Nightmare Magazine, Issue 66 (March 2018)

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Issue 66, March 2018

FROM THE EDITOR Editorial: March 2018 Launching Our Patreon and Drip, or How to Become a Dragonrider or Space Wizard

FICTION Mr. Try Again A. Merc Rustad Was She Wicked? Was She Good? M. Rickert Crave Lilliam Rivera Apports Stephen Bacon

NONFICTION The H Word: Reviewing Horror Charles Payseur Book Reviews: March 2018 Adam-Troy Castro

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS A. Merc Rustad Lilliam Rivera

MISCELLANY Coming Attractions Stay Connected Subscriptions and Ebooks About the Nightmare Team Also Edited by John Joseph Adams

Welcome to issue sixty-six of Nightmare. We have original fiction from A. Merc Rustad (“Mr. Try Again”) and Lilliam Rivera (“Crave”), along with reprints by M. Rickert (“What She Wicked? Was She Good?”) and Stephen Bacon (“Apports”). In the latest installment of our column on horror, “The H Word,” reviewer and author Charles Payseur discusses what reviewing horror means to him. Plus we have author spotlights with our authors, and Adam-Troy Castro brings us reviews of terrific new fiction.

John Joseph Adams Books News for March 2018 ICYMI last month, I have one recent acquisition to report:

New York Times bestseller and multiple Hugo and Nebula Award- winner Greg Bear’s The Unfinished Land, about a time of great peril —the sailing of the Spanish Armada—when a young man is transported in a wrecked fishing boat to a lost island at the top of the world, to be caught up in a war that pits gods against monsters and humans against the slavery of history. (2019)

And in other exciting news: Carrie Vaughn’s Bannerless was named a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award! The winner and any special citations will be announced on Friday, March 30, 2018 at Norwescon 41 at the DoubleTree by Hilton Seattle Airport, SeaTac WA. To learn more about the award, and see the full list of this year’s finalists, visit philipkdickaward.org. News aside, here’s a quick rundown what to expect from John Joseph Adams Books in 2018: In April, we have Bryan Camp’s The City of Lost Fortunes, about a magician with a talent for finding lost things who is forced into playing a high stakes game with the gods of New Orleans for the heart and soul of the city. Here’s some early buzz for the book:

“Camp’s fantasy reads like jazz, with multiple chaotic-seeming threads of deities, mortals, and destiny playing in harmony. This game of souls and fate is full of snarky dialogue, taut suspense, and characters whose glitter hides sharp fangs. [. . .] Any reader who likes fantasy with a dash of the bizarre will enjoy this trip to the Crescent City.” — Publishers Weekly “Take a walk down wild card shark streets into a world of gods, lost souls, murder, and deep, dark magic. You might not come back from The City of Lost Fortunes, but you’ll enjoy the trip.” —Richard Kadrey, bestselling author of the Sandman Slim series “In The City of Lost Fortunes, Bryan Camp delivers a high-octane tale of myth and magic, serving up the best of Neil Gaiman and Richard Kadrey. Here is New Orleans in all its gritty, grudging glory, the haunt of sinners and saints, gods and mischief-makers. Once you pay a visit, you won’t want to leave!” —Helen Marshall, World Fantasy Award- winning author of Gifts for the One Who Comes After “Bryan Camp’s debut novel The City of Lost Fortunes is like a blessed stay in a city both distinctly familiar and wonderfully strange, with an old friend who knows just the right spots to take you to–not too touristy, and imbued with the weight of history and myth, populated by local characters you’ll never forget. You’ll leave sated with the sights and sounds of a New Orleans that is not quite the real city, but breathes like the real thing, a beautiful mimicry in prose that becomes its own version of reality in a way only a good story—or magic—can. You won’t regret the visit.” —Indra Das, author of The Devourers “With sharp prose and serious literary chops, Bryan Camp delivers a masterful work of contemporary fantasy in The City of Lost Fortunes. It reads like the New Orleans-born love child of Raymond Chandler and Neil Gaiman, featuring a roguish hero you can’t help but root for. It’s funny, harrowing, thrilling—the pages keep turning. The City of Lost Fortunes establishes Bryan Camp as the best and brightest new voice on fantasy literature’s top shelf.” —Nicholas Mainieri, author of The Infinite “Anyone who loves New Orleans will love this mystical adventure where gods, magicians, vampires, zombies, angels, and ghouls clash in the only city where a story like this is actually possible. The City of Fortunes expertly blends the real and the surreal, capturing the essence of New Orleans in such a unique way. In this city, just as in this story, the line between fact and fiction blurs, and your imagination is set free.” —Candice Huber, Tubby and Coo’s Bookstore (New Orleans, LA) “Myth and archetype combine with the gritty realism of modern post- Katrina New Orleans in this fast-paced novel. Throughout the twists and turns of a clever, compelling plot, the soul of the city and strength of its survivors shine through. As a southern Louisiana resident, Bryan Camp saw firsthand the devastation and impact on people’s lives caused by Katrina, and the emotion of that experience fuels the power of the story and its unique, well-crafted characters. If you like the work of Neil Gaiman and Roger Zelazny, you’ll enjoy this book. A fun, engaging read. Highly recommended.” —Les Howle, director of the Clarion West Writers Workshop

In June, we have Todd McAulty’s The Robots of Gotham, a debut novel about a future where the world is on the brink of total subjugation by machine intelligences when a man stumbles on a sinister conspiracy to exterminate humanity and a group of human and machine misfits who might just be able to prevent it. Here’s what some early readers are saying about this one:

“When the robot apocalypse comes, I hope it’s this much fun. Like The Martian and Ready Player One, Robots of Gotham is set in a high-tech near-future where something has gone terribly wrong, and it’s navigated by a hero who’s quirky, resourceful, and as likable as they come. Read it for the rock’em-sock’em-robot action—read it for the deft world-building with its detailed taxonomy of intelligent machines—read it for the sobering parallels to modern-day issues and threats. Or just read it because it’s a helluva good ride.” —Sharon Shinn, author of the Elemental Blessings series “The Robots of Gotham is a crackling good adventure, stuffed with cool action sequences. It also features serious and intriguing speculation about the potential of Artificial Intelligence, for good and bad. And it’s an engaging read, with absorbing characters, and, of course, lots and lots of nifty robots.” —Rich Horton, editor of The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy “Todd McAulty has imagined a fascinating geopolitical future, filled it with some very cool technology, and thrown in healthy helpings of intrigue and action. The result is a page-turner that kept me riveted from the opening lines to the final chapter. Highly recommended!” — David B. Coe, author of The Case Files of Justis Fearsson “If Johnny 5 had a baby with the Terminator, the result would be Robots of Gotham: a book that explores the consequences of world domination by our Robot Overlords. (And, lest we forget the badassiest of them, our Robot Overladies.) Drones, dinosaurs, and doggies—with a plague thrown in for good measure!—the barter is banter, and death is cheap. With man against machine, machine against machine, man against man, unlikely alliances must be forged across all species, rational or otherwise. For all its breakneck world- building, constant questing, and relentless wheeling and dealing, Robots of Gotham is deceptively deep-hearted: a novel about, of all things, friendship.” —C.S.E. Cooney, author of World Fantasy Award-winning Bone Swans: Stories “Soldiers, spies, diplomats—and that’s just the machines. Wait until you meet the wise-cracking hero and his dog. Wildly inventive, outrageous fun.” —Kay Kenyon, author of At the Table of Wolves and Serpent in the Heather “Adventure, mystery, action, sinister intrigue, clever heroics, and robots—what more do you need? I couldn’t put it down.” —Howard Andrew Jones, author of The Desert of Souls

Further out in 2018, we’ll have The Wild Dead—Carrie Vaughn’s sequel to Bannerless—in July; Dale Bailey’s In the Night Wood in October; and then Molly Tanzer’s Creatures of Want and Ruin in November. We’ll provide more details about those as the publication dates draw nearer, but as always if you want more information about these or any other John Joseph Adams Books titles, just visit johnjosephadamsbooks.com. That’s all the JJA Books news for now. More soon!

• • • •

Well, that’s all there is to report this month. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy the issue!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR John Joseph Adams, in addition to serving as publisher and editor-in-chief of Nightmare, is the editor of John Joseph Adams Books, an science fiction and fantasy imprint from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He is also the series editor of Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, as well as the bestselling editor of many other anthologies, including The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, Robot Uprisings, Dead Man’s Hand, Armored, Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, and The Living Dead. Recent projects include: Cosmic Powers, What the #@&% Is That?, Operation Arcana, Loosed Upon the World, Wastelands 2, Press Start to Play, and The Apocalypse Triptych: The End is Nigh, The End is Now, and The End Has Come. Called “the reigning king of the anthology world” by Barnes & Noble, John is a two-time winner of the Hugo Award (for which he has been a finalist eleven times) and is a seven-time World Fantasy Award finalist. John is also the editor and publisher of Lightspeed Magazine and is a producer for Wired.com’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Find him on Twitter @johnjosephadams. Launching Our Patreon and Drip, or How to Become a Dragonrider or Space Wizard John Joseph Adams | 640 words

If you’re reading this, then there’s a good chance you’re a regular reader of Nightmare and/or Lightspeed. We already offer ebook subscriptions as a way of supporting the magazines, but we wanted to add an additional option to allow folks to support us, thus we’re launching a Patreon (patreon.com/JohnJosephAdams) and a Drip (d.rip/john-joseph-adams).

TL;DR Version If you enjoy Nightmare and Lightspeed and my anthologies, our Patreon and Drip pages will be a way for you to help support those endeavors by chipping in a buck or more on a recurring basis. Your support will help us bring bigger and better (and more) projects into the world.

Why Patreon and Drip? There are no big companies supporting or funding the magazines, so the magazines really rely on reader support. Though we offer the magazines online for free, we’re able to fund them by selling ebook subscriptions or website advertising. While we have a dedicated ebook subscriber base, the vast majority of our readers consume the magazine online for free. If just 10% of our website readers pledged just $1 a month, the magazines would be doing fantastically well. So we thought it might be useful to have an option like Drip and Patreon for readers who maybe haven’t considered supporting the magazine, or who maybe haven’t because they don’t have any desire to receive the ebook editions—or who would be glad to pay $1 a month, but not $3 (the cost of a monthly subscriber issue of Lightspeed). Though Lightspeed and Nightmare are separate entities, we decided to create a single “publisher” Drip and Patreon account because it seemed like it would be more efficient to manage just one page on each platform. Plus, since I sometimes independently publish works using indie-publishing tools (as described above), we thought it would be good to have a single place where folks could come to show their support for such projects. But basically, we wanted to create a crowdfunding page where, if you enjoy my work as an editor, and you want to contribute a little something to help make it easier for us to produce more cool projects, then our Drip or Patreon will be the place to do that.

What Do I Get Out of Being a Backer or Patron? Well, you get the satisfaction of helping to usher the creation of cool new short fiction projects into the world! Plus, the more support we get, the better we can make the magazines and compensate our authors and staff. By becoming a supporter via Patreon or Drip, you help fund our growth and continued publication of two award-winning magazines. Of course, if you’re already one of our ebook subscribers (thank you!), you are already supporting us. This is for those who prefer to read the issues each month on our free websites, or wish to support our efforts more generally. By becoming a supporter, you are also bestowed a title, such as Dragonrider, or Space Wizard, or Savior of the World and/or Universe, thus making you instantly the envy of all your friends.

Thank You! If you’ve read this far, thanks so much. We hope you’ll consider becoming a backer on Patreon or Drip. Those URLs again are d.rip/john-joseph-adams and patreon.com/JohnJosephAdams. Thanks in advance for your time. We look forward to hopefully being able to make the magazines—and my other publishing endeavors—even better with the support of people like you.

Six-year-old Violet Wellington was the only child to come out of the swamp. The boys were gone forever. She sat on the side of a muddied dirt road, digging her nails raw against the gravel; her jeans and pink t-shirt were damp but clean. She had a scrape over her left eyebrow and her hair smelled of mildew. Unharmed, otherwise. Dogs and professionals and volunteers spent days trying to find the other bodies. Violet couldn’t help. She wouldn’t draw pictures, she wouldn’t answer questions, she wouldn’t be cajoled with sugar and promises that “everything is okay now, you’re safe, no one can hurt you.” Three families resisted funerals, clinging to possibility. Violet didn’t talk for seven weeks after her miraculous reappearance. When she did, she just said, “Try again. Try again. Try again.”

• • • •

Violet grew older. The boys were never found. No one knew why four children vanished one day. (No one ever really knows.) Eventually, authorities said there was nothing to be done. No bones, no closure. I tell you this because it’s not important. What happened in the swamp doesn’t matter. The boys are dead. That’s obvious. My name was Violet when I went into the swamp. That wasn’t my name when I came out. It’s never been my name again. Violet died with the boys. I thought that was obvious, too. While the media went into a feeding frenzy for fresh facts, the girl who wasn’t Violet attended therapy and watched her parents divorce and told the cops nothing about Mr. Try Again. Where he was, what he looked like, what he had done to those poor boys. That’s because she never told anyone about Mr. Try Again. If she told, then someone else would find Mr. Try Again, and she couldn’t have that. The girl who came out of the swamp had not been entirely alive; it makes sense that this part-dead girl would eventually grow up and decide to keep Mr. Try Again’s existence all to herself.

• • • • “No, Violet. That’s not how you hold the spoon. Try again.”

• • • •

You know the movie Alien? Its tagline says no one in space can hear you scream, but that’s not true. Ripley heard her crewmates screaming. The alien heard. When you watch it on your TV, you hear the people screaming. I hear the boys’ screams, mostly. Violet didn’t make a sound when the boys died. That’s why she survived, even though she wasn’t alive. But I suppose you’ve seen vampire movies and zombie movies, right? Undead. Not-dead. A corpse walking, talking, breathing. Never smiling, though. That’s for people who are alive.

