shall I tell everyone about her so you can say it's the first time you've heard? I will tell about her, so everyone knows. She deserves that at least. She was the one who helped me be a writer.

Oh, but I'm not a writer, am I? I can't be, I haven't had any of my stories published, that's what you'd like everyone to think. You and me know whose names were on my stories, and maybe my mother did finally. I don't believe she could have been taken in by the likes of you. She was the finest person I ever knew, and she had the best mind.

That's why my father left us, because she made him feel inferior. I never knew him, but she told me so. She taught me how to live my life. "Always live as if the most important thing that ever happened to you is just about to happen," she'd advise, and she would always be cleaning our flat at the top of the house with all her bracelets on when I came home from the printer's. She'd have laid the table so the mats covered the holes she'd mended in the tablecloth, and she'd put on her tiara before she ladled out the rice with her wooden spoon she'd carved herself. We always had rice because she said we ought to remember the starving peoples and not eat meat that had taken the food out of their mouths. And then we'd just sit quietly and not need to talk because she always knew what I was going to tell her. She always knew what my father was going to say too, but that was what he couldn't stand. "My dear, he never had an original thought in his head," she used to affirm. She was one step ahead of everyone, except for just one exception-she never knew what my stories were about until I told her.

Next you'll pretend you don't see how that matters, or maybe you really haven't the intelligence, so I'll tell you again: my mother who was always a step ahead of everyone because they didn't know how to think for themselves didn't know what my ideas for stories were until I told her, she said so. "That's your best idea yet," she would always applaud, ever since she used to make me tell her a story at bedtime before she would tell me one. Sometimes I'd lie watching my night light floating away and be thinking of ways to make the story better until I fell asleep. I never remembered the ways in the morning and I never wondered where they went, but you and me know, don't we? I just wish I'd been able to follow them sooner and believe me, you'll wish that too.

When I left school I went to work for Mr Twist, the only printer in town. I thought I'd enjoy it because I thought it had to do with books. I didn't mind at first when he didn't hardly speak to me because I got to be as good as my mother at knowing what he was going to say, then I realised it was because he thought I wasn't as good as he was the day he told me off for correcting the grammar and spelling on the poster for tours of the old mines. "You're the apprentice here and don't you forget it," he proclaimed with a red face. "Don't you go trying to be cleverer than the customer. He gets what he asks for, not what you think he wants. Who do you think you are?" he queried.

He was asking so I told him. "I'm a writer," I stated.

"And I'm the Oxford University Press."

I laughed because I thought he meant me to. "No, you aren't," I contradicted.

"That's right," he stressed, and stuck his red face up against mine. "I'm a second-rate printer in a third-rate town and you're no better than me. Don't play at being a writer with me. I'm old enough to know a writer when I see one."

All I wanted to do was to tell my mother when I got home, but of course she already knew. "You're a writer, Oscar, and don't let anyone tell you different," she warned. "Just try a bit harder to finish your stories. You ought to have been top of your cla.s.s in English. I expect the teacher was just jealous."

So I finished some stories to read to her. She was losing her sight by then, and I read her library books every night, but she used to say she'd rather have my stories than any of them. "You ought to get them published," she counselled. "Show people what real stories are like."

So I tried to find out how. I joined a writers' circle because I thought they could and would help. Only most of them weren't published and tried to put me off trying by telling me that publishing was full of cliques and all about knowing the right people. And when that didn't work they tried to make me stop believing in myself, by having a compet.i.tion for the three best stories and none of mine got anywhere. The judges had all been published and they said my ideas weren't new and the way I told them wasn't the way you were supposed to tell stories. "Take no notice of them," my mother countermanded. "They're the clique, because they want to keep you out. You're too original for them. I'll give you the money to send your work to publishers and just you wait and see, they'll buy it and we can move somewhere you'll be appreciated," and I was just going to when you and Mrs. Mander destroyed her faith in me.

Of course you don't know Mrs. Mander either, do you? I don't suppose you do. She lived downstairs and I never liked her and I don't believe my mother did, only she was sorry for her because she lived on her own. She used to wear old slippers that left bits on the carpet after my mother had spent half the day cleaning up even though she couldn't see hardly, and she kept picking up ornaments to look at and putting them down somewhere else. I always thought she'd meant to steal them when she'd got my mother confused about where they were. She came up when I wasn't there to read books to my mother, and now you can guess what she did.

Oh, I'll tell you, don't worry, I want everyone to know. It was the day they told Mr Twist not to print any more posters about the old mines because the tours hadn't gone well and they'd stopped them, and I was looking forward to telling my mother that the grammar and spelling had put people off, but Mrs. Mander was there with a pile of paperbacks you could see other people's fingermarks on that she'd bought in the market. As soon as I came in she got up. "You'll be wanting to talk to the boy," she deduced, and went out with some of her books.

