Cormac McCarthy meets The Twilight Zone . A modern-day Hawthorne, Evenson is a writer people will claim they discovered early. A woman falling out of sync with the world, a king’s servant hypnotized by his murderous horse, a transplanted ear with a mind of its own—the characters in these stories live as interlopers in a world shaped by mysterious disappearances and unfathomable discrepancies between the real and imagined. Evenson, master of literary horror, presents his most far-ranging collection to date, exploring how humans struggle to persist in an increasingly unreal world. Haunting, gripping, and psychologically fierce, these tales illuminate a dark and unsettling side of humanity. Praise for Windeye A Time Out New York Best Book of 2012 “Evenson’s thrillingly unnerving books have won awards for mystery, horror, and literary fiction; this is work that’s scary on a deep level.” — Reader’s Digest “The fact that Evenson can move from parody to paranoia and humor to horror in the span of three paragraphs is a testament to his ability as a storyteller.” — The Brooklyn Rail “Ranging from feudal to post-apocalyptic, [ Windeye ] contains some of the best uncanny and horror writing to come out of New England since Stephen King published The Stand in 1978.” — ForeWord “Imagine Beckett’s Murphy or Molloy lost, walking around in a Poe tale, then read these stories to find out why Jonathan Lethem calls Evenson ‘one of the treasures of American story writing.’” — Shelf Awareness “Characterized by building suspense and dread, these tales often have a folkloric feel far removed from the commonplace.” — Booklist “[ Windeye is] fiction that, for all its seeming insubstantiality, is weighty, solid, and provocative.” — Locus Magazine “Laughter can be an effective tool of the horror writer, and Evenson is its finest practitioner.” — Time Out Chicago “Brian Evenson is one of the treasures of American story writing, a true successor both to the generation of Coover, Barthelme, Hawkes and Co., but also to Edgar Allan Poe.” —Jonathan Lethem “No one—and I mean no one—is better at excavating the strangeness of our everyday lives.” —Andrew Ervin Praised by Peter Straub for going “furthest out on the sheerest, least sheltered narrative precipice,” Brian Evenson is the recipient of three O. Henry Prizes and has been a finalist for the Edgar Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the World Fantasy Award. He is also the winner of the International Horror Guild Award and the American Library Association’s award for Best Horror Novel, and his work has been named in Time Out New York ’s top books. Windeye Stories By Brian Evenson COFFEE HOUSE PRESS Copyright © 2012 Brian Evenson All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-56689-298-8 Contents Windeye, The Second Boy, The Process, A History of the Human Voice, Dapplegrim, Angel of Death, The Dismal Mirror, Legion, The Moldau Case, The Sladen Suit, Hurlock's Law, Discrepancy, Knowledge, Baby or Doll, The Tunnel, South of the Beast, The Absent Eye, Bon Scott: The Choir Years, Tapadera, The Other Ear, They, The Oxygen Protocol, The Drownable Species, Grottor, Anskan House, CHAPTER 1 Windeye 1 They lived, when he was growing up, in a simple house, an old bungalow with a converted attic and sides covered in cedar shake. In the back, where an oak thrust its branches over the roof, the shake was light brown, almost honey. In the front, where the sun struck it full, it had weathered to a pale gray, like a dirty bone. There, the shingles were brittle, thinned by sun and rain, and if you were careful you could slip your fingers up behind some of them. Or at least his sister could. He was older and his fingers were thicker, so he could not. Looking back on it, many years later, he often thought it had started with that, with her carefully working her fingers up under a shingle as he waited and watched to see if it would crack. That was one of his earliest memories of his sister, if not the earliest. His sister would turn around and smile, her hand gone to knuckles, and say, "I feel something. What am I feeling?" And then he would ask questions. Is it smooth? he might ask. Does it feel rough? Scaly? Is it cold-blooded or warm-blooded? Does it feel red? Does it feel like its claws are in or out? Can you feel its eye move? He would keep on, watching the expression on her face change as she tried to make his words into a living, breathing thing, until it started to feel too real for her and, half giggling, half screaming, she whipped her hand free. There were other things they did, other ways they tortured each other, things they both loved and feared. Their mother didn't know anything about it, or if she did she didn't care. One of them would shut the other inside the toy chest and pretend to leave the room, waiting there silently until the one in the chest couldn't stand it any longer and started to yell. That