Search Worlds Without End

Winner of the 1991 Stoker award for Superior Achievement in Short Fiction.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Obsessions (1991), edited by Gary Raisor. It has been subsequently republished several times.

Some of today's leading masters of speculative fiction, dark fantasy, and horror contribute a collection of original tales of the macabre.

Table of Contents:

• xi - Foreword (Outsiders: 22 All-New Stories From the Edge)
• 3 - The Empty Chambers - short story by Neil Gaiman
• 6 - The Company You Keep - short story by Steve Rasnic Tem
• 15 - Under the Needle - short story by Léa Silhol
• 22 - Scarabesque: The Girl Who Broke Dracula - novelette by Tanith Lee
• 53 - Expanding Your Capabilities Using Frame/Shift™ Mode - short story by David J. Schow
• 70 - Cat and the Cold Prince - short story by Freda Warrington
• 89 - Faces in Revolving Souls - short story by Caitlín R. Kiernan
• 105 - Lighten Up - short story by Jack Ketchum
• 115 - Pit Boy - short story by Elizabeth Massie
• 125 - The Country of the Blind - short story by Melanie Tem
• 140 - Ruby Tuesday - short story by Kathe Koja
• 150 - Running Beneath the Skin - short story by Brett Alexander Savory
• 169 - Grim Peeper - short story by Katherine Ramsland
• 177 - Craving - short story by Yvonne Navarro
• 187 - Violent Angel - short story by Thomas S. Roche
• 204 - ...And the Damage Done - novelette by Michael Marano
• 226 - Pop Star in the Ugly Bar - short story by Bentley Little
• 233 - Miss Singularity - novelette by John Shirley
• 267 - The Working Slob's Prayer - short story by Poppy Z. Brite
• 282 - If I Should Wake Before I Die - short story by Brian Hodge
• 301 - Honing Sebastian - short story by Elizabeth Engstrom
• 316 - The Shadows, Kith and Kin - short story by Joe R. Lansdale
• 335 - About the Editors (Outsiders: 22 All-New Stories from the Edge)

Tivoli Gardens.

White lights, a Ferris wheel, music, balloons, frosted ginger bread hearts and a fountain that sprays into the red sky like fairy dust.

The magic land all that was good and fun in life.

For Neils the enchantment was alway ruined by the knowledge that soon he would have to return to the gray, real world--even grayier now that his sister Emilie was dying.

But on her deathbed Emilie make him promise to return to Tivoli to search for the magic he has never known.

The shipwrecked, vacationing passengers of the ill-fated freighter, Morris, are picked up by the H.M.S. Pandora and sail into a cruise of metaphysical terror, madness, and death.

On the night of her fortieth birthday, Charlotte Tobias created her perfect lover. But soon he was eveything that she would come to dread as she slid into a voyage through anger and madness and loss, towards the truths that lie just beyond consciousness.

Twenty-year-old Valerie Kittridge is horrified to learn that her father has had a stroke. As an only child and with her mother dead, her father is all she has in the world, and she leaves her life as a film student in California to nurse her father back to health. On her wild, late-night car ride to Duerme, the small town in New Mexico where her father lives with his girlfriend, she is besieged with a host of strange and terrifying dark omens and flashbacks to her childhood. For there is something waiting for Valerie at Duerme, not just her stricken father, but an irresistable stranger who had saved her life many years ago-the man of her dreams.

In Witch-Light, Nancy Holder and Melanie Tem collaborate on the second of their fascinating demon-lover stories. The first one, Making Love, was a sensual variation on the Frankenstein theme. Witch-Light is the mesmerizing story of a dark, mysterious, devastatingly handsome man named Gabriel, a bruja, or male witch, who draws Valerie into a twisted romance that will take her to the very edge of love and obsession.

Full of the magic and mystery of the Southwest, Witch-Light is a bittersweet, compelling mix of romance, horror and fantasy, a dark journey into a strange and wonderful world of folk magic, superstition, and obsessive love that knows no bounds.

