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    Dark Tides
    Dark Tides
    Dark Tides
    Ebook96 pages1 hour

    Dark Tides

    By Adele Cosgrove-Bray

    5/5

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    About this ebook

    A collection of thirteen short fantasy stories and one poem by Adele Cosgrove-Bray.

    Nightmares from ancient myths glide through our thoroughly modern world. When selkies, faeries, old gods and young mortals rub shoulders, tensions quickly flare.

    Terrifying watchers, devious lovers, mischief makers, dangerous business partners - you will meet them all in "Dark Tides".

    Also includes book club questions.

    About the stories…

    "Liar": Can you separate fact from fantasy in these words from a born liar?

    "New Year's Day": Tom had always known that Louise would leave him. That's what selkies do. So why did he marry her?

    "Snack Time": A chance conversation has surprising consequences in this chilling tale which introduces Fabian, from the novel of the same name.

    "Rebirth": After the closing of one door and before the opening of another, there is a dark journey to be made.

    "Swap": Learn why the tidal River Dee never returned to the harbour at Parkgate in Wirral, in this tale of the notorious Caldy fae.

    "The Four Seasons": A whimsical exploration the generation gap and levitation.

    "The Princess Cave": An elderly mother reminisces about her encounter with the selkies of the Dee Estuary.

    "School": Mischief heralds unforeseen changes in this science-fantasy tale of two very different schools.

    "Song of Earth": Ancient archetypes run riot through this, the only poem in Dark Tales.

    "Punch": For everyone who views office parties with a sense of impending dread.

    "Food": When four schoolboys play truant, they bite off more than they can chew in this tale of the Caldy fae.

    "The Solution": An artist's models proved unreliable until a solution was found.

    "Clara's Wristwatch": Childhood can be a magical time, but some games lead to danger as Clara discovers in this contemporary faerie tale.

    "Watcher": The terror which dragged Joanne to the brink of insanity returns. What will it take to get her attention?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAdele Cosgrove-Bray
    Release dateSep 21, 2011
    ISBN9781466052024
    Dark Tides
    Author

    Adele Cosgrove-Bray

    Adele Cosgrove-Bray is a writer and artist. Her writing has been widely published traditionally in magazines and anthologies, and she has also explored self-publishing. Her Artisan-Sorcerer novels have drawn an impressive cult following. Other activities include photography, gardening and walking with her dogs through the ancient woodlands of the Wirral peninsula in England.

    Read more from Adele Cosgrove Bray

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    • 5/5
      Nightmares from ancient myths glide through our modern world. When selkies, faeries, old gods and young mortals rub shoulders, tensions quickly flare. Terrifying watchers, devious lovers, mischief makers, dangerous business partners - you will meet them all in the thirteen stories and one poem found in Dark Tides.

    Book preview

    Dark Tides - Adele Cosgrove-Bray

    tmp_befdd72510ef21bc30a083c1416dce90_RTFcMP_html_m24aa2a52.jpg

    DARK TIDES

    A Collection of Short Fantasy Fiction

    By

    Adele Cosgrove-Bray

    Smashwords Edition

    *******

    Dark Tides

    A Collection of Short Fantasy Fiction

    Copyright Adele Cosgrove-Bray, 2011.

    Author's website: http://adelecosgrove-bray.blogspot.com/

    Smashwords Edition License Notes

    This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with, or if it was not purchased for your use only then you should return it to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

    All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. The right of Adele Cosgrove-Bray to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

    *******

    Table of Contents

    Liar

    New Year's Day

    Snack Time

    Rebirth

    Swap

    The Four Seasons

    The Princess Cave

    School

    Punch

    Food

    The Solution

    Clara's Wristwatch

    Watcher

    Book Club Questions

    Dedication

    This collection of short stories is dedicated to my husband Richard, who has always been supportive of my writing; and also to members of Riverside Writers.

    *******

    Liar

    I am a born liar. As a child, it was easier than telling the truth when people posed probing questions about my thoughts or why I was talking to myself. I’d tell them I was playing a game. This was a lie but the truth only confused them, and then I’d be accused of lying anyway--or of being over-imaginative, or a touch too weird.