• • • •

“Ah, my little Judas goat, that is not how I taught you to hold a knife. Try again.”

• • • •

Sixteen years, three months, and twenty-eight days pass since Violet was found. When my parents leave, I stay in the house on the dirt road, the one a mile from the swamp. I can’t move anywhere else. This is the place—with bland gray siding, a patched shingle roof, unkempt hedges—that Violet remembered. It was the house that kept her sane. In July, a family moves into the long-unsold lot in the unfinished cul-de-sac next to me. A man and a woman and a seven-year-old girl, all white, all fake smiles and false prosperity. The man beats his wife when he thinks no one notices. He yells at the daughter, spills abuse over the top of beer cans and knuckled fists. He’ll kill them both one night, when no one is around to see. Everyone who knew him will say that he wasn’t like that, that it was just a mistake. That’s how these stories go. The girl might try and tell someone: a teacher, a relative, a stranger. She won’t be believed, because girls always lie. So I watch the girl. She’s a loner. Quiet, reserved, content to play in the grass behind the house with imaginary friends. Sometimes she strays. • • • •

“Dear Violet, my sweet little flower, this one is too small. And this one is too skinny. You know what I need. Try again.”

• • • •

The neighbor woman’s name is Kathy, her husband’s name is irrelevant, and her daughter is called Judith. When the man leaves for work, when Kathy is home from her part-time job at an antiques shop in town, when Judith is exploring the woods that rub up against the swamp, I go over to visit. We sit on her front porch, awkward, drinking cold tea and remarking on the weather. But I see relief in Kathy’s eyes when I’m there. She isn’t alone, the sole barrier between the man in her house and her daughter. I visit as often as possible, and the man never knows. I rarely leave my house, so these trips across the cul-de-sac’s cracked asphalt circle to Kathy’s door are cathartic. Grocery delivery keeps me fed, shopping online satisfies other needs, and I live off residual income from royalties earned by the true crime book written about Violet Wellington. “You’re trapped,” I tell Kathy one afternoon. Thunderstorms bubble in the distance. “With that man.” “My husband?” She laughs, brittle, and glances over her shoulder as if afraid he’ll hear. The bruising along her collarbone spills down her V-neck shirt and she breathes shallowly, nursing cracked ribs. One eye is swollen purple. She “ran into the door” like she always does. Judith is sitting beside the porch. She thinks neither her mother nor I can tell she’s there, hidden in half-shadow and gripping a fist-sized rock. She carries that rock with her everywhere; sometimes in the pocket of her jeans, sometimes in a tattered backpack. I imagine it’s under her pillow at night. “Nonsense,” Kathy says, waving a hand. There are no flies abuzz. Even with the swamps so near, there are never any insects around me. “He’s a good man. He just gets stressed, you know? The economy is tough.” “He’s going to kill you,” I tell her. “Very soon.” Kathy asks me to leave. I won’t be invited back to the porch. Judith watches and I know the girl believes me, even if her mother won’t.

• • • • Violet Wellington had been missing for eight months, fourteen days, and seven hours total. In the space of those months, thirteen little boys went missing across the state, all near or around wetland. No one connected the dots.

• • • •

Judith knocks on my door one night in late August, when the stars are limp and listless in the smog-black sky. Mosquitos vanish at the edge of my senses, and Judith scratches at old bug-bite swells on her arms. “Hi,” she says when I answer the door. She shoves her hand in her pocket, where the rock bulges. “My dad’s shouting again.” I can hear the man’s loud, gutless bleating. Puffed up lungs full of word-bile and violence. It’s oppressively hot, over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit, with sticky-damp humidity that sucks the patience from saints. There are brownouts all over the grid. No AC. No breeze to calm frayed nerves. I lit candles in my window sills to guide the lost to my door. Judith grinds her teeth. “Did you mean what you said awhile back?” She has that slow-burn fury in her gut. I smell it like popped blisters. “Is he gonna kill my mom?” “Yes,” I say. Probably tonight. It’s a murder-night, all sullen air and repressed rage. I think she knows the truth like I do. It’s why she came. “Do you want me to stop him?”

• • • •

Violet didn’t like the swamp. It smelled like bad breath, and the mud sucked at her feet, and her arms itched with mosquito bites. But her new puppy named Peaches had run off into the cattails and brown grassy humps, and she promised promised PROMISED Daddy she’d take care of the puppy. She had to find Peaches or she’d never get another pet again, and that was a terrible thought. It was getting dark, the scary kind of dark where boogeymen crept out of closets and ghosts jumped out to shout BOO. “Peaches!” Violet yelled. She soft- yelled, though, just in case there were ghosts nearby. “Come here, girl!” “Are you looking for your lost puppy?” said a voice behind her. “This one, perhaps?” Violet spun around. There was a tall man in a white tuxedo standing there, not at all ghostly, and he smiled very wide and held Peaches under one arm. His eyes were weird: Violet couldn’t quite tell where they were on his face. “Y-yes, that’s my puppy.” Violet held out her hands. It was bad to talk to strangers, but it was more bad to go home without Peaches. “How do you ask nicely, little flower girl?” the man said. Violet frowned. “Please?” He laughed. “No, Violet. Try again.”

• • • •

The man has killed Kathy before Judith and I cross the cul-de-sac. She lies broken-faced on the kitchen floor, staining the linoleum red. He’s ransacking the house, looking for the girl. I make him stop. I make him into very small, very bloody pieces so he will go away forever. Judith watches and doesn’t flinch. She’s not the kind of girl who cries, either. “Sorry,” I tell her. Try again. “I should’ve come last night.” Or a week ago. A month. The day he moved in and I saw Kathy’s shoulder when her sleeve rolled up while she carried a box. Judith just stares at the pieces of the man. That’s okay. I know how to dispose of bodies. “The cops will arrest you,” Judith says at last. She looks much older than she is. Time passes differently when you survive. “Won’t they?” “I suppose.” The thing about news stories is that they fade, and soon everything cycles all over again. Reporters will ask questions and forget answers. Authorities will sweep the uncomfortable details into locked case files and redacted testimonies. Statistics will label Kathy a victim and move on. Maybe there will be a funeral and maybe sad coworkers or distant relatives will attend, shake their heads about the tragedy, and forget about it within a week. Judith sniffs, rubbing her nose with the back of a hand. Her fist is clamped around the rock. “I don’t want to go into foster care. Mom didn’t have any friends or family and . . . and . . . he . . .” “Don’t say his name.” I pat her on the shoulder. Her back is rigid, muscles taut like guitar strings. “He doesn’t deserve it.” She kicks the ground. “He used to call me Judy when he wanted to be nice.” “My name does not mean nice,” I tell her, and when she looks at me, I whisper in her ear the name I’ve called myself since Violet died. “What do I do?” Judith whispers. Her eyes are burning, hot and bright. “Where do I go now?” “You can live with me,” I offer. The house is big enough. “But I need your help.” “Help with what?”

• • • •

Mr. Try Again likes to watch little girls. He only comes out when a girl is alone, made vulnerable by distance, age, fear. He corners her with treats or puppies, and lures her deeper into the swamp. Into the Dim Place, where time doesn’t pass the right way. Where no one can hear her scream.

• • • •

The next August, when the house across the cul-de-sac is foreclosed upon, when the police believe Kathy has ran off with her daughter to escape an abusive husband—all three becoming no more than files on a basement desk in an underfunded, overworked local department—when the night is unbearably hot and sticky with murder, Judith and I head into the swamp. We go on the night her mother died, because grief has power, just like rage. Judith and I spent a year in mostly silence. I told her what happened to me. I told her about Mr. Try Again. She thought about the other girls who’d gone into the swamp, the ones who didn’t come out. (The boys? Oh, those were just for him to eat. Mr. Try Again didn’t call me a Judas goat for no reason.) I told Judith what I needed her to do. What I would do, in turn. “Okay,” Judith said. In place of a rock, I give her a knife.

• • • •

“What is this, darling Violet? What have you brought me? This isn’t a morsel-boy, not a proper treat.” “Her name’s Tara.” “This won’t do, my girl, this won’t do at all! Try again.” “No.”

• • • •

There is another reason Violet Wellington told no one about Mr. Try Again. She knew she wouldn’t be believed. Adults would blame her for her own trauma. They would say, “Surely you can remember what this man looked like. What he really looked like. Where he is.” It would have been her responsibility to point the way, and her fault when the police found nothing. Maybe she had lied. Girls lie, you know. Everyone knows that. If Violet was a boy, someone might have believed her. If Violet had described Mr. Try Again, this is what she would have said: “He has two faces. One in front, one in back. The front-face looks smiley and nice. The back-face is all teeth. No, he doesn’t have a spine. He’s two sides, and one is scary and that’s the one that eats.” Violet would have been called a liar. So she lied. When she talked again, she said, “The man who kidnapped me was short. He had crooked teeth. I don’t remember where he took me. I was blindfolded.”

• • • •

In the Dim Place, Violet could see all the swamps in the world connected like root systems. The tendrils formed a domed roof, which existed nowhere Violet understood. The tip of one root would lead her to the edge of a patch of wetlands, close to human habitat, and she’d clutch a rotting cattail so she’d see the Way Back once she found a new boy. She always went back. Mr. Try Again told her what he’d do if she didn’t. She remembered her old house (so far away, so long ago) and kept it painted like a water color masterpiece behind her eyes. She didn’t sleep often. Mr. Try Again didn’t like sleep. Besides, her only pillow was made from Peaches’ fur. Then, when she went trying again, she found another girl who looked like her: pale skin, brown hair, a house painted behind her eyelids. Violet came alive and smiled. She had a plan.

• • • • Judith creeps through brittle grass, the ground sagging under her sneakers. There’s a full moon tonight. It’s sallow and sad, putting in minimal effort to shine yellowed light through scraggily willows and popped cattails. She doesn’t bring a flashlight. “Biscuit?” she whispers, the name of the stray we set loose as bait. “Here, boy . . .” Judith’s skin is damp with sweat. She doesn’t want to be out alone. Worries that her dog is gone forever. Is afraid what will happen if her dad finds out she let Biscuit get away. Irresistible. The tall, white-tuxedoed figure glides from the heat. He steps from behind a clump of sumac, holding Biscuit. (The dog is already dead, but Judith doesn’t know that yet.) “Are you looking for your pet, darling girl?” Judith freezes. Her heart rabbits in her ribs. Bibittabibittabibbita. Mr. Try Again always appears behind the girls he wants to take. Slowly, Judith turns around. She swallows, then remembers to nod and force a smile. “Can I have my dog back?” “You must say the magic word, Judith,” whispers Mr. Try Again. Judith takes a breath. “Please.” Mr. Try Again’s second face, the eating-face, has its eyes closed. They only open when he’s hungry. And right now, he’s got a different hunger than the lust for succulent boy-meat. He looks at Judith as if she’s a chocolate-dipped, cream- filled bonbon. So sweet, so delicate, so innocent. If his eating-eyes had been open, he would have seen what was stalking him. Judith sees.

• • • •

There is no magic word. Nothing Mr. Try Again says is true. He won’t let you live and he won’t let you go home.

• • • •

Judith lets Mr. Try Again take her hand, the dead dog in his other arm, and he leads her through the swamp. She glances over her shoulder repeatedly, and he laughs that soft, pat-pat-you-adorable-little-girl sound. He thinks she thinks they’re lost. She’s checking to be sure I’m following.

• • • •

Violet took Tara by the hand and led her deeper into the swamp. The mosquitoes and deer flies didn’t bother the girls. No hidden quagmires sucked them down to their deaths (like Tara’s mom believed would happen). The cattails were quiet. They knew this was not how things should be. When Violet and Tara reached the hole that led to the Dim Place, Violet turned to her scapegoat, put her hands on Tara’s shoulders, and said the magic words. “Try again, try again, try again.” Then they were inside the Dim Place, with its root-ceiling and the smell of lies. And Mr. Try Again, standing with his eating-face to the mirror so he could pick clean his teeth. His smile-face frowned when he saw Tara. All his eyes were open. “This won’t do, my girl, this won’t do at all! Violet, try again.” “No.” While Tara stood there, frozen in terror, while Mr. Try Again licked his lips and inhaled the savory scent of girl-fear, Violet grabbed the nearest root and pulled herself up. She scurried into the swamps a hundred miles from where she had snatched the other girl. She ran and ran and ran until she found a dirt road, where she sat down. She wanted to cry. But she wasn’t alive. So she waited, digging her fingers into gravel. Waited for Mr. Try Again to come find her. Waited for sixteen years. Waited to see if she would ever regret what she did to Tara.

• • • •

You don’t need to know what happened to all the girls in the Dim Place. You aren’t going to be a voyeur to their pain.

• • • •

I remember these trails. The roots that snake, coil, skitter or jump. I follow, silent and unseen, like how Violet was when she hunted boys. What the news reports never connected: not all the missing children disappeared in swamps. Some vanished from daycare. Some from school. Some from their beds. In the end, they all ended up in the swamps. You can’t see all the pieces if you don’t know what the puzzle is supposed to look like. I made ninety-seven children disappear. No one would have believed Violet Wellington if she’d told them. Girls are liars in the eyes of the world. That’s why Mr. Try Again likes them so much. Who will believe her? Judith’s toes brush the hole where the root leads down to the Dim Place. Mr. Try Again always makes the girls take the first step of their own violation. Then it’s their fault, what happens to them after. (Liar.) Judith looks back once. I nod to her. I am watching. I am here. Judith steps into the hole and sinks.

