In A Season Of Dead Weather

By Mark Fuller Dillon

The weird, the uncanny, the strange: these are the local conditions of dead weather.

And these are stories based on dreams and nightmares, on things barely glimpsed in the moonrise, on places perfectly normal by day but haunted by the light of winter stars.

Along with stories that appeared in "All Hallows" (edited by Barbara and Christopher Roden) and in the ROC anthology, "Alone on the Darkside" (edited by John Pelan) are tales that have never seen the light -- but now, as daylight fades, the stories can be told.

(May be too intense for younger readers.)

The cover was designed and drawn by Tragelaphus.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mark Fuller Dillon
• Release date: Feb 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9780991861217

Mark Fuller Dillon

"Mark Fuller Dillon is an original talent, whose precise use of language, obliquely disturbing imagery and meticulous world building single him out as a writer to watch." -- Peter Tennant, BLACK STATIC #35. Hello, and welcome! Most of my stories are set in the region where I live (Gatineau, Quebec), and are based on some of the stranger moments of my life, or on my nightmares (which have kept my nights lively and loud since I was three years old). I've had work published in Barbara and Christopher Roden's ALL HALLOWS and in John Pelan's DARKSIDE; I've also had work accepted for anthologies and magazines that faded away before my stories could appear. The best of these are collected in my second ebook, IN A SEASON OF DEAD WEATHER. Right now, my goal is to find reviewers. Writers can focus on craftsmanship, but they cannot be certain of just how much they've been able to learn and apply, until the readers tell them. To that end, I'm inviting you to let me know exactly what you think of my stories. Honest feedback, pro or con, is one of the most valuable things a writer can use. And please don't hesitate to visit my blog, or my Facebook page. Thank you! Mark Fuller Dillon

Book preview

In A Season Of Dead Weather

by Mark Fuller Dillon

Smashwords Edition

Cover designed and drawn by Tragelaphus.

Copyright 2013 Mark Fuller Dillon

Smashwords Edition License Notes:

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Table of Contents

Lamia Dance

Never Noticed, Never There

Shadows In The Sunrise

When The Echo Hates The Voice

Who Would Remain?

The Weight of Its Awareness

The Vast Impatience Of The Night

Acknowledgements

*****

Lamia Dance

On a cold November night when I was eighteen years old, I went with several students to a run-down movie house, and rediscovered the truth about myself: the truth I had long hoped to conceal.

On that night, when we stepped out of the wind and into the grimy, dark-paneled lobby of the cinema, I was already unsure of my decision to tag along. The need had driven me -- the need, and a sense of being trapped within the laboratories and lecture halls of university routine. For seven days a week, I studied; I lacked the time for anything else. And I certainly lacked the money; only my scholarship had allowed me to attend classes in the first place; only my grants had allowed me a tiny room in residence and the two meals a day that left me constantly hungry by nightfall. So when I learned about the foreign cinema club and the movie house that offered substantial discounts to university students, I decided -- against my better judgment -- to hide myself within a crowd.

I came to realize my mistake as soon as I entered the lobby with the twenty or so fellow-students. As one of the few unattached people in a crowd of couples, I had felt exposed and isolated on the long walk through the stabbing wind to the movie house; but once in the lobby, I began to feel as well that old anxiety that always hit me whenever I stood on the verge of watching a film. The reek of popcorn butter and dusty carpet, the shadows in the corners, the faded posters sagging on the mottled walls -- everything reminded me of how uncomfortable I had always felt in cinemas. As the others stood in groups and chattered in open, friendly ways, I began to feel like a cast-off anatomical skeleton propped up within a long winter coat.

To conceal my discomfort, I wandered toward a series of smudged glass frames on the wall, where information on the short films to be screened that night was posted. Directors and actors were detailed in page after page of text, but there were no pictures, no mention of storylines, no indication of what the films were actually about. The only clues offered were exotic titles that meant nothing to me. As I stared at one of them -- Lamia Dance -- I felt the sudden presence of a young man at my side.

That's a poor translation, he said. They're not really lamiae. They're something else... something even better.

I wouldn't know, I said, in a voice far too weak and tremulous. I don't know a thing about films.

Then I stared helplessly at the faded crimson carpet spotted black with ancient grime and starred with scattered popcorn salt, until I felt him move away from me and back into the crowd.

Finally, armed with ticket stubs,tall cups of soda-pop, and striped cartons of popcorn, the students filed into the theatre. I tagged along and sat hesitantly in a seat right beside the aisle, from where I could see the others ease out of their bulky coats and jackets: beautiful young people, shedding unwanted and unnecessary shields. The man in front of me, having laughed at some comment from his warm and lovely girlfriend as she unwound her scarf, glanced at me, huddled in my thick coat, and said, You know, you really should take that off, or else you'll get used to the heat... and then you'll freeze on the way home tonight.

I smiled back and shrugged off my coat, pretending that my shields, too, were unnecessary. Yet I wondered how anyone could call a university home. Did he find it so easy there, to blend right in?

For the next few minutes, my stomach trembled from a combination of hunger and the need. I stared at the frozen ripples of dim light on the scarlet curtains straight ahead, at the curved lamps glowing like pale subterranean toadstools on the angled walls, and realized once again how ill at ease I felt in cinemas. I knew the reason why, but whenever that reason bubbled up into memory I turned aside with firm resolve and listened to the clever, relaxed conversations all around me. I reminded myself that I had come here to hide within a crowd; and then the curtains parted, the voices died, the darkness fell and covered me.

A beam of light stabbed the darkness, and a faded blue title card appeared on the screen: Short Subject. The man ahead of me turned to his girlfriend and whispered a name or a word that eluded me; it sounded vaguely Slavonic.

Blackness followed; then another beam stabbed out, and letters indecipherable to me, Cyrillic perhaps, crawled across a slowly turning vortex of magenta, scarlet, blue and purple. Despite the apparent age of the print, with its occasional spray of speckles and its occasional flickering scratch, the colours were unfaded, deeply saturated and vibrant. The man ahead of me whispered something about 1940s Technicolor.

With the credits over, the vortex faded to black. Then a faint light appeared: I seemed to float through a black