She always called me the boy, which was another reason why I didn't like her. I was going to say about Mr Twist and then I saw how sad my mother looked. "I'm disappointed in you, Oscar," she rebuked.

She'd never said that before, never. I felt as if I were someone else. "Why?" I inquired.

"Because you led me to believe your ideas were original and every one of them are in these books."

She showed me where Mrs. Mander had marked pages for her with bits of newspaper. By the time I'd finished reading, I had a headache from all the small print and fingermarks. I was almost as blind as she was. All the books were the number one best seller and soon to be major films, but I'd never read a word of them before, and yet they were all my stories, you know they were. And my mother ought to have, but for the first time ever, she didn't believe me. That's the first thing you're going to pay for.

I had to take some aspirins and go to bed and lie there until it was dark and I couldn't see the small print dancing any more. Then my headache went away and I knew what must have happened. It was being one step ahead, I knew what stories were going to be about before people wrote them, except they were my stories and I had to be quick enough to write them first and get them published. So I went to tell my mother, who was still awake because I'd heard her crying, though she tried to make me think it was just her eyes hurting. I told her what I knew and she looked sadder. "It's a good idea for a story," she dismissed as if she didn't even want me to write any more.

So I had to prove the true facts to her. I went back to the writers' circle and asked what to do about stolen ideas. They didn't seem to believe me, and all they said was I should go and ask the writers to pay me some of their royalties. So I looked the writers of the books up in the Authors and Writers Who's Who, and most of them lived in England because Mrs. Mander liked English books. None of the writers' circle were listed, so that shows it's all a clique.

I couldn't wait until the weekend and I could tell the writers they were my ideas they'd used, but then I realized I'd have to leave my mother for the first time I ever had and keep the money from my Friday pay packet to pay for the train. She hadn't hardly been speaking to me since Mrs. Mander and her books, she'd just kept looking as if she was waiting for me to say I was sorry, and when I told her where I was going she looked twice as sad. "That's going too far, Oscar," she a.s.serted, but she didn't mean to London, she meant I was trying to trick her again when I hadn't really even once. Then on Friday evening when I was going, she entreated, "Please don't go, Oscar. I believe you." But I knew she was only pretending that to stop me. I felt as if I was growing out of her and the further I went, the more it hurt, but I had to go.

I had to stand all the way on the train because of the football, and I'd have been sick with all the being thrown back and forth except I couldn't hardly breathe. Then I had to go in the tube to Hampstead. The sun had gone down at last, but it was just as hot down there. But being hot meant I could wait outside the writer's house all night when I found it and I could see he'd gone to bed.

I lay down on what they call the heath for a while and I must have fallen asleep, because when I woke up in the morning I felt like toothache all over and there was another car outside the big white writer's house. When I could walk I went and rang the bell, and when I couldn't hear it I banged on the door with my fists to show I didn't care it was so tall.

A man who looked furious opened the door, but he was too young to be the writer and anyway I wouldn't have cared if he had been when he'd made my mother lose her faith in me. "What do you want?" he interrogated.

"I'm a writer and I want to talk to him about his book," I announced.

He was going to shut the door in my face, but just then the writer clamoured, "Who is it?" and his son vociferated back, "He says he's a writer."

"Let him in then, for G.o.d's sake. If I can let you in I might as well let in the rest of the world. You and I have said all we have to say to each other."

His son tried to shut the door, but I wriggled past him and down the big hall to the room where the writer was. I could see he was a famous writer because he could drink whisky at breakfast time and smoke a pipe before getting dressed. He gave me a look that made his face lopsided and I could see he really meant it for his son. "You're not here for a handout as well, are you?" he denied.

"If that means wanting some of your money, I am," I sued.

He wiped his hand over his face and shook his head with a grin. "Well, that's honest, I can't deny that. See if you can make a better case for yourself than he's been doing."

His son kept trying to interrupt me and then started punching his thighs as if he wanted to punch me while I told the writer how I'd had his idea first and the story I'd made it into. Then the writer was quiet until he acclaimed, "It took me a quarter of a million words and you did it in five minutes."

His son jumped up and stood in the middle. "You're just depressed, Dad. You know you often get like this. All he did was tell you an anecdote built around your book. He probably hasn't even the discipline to write it down."

I caught the writer's eye and I could see he thought his son was worried about whatever money he'd asked for, so I winked at him. "Get out of the way," he directed, and shoved his son with his foot. "Who the devil are you to tell us about discipline? Keep a job for a year and maybe I'll listen to you. And you've the gall to tell us about writing," he enunciated and looked at me. "You and I know better, whatever your name is. Ideas are in the air for whoever grabs them first and gets lucky with them. n.o.body owns an idea."

He went over to his desk as if the house was a ship. "I was about to write a cheque when you appeared, and I'm glad I can do so with some justice," he relished. "Who do I make it out to?"