• • • •

The Dim Place is just like Violet remembered. I have her memories. She slept on that small bed of rags behind the full-length mirror. She sharpened the knives on the butcher-block table in the center of the room. It’s not so much a room as it is a space lit against the gaping darkness all around it. The Dim Place. Tara is still here—no. Not Tara. That’s wishful thinking. This is another girl, another face, who took her place here long ago. The girl lies on that bed, blank- eyed, whispering, “Try again, try again, try again.” Now that Judith is here, this girl can walk into the mirror and disappear with all the other ghost-girls. (Even when she banged her forehead and hands bloody on the glass, it would never break for her. It wouldn’t let her through. There must be another girl in the Dim Place before the mirror will crack.) “Rose darling, this is Judith.” Mr. Try Again pulls Judith towards the rag bed. He’ll make a new pillow from Biscuit to replace the one that was Peaches. Judith wrenches her arm free of his hold, and that’s when the eating-face opens its eyes and sees me. Mr. Try Again whirls around, coattails like lightning. Violet would have frozen, caught in that familiar vise of don’t-run-don’t-resist-it-will-hurt-less-if-you’re- good. I am not Violet. I lunge at him. “I told you I’d come back.” Mr. Try Again grabs at me, his hands crooked in smiling rage. “Violet, the one who left, I have missed you, my sweet! Shall we try again?” I seize his wrists before his fingers curl around my throat and awaken old bruises. “No. Never again.” He’s powerful, but here’s the thing about the Dim Place: it’s not his any longer. I was here for half my life. For eight months that were fifteen years in his time. Girls stay until they are no longer girls in mind, even if their bodies don’t change, and that’s when he finds a new Judas goat. I lived here. I remember. And the Dim Place remembers me back. My feet are roots, sinking into the shadowy floor, into the mud that never sticks to clothes or skin. My hands are sinewy briars; my nails are burrs that dig into his forearms. I hold him. Not the way he held me. The old wounds reappear in scar-shadows along my back and ribs and thighs. Mr. Try Again hisses through his smile. “Dear Violet, sweet Violet. How do you intend to stop me?” “My name isn’t Violet,” I say. Violet was the girl he killed. Like Tara, and like all the ones who’d come before. “I’m Knife.” I can see Judith in the mirror. She pulls out the blade I gave her, holds it in one hand, her rock in the other. When she wandered, she practiced throwing stones across stagnant ponds or hurled pebbles at bug-rotted apples on an old tree. Her aim was spectacular. She hurls the rock and shatters the mirror. Mr. Try Again screeches. Now his eating-face can’t communicate with his smile-face. I can see Judith without the mirror. She crouches on the table, the table where I learned how to make boys become tiny pieces. Finger food, Mr. Try Again called the pieces. My fingers to put the scraps into his mouth, wriggling and bloody just the way he liked. She’s tall enough to reach Mr. Try Again now. I shove him towards her. Judith swings her knife with all her strength and cuts off Mr. Try Again’s eating-face. A billowing wail fills the Dim Place: the screams of all the boys he has ever consumed. His strength goes out as the dead boys vanish, finally free, and I fling him down onto the table. I remember where the heavy chains are kept. I remember how to click locks into place. Judith breathes hard, white-knuckled grip unflinching on the knife handle. She doesn’t seem to mind the blood on her shirt. “Is that it?” “No.” I stand over Mr. Try Again. His white tuxedo is rotting into gray threads and the maggots roil out of his skin and between his lips. There won’t be any flies around us; insects will touch dead things, but they won’t touch Death. I put a hand on Judith’s shoulder. “Are you okay?” She nods. She’s still alive. I look at the other girl: Rose. She hasn’t moved, but she’s no longer whispering to herself. She can see me. She can have a new story after this. “How do we kill him?” Judith asks, hefting her knife. Mr. Try Again’s eating- face gnashes its teeth and writhes on the floor by my feet. I kick the face away. It can watch what we do. I don’t know if he can be killed. But he isn’t going anywhere. The Dim Place is mine now. There will be no more lost boys or final girls. I will dry up those roots that traverse the world, and when I am finished, there will never have been a Dim Place to begin with. “If one method doesn’t work,” I tell Judith, and watch her eyes brighten. She smiles a slow, understanding smile. “We try again.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR A. Merc Rustad is a queer non-binary writer who lives in Minnesota and is a 2016 Nebula Awards finalist. Their stories have appeared in Lightspeed, Fireside, Apex, Uncanny, Shimmer, Cicada, and several Year’s Best anthologies. You can find Merc on Twitter @Merc_Rustad or their website: amercrustad.com. Their debut short story collection, So You Want To Be A Robot, is published by Lethe Press (May 2017).

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight Was She Wicked? Was She Good? M. Rickert | 4027 words

She leaves the small creatures in tortured juxtapositions. Her mother and I find them on the porch steps, in the garden, drowning in small puddles, the green hose dripping water from the copper nozzle, guilty as blood. For a few weeks we are able to believe that these tragedies have nothing to do with our little girl whose smile breaks each morning like the sun. We scrape them up, gently, with the edge of leaves or blades of grass (once I cut one in half that way, a horrible accident and it bled while Sheilah laughed, I thought at some imaginary play) but we save none. Sometimes, we have to take them out of their misery, the slow agony of dying they suffer, we step on them, hard, and later scrape their squashed remains from the soles of our shoes. It has been a long, hot summer. The flowers wither on exhausted stems. We almost regret our stance against air conditioning. We place fans throughout the house; the hum is as annoying as the insidious hum of hornets that occasionally circle over us in the garden, like a threat. Sheilah runs through the summer days in her nightgown, pale pink and ethereal, her white limbs and moon-white face protected by slatherings of coconut-scented sunscreen. At night, when she finally falls asleep, tiny beads of sweat dotting her pink lips, heat emanates from her blonde curls as if she, herself, were a season. Had there been earlier signs that we ignored? Certainly, we tried to believe it was all accident and coincidence until, at last, she brought her game into the house. We found them in gruesome cups of strange concoctions in the kitchen, combinations of balsamic vinegar, Worcester sauce, and food coloring, their tiny bodies floating in the noxious liquid, we found them in the ice cubes, fingers splayed against their frozen death, finally we find them in Sheilah’s bedroom, pinned alive to a bulletin board that displays her kindergarten graduation certificate, her blue ribbon for good citizenship, and a drawing of a horse. They are screaming but they are beyond being saved, we unpin them and hit them with the bottom of our shoes, feeling worse about the one who survived our repeated attempts at mercy killing only to die in agony. From this upstairs window we watch Sheilah. She is, once again, dressed in the silky pink sleeveless nightgown, sitting on a quilt under the oak tree. One second we are looking down at the golden haloed head of our child, her murmured voice rising up to us, pretty as the cardinal’s morning song, and the next, we are running out of the room, down the wooden stairs, through the meditation room, into the kitchen (with its bright windows and spider plants), down the concrete steps lined with terra cotta pots filled with geraniums, awkwardly running across the lawn to Sheilah, who sits on the old quilt beneath the ancient tree, plucking wings and severing limbs, the damaged and wounded writhing in agony while she sings. With a moan, Anne scoops Sheilah up and runs back into the house, as though escaping a tornado, which leaves me to take care of the mess. I apologize to each and every one. I beg forgiveness. Their eyes lock into mine, infinitesimal eyes filled with the infinite suffering my daughter has caused. Later, when I go inside, I find Anne closing all the windows. “What are you doing?” I ask. “Isn’t this why we moved to the country? It’ll be a hundred degrees in here.” She looks at me with bright eyes, as though she suffers a fever. “They aren’t going to let her get away with this,” she says. “You know they won’t.” “You’re right,” I nod. “We need to punish her.” Anne turns from the closed window, the air around us charged, like the feeling before a storm. “What are you saying?” I step toward her but stop when I see the stone of her face, once beautiful, now set into the hard lines first etched three years ago. “Maybe we should reconsider. Maybe a little punishment—” She turns away from me; she whirls out of the room. I stand there and listen to the sound of windows being slammed shut.

• • • •

This is a difficult time for all of us. Anne makes jewelry in the basement studio, which Sheilah is forbidden to enter, while I work on my second book (The Possibilities for Enchantment in a World at War with the Self, the Other, and the Infinite) in my upstairs office, also forbidden. Sheilah follows this rule so completely that, one morning, I find her lying curled against the door, like a good dog. “Why don’t you go play?” She looks up at me, her eyes bright and wide as pennies. “You mean outside?” she asks. I shake my head. Sadly. “No, Sheilah, not outside.” She purses her lips into rosebud shape. “I wanna go outside.” Every time she mentions the outdoors I picture the little bodies, the dark eyes, the strange combination of her singing and their small screams. “We’ve already talked about this, Sheilah. No.” “Why not why not why not?” she wails. “You know why,” I say, and am surprised by how mean I sound. She stops her whining. She stares at me. I can’t tell if her expression is one of insolence, or horror. I step around her, carefully shutting the door behind me. My office window overlooks the backyard. I press up on the sash, hard. These are old windows, with screens and stormers that we change each spring and fall, a massive undertaking we had not considered when we bought the place, frantic to make our escape. I breathe in the scent of dirt, roses, leaves, grass, the green, loamy scent of summer, but my reverie is interrupted by droning, low and near. Hanging from the eave, like some dark tumor, is the hornet’s nest. I am both repelled and fascinated by the hornets, their golden wings quivering as they work their way around the orb. Sheilah is no longer screaming, perhaps she’s gone to bother Anne, or maybe she’s actually playing with her crystals or her chemistry set. I breathe in until I become restless and can’t stand still any longer, then I pull down the sash. The effect is immediate; stifled in my own home. I inspect the room carefully, checking the corners, the ceiling, the hiding places behind the furniture. We are striving for something like normal. The thought of having a “normal” child would once have struck us as a failing. Now it is our hope. The honey butter melts across the biscuits and we wash our hands under the tap as we stare out the closed window, remembering how we used to lick each other’s sticky fingers. When she comes into the kitchen, wearing that nightgown, her hair a wild cloud around her sleep-pink face, we greet her joyfully. She pushes us away with her tiny, dangerous hands. She sighs like an old woman. She demands white bread (who knows where she was introduced to this vile concoction) toasted and slathered with sugary peanut butter. She chews with her mouth open, her pearled teeth coated with oily brown, and squints at us. “I wanna go outside.” We shake our heads. “Why not why not why not,” she cries and flings the toast to the floor, where she follows it in a spectacular display of temper. “Why not why not why not?” We sit in the rays of morning sun, sealed in with her screams and the heavy moaning heat, and it does not escape me that, in a way, we have become her victims.

• • • • Many nights, after Sheilah falls asleep in mid-protest, Anne goes outside, only to return streaked with dirt and grass, her blue eyes bereft of even the memory of joy. She does not invite me to join her, but one night I follow, allowing myself the freedom we must deny our daughter. Anne sits in the garden on a rock large enough, just barely, for one. She does not acknowledge me. Once my eyes adjust, I see what she has done. Miniature tombstones stand in neat rows, flowers in acorn cups arranged before them. I glance at Anne, then lean closer. Each stone is carved with a symbol: a star, a moon, a little shoe, a feather, a clock. “I didn’t know their names.” “Anne, listen, we—” “Don’t. Don’t try to make this right with words.” What else do I have? I stand there at the foot of the fairies’ graveyard for a long time, hoping that Anne will speak, but she doesn’t. Finally, I turn around and walk back inside, immediately assaulted by the hot air, the droning fans, and Sheilah’s screams, wild with terror. I take the steps, two at a time, slipping on the braided rug, pushing against the floor as I call, “I’m coming! Daddy’s here.” She is sitting in bed, tears streaming down her face, her mouth open, her hair blowing up and back as though she is possessed, but before I can take her in my arms, Anne swoops past. She turns to me, her eyes wide, her own hair blowing in the hot fan wind. “What happened?” I shrug. Anne frowns as if I have failed her with this answer. (I have failed her with this answer.) She is holding Sheilah, swaying side to side. The room is stifling, too hot with its shut windows, and too stuffy with a vague, sour odor. Suddenly, I feel nauseous. I step into the hall to catch my breath. Anne follows. “You can’t do this right now. You have to make sure the room is safe.” Reluctantly, I step back into the bedroom. The windows are closed and locked. I check behind the door, look in the closet. I even look under the bed. Finished with my search, I follow the sound of Anne’s cooing, downstairs into the living room, where the standing fan gently hums, its great unwieldy head turning slowly in repeated surveyance of mother and daughter sitting in the flowered chair. The windows are locked against the black night as though it is something that will creep in and destroy us if we give it any quarter. “Can you tell me what frightened you? Can you tell Daddy?” Sheilah sits in her mother’s lap, her curls damp at the back of her neck. She glances up at me with her copper eyes and I see in them, for just a moment, the look of murder before her long lashes flutter down. “Wings,” she says. “Wings?” her mother and I repeat. She nods and, sniffling loudly, wraps her small arms around Anne’s neck. The fan blows over us while Anne gently rocks. “I told you they would come after her.” “It was just a dream. A nightmare. Kids—” “No. It was them. Do something, Michael.” “We need to punish her.” Anne holds Sheilah closer, as if I have suggested releasing her into the dark yard where those who seek revenge could have their way. “We’ve already discussed this.” “I’m not saying we do anything corporal, I’m just saying that we need to show her that what she’s doing is wrong. They won’t bother her if she stops hurting them.” “No.” “Anne, listen to me—” “Why should I? Do you listen to me? Do you ever listen to me? I told you we should have taken her to a different doctor. I told you he didn’t understand people like us. I told you—” “When? No. You didn’t. You never said . . .” Sheilah stirs against Anne, turning her head to reveal her profile, damp with sweat, wet curls plastered against her cheek. “We’re not going to punish her,” Anne hisses. “She’s already been through enough.” She scoots to the edge of the chair and stands up, her eyes sharp on my face. “You’re obsessed with vengeance.” “Don’t be ridiculous.” “Ridiculous,” she says as she passes me. It’s only when I hear the creaking of the stairs that I realize she was calling me a name. The fissures have formed beneath us, and I am not so far gone that I don’t recognize we are falling. I stand there, I don’t know for how long, as if any movement would collapse the careful arc that keeps us suspended. The fan drones, how I hate that sound.