The Battle of Serenity Valley was the turning point that led the Independents to their defeat at the hands of the Alliance. Yet the Browncoats had held the valley for weeks against all odds, before being ordered to lay down their arms. Command stated they refused to send in airpower because the ground war was "too hot." But the soldiers who were there insist that was not true...

While picking up a new cargo on Persephone, Captain Malcolm Reynolds is kidnapped by a bunch of embittered veteran Browncoats who suspect him of sabotaging the Independents during the war. As the rest of the crew struggle to locate him, Mal is placed on trial for his life, fighting compelling evidence that someone did indeed betray them to the Alliance all those years ago. As old comrades and old rivals crawl out of the woodwork, Mal must prove his innocence, but his captors are desperate and destitute, and will settle for nothing less than the culprit's blood.

One of the ages-old race of Immortals, Duncan MacLeod has tried to turn his back on tradition and live his life as a mortal. But as the time of the Gathering draws near--when the few remaining Immortals will fight to the last--he finds himself being drawn back to battle. If he wins at the Gathering, he will acquire all the powers of the losers; if he does not succeed, he loses his life forever.

or

The Scottish Immortal Duncan MacLeod faces Immortal Niccolo Machiavelli in Venice, Italy, in 1655.

The It Girl meets The Exorcist in this chilling, haunted boarding school tale New-girl Lindsay discovers all is not right at the prestigious Marlwood Academy for Girls. Ethereal, popular Mandy and her clique are plotting something dangerous. Lindsay overhears them performing strange rituals, and sees their eyes turn black. It doesn’t help that the school itself is totally eerie, with ancient, dilapidated buildings tucked into the Northern California woods, a thick white fog swirling through campus. There are hidden passageways, odd reflections in the windows at night, and scariest of all is the vast lake rumored to have captured the ghost of a girl who drowned many years ago.

What Lindsay doesn’t yet realize is that Mandy and her cohorts are becoming possessed by spirits who have haunted the school for two hundred years. Spirits who want someone dead...

And that someone is Lindsay.

In this sequel to New York Times bestselling author Nancy Holder?s Possessions, Lindsay finds out that she, too, is possessed, and must return to creepy Marlwood Academy in order to rid herself of the spirit. Lindsay?s afraid of what the spirit is telling her to do?kill Mandy! But the secrets of Marlwood go much deeper than Lindsay thought. Sometimes the girls who seem like enemies are actually on your side. And the voices you trust the most?the voices that come from within?are the ones that want you dead.

The gutsy heroine of Possessions and The Evil Within returns for another year of boarding school at the haunted Marlwood Academy. Lindsay wakes to find herself strapped down in the infirmary. She had a breakdown and might have tried to kill her nemesis Mandy or Mandy's boyfriend, Troy-or both. The details are hazy, but one thing is certain: she is possessed by a spirit she cannot trust.

Lindsay soon realizes that nowhere on campus is safe. Then, she finds a surprising ally in her former rival. Together, Lindsay and Mandy must figure out who can be trusted-and who wants them dead. But when Lindsay's ex-boyfriend shows up at Marlwood, she is given a chance to get away and be free of the curse. Will she take Riley's hand and run, or team up with a new love to save Marlwood from the evil spirits forever?

In Beacon Hills, a mountain lion is blamed for a spate of vicious attacks; Scott McCall wishes the cause was that simple. Unfortunately, hiding his werewolf identity, especially from Allison Argent, while fighting his need to shift, is only one problem. Keeping his mysterious, murderous Alpha off his back (literally), avoiding hunters, deciphering strange dreams about flames and impending doom . . . is really eating into lacrosse practice and hang-out time. So when Jackson Whittemore doesn't show for his date with Lydia, Scott hopes that helping Allison track down their buddy will be simpler. Derek--whose hunger for vengeance blinds him to the dangers that lie in wait--and Stiles are also looking, but the worried teens' search is leading right to the preserve from Scott's nightmare. They aren't the only ones in the woods, and their little trip starts looking less like a rescue mission and more like an elaborate trap--one that will force them to make the choice between killing and being killed....