The Dark Issue 50: The Dark, #50

By Tlotlo Tsamaase, L Chan, Teresa P. Mira de Echeverría and Kay Chronister

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 four all-new stories:

"Who Will Clean Our Spirits When We're Gone?" by Tlotlo Tsamaase
"The House Wins In The End" by L Chan
"The Dead Kings" by Teresa P. Mira de Echeverría
"Thin Places" by Kay Chronister

• Language: English
• Publisher: Prime Books
• Release date: Jun 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393791836

Book preview

THE DARK

Issue 50 • July 2019

Who Will Clean Our Spirits When We’re Gone? by Tlotlo Tsamaase

The House Wins In The End by L Chan

The Dead Kings by Teresa P. Mira de Echeverría

Thin Places by Kay Chronister

Cover Art: Spell by Tanya Varga

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

Who Will Clean Our Spirits When We’re Gone?

by Tlotlo Tsamaase

Stormy weather flicks the night sky with lightning and thunder. Old, two-storied buildings with unlit eyes watch the empty streets as if waiting for someone. Suddenly, a girl appears from one of the old brick-faced buildings wearing torn jeans and a waistcoat, and holding an umbrella to the sky. She wavers, appearing to be looking for something. She narrows her eyes trying to see through the dark. Suddenly her eyes settle on something when lightening flicks. She considers turning back, but she needs answers, she needs them now. There’s no one in sight except danger. Except danger and a standalone telephone booth untouched by the weather.

She decides to move forward with her plan.

The wind rips the umbrella from her hold, tosses it against the flailing treetops and whips her boxbraids about. Nonetheless, she hurries across the rain-swept streets and slips, nicking her palm against the hard tarred road. Blood leaks down her arm as she hobbles to a street phone—her knee hit something hard. Through a mighty struggle, she closes the glass encasement and it seals the outside noise of rain and wind whipping by.

She huddles inside like there’s a fireplace. She pulls out a business card from her back pocket: Spiritual consultant—contact a bae from the other side. Beneath the italic text a number. She scoffs. What a joke. Am I really that desperate to believe in this shit?

The lady ain’t on WhatsApp, ja, the helpful guy had said, pulling out a bunch of white cards kept together with a rubber band. There’s always a card for a specific issue with a specific number—call a wrong number and you’re fucked, he said, flipping through each card as if they were playing cards. Got it. Try it. Call this number. You will thank me. Just use a telephone booth. He stared through the window at the chaotic weather outside. And it’s a perfect time to call.

Where the hell am I supposed to find one? Do they still exist? she’d asked.

Apparently there’s one down the road—you only see it when you have the card—never saw it because never been in need of its service, he’d said.

Where? she’d asked? But he was already gone, whistling somewhere in their office building. She was tired, had been drinking, and was looking for a dose of comfort and love. She was yearning for something, that’s why she was standing in the middle of nowhere in a storm in a telephone booth just so she could hear her voice, ask her what happened.

With slippery fingers she picks the telephone earpiece, slips in some coins and dials a number, leaving bloody fingerprints. A jarring wound gapes at her from her palm.

Fuck, she mutters.

When she looks at the metal keypads, the blood is bubbling as if it’s being boiled, and it seeps into the spaces between the keypads, sucked in by something. The spiritual consultant not only takes money as payment, she takes blood as well.

What are you still doing here? she asks herself. Leave now. Why are you getting mixed up with this? This is probably why you’ve never been promoted—you bring bad luck to yourself.

She pulls off her scarf and wraps it around her hand. Nervously, she peeks outside the telephone booth and holds her breath.

The voice of a phone operator comes to: Hello, please hold on as our servers are experiencing a technical difficulty due to the storms—

I heard it’s good to call during stormy weather, she says, wiping rainwater from her face with her sleeve. That it helps with the connection.

You are correct. I will be your phone operator today to help facilitate your call. How can I help you today?

I want to get in touch with someone.

Living or dead?

A beat. She clears her throat and feels foolish, like she’s sitting in an exam room with sweaty fingers trying to recall what she studied for the hardest paper. Thunder cuts her off when she tries to speak, as if a sign to turn around and get back to her deadline. Her editor is going to be downright mad if he found out she wasn’t where he could see her working on those articles.

She’s confused. Living? I thought—

Living people who are missing.

Oh.

Hello? Mma, are you still there?

She rests her head back against the cold surface of the glass. Dead.

Insert your bank card into the card slot and provide specific details of the deceased.

As she whispers out the details of the deceased—twenty-year-old Goitseone who died in a fire—the girl wedges the phone between her ear and shoulder and rummages through her book bag—several things fall out: a pocket knife, a cellphone, lipstick, novels, a tape recorder and a photo of two Afroed girls laughing, a joke between their lips. She pauses, stares at the picture and rubs her thumb against one of the girl’s lips. She slips down against the glass casing until