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INTRODUCTION

MURIEL GRAY

If you’re an avid reader of Paul Kane’s work, then you might stop and ponder what it would be like to actually meet him. What black soul would inhabit this person, the one whose mind conjures up demons, spins darkness out of sunlight, pins open our eyes and makes us look at things we pray we never see even in our worst dreams? That shadowy man. That twisted, tortured spirit.

The answer, like so many of Paul’s own tales, is that nothing is quite as it seems. Paul Kane is what a smile looks like distilled into human form. It’s a safe bet that you’re unlikely to encounter anyone more cheerful, friendly, helpful and optimistic than Mr Paul Kane. The lofty position he’s held at the very top table of British horror and fantasy for the last two decades is not just down to the breadth of his imagination, and unflinching willingness to explore every dark corner of the genre, but his enthusiasm for helping and encouraging other authors, both old and new, is itself the stuff of legend. Many a new writer will tell you they had their first hand up from Paul, with either practical advice, important introductions made, or simply just revitalised by the puppy dog boundless excitement for the genre he’s passed to them, that shiny wrapped gift of encouragement he always seems to have at the ready like a department store Santa. Many older hands at the game can also tell you tales of exactly how Paul helped them out when times were tough, giving up his own precious writing time to read or edit, or sometimes simply just to talk.

It’s no surprise therefore, that his career has been so fruitful and celebrated in such diverse ways, from his unique collaborations with the master of horror Clive Barker, to clutches of award-winning short stories and novels, screenplays and adaptations. Paul Kane has left a very big and important mark indeed. It’s a trail of success wider than the wake of a car ferry.

So where does this marvellous sunbeam of a man harvest the putrid fruit of our nightmares that he so chillingly chronicles in his work? How can somebody who could teach advanced classes in laughing and smiling, spend his time fashioning such a frightening landscape and invite us in to walk in it alone, without a torch?

Perhaps we’ll never know. But we do know that behind the grin that could light up all of Derbyshire lurks an imagination of a darker hue. Here, in these pages, you can wander through that world a little and try to decide for yourself whether Paul Kane is smiling because he’s happy, or because he knows something we don’t. Something that’s coming. Something that’ll make us wish, like him, we’d enjoyed every ticking moment of this ephemeral sunlit world while we can. To help us just a little in getting closer to finding that out, here, collected for the first time, from twenty years of published works, are some of Paul’s best stories, a tiny insight to his world. And oh, what delights and terrors you will encounter.

In “Shadow Writer” you’ll meet a horror fan. Aren’t we all? Well here’s a man so in love with his favourite author that the chance of an exclusive interview is something impossible to refuse, even if that opportunity starts to look like something else entirely. Something a lot less attractive. What would you do to worship at that shrine? How far would you go?

Or you may find yourself equally drawn in, unwillingly in “Strobe”, a world where addiction is not merely confined to chemicals. A world where a flashing light can transport a person into a Nirvana of ecstasy, but a place that becomes harder to escape. The over-used phrase “don’t look into the light” has never been more apt. But then humans have more willpower than moths. Well, maybe not all.

“Rag and Bone” is a story worth remembering if your plans are ever to be exploitative in love, to betray and cheat. The comforting clip-clop sound of the horse and cart of an older generation’s youth might not seem so gentle a memory when this tale is told, and the familiar cry of the rag and bone man takes on a very different tenor when it comes from the lips of a character called into being by Kane.

And to those who regard their bodies as temples, that oh so twenty-first century new religion, then “Biorhythms” might make them look twice at their standing order to the gym. Is it really so important to be in control of your body? Really? What happens if you’re not quite so in control as you thought?

Talking of taking things for granted, like breathing in and out, “Yin and Yang” is a salutatory lesson in why the good might just be an empty, hollow thing without the bad. A metaphor, perhaps. But what if it’s not a metaphor? What if myths have personalities? Personalities not that indistinct from our own? Chaos? What could be more chaotic than mankind? Dare to have a peek and see.

