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  PRAISE FOR ROBERT SHEARMAN

  “Thrillingly unpredictable, bizarrely life-enhancing. . . . Shearman is a great writer.”

  The Scotsman

  “A writer who is not afraid to approach the big subjects, but does so from interesting oblique angles and with a light, kittenish gait. Rather profound, ingeniously plotted.”

  The Independent

  “Shearman’s prose is a mixture of faux-naive mundanity and breathtaking fantasy visions. Addictive. Wonderful.”

  SFX

  “Corrosively funny, wistful, sharp, strange and black as a coffin lid, Robert Shearman is an addictive delight.”

  Mark Gatiss, Co-creator of Sherlock

  “Shearman offers us haunting, nightmare alternatives to our world that are still somehow utterly recognizable as our own, thanks to the way he always picks out the comically mundane among the impossible and the fantastical.”

  Steven Moffat,

  Executive Producer and Hugo Award-winning writer for Doctor Who

  “His stories are like the bastard offspring of Philip K. Dick and Jonathan Carroll, but with a quirky personality that is completely their own.”

  Stephen Jones,

  World Fantasy Award-winning editor of Best New Horror

  “Shearman has a uniquely engaging narrative voice and he steers clear of genre clichés, injecting elements of horror and the surreal into a recognizably real world. As impressive as his quirky imagination is his emotional range: most of the stories are darkly humorous, but humour, horror and genuine pathos all make a powerful impact in a very short space.”

  The Times Literary Supplement

  “Shearman's stories are hard to categorize, a unique fusion of literary and the fantastic, perhaps not surprising from a writer whose credits include Doctor Who scripts and mainstream theatre.”

  The Guardian

  REMEMBER WHY

  YOU FEAR ME

  THE BEST DARK FICTION OF ROBERT SHEARMAN

  ChiZine Publications

  COPYRIGHT

  Remember Why You Fear Me © 2012 by Robert Shearman

  Cover artwork © 2012 by Erik Mohr

  Cover design © 2012 by Samantha Beiko

  Interior design © 2012 by Danny Evarts

  All rights reserved.

  Published by ChiZine Publications

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  EPub Edition OCTOBER 2012 ISBN: 978-1-92746-922-4

  All rights reserved under all applicable International Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen.

  No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  CHIZINE PUBLICATIONS

  Toronto, Canada

  www.chizinepub.com

  [email protected]

  Edited by Helen Marshall

  Copyedited and proofread by Kate Moore

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada.

  Published with the generous assistance of the Ontario Arts Council.

  To my sister, Vicky

  who’s always been braver than me.

  TABLE OF

  CONTENTS

  Not Really A Horror Writer: An Introduction by Stephen Jones

  Mortal Coil

  George Clooney’s Moustache

  Damned if You Don’t

  So Proud

  Roadkill

  Clown Envy

  Elementary Problems of Photography (Number Three): An Analysis, and Proferred Solution

  Good Grief

  Custard Cream

  Cold Snap

  Pang

  Blue Crayon, Yellow Crayon

  Favourite

  One More Bloody Miracle After Another

  Featherweight

  Jason Zerrillo is an Annoying Prick

  Granny’s Grinning

  Alice Through the Plastic Sheet

  The Bathtub

  The Dark Space in the House in the House in the Garden at the Centre of the World

  Afterword: Merely a Horror Writer

  Bonus Material: Ebook Exclusives

  Tiny Deaths

  Jolly Roger

  The Big Boy’s Big Box of Tricks

  The Girl from Ipanema

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Publication History

  Also Available from ChiZine Publications

  NOT REALLY A

  HORROR WRITER

  AN INTRODUCTION BY

  STEPHEN JONES

  What can I say about Robert Shearman that hasn’t been said before?

  Well, quite a lot, really.

  For starters, Remember Why You Fear Me is his first honest-to-god horror collection, which is odd because, as Rob will readily tell you, he doesn’t write horror fiction. Or even genre fiction for that matter.

  Yet I first met Robert Shearman lurking at the top of an escalator at the World Fantasy Convention in Calgary, Alberta, in 2008. He was looking confused (which I later discovered is an almost perpetual expression for him). But not as confused as I was.

  I pride myself as an editor for keeping up with what is happening in the genre. Yet here was this fellow Brit, who I had never heard of before, who was not only up for a World Fantasy Award for his first collection of stories, Tiny Deaths (which, again, I had never heard of, let alone seen), but who had been additionally nominated for one of the stories in that collection, “Damned if You Don’t.”

  That’s a hell of an introduction for anyone to the genre.

  It turned out that Rob was better known as a playwright and radio dramatist, working alongside such luminaries as Alan Ayckbourn and Martin Jarvis.

  However, perhaps his biggest claim to fame was that he scripted a 2005 episode of Doctor Who, which is remembered by everybody as the one in which they brought back the Daleks.

