The Dark Issue 48: The Dark, #48

By Angela Slatter, Georgina Bruce, Sara Saab and Brenna Gomez

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

"Wilderling" by Angela Slatter
"Her Bones the Trees" by Georgina Bruce (reprint)
"The Wiley" by Sara Saab
"Corzo" by Brenna Gomez (reprint)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Prime Books
• Release date: Apr 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386091714

Book preview

THE DARK

Issue 48 • May 2019

Wilderling by Angela Slatter

Her Bones the Trees by Georgina Bruce

The Wiley by Sara Saab

Corzo by Brenna Gomez

Cover Art: Evil Cat by grandfailure

ISSN 2332-4392.

Edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Michael Kelly, and Sean Wallace.

Cover design by Garry Nurrish.

Copyright © 2019 by Prime Books.

www.thedarkmagazine.com

The Wilderling

by Angela Slatter

The kid appeared on the first of May.

LP was in the kitchen, doing the dishes in desultory fashion, cursing Kurt’s refusal to shell out for a dishwasher (Already got one and she cooks too, accompanied by a slap on the ass was his standard reply), and staring at the overgrown foliage of the back yard; it tangled with the old growth woods their property bordered. It was the movement that caught her eye, slow but still kinda sharp, cautious and nervous, and pretty soon there was this kid creeping out of the trees and shrubs and long grass.

Matted dark hair, halfway down the back, no clothes to speak of but so covered in filth that LP couldn’t tell if it was a girl or a boy. Lordy, but it must reek to high heaven. She wondered if the kid could see her, but realized its gaze wasn’t directed at her, or the windows she stood behind, but at the fat tortoiseshell tom.

It was Tuesday, and quiet. LP’s best friend Angie had been sick, so she’d not dropped Thomas off for his once-a-week day with aunty; he was a good baby, contented, seldom cried, but she was always aware of his presence. Kurt was long since gone to work at the furniture factory. The houses on either side were empty and had been for some time, with foreclosure signs decorating their front yards like great steaming turds. LP was deeply grateful for the respite as the Mondays she spent with her mother were invariably hellish, and yesterday had been a high-water mark.

Whiskey was sunning himself on the little round iron table that had been quietly rusting in the garden for ten years. It sat just off to one side of the washing line, didn’t get in the way, could barely hold the weight of a cat or a peg-basket. There were two chairs to go with it, but no one sat on them anymore on account of the legs being held together with what passed for oxidized spit, and the tendrils of some mysterious weed that wound its way through the lacework.

LP told herself she couldn’t have done anything, couldn’t have changed what happened, but she was lying and she knew it. Sure, she wouldn’t have made it to the back door and into the yard, but she could have banged on the glass. Kurt loved that damned cat more than life itself, and maybe more than her, but it jumped and hissed if she so much as breathed near it; anything louder would have made the critter shit itself and run. But she didn’t trouble to make a noise, in fact she held her breath, just waiting to see what might happen. She rubbed one damp hand absently across the flat belly beneath her cotton dress, primped the short dark curls of her ghostly reflection with the other.

Whiskey didn’t even see it coming.

Which meant the kid was silent, like stealthy as a fox, light as a breeze, because the kid’s fingers—closer up now, LP could see how long the nails were, black ragged things—were around Whiskey’s thick neck before he knew it. That neck was broken in a freakishly swift motion—there was no doubt the cat was dead, the way it hung in that strong, nasty little grip.

But LP couldn’t muster even a lick of sympathy for the feline. Too many years of him tearing up her favorite cushions and couches, her craft supplies and works-in-progress, her clothes whenever he could get his paws on them, and the smell of piss in the house because Kurt wouldn’t get the fucking animal neutered. There were deep red scratches on her arms, the latest in a series of Whiskey’s love taps while she slept; she’d got infections from them three times before. LP felt the first genuine smile in a long while lift her lips, and imagining life without Whiskey distracted her from watching the kid tear him open and feast on his innards. She kind of glanced off to the side, so she saw but not quite.

When the cat was no more than a sack of bloodied fur and bones, the wilderling tossed Whiskey on top of the little iron table again, almost well-mannered, and disappeared back into the woods. LP would go out soon and put him in the compost, bury him deep in the rotting food scraps and other crap in the plastic bin that sometimes swelled in the summer heat and always smelled bad, so bad even Whiskey never went near it. Kurt wouldn’t look for his old tom there.

LP went back to doing the dishes, humming, heart considerably lighter.

Angie, you ever hear of kids lost in the woods hereabouts? Not ever coming out again?

LP had spent part of a day at the library, using their internet so Kurt couldn’t check up on her browsing history at home. He didn’t do it to keep track of her or anything—he wasn’t that kind of husband—but he liked to find reasons to tease her and LP was an inveterate adopter of hobbies. She always began with online research. Kurt thought he was being funny, didn’t notice her gritted teeth.

So she’d sat in