A girl born with a number for a name, destined to become a new messiah - a seagull who becomes a household pet and national celebrity - flashing patterns of light as a key to your darkest fears - an impoverished family with a murderous secret. In these fourteen stories of this his first collection, Jeff Gardiner shows a startling range of styles and imagination, from visceral horror to lyrical literary prose. Keen psychological insight is allied to a shrewd knowledge of ancient myth and mysticism. Gardiner's recurring interest is in religion and spirituality and the strange traces these almost outlawed strangers have left on modern urban life. His characters are often dangerous and unreasonable, their actions unpredictable, a far cry from the rational universe we like to think we share. Look again at your world and let Gardiner show the glimpses you've been missing of the doors that beckon you to other ways of seeing. The ominous, the luminous... the numinous.