Following closely on from the recent story on Starship Sofa, my horror story “Ravello Steps” features in the latest podcast from Tales to Terrify. You can download it free from the Tales to Terrify website, or on iTunes.
The story is narrated by Matt Dovey, who did a super job on an earlier story of mine (Looking After Shaun Tales to Terrify 336). He does an equally fine job this time, too. Thanks, Matt. You can check out Matt’s own writing, and other news at https://mattdovey.com/
Ravello Steps first appeared in the UK’s premier horror magazine, Black Static, which is well worth subscribing to. If you like Ravello Steps, you might like my dark fantasy novel, Among the Living, with which it shares a significant amount of story DNA (and quite a few words!). You can find Among the Living here.
Here’s a taster for the story (but you really need to hear Matt reading it!)
RAVELLO STEPS
“You look like shit.”
I cleaned myself up in the room and rinsed my mouth with some whisky from the mini-bar, but I obviously show signs of the afternoon.
“Like you care.”
I get myself a Peroni and sit at Elizabeth’s table. She pushes her bag under the table with her foot. She looks fantastic again; dark hair pulled back and tied with a jewelled clip, lips full and dark, as if she has eaten cherries. This morning’s faint lines around her eyes are gone and she is spray-painted again with youth.
“Seriously.” A cool hand on my wrist. “What’s wrong?”
“When you left this morning, I thought maybe you were gone for good.” The hotel bar has a view over the bay and through the window behind Elizabeth, light is fast draining from the sky, turning the sea below a deep impossible blue.
“I decided to take a drive.”
The coast road twisted like a lunatic ribbon along the cliff tops. I barely noticed the sumptuous views of sapphire sea and small towns perched above the water. My mind was full of Elizabeth’s bizarre behaviour, and the way she walked out before breakfast.
The other times, back in London, it was easier to ignore what she was doing. In a city of millions of strangers she could disappear for days while I lost myself in work. She didn’t say where she went and I didn’t ask. Over the years, whenever she came back it was always good between us. She returned refreshed and revived, always with enough energy for both of us to apply jump leads to our flagging romance.
Here in Italy it was different. It brought into focus the things I could ignore back home. The gaps in our relationship, the lack of common ground, the absence of family or friends or anyone who could tell me what she did and where she was before I met her, or what she did those times when she disappeared without explanation.
I stopped in a small town called Atrani and sat on the grey beach of volcanic sand. High crags on either side pinned the town beneath a pale blue vee of sky.
Fifty yards away a woman walked rapidly along the street. It looked like Elizabeth but the glare of sun on windows made it hard to see. The woman turned a corner and disappeared. I ran up the beach and crossed the road. A narrow street led under an arch into a small square. There was no sign of the woman. To my left a narrow set of stone steps led upwards for a few yards and then disappeared around to the left. A sign on the wall said ‘Ravello Steps’.
Elizabeth had once said something about Ravello, when we were planning the holiday. She spent some time in Italy in her youth, she said. An aunt lived here.
I started to climb the steps.
The story was originally published in the magazine, Devolution Z, in February 2016, and it’s fun to have it pop up again now, in audio form. In it, Shaun comes back from the Far East with some kind of fever, and takes to his bed, with increasingly disturbing consequences for his housemates.