• • • •

Sheilah is sleeping with Anne in our bed. I try to move quietly, but they both stir when I crawl in beside them. For a while I just lay there, watching them breathe. Bright light streams through the lace curtains of the humming room, and I awake to the sound of Anne weeping. I wrap her in my arms. She tries to explain, but the words are swallowed by her tears. I pat her gently on the back. Over her shoulder I see Sheilah standing in the doorway in her favorite nightgown. She watches with a cold, calculated expression, holding in her dimpled fingers a fairy, so small it is almost invisible. Careful to cover the tiny mouth with her pinky she pulls one wing off the poor creature, and then the other. I take a deep breath and hold Anne closer. We’ve had this problem with windows before, when we lived in the city. I begged Anne to lock them at night but she “couldn’t feel closed in” and “had to have fresh air.” Eventually, I had boards cut to size so that the windows could be left partially open, but safe. She used them for a while, but then one night she “forgot,” or so she’s always said, and I never had the heart to confront her about it. Whether she forgot to close the windows or not, her intention had been to let in the breeze, not the night creatures, with their masks and guns. “This happens every year. It’s like we’re all stuck in some kind of cycle.” “We’re not stuck,” she says. “We moved. That’s one thing. I’m making jewelry again. You’re working on your book. We are making progress. Give me some credit.” Over Anne’s shoulder, Sheilah pulls one leg off the poor fairy and then the other. “No.” Anne pulls away from me, her face hard. Behind her Sheilah tosses wings, legs, and corpse to the floor, then walks down the hall, humming. “I mean, you’re right. Of course. We’re not stuck, we’re just, this is just a hard time of year for us, and I was thinking that it might be nice for you to take a break.” “But how can I leave her, so close to the anniversary?” “She’ll be fine. She’ll be with me. Besides, we don’t even know if she remembers anything about that night.” Anne shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter whether she remembers,” she says. “What do you think this is all about?”

• • • •

It is disturbing, how eagerly she leaves. Sheilah and I wave from the open doorway, the scent of summer dying in the morning air, the brown lilacs withered on the bush, the squirrels scampering wildly through the yard, which is overgrown and dried out. Anne waves from the open car window, the graceful arc of her hand the last we see of her as she turns the corner. Sheilah starts walking across the porch, she turns and looks at me, wonder and fear in her small face. I nod. She breaks into that brilliant smile, and with a shout, runs free, a wild thing released. Later, I lay the quilt under the tree, and bring out a thermos of lemon aide, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. She gulps the lemon aide, and tears into the sandwich. With her mouth full, she looks up at me, smiles, and plants peanut butter kisses all over my face. She plays outside all day, and into the evening. When I call her in, she comes, tired and happy. She sits at the kitchen table and stares at the macaroni and cheese, her favorite food, but she cannot eat, instead she slumps forward, falling asleep, right there at the table. I carry her upstairs, and put her to bed in the clothes she played in. I go from room to room opening all the windows and turning off the fans. The damp night air smells sweet, and reminds me of the scented candle Anne had in her bedroom when we first met. I stand at the open window of my office, breathing in the memory of those wild nights of limb and skin, when we discovered each other so thoroughly it was as though we were created by touch. I lean into the screen and it pops. I press just a little harder, it comes loose but doesn’t fall. I pound it with my fist, remembering, as I do, how I hammered the corners to make it secure. It’s an old house and we often found the screens fallen or dangling. “What are you doing?” “Go back to bed, Sheilah. I’m fixing something.” “I’m thirsty.” “Go back to bed. I’ll bring you a glass of water as soon as I’m finished.” She looks at the open window. “Mommy’s going to be mad.” “Yes, she is. If she calls and finds out that you are still awake she’s going to be very angry at you.” Sheilah’s face contorts. I have confused her, taken advantage of her logic skills, rooted, as they are, in her six-year-old mind. “Go on now.” Her eyes narrow as she glances from me to the window and back again. “Go on.” She shuffles out of the room, like a little old lady, weary with the wrongs of the world. I hit the screen three more times, wincing with pain until, at last, it loosens, only to dangle by the bottom left corner. The hornet nest is silent, two hornets, the night guards, cling to its side. “Daddy? I’m ready for my water now.” It takes both hands to wrench the thing free. My knuckles are bleeding. “Daddy!” Finally it comes undone. I shove it away, approximating a throw, it crashes to the ground, followed by a sound of brush scattered, twigs broken. I have frightened some creature down there, a deer, or perhaps something more dangerous. “Daddy!” When I walk into Sheilah’s room her eyes widen. I hand her the glass of water. “Drink it,” I say, and then I say it again, in a gentle tone. “Drink it, honey.” She shakes her head vigorously. “Don’t wanna,” she says. I snatch the glass from her. Water slops out. “Go to sleep, now.” I lay my hand on her head, bend down to kiss her. As I leave the room, I prop open the door with the big book of Grimm, the one with the fake gold edging on all the pages. Downstairs, the rich scented summer air flows through the rooms. I sit in the flowered chair, sipping last year’s clover wine. It was on just such a night as this that we were ruined. I fall asleep remembering the screams, the terror, the open windows. Screams. I wake to her screams, my heart pounding like a trapped creature. She screams, and I run through the rooms brightened by morning sun. “I’m coming,” I shout, “Daddy’s here.” I race up the stairs and do not hesitate as I approach her room, abuzz with dark noise and screams. She is sitting up, covered by them as if she were made of honey, their golden wings trembling. I can see her halo of hair, though some alight there as well, her mouth, open but blackened by their writhing. I grab a blanket and swing it but this only heightens their attack, she screams and they sting me without mercy. “Daddy’s here, Daddy’s here,” I say even as I run out of the room, down the sunlit hall (but wait, what was that scurrying to hide in the corner) to the bathroom where I draw the water, which comes out languidly. I run back to the room, “Daddy’s here,” I say over and over again, wrapping her in the blanket. She screams at their new assault. Through the blanket I feel their squirming, their soft bodies, their stings. I rush down the hall to the bathroom, set her in the bath, she screams. I tear the blanket off, it is alive with wings, I press it, and her under the water, releasing her just long enough for screams and breath before I hold her under again. They fly at me, as if they understand what I am doing. The water is black with them. She struggles against my grasp, her mouth wide with screams, I dunk her one more time, then I carry her, heavy and wet and screaming, down the hall, slipping but not falling, down the stairs (and there, what was that behind the potted plant, and what just flew overhead) I hold her close even as they continue to sting. I grab my car keys from the kitchen counter, I run down the crooked path. They follow us, stinging again and again, she screams and I scream too as I set her in the car. A few of them follow, but only a few. I kill them with a rolled up atlas. At least now she understands, I think, now she knows not to harm a creature with wings.

• • • •

Although it is late fall we are making up for lost time and spend much of our evenings outdoors. Anne is sitting in the garden, painting a small portrait of a fairy. She has never accused me of doing anything more than opening all the windows on a hot summer night. Why has she stayed, knowing even this? Well, why did I stay three years ago? I like to think it is love, this tendency to believe in each other’s innocence, but maybe it’s something else. I sit here, on the porch, writing in this notebook, sipping dandelion wine we bought from an old German fellow at the farmer’s market. Sheilah sits on the blanket beneath the oak. She is almost entirely recovered though she moves strangely at times, with an odd, careful slowness that you would expect from someone wounded, or very old. They had to shave her head. Her hair has grown in strange, bristly and sharp. The doctors say that it will likely fall out, this sort of thing happens sometimes as a result of trauma, and already there are a few patches of soft hair coming in behind her ears, no longer blonde, but pure white. She sits on her quilt, dressed in jeans and a cotton sweater, playing some sort of game with fallen leaves, they are scolding each other, their leafy voices brittle. As the amber evening closes in around us, and the night fairies come out, carrying their tiny lanterns, whispering their dark thoughts, Sheilah continues playing, even when a parade of them crosses the patches of her blanket, even when several fly right past her, she pays them no mind at all. Anne and I have begun to suspect she no longer sees them, which is sad in a way, but given the choices we had, and what life made of us, we think we have done well by Sheilah. Now that we have a normal child, she will be safe in her normal world, and we will be safe in ours. We can hope, we can dream, we believe.

©2010 by M. Rickert. Originally published in Holiday. Reprinted by permission of the author. ABOUT THE AUTHOR M. Rickert has published three short story collections: Map of Dreams, Holiday, and You Have Never Been Here. Her stories have been collected in numerous anthologies, including American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940s to Now (Library of America), The Big Book of Ghost Stories (Vintage Books), Nightmares: A New Decade of Modern Horror (Tachyon Press) and Shadows and Tall Trees 7 (Undertow Publications). She is the winner of the Crawford Award, World Fantasy Award and Shirley Jackson Award. Her first novel, The Memory Garden, won the Locus award. Before earning her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts she worked as a kindergarten teacher, coffee shop barista, Disneyland balloon vendor and personnel assistant in Sequoia National Park. She currently lives in Wisconsin where she is working on a new novel, and teaching yoga. Her story, “The Shooter” will be published in 2018 in Echoes: The Saga Anthology of Ghost Stories. Find her online at www.mrickert.net. Crave Lilliam Rivera | 2882 words

Taina crawls underneath the shack to unearth her wooden cigar box. She opens it and places the items in front of her: a piece of leftover mundillo lace from an unfinished handkerchief, an ivory ribbon she stole from Don Victor’s store, and the rosary beads given to her by Abuela. Everything is right where she left it. She carefully places the items back and covers the box with dirt. “Shhh,” Taina whispers, hugging the dog Choco. Choco licks the side of her cheek and nuzzles his cold wet nose on the crevice of her bony elbow. His dark brown fur is encrusted with fruit juice from fallen mangos. Sticky and matted. He needs a bath. Taina needs a bath, too. She carefully crawls to the other side of the shack and hides underneath the wooden cart her mother sometimes uses to haul their wares to the plaza. From there, she can listen to her mother and aunt talk. This is the time of day when everything slows down. When her mother and aunt can speak freely as they work on another lace border under the shade of a flamboyan tree. The cluck of the chickens can be heard while the falling red petals of the tree blanket the ground around them. Inside the shack, her brother sleeps quietly. “It happened again last night,” her mother says. She adjusts the portable pillow box used to create the mundillo lace on her lap. The wooden bobbins make a musical clinking sound as her fingers guide the threaded spools, turning and crossing them between her steady hands. The embroidered piece slowly takes shape. “The Ortiz family. It was the mother that found the girl.” Taina presses Choco closer and ignores the insects dancing in front of her thinning face. “La nena?” The aunt gasps, clutching her own pillow box to her chest. “Pobrecita.” “They found her white as can be. Barely breathing,” the mother says. Her hair is up in an unraveling bun. “Stupid woman. I showed her exactly where to leave the food for La Caridad. She insisted her family needed the food more. Her baby girl nearly dead because of her foolishness.” Taina stretches her neck to better hear them. Ever since she could remember, Taina knew to fear La Caridad. La Caridad appears like any old woman with grey wiry hair and a trembling voice. Her wrinkled fingers gnarled like the thorny branches of a ceiba tree. Walking with the aid of a blackened wooden cane, the old lady seems harmless enough during the brightness of day. Like most of the campesinos of Voladoras, Taina was taught to dread La Caridad, for it is in the cover of darkness when she sheds her skin and travels like a ball of light to feed. “Her daughter suffered because of her mother’s selfishness,” the aunt says in disgust. “A little bowl of food once a week is nothing. We all do it.” Choco barks at the soft breeze. Taina tries to shush him. It’s too late. “Taina! Out from there,” her mother yells. “Almost ten-years-old and look at her. Sinvergüenza. Rolling in the dirt like a savage.” Her mother is hard on Taina. As the firstborn, Taina must learn to shoulder the burden of bringing the weekly offering of food to La Caridad, the only way to protect the family from a nightly visit. Her mother was taught to do the same, as was her mother’s mother. The girl crawls out from under the shack. Choco follows her just as guiltily. She tries to brush the dirt off of her tattered cotton dress. Her long dark hair is tangled in stiff bundles, with leaves hiding in the braids. Dark freckles sprinkle across the bridge of her nose. Taina takes after her father. He used to call her “little warrior” before her brother was born. “It’s time to take the offering,” her mother says, straightening the girl’s dress. She picks a red petal from Taina’s hair and caresses the daughter’s hollow cheek. The two share the same large almond eyes. “Leave the food like I taught you to do.” “But I want to go to Don Victor’s to help,” Taina says. Yesterday, the girl waited patiently in front of the store until Don Victor gave her the tiniest piece of turron de coco. The scent of the coconut candy stayed on the tips of her fingers all day. “No, Taina, not today,” her mother says. Her soothing timbre has been replaced with the edginess of a weary voice. When Taina was five, not too long ago, her mother taught her the song of the little chickens. Under this very same tree, she placed Taina on her lap, and with fingers that were not yet ravaged from the intricate mundillo lace work, the mother swayed her graceful hands to invisible notes. Her mother smelled of sweet guavas. The sound of her laughter enveloped Taina warmly, planting a longing deep within. Back then, Taina sang the song over and over again:

Los pollitos dicen pio, pio, pio cuando tienen hambre, cuando tienen frio . . . • • • •

Now the little girl stares defiantly at the sun. There is never enough time. There’s the cleaning, the cooking, making sure father has enough food to work the field, helping mother lace the mundillos to later sell at the plaza. The chickens must be tended to, and then there is the baby. Her brother must be taken care of. Protected. “Go now. The food is where it always is,” her mother says. “Do this and come back quickly. Your father will not be returning home tonight. There’s much work to be done. Go on.” “Yes, Taina, go before the day ends,” her aunt says ominously, adjusting her patterned headscarf protecting her from the harsh golden rays.

