J. Ashley Smith is a British–Australian writer of dark fiction and co-host of the award-winning podcast Let The Cat In. J.'s first book, The Attic Tragedy, won the Shirley Jackson Award. Other stories have won the Ditmar, Australian Shadows, and Aurealis awards. The Measure of Sorrow, his first short story collection, won the Ditmar Award 2024 for Best Collection, was Highly Commended in the 2024 ACT Book of the Year Awards. J. was born in Cambridge, UK, and spent his childhood hiding with imaginary companions in the foundations of an Edwardian townhouse. He studied film and creative writing, then lost fifteen years to the British indie music scene, clothed in unfashionable sweaters, releasing unpopular records. He now lives with his wife and two sons in the suburbs of North Canberra, gathering moth dust, tormented by the desolation of telegraph wires. J. haunts the internet as @SpookTapes.

The Attic Tragedy by J. Ashley Smith

Sylvie never called them ghosts, but that's what they were—not that George ever saw them herself. The new girl, Sylvie, is like a creature from another time, with her old-fashioned leather satchel, her white cotton gloves and her head in the clouds. George watches her drift around the edge of the school playing fields, guided by inaudible voices.

When George stands up for Sylvie, beating back Tommy Payne and his gang of thugs, it brings her close to the ethereal stranger; though not as close as George would have liked. In the attic of Sylvie's father's antique shop, George's scars will sing and her longing will drive them both toward a tragedy as veiled and inevitable as Sylvie's whispering ghosts.

 

REVIEWS

  • "Ashley-Smith debuts with a gorgeous, melancholy coming-of-age novella about girlhood and ghosts. … This eerie, ethereal tale marks Ashley-Smith as a writer to watch."

    – Publishers Weekly

  • "A of loss, trauma and identity, masterfully told. Horror and thriller elements underpin an unsettling coming-of-age story … Ashley-Smith's style is gripping, his structure clear and considered. The Attic Tragedy's multifaceted nature and effective storytelling has far-reaching appeal."

    – Aurealis Magazine, #129

  • "A beautifully written book about desire, pain, and loss, haunted by glimmerings of the supernatural. The Attic Tragedy manages to do more by intimation and suggestion with its 53 pages than most novels manage to accomplish over their several hundred."

    – Brian Evenson, author of Song for the Unraveling of the World
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

Sylvie never called them ghosts, but that's what they were.

The day we became friends, she walked me through the darkened rooms of her father's antique shop, trailing her fingers over the objects. All of them were lovingly cleaned, none with even a trace of dust. There were old books and reliquaries, trinket jars and model ships, barometers, credenzas, compendiums and lamps. There were music boxes and what I now know was a Minton hand-painted jardinière. Sylvie brushed them with her long pale fingers, her eyes aflutter, her voice so soft it was almost lost to the tinkle of the overhead chandeliers, the tick tick tick of the many hidden clocks.

"The woman who wore this lost her husband to madness." Sylvie fingered an ornate ring, curlicued silver bordered with diamonds. "He disappeared when she fell pregnant and everyone thought him dead. He'd been gone three years when she read about him in the paper. He was living rough in Centennial Park, running naked and wild, biting the heads off geese." She slipped the ring back into its padded velvet tray. "Her mother always said he'd come to no good."

"Or this," she said, and her fingers moved to the stem of a burnished brass telescope. "A lover's memento. The woman who owned this took a keepsake from every man she fell for. Not one of them ever knew of her love. And none loved her in return. She died of loneliness and an overdose of laudanum, lifted from the Gladstone of a doctor she'd set her heart on."

Sylvie swam between display cases with fluid movements, her touch as delicate as a butterfly. I hardly dared move, afraid my bulk would knock over some priceless curio, topple some fragile ancient thing.

"How do you know?" I asked and followed, squeezing between a bookcase and a mahogany sideboard. A blue glass vase wobbled on its shelf and I reached out to steady it. "D'you find all that on the Internet or something?"

"No, silly," said Sylvie, eyes laughing. "They tell me."

I thought she was teasing, so turned away, pretended I was examining the collectables. Beside us was a heavy leather-top desk, the surface inlaid with gold leaf that glittered faintly in the half-light. There was an old-fashioned cash register and a marble bust and, beside them, a black-and-white photo in a silver art deco frame. It was a portrait of a dark-haired woman with round faraway eyes and a haunting smile; just as Sylvie would look in ten years, twenty years—beautiful and tired and sad. But there was a spark in her eyes, as though she were smiling through the sadness, like a single beam of sunlight glimpsed through brooding clouds.

"And this one?" I said and reached to pick it up, but felt through my sweater a delicate touch. Sylvie's hand on my arm.

I felt hot all over and prayed I wasn't blushing. Every one of my scars was tingling. "What do you mean they tell you? Like you can . . . hear them?"

Sylvie looked up at me and frowned, her eyebrows furrowed and serious.

"Of course," she said. "You mean you can't?"