The beauty of our English villages is hard to resist, and all the more so for ex-pats searching for their roots amidst the pleasant village greens and quaint pubs. How our tourists adore those old and peculiar customs, like the scarecrow festivals so often displayed at harvest time in the most picturesque of hamlets, that both delight and unsettle simultaneously. Though after meeting the “Men of the Cloth”, perhaps your foot will press a little harder on the accelerator next time you drive past one, glaring at you from button eyes, propped beneath a hanging basket.

If you feel your life rushing by, you might not want to meet “The Butterfly Man”. What does the length of our lifespan mean? Can we learn, live, love, and die in anything other than our allotted time? And what if that was to change? The lesson we keep on learning is that things we fear, things we don’t understand, we seek to destroy. But if things we fear move too fast, then be careful.

It’s a familiar and heartbreaking world in “Homeland”, the lonely neglected pensioner, hoarding his lifetime of possessions and living like a hermit. And even if neighbours plead compassion, who in their secret heart wouldn’t want him gone? Particularly if that home of his is spreading rats, and bringing the neighbourhood low. So, clearing out the debris after his death may be unpleasant, but it’s an everyday occurrence and just another mop-up job. Or is it? Maybe there are some messes that can’t be tidied away. Some you’re probably best just shutting the door on and turning the key on for good.

If Paul Kane can make you shiver, he can also make you laugh out loud. The ritual round the Christmas tree of watching a cherished child open that one special present is never again going to seem quite so straightforward. “A Chaos Demon is for Life ...” is as hilarious as it is unsettling. If you ever needed reminding that live creatures don’t make the best gifts for children, then this will keep you right. Even the most well-meaning parents can sometimes get it wrong. But please, please, do try and never get it quite this wrong. For the sake of us all.

Yes, yes, we all know what it’s like to be on the run from the zombie horde. How many times have we been there with those victims, running and screaming, hiding and fighting as they desperately battle their way through the undead to cling on to the last hope that somewhere, anywhere, there will be people out there just like them? So, in “Dead Time” maybe we’re not that surprised to find ourselves in that world as our heroine does exactly that. Only, when we’ve followed her through the apocalypse, there might be something of a little shock waiting for us. After all, safety can mean something very different depending on where you are. And more importantly, who you are.

If you’ve checked your horoscope today then maybe you’re waiting to meet that tall dark stranger, or get that windfall you didn’t expect. It’s all true, those star sign predictions in the newspaper. The planets shift, and we are all just pawns in the system. Do you doubt it? Does your modern, cynical mind suspect it’s just written by some 19-year-old intern on the features desk shift? Then let “Signs of Life” take you through the signs of the zodiac, but perhaps not in the way you might expect. Because sometimes star signs can collide. Lots of things can collide. Not always the way that even your horoscope has predicted.

It’s fitting indeed that Paul Kane finishes his choice of excellence with “Eye of the Beholder”. Because his story is a challenge to our sense of self-importance, of who we are, and our paths of free will and choice. You see, Paul thinks he is in charge. He thinks his long and fruitful career, his prolific output, his generosity and hospitality, all the favours big and small and all the projects epic and tiny, have all been within his control. Master of his own destiny. Pilot of his soul.

But what if Paul Kane’s life and work, that long and admirable span of imaginative and inventive storytelling, was not truly in his hands? What if someone else, no, worse, something else, was merely using him as a conduit, indifferent to his will, ticking him off as another part of a bigger plan, one where the sparkle of his talent and the breadth of his imagination was predestined, none of his doing?

Wouldn’t that be ironic? Let’s leave the idea there and see what happens. The mile-wide Paul Kane smile, the body of work that shames any professional, the accolades and the prizes, the friends, family and colleagues that love and admire him. All a plan. All an unchangeable, unalterable destiny that even the very best, most skilful of writers can’t quite plot himself out of.

Hey, don’t blame me Paul! I didn’t make this stuff up. You did mate. And it’s all bloody brilliant.

Reader. Enjoy.

Muriel Gray

Sept 2016