The Dark Issue 20: The Dark, #20

By Sara Saab, Ray Cluley, Lisa L. Hannett and E. Catherine Tobler

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

“Twilight Travels with the Grape-Paper Man” by Sara Saab
“Child of Thorns” by Ray Cluley (reprint)
“Little Digs” by Lisa L. Hannett
“A Wisdom that is Woe, a Woe that is Madness” by E. Catherine Tobler (reprint)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Prime Books
• Release date: Dec 31, 2016
• ISBN: 9781386610465

Book preview

THE DARK

Issue 20 • January 2017

Twilight Travels with the Grape-Paper Man by Sara Saab

Child of Thorns by Ray Cluley

Little Digs by Lisa L. Hannett

A Wisdom that is Woe, a Woe that is Madness by E. Catherine Tobler

Cover Art: Fireflies by Alexandra Schastlivaya

ISSN 2332-4392.

Edited by Sean Wallace.

Cover design by Garry Nurrish.

Copyright © 2017 by Prime Books.

www.thedarkmagazine.com

Twilight Travels with the Grape-Paper Man

by Sara Saab

When he appeared, the grape-paper man, I was half in half out of the fig tree in my grandmother’s courtyard.

He stopped short in the war-rutted driveway and announced, Layal! What happened to the snotty rascal I remember? You grew into a little lady.

Who the heck are you? I asked. Why do you even look like that?

He was wrapped up like a giant dolma with dolma limbs, even his face covered in grape leaves.

Who knows, said the grape-paper man, and he sat heavily on the cinderblock shelf of the jasmine bush across the drive, the one you could smell even inside the house.

Getting out of the fig tree was complicated. I shifted my weight and shouldered away the branch tickling my neck. I kept an eye on the grape-paper man as I dodged grubs and millipedes and the itchy milk welling where I’d twisted fruit away.

In God’s name, he said, watching me maneuver. An automatic phrase, to protect me from harm. Who was he to say it? An estranged uncle of mine? An eccentric family friend? Someone looking for a very young wife?

I hopped down to the ground, slapped my hands together. Seedpods and bits of gravel came away from my palms, leaving impressions behind. I tried not to be self-conscious of my baggy striped Adidas tee, my pilling basketball shorts concealing skinned knees and blond-brown hairs. My dorky glasses kept sliding down my nose. At least the cotton training bra under my tee had mostly stopped bugging me.

Well? What do you want? I asked, hands in my lumpy pockets. The lumps were a ping-pong ball, an oval rock, an acorn, and nine figs. My grandmother showed me this way to trick the hens into laying huge eggs by leaving round-shaped things in their coop. Five minutes before the grape-paper man showed up, I’d been wondering if figs might be round enough to work.

The grape-paper man stood. He watched me from across the extremely steep driveway, shaded by the chocolate factory towering next door. Weirdly I knew he was watching me although I couldn’t see his eyes. He really was wrapped head to toe in grape leaves. They were a thriving shade of green, thick and swampy.

Is your grandmother around? asked the grape-paper man.

Nope, not here, I said. She was taking a pot of okra stew to my great-aunt Marwa, the one with the rude parrot.

Oh, he said a moment later. Then can I ask you a favor? He brought his tightly bound arms up—gangly arms nearly too long for his legs—and clasped hands in front of his heart.

Depends. What is it?

I’ve hit a dead end and could use a little help, he said. He coughed with humiliation. I’m looking for my face.

Most of the time I would not want anything to do with a freaky guy wrapped in leaves. The thing is, something about the grape-paper man made my heart sore, the same sore as when my mom hugged me and asked if I’d had a good day at school when actually the guy I had a crush on had called me a pathetic nerd and shouted in class how I’d die a virgin.

That’s why I walked the grape-paper man to the back of my grandmother’s house, to the broken down fridge with a cardboard box on top. Plucky the red hen wouldn’t lay eggs anywhere else. There was a single egg in the box. I swapped it out for my largest fig.

I’m going to boil you a fresh egg, I told him.

He craned his neck to see into the box and said, I would love an egg. I can’t remember the last time I had one.

Wait—can you eat?

He was silent a long time, until Plucky’s sister Clucky barreled up to us and pecked at his wrappings and I had to take him inside.

I was thinking I’d better be hospitable in my grandmother’s place, so she’d remember that about me later, when summer holidays were over and I was back at school, in another country in basically another world. All the crap I gave myself during the long, lonely days of summer would be reiterated by hormonal boys and looks-obsessed girls, but at least my grandmother would know I was a good person.

Inside I put the egg in a coffee pot with tap water and lit the stove, then jumped up on the kitchen counter and pulled down a drum of orange Tang from the rafters.

Can you drink at least? I asked the grape-paper man, dusting shoe mud from the counter.

Not since I was hunting for my face in ’Aley, he said. He pronounced the ʿayn all rich and round, like putting a word in your mouth and chewing it till it bursts and there’s caramel inside. Whenever I pronounced that letter I sounded like I was choking.

I gave the grape-paper man a seat at the table and handed him an old newspaper kept aside for the chicken coop. He began to search the listings for his face.

How do you know who I am? I asked. I drank my Tang slowly and bit into a salted and peppered yolk like a setting sun.

Isn’t that an embarrassment, Layal? To ask me such a thing?

Not really, I said. I wondered if he had a Ken-doll crotch under all the grape leaves. Whether he cared either way.

Come on. We’ve known each other forever, he said. And I’ll be at your wedding, and your children’s weddings, and their children’s weddings, God willing.

I’m not getting married, I said.

Oh? He turned a