The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All - Plot & Excerpts
A man alone. In a castle… or perhaps a manor house. A solitary gent with a few years on him; a man who's carved his place in the world. Of course, we're talking Scotland. Yes. The man lives in a stone manor on the moors. There he sits, staring at a crackling fire in a huge fireplace. His hunting dogs wait at heel, ready for the bones the master has stripped bare during a long evening meal. The animals are wise enough to hold their place until the word is given. Of course it will be (and soon), for the man loves his dogs as he loves little else. But something more than love fires this man's engine. Just look above the carved mantle, at the claymore mounted on a pair of hooks that might just as easily be found in an abattoir. There's a spatter of tarnish on the weapon's hilt, but none at all on the blade. And so the claymore speaks of stories that will not cross the man's lips this night… or any night. Laird Barron. It's a name that conjures images, if you've an imaginative turn of mind. That's no surprise-if you know the words of the man who owns it. If you know the work he has set down on the page. *** I first read Laird's work in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.
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