Transgressions Vol. 2 - The Ransome Women/The Things They Left Behind

In our lead story this month, “Hindsight,” horror author Sarah Langan tells the story of an apocalypse-in-progress, a world in which the laws of physics no longer seem to behave properly, and a mysterious cosmic anomaly called Black Betty. The last remaining survivors have one last hope, but can the technological singularity defeat the threat of a gravitational one?

In “Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man’s Back,” author Joe R. Lansdale tells the tale of a mad scientist and his family who spend twenty long, hard years Down Under waiting for the war to end. By doing so, they manage to survive the end of the world, but when they go back Topside, they find a world very different than the one they remember—a world in which even a rose is supremely dangerous…and not just because of its thorns. (Reprint)

Imagine you’re awakened early from cryonic stasis aboard a starship traveling to a colony world where tens of thousands of starving colonists will die if you don’t get there to help them. John R. Fultz’s chilling “The Taste of Starlight” explores whether the lives of many outweigh the lives of few, as we experience the lengths the good Doctor Pelops is willing to go to in order to ensure his mission’s success. Would you—should you—be able to do the same thing?

There are few authors in the world about whom you can honestly say “he needs no introduction.” But when you’re talking about Stephen King, that’s most certainly the truth. “Beachworld,” one of the horror master’s rare forays into straight-up science fiction, follows the plight of the two survivors of a far-future interstellar spaceflight, who crash land on a harsh and unforgiving planet. (Reprint)

Inspired by Richard Matheson's classic "Duel," "Throttle," by Joe Hill and Stephen King, is a duel of a different kind, pitting a faceless trucker against a tribe of motorcycle outlaws in the simmering Nevada desert. Their battle is fought out on twenty miles of the most lonely road in the country, a place where the only thing worse than not knowing what you're up against, is slowing down . . .

At Mile 81 on the Maine turnpike is a boarded up rest stop, a place where high school kids drink and get into the kind of trouble high school kids have always gotten into. It’s the place where Pete Simmons goes when his older brother, who’s supposed to be looking out for him, heads off to the gravel pit to play “paratroopers over the side.” Pete, armed only with the magnifying glass he got for his tenth birthday, finds a discarded bottle of vodka in the boarded up burger shack and drinks enough to pass out.

Not much later, a mud-covered station wagon (which is strange because there hadn’t been any rain in New England for over a week) veers into the Mile 81 rest area, ignoring the sign that says “closed, no services.” The driver’s door opens but nobody gets out.

Doug Clayton, an insurance man from Bangor, is driving his Prius to a conference in Portland. On the backseat are his briefcase and suitcase and in the passenger bucket is a King James Bible, what Doug calls “the ultimate insurance manual,” but it isn’t going to save Doug when he decides to be the Good Samaritan and help the guy in the broken down wagon. He pulls up behind it, puts on his four-ways, and then notices that the wagon has no plates.

But that's just the beginning of the mystery. Because the more they learn about the man and the baffling circumstances of his death, the less they understand. Was it an impossible crime? Or something stranger still...?

Roland Deschain and his ka-tet—Jake, Susannah, Eddie, and Oy, the billy-bumbler—encounter a ferocious storm just after crossing the River Whye on their way to the Outer Baronies. As they shelter from the howling gale, Roland tells his friends not just one strange story but two . . . and in so doing, casts new light on his own troubled past.

In his early days as a gunslinger, in the guilt-ridden year following his mother’s death, Roland is sent by his father to investigate evidence of a murderous shape-shifter, a “skin-man” preying upon the population around Debaria. Roland takes charge of Bill Streeter, the brave but terrified boy who is the sole surviving witness to the beast’s most recent slaughter. Only a teenager himself, Roland calms the boy and prepares him for the following day’s trials by reciting a story from the Magic Tales of the Eld that his mother often read to him at bedtime. “A person’s never too old for stories,” Roland says to Bill. “Man and boy, girl and woman, never too old. We live for them.” And indeed, the tale that Roland unfolds, the legend of Tim Stoutheart, is a timeless treasure for all ages, a story that lives for us.