Quis Separabit

Brian J. Showers

Availability: Out of Print – Chapbook

“Shortly after crossing La Touche Bridge and proceeding south along Rathmines Road, you will notice a nondescript and ultimately dead end lane stretching to the west. This is tiny Blackberry Lane, as evidenced by a sign bolted to the adjacent terrace, and in days past it was literally neither here nor there. This east-west lane was once a narrow and much lengthier bohreen beat through the dense foliage between the Earl of Meath’s lands to the south and the old Farm of St. Sepulchre to the north. It should arouse no curiosity that neither estate claimed this stretch of ground, as for countless generations it was primarily utilised by the dead. Until 1850, the lane served as a corpse road–a path used not only by funeral processions, but also, according to belief, by souls of the deceased.”

This story was collected in The Bleeding Horse (2008)

This limited edition chapbook is sold out.
Please check with our Booksellers for remaining copies.

Cover art by Jeffrey C. Roche

ISBN: N/A

Contents

“Quis Separabit”

Brian J. Showers

Brian J. Showers is originally from Madison, Wisconsin. He has written short stories, articles, and reviews for magazines such as Rue Morgue, Ghosts & Scholars, and Supernatural Tales. His short story collection, The Bleeding Horse, won the Children of the Night Award in 2008. He is also the author of Literary Walking Tours of Gothic Dublin (2006), the co-editor of Reflections in a Glass Darkly: Essays on J. Sheridan Le Fanu (2011), and the editor of The Green Book. Showers also edited four volumes of Uncertainties anthology series, and co-edited with Jim Rockhill, the Ghost Story Award-winning anthology Dreams of Shadow and Smoke. He lives in Dublin, Ireland.

“Collectors of unusual books have probably already discovered Brian J. Showers’ tiny little horror-story chapbooks. These carefully constructed, A7-sized limited-edition gems, each with its own ribbon bookmark, present ghost stories told in a traditional Old World manner.

“In Quis Separabit, Showers calls on his knowledge of Dublin’s neighborhoods and folklore to tell the story of Blackberry Fair, a curious gated jumble of shops that closed at dusk each night out of respect for ‘The Blackberry Man’, a violent apparition known to haunt the premises after sundown:

” ‘At closing time the gates to the stable passage are shut and padlocked, as are the front gates along the footpath. Even the local hooligans with their inbred superstitions know that the back premises are strictly off limits. Anyone who enters the fair after the sun has disappeared from the late afternoon sky does so at their own risk.’

“The Fair closed down for good in 2002, the narrator tells us—Why? What did the closing have to do with the deaths of three amateur ghosthunters, and what link is there between the Blackberry Man, a statue of the Virgin Mary, and the rats that lurk in the corners of the terrace?

“Showers, whose full-sized books include the guidebook Literary Walking Tours of Gothic Dublin and an upcoming collection of ghost stories set in Dublin titled The Bleeding Horse and Other Ghost Stories, captures the sense of a small, insular, secret-keeping community in this short little pseudo-investigative look at the mystery around Blackberry Fair, linking it to one of the most famous of Irish historical mysteries.

“Quis Separabit includes six black-and-white illustrations, plus the cover, by Jeffrey C. Roche.” – The Harrow

Quis Separabit by Brian J. Showers. Cover art and illustrations by Jeffrey C. Roche; copyedited by Jim Rockhill; published by Swan River Press.

First printing: Published in December 2007; limited to 300 copies; 48 pages; laser printed on 80 gsm ivory paper; bound in 150 gsm buttercup yellow card; hand-sewn with a black ribbon bookmark; ISBN: N/A.