Author: Chris

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Something in the Air: New Story in Kaleidotrope Magazine

Thrilled to make my debut in the latest edition of Kaleidotrope Magazine, with a story called “Something in the Air.”

The story – and the whole magazine – is free to read online here. The magazine is well worth your time.

The story features an unfortunate linguist tasked with investigating the alien markings on a mysterious ancient slab retrieved from beneath the Antarctic. All other scientific tests having failed, the linguist tries to decipher what appears to be writing inscribed into the surface of the slab. But the message on the monolith contains a surprise that has a dramatic impact on the linguist, and through him the rest of the world.

There’s a story behind the story. It takes place at Porton Down, the UK’s chemical and biological research facility in south west England. Many years ago, I was lucky enough to visit Porton Down. Not because my work had anything to do with chemical or biological weapons (it did not!), but because I had met a senior official from Porton Down on a training course, and he organised the visit for a number of us. It was a memorable and fascinating day, including an outing to look at the UK’s stock of decommissioned chemical weapons (not as grand as it sounds – it was a cattle shed with pallets holding mainly rusty World War One gas shells that had been found over the years).

Continue reading “Something in the Air: New Story in Kaleidotrope Magazine”
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The Past Is Not Past: A Manifesto

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

— William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun

The bones of the past

In a years-ago job interview, I was surprised when an interviewer picked up on the reference at the bottom of my CV to writing fiction.

“Tell us about these ghost stories,” he said.

Unprepared, I muttered something mock-profound about ghost stories being a metaphor for the way the past affects the present. It seemed to suffice: I got the job.

Someone once asked me why so many of my stories are concerned with the way actions have consequences over time, memories persist, and the bones of the past poke through into the present.

Things happen. People make choices. Relationships end. Political decisions are made. People die. But their consequences don’t end there.

I studied history at university and have retained a fascination with the way the past affects the present. If you know where to look, the present is full of remnants of decisions and experiences from decades or centuries ago. Buildings, institutions, borders, traditions, memorials, family stories, even apparently ordinary places contain layers of earlier lives.

If the past could speak

When I started writing fiction, it was natural to ask what would happen if those buried layers of the past could speak to us.

My first published story, On The Fishermen’s Path*, was essentially a ghost story. I have often returned to the theme. Ghosts are quite literally the past refusing to remain past. In truth, I’m less interested in ghost than the question: What happens when the past has unfinished business with the present?

Actions have consequences

I don’t just write ghost stories. Most are science fiction. At first glance, history, ghost stories and science fiction look like very different interests. But what connects them is my fascination with the way the past continues to exert pressure on the present.

The common thread is consequence across time.

That fascination looks different in science-fiction clothing. My stories have explored grief and the power of memory; time travel and alternative realities; technological or scientific changes whose consequences unfold later; choices that produce unexpected futures.

I never consciously tried to express that theme through my fiction. But when I look back, I can see it recurring.

In Sort Code, a couple find themselves bounced in and out of different periods of the past. In When I Close My Eyes, the first astronaut on Titan is haunted by memories of his dead wife. Fifty-One puts a timecop from the future into wartime London, where falling in love forces him to choose between changing the future and letting someone die. In Vincent’s Penny, Sebastian is rescued as a boy from a bleak life of poverty and abuse by a mysterious, powerful stranger, who grooms Sebastian for a very dark and dangerous form of “greatness”—one that weaves through time from the sixteenth century to Blitz-era London.

Other stories have approached the idea through alternate realities, grief, memory, or the consequences of choices made long ago. Perhaps this is why I keep coming back to ghosts, even when I’m ostensibly writing science fiction.

And back to ghosts

It’s probably no accident, then, that my next novel is a ghost story.

The Wrong Ghost takes the idea in a particularly literal direction: darkness from the past intrudes upon a family in the present. Someone thinks they are being haunted. They are, but that’s not the biggest problem.

The novel grew out of a 2013 story, The Other Woman**, that stuck with me, and was given wings by the discovery of the history of a house near mine, with a sad story attached.

Ghosts, history and stories about alternate realities all allow us to ask the same question in different ways:

How much of the past are we really able to leave behind?

That question has been following me for a long time.

