Blackwater Days (Eidolon, 2000) is a collection of horror stories by Australian writer Terry Dowling. The collection won the Ditmar Award for Best Collection 2001, and from it, "Jenny Come to Play" (Eidolon, Spring 1997) won the Aurealis Award for Best Horror Short Story (1997) and "The Saltimbanques" (Eidolon 29/30, 2000) won the Ditmar Award for Best Short Story (2001).
Blackwater Days features seven closely linked tales set around the Blackwater Psychiatric Hospital at Everton in the Hunter Valley, featuring Dr Dan Truswell and his two "psychosleuths", Peter Rait and Philip Crow. "Downloading" (Event Horizon Online, 14 September 1998) is a chilling exercise in murder and possession. "Beckoning Nightframe" (Eidolon, Spring 1996) plays with narrative framing devices in the atmospheric story of a woman convinced that there is a presence behind the fluttering curtain of a shed visible from her home. "Basic Black" is a complex serial killer tale in which (mistaken) identity plays a pivotal role. "The Saltimbanques" features the otherworldly impact of a troupe of travelling carnival players on some youths of a small Australian outback town. "Jenny Come to Play" is a bizarre reconciliation of opposites in the story of sisters joined by more than simply flesh; "Light from the Deep Pavilion" is another disturbing tale about ritualistic murder and psychic detection; and "Blackwater Days" draws the threads of the book together, an unforgettable tale of dioramas, catatonic withdrawal, mystery and madness.
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“Today as in the time of Pliny and Columella, the hyacinth flourishes in Wales, the periwinkle in Illyria, the daisy on the ruins of Numantia; while around them cities have changed their masters and their names, collided and smashed, disappeared into nothingness, their peaceful generations have crossed down the ages as fresh and smiling as on the days of battle.”
—Edgar Quinet (1803–1875)