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    The Dark Issue 19: The Dark, #19
    The Dark Issue 19: The Dark, #19
    The Dark Issue 19: The Dark, #19
    Ebook70 pages1 hour

    The Dark Issue 19: The Dark, #19

    By Steve Rasnic Tem, Thana Niveau, Cate Gardner and Priya Sharma

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    About this ebook

    Each month The Dark brings you the best in dark fantasy and horror! Edited by award winning editor Sean Wallace and brought to you by Prime Books, this issue includes two all-new stories and two reprints:

    “Too Many Ghosts” by Steve Rasnic Tem
    “The Curtain” by Thana Niveau (reprint)
    “As Cymbals Clash” by Cate Gardner
    “The Absent Shade” by Priya Sharma (reprint)

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPrime Books
    Release dateDec 3, 2016
    ISBN9781540119346
    The Dark Issue 19: The Dark, #19

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      Book preview

      The Dark Issue 19 - Steve Rasnic Tem

      THE DARK

      Issue 19 • December 2016

      Too Many Ghosts by Steve Rasnic Tem

      The Curtain by Thana Niveau

      As Cymbals Clash by Cate Gardner

      The Absent Shade by Priya Sharma

      Cover Art: Crows in the Forest by Susanafh

      ISSN 2332-4392.

      Edited by Sean Wallace.

      Cover design by Garry Nurrish.

      Copyright © 2016 by Prime Books.

      www.thedarkmagazine.com

      Too Many Ghosts

      by Steve Rasnic Tem

      He’d paid more attention to the knife, and the face he’d brought forth from the wood, than to his left hand trembling as it gripped the cottonwood branch. The blade went into the side of his thumb smoothly, and if it had been wood he would have immediately realized he’d chosen his materials poorly, because wood that soft wouldn’t hold the intricate detail he required. Hector watched as his blood filled the valleys of the bark, reddening the hollows of the unfinished face, an exaggerated expression of anger that dripped onto the porch’s worn boards.

      He laid the knife and the branch down carefully on his small table of tools and materials. Then he said dammit once and evenly and attempted to close the wound with his other hand.

      He wondered again if he might be too old, or at least too infirm, to carve anymore. But carving was all he’d ever wanted to do. It might be all he could do. He hadn’t the stamina to farm anymore, or the heart to sit in an office staring at a screen. If he still had a wife he might feel differently—there might be other things he could do in the world. But he no longer had a wife, so this was how he filled his time.

      Here, Dad. Lucena dangled a roll of gauze and tape in front of him. She always kept some handy. Can I help you?

      He grabbed the gauze, wrapping his thumb with swift turns of his other hand. I’ll manage. Thanks.

      She went back into the kitchen, then called, Are you sure you can handle the trick-or-treaters tonight? You could still come with us. We could put the candy bucket out with a sign telling the children to take no more than two.

      Please tell me you’re joking. He tied the ends of the gauze with a flutter of his fingers. His wife Nekana had called the maneuver his butterfly. She had loved his butterfly. The candy wouldn’t last five minutes. Parents would be coming by tomorrow to complain about their children’s bellyaches. His daughter always tried to lure him back into the church, but Hector would not be lured.

      Well, at least help the boys carve their pumpkin. They love seeing the things you come up with.

      He picked up the branch again, stared at it. The old man in the cottonwood stared back. Hector thought he recognized the face from when he was a boy. The eyes in the wood shifted, avoiding capture. Hector couldn’t be sure. I don’t carve vegetables, mija.

      A pumpkin is a fruit, papa.

      I don’t carve those either.

      He heard her move back into the dining room. She fussed at the boys. Apparently they were still staring at the pumpkin, and had not even lifted their puny blades with the colorful plastic handles—very safe, but impossible to use with any skill. She did not understand. You could not carve the face until you first saw the face in your material. The boys had watched him do this hundreds of times, and now they were copying him, although they didn’t have his knowledge, and they were getting into trouble for it. They would be late for the church Halloween party, she told them.

      His daughter took the boys to church every Halloween for the safe candy. Hector knew of no child who had ever been poisoned, or who had bitten into a razor blade or a pin. But his daughter always imagined the worst. Now she was angry. The boys would not get their Halloween. One of them began to cry; Hector didn’t know which one—they both sounded the same to him.

      This was not his responsibility. He picked up the branch again. He looked for the old one’s eyes, but he still couldn’t find them. Perhaps the old man was sleeping. Or hiding. Hector put his knife point where the left ear should be, but he didn’t know how to carve it until he could see the eyes. A sharp pain in the web of his right hand. He turned the branch over quickly, and thought he saw tiny teeth receding into the carved mouth. There was a bite mark in his skin, or was it a splinter? He pushed his thumb into the mouth but the lips did not move. He sighed and continued to ponder what he had made.

      The face in the wood looked disturbingly familiar—the invisible eyes, and the way the hair flowed with the grain—but he could not connect the visage with a name.

      He would decide later if he would take this carving to the craft show the next day, or stick it with the others in the field. Both his mistakes and his finest works were out in the field.

      The distant explosion was too far away to cause any vibration, but he dropped the branch anyway. A piece of beard snapped off, a corner of one ear. This one was for the field, then. Hector was okay with it—this one’s destination

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