CONTINUED

An Imagination Run Riot

by John Linwood Grant

Consider the confused thought processes involved. The supposed beast has never attacked or taken a human being. There is no reason to think it will ever do anything but steal or molest sheep — a rural habit which has no impact on Hardcastle himself whatsoever. Yet he then invents guilt over the disappearance of Armitage, a local farmer, imagining that the man might well have “been carried off by it into the recesses of the mountains,” by a creature no one has ever seen — probably the least likely option (except in horror stories, of course).

Does Hardcastle then seek out traces of Armitage, or look to the Gap in daylight for signs of struggle, blood, torn clothing? No, he goes out unaccompanied, having made no attempt to get other farmers — his most likely allies to confront a sheep thief — involved; he is armed with a shotgun, to take down a monster whose tracks he himself has said “even an elephant could not have produced.” And he does so under conditions most favourable to the monster but least favourable to himself, waiting there with no backup in “the darkest hour of the night.” That these are also the conditions under which the thing is most likely to appear, blasting away in the dark with a low accuracy shotgun, however heavy the slugs, at a huge, unknown beast hardly seems the wisest plan.

Thus this whole venture seems to be that of a man not entirely of sound mind. He speaks of personal pride and manhood, and yet he is no warrior nor big-game hunter, nor has anyone else charged him with this duty. Tuberculosis is often accompanied by bouts of altered mood — is his physical ill health a contributory factor to this rather mad undertaking? Although its use as a diagnosis was beginning to dwindle by the latter part of the 19th Century, we might be forgiven for considering Hardcastle, by now, to be in the grip of what many would call a monomania — a man with an obsession, an idée fixe … .

WHO IS JOHN?

John Linwood Grant is a professional writer/editor from Yorkshire, UK, who has had some hundred plus stories published in magazines and major anthologies, plus a novel and several novellas. He writes period-set strange tales and contemporary weird fiction. His novel The Assassin’s Coin (IFD) featuring the Edwardian assassin Mr Dry, and the related novel 13 Miller’s Court (with Alan M Clark), won the 2019 Ripperology Books award. A Shirley Jackson Award finalist for his third collection, Where All is Night, and Starless (Trepidatio), his sixth collection, Miss Linwood Entertains (Cathaven Press), was published earlier this year.

Trained as a zoologist and with many years working in mental health services, he has a history of adopting lurchers, making ever-more improbable chutneys, and writing classic detective pastiches for fun. And queer fiction. And stories about slightly psychotic ponies or accident-prone half-elves. But at least he still has his own beard.