Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Harbingers: Dark Tales of Speculative Fiction
    Harbingers: Dark Tales of Speculative Fiction
    Harbingers: Dark Tales of Speculative Fiction
    Ebook72 pages1 hour

    Harbingers: Dark Tales of Speculative Fiction

    By Icy Sedgwick

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    These fifteen tales of the weird and wonderful are collected together for the first time, spanning fantasy, horror, sci fi and speculative fiction. Harbingers is a veritable Cabinet of Curiosities for fans of weird tales! If you enjoy the writing of Neil Gaiman or Ray Bradbury, then you might just see the wonder by strolling through these dark shadows.

    In the title story, 'Harbingers', portentous visitors try to warn a young woman who fails to grasp their importance; a washed-up actress seeks to prolong her pact with a Greek goddess in a hotel bathroom; a porcelain woman awaits the return of her maker on a lonely rooftop; and a Resurrection man rethinks his career choices in Victorian London. 

    Harbingers also includes the pulp adventure tale, One Woman Cure, and a Grey O'Donnell ghost story, A Christmas Ghost Story in the West. You can also get a complimentary copy when you sign up to my mailing list at eepurl.com/ftkoE.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIcy Sedgwick
    Release dateFeb 22, 2016
    ISBN9781524231019
    Harbingers: Dark Tales of Speculative Fiction
    Author

    Icy Sedgwick

    ICY SEDGWICK is part film academic, part writer and part trainee supervillain. Icy dreams of Dickensian London and the Old West. She writes primarily gothic fiction, although she does love a good Western. Find her ebooks, free weekly fiction and other shenanigans at Icy’s Cabinet of Curiosities.

    Read more from Icy Sedgwick

    Related to Harbingers

    Related ebooks

    Horror Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Hair-raising Heirlooms

      Apr 13, 2021

      If you’ve got a spare five minutes, a quick search of internet selling sites will bring up numerous supposedly cursed antiques for sale. ‘Haunted’ objects on offer range from dolls to tea sets, mirrors to watches – and many of the adverts are posted

      4 min read

    • Article

      Paul Tremblay

      Jun 17, 2020

      IT’S ALWAYS BEEN ONE OF MY BIGGEST FEARS that I would live to see the end of everything,” says Paul Tremblay, speaking to SFX from his Massachusetts home in the middle of lockdown. It’s a singularly peculiar time, and a peculiar interview for him to

      3 min read

    • Article

      Trump Derangement Syndrome

      Feb 23, 2023

      Just like stains, some ghosts can prove more stubborn to remove than others. Whereas a quick splash of Holy Water and prayer might suffice to see off most spooks, others require rather more obscure methods of banishment. Yet for sheer oddness, the ef

      6 min read

    • Article

      Garden Magic

      Sep 15, 2019

      I took a step further to meet Horace for health, for love, for a leg up. And at Horace’s everything was gray there with some white accents—and the walls were gray, not paint. They were hung with fabric and he had a gray carpet on the floor. Once, bef

      2 min read

    • Article

      Reading Corner

      Jul 12, 2020

      Could witches actually exist? Are fairy tales not tales at all but relics of a the not-too-distant past? These questions and more are on Roxy’s mind ever since she moved into the Soup Ministry’s servant quarters with her sister Gretel. The Soup Minis

      1 min read

    • Article

      Horrors Of The Past

      Dec 2, 2021

      Horrors Of The Past
      6 min read

    • Article

      Setting the table

      Dec 14, 2020

      Setting the table
      5 min read

    • Article

      Leading Lights Of Horror

      Jun 4, 2020

      The Horror Writers Association (HWA) 2019 Bram Stoker Awards for ‘superior achievements’ in the genre have been awarded as follows: Superior Achievement in a Novel, Coyote Rage, Owl Goingback; First Novel, The Bone Weaver’s Orchard, Sarah Read; Young

      1 min read

    • Article

      Gothic Revival

      Oct 1, 2020

      Gothic Revival
      9 min read

    • Article

      Black Christmas

      Oct 26, 2021

      Black Christmas
      3 min read

    • Article

      An Enchantment Of Lore

      Jan 5, 2022

      Sirens, Selkies and Ghost Ships Dee Dee Chainey & Willow Winsham Batsford 2021 Hb, 192pp, £12.99, ISBN 9781849946599 Wild Gods, World Trees and Werewolves Dee Dee Chainey & Willow Winsham Batsford 2021 Hb, 192pp, £12.99, ISBN 9781849946872 Dee Dee Ch