• • • •

Inside the shack, Taina glares at the napping baby shielded under a canopy. Naked and fat. She pulls away the lace netting protecting him from the mosquitoes and pokes at the baby with a stick. She pokes at her baby brother again. The baby whimpers and looks up at Taina with a toothless grin. Then he closes his eyes and returns to sleep. Voladorans only wish for boys, a strong body to help work the field. The girl’s stomach growls. Like her mother, Taina only ate a bit of rice. A piece of chicken was given to her father to eat on his break cutting sugar canes at the plantation. Another piece was fed to her growing baby brother and a much larger piece of the chicken was saved for La Caridad, as it always is. “Eat fruit,” was what her mother suggested. How many times has the little girl scraped the inside of a coconut or sucked the juices off of a papaya? It’s the same, day in and day out. A barrio overrun by weak hands. Too many girls, thinks Taina. Not enough strong hands to work the fields owned by La Caridad. Maybe if she were born a boy, then this life would be different. Maybe. Taina grabs the prepared meal and motions to Choco to follow her.

• • • •

To reach La Caridad’s house, Taina must pass Don Victor’s store and go deep into the dense field. Women sit in front of their shacks, working on their pava hats to sell at the market. Children play, their faces smeared with the sticky fibrous meat of quenepas. As she walks by them, the little ones playfully throw the pits of the quenepas at her. Choco barks at them and they flee laughing. Each of the shacks are the same, with uneven slabs of wood made sturdy enough to withstand the hurricanes, but not by much. Animals roam freely. La Caridad’s house is different. It’s the only home with no animals. And unlike the one-room dwellings that grace most of the barrio, La Caridad’s hacienda enjoys two stories with an expansive front porch flanked by towers. Shutters seal many of the windows shut. Taina walks toward the direction of La Caridad’s house. When the grand place comes into view she stops. Only lush palm trees surround her. She opens the fiambrera, the metal lunch pail that keeps the offering warm, and glances around. Taina looks back at the large cold home and then at the food. Hunger as sharp as a machete strikes her so hard that she’s barely able to breathe. Earlier, her mother ignored Taina’s complaint of being so hungry. How the baby is always served a full bowl of food and she is left with only rice. Her mother called her selfish. Taina stood silent and watched her brother eat. Always her brother. Never Taina. Taina crouches to the ground. With dirt-encrusted fingers, she eats the food meant for La Caridad. She shares it with Choco. One scoop of rice with chicken for her, another for Choco. Her heart pounds with every chew. She continues. When she’s done, Taina lets Choco lick the fiambrera clean and then hides it in a bush to retrieve the next day. Not completely full, yet satisfied, Taina turns away from La Caridad’s house and heads back home. She plays with Choco, throwing sticks for the dog to retrieve, unaware of the old lady following close behind. With floppy ears and a sheepish expression, Choco growls at Taina as she pulls the stick from his mouth. She throws it again and again. Choco was a gift from her father for being a big sister. A stray dog he found. A gift only for her. “Did you forget something?” The voice behind her asks. Taina stops and slowly turns. Choco cowers next to her leg, whimpering with its head to the ground. “Nena, did you forget?” asks La Caridad. Her wrinkled hands, a map of bulging veins and swollen knuckles, grasp tight unto a wooden cane. She wears a sky-blue Victorian dress with exaggerated puffy sleeves. Intricate mundillo lace lines the hem of the dress. A polished wooden cross hangs neatly around her neck, held in place with a white ribbon. Taina saw La Caridad only once before. When she did, the girl clung tightly to her mother and never let go of her hand until the slouching silhouette disappeared into the field. “Little girl, are you there? Did you forget something?” La Caridad asks again. La Caridad’s lips, a mere crinkle on her round face. “No,” Taina says, her voice barely a whisper. “I can’t hear you from over there. Come closer,” La Caridad says. “My hearing is not good. Come.” Taina doesn’t move. From where she stands, she can see that La Caridad is nothing but a small shriveled up vieja, nothing like her beautiful Abuela. La Caridad reeks of a rotten prickly soursop fruit. “Are you sure you don’t have a gift for me? I’m so hungry, and your mother makes the best rice. White and fluffy. And her chicken, always so juicy and fresh.” La Caridad inches closer. “You must have a little something from your mother. Hmm?” “No, I don’t have anything.” Taina turns and runs. Choco, next to her, barks happily. La Caridad calls out. Taina doesn’t look back. When the girl arrives home, breathless, Taina tells her mother she did what she was told. “Good,” her mother says. “Then we are safe.” Her mother presses the baby close and kisses her son’s forehead. Then she pulls Taina to her and holds both of them tight. The little girl tries to sit on her mother’s lap. There isn’t enough room for both her and her brother. Her mother gently pushes her away. Taina stares at her brother. The sounds of the coqui, a tiny frog that exists only on this island, alerts the little girl that night soon approaches.

• • • •

While her mother slumbers in the other room and her brother sleeps in the makeshift bed on the floor, Taina stares vigilantly out the window waiting for La Caridad to appear. Although her eyes grow heavy and there are times when the night sounds lull her to join the others, Taina does not give in. She waits. From a far distance, she sees the light. At first it appears like a tiny speck. Soon the speck grows larger and larger. The great ball of light floats across the fields, illuminating the sugar plantation, sweeping down Don Victor’s store and over the row of wooden shacks. With her skin completely shed, La Caridad lands atop a branch of the ceiba tree. Her insides dangle outside of her. Entrails. Muscles. Her colorless lips and bones. Organs lay bare, pulsating. La Caridad is no longer an old lady. It is a skinless creature, a soucouyant. Her milky eyes turn to Taina and the girl quickly moves away from the window. She buries herself underneath a useless piece of fabric. Choco hides in a corner. Nothing alerts her when the creature enters the shack, not a sound or a gust of wind. Still, Taina senses the change in the room. It is as if all the animals and the insects went mute, just like they do right before the onset of a hurricane. Taina holds her breath and tries not to move. La Caridad pokes at Taina with a long claw. Once. Then again. The soucouyant slowly pulls off the sheet. The little girl gets up to run. La Caridad grabs hold of her. For the first time, Taina sees the monster up close and a fear she’s never experienced bursts within. “Not me,” Taina whispers. “The boy.” A lipless grin appears on the creature’s skeletal face. “I’ll take both of you,” La Caridad says. “Not me. Please,” Taina says. “The baby is fat.” La Caridad’s laugh is low and guttural. “Dumb little girl. Why are you giving your brother to me? Do you think that will change things? Nothing ever changes for the women of Voladoras.” The more Taina shakes, the deeper the tips of the claw pierce into her shoulders. “It is the women who must bare the cross,” La Caridad says. “We must hold tight to the old ways. That includes the offering. My food.” Taina squeezes her eyes, shakes her head, and then opens them only to find the creature still above her. “You’ve ever heard the saying, ‘Cada gallina a su gallinero?’ Do you know what that means?” The creature’s tongue licks the pulpy meat of her lips. “It means everyone who lives in Voladoras play an important role. The animals. The roosters and chickens. The adults and their children. Even you. I’ll remind you what that is.” La Caridad presses down on Taina’s shoulder with its claw. With the other, it covers Taina’s mouth. It leans in and feeds. The girl’s heart thumps violently while a buzzing sound grows louder and louder. The creature continues to drink. Taina squirms and kicks, There’s no hope. When Taina’s heart reaches the point where time no longer exists, La Caridad pulls away. Weakened, Taina can only helplessly watch the creature’s movements. While humming the pollito song Taina knows so well, the creature swoops toward the sleeping baby next. Although this is exactly what Taina wanted, to return to a time when she was the only baby, the little girl remembers her brother’s toothless grin. How he follows her everywhere, his tiny legs unable to keep up. The sound of her brother’s giggles. “No,” Taina says, barely able to form the words. “Don’t.” The creature caresses the boy’s full cheeks and chuckles. There is a rustling movement from the other room as Taina’s mother turns in her sleep. Outside, the first of the gallos begin their morning call. The creature faces Taina. “Don’t ever forget your place. You are the firstborn. You hold the weight,” it says. “And since you stole from me, it’s only fair that I repay you with the same.” Before turning into a ball of light, the creature scoops up the cowering Choco. Taina opens her mouth to scream. Her voice fails her. La Caridad is gone. Choco is gone. All Taina can do is weep soundlessly.

• • • •

Without being told, Taina gets up before the dawn breaks. She walks to the kitchen to prepare the meal. Enough food for her father to sustain cutting down the long sugar canes. Enough food for her growing baby brother. Enough for La Caridad. Before leaving to La Caridad’s house, Taina crawls underneath the shack and unearths her treasure box. She has not looked at the items in weeks. Taina dumps the lace and the ivory ribbon. The rosary bead she places around her neck. There will be no more trips to Don Victor’s for coconut candy. No playing with other kids. Taina carries the burden of being the firstborn on her ever-thinning shoulders without question. It’s time to leave. The offering is ready.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Lilliam Rivera is a 2016 Pushcart Prize winner and a 2015 Clarion graduate. Her work has appeared in Tin House, Los Angeles Times, Latina, and forthcoming in Fantasy & Science Fiction. She is the author of the young adult novel The Education of Margot Sanchez, which debuted on February 21, 2017 from Simon & Schuster. Lilliam lives in Los Angeles. To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight Apports Stephen Bacon | 4534 words

They met at a café on the corner of Mulberry Street. It was a fairly nondescript place—greasy net curtains, laminated menus, chipped Formica tables. Probably bustling with overweight truckers first thing in the morning, but at this hour it was almost deserted. Casual patrons had possibly been deterred by the rain. Or maybe the poor hygiene. Cowan spotted Jimenez as soon as he stepped inside. He was sitting at a table in the corner, and he glanced up and waved at the sound of Cowan’s entrance. The only other customer was an elderly man slurping noisily from a mug, a mangy dog lying at his feet. Despite the ban, the air was thick with cigarette smoke. Cowan slid into the plastic chair opposite Jimenez. At first he thought the older man’s hair was wet, but then realised the greying locks were actually slicked back with Brylcreem. Dandruff dusted his shoulders. The lines around his mouth were deeply ingrained with age, greying whiskers indicating several days’ growth. He drew out a manila envelope from beneath the table and patted it with his nicotine- stained fingers. “Got what you wanted, Mr. Campbell.” Cowan licked his lips. “Good.” He squirmed inside his tight collar. “Got the money?” Cowan took an envelope from his pocket and passed it quickly across to Jimenez, who accepted it and transferred it into his own. There was a layer of dirt beneath the man’s cracked fingernails, so ingrained it looked like wood varnish. “Five hundred—like you said.” Cowan cleared his throat and glanced at the counter. The owner—an Asian woman in a stained apron—was wiping down the wall tiles with a dishcloth. Behind her, a tinny speaker blared out the insipid blandness of local radio. Jimenez began to speak. “I managed to locate him . . . Before I run through what I found, though, I need to ask you one question—why’re you looking for Mark Fisk?” Cowan continued to shift his gaze round the café. “I told you—we were at school together. He was a mate of mine. I just wanted to see him again. You know —catch up.” His eyes were restless. “Old time’s sake and all that.” “Ah yes, I remember now.” He flexed his fingers and rubbed the back of his left hand. “Took quite an effort to find him. Our Mr. Fisk did not want to be found.” “Really?” “Hmmm. You see, he’s going under an assumed name now—Peter Feltham. Been living under that name for several months, in fact.” His eyes searched the younger man’s face. “I had to call in some extra favours to discover this, believe me.” Cowan blinked. “I thought we’d agreed the fee—” “We did, we did. Don’t worry—no extra.” Jimenez waved a hand. “No, I meant I know a few contacts in the criminal justice system, the legal profession. And the police, for that matter. Had to go to them to get the info. Quite interesting really.” “Oh?” “Well you know the first part of the story—up till he left school, right? Well after that, Fisk got a job in the steelworks. Worked for a Sheffield company. He inherited his mother’s house when she died in 1994. Lived there for a couple of years. Then in ’97 he married a Rosemary Willows. They sold his house and moved to Stannington. He was still at the steel company. She was a secretary at a firm of insurance brokers. They had a son, Alex, in 2002. This is where it takes a turn.” He leaned forward in his chair. “In 2006 they separated. The wife left him and got custody of the kid. He was pretty cut-up about it, apparently. As you would be. Had to move into a council flat. For a few months he was just getting access to the lad every other weekend. The missus starts seeing another bloke. Looks like Fisk then gets edgy—thinking he’s going to lose the kid; reckons the lad’s going to start calling another bloke ‘Dad.’ “Then in the summer of 2008 he picks little Alex up as usual. Takes him to the top of the tower block and they both jump off.” “Jump off?” “Well, Fisk jumped and dragged the kid with him. Even left a suicide note for the ex, saying if he couldn’t have his son, no one would.” Cowan swallowed and glanced away from the scrutiny of the older man’s gaze. He watched the Asian woman browsing a magazine, licking her fingers as she turned the pages. “I remember it in the news, actually,” said Jimenez. “There was a public outcry. Front-page shit.” Cowan nodded noncommittally. “But here’s the best part—although the kid died, Fisk survived. Just snapped his fucking legs. The kid broke his fall.” Cowan looked out of the window. Mid-morning traffic crawled past, glistening in the rain. Pensioners shuffled along the pavement laden with carrier bags. He shook his head. “What a bastard.” “Bastard indeed.” Jimenez pursed his lips. “He was charged with murder but the judge let him off—diminished responsibility. He got five years in a nuthouse. The ex-wife killed herself a few months later. Overdose.” Cowan watched the older man remove a cigarette and light it, taking a deep drag and blowing the smoke out almost provocatively, his eyes narrowing. “The judge said Fisk was remorseful afterwards—he’d just cracked under the pressure of the divorce, that’s all.” “So he’s—what? Locked up still?” Jimenez shook his head. “Got released after four years. Since last summer he’s been living here under the name Peter Feltham.” He opened the envelope and took out a folded sheet of A4 paper. His fingers hesitated on it for a second before he slid it across the table. Cowan unfolded the paper and looked at the address. “Leeds?” “Yeah. As part of the rehabilitation process he was given a new identity. That’s why I asked why you were looking for him.” Jimenez paused. “This info can’t be traced back to my contact—it’s now a matter of public record anyway, if you can be arsed to wade through enough paperwork—but I wanted to make sure you’d be . . . discreet with it.” Cowan forced himself to maintain eye contact. “So you think—what? That I’ll grass to the papers?” “I don’t know, son.” His hand gripped Cowan’s wrist. “But if you go through with what I think you’re planning, I’d urge you to be careful.” Cowan released his hand, on the pretence of scratching his nose. “Mr. Jimenez, I just wanted to see him—to talk. I won’t mention it to anyone else.” Jimenez shrugged. “Look, I couldn’t give a shit. Just don’t bring my name into it if he gets itchy feet and scarpers. The authorities’ll have your arse for an ashtray.” His laughter sounded ugly and coarse. “I just want to say hello—that’s all. Maybe he’ll be pleased to see an old face.” Cowan slipped the address into his pocket. Jimenez smiled wanly and began packing the envelope away. “Aye, Mr. Campbell—or whatever your real name is—maybe he will.”

