"Anubis"Living on an old houseboat on the Nile, Nick grows increasingly uneasy as he begins to pick up echoes of lives and incidents from at least a hundred years earlier. When his family has to make an unexpected trip to the U.S., Nick is left alone with the taciturn Egyptian who takes care of the boat. But who is Zaman, really? And what's the strange link between Zaman and the young man supposedly just hired to help him? Then there's the sound of a woman weeping, and the fragrance of jasmine at odd moments.... With an Egyptian friend, a girl named Amani, Nick tries to uncover the mysterious history of the boat--and finds himself in mortal danger. My ideas for a story about a haunted houseboat came from my year on an old paddle-steamer (originally part of the "Nile fleet" for tourists.) At times it responded to the winds and waves in a way that made me feel as though the boat were taking on a life of its own.... This collection of highly imaginative and unusual stories (no run-of-the-mill "horror"!) includes stories by such well known authors as Vivien Alcock, Joan Aiken, Patricia Windsor, Robert Westall, Joan Lowery Nixon, and several others. |
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