The Dark Issue 43: The Dark, #43

By Kay Chronister, Wenmimareba Klobah Collins, Ruth EJ Booth and Alberto Chimal

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

"Russula's Wake" by Kay Chronister
"Walking off the Doeskin" by Wenmimareba Klobah Collins
"Telling Stories" by Ruth EJ Booth
"Art" by Alberto Chimal

• Language: English
• Publisher: Prime Books
• Release date: Nov 29, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386814702

Book preview

THE DARK

Issue 43 • December 2018

Russula’s Wake by Kay Chronister

Walking off the Doeskin by Wenmimareba Klobah Collins

Telling Stories by Ruth EJ Booth

Art by Alberto Chimal

Cover Art: The Nutcracker by Anna Mei

ISSN 2332-4392.

Edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Sean Wallace.

Cover design by Garry Nurrish.

Copyright © 2018 by Prime Books.

www.thedarkmagazine.com

Russula’s Wake

by Kay Chronister

They hadn’t been naming the barn cats, now that Ainsley and Devon were old enough to know the difference between taking care of and caring for something. In the afternoons, when the school bus doors opened to release them, the children hurried through all the feeding and mucking and cracking and cutting, then closed up the barn and left the animal world to manage itself until morning. By then, the table would be set for dinner: cheap mauve plates for the two older children, blue porcelain for Jane and the baby.

For herself and little Rosemarie, Jane made roasts and casseroles, sometimes quiche. But the older children followed Paley family rules, and the substance of their meal was always the same. While they nourished, Rosemarie would pick at her food until getting up the courage to ask after the barn cats: had they been good, had the new kittens been born yet, was there still any milk in the dish she’d left? Ainsley and Devon would smirk, they would giggle; sometimes, if they thought Jane wasn’t listening, they would whisper false stories of dead cats hung from rafters. From across the kitchen, scrubbing pots and pans, Jane would let herself glance only momentarily at the faces that Ainsley and Devon hid from their teachers and schoolmates. Later, tucking them into bed, she would have to avert her eyes. When her lips brushed their foreheads, she would try not to flinch.

She always said goodnight to Rosemarie last. Mothers did not have favorites, certainly Jane did not have a favorite, but Rosemarie wouldn’t still be Rosemarie by the end of the year, and that made her precious. A Paley woman would doubtless have said that Rosemarie was thin-skinned, fragile to a fault, but Jane was not a Paley by birth and she had always secretly felt that Rosemarie was not really a Paley either. Ainsley and Devon, on the other hand, were Paleys, true Paleys, and Jane was afraid that in the end maybe there wasn’t much difference between a cruel child and a Paley child.

The less Ainsley and Devon cared for the animals, the more desperately Rosemarie loved them. In the mornings, while the older children collected their belongings and hurried out to the waiting school bus, Rosemarie stood solemnly at the window facing the barn, her chin propped on her hands, a field guide to edible mushrooms splayed open on the windowsill in front of her. When the bus doors closed, she climbed down from her perch and slipped into her rubber boots and waited for Jane to open the barn. Jane could not remember when exactly she had begun allowing this, only that it had been a while ago and yet she still felt a sort of secondhand embarrassment at seeing Rosemarie on the floor with the feral cats that lived in the hayloft. Rosemarie didn’t know yet, not to get attached. But that was only because Jane had neglected to tell her.

When the letter came from the school in March, Jane knew she had waited too long. The interval of time between the now and the then had shrunk down almost to nothing. The day the letter arrived, she stood with the mailbox hanging open like a black unhungry mouth, and looked at the letter, and looked at her daughter, who was kneeling in the mud with one of the cats. Russula was a saggy-bellied calico with a missing eye, who had been named, for reasons apparent only to Rosemarie, after a rare red mushroom that grew only in deep seclusion. She was the most hideous of all the barn cats, and Rosemarie loved her more than anything else.

Someone sent you a letter, Rosemarie observed, seeing Jane look into the mailbox.

Yes, Jane said.

She was afraid Rosemarie would ask who or why. They received mail so rarely. But Rosemarie only frowned, screwing up the corners of her mouth, and asked, Could we send letters?

If we wanted to, Jane said. Who would you write to?

I don’t know, Rosemarie admitted, as if the possibility