Release date: June 9, 2020
Subgenre: Dark Fantasy
About The Attic Tragedy:
Sylvie never called them ghosts, but that’s what they were—not that George ever saw them herself. The new girl, Sylvie, is like a creature from another time, with her old-fashioned leather satchel, her white cotton gloves and her head in the clouds. George watches her drift around the edge of the school playing fields, guided by inaudible voices.
When George stands up for Sylvie, beating back Tommy Payne and his gang of thugs, it brings her close to the ethereal stranger; though not as close as George would have liked. In the attic of Sylvie’s father’s antique shop, George’s scars will sing and her longing will drive them both toward a tragedy as veiled and inevitable as Sylvie’s whispering ghosts
Excerpt:
Prologos
Sylvie never called them ghosts, but that’s what they were.
The day we became friends, she walked me through the darkened rooms
of her father’s antique shop, trailing her fingers over the
objects. All of them were lovingly cleaned, none with even a trace
of dust. There were old books and reliquaries, trinket jars and
model ships, barometers, credenzas, compendiums and lamps. There
were music boxes and what I now know was a Minton hand-painted
jardinière. Sylvie brushed them with her long pale fingers, her
eyes aflutter, her voice so soft it was almost lost to the tinkle
of the overhead chandeliers, the tick tick tick of the many hidden clocks.
“The woman who wore this lost her husband to madness.” Sylvie
fingered an ornate ring, curlicued silver bordered with diamonds.
“He disappeared when she fell pregnant and everyone thought him
dead. He’d been gone three years when she read about him in the
paper. He was living rough in Centennial Park, running naked and
wild, biting the heads off geese.” She slipped the ring back into
its padded velvet tray. “Her mother always said he’d come to no
good.”
“Or this,” she said, and her fingers moved to the stem of a
burnished brass telescope. “A lover’s memento. The woman who owned
this took a keepsake from every man she fell for. Not one of them
ever knew of her love. And none loved her in return. She died of
loneliness and an overdose of laudanum, lifted from the Gladstone
of a doctor she’d set her heart on.”
Sylvie swam between display cases with fluid movements, her touch
as delicate as a butterfly. I hardly dared move, afraid my bulk
would knock over some priceless curio, topple some fragile ancient
thing.
“How do you know?” I asked and followed, squeezing between a
bookcase and a mahogany sideboard. A blue glass vase wobbled on its
shelf and I reached out to steady it. “D’you find all that on the
Internet or something?”
“No, silly,” said Sylvie, eyes laughing. “They tell me.”
I thought she was teasing, so turned away, pretended I was
examining the collectables. Beside us was a heavy leather-top desk,
the surface inlaid with gold leaf that glittered faintly in the
half-light. There was an old-fashioned cash register and a marble
bust and, beside them, a black-and-white photo in a silver art deco
frame. It was a portrait of a dark-haired woman with round faraway
eyes and a haunting smile; just as Sylvie would look in ten years,
twenty years—beautiful and tired and sad. But there was a spark in
her eyes, as though she were smiling through the sadness, like a
single beam of sunlight glimpsed through brooding clouds.
“And this one?” I said and reached to pick it up, but felt through
my sweater a delicate touch. Sylvie’s hand on my arm.
I felt hot all over and prayed I wasn’t blushing. Every one of my
scars was tingling. “What do you mean they tell you? Like you
can . . . hear them?”
Sylvie looked up at me and frowned, her eyebrows furrowed and
serious.
“Of course,” she said. “You mean you can’t?”
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About J. Ashley-Smith:
J. Ashley Smith is a British–Australian writer of dark fiction and other materials. His short stories have twice won national competitions and been shortlisted six times for Aurealis Awards, winning both Best Horror (Old Growth, 2017) and Best Fantasy (The Further Shore, 2018).
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About Meerkat Press:
Meerkat Press is an independent publisher committed to finding and
publishing exceptional, irresistible, unforgettable fiction. And despite
the previous sentence, we frown on overuse of adjectives and adverbs in
submissions. *smile*
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