The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories: Two by James D. Jenkins

Author:James D. Jenkins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Valancourt Books
Published: 2021-10-10T00:00:00+00:00

Translated from the Icelandic by Larissa Kyzer

Jayaprakash Satyamurthy

Shelter from the Storm

Jayaprakash Satyamurthy burst onto the weird fiction scene in 2014 with his debut collection, a chapbook entitled Weird Tales of a Bangalorean, which has attracted wide acclaim from readers and critics. Christopher Slatsky called it ‘reminiscent of Hearn and M. R. James’ while also drawing parallels to ‘the lingering dread of Ligotti, the haunting subtlety of Aickman’. Satyamurthy describes his own tales as being based on a sort of ‘mythos which evokes the history, folklore and urban legends of the city where I live’, namely Bangalore, a city of some eight million people in southern India. But though this author has his many admirers, his body of work is not yet a large one, so we’re sure that readers will eagerly welcome ‘Shelter from the Storm’, his first new tale in some time.

2003. you’re at work, at the second job you’ve ever had. You finish up around 8 p.m. as usual, head down, buy a cigarette at the corner shop, suck down three drags before it starts raining and you have to scuttle for shelter. You find an inch of space under an awning, the fumes of your cigarette mingling with strangers’ breath, with the acrid reek from someone’s beedi, with someone else’s cigarette smoke. It’s close quarters and little comfort. A gust of wind blows the droplets closer to you. Too close. You want to go home. You hail a passing autorickshaw. Two, three autos ignore you. The fourth stops. You run up to it, blurt your destination to the driver. He demands a fare you find unacceptable. You curse him. He laughs, rides away. Getting wet, getting angry, feeling tired and hopeless, you return to the awning but your space has been taken. Shrugging, giving up the idea of getting home – home to your small flat, your cramped bachelor pad – you head back into the rain, head down, hands in pockets, cigarette long since discarded, your nice office-casual outfit drenched, you striding to the pub down the road. The one you’d planned not to spend another night in, but any port in a storm . . .

Half an hour later. A mug of Kingfisher Lager gripped in your fist, another cigarette burned three-fourths of the way down, you’re starting to dry out, to feel better. Someone slides in beside you, sits down on the next stool. A slightly older guy, short hair, chin beard, big, watchful eyes, sweatshirt, jeans. He orders a mug, pulls out his cigarette carton. Offers you a cigarette. You pull out one of your own instead, but accept a light from him, the flame from his blue plastic lighter starting up between you like a sudden shared secret.

Hours later, you’re chatting, laughing. The music is good: Chicago blues. A few other drinkers, a few other refugees from the city scrum, have joined the two of you. Some you know, some you don’t. You all work in more or less the same

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