Think Yourself Lucky

Cover art by Pete Von Sholly.

I scurry up the ladder to tug at his ankles. This time he can’t keep his cry to himself. As I dislodge one of his feet from the rung they’re desperate to stay on, he lunges upwards to clutch at the gutter. I’m down the ladder in a moment, and in another I’ve snatched it away. It clatters at full length on the concrete as its owner dangles from the flimsy gutter. “Help,” he screams. “Look what he’s done. Christ, someone help.” He’s saying more than he needs to, as so many of them do. You’d think they’ve taken a vow to use up all the oxygen they can, but he won’t for much longer. I watch him struggle to haul himself up and find a handhold on the roof. His hand slips off the wet tiles, and the gutter emits a creak that sounds as if it’s splintering. I might enjoy watching him dangle and wave his helpless legs for however many seconds he has left...

David Botham just wants a quiet ordinary life — his job at the travel agency, his relationship with his girlfriend Stephanie. He doesn’t want to be a writer, and he certainly doesn’t think he’s one. The online blog that uses a title he once thought up has nothing to do with him. He has no idea who is writing it or where they get their information about a series of violent deaths in Liverpool. If they’re murders, how can the killer go unseen even by the security cameras? Perhaps David won’t know until they come too close to him — until he can’t ignore the figure from his past that is catching up with him. Perhaps denying it isn’t just the worst thing he can do but fatal...

In Ramsey Campbell and the Twenty-First-Century Weird Tale Richard Bleiler argues that Campbell has brought the new century into supernatural fiction. Following The Grin of the Dark and The Seven Days of Cain, Think Yourself Lucky finds new demons online. But perhaps they are ourselves...