Unfinished Stories in a Seaside Town and Other Weird Tales: Hauntologies, #2

By David Rees-Thomas

These hauntologies are stories of the weird and the supernatural. They can be read in any order, and many are set in South Wales. For horror, weird, supernatural, and literary tastes. This is volume 2.

The South Wales valley's are steeped in dark mystery left over from the coal mines, the bleak landscape, and myths that reach further back than history itself.
This collection includes 4 stories that explore the layers beneath the surface, and examines the weirdness within.

Reality, nightmare, or a stranger truth? You decide.

David Rees-Thomas has written many short stories in a variety of genres, including horror, mystery, science fiction, and even the occasional literary foray.
He has also worked as an editor and first reader on magazines such as Waylines, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Nightmare. More volumes of hauntologies can be found on here, and in other bookstores.
He is currently at work on a new mystery novel series, and also writes under other names.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Acid Publishing
• Release date: May 17, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201372897

Book preview

Unfinished Stories

in a Seaside Town

and

Other Weird Tales

Hauntologies Volume 2

David Rees-Thomas

Acid Publishing

Unfinished Stories

in a Seaside Town

and

Other Weird Tales

Hauntologies Volume 2

A short story collection

Copyright © 2021 David Rees-Thomas

Published by Acid Publishing

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Contents

Introduction

Unfinished Stories in a Seaside Town

Mamgu

A Signal for Meirion

Rhiannon

About the Author

Introduction to

Unfinished Stories in a Seaside Town and

Other Weird Tales

This is the second volume of my various hauntologies. The concept is a borrowed one, and I’m applying my own licensing of the term in quite a liberal manner. Is this what Jacques Derrida had in mind when he coined the term in reference to communism in his 1993 book, Specters of Marx? Perhpas not, but it works for me. His book is a fascinating read, well worth your time, though not what I’d describe as an easy read.

In a sense, or at least in a sense that I choose to coalesce with, all horror, all supernatural, all weird literature could be said to discharge its contents into the hauntological mix. The concept plays upon the insistent nature of events, ideas, actions, and even people. We see the persistence of elements of the past. And this is not just nostalgia, but a constant reworking and rediscovery. An eighties disco, although fun to dance at, might simply be nostalgia, but many of the songs in whatever the charts are constituted as these days might well qualify as having hauntological aspects.

Hauntology is a perception. We can visit our own futures via this lens, we can grapple with our understanding of the past. But, it can also lead to nullification, a negation of meaning. If we extrapolate the hauntological paradigm far enough, the Soviet Union becomes Disneyland. Perhaps there is something in this after all.

To understand Derrida’s hauntology, we would probably have to take a deep dive into deconstruction, and there’s no need to do that here! Worth reading mark Fishers’ books as he approaches the subject in a somewhat more user-friendly manner.

We can perceive the meaning by looking to some music of the early 21st century. For example, Boards of Canada, or the Ghost Box Label with groups such as The Advisory Circle, The Focus Group, or Pye Corner Audio. As they say on their website, Ghost Box explores the misremembered musical history of a parallel world. Definitely worth taking a look.

Hauntology also plays well with the concept of liminality or liminal spaces. In simple terms, we can think of these as transitory spaces between places or realms. In these areas, doubt can become a dominant characteristic, at least in play as much as certainty.

These hauntological or liminal spaces and concepts are scary. They don’t provide comfort in a manner we might usually expect. They push against the warm ideas we are presented with as we grow up, they make fragile the solid structures of family, community, state, and philosophy.

In these stories, and all the others spread across the hauntologies volumes, I merely seek to poke about in these spaces, to present perceptions, and in the end, hopefully to entertain!

There is some reassurance when we read stories. We join with others, and we sense, and recategorize unease.

If you like these stories, please look out for volume 3 and more volumes to come. They are all available as standalone editions, and I’ve left the oroiginal introductions ot each story in this collected edition.

Enjoy :)

David Rees-Thomas, May 2021

Nishinomiya, Japan

Introduction to

Unfinished Stories in a Seaside Town

This story came out of a daydream on a train. Sometimes, I like to switch off on trains, unplug the headphones, and just stare out the window. Recently, I found myself standing in the middle of the aisle of the front carriage in such a position that allowed me to observe both sides of the train equally as we sped through the North Osaka area.

Mesmerizing.

It seemed as though there was no way, aside from magic, that we could possibly stay on the tracks.

Anyway, I digress. As I mentioned, I like to daydream on trains. Well, one day, I started thinking about when I used to live in a small seaside town on the Welsh coast.

Mid Wales doesn’t have many large towns, so a sense of wilderness still pervades much of the landscape, and as we know, the legends and stories which have flowered from these moors and mountains over the centuries lend an extra element of distance and mystery.

I lived for a short time right on the beach, so each morning before work, I’d make a coffee, open the front door, and walk the ten meters or so to the wall that separated the sand from the road.

But that was the limit of our world. Sure, you might find some swimmers or surfers, but it was mostly just dolphins and oil tankers on the horizon. And on that train, I started thinking about the beach at night, where the only light would come from the houses and the streetlights, but it was basically dark. The sky, the sea, the mountains and the coast beyond the town, all dark. Sometimes, no stars. And in winter, biting cold.

In spite of all this rugged nature, the town hosted the lives of people. Real people, with real problems, real moments, and real ends.

I remembered staring out the window at night with the light turned off, just the amber glow from a cigarette, and I couldn’t see the edge anymore. The edge of where the sand, and the sea, and the sky ceased to be one thing, and became another.

There were people in that town, living lives beside the town itself, in full view of it and everyone in it, and yet they possessed secrets still. And I wondered if some could just walk into that blackness, as if out for a stroll, and I wondered if, perhaps, some of them would never come back.

This is not that story, not exactly. But that train journey did get me thinking about Wales again, and about how we live our lives in a state where we are merely dipping into other people’s experiences, and maybe even only catching fleeting glimpses of our own.

David Rees-Thomas, May 2021

Nishinomiya, Japan

Unfinished Stories in a Seaside Town

Fish and chips for lunch. Not what I’d usually eat but the sun is high, the salt air fresh in my lungs, and the hangover has receded, leaving my stomach and my muscles craving fat, protein, and carbs. In the end, the vinegar