TABLE OF CONTENTS Issue 59, August 2017 FROM THE EDITOR Editorial: August 2017 FICTION The Devil of Rue Moret James Rabb Senbazuru V.H. Leslie The Spook School Nick Mamatas Shift Nalo Hopkinson NONFICTION The H Word: I Need My Pain Gemma Files Book Reviews: August 2017 Terence Taylor AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS James Rabb Nick Mamatas MISCELLANY Coming Attractions Stay Connected Subscriptions and Ebooks About the Nightmare Team Also Edited by John Joseph Adams © 2017 Nightmare Magazine Cover by Chorazin / Adobe Stock Art www.nightmare-magazine.com FROM THE EDITOR Editorial: August 2017 John Joseph Adams | 629 words Welcome to issue fifty-nine of Nightmare. We have original fiction from James Rabb (“The Devil of Rue Moret”) and Nick Mamatas (“ The Spook School”), along with reprints by V.H. Leslie (“Senbazuru”) and Nalo Hopkinson (“Shift”). We also have Gemma Files bringing us the latest installment of our column on horror, “The H Word,” plus author spotlights with our authors, a showcase on our cover artist, and a fiction review from Terence Taylor. John Joseph Adams Books Update Here’s a quick rundown what to expect from John Joseph Adams Books in 2017: In July, we published Carrie Vaughn’s novel, Bannerless—a post-apocalyptic mystery in which an investigator must discover the truth behind a mysterious death in a world where small communities struggle to maintain a ravaged civilization decades after environmental and economic collapse. Here’s what some of the early reviews have been saying about it: “Skillfully portrays a vastly altered future America. [The] focus on sustainability and responsibility is unusual, thought-provoking, and very welcome.” —Publishers Weekly “An intimate post-apocalyptic mystery [. .] well-crafted and heartfelt.” —Kirkus “A compelling, deft post-apocalyptic tale.” ​—Library Journal “Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower mixed with a modern procedural mystery […] Wonderfully intriguing.” —Thomas Wilkerson, BookPeople “Totally fascinating as a thought experiment and compulsively readable.” —Jenny Craig, Seattle Public Library Also in July, we published Sand by Hugh Howey, a reissue of his acclaimed indie-published novel (which was just announced to be in development as a television show for Syfy, with Gary Whitta and Marc Forster attached): “Magnificent […] After reading Wool, his other post-apocalyptic series, I didn’t think he could repeat the creation of a great world setting filled with characters you instantly care about. But he did.” — SFF World “Sand immerses you in its grubby post-apocalyptic world. […] Howey conjures a credible, brutal future.” —Financial Times In September, we’ll be publishing Retrograde by Peter Cawdron, a hard SF novel about an international colony of astronauts on Mars, who have been prepared for every eventuality of living on another planet except one: What happens when disaster strikes Earth? In October, we’ll be publishing Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories by Hugh Howey, a short story collection including three stories set in the world of Hugh’s mega-hit Wool and two never-before-published tales, plus fifteen additional stories collected together for the first time. In November, we’ll be publishing Molly Tanzer’s Creatures of Will and Temper—a Victorian-era urban fantasy inspired by The Picture of Dorian Gray, in which an épée-fencing enthusiast and her younger sister are drawn into a secret and dangerous London underworld of pleasure-seeking demons and bloodthirsty diabolists, with only her skill with a blade standing between them and certain death. A bit further out, in Spring 2018, we’ll have The City of Lost Fortunes by Bryan Camp, 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. And then in late 2018, we’ll have Upon a Burning Throne by Ashok K. Banker, an epic fantasy about a group of siblings battling for control of a vast empire while a powerful demonlord pits them against each other. That’s all the JJA Books news to report for now. More soon! • • • • Well, that’s all there is to report this month. Thanks for reading! 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, a new SF/Fantasy imprint from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He is also the series editor of Best American Science Fiction & 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 and forthcoming 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 ten 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. FICTION The Devil of Rue Moret James Rabb | 2165 words The boy grew up in the tangle of the bayou, in a township known as Rue Moret. His mother had married a farmhand, but his father wasn’t the same man. The boy told himself that these things happen when life loses its luster and we create complications to bear it. He wore a small woven hat wherever he went, and he went many places for a boy of his age. He walked to school most days, alone because his half-sister had been lost in childbirth. The boy still spoke to her, believing if she’d lived that they might have walked alone together, past the tupelos and the cypress groves, and she would greet him every day after class with a magnolia blossom from the tree outside the second grade annex, and only she would know he was failing math because of Virgine Beuze, who sat in front of him and was far more interesting. She would’ve worn a hat like his—his grandmother had stitched it for him when she was alive, and surely she would have made his sister one to match. But his sister was still dead, and he was still walking alone, past the tupelos and the cypress groves. It was preferable to the closet, where the mildew crept into his clothes and he could see through the slats, see his mother and his father, who wasn’t the man she’d married. She never took off the ring, and he never asked her to, and since the boy was not scolded for being late, only for being present, he always took his time returning home. There were rumors among the higher students of an old house, decayed and twisted within the algae and the murk, bent and broken like the inhabitants of Rue Moret. They said the devil lived there, but the boy took no account of it. He’d walked the route many times, repelled innumerable demons with a sturdy branch, stomped cockroaches by the dozen, but he’d never seen the devil, not once. A day came when the boy was delayed leaving school, the inevitable result of his growing obsession with Virgine Beuze and his shrinking grasp of basic math. His teacher, who had not made the connection, insisted on private tutoring after class and sought out the boy’s mother, who said she would come for him in the evening. The child did not blame the teacher for trusting his mother and leaving him at the school, and he did not blame his mother when she failed to pick him up. He would walk home, same as always. But darkness transforms even the most familiar things, and the boy found himself lost along this trail he knew so well. He spoke with his sister until the chirps and croaks of crickets and bullfrogs drowned out his voice. He hurried on, feeling for cypress roots or sinkholes—these were the true dangers of the bayou, he kept reminding himself—brushing aside Spanish moss that seemed to cling to him and bristle over his body. The fen tightened around the boy, threatening to crush him as he had crushed those helpless roaches. He called for help, but the swamp echoed back, mocking him, and the child began to believe that the true danger of the bayou was something quite different from cypress roots and sinkholes, and he began to run, though he had always walked, wary of the boscoyos protruding from the ground, daring travelers to trip upon them, and this is just what happened to the poor boy that night, and he tumbled into the mire, striking his head on a rotted log, and the algae sealed around him, and he was gone. The child awoke to the glow of a small wood-burning stove near the center of a fisherman’s cabin. He was soaked, but he was also alive, which seemed strange because he was certain that he must have drowned like that Holcomb man they dredged up from the swamp last year, bloated and blue with eyes like glass. But the boy had none of these symptoms, and, arriving at the conclusion that it must have been a miracle, began to thank God for sparing his life. “You, boy, have you eaten?” The child looked around and found the fire’s light extending to all corners of the tiny cabin save for the one nearest the stove, and from this corner, blanketed in darkest obsidian, the voice asked again, “Have you eaten?” and the boy, too afraid not to answer a second time, responded, “No sir, I have not.” The old man —because his voice was just that, the strained rasp of one on the verge of death— asked the boy what he would like to eat, and the boy said anything would do, because anything had always done.