Sika Tarn
You’ll never look at peat in the same way again
This week at The Tricky Genre Press we have been putting the final touches to jjhudsson's latest work of weird and uncanny fiction, Sika Tarn. It's a haunting and atmospheric ghost story, set in the inter-war years, about two travelling companions who encounter strange noises emanating from an isolated loch in the distant highlands of Scotland.
Sika Tarn is the first of four novellas collected under the title Foretellings. The individual stories will come out over the autumn, with the full collection appearing around Christmas time. We thought you might like a sneek peek of Sika Tarn and a look at the covers we are developing for this project.
EPUB cover of the novella Sika Tarn by jjhudsson. (The Tricky Genre Press 2026). Click to enlarge.
The Sika Tarn cover image features the painting ‘Landscape with Lake ’ by the German-American painter Albert Bierstadt (Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons), one of Jess’s favourite artists. The original is held in a private collection. Jess has modified the digital image used here to work in the present cover format, sampling and scaling the photograph. Although the largely tree-less landscape does not reflect the claustrophobic environs of the pine wood as featured in the story, we felt the mountains, lake and lone pines captured the sense of isolation and loneliness that is a prominent theme of the novella.
The Storyteller admits that the premise of the tale is a shameless mimic of The Willows, by Algernon Blackwood - for his money one of the finest examples of uncanny fiction you can read. In the classic Blackwood story two companions on a canoe trip down the Danube spend the night on an isolated island in the stream, where they gradually succumb to the nightmare of the ordinary. Sika Tarn deviates from Blackwood’s eerie tale in circumstances if not in theme. However the events—and the places wherein they take place—are mostly recollected from various family holidays taken in the north of Scotland. Indeed, it might be said that the ending of the tale is the only part of Sika Tarn that is truly from the Storyteller’s imagination.
Here's a brief extract. It is 1938. The writer and his companion, Johansson, are on a hiking holiday. They have arrived at an isolated community on the north-west coast of Scotland with the intention of climbing Ben Callister, the local peak. After a series of unnerving experiences in the hamlet where they are staying and on the mountain, the pair enter a dark and foreboding pine wood on the last leg of their return journey. It is towards the end of the day. They are tired and not a little fraught:
Extract from the novella ‘Sika Tarn’ by jjhudsson (The Tricky Genre Press 2026)
You'll have to read the EPUB to learn what happens next, but it's probably safe to say you won't look at peat in quite the same way again.
The Sika Tarn EPUB also comes with a map showing the fictional Rachnaculis Bay and the walking route taken by the writer and Johansson. And there are a few endnotes to help with odd bits of Gaelic.
Map of Rachnaculis Bay (click to view larger image), showing locations featured in the novella Sika Tarn by jjhudsson (The Tricky Genre Press 2026)
Click the map to view a larger version.
The novella Sika Tarn is available now as an EPUB on the The Tricky Genre Press website, and for a very short time you can download it for free.
NOTES
The digital image of ‘Landscape with Lake ’ by Albert Bierstadt is in the Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Willows, by Algernon Blackwood was originally published in the collection The Listener and Other Stories (1917, Knopf). It is available today in several anthologies of uncanny stories and online at The Internet Archive.org.
