© Cloaked Press LLC
Nightmare Fuel: Mind Terrors 2023 is a new anthology of psychological horror stories published by Cloaked Press LLC. I’m delighted to say it includes a story I wrote under the nom de plume of Jim Mountfield, which I use for scary fiction. My tale is entitled One for the Books and is about weird, then macabre happenings in a second-hand bookshop that might – possibly – be taking place only in the fevered imagination of one of the bookshop’s customers.
The bookshop in the story is inspired by the real and wonderful Armchair Books, which resides at 72-74 West Port in Edinburgh. It’s been many years since I was last in the shop. I haven’t been in it since 2014, in fact. Back then, I wrote of it: “A guddle of boxes of super-cheap books on the pavement outside, its walls inside stacked to the ceiling with thousands, if not zillions, of tomes, it is actually two premises – number 72 mostly sells fiction, number 74 next door sells non-fiction… It does seem a bit better organised these days… In times past, the supposed alphabetical arrangement of the books’ authors would lead you on a merry dance, back and forth and into all sorts of awkward nooks and crannies. Also, the cranky and entertaining notices that used to be stuck on the walls, in which the management expressed its disdain for health-and-safety inspectors – I assume at some point the council criticised the place, with its vertiginously high shelves, for exposing customers to possible death-by-avalanche-of-books – seem to have all come down now.”
During the Covid-19 pandemic I worried about how Armchair Books was faring. And, although I was in Edinburgh just a few weeks ago, I didn’t have time to venture down to West Port to check if it was still on the go. Thankfully, according to its website, it is still operational. I hope the same applies to the other second-hand bookshops that I used to visit on West Port and along the adjoining Bread Street – Peter Bell Books, Edinburgh Books, Main Point Books, Pulp Fiction, etc. – and that made the neighbourhood such a pleasure to explore.
Meanwhile, Nightmare Fuel: Mind Terrors 2023, among whose 219 pages of madness my story lurks second from the end, can be purchased on Kindle or as a paperback here.