  As it turned out, Rob won the World Fantasy Award for Best Collection in Calgary, which was no mean achievement for a fledgling author. However, his publisher didn’t see it that way. They were under the impression that they were publishing a book of “literary” stories, which is why they had never bothered to send it out to the usual genre reviewers. They were horrified when he returned home and proudly announced that he was the recipient of a big-arse bust of H.P. Lovecraft!

  But trust me, as I discovered a few weeks later when he sent me a copy, Tiny Deaths contained some terrific horror stories. These included the aforementioned “Damned if You Don’t” (one of the most disturbing, funny and surreal pieces of fiction I have ever read), “Mortal Coil” and “So Proud” and “Favourite.”

  Two years later Rob had found a more sympathetic publisher and put together a second collection, Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical. Once again, the stories were an audacious mix of themes and styles, but he still managed to include the British Fantasy Award-nominated novella “Roadkill�
� (another personal favourite of mine), along with the popular “George Clooney’s Moustache” (also shortlisted for the same award) and “Pang.” As it was, the collection itself picked up the British Fantasy Award for that year, as well as winning the Shirley Jackson Award.

  Whether he liked it or not, by now Rob was definitely considered a genre writer.

  With his third collection, Everyone’s Just So So Special, published in 2011, he pushed the boundaries of his fiction even further. The book featured “Cold Snap” along with two stories I had the honour of commissioning.

  When I was putting together my anthology The Dead That Walk: Zombie Stories, I invited Rob to contribute something.

  “But Steve,” he whined over lunch, “you know I’m not a horror writer. I can’t do that stuff without being funny. And I’ve never written a zombie story in my life.”

  I ordered us a couple more bottles of wine and told him to go away and think about it.

  A few weeks later he delivered “Granny’s Grinning,” one of the most terrifyingly twisted stories I have ever published. Yes, the word “zombie” is in there, but Rob’s particularly skewered tale went way beyond what anyone would expect to find in a book of stories about the reanimated dead. To my mind, it’s a modern classic of the genre.

  So when it came time to do a follow-up anthology, Visitants: Stories of Fallen Angels and Heavenly Hosts, I approached Rob again.

  “But Steve,” he complained in the pub, “you know I can’t do horror stories. I’m no good at writing to a specific theme. And I’ve never written an angel story before.”

  I bought us several more pints and told him to go away and think about it again.

  Sometime later he submitted “Featherweight,” a particularly nasty story involving cannibal cherubs. Once again, it was like nothing else in the book.

  Because neither of these volumes was published in the UK, I reprinted both of these stories in consecutive editions of The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror.

  More recently, we were having dinner and I mentioned to Rob that I was working on two new anthologies—Haunts: Reliquaries of the Dead and A Book of Horrors—and how pleased I would be if he could submit a story to both.

  “Oh, Steve,” he sighed, “as I keep telling you, I’m not really a horror writer. All my stuff turns out to be weird or humorous. Not the kind of thing anyone would want to see in a horror anthology.”

  I asked the waitress to bring him the pudding menu and patiently explained that that was what made his stories stand out from so much other genre material. I also suggested that he might want to go away and think about it some more.

  He did. The result was “Good Grief” and the British Fantasy Award-nominated “Alice Through the Plastic Sheet,” two of the most blackly comic horror stories it has ever been my pleasure to publish.

  All the above, plus a number of original and uncollected tales, are contained in the book you are now holding. (There are also a few more if you happen to be reading the e-book version.)

  Besides the collections, Rob has also published an omnibus of his stage plays, Caustic Comedies, and he’s been working on a novel for nearly as long as I’ve known him. Or so he claims.

  Over the past few years we have become good friends—attending the same conventions, meeting up for riotous lunches and dinners, or simply working together on various publishing projects. So here are some little-known facts about Rob that I would like to share with you:

  Rob was born in the West Sussex town of Crawley in 1970. He tells Americans that it is near Gatwick Airport, just to make it sound more interesting. Rob looks older than his age. I hesitate to say “wiser.”

  Rob loves eating. When you meet him, he has either just consumed a meal or is on his way to have one. Sometimes both at the same time. And he is certain to regale you with a story about how he is about to go on a diet the following week, or is already on one and has lost several pounds. He really does believe this, and nobody has the heart to tell him differently.

  Rob loves drinking. Sometimes, when we go out for one of our “lunches”—which have been known to last until dinnertime—and we have consumed our body-weight in bottles of wine, Rob will still have a few whiskies on the way home as a “night-cap.” I really don’t know how he does it, especially when I have barely managed to crawl back to my own residence.

  Rob loves travelling. He’ll go anywhere. He’s been known to travel to the ends of the Earth (well, Australia) for a free convention membership. He has also been fêted around the globe by various cultural organizations with too much public money at their disposal. And, if all else fails, he’ll take a cruise to teach Russian literature to little old ladies. I’m not even going to go there.

