David Nickle, the Stoker-award-winning horror writer, has just posted a bunch of his short stories to his website under a Creative Commons license. Dave's one of my favorite horror writers — we workshopped together when I lived in Toronto — and these stories are some of his best (included in the lot is Swamp Witch and the Tea-Drinking Man, a story I liked so much that I bought it for Tesseracts 11, the Canadian sf/f/horror anthology I just co-edited with Holly Phillips).
Swamp witch rode her dragonfly into town Saturday night, meaning to see old Albert Farmer one more time. Albert ran the local smoke and book, drove a gleaming red sports car from Italy, and smiled a smile to run an iceberg wet. Many suspected he might be the Devil's kin and swamp witch allowed as that may have been so; yet whether he be Devil or Saint, swamp witch knew Albert Farmer to be the kindest man in the whole of Okehole County. Hadn't he let her beat him at checkers that time? Didn't he smile just right? Oh yes, swamp witch figured she'd like to keep old Albert Farmer awhile and see him this night.
That in the end she would succeed at one and fail at the other was a matter of no small upset to swamp witch; for among the burdens they carry, swamp witches are cursed with foresight, and this one could see endings clearer than anything else. Not that it ever did her much good; swamp witch could no more look long at an ending than she'd spare the blazing sun more than a glance.