• • • • The rain hadn’t let up all week. Cowan tried to concentrate as he peered through the windscreen, the wipers doing their best to distract him. Rows of sagging shops blurred into one continuous line as he negotiated the ceaselessly spiralling roads. Leeds appeared to be a labyrinth of narrow streets choked by parked cars. The bricks of the buildings were a strange shade of ochre. It was quite unlike anything he’d seen before, certainly different to the houses in Sheffield. He’d stumbled across a Tesco on the ring road. He’d been queuing at the checkout, clutching a Leeds A-Z, when the enormity of what he was about to do engulfed him. He quickly paid and rushed to the toilet, his legs almost buckling with nerves. Outside, the cool air helped revive him. He waited in the car and browsed the A-Z, taking time to familiarise himself with his destination. He took a carrier bag from the glove box, gauging its weight in his hand. He drew back the plastic opening and admired the pistol inside, careful not to touch it with his fingers. The two-inch barrel looked deceptively harmless. It had been originally manufactured in Brazil; standard issue for the Singapore Police Force. The serial number had been filed down. This particular model—the Taurus 85—had an ornate pearl handgrip. He’d paid £600 for it from a man in his local, a transaction that had come with unspoken conditions attached: the weapon was untraceable—there would be no incriminating trail—but Cowan better keep his mouth shut if things went wrong. He swallowed and wrapped it back up. Soon Cowan was back on the road, Fisk’s address seared indelibly into his mind. He was headed for a tower-block in Gipton called Coldcote Heights. He pushed other thoughts away and tried to concentrate on driving. Eventually he spotted an ugly, brooding building on the corner of Beech Lane —the Church of the Epiphany—and realised his destination was close by. He parked on the roadside and switched off the ignition, listening to the patter of rain on the roof as it synchronised with the ticks of the cooling engine. The wipers— frozen in the act of clearing the windscreen—helped to divert him as the raindrops obliterated his view. He removed the carrier bag from the glove box and tucked it into his jacket pocket. Then he paused for a few moments to gather his nerves before climbing out of the car and locking it. A row of shops slouched to his left, rendered almost identical by the metal grilles obscuring their windows. Two elderly women in headscarves stood chatting outside the off-licence. An Asian man was talking loudly on his mobile phone, glaring through the window of the bookies. Cowan drew up his hood and set off across the grassy incline towards the kids’ playground. The squat, redbrick council houses surrounding the muddy expanse seemed to stare at him reproachfully. The play area was in a poor state. Cowan stepped between used condoms and rusting syringes. The rungs of the slide’s ladder were blackened with fire. Spray-painted obscenities adorned the side of the toddlers’ climbing frame. Nearby, a heavily-muscled skinhead waited patiently as his Staffordshire bull terrier shivered a pale turd onto the grass. Cowan glanced away. Ahead, his destination loomed like a beacon for the destitute. He hurried up the slope. Coldcote Heights towered broodingly above the roofs of the surrounding houses, seeming to watch over Gipton like a guardian. The cold, impassive building almost made him shudder. A chain-link fence at the top of the grassy square had been breached, its posts skewed by force. Empty cigarette packets and McDonald’s cartons wilted in the rain. The sign on the Bangladeshi community centre had been vandalised, clearly by someone lacking the use of a spell-check. Youths loitered around the industrial bins at the rear. Soon he had negotiated the warren of faceless tenements and found himself approaching the tower-block. He crossed the quadrangle of concrete, suddenly feeling exposed by the countless windows that watched his progress. A burnt-out car stood in the centre, rusting on four flat tyres. From somewhere nearby came the frantic barking of a dog. He pushed open the door of the building and entered the dark foyer. The smell of piss was overpowering. To the left, a flight of concrete steps rose out of sight. A CCTV camera was positioned at a weird angle—possibly made ineffective by some wrongdoer. Signs on the walls promised direction but did nothing more than bewilder him. He scanned for the address that Jimenez had supplied, seeing that he needed to trek to the ninth floor. The steel door of the lift was so scratched it looked as if ancient runes had been etched into its surface. Someone had smeared a foul-smelling substance over the call button. Wrinkling his nose, Cowan glanced down and spotted the neck of a broken beer bottle discarded in the corner. He picked it up and used the lip of the glass to press the button. The noise of the lift’s approach sounded ominous, as if the action had tripped some unseen signal. Inside the lift, the smell of piss was just as strong. He used the glass shard to press the number 9 on the panel. A furry patch of mould stained the floor and a lower section of the compartment. Cowan stood as far away as possible from it as the lift bounced its ascent. The red LED above the panel flickered aggressively. Presently, the door opened and he stepped out onto the ninth floor, taking time to carefully deposit the glass in the corner where he might later retrieve it. A narrow corridor led into the heart of the building. Cowan wandered down it, glancing at the door numbers to check he was headed in the right direction. The light was meagre. Shadows scuttled in the corners. Windows at evenly spaced intervals looked down into the quadrangle, accentuating his dizzying height. From further down the landing, he heard the sound of someone singing in a foreign language, the staccato rhythm of the words suggesting a football chant. Cowan hurried along until he reached an intersection, heading to the left according to the door numbers. He could feel his heart pounding as he drew close. The bag in his pocket felt like it was getting heavier. He stopped outside a door and stared at the plastic numbers screwed to the wood, licking his lips to alleviate the dryness. A quick glance both ways up the corridor eased his nerves. He pressed his ear to the door and listened. Indistinct music was playing inside. Somewhere beyond the sound, a child was crying. Cowan considered the two bullets loaded in the pistol; for the first time worried that he ought to have requested more. The original intention had been for one bullet for Fisk and one for himself. The bloke in the pub had warned that it was difficult to silence this type of weapon; he’d need to make every shot count. He took a deep breath and tried the door handle. He peered into a deserted hallway. The music was now recognisable—The Style Council—and he slipped inside the flat and closed the door. From this angle, he had a narrow vantage point into the living room. He could see the crown of someone’s head as they sprawled on the sofa. The weeping child now sounded like it was coming from next door. He crept closer. As he drew near, he could see that the prone figure was indeed Fisk. But not as he’d remembered him. The man had his eyes closed tight, his face screwed up like a wrinkled cloth. His forehead looked unnaturally pockmarked. Sallow. The skin was pale and gaunt, stretched over the bones like tissue. His thinning hair barely covered the skull. His hands clutched the side of his head, accentuating the tendons in his rail- thin arms. He looked depleted. Cowan swept a quick glance around, noting the signs of disarray. Empty beer bottles and cans littered the floor. Discarded pizza boxes and the misshapen trays from microwave-ready meals. Boxes were stacked in the corners, filled with brightly coloured objects. Light was pouring through the curtainless window. There was a powerful odour of stale sweat and booze. Relief surged. The pokey flat seemed otherwise empty. Cowan’s fingers curled around the handle of the gun. “Fisk.” He stood over the emaciated wreck of a man, staring, daring him to look. Fisk’s eyes opened slowly. They looked blurred and bloodshot. He widened them, trying to focus, shuffling into an upright position. “Remember me?” Cowan tried to keep his voice low and threatening, but he was afraid it just sounded weak. Fisk blinked slowly. He appeared to be under the influence of something; probably drink, by the smell. He pulled a sour face. “I’ve come to kill you,” Cowan said quietly. He shuffled his feet. Fisk smiled wanly and rolled onto his side, moved to a sitting position. “You were Rosie’s bit on the side. I remember you.” His voice sounded dead. Listless. “I wasn’t a bit on the side. I tried to help her after you two split up.” “So you say.” Fisk laughed hollowly. “How’d you find me?” Cowan made a fist. “I made a promise to Rose before she died.” Fisk shrugged. It was an unsightly gesture. Cowan marvelled again at the man’s appearance. He looked ravaged. Close to death. “Go on then.” He sat up and put his head in his hands. “You’ll be doing me a favour.” Cowan stared at him, clenching his teeth. He fought to suppress the rage that ached inside. “You piece of shit. He was six years old, for fuck’s sake. A good kid.” “Should I tell you something . . . what’s your name?” “Cowan.” “Cowan, that’s right. Cowan.” He rolled the word around his mouth. “Let me tell you something—he’s not a good kid anymore.” “You selfish bastard. Why couldn’t you just kill yourself and leave him with his mum?” “With you and Rosie, you mean? That would’ve been nice.” His breath hitched. A change seemed to come over him. He looked detached. “Don’t you think I’m sorry for what I done? Don’t you think I wished I’d died that day? I’d end it tomorrow if I thought it would all stop.” “This place is a shithole. Why’d you move here?” Fisk shrugged. “Why not? I lived ’round here as a kid. Till we moved to Sheffield when I left school.” Shit. Jimenez must have known about the lies. He must have known Fisk hadn’t attended school in Sheffield. Cowan glanced around. There was a cushion on the sofa. He could hold the gun against it and shoot through. It should muffle the shot. The crying kid next door might mask the noise. It could give him sufficient time to get away. Fisk looked up, wrongly interpreting the pause. “You can hear him too, can’t you?” “That kid?” Fisk nodded and grimaced, revealing yellow teeth. His next words chilled Cowan to the core. “That’s Alex.” Cowan peered in the direction of the sound. He’d assumed it had been from the neighbouring flat, but he realised it was coming from the next room. Heart hammering in his throat, he approached the door and pushed it open. The sound stopped instantly. He could see similar signs of disorder in the room—an unmade bed, clothes strewn on the floor, boxes of things stored in the corner. “It’s not so bad in the day,” Fisk said. “The nights are worst. I can’t get away. He’s changed. He doesn’t love his dad no more.” Cowan turned back. “You should see his face at night. Fucking terrifying.” Fisk stood with a groan and switched off the music. “That’s why I have that on—drowns him out a bit.” His foot knocked an empty can of Tennent’s Super across the floor. He slumped back onto the sofa, the movement causing a hole in the upholstery to gape like a hungry mouth. He stared at a spot in the corner of the ceiling. “Sometimes at night I see him watching me from up there.” He motioned with his hand. Despite himself, Cowan glanced into the empty, mildew-stained corner. “He grows spindly legs like a spider. He creeps around quiet, daring me to watch. If I close my eyes, he’ll pounce. It’s just a game to him. Without the booze, I can’t sleep.” Cowan rolled his eyes. “Maybe the booze makes you imagine things.” “The fuck it does.” He suddenly lifted the sleeve of his t-shirt, revealing a pattern of angry scabs. “Trouble is, I’m so out of it, I can’t feel him slashing me.” Cowan winced at the rawness of the wounds. “Stanley knife,” Fisk said. “Fucker likes to have his fun.” Cowan studied the boxes for the first time. They were stuffed with children’s toys, videos, wooden jigsaws. “You need help.” Fisk laughed again, that horrible sound. “I’m past help.” He slumped back onto the sofa. “I need to drink—that’s what keeps me from seeing him. That or the gear.” He ran his fingers through his hair and belched. Cowan could see the forearm was scarred with circular marks like burns. The man looked wrecked with exhaustion. His anger was beginning to dissipate, replaced by a modicum of pity. It seemed like Fisk was existing in his own self-induced hell. Tormenting himself. The guilt must have tipped his mind. That or the booze. “If I carry on drinking, I know I’ll die. I’ve already seen signs. Liver’s knackered. Be a blessing when it comes.” He motioned with his hand. “Benny from over the way brought me a couple of bottles of absinthe back from his last trip. That’s good stuff, let me tell you. Good stuff.” “Why do you keep these?” Cowan tapped the side of one of the cardboard boxes. “You should let it go. You’re just torturing yourself.” Fisk shook his head. “You don’t get it, do you? He brings them.” “You think Alex brought this stuff?” “Uh-huh. He leaves me . . . little gifts. From the other side.” Cowan felt the skin on the back of his neck prickling. He lifted a soft toy out of the box. It was a cloth mouse wearing a gingham shirt—something from Bagpuss? Cowan’s memory faltered. It looked old. Some of the stitching had come loose. One of its eyes looked wonky. As he held the object, a foul stench seemed to emanate from it. An intense feeling of revulsion struck. He tossed the toy back into the box, almost recoiling. Little gifts. Cowan knew enough to understand the correct word even if Fisk didn’t—apports. Fisk believed the toys were reminders from his dead son. Reminders of what damage he’d done. He had clearly lost his mind. The self- harming was just another symptom of the madness. Cowan supposed guilt could do that. Fisk was speaking. “Remember that film with Bruce Willis’s wife and the crazy black woman? And him—Lundgren?” “Swayze.” “Yeah, that’s it. Well that’s what it’s like. Twenty-four hours a day. He’s there taunting me, trying to hurt me. Reminding me that he’s angry. At night he sometimes burns my skin.” He rested his head back on the sofa. “And he set fire to my hair once. But it’s no more than I deserve.” His voice seemed stronger now, less slurred. Maybe he was sobering up. Cowan became aware of the gun’s weight again. He looked around the squalor, considering Fisk’s situation. His physical condition was pathetic. Dishevelled. The mementoes, the cans of booze, the state of his mind. Ending Fisk’s life would be doing him a favour, and that was the last thing he wanted to do. “Why not kill yourself then? Proper this time though.” Fisk blinked slowly. “You a religious man?” Cowan shook his head. “Neither was I before all this shit.” He swallowed. “But in hospital I was encouraged to find God. So I’m hedging my bets—this might be His test. I need to endure my punishment. Anything else would be to face eternal damnation. And —like I said—my liver’s on its way out anyway.” Cowan shook his head. “You sick fuck. You committed a wicked act. For that you’ll rot in hell when your time comes.” He fought to keep his composure. “You ruined Rose’s life—and mine. And you took poor Alex. But the judge was right— you’re fucked up in the head. That’s no excuse for what you did, but I think you’re suffering in your own hell.” He shook his head and left the flat, slamming the door behind him. Almost instantly the crying kid started up again. It really did sound like it was coming from inside Fisk’s flat. The music recommenced straight away. Cowan made his way back to the lift. Turning back, he glanced into the throat of the corridor. An indistinct shape loitered in the shadows. The singsong tone of a nursery rhyme echoed along the passage, followed by the sound of children’s laughter. “Hello?” Cowan’s voice was taut. “Who’s there?” The laughter rang again, this time with a malevolent edge. Brittle. Cowan turned back to the lift. He flared his nostrils at the panel and shouldered open the door to the stairs. The air was cool. He began his descent. Raindrops on the windows warped his view. Someone was kicking a football in the stairwell far below. A child’s echoing voice recited “Baa Baa Black Sheep.” The noise felt like it was swirling around him. Monochrome colours of the décor matched his headache. He was gasping by the time he reached the ground floor, bursting from the foyer into the quadrangle. It had stopped raining. He strode back to his car, feeling uncomfortably warm beneath his coat. Shafts of sunlight were fighting to break through the clouds. He uttered silent apologies to Rose as he crossed the playground, reminding himself that Fisk’s suffering justified the broken promise. It made him feel no better. As he drew near to the car, he clicked his remote control. The alarm squealed its short burst and unlocked the doors. He was desperate to get back to Sheffield. He was tired of this world of graffiti and decay, of litter and filth. He took off his coat and tossed it into the back. The key slid into the ignition and he turned it, firing the engine. And it was just as he was reaching over to fasten his seatbelt that he spotted the toy mouse on the dashboard. He picked it up carefully and studied it. The faded gingham, the worn seams, the wonky eye—all identical to the one in Fisk’s flat. Cowan clicked the seatbelt in and released the handbrake.