"Dad," his son bleated, "Dad, listen to me," but both of us writers ignored him, and I told his father to make the cheque out to my mother. He started pleading with his father as I put it in my pocket and ran after me to say his father had only been trying to teach him a lesson and he'd give him it back for me. But he didn't touch me because he must have seen I'd have burst his eyes if he'd tried to steal my mother's cheque.

I didn't want her to apologise for doubting me, I just wanted her to be pleased, but she wasn't that when I gave her the cheque. First she thought I'd bought it in a joke shop and then she started thinking the joke was on me because the writer would stop the cheque. She had me believing it had been too easy and meaning to go back to make him write another, but when I got round her to pay it into her account where she kept her little savings the bank said it had been honored. Then she was frightened because she'd never seen five hundred pounds before. "He must have taken pity on you," she fathomed. "Don't try any more, Oscar. I believe you now."

I knew she didn't and I had to carry on until she did, and now there was money involved I knew who to go to, the solicitor who'd got her the divorce. He didn't believe me until I told him about the cheque and then he was interested. He told me to write down all my ideas I didn't think anyone had used yet for him to keep in a safe at the bank, though Mr. Twist tried to put me off writing in my lunch hour, and then he said we'd have to wait and see if the ideas got written after I'd already written them. That wasn't soon enough for me and I went off again at the weekends.

You'd been putting your heads together about me though, hadn't you? The writer in the Isle of Man would only talk to me through a gatepost and wouldn't let me in. The one in Norfolk lived on a barge where I could hear men sobbing and wouldn't even talk to me. And the one in Scotland pretended she had no money and I should go to America where the money was. I wasn't sure if I believed her, but I couldn't hurt a woman, not then. Maybe that's why you chose her to trick me. She'll be even sorrier than the rest of you.

So I went to America instead of the seaside with my mother. I told her I was going to sell publishers my stories, but she tried to stop me, she didn't think I could be published anymore. "If you go away now you may never see me again," she predicted, but I thought that was like saying the other time she believed me and I kept on at her until she gave me the money. Mrs. Mander promised to look after her, seeing as she wouldn't go away without me. I only wanted the money for her and to make her believe me.

I got off at New York and went to Long Island. That's where the number one best seller who stole my best idea lives. Maybe he didn't know he was stealing it, but if I didn't know I'd stolen a million pounds I'd still be sent to prison and he stole more than that from me, all of you did. He had a big long house and a private beach with an electric fence all around, and it was so hot all the way there when I tried to talk to the phone at the gate all I could do was cough. The sand was getting in my eyes and making my cough worse when two men came up behind me and carried me through the fence.

They didn't stop until they were in the house and threw me in a chair where I had to rub my eyes to see, so the writer must have thought I was crying when he came in naked from the beach. "Relax, maybe we won't have to hurt you," he prognosticated as if he was my friend. "You're another reporter, right? Just take a minute to get yourself together and say your piece."

So I told him about my idea he'd used and tried to ignore the men standing behind me until he nodded at them and they each took hold of one of my ears just lightly as if I'd be able to stand up if I wanted to. "Nothing my friends here like better than a tug-of-war," the writer heralded, then he leaned at me. "But you know what we don't like? b.u.ms who try to earn money with cheap tricks."

I was going to lean at him, but I couldn't move my head after all. My ears felt as if they'd been set on fire. Suddenly I knew I could show him it wasn't a trick, because all at once it was like what my mother did, not just knowing what someone was going to say, but knowing which idea of mine he was going to steal next, one I hadn't even written down. "I can tell you what the book you're going to write is about," I prefaced, and I did.

He stared at me, then he nodded. The men mustn't have understood at first, because I thought they were tearing my head in half before they let me go. "I don't know who you are or what you want," the writer said to me, "but you'd better pray I never hear of you again. Because if you manage to get into print ahead of me I'll sue you down to your last suit of clothes, and believe me I can do it. And then my friends here," he nuncupated, "will come visit you and perform a little surgery on your hands absolutely free and with my compliments."

They marched me out and on a lonely stretch of path where I couldn't see the house or the bus stop. They dragged me over the gravel for a while, then they dusted me off and waited with me until the bus came. There was a curve where you could see the house and when I looked back off the bus I saw the writer talking to them and they jumped into a car. They followed me all the way to New York and either the writer had sent them to find out how I'd known what he was thinking or to get rid of me straight away.

But they couldn't keep up with the bus in the traffic. I got off into a crowd and wished I could go back to England, only they must have known that's where I'd go and be watching the airport if they'd read any books. So I hid in New York until my holiday was over because if I'd gone to any more writers they might have given me away. I didn't hardly go out except to write to my mother every day.

