Datlow, Ellen (ed) - Inferno / Датлоу, Эллен (ред) - Ад [2012, epub, ENG]

Riding Bitch novelette by K. W. Jeter Misadventure short story by Stephen Gallagher The Forest novelette by Laird Barron The Monsters of Heaven / Чудовища небес short story by Nathan Ballingrud Inelastic Collisions / Неупругие столкновения short story by Elizabeth Bear The Uninvited short story by Christopher Fowler 13 O'Clock short story by Mike O'Driscoll Lives short story by John Grant Ghorla short story by Mark Samuels Face short story by Joyce Carol Oates An Apiary of White Bees short story by Lee Thomas The Keeper short story by P. D. Cacek Bethany's Wood novelette by Paul Finch The Ease with Which We Freed the Beast short story by Lucius Shepard Hushabye short story by Simon Bestwick Perhaps the Last short story by Conrad Williams Stilled Life novelette by Pat Cadigan The Janus Tree novelette by Glen Hirshberg The Bedroom Light short story by Jeffrey Ford The Suits at Auderlene novelette by Terry Dowling

Stay away from her, they said. Don’t even look at her. Don’t let her see you. She was one hundred years old. Nobody could remember a time when she’d been younger. She had a thing growing out of her neck, swollen like a goiter and the bright color of a rooster’s erect comb. Stay away from her and don’t let her see you. But the children hid in the tall marsh grasses beside the lane to spy on her, excited and frightened, and they could hear the old woman speaking to herself in a language they couldn’t comprehend; maybe it was no language at all only just rapid muttered sounds punctuated by laughter, quarreling; you could see the thing pushing out of her neck, tight smooth shiny hot-looking skin of a texture different from her own raddled skin, like a balloon blown tight to bursting. It was the beginning of a face, maybe. Didn’t it have tiny indentations where the eyes would be, a hollow for the nose, a tiny pit of a mouth? First they’d seen it was the size of a peach, then the size of an apple, then the size of a melon forcing the old woman’s head to one side like she was laying her head on her shoulder. Her back was twisted, too. Her spine you could almost see through her dirt-stiffened clothes, like a bow. When she walked it was a crab-scuttling, you could hear her harsh quickened breathing. . . .