  But Rob does love the ladies. No, really. Who knew? The guy is a babe-magnet. I remember that after blearily leaving a British Fantasy Awards Banquet in Nottingham, Reggie Oliver and I were amazed to observe Rob semi-lounging on a sofa, surrounded by half-a-dozen attractive women draped over the furniture or literally sitting at his feet. Personally, I put this attraction down to the fact that women think he is funny and “safe.” It also helps that he looks like a big, cuddly teddy bear.

  Rob loves reading his fiction aloud. I hate most authors reading their own stories, but he is apparently very good at it. At one of his book launches a few years ago, Sarah Pinborough and I were admonished by his publisher for talking too loudly—outside the venue! I can only presume from this that Rob must read very quietly indeed.

  Rob loves writing. But not in his office. Or even his home. He prefers to work on his hand-written first drafts in museums and art galleries—and of course, cafés. I don’t know if this makes his work any better, but at least it gets him out of the house.

  Despite a reputation that continues to grow, Rob probably still doesn’t consider himself to be a horror writer. But that’s okay, because by now everyone else does and he has the awards to prove it. The creepy, disturbing and, yes, often hilarious stories in Remember Why You Fear Me will only add to his well-deserved esteem, and I am delighted to have been the catalyst for at least a few of them.

  However, there’s still one thing that I simply do not understand—just how does he get to hang out with all those attractive women at conventions . . . ?

  —Stephen Jones

  London, England

  May 2012

  MORTAL

  COIL

  On first impression, it looked like an apology. But the more you reread it—and it was reread a lot that day, it was pored over and analysed, governments around the world made statements about it, dismissing it first as a hoax, then taking it more seriously as the afternoon wore on, until by evening you could have sworn they had been in on the whole thing from the start, television programmes were rescheduled to make way for phone-in discussion shows and cobbled-together news reports that had very little actual news to report. . . . The more you reread it, you couldn’t help but feel there was a note of disappointment to it. It was almost patronizing.

  This is what the message said.

  “You’ve got it all wrong. And we’re sorry, because it’s our mistake. If we’d made things clearer to you right from the start, none of this would have happened.

  “We gave you a knowledge of death. We thought it would make you rise above the other animals, give you a greater perspective on how to live your lives fruitfully, in peace and in happiness. But it’s all gone horribly wrong, hasn’t it?

  “You obsess about death. Right from childhood, it seems to exercise your imagination in an entirely unhealthy way. You count all the calories on every single tin in the supermarket, you go to the gym twice a week, just so you feel you can ward it off that bit longer. You pump botox into your cheeks and stick plastic sacks into your breasts so you can kid yourselves you look younger, that death isn’t on the cards yet. And then, when death finally does happen to someone you know, you go to long boring funerals and sit on hard benches in sullen silence, dressed i
n smart clothes that make you itch, with only flat wine and sausage rolls to look forward to. And the growing certainty that soon it’ll be your turn, the sausage rolls will be eaten for you.

  “You’re frightened and you’re miserable. We can’t blame you. Looking down at you, it makes us pretty miserable too!

  “Houseflies and worms and llamas have the right idea. They understand that death is just part of the system. As much as birth and procreation. A thing to avoid when it isn’t necessary, and to accept when it is. And so houseflies and worms and llamas have a better grip on what’s expected of them, to be as good houseflies, worms and llamas as they can be, and not let all that death baggage get in the way.

  “As we say, sorry. We made the mistake of giving you a little knowledge, when either none or more would have been more sensible. There was some hope we didn’t need to spell it all out for you, but don’t you worry, that’s our fault, not yours. And so we’re going to put an end to it.

  “We did consider that taking away the knowledge of death would be the best thing. But there was a general feeling that it’d be a shame to go backwards—and that we’ve enough houseflies and worms and llamas as it is. They’re coming out our ears! So, starting tomorrow, expect things to be different. It’ll be a new chapter. For you and for us!

  “And in the mean time, please accept our apologies for any distress we may have caused you.”

  You see, that patronizing disappointment was hard to ignore. Especially after multiple readings of the message. Some very well-known intellectuals appeared on the phone-in discussion programmes that evening to complain that they’d been so obviously talked down to. “After all,” grumbled one, “what do they expect? If they’re going to turn the secrets of life and death into a crossword puzzle, they can hardly object when we all sit around trying to solve it.”

  The first message had naturally taken everyone by surprise. In every country around the world, on every television set, on every radio and in every newspaper, the words appeared. All in the language of the country in question, of course. Many people studied the different translations, just to see whether they could glean any hidden meanings, but all they could conclude was that (a) German words can be irritatingly long and never use one syllable when six will do, and that (b) French is very romantic. So no one was any the wiser.