Story Excerpts

Death and the Gorgon
by Greg Egan

When the vault in the abandoned coal mine collapsed, it took four days for the engineers to complete their inspection and certify that it was safe for law enforcement personnel to enter the site. Beth drove out from town with her deputy, Ken Osgood, and the county medical examiner, Helen Myers.

Vitrosophy had bought the mine eleven years before, and though their business had attracted a degree of notoriety at the time, Beth couldn’t recall the company generating any kind of fuss during her tenure as sheriff. In the days since the cave-in, she’d gone over all the original applications and permits, and everything seemed to have been done by the book.  READ MORE

 

Burning Grannies
by Rory Harper

In the long ago, I sometimes imagined that I perceived half-solid phantoms moving across the landscape, sometimes alone, sometimes in groups. They looked vaguely humanoid, their outlines wavering like those of the immaterial structures that intrude upon our world. Nobody but me saw them.

I haven’t seen them for many years.  READ MORE