• • • •

He stopped in a lay-by several miles outside Leeds. A stone bridge spanned the road, under which flowed a deep waterway identified by a wooden sign as the River Aire. Cowan paused for a moment and peered at the brown water as it flowed languidly beneath. The road was deserted. He removed the plastic bag from his pocket and paused for a second before dropping it over the side. The splash was deep and satisfying. For several minutes, he watched the ripples until they died away and the surface returned to its flat, constant motion. Then he walked back to the car.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Stephen Bacon’s short fiction has been published in Black Static, Cemetery Dance, Shadows & Tall Trees, Postscripts, and Crimewave. Several of his stories have been selected for Best Horror of the Year. His debut collection, Peel Back the Sky, was published in 2012 by Gray Friar Press and was nominated for a British Fantasy award. He is the author of the novellas Lantern Rock and Laundanum Nights. Forthcoming from Luna Press is his second collection, Murmured in Dreams. He lives in South Yorkshire, UK, with his family and an increasingly large collection of paperback books. Please visit him at www.stephenbacon.co.uk. NONFICTION The H Word: Reviewing Horror Charles Payseur | 1057 words

In speculative fiction, what defines genre is often boiled down to plot elements —spaceships or magic, technology or mysticism. Right or wrong, it makes pointing to what makes a story speculative somewhat easier. With horror, though, the line between what is “definitely horror” and what is “definitely not horror” is a bit more . . . vague? Further, those who seek to define horror based on other media often seem to fall into the trap of thinking of it only in terms of slasher films and jump scares. Which I feel is why you will find many speculative fiction readers and reviewers struggle with and avoid horror whenever they can—a great disservice not just to themselves, but to speculative fiction as a field, and to horror enthusiasts in particular. So what makes horror distinct and recognizable? How can one begin to appreciate and examine the intersection of speculative fiction and horror? And how does one attempt to engage with and review horror stories in a way that can be personally rewarding and (hopefully) interesting to a wider audience? To me, horror is about fear. It’s about feeling. Which I think is why a lot of readers and reviewers shy away from looking at stories that are labeled as horror. Because fear is intense, and intensely personal, so what one person finds frightening another person will likely find . . . boring. And if a reviewer decides to judge horror stories solely on how well the stories scare them personally, they’ll likely find a lot of horror to be unsuccessful. But to me there’s so much more to horror than just the ability to make us afraid. They can complicate how we think about fear, and they can open the door for our empathy to better understand the experiences and fears of others. As a reader and reviewer, trying to judge whether or not a story has been successful for me, whether or not it has been valuable, means engaging with it, figuring out what it was trying to do and seeing how well I think it did. With horror, this task can be uniquely challenging because, well, because horror is so rarely fun. It’s about horrific things, about fear and what makes us afraid. As such, it’s rare to find a horror story that’s very fun to read, because most horror stories require a certain amount of discomfort in order to work—they seek to make our skin crawl, to make us look over our shoulders at the slightest noise, to make us see something terrifying that has otherwise passed unnoticed. It’s rarely pleasant, though I do feel horror is often optimistic and triumphant, showing people overcoming fear in order to reach for justice and healing. Engaging with horror, then, requires an openness and level of trust that the story isn’t going to use horrifying and unpleasant elements simply to be gratuitous or to pander to those who might enjoy seeing the pain of others. This isn’t a small amount to require, especially for those already asked to accept their own erasure, exploitation, or abuse for the good of entertainment on a regular basis. There are few worse experiences as a reader than to open yourself to a piece and feel betrayed by it, to find your willingness to engage turned into a weapon against you. For readers, this might be reason enough to avoid the often-fraught themes, tropes, and traditions of horror stories. For reviewers, though, I feel there is an obligation to try, to remain open in hopes of acting as a sort of minesweeper, pointing out areas that require more caution or might be best avoided. Horror has a lot to offer, after all, that makes such effort, such mapping, incredibly rewarding. Though often unpleasant, I find that horror, more than any other genre, really helps to build empathy, by showing readers fears they might not otherwise experience. By revealing darkness and pitfalls, predators and nightmares, the stories can educate, affirm, warn, and inspire. Educate by teaching how others fear and what they fear. Affirm by showing us that we are not alone in our fears, that they do not make us outcasts or unworthy of compassion. Warn by showing us how to avoid contributing to people’s terror and abuse. And inspire by showing that it’s possible to overcome fear, to push through darkness, and to emerge in a place where, together, we can banish and defeat our demons. How I approach horror as a reviewer is to try and judge how well a story does any or all of these things—how it engages with fear in order to create meaning. And, with speculative horror, how it uses its speculative elements to enhance that meaning. It’s something that’s not always been easy for me, as I began reviewing speculative short fiction largely ignoring horror-specific venues, in part because so much of the discussion around short speculative fiction treated speculative horror as if it was part of some entirely different field and history. But from monster stories to dystopic narratives, fear and horror are very much woven into a lot of what makes speculative fiction powerful. For me, learning to approach horror stories openly, to get over my own fear (heh) of feeling uncomfortable or afraid when reading, has allowed me to find the beauty that is often present in horror, and the subtlety that many writers can bring to showing how foundational fear is in our lives and our world. For me, judging how effective horror is goes far beyond detailing how scared I feel when I’m reading. It’s not about how often I jump, or even how desperate I am to read with the lights on, without the lengthening shadows to send shivers up my spine. Those are all tools, yes, that horror excels at utilizing, but the goal is not just to provoke a fear response. The goal, as with (I think) all literature, is to provoke thought, introspection, and action. Pretending that horror is only about making the reader feel afraid is, to me, overlooking so much that horror is capable of. As a reviewer, it’s with that in mind that I try to engage with horror stories and articulate my own opinions about them. And, so far, I haven’t regretted it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Charles Payseur is an avid reader, writer, and reviewer of all things speculative. His fiction and poetry have appeared at Strange Horizons, Lightspeed Magazine, The Book Smugglers, and many more. He runs Quick Sip Reviews and can be found drunkenly reviewing Goosebumps on his Patreon. You can find him gushing about short fiction (and occasionally his cats) on Twitter as @ClowderofTwo. Book Reviews: March 2018 Adam-Troy Castro | 1379 words

Synchronicity Strikes Like a Son of a Bitch

They say this about the best horror writers, but it’s true of all the best fiction writers in general: you need to seem heartless. This is a wholly different animal than actually being heartless. You need to feel some compassion for your characters, some understanding of their feelings and some concern for their respective predicaments, in order to produce the desired result: reader engagement. But you need to seem like a remote and angry shepherd, who cannot be trusted to guide your characters to a painless happy ending. Even if that is the destination, you need the reader to believe that you’re capable of anything, that not all problems will be solved, that not everybody who deserves a happy result will achieve one, and that the worst will not always be averted in the nick of time. (With horror fiction in particular, that genre which commemorates life’s sharpest edges, most regular practitioners also need make sure that they don’t always push the last survivor into the abyss, just before the close; that way lies futility, and it honestly takes a singular mind like Lovecraft, all his other problems put aside, to work that vein to the near-exclusion of all else.) But the basic premise remains: you need to seem heartless. While still having a heart. And as it happens, synchronicity provides us with a pair of volumes by two of the best short story writers in the field, both putting the most brutal aspects of their imaginations on display, while accidentally, and delightfully, arriving at almost the same place. The two books are Gorilla in My Room: Stories by Jack Ketchum (Cemetery Dance) and DJStories: The Best of David J. Schow (Subterranean Press), both handsomely-produced, both collections containing their share of what Schow described as, in the afterword of one memorable story shortly to be discussed, “ultraviolence.”

Gorilla in My Room: Stories by Jack Ketchum Jack Ketchum Hardcover ISBN: 978-1596068612 Cemetery Dance, October 2017, 192 pages

It needs to be said that while Schow’s book is better, this is because we are comparing apples to oranges. His volume is a career retrospective, compiling his favorite and “best” short fiction over a span of forty years; Ketchum, whose outstanding Peaceable Kingdom is a volume to rival it, is here providing us with a collection of odds and ends and stuff he’s been up to lately. A “stuff I’ve been up to lately” book, whatever its quality, is at some degree of disadvantage when contrasted with a “best stuff I’ve ever done,” volume. So put that aside, just to begin. Also note that the two writers, who work with similar dark matter, have very different voices. Ketchum tends toward transparent prose (that can nevertheless slice to the bone), Schow plays more stylistic games with language (cutting just as deeply with added barbs). Ketchum gives us a couple of stories connected to the menace first introduced in his pivotal and controversial novel Off-Season, about a brutally feral tribe abducting, savaging, and eating people in coastal Maine. Of those, one is “Cow,” written with filmmaker and occasional collaborator on both celluloid and paper, Lucky McKee, about a man who, with his friends, is unlucky enough to be attacked by that tribe and taken prisoner after everyone else is murdered. His fate among the cannibals is to be forced to eat what they eat, to commit acts that revolt him, and ultimately to live in a condition of mutilated bondage that reduces him to life as what the title suggests he’s reduced to, a farm animal. “Winter Child,” another story set in that universe, has a little girl of the cannibal tribe adopted by a loving and well-meaning man, to effects brutal and unfortunate for him. Other stories here, like “Bully,” effect similar apparent heartlessness, and you will find among the others “Group of Thirty,” in which a horror writer very much like Ketchum meets a reader’s group intent on confronting him and taking violent exception to the cruelty in his work. Heartless.

