From award-winning author Cadwell Turnbull comes a brilliant collection of short stories, including old favorites and brand-new adventures.
Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from All the Hidden Places: Stories by Cadwell Turnbull, which is out now.
Fourteen stories. Unseen places that lie just within, beneath, beyond our reality.
A father and daughter traverse postapocalyptic America seeking safe haven and the truth about why the world ended. Three siblings write intimate letters as their society slips ever deeper into dystopia.
On an island where locals use cooperative AI to survive hurricanes, a journalist returns home to cover their story and reconnect with her past. A wayward god sets out to find the source of all gods. But can they survive to tell the tale?
After a whimsical attempt to teleport proves successful, a couple finds that their conflicting feelings about the event are threatening their marriage. In a world where multiple souls can inhabit the same body, a recovering addict confronts his family about a terrible secret.
A monster who lives on human blood finds her undoing in the loneliness she carries within her heart.
In his debut collection, acclaimed novelist Cadwell Turnbull takes readers across an omniverse of monsters, gods, and people, all trying to make peace with the parts of themselves they don’t want others to see. Until they are forced to face all their hidden places.
EXCERPT
IBAMWE AND THE MOUNTAIN BOX
“Who created you?” Asuneth asked Ibamwe.
“I’ve always existed,” said Ibamwe.
Asuneth gave Ibamwe a look Ibamwe had never seen before, the kind of look you give to someone who doesn’t have a clue. Ibamwe did not know what it was like not to have a clue.
Asuneth elaborated: “The sentient beings you’ve created have no recollection of their own beginnings. But when they are born, they have witnesses who can tell them the when and the where and the how. But . . .” Asuneth appeared uncertain. More than that. Nervous.
Ibamwe leaned forward on their throne—they had a nice throne: gold-adorned, glimmering with jewels, the whole package—and said, “Go on.”
Asuneth did: “But if they didn’t have a witness, who would tell them these things?”
The implication was clear. Ibamwe pushed it away out of stubbornness. “Get to your point.”
“Well . . .” More hesitation. “Couldn’t it be that you don’t remember your beginning, simply because you didn’t have a witness? Couldn’t it be that you were simply created by someone you’ve never met?”
Ibamwe considered this.
Asuneth the angel waited.
Finally, Ibamwe said, “I don’t know. I will have to give this some more thought.”
After Asuneth left, Ibamwe searched their mind, trying to remember the precise beginning of their existence. All they could manage was the first moment of self-awareness: Ibamwe floating in void, Ibamwe considering themself in that void, Ibamwe desiring not to be alone in that void. And if there was a moment like this to wake to, a void to rouse from, it did imply a before.
This thought was very unsettling to Ibamwe, and it was made worse by the inability to escape it: no valve, no button, no secret door.
When Asuneth visited again, she asked, “How can you know you were the first thing?” In her eyes: a desperate wildness. “Please answer me.”
But Ibamwe had no answer. “With this question, you’ve imprisoned us both.”
Time passed this way, the question wreaking havoc across heaven. As this happened, Ibamwe refused visitors.
The thought came during that period of isolation, rose from some hidden place in Ibamwe’s mind: What if I make another? Like myself but separate, in its own realm?
And because Ibamwe was a god, and gods have no limits except their own imagination, Ibamwe made it so.
This new god did not stir to life instantly. That would take time, as it had with Ibamwe. They would have to wait.
To pass the time, Ibamwe threw parties.
At one such party, Asuneth approached again.
“I am still working on an answer,” Ibamwe said. “Come back later.”
Asuneth did not move. Behind her, all of heaven was raucous with laughter and dancing and debauchery.
“You have another question?” Ibamwe said, nervous.
“If you’ve come to the same solution I did,” Asuneth said, “the same potential answer, I suspect you will have more questions before we’re through.”
And Asuneth left Ibamwe on their throne, even more unsettled than before.