*On The Fishermen’s Path, Pan Book of Horror, 1986

**The Other Woman, Urban Occult anthology, Anachron Press, 2013

If you’d like to explore this theme, and others, sign up below for my monthly newsletter.

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New Story: The Last Lighthouse Keeper

It’s a little way off, but contract’s been signed, so…

Sale klaxon!

My briny horror story, “The Last Lighthouse Keeper” will be published (sometime, not sure…) by horror podcast Tales to Terrify.

The last couple of stories I had on TTT were read by the excellent Matt Dovey. You can still listen to them (and hundreds of other great stories) absolutely free. Check out the Tales to Terrify website.

I’ll post more when the story is nearer to publication.

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“The Physics of a Gunshot” now free to read

My (admittedly nasty) story “The Physics of a Gunshot” was published in Trollbreath Magazine a few months ago.

Just to update – as a summer treat, the magazine has now generously made the story free to read online.

You can find (and – ahem – “enjoy”) it here: https://magazine.trollbreath.com/the-physics-of-a-gunshot/

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New Story: The Physics of a Gunshot

Good as the magazine is, there’s nothing attractive about the title “Trollbreath.” I mean, I’ve never knowingly met a troll. But I’m imagining their breath would be challenging.

So, maybe it’s fitting that the first story of mine they’ve picked up (out now in Issue 7) is suitably nasty. It’s called “The Physics of a Gunshot.”

As editor Jennifer Reynolds puts it, the story is a dark one, which “takes us through time in the final agonizing moment of immortality.” A final moment in which the deperate main character – who has lived a long life but at a terrible cost – tries to end it before he is forced to pass on the curse to someone else.

There are a bunch of really strong stories in the magazine, and I’m pleased to be included in such good company. You can get a copy here.

To whet your appetitie, here’s a taster:

The Physics of a Gunshot

By Chris Barnham

When Anya wakes up, I’m beside the bed. Her eyes go wide when she sees the gun.

A Smith and Wesson M&P Shield: steel barrel, polymer grip, twenty ounce. Best-selling self-defense pistol on the market. That’s the US market; it’s harder to get hold of in Italy. But here it is.

In my hand.

Where I mustn’t think about it.

“What are you doing?” Anya says.

“I won’t hurt you.”

“Is that loaded?”

“Ignore it. Talk about something else.”

“Like what?”

“Anything,” I say. “Childhood pets. Your parents. How we met.”

***

I was staying in Siracusa, Sicily. I’d been restless – pacing streets once trod by Archimedes and Cicero, searching passing faces as if looking for something lost. At the Roman amphitheatre, Anya stood at a railing, consulting a guidebook, wearing a dress the colour of peach flesh. Without conscious thought, I stood three yards upwind. Hair prickled the back of my neck, saliva flooded my mouth. She dropped the book and put a hand to her forehead, eyes blinking, nostrils flared.

Emerald does this pheromone thing, and it’s like they’re drugged. In the early years I accepted it – took advantage of it – kidded myself it was my natural magnetism for women. Sometimes it was harmless. We had a fling and went our separate ways. Other times…well, I didn’t like what Emerald made me do.

When I met Anya, this hadn’t happened in a decade. It was a bad sign.

“No good?” I nodded at the guidebook.

“It’s okay,” she said. “Some gruesome stuff about the tank in the centre of the amphitheatre collecting blood from the games.”

“Things were brutal back then.” 

“Are you staying in town?” Her eyes drifted, unfocused, but her hand was on my arm.

“Actually, I am.”

***

Anya’s still in bed, I’m in a chair. My face is filmed with sweat and I shake with the effort of keeping my attention on her and away from the gun in my hand.   

The gun’s hollow points have a cavity in the nose, to cause expansion on impact, meaning more trauma to whatever the bullet hits. There’s a trade-off: more air resistance, a small loss of accuracy and increased susceptibility to wind drift.

This will not be a problem if it’s fired an inch from my head.

***

I pitied Anya. I knew how it felt – that overwhelming surge of interest and desire, the sucking mental vacuum as thoughts fled. It happened to me when I met Eliza Batho…..

To read more, of this and other super stories, check out Trollbreath Magazine.

