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    The Dark Issue 2: The Dark, #2
    The Dark Issue 2: The Dark, #2
    The Dark Issue 2: The Dark, #2
    Ebook67 pages1 hour

    The Dark Issue 2: The Dark, #2

    By Jack Fisher and Sean Wallace

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    The Dark is a quarterly magazine co-edited by Jack Fisher and Sean Wallace, with the second issue featuring all-original short fiction by Willow Fagan, Amanda E. Forrest, Sarah Singleton, and E. Catherine Tobler.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPrime Books
    Release dateDec 1, 2013
    ISBN9781497711624
    The Dark Issue 2: The Dark, #2

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      Book preview

      The Dark Issue 2 - Jack Fisher

      THE DARK

      Issue #2, December 2013

      Our Lady of Ruins by Sarah Singleton

      The Nameless Saint by Willow Fagan

      Wrought Out From Within Upon the Flesh by E. Catherine Tobler

      Five Boys Went to War by Amanda E. Forrest

      Cover Art: Wednesday’s Very Bad Day by Beth Spencer

      Edited by Jack Fisher & Sean Wallace.

      Cover design by Garry Nurrish.

      Ebook design by Neil Clarke.

      Copyright © 2013 by TDM Press.

      www.thedarkmagazine.com

      Our Lady of Ruins

      Sarah Singleton

      A winter forest: dark stripes of trees against the snow, and the girl’s red coat. He followed her, away from the glistening road and inert car. She moved through the black and white, folding herself into the trees.

      He was two hours’ drive from the city. The car had died in the narrow corridor of road. No phone signal, no passing traffic. He lifted the bonnet and stared, perplexed, at the engine, its incomprehensible hieroglyphs of steel.

      To north and south, he saw twin vanishing points, neatly ruled: road, snow, trees, sky.

      Then he saw her, impossible, mythological—a running girl.

      Hey! he called out. Hey! I need help!

      The forest swallowed his words. The girl didn’t hear him, didn’t stop. He looked again at the car and stepped away from the road.

      He found her footprints in the snow. The road disappeared behind him. Silence—except for the crunch beneath his boots. Prepared for the cold he had a hat and black sheepskin mittens. His mobile lay in his zipped up pocket, a protective charm proved useless.

      The trail wound to left and right, sometimes circled a tree, back-tracked and looped, as though to tease. He’d lost sight of the girl, wondered about wolves and bears, and when the snow grew deeper, sweated. The light would fade in another hour. What then?

      He heard a clink, observed a stab of colour.

      He stopped and looked up, shading his eyes to see. A dense net of twig and branch, ink-black, drawn against the sky and a blot, a knot of colour—scarlet, blue—turning on the air.

      He stretched out his hand and grabbed. The branch bent and rebound, like a bow, spraying him with snow. He shook his head, wiped his face and stared at the object in his hand.

      A round, white face: bead eyes, stitched mouth and nose. A dress of rags, cunning strips of cloth, a tiny bell hanging from wooden feet. He rolled it from side to side, observing sequins, fragments of glass, silver embroidery, a stuffed pouch made for a body. As his fingers probed, the doll lay like a dead bird in his hand, lolling and gaudy.

      He’d broken the string from which the doll depended so he propped it in a cleft of the same tree and walked on. The footprints veered east. He followed.

      Another doll, then a few paces, three more on one tree. He felt them watch, bead eyes turning in his direction. Then dark pines gave way to silver birches with peeled–paper trunks. He saw the girl again, vivid, only yards away. The birches melted on the air to make a clearing in the forest, a lake of sunlight—and a church with a high turret.

      The church floated above the snow.

      He blinked, struggling to make sense of it: a wooden church with a steep shingled roof, narrow stained-glass windows, the tilted cone of a spire, jostling with statues and gargoyles. A church with six huge wooden wheels to carry it through the forest.

      What’s your name? The girl in red was standing in front of him, a hood pulled over her head. She was about fourteen, with dark hair, tawny skin and a slight squint.

      Rider, he said. Dan Rider.

      What are you doing here, Rider?

      My car broke down.

      You followed me.

      Yes. I need help—a phone. Someone who can fix cars. Or give me a lift. He gestured vaguely at the forest, the way he’d come.

      The girl didn’t respond. She narrowed her eyes.

      The church, Rider said. Does it actually move?

      Of course. Her voice was deadpan. You want to go inside? She didn’t wait for an answer but turned away holding out an arm to guide him.

      As they drew closer, he saw an encampment of caravans beyond the church, horses tethered and browsing on hay, the twining smoke of a dozen small fires where several anonymous figures huddled.

      They climbed a flight of wooden steps at the front of the church to an arched door. Above it, in a tall niche, stood a statue of the Virgin Mary made of dark, polished wood. Her gaze was raised, her hands pressed together in prayer.

      Come in, the girl urged.

      Rider glanced back, aware of time passing, the imminent approach of night.

      I need to—I have to . . . 

      Come on. The girl was impatient, imperious. Rider’s words died. He followed.

      They entered a wooden box with an uneven floor. Light leaked through stained glass windows—three narrow slots on each side and one elaborate circle above the altar. The walls were not quite true, creating a sense of vertiginous hallucination. The church seemed to totter. Rider’s brain struggled to make sense of it, the out-of-true walls, the

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