When I got to the airport I hid at the bookstall and pretended to be choosing books until the plane was ready, and that's how I found out what you'd done to me. I leafed through the best sellers and found all my ideas that were locked in the safe, and the date on all the books was the year before I'd locked my ideas up. You nearly tricked me like you tricked everyone until I realised the whole clique of you'd put your heads together, publishers and writers, and changed the date on the books.

I bought them all and couldn't wait to show them to the solicitor. I was sure he'd help me prove that they'd been written after I'd written them first. I thought about all the things I could buy my mother all the way home on the plane and the train and the bus. But when I got home, my mother wasn't there and there was dust on the furniture and my letters to her on the doormat, and when I went to Mrs. Mander she told me my mother was dead.

You killed her. You made me go to America and leave her alone, and she fell downstairs when Mrs. Mander was at the market and broke her neck. They couldn't even get in touch with me to tell me to go to the hospital because you were making me hide in New York. I'd forgive you for stealing my millions before I'd forgive you for taking way my mother. I was so upset I said all this to the newspaper and they published some of it before I realised that now the Long Island men would know who I was and where to find me.

So I've been hiding ever since and I'm glad, because it gave me time to learn what I can do, more than my mother could. Maybe her soul's in me helping, she couldn't just have gone away. Now I can tell who's going to steal one of my ideas and which one and when. Otherwise, how do you think I knew this story was being written? I've had time to think it all out down here and I know what to do to make sure I'm published when I think it's safe. Kill the thieves before they steal from me, that's what, and don't think I won't enjoy it too.

That's my warning to you thieves in case it makes you think twice about stealing, but I don't believe it will. You think you can get away with it but you'll see, the way Mrs. Mander didn't get away with not looking after my mother. Because the morning of the day I hid down here I went to say goodbye to Mrs. Mander. I told her what I thought of her and when she tried to push me out of her room I shut the door on her mouth then on her head and then on her neck, and leaned on it. Goodbye, Mrs. Mander.

And as for the rest of you who're reading this, don't go thinking you're cleverer than me either. Maybe you think you've guessed where I'm hiding, but if you do I'll know. And I'll come and see you first, before you tell anyone. I mean it. If you think you know, start praying. Pray you're wrong.

About Ramsey Campbell.

Living in England, Ramsey Campbell is perhaps the world's most decorated author of horror, terror, suspense, dark fantasy, and supernatural fiction. He has won four World Fantasy Awards, ten British Fantasy Awards, three Bram Stoker Awards, the Horror Writers' a.s.sociation's Lifetime Achievement Award, and has been named a Grand Master of Horror.

Ramsey Campbell's work is notable for both its focus and its breadth. His novels, short fiction, and even nonfiction always seem to address emotions. Characteristic themes weave throughout Campbell's works: the uncertain nature of reality, the dangers of repressed fears and desires, and the reactions of ordinary people in extraordinary circ.u.mstances.

Douglas E. Winter praises Campbell's "stylish sophistication and intensely suggestive vision" and The Horror Zine's Poet Gary William Crawford writes in Ramsey Campbell (1988) that Campbell's prose "is like no other in supernatural horror fiction."

S.T. Joshi, in which his book Ramsey Campbell and Modern Horror Fiction (2001) studies the writer, says: "Ramsey Campbell is worthy of study both because of the intrinsic merit of his work and because of the place he occupies in the historical progression of this literary mode." Joshi went on to say: "Future generations will regard him as the leading horror writer of our generation, every bit the equal of Lovecraft or Blackwood."

Campbell is always refining his craft. "As far as I'm concerned," Campbell stated in a 1990 interview by Stanley Wiater, "the whole business of writing is a process of trying to do things you didn't do last time."

Ramsey Campbell is the prolific author of thirty novels, twenty books of short stories, two chapbooks, and two non-fiction books. He has edited fifteen anthologies, and has had one or more of his stories appear in 132 multiple-author collections. You can visit Ramsey Campbell at: http://www.ramseycampbell.com.

3 AM..

by James Marlow.

At 3AM, the mind likes to travel on dark and strange roads. Your thoughts seem more real while your actions have a dream-like quality. It's a time when reality is fluid and drips slowly. It's also a time to tell yourself lies.

Much soul searching happens at 3AM. It's the beginning of The Tomorrow, as in: "I'm going to quit smoking tomorrow." Or, "Tomorrow I turn things around," and the ever popular, "My diet begins tomorrow!"

These thoughts are easy to swallow at 3AM. If we want to be honest, at 3AM they are the truth. The Gospel. They are words carved in stone by the finger of G.o.d. It's only after sleeping that we come to see the truth has turned to lies.

I may be biased toward 3AM. My father died at 3AM. My ex-wife caught me with another woman at 3AM, and I was thrown in jail for the first and only time at 3AM. Also (this may mean nothing or it may explain everything and I'm just not smart enough to figure it out), I was born at 3AM.