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The Length of Coastal Miles – Pembrokeshire Coast Path, Part One

“If you are in a bad mood go for a walk. If you are still in a bad mood, go for another walk.” – Hippocrates

I’m with Hippocrates on this. Whenever life gets oppressive nothing works as well as lacing up the boots and getting out of London for a day of solitary walking.

Occasionally, I’m lucky enough to carve out the time to do something more substantial. You can read my account of walking the 630-mile South West Coast Path here. (I can’t claim it’s as redemptive and life affirming as Raynor Winn’s The Salt Path – much in the news recently – but it has the same scenery and weather, and more pubs. And is all true.)

Having walked the coast of south western England, I was stuck for an encore. I toyed with inland trails, notably the Wessex Ridgeway, but that was tame after the glory of the Cornish and Devonian seascapes. So I returned to the coast, and with two old friends I recently hiked the first half of the Pembrokeshire Coast Path, in Wales.

I don’t intend to blog about it day by day, but here are a few lessons learned:

1. Coastal Miles Are Longer Than Inland Miles

I should know this by now. A 12-mile hike in the Surrey Hills is a different proposition to the same distance on the switchback terrain of a hilly path that winds in and out, following the eccentric line of our rugged coast. I learned this lesson repeatedly in Cornwall, but I keep forgetting it.

Day One in Wales was an example. We set out from Cardigan and had walked two miles before we even picked up the Path at St Dogmaels. After that, it was 17 miles of what the guide described as “challenging” walking – lung-bursting climbs, followed by knee-straining scrambles back down to sea level. Rinse and repeat. On the hottest day of the year so far.

We were able to cool off with a lunchtime swim at Ceibwr Bay, one of many attractive, deserted beaches. But the day got hotter and hotter, and the walking got tougher and tougher. I had packed four bottles of water. By mid-afternoon I had finished them all.

The views were fabulous, but I would happily have stopped after 13 or 14 miles, instead of trudging on, slowly shrivelling in the sun.

At last, we reached the cafe at Newport Sands. My order consisted of a cold can of water, a diet Coke, and an ice cream. All at once. And it wasn’t enough. Half an hour later, we reached our destination at the Castle Inn, where I had a pint of icy lime and soda and copious beer. And still i was thirsty.

2. Short Cuts Are Acceptable

I walked with two of my oldest and best friends. This in itself made the trip a pleasure, but there are drawbacks. Some people are a little more, um, fundamentalist about walking a trail. I knew the first day was going to be hard. There was scope for cutting it shorter at the start by taking a bus or cutting across the first headland. I was keen to do both but was overruled. After that, there was no option but to trudge every mile of the coastline.

The rigours of the first day meant we were all tired and sore next day. It was an easier trek, with a cooler start, but even so, the day became increasingly hot and the coastline was tediously wiggly, with not so much climbing as day one, but more than enough. One of our party had started with a knee problem, and this became progressively worse through day two. By the time we plodded into Fishguard, he was finding it hard to walk, and indeed on subsequent days he took buses to meet us along the Path.

This was obviously Not Good. But there was one silver lining – the impact of overdoing it on the first day meant that those of us still walking became increasingly cavalier about the route. On day three, confronted with a 20-mile trek, we junked any ambition of walking round Strumble Head and instead cut across the headland, saving at least five miles and allowing us the added bonus of a mid-morning stop at a splendid cafe at the Melin Tregwynt mill.

After that, we had an easy stroll down a wooded lane to the sea at Aber Mawr, where coastal walking resumed, with the familiar routine of steep ascents and descents. For which we had more in the tank than if we’d pedantically sweated round the coast.

3. Remember Rest Days

The third lesson flows from the first two. If you’re overly ambitious in your planning, you’ll soon tire of the walk, whatever the beauty of the scenery. We did five consecutive days of walking, partly because we had to cram the trip into our schedules. It was notable that each day we walked a shorter distance, culminating in a bus trip on day five that shaved off the first six or seven miles.

We reached Broad Haven by lunchtime, way too early to check into our hostel. But by this point, we were sufficiently leg-weary that any shortening felt like a good thing and the stunning beauty of Whitesands Bay was easy to take for granted.

Note to self: in future, programme in a rest day – or at least a very easy day – every third or fourth. Enjoy the walk rather than becoming fixated on simply completing it. You may never come this way again.