Dimmer
Dimmer is a new story published in January 2025 by Salo Press as one of their Flirtations, a series of one-shot stories or short poetry collections that includes work by David Frankel, Andrew Hook, Tim Major and many more.
The story again features the paranormal investigators Henry and Rowena. It can be read independently, of course, but there are a few callbacks and resonances that will add an extra layer if you are in the know. It is also the earliest story in the Henry-Rowena chronology so far (I seem to writing them backwards, from grave to cradle so to speak).
When a mysterious photograph of an unearthly figure, allegedly taken at a paranormal black spot, the legendarily bottomless Lake Mott appears on r/eerie_england, Henry and Rowena set off investigate. Once at the lake, the bleak waters stir in Rowena’s uncanny senses premonitions of doom . Meanwhile, Henry becomes distracted by the nearby site of a retreat once frequented by Britain’s most celebrated horror writers. Against Rowena’s better judgment, they head into the woods looking for ruins.
Origin Story
The merest twinkle of Dimmer appears in the first Henry and Rowena story I wrote, The Hinwick Effigy (Cloister Fox 2), where in Henry’s list of previous investigations he mentions ‘The Lamia of Lake Mott’.
I busked the story quite quickly when I wanted to answer a call for submissions for a folk horror anthology. I received no reply or rejection to this submission.
Salo was the next publisher I sent it to. I’m grateful they accepted it and it has found a perfect home.
Launch
Dimmer will be launched on February 12th at The Holloway bookshop in Norwich.
Extract
After we’d hiked across the moor and found the lake low down in the flatlands, rather than help me scope-out and catalogue the site, you became overly involved with your reflection in the black water. I must have been standing a little further back than you. Some trick of the light made my likeness a zigzagged blur on the surface tension of the water. In contrast, your eyes and mouth and foxish cheekbones stayed shiningly distinct. I did like the way we looked: mysterious and serious, hazy and rock-hard, the psychic detective girl and the cultural geography maestro out to investigate the striking but contentious photograph of the so-called Black Lamia of Lake Mott, a cause célèbre in certain quarters you were sure already was another fake.
Although I doubted it – you being you – I wondered if the stories attached to Lake Mott had unsettled you. The lake is bottomless, according to legend, and the haunt of a long-armed, snaggle-toothed water demon with an insatiable appetite for human life. On certain forgotten feast days, this Black Lamia will the float on the surface of Lake Mott the face of one who will drown someday at noon, and use the wind to call his name.
The wind was harsh and persistent that day, if you remember.
I elbowed you. Don’t stare too hard, I said. When water isn’t water, it can stare back.
Reviews
Patience!
Eeriepedia
There are a few references to other stories here in what will be the Eerie England collection beyond the inclusion of Henry and Rowena.
r/eerie_england: Subreddit where various skeptics, believers, lunatics and hoaxers congregate to discuss reports of hauntings, apparitions, cryptids, aliens, cults etc. First appeared in The Hinwick Effigy. Also appears in Vacancy and Under the Tower that Fell. Adam Pasmore from The Crumbling Edifice is banned.
Astraea Themis: Legendary horror writer and author of the cursed collection The Underkin and Other Stories . Appears in The Validations and others.
Dimmer is available to order direct from Salo Press, or come to the launch at The Holloway on February 12th, hear me read and pick up a signed copy.