DJStories: The Best of David J. Schow David J. Schow Hardcover ISBN: 978-1596068612 Subterranean Press, March 2018, 520 pages

And if you check out the Schow collection, you will find stories like “Not From Around Here,” (1986), about a new homeowner whose perfect family is graphically predated by a monster prowling the woods around the house; “Refrigerator Heaven,” (1992) about a man spirited away by a government interrogation squad that tortures him at length, and takes forever to realize that he’s not even the guy they were looking for; and “Life Partner” (1991), about a woman whose oaf of a husband fails to wake up one day, and who she is sufficiently conflicted about to just permit to lie there, even as his initially comatose state enters the realm of post-mortem rot. And then there’s the story I have remembered vividly and with something like awe for close to thirty years, a tour-de-force of unblinking prose put to the service of what Schow calls “ultraviolence.” In “Bad Guy Hats” (1990), a gang of spree killers who vividly massacre the patrons of a convenience store are stalked by another pair of spree killers who are simply better at this despicable form of recreation than they are, and like hunting bigger game. There is no “protecting the innocent” involved; the newcomers have nothing but contempt for the innocent, and perpetrate their own horrors along the way. You might perceive some hope of the scales being balanced, at the end. But if that is to happen at all, it is outside the scope of this story, which is a blood- soaked exercise in unblinking over-the-top carnage, rendered unforgettable by the sheer energy with which it’s told. Heartless. Both of them. Brilliant writers. Poets of human brutality. But heartless. Right? And here is where we arrive at the divine synchronicity that makes our point. The penultimate story in Ketchum’s collection contains “Oldies,” a love story written from the point of view of an Alzheimer’s patient, still loved but unable to remember her condition or what’s happened to her. It’s not a horror story at all, except in that it compassionately examines and inhabits a terrible fate that awaits many of us. The final story in Schow’s collection is “The Last Song You Hear,” more plotty but another love story involving an Alzheimer’s patient and a long- time, and intermittent, lover who comes to visit him. Again, not a horror story at all, except in that it compassionately examines and inhabits a terrible fate that awaits many of us. They are a pair of tales brimming with human life, driven by the pain and the joy that are the birthright of our species, and though they play similar notes they also play completely different songs. What are the odds that two writers so well known for putting their characters through one form of splattery hell or another, would more-or-less simultaneously come out with collections that come down to these stories so resonant with one another, that both find such beauty in the fading of the light? Consider too that Ketchum also gives us “That Moment,” a very short story of only twelve words, with no goal deeper than making us cry over the bond between a human being and a dying pet cat. The author of “Cow” and Off-Season wrote that. As I said, you need to seem heartless. But the operative word in that sentence has always been “seem.”

—Note from the author: Written before the loss of Jack Ketchum.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Adam-Troy Castro made his first non-fiction sale to SPY magazine in 1987. His twenty-six books to date include four Spider-Man novels, three novels about his profoundly damaged far- future murder investigator Andrea Cort, and six middle-grade novels about the dimension- spanning adventures of young Gustav Gloom. The penultimate installment in the series, Gustav Gloom and the Inn of Shadows (Grosset and Dunlap) came out in August 2015. The finale published in August 2016. Adam’s darker short fiction for grownups is highlighted by his most recent collection, Her Husband’s Hands And Other Stories (Prime Books). Adam’s works have won the Philip K. Dick Award and the Seiun (Japan), and have been nominated for eight Nebulas, three Stokers, two Hugos, and, internationally, the Ignotus (Spain), the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire (France), and the Kurd-Laßwitz Preis (Germany). He lives in Florida with his wife Judi and either three or four cats, depending on what day you’re counting and whether Gilbert’s escaped this week. AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS Author Spotlight: A. Merc Rustad Setsu Uzumé | 839 words

You’ve written so many stories across so many genres; how do you balance the light and dark in your work? Is it an intuitive flow or a meticulous architecture?

One of my favorite words is chiaroscuro. I adore black and white films and the specific structure and design that goes into filming for that style, especially noir—and on the other hand, I also love super-rich-color-palette visual eye-feasts that are also abundant. So when it comes to my writing, I think I have a mix of intuitive flow and very specific, controlled architecture. (Great descriptors, by the way! I really like those.) I often think of stories in word clusters that evoke a style, or mood, or texture: so like, for “Mr. Try Again,” the words were vicious, teeth-filled, frigid. It began with the opening scene, which was all intuitive flow, as was the ending, and then I focused on building the plot and structure to connect the two points and evoke the sensation and mood from my word-cluster. With every story, at some point—whether it be in the middle of drafting, before I start plotting, or when I’m in the revision stage—I pause and consider what I want from it. Is this intended to be dark, or light, or a mix of light and shadow? Sometimes I know right away (as with this story—I knew it was dark and bitey from the start), and sometimes it takes a while for the mood and tone and intent to gel so I can refine the raw material into the final product I’m happy with.

You’ve done art, film, code, what else? Do you find that you can tell different kinds of stories more effectively in different mediums? What’s your dream project?

Yeah, I do feel like each medium has its own unique voice and style that best fits telling specific kinds of stories. I love interactive fiction for how it engages the reader in a specific way, and film is one of my favorite mediums for horror, because of how much you can do with visuals. My dream project at the moment would be to write a major video game, and then be able to play it. We had an amazing number of awesome video games in 2017 (some of my favorites being Prey, Shadow of War, and Dishonored: Death of the Outsider), and I would be beyond excited to work with other artists and designers and programmers on something massive and exciting. Plus, I just love playing games in general. So it’d be win-win! Also, WB Games, if you need an author to write the tie-in novel Middle-earth: Shadow of War: The Continuing Adventures of Ranger and Ratbag, I am totally your bot.

I loved that every shade of “try again” showed through in this story. It’s such a loaded phrase, and the danger seemed to be in a failure to understand what kind of instruction it was. Encouragement, discipline and honing—or a Sisyphean hell in which the correct answer will always be out of reach. Are Mr. Try Again and Judith’s father agents of the same force, or two sides of the same coin? Is “try again” a catalyst for growth, or solely a means of manipulation?

It depends a lot on who’s using the phrase—there is the context inherent in whose speech is being displayed. When it comes around to Judith claiming it for herself and for Knife, absolutely a reclaiming of something used to abuse them.

“You aren’t going to be a voyeur to their pain” was such a striking line. It was like the first glimmer of possible victory—followed by the way girls are made to be complicit in their own suffering. What was the most challenging idea you were exploring through this story? What do you want your readers to take away from it?

I honestly think every reader will take away something different, but I hope it encourages people to think about the way narrative treats girls, especially in horror. In this one, I wanted to explore the idea that there’s never just one Final Girl. It’s that in narratives, the audience is shown a specific character and told “this is who matters.” The ones left behind are just as important, and we shouldn’t forget them.

What can we look forward to from you in 2018? I will have short stories in several very cool anthologies, including Sword and Sonnet (battle poets! apex raptors!), and excellent publications (look for stuff in Lightspeed, Uncanny, and Fireside!). I’m also hoping that 2018 is both the year of Novel Revision and Finish This Game. Oh! And stay tuned, because I am aiming to run a project about robot dinosaurs over the summer. It should be an exciting year!

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER Setsu grew up in New York, and spent their formative years in and out of dojos. They like swords, raspberries, justice, the smell of pine forests after rain, and shooting arrows from horseback. They do not like peanut butter and chocolate in the same bite. Their work has appeared in PodCastle and Grimdark Magazine. Find them on Twitter @KatanaPen. Author Spotlight: Lilliam Rivera Sandra Odell | 964 words

I thoroughly enjoyed this powerful story about the nature of fear, family, and a hunger so great it eats away at your soul. What is the inspiration behind “Crave”?

Back in 2013, my sister and I became obsessed with the Puerto Rican traditional art of lace-making called mundillo. We met with one of the leading artists, Rosa Elena Egipiciaco, and she told us how mundillo was a dying art form. I kept thinking how this art form, employed mostly by women on the island, would no longer be around. It also bought up questions of who would be able to truly enjoy this beautiful piece of lace, how class plays a role in the making of art and beauty. This meeting became the impetus of my story.

You begin “Crave” with a number of distinct sensory impressions: Coco’s cold, wet nose; matted sticky fur; “the falling red petals of the tree”; the musical clinking of wooden bobbins. What is it about providing strong sensory descriptions that appeal to readers?

It’s been close to eight years since I last visited Puerto Rico. Since then, so much has changed, including the destruction that occurred because of Hurricane Maria. I’ve had so many conversations with my father regarding places that have disappeared, plazas completely missing because of the hurricane. When I was writing “Crave” I wanted to try to remember the smells of the island on my first visit at five years old. The island was in so many ways a magical place for me, so outside of the concrete jungle I grew up in in the Bronx, New York.

To me, the true horrors of this story are the cage of gender expectations that imprison Taina and how she is punished for stealing from La Caridad by losing something that was uniquely hers. In your experience as a writer, have you found that the expectations and expressions of horror differ between men and women as much as they do between individuals?

I’m always looking at the world through the eyes of a Latina who comes from a long history of colonization. Puerto Rico first dealt with being invaded by the Spaniards and then the United States. Women on the island, as well as the women who migrated to the United States, have always been subject to medical experimentations that still occurs to this day. The real horror story can be found in history. The stories I find myself writing again and again always gravitates towards people of color battling the supposed roles forced on them by society and by those in power.

La Caridad resembles other supernatural creatures that shed their skin or body such as the Malaysian Penanggalan, the Japanese Nukekubi, and the Filipino Manananggal. Why do you think it is that similar stories can grow out of seemingly disparate cultures? Is it the cross pollination that comes with cultural exchange or conquest, or is it possible that humanity shares an unconscious fascination with certain common story elements?

I love how the story of the soucouyant, a shape-shifting folklore character from the Caribbean, can be found across the world. I wrote a whole novel on the legend (one that has never been published) that moves the soucouyant to modern- day Los Angeles. I’m obsessed with the idea of a creature holding sway over a community. Doesn’t it bring to mind Frankenstein, one of the first science fiction stories written by a woman? Even further than that, I’m blessed with legends and folktales from my own community. It’s exciting to see how these tales are reimagined. The common elements make the stories universal—the death of innocence, who has power—which revolves around the same questions about voice and class.

The publishing world continues to struggle with #ownvoices, the concept of a given culture writing their own stories rather than standing to the side as others appropriate cultural elements that are not their own. If you could speak about such things to the young writers seeking their way in the grand world of words, what would you say to them?

Writing is such a revolutionary act. If you follow history you will see how writers, poets, and teachers are ones who are usually imprisoned for their words. For me to force my way into an industry that is predominately white is an act of faith and determination. I believe that there are so many voices out there waiting to be heard. If I could speak to young writers, I would say that persistence is key. I may not be the strongest writer, but I am a person who refuses to quit. I believe my voice is needed, and as a young writer, you need to believe that too, despite what the industry or others say.

Not only are you a prolific and talented writer, you work spans a range of both subjects and styles. What’s next for Lilliam Rivera? What can eager fans look forward to in 2018?

Thank you! I’ve taken my first, and I hope not my last, step into comic books. Lion Forge Press is publishing Puerto Rico Story, (bit.ly/2qNTC5s) an anthology benefiting the island. My story combines my love of Puerto Rican history and horror in a way I hope will educate people. This will be out in March and is available for pre-order now. My debut novel The Education of Margot Sanchez will also be out in paperback in March. I’m also hoping to publish more short stories with a fantastical bent to them.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER Sandra Odell lives in Washington state with her husband, sons, and an Albanian miniature moose disguised as a dog. Her work has appeared in such venues as Jim Baen’s Universe, Daily Science Fiction, Crossed Genres, Pseudopod, and Cast of Wonders. She is a Clarion West 2010 graduate, and an active member of the SFWA. Find out more at writerodell.com or follow her on Twitter at @WriterOdell. MISCELLANY Coming Attractions The Editors | 95 words

Coming up in April, in Nightmare . . . We have original fiction from Adam-Troy Castro (“Pitcher Plant”) and Emma Osborne (“Don’t Pack Hope”), along with reprints by Lee Thomas (“Fine in the Fire”) and Carmen Maria Machado (“Horror Story”). We also have the latest installment of our column on horror, “The H Word,” plus author spotlights with our authors, and a feature interview with Chris Kullstroem. It’s another great issue, so be sure to check it out. And while you’re at it, tell a friend about Nightmare. Thanks for reading! Stay Connected The Editors

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If you enjoy reading Nightmare (and/or Lightspeed), you might also enjoy these works edited by John Joseph Adams:

ANTHOLOGIES

THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH, Vol. 1: The End is Nigh (with Hugh Howey) THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH, Vol. 2: The End is Now (with Hugh Howey) THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH, Vol. 3: The End Has Come (with Hugh Howey) Armored Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2015 (with Joe Hill) Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2016 (with Karen Joy Fowler) Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2017 (with Charles Yu) Brave New Worlds By Blood We Live Cosmic Powers Dead Man’s Hand Epic: Legends Of Fantasy Federations The Improbable Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!! and Other Improbable Crowdfunding Projects Lightspeed: Year One The Living Dead The Living Dead 2 Loosed Upon the World The Mad Scientist’s Guide To World Domination Operation Arcana Other Worlds Than These Oz Reimagined (with Douglas Cohen) Press Start to Play (with Daniel H. Wilson) Robot Uprisings (with Daniel H. Wilson) Seeds of Change Under the Moons of Mars Wastelands Wastelands 2 The Way Of The Wizard What the #@&% Is That? (with Douglas Cohen)

NOVELS and COLLECTIONS

Beacon 23 by Hugh Howey Shift by Hugh Howey Dust by Hugh Howey Bannerless by Carrie Vaughn Sand by Hugh Howey Retrograde by Peter Cawdron Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories by Hugh Howey Creatures of Will and Temper by Molly Tanzer The City of Lost Fortunes by Bryan Camp The Robots of Gotham by Todd McAulty The Wild Dead by Carrie Vaughn In the Night Wood by Dale Bailey Creatures of Want and Ruin by Molly Tanzer Upon a Burning Throne by Ashok K. Banker

Visit johnjosephadams.com to learn more about all of the above.