Read an Excerpt from Caitlin R. Kiernan's Novella, ZOETROPE BIZARRE

As many of you know by now, the signed limited edition of Caitlín R. Kiernan's new collection, Bright Dead Star, is accompanied by an additional hardcover volume, a new novella bearing the title Zoetrope Bizarre.

Here's the compelling opening to that novella: 

1.

The Fans (1)

(April 1987)

The third Thursday of each and every month, Carson Holly meets up with one or two of the other members of the tiny cabal of horror movie aficionados who call themselves the Groovy Ghoulies, after the early seventies cartoon series. The meeting place is almost always Rae’s Restaurant in Santa Monica, because Carson swears they have the best vanilla milkshakes in the Greater Los Angeles area. And he almost always manages to get the same red vinyl booth, up front near the big plate-glass windows looking out on Pico Boulevard. This afternoon, Carson is right there in his favorite booth, already halfway through his first milkshake, and the waitress has just brought him a big plate of fries when Johnny Frankenstein shows up.

That’s not his real name, of course. Johnny Frankenstein has never yet told any of them his real name, and no one’s ever pressed him very hard. He wears the pseudonym well. Carson Holly, he’s a rail-thin dude, the “before” in those old Charles Atlas ads on the backs of comic books, the skinny, bespectacled geek who’s always getting sand kicked in his face, but Johnny Frankenstein is a big guy, six foot five and two hundred pounds if he’s an ounce, with an ugly scar across his forehead (the likely source of the nickname). He wears T-shirts emblazoned with Big Daddy Ross’ Rat Fink and listens to surfer music and rockabilly bands. Carson Holly has a thing for jazz and turtlenecks.