This story was my introduction to Nathan Ballingrud and I come back to it about once a year. It certainly wasn’t the first “strange town” story I read, but it came into my life around the time I was starting to get serious about writing—and so I credit it with being The One that planted the seed in my head of wanting to create a strange town of my own. There are rumors that Ballingrud plans to return to Hob’s Landing someday with either a series of novellas or a collection of stories or something else altogether; whatever the form, I certainly hope he does it, as I’ll be waiting eagerly until then.
First published in Nightmare Carnival, Dark Horse Books 2014. Collected in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2014, HMH, 2014, and in Wounds, Saga Press, 2019. Read it online here
A Personal Anthology 