The Incubations

Companion to the special, collectable hardcover edition for Ramsey Campbell's 60 years in publication.

When a weight landed on his legs, he raised his head from the violently crumpled pillow. The bed already had another occupant, and as Leo flung the quilt back so that it wouldn't hinder his escape, the creature scurried up his body to squat on his chest, clutching him with all its limbs like half a spider.

The English town of Settlesham was twinned with Alphafen in Germany soon after the Second World War. During the war, both towns were bombed, even though Alphafen seemed to have no strategic significance. To mark the fiftieth anniversary of the postwar reconciliation, pupils at the local schools were set to correspond with their opposite numbers. Leo Parker has been in touch with Hanna Weber ever since but has never previously visited her.

As an adult, he's welcomed in Alphafen, but his stay seems idyllic despite the odd incident—a local who blames him for a hostile letter a schoolmate of Leo's sent, a glimpse of an uncanny figure on an Alpine walk, a flapping intruder that seems to embody Hanna's night fears, an encounter in a mountain restaurant with an English tourist who turns out to be there for his own disturbing reasons.

It's only after Leo leaves the town that the nightmares begin: an airport turns into a labyrinth, his own words become treacherous if not lethal, a family meal grows unnaturally active, and what are those creatures that have appeared in the photographs he took? The man he met in the mountain restaurant hasn't finished with him, and he has to deal with the town councillor who sent the warlike letter when they were teenage classmates.

A local police inspector has reason to suspect his actions, even though the policeman is a friend of Leo's parents. Even the therapy Leo undertakes becomes a source of menace. In his bid to cement international relations, Leo may have roused the source of an ancient Alpine legend and brought a supernatural infection home with him. Even once he understands what has travelled with him, his attempts to overcome its influence may lead to greater nightmares still.

The Incubations is a chilling exploration of personal and collective haunting, woven with nightmarish tension and eerie realism.

AUTHOR: Ramsey Campbell was born in Liverpool in 1946 and still lives on Merseyside. The Oxford Companion to English Literature describes him as "Britain's most respected living horror writer". He has been given more awards than any other writer in the field, including the Grand Master Award of the World Horror Convention, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Horror Writers Association, the Living Legend Award of the International Horror Guild, and the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award.

In 2015, he was made an Honorary Fellow of Liverpool John Moores University for outstanding services to literature. Among his novels are The Face That Must Die, Incarnate, Midnight Sun, The Count of Eleven, Silent Children, The Darkest Part of the Woods, The Overnight, Secret Story, The Grin of the Dark, Thieving Fear, Creatures of the Pool, The Seven Days of Cain, Ghosts Know, The Kind Folk, Think Yourself Lucky, and Thirteen Days by Sunset Beach. Needing Ghosts, The Last Revelation of Gla'aki, The Pretence, and The Booking are novellas.

His collections include Waking Nightmares, Alone with the Horrors, Ghosts and Grisly Things, Told by the Dead, Just Behind You, and Holes for Faces, and his non-fiction is collected as Ramsey Campbell, Probably. Limericks of the Alarming and Phantasmal are what they sound like. His novels The Nameless, Pact of the Fathers, and The Influence have been filmed in Spain. He is the President of the Society of Fantastic Films.

Hardback, Deluxe edition, matt laminated, gold and silver foil stamped, embossed, coloured page edges.