      4 min read

    • Article

      Hounslow Grail

      Feb 25, 2021

      Hounslow Grail
      1 min read

    • Article

      Cross- Pollination

      Nov 8, 2018

      Cross- Pollination
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Quarantine Bookshelf

      Mar 19, 2021

      The Quarantine Bookshelf
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Primeval Comic Book

      Aug 1, 2017

      The Primeval Comic Book
      8 min read

    • Article

      Follow The Science

      Feb 1, 2024

      Last summer I was credited in two national newspapers for keeping award winning crime writer M.W. Craven out of jail. This was not because of my skills as a solicitor – I’m not one, and Mike was never arrested – but because of advice I gave him about

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Moth Shall Rise Again

      Aug 13, 2020

      The Moth Shall Rise Again
      2 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Harbingers

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Harbingers - Icy Sedgwick

      Foreword

      Twelve of these fifteen stories were originally published in a range of anthologies and have been collected here for your convenience and enjoyment. Three are stories that I think you’ll like. If you enjoy reading this collection, then please consider leaving me a review to help other readers find Harbingers! Have a good read!

      Harbingers

      I never knew if I really saw it, or if I simply imagined it. A body, draped across the low tide of the Thames. Bloated skin shone white against the black mud. Or did it? The train left the scene behind before I could look twice. Yet the newspapers, normally so exuberant about death and depravity, remained silent about any corpses washed up south of the Thames.

      I confided in my best friend.

      You probably just imagined it, said Claire. You have been under a lot of stress at work.

      I nodded over tea and homemade muffins, though I disagreed. Plenty of people have stressful jobs, but they don’t imagine dead bodies.

      My mother put it down to latent morbidity, reminding me of my teenage Goth phase and preference for crime novels. My boyfriend suggested that I mistook a pile of rubbish for a body. I hadn’t had time to look twice, so my brain made up the scene based on the serial killer book I was reading. I liked Patrick’s theory the best. Content that the corpse was just waterborne detritus, I resolved to think of it no more.

      The resolution held firm for three days. On the fourth day, I saw another dead body. This one hung out of the open passenger door of a burned out car, abandoned on waste ground. I saw it from the window of the bus, catching my eye as we pulled up at the traffic lights. I asked the man beside me if he’d seen it too, but all I got was a blank look. The newspapers kept their own counsel about dead bodies found in cars. I couldn’t remember which patch of waste ground it had been; I couldn’t go back to check.

      Claire advised I book a quiet holiday somewhere warm. She recommended a little village near Malaga. She still thought stress overworked my imagination. Patrick thought logically. He asked if maybe I hadn’t seen a body hanging out of the car, but rather I’d seen a dog trying to climb in. My mother threw a fit of hysterics and told me to see a shrink. I promised to book an appointment.

      I forgot to call anyone and three days later, I saw my third dead body. The taxi took me home from a late night at the office, rolling down quiet residential streets as the red numbers flicked higher on the meter. A silhouette of a body hung in the brightly lit upstairs window of a smart townhouse. I should have phoned someone, maybe tried to fetch help. But I didn’t. I said nothing to the driver, knowing he would have seen nothing. I told no one. I didn’t pause to check the newspapers, and the obituaries went unread.

      Two days later, I crossed the road near my flat and saw them all again, this time together. They stood in a row outside the betting shop. A woman; blue veins snaked across her wet and blotchy naked skin. A man; hideously burned, his teeth showing through gaping wounds in his cheek. Another woman; her face swollen and black, an electrical cord embracing her throat.

      I froze.

      I didn’t hear the car horn, or the squeal of brakes. I didn’t feel the impact of two thousand two hundred eighty eight pounds of steel, or the sickening crunch when I hit the tarmac. I didn’t see the growing crowd of morbid onlookers, and I didn’t hear the wail of approaching sirens.

      I did feel three pairs of hands help me to my feet. I thought perhaps I would go with them.

      The Resurrection Men

      Midnight mist swirled around my ankles. I stumbled, my foot caught under a tree root. At least, I hoped it was a tree root. I didn’t want to think what else might grab my foot in a cemetery.

      So what you’re saying is, you won’t steal, you won’t run any doxies, and you won’t get a job. How else do you expect us to make money? asked Will.

      I noticed he didn’t struggle with the sack. Perk of leading a gang, I suppose. We do all the hard work, he gets the glory.

      Well, not this. It’s robbin’ bodies, Will! Diggin’ up graves. It’s not right, replied John.

      I couldn't see him in the gloom but his reedy voice carried on the still air.

      It’s not exactly diggin’ ‘em up when the diggers leave the bloody graves open, is it? said Will.

      "Think about it, John. The

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1