TABLE OF CONTENTS Issue 43, April 2016 FROM THE EDITOR Editorial, April 2016 FICTION Reaper’s Rose Ian Whates Death’s Door Café Kaaron Warren The Girl Who Escaped From Hell Rahul Kanakia The Grave P.D. Cacek NONFICTION The H Word: The Monstrous Intimacy of Poetry in Horror Evan J. Peterson Artist Showcase: Yana Moskaluk Marina J. Lostetter Interview: David J. Schow Lisa Morton AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS Ian Whates Kaaron Warren Rahul Kanakia P.D. Cacek MISCELLANY Coming Attractions Stay Connected Subscriptions and Ebooks About the Nightmare Team Also Edited by John Joseph Adams © 2016 Nightmare Magazine Cover by Yana Moskaluk www.nightmare-magazine.com FROM THE EDITOR Editorial, April 2016 John Joseph Adams | 750 words Welcome to issue forty-three of Nightmare! This month, we have original fiction from Ian Whates (“Reaper’s Rose”) and Rahul Kanakia (“The Girl Who Escaped From Hell”), along with reprints by Kaaron Warren (“Death’s Door Cafe”) and P.D. Cacek (“The Grave”). We also have 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 feature interview with author David J. Schow. Nebula Award Nominations ICYMI last month, awards season is officially upon us, and it looks like 2015 was a terrific year for our publications. The first of the major awards have announced their lists of finalists for last year’s work, and we’re pleased to announce that “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers” by Alyssa Wong (Nightmare, Oct. 2015) is a finalist for the Nebula Award this year! Over at Lightspeed, “Madeleine” by Amal El-Mohtar (Lightspeed, June 2015) and “And You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead” by Brooke Bolander (Lightspeed, Feb. 2015) have been named finalists. This marks Nightmare’s very first Nebula Award nomination. Congrats to Alyssa (and Amal and Brooke) and to all of the other Nebula nominees! You can find the full slate of nominees at sfwa.org. The Nebulas will be presented at the 2016 Nebula Awards Conference, held this year in Chicago, Illinois, May 12–15. Stoker Nominations In other awards news, Nightmare had two stories—the aforementioned “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers” by Alyssa Wong and “Snow” by Dale Bailey—on the preliminary Stoker Awards ballot for best Short Fiction (plus Seanan McGuire’s story, “Resistance,” from my anthology The End Has Come, made it in the Long Fiction category), and we’re pleased to report that Alyssa Wong’s story made the final ballot! That marks Nightmare’s (and Alyssa’s) first Stoker Award nomination. So big congrats to Alyssa, and also to Dale and Seanan for nearly making it. You can find the full slate of what made the final ballot at horror.org. The Stokers will be presented at StokerCon 2016, which is being held in Las Vegas, Nevada, May 12–15. Locus Awards Voting And last but not least, the Locus Awards are still open for voting [bit.ly/locus2016]. Several stories from Lightspeed, Nightmare, and my anthologies made the recommended reading list, though the Locus Award has a write-in ballot, so you can also disregard the recommendations and vote for whatever you like instead. Voting closes April 15, 2016. Best-of-the-Year Selections As previously noted, several stories from Lightspeed, Nightmare, the Destroy special issues, and my anthologies have also been selected for reprint in several best-of-the-year volumes. However, we initially somehow managed to leave a couple stories off our big list, so here is the list again, now with everything included: “Time Bomb Time” by C.C. Finlay (Lightspeed | Horton) “And You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead” by Brooke Bolander (Lightspeed | Horton) “Ghosts of Home” by Sam J. Miller (Lightspeed | Strahan) “The Karen Joy Fowler Book Club” by Nike Sulway (Lightspeed | Horton, Strahan) “The Smog Society” by Chen Qiufan, translated by Ken Liu and Carmen Yiling Yan (Lightspeed | Clarke) “Violation of the TrueNet Security Act” by Taiyo Fujii, translated by Jim Hubbert (Lightspeed | Clarke) “The Astrakhan, the Homberg, and the Red Red Coal” by Chaz Brenchley (Lightspeed | Dozois, Horton) “Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World” by