    That was rich, coming from them. Adults told lies all the time and insisted we children believe them unquestioningly if we wanted to be considered good. Good to them meant obedient, submissive to unwritten laws which sent them scurrying to boring jobs where they toiled until frailty stole their usefulness as drones. That seemed their fate, their sole purpose in the hidden scheme of things, but they stubbornly refused to acknowledge this, preferring lies about freedom of choice and social aspirations. The most they could aspire to was to become a wealthy corpse.

    But I was born amongst them and knew it wise to blend in. I soon learned not to discuss metaphysics with infant school teachers or to reveal that I knew their thoughts from the energy they constantly expelled, each human body a complex transformer of meat and grain to the finer fuel which I later learned to harvest.

    I had few companions as a child, choosing just one or two from the screeching, chattering throng. Occasionally others tried to befriend me but soon found I had little use for them. The games which absorbed them meant nothing to me; and in this respect I have not changed. Besides, I wasn’t lonely. How could I be, with the friends who filled my dreams?

    And such dreams they were… Far more vivid than so-called real life, which is merely a grey shadow of that other place, that other dimension where I spent so much time as a child, nurtured and fed by companions unseen by anyone else. Usually, anyway. Sometimes my sister would complain of dark silhouettes gliding through our home, or of figures seen at the corner of her eye, or of multiple voices whose conversation would cease the moment her presence was detected. Her reports merely attracted accusations of attention-seeking and the scorn of those whose undeveloped sensory skills denied them experience of such things.

    On my fourteenth birthday, one whom I’d known seemingly forever walked into my dream and changed everything. I knew little of adult themes beyond the blushing mechanical explanations of my mother’s, yet I was carried into an ecstasy far exceeding pleasures found since in the arms of any human lover. I reminded him of my youth, and he replied that in earlier eras I would have already been married. He spoke as one who had witnessed a parade of centuries.

    Months might pass, then he would return. And so visitations continued as years became decades, as to him time possessed no meaning--yet I lived in an agony of confusion, pulled one way by human concepts of reality and pulled another by the strength of my own experiences.

    And of course I also took human lovers, who never really touched my heart. How could they? Their souls felt thin.

    Whole libraries I devoured in search of answers; whole philosophies--and found only awe-filled superstitions or dark psychological dismissals. Their libraries are ink on dust.

    The shadows of my room parted for his smile, and holding out his hands to catch mine he teased my denial of everything I already knew. Shimmering and perfect, he is; some eight feet tall, with crimson hair flowing over his starlight skin; far more beautiful than any human clay--and even this merely a form he sometimes chooses to take, one which pleases us both.

    His name is John; one of his names, anyway. He is no more human than I. Others like us walk amongst the human herd, lost or hidden within their heaving masses. We seek the lost ones and bond with those we find, with those who are receptive to their inheritance as the sons and daughters of rebellious angels.

    I told you I’m a born liar, didn’t I?

    *******

    New Year's Day

    She had left him.

    Tom McVeagh had always known that his wife would leave, taking some or all of their children with her.

    Her wardrobe still burst with clothing. None of her shoes were missing, not even the beaded moccasins she adored. Her Gucci handbag lay neatly on the Lloyd Loom chair, her purse round with money. He’d always been generous with her, providing for her as if she had been a child rather than a grown woman. Yet hadn’t she been childlike in so many enchanting, infuriating ways? Hadn’t she treated their hard-earned possessions as little more than playthings?

    She had tidied the house before leaving. An evening meal had been prepared. Any fallen needles beneath the tinsel-gowned pine tree had been swept away. Even the ironing had been finished and folded, and Louise had loathed this task above all others.

    A faint trace of dry golden-brown sand had blown in from the French doors which opened onto an elevated teak deck, whose rail was festooned with multicoloured Xmas lights. Louise had spent hours out there, even in winter when wild winds screamed down the mouth of the Dee. Her long, sleek hair would be streaming behind her like kelp in a storm while, with one thin hand holding down the shuddering easel, she’d paint breathtaking seascapes in watercolours. Their walls were adorned with her paintings. Every minute mood of the ever-changing sea was captured captivatingly, its constant shifts of light and shadow, its myriad of greys, greens and silvery-blues, its sparkling delicacy and merciless wrath.

    Tom stepped onto the deck, and wished that Louise could have loved him even half as much as she adored the ocean. Goodness knows he’d tried his absolute best to provide every material comfort Louise either needed

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