Runalong The Short Shelves - Cloisterfox Issue 4
Published - Out Now
CloisterFox is a bi-annual zine of British speculative fiction. Here you will find the stories that creep uninvited along quiet corridors. Stories unnoticed by shoppers hurrying by. Secrets, miracles, and universes behind locked tenement doors. Ghosts and gallows. The dress in the attic as seen through a haze of neon.
Tell me things I don’t know, says the fox. Tell me the dreams you can’t forget. Tell me strange things.
The end of the year is always a suitable time for fiction with a more shadowy nature; the borders of light and darkness feel thin, time loses meaning and it was therefore a great delight to get my latest copy of Cloisterfox delivered which delights in tales of short strange and weird fiction. This time the linking theme for the stories is the underground and many inventive tales are to be found in the pages
Long Player by Sarah Royton - set in the mid-twentieth century has folk music as its main framing device, Seekers of traditional english ballads are sent out into the country to find the best examples of the genre. One of the company though is very very good and his methods are under suspicion and indeed are dangerous too. I really enjoyed the sense of time; the unique idea for the music hunters and its surprisingly dark turns that very quickly escalate. A reminder folk songs are not simply cosy but often reminders of much darker times.
The Thing That Blights by Olivia McNeilis - An increasingly disturbing tale of a young family whose fortunes are linked to the family’s pear tree that follows them wherever they go. It’s a tale with a sense of growing wrongness to this family where things go from bad to worse and the end is rather shocking. Things helped by it being told from the child’s perspective who is slowly working out why their world doesn’t make sense. Really well told.
Men O’ The Sea by Mathew Gostelow - A hauntingly beautiful tale of growing up and grief combined with a wonderful sense of place focused on the shores of Norfolk. A troubled young boy learns the secerts of the sea from his beloved Grandpa but time and tide waits for no one. The sense of someone learning to be an adult and that nothing is forever sweeps this tale which has gorgeous scenes of weird beauty and lightness. Loved this story a lot!
Salt Your Stew With Blood and Tears by Rhiannon A Grist - A gorgeous tale that treads the feeling of an ancient folk tale with a refreshingly modern approach. A tale of a family that when times get dangerous have found a way to cheat death in a very unexpected way. I loved the sense of the mythic in this story as the decades pass and yet it has atmosphere of wonder and actual kindness which perhaps we tend not to expect. Another beautifully told tale.
Bone Meal by Eve Brandon - Gloriously strange and darkly poetic a tale of a woman and her flatmate where strange magics and rituals seem to be in play. A tale of an almost fever dream as our narrator takes us on a strange trip. Its delightfully eerie.
The Living Heart by Ivo de Jager - a tale that feels very much 19th century of two young boys who become friends which turns into something stronger and more intimate but also they are becoming aware one of the pair is very ill. A taler of lost love but merged with wonderuflly gruesome body horror that manages at the same time to be tender and filled with loss.
Cloisterfox is a favourite magazine of mine and the two issues a year are never a disappointment. Strongly recommended!