Caroline M. Yoachim (Lightspeed | Clarke) “Snow” by Dale Bailey (Nightmare | Datlow, Guran) “Descent” by Carmen Maria Machado (Nightmare | Datlow) “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers” by Alyssa Wong (Nightmare | Strahan) “The Lily and the Horn” by Catherynne M. Valente (Fantasy | Guran, Strahan) “Kaiju maximus®: ‘So Various, So Beautiful, So New’” by Kai Ashante Wilson (Fantasy | Guran, Strahan) “Bannerless” by Carrie Vaughn (The End Has Come | Clarke, Dozois) “The Gods Have Not Died in Vain” by Ken Liu (The End Has Come | Clarke) “Blood, Ash, Braids” by Genevieve Valentine (Operation Arcana | Strahan) “The Graphology of Hemmorhage” by Yoon Ha Lee (Operation Arcana | Horton) “1Up” by Holly Black (Press Start to Play | Guran) John Joseph Adams Books: New Releases + Acquisitions And finally, one last bit of news: John Joseph Adams Books’ first three releases are now available in bookstores. Our first release, Beacon 23 by Hugh Howey, came out in February, and the final two titles of our “pre-launch” season come out in March: Hugh Howey’s Shift and Dust, were released on March 22. They’re volumes 2 and 3 of Hugh’s bestselling Silo series (which began with the blockbuster Wool). You can read an excerpt of Shift in Lightspeed’s March issue. In a related development, I also acquired my first original title for the line: Bannerless, by Carrie Vaughn. It takes place in the same world as her Hugo-nominated story “Amaryllis,” which appeared in the very first issue of Lightspeed. Also more directly-related is her 2015 story “Bannerless” from my anthology The End Has Come (which you can also read online at bit.ly/bannerless). In the official release, we described it as: “a novel 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.” It’s a two-book deal, with publication of the first slated for Spring 2017. • • • • It’s another great month for nightmares, so 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, Armored, Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, and The Living Dead. Recent projects include: Robot Uprisings, Dead Man’s Hand, 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 nominated nine 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 Reaper’s Rose Ian Whates | 2169 words Unpleasant? No, I wouldn’t say that. In fact, quite the opposite. You know the smell of pot? Well of course you do, you’re a policeman . No, I didn’t mean anything by that. It’s just that in your line of work you’re bound to have come across it, that’s all. What I’m trying to say is that this smells a bit like pot but without that horrible sweatiness; you know, it has a sort of oily, herbal smell, less acrid and a lot more floral and, well, nicer than pot. Sorry, I know I’m doing a terrible job of describing this, but I don’t know what else to say. Really, it’s not like anything else I’ve ever smelt. Yes, pretty much all my life. Well, near as I can recall. The first time, I thought someone had walked past me wearing expensive perfume, the most wonderful perfume in the world. I remember looking around, trying to work out who was responsible, whether she was in front of me or behind. I was desperate not to let her get away without at least seeing who was wearing such a gorgeous scent. She had to be beautiful. Only a beautiful woman could wear perfume like this. But the platform was crowded and everyone was in a hurry and I couldn’t even decide which direction to look in. And then, of course, it happened. That’s right. Moorgate, in London. The time was 8:38 am. I can say that because I remember looking up at the station clock and thinking that the train had come in three minutes late. Funny the things that stay with you, the little things; I suppose because then you don’t have to dwell on the bigger ones. Yes, I was thirteen, we all were. We travelled in to school together every morning, the five of us, always on the same train. Tim and me were the first to get on, then Mick would join us two stops later and finally Alan and John at the next. You know the worst part, what I’ve always been a little ashamed of? Immediately afterwards, all I could think about was whether the woman wearing the perfume had survived.