Neil Gaiman: Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances

About the book

‘We are all wearing masks. That is what makes us interesting. These are stories about those masks, and the people we are underneath them.’ Neil Gaiman, writing from a cabin in the dark woods.

Make sure you secure your own mask before reading. Before being transported to worlds filled with witches, watchers and big black bees, with deathless Kin and pirate girls, with things that prowl in the darkness beyond the circle fire, to find the Shadder lurking at your journey’s end. But then what happens? There’s always something waiting for you. There’s always more. Just keep turning the pages.

‘We each have our little triggers.’

Literary alchemy from ‘a writer of rare perception and endless imagination’ (William Gibson), TRIGGER WARNING is a cornucopia of storytelling: horror and ghost stories, science fiction and fairy tales, fabulism and poetry. It will open your eyes to the inexhaustible supply of darkness around you, the magic and the monsters, the myths and the miracles, and to finding truths in the most extraordinary of places.

About Neil Gaiman

© Kimberly Butler

Neil Gaiman is the author of over thirty acclaimed books and graphic novels for adults and children, including AMERICAN GODS, STARDUST, CORALINE and THE GRAVEYARD BOOK. His most recent novel for adults, THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE was highly acclaimed, appeared on the hardback and paperback Sunday Times bestseller lists and won several awards, including being voted Book of the Year in the National Book Awards 2013: ‘Some books you read. Some books you enjoy. But some books just swallow you up, heart and soul’ Joanne Harris.

The recipient of numerous literary honours, Neil Gaiman’s work has been adapted for film, television and radio. He has written scripts for Doctor Who, collaborated with authors and illustrators including Terry Pratchett, Dave McKean and Chris Riddell, and THE SANDMAN is established as one of the classic graphic novels. As George R R Martin says: ‘There’s no one quite like Neil Gaiman.’

Originally from England, Neil Gaiman now lives in America.

Praise for Neil Gaiman

OPEN YOUR MIND TO ONE OF THE BRIGHTEST, MOST BRILLIANT WRITERS OF OUR GENERATION

‘His mind is a dark, fathomless ocean, and every time I sink into it, this world fades, replaced by one far more terrible and beautiful in which I will happily drown’ New York Times Book Review

‘One of the best fabulists of our age’ Financial Times

‘He’s the master of fantasy and realism twisted together’ Hugo Rifkind, Spectator

‘A very fine and imaginative writer’ The Sunday Times

‘A rich imagination . . . and an ability to tackle large themes’ Philip Pullman

‘Gaiman’s achievement is to make the fantasy world seem true’ The Times

‘A power that defies explanation’ Sunday Express

Slots perfectly into the canon of British magical fiction’ New Statesman

‘Fantasy rooted in the darkest corners of reality’ Independent on Sunday

‘Gaiman is a master of fear, and he understands the nature of fairytales’ A S Byatt, Guardian

Copyright © 2015 Neil Gaiman

The right of Neil Gaiman to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

‘Nothing O’Clock’ copyright © 2013 by Neil Gaiman and BBC Worldwide Limited. First published in the collection Doctor Who: 11 Doctors, 11 Stories , published by Puffin. BBC, DOCTOR WHO (world marks, logos and devices), TARDIS, DALEKS, CYBERMAN and K-9 (word marks and devices) are trademarks of the British Broadcasting Corportion and are used under licence. BBC logo © BBC, 1996.

Doctor Who logo © BBC, 2012. Licensed by BBC Worldwide. All rights reserved.

The ‘Credits’ constitute an extension of this copyright page

Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

This Ebook edition was first published by Headline Publishing Group in 2015

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

eISBN: 978 1 4722 1770 7

HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

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London NW1 3BH

www.headline.co.uk

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Contents

Title Page

About the book

About Neil Gaiman

Praise for Neil Gaiman

Copyright Page

Also by Neil Gaiman

Dedication

Introduction

Making a Chair

A Lunar Labyrinth

The Thing About Cassandra

Down to a Sunless Sea

‘The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains . . .’

My Last Landlady

Adventure Story

Orange

A Calendar of Tales

The Case of Death and Honey

The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury

Jerusalem

Click-Clack the Rattlebag

An Invocation of Incuriosity

‘And Weep, Like Alexander’

Nothing O’Clock

Diamonds and Pearls: A Fairy Tale

The Return of the Thin White Duke

Feminine Endings

Observing the Formalities

The Sleeper and the Spindle

Witch Work

In Relig Odhráin

Black Dog

Credits

By Neil Gaiman and published by Headline

American Gods

Stardust

Neverwhere

Smoke and Mirrors

Anansi Boys

Fragile Things

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains (illustrated by Eddie Campbell)

I’m not sure how I wound up with an honourable Hollywood agent who reads books for pleasure but I did, eighteen years ago. He’s still my agent, still honourable, and he still likes short stories best of all. This book of tales is for Jon Levin.

Introduction

I. LITTLE TRIGGERS

There are things that upset us. That’s not quite what we’re talking about here, though. I’m thinking rather about those images or words or ideas that drop like trapdoors beneath us, throwing us out of our safe, sane world into a place much more dark and less welcoming. Our hearts skip a ratatat drumbeat in our chests, and we fight for breath. Blood retreats from our faces and our fingers, leaving us pale and gasping and shocked.

And what we learn about ourselves in those moments, where the trigger has been squeezed, is this: the past is not dead. There are things that wait for us, patiently, in the dark corridors of our lives. We think we have moved on, put them out of mind, left them to desiccate and shrivel and blow away; but we are wrong. They have been waiting there in the darkness, working out, practising their most vicious blows, their sharp hard thoughtless punches into the gut, killing time until we came back that way.