Caitlin Kiernan - Alabaster

As for the big man in the Monte Carlo, well, one meets strange people on the highway late at night, and sometimes they don't smell so great. It's the silver eyes that still bother me, from time to time. A couple days after the interrupted trip to Jefferson and Woodbine Cemetery, Death's Little Sister got together in the East Athens attic we'd converted into a practice space and, at some point, someone finally mentioned the odd events after the show. I think we'd all been avoiding talking about that night-the light, the Monte Carlo and its driver-and I don't remember who finally brought it up. I also don't remember who suggested that the silver eyes might have been a dog's eyes, that there might have been a dog in the car with the man, which also might have helped explain the odor. But I do remember how that suggestion upset Mike, and he insisted that there hadn't been a dog, just a kid sitting up front, and that there had been something "all wrong" about the kid, but he wouldn't elaborate, and we didn't press him.

I think that, all those years later, when I sat down to write the short story that grew into the novella In The Garden of Poisonous Flowers, I'd hoped that by burying some of the events of that strange night in fiction I might divest them of at least a modicum of their weirdness. But it doesn't seem to have worked. Lonely country roads still make me nervous now, and they never did before. I watch for lights in the sky more than I once did, and dread the glint of silver eyes from the windows of passing cars.

Caitlín R. Kiernan

9 January 2002

Liberty House, Birmingham

For the other three-quarters of Death's Little Sister: Barry Dillard (guitars), Michael Graves (bass), and Shelly Ross (keyboards).

Alabaster is Caitlín R. Kiernan's fourth collection of short fiction in only six years, following Tales of Pain and Wonder, From Weird and Distant Shores, and To Charles Fort, With Love. She has also published six novels, including Silk, Threshold, Low Red Moon, Murder of Angels, and Daughter of Hounds. Trained as a vertebrate paleontologist, Caitlín now lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her partner, Kathryn, her cat, Sophie, thousands of books and fossils, and her winter white dwarf hamster, Chiana Marshmallow Pipsqueak.

Eisner-award nominee Ted Naifeh has been working in comics and related fields since 1990. His work includes Gloomcookie, How Loathsome, Courtney Crumrin and the Night Things, Courtney Crumrin and the Coven of Mystics, Courtney Crumrin in the Twilight Kingdom, Polly and the Pirates, and the manga Unearthly. Ted lives in San Francisco with his girlfriend Kelly.