The Night Shop

Tales for the Lonely Hours

You may have found it too, down a side-street, in a back lane, up or down some stairs. Open at odd hours, usually after sundown, mostly way past midnight, just a few lights showing. Windows filled with half-seen things, all darkling glints and firefly shimmer, suddenly precious.
You know the kind. You've found one, seen one, dreamed one, imagined it there in the small hours, primed and waiting. You've probably tried to find it again, found it locked, found it gone. Some places never stay.

But who chooses to open in these empty late-night hours, wants to, needs to? What people come to its door when the wind is in the trees, singing in the wires, scattering leaves along the sidewalks?

Forgotten. Overlooked. Waiting. These are the watchwords for such a place. And others. Soon. Believe.

Your chance. Your chance again. You've found it and it's open. The door swings back. The little bell rings. The sound trails off into the night, the wind, forlorn.

At first there's no-one. Then, of course, there is.

"You made it," a voice says, deliciously strange yet strangely familiar. Then there's the smile, what might just be a wink. "So much for a good night's sleep, eh?"

Australia's internationally acclaimed master of horror and dark fantasy, winner of the 2007 International Horror Guild Award for Best Collection, serves up another 18 of his wonderfully disturbing tales of appropriate fear, among them such treasured "Best of" selections as "Two Steps Along the Road," "Nightside Eye" and "Mariners' Round," "Toother," "The Sleepover," and "Dark Me, Night You." This is the kind of sharp intelligent horror others dream of...