Megan Taylor, "The Therapist's Daughter"

 

Megan Taylor is the author of five dark novels, most recently, The Therapist’s Daughter, an eerie psychological thriller, released from Bloodhound Books in September 2024, and We Wait, her take on a traditional haunted house mystery. Megan’s short stories can be found in her collection, The Woman Under the Ground, and in many other places, including Weird Horror Magazine and GONE: An Anthology of Crime Stories. For more information, please visit her website here. 

About The Therapist’s Daughter, by Megan Taylor

Forgetting is difficult but remembering might be worse …

Caitlin Shaw fled Underton fifteen years ago when her girlfriend was accused of murder, but concerned for her mother’s health, she’s forced to return to the village and face the secrets she thought she’d left behind. As her family starts to unravel, Caitlin’s soon questioning the truth about the tragedy and her girlfriend’s guilt. But if her first love was innocent, could the killer still be out there, watching and waiting, far too close to home?

From The Therapist's Daughter

“Enough,” Jill muttered. “For Christ’s sake, stop.”

She refused to put up with the racket from her daughter’s room any longer. The ceiling was quivering, the whole house bristling, and with her head feeling just as invaded, she stalked out into the hall. But she’d barely mounted the stairs when the girls’ infuriating whoops and laughter erupted into screams.

The noise was dazzling. It sheared the air like knives and Jill’s first instinct was to cover her face. Instead, she broke into a run.

But though she flew up the steps two at a time, as soon as she hit the landing, everything apart from the screaming slowed to a sludgy dreamlike pace. The wallpaper’s roses tumbled lazily past, the deep pile carpet tugged at her heels, and even when she made it, panting, to Caitlin’s door, she felt like she wasn’t keeping up, as if she’d left herself behind. 

Another Jill remained holed up in the living room, still jabbing at the stereo and knocking back her Chardonnay, and still cursing Richard – bloody Richard – for abandoning her. He should have been home hours ago.

Except what was she thinking? Caitlin was behind that door, part of those screams, and coming abruptly awake, Jill grasped hold of the handle and plunged inside, and the darkness was nearly as shocking as the sound. She longed to back away.

David Tregarthen, "Come the Dark Night"

 

David Tregarthen is a writer, singer, accompanist, and tutor. He grew up in the North of England, studied at Oxford (where his novel Come the Dark Night is set), then worked for several years as an academic in the Midlands. In the past year he's taken some time out to travel (where the global pandemic allowed) and pursue his other interests. As a creative writer, he's interested in identity, truth, nuanced queer characters, and what (if anything) makes psychopaths different from the rest of us. Come the Dark Night is his first novel and is published by Bloodhound Books. He can be found on Twitter @davidtregarthen

About Come the Dark Night, by David Tregarthen

In this sophisticated novel of suspense, a killer with a taste for literature lurks in the shadows of Oxford University ...

After a student is found decapitated in the cupola of the Sheldonian Theatre and a cryptic note in an unknown language is discovered, DS Kate Stewart and her partner turn to medievalist Dr. Jonathan Reynolds. He identifies the note as a passage from Beowulf and explains that the murder replicates a killing in the epic poem.

Then a second, equally grisly murder escalates the situation. The victim is Tom, Jonathan’s former student and stalker. Horrified, Jonathan identifies the crime’s literary connection to another early English poem. Is the killer obsessed with medieval times—or with Jonathan? When another death suggests that a serial killer is working his way through the English Literature syllabus, both the police and the scholar are drawn into a baffling mystery ...

From Come the Dark Night

Oxford, 1998, First Week in Trinity

I look down from my vantage point high above the city, scent the early morning air and smile. It will be another of those sultry days that spring borrows from summer. On such a day, the air holds out the promise of a time beyond the teaching term that has just grudgingly begun; beyond the testing, fraught, close-knit days of Finals; beyond even those precious weeks of quiet libraries where dust motes dance as scholars snooze. On such a day, the illusory prospect of drifting on a peaceful river or browsing in bookshops along deserted lanes has not yet been shattered by the squalid reality of building works and the blind hunger of the omnipresent crowds. And on this day it is that I – or rather my Work – shall be seen.

I walk back across the wooden floor, carefully lift and place the head to one side, then take a moment to rest from my labours. As the young April sun rises over Oxford’s spires and bell towers, my city is neither dreaming nor sleeping. Whilst darkness and quietude still prevailed – though I, of course, was busy about my Work – three dozen college porters waited patiently within the establishments they guard. Now, as the bells of Tom Tower and a hundred churches strike their conflicting chimes, these men begin to unlock the smaller wickets set inside the great iron-studded timber gateways. The more famous – or cupidinous – colleges ‘fling wide their gates,’ knowing an influx of tourists waits to make its less than royal way. Agog to consume cultural capital, the sheep will stream inexorably in from early morning until dusk: from the grubby ring road and coach parks and railway station. Within each college, gardeners are doubtless hard at work weeding borders and mowing precious lawns still thirsty for the month’s promised ‘shoures soote.’ Scouts and bedders begin to scrub porcelain and polish stainless steel – or so I imagine. I do not know the truth of it. Perhaps they are instead counting out linen for distribution amongst the students in their charge – most of them still dead to the world, it’s safe to assume, bins outside their rooms to guard against unwanted intrusion. Excluded here, of course, the chasers of Firsts already annotating texts in quiet carpeted libraries, the earnest chapelgoers kneeling in prayer, and those Lycra-clad rowers quick-stepping it to the cold river. I see one now, cycling along the pavement, weaving between concrete bollards, almost close enough to … but, no, I must not allow myself to be distracted.

I hammer in the spike, muffling the sound of metal on iron with his scarf, then rest again. As I wait, silent and unseen, elsewhere cheerful shouts, ribald laughter, rise from the meat stalls in the Covered Market and the kitchens they stock. Along Catte Street and Cornmarket, Broad Street and the High, the thin light shines down alike on saints peering myopically from their niches in the church towers, and sinners, scurrying back from strange beds, rumpled-black-jacketed and pallid-faced. Loathsome in their petty deceit. Ants, all of them, waiting for one divine foot to mash them into the cobbles of Radcliffe Square.

My breath returns and I begin to pack away my tools. Nearby, the Old Bodleian’s great quadrangle lies yet hushed, as lonely staff dribble their way past old Pembroke’s statue. He stands now in shadow, impassively watching over the doorways with their neatly painted homage to the Old Schools, as he has done since his translocation in the Year of Our Lord 1723. Nearby, the sun’s warming rays slide tentatively up the wall of the Sheldonian Theatre, past its encircling grotesques with their gaping mouths, till they reach the cupola’s arched windows and pale-green dome, high above the waking city. My mouth waters. Soon and very soon.