The Dark Issue 54: The Dark, #54

By Richard Gavin, Elizabeth Childs, Vaishnavi Patel and Alison Littlewood

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

"The Beckoning Green" by Elizabeth Childs
"Fragile Masks" by Richard Gavin (reprint)
"Logic Puzzles" by Vaishnavi Patel
"The Marvellous Talking Machine" by Alison Littlewood (reprint)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Prime Books
• Release date: Nov 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386995555

Book preview

THE DARK

Issue 54 • November 2019

The Beckoning Green by Elizabeth Childs

Fragile Masks by Richard Gavin

Logic Puzzles by Vaishnavi Patel

The Marvellous Talking Machine by Alison Littlewood

Cover Art: Zombie Hand Rising by Romolo Tavani

ISSN 2332-4392.

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

Cover design by Garry Nurrish.

Copyright © 2019 by Prime Books.

www.thedarkmagazine.com

The Beckoning Green

by Elizabeth Childs

1961

I am six years old when, one summer afternoon as the sun beats down and rolls sweat down my neck, my sister yells, Catch, Judith! She launches her porcelain doll at my head. I am one second older when it slips through my fingers and shatters on the concrete driveway at my feet. I run my fingers over the broken pieces and gather them up in my arms, and I dig with my hands in the backyard until my fingers are sliced open by the earth, until my blood mingles with the blades of grass and the bits of doll. I am hot, but the green under my fingernails seeps coolness into my veins that lodges itself somewhere deep inside of me. I shiver and rub goosebumps from my arms.

I bury the shards in the shallow grave. My sister has already forgotten it. I imagine earthworms crawling through the eye holes and digesting the cloth-and-stuffing body, dandelions rooting through the lace on the dress, turning the linen into pillowy seed puffs to be blown into the wind by some child who has no idea.

That summer I sit over the grave with my dress spread around me in a circle, my feet sticking out the front, grass tickling between my toes. My sister flits about the yard, barefooted and red-cheeked and carefree, calling songs to me that I refuse to answer, puckering her cheeks and lips with sour crabapples, while I watch over her baby.

The grass blades brush the backs of my bare thighs, then begin to sting—but nicely. The green sends chilly tendrils up through my skin and into the muscle. The leaves seem to wrap their hands around my bone and root me to the ground.

My brother, Henry, is fourteen. He sits wide-legged on the porch steps, plucking out folk tunes of his own creation on his hard-earned guitar, stopping to jot down the notes and wipe summer perspiration from his brow. The light catches in his eyes. I hum the tunes with him once I hear the melody, and he stops and grins and says, Is that a good one, Judith?

I say, Yes, and smile, and I want to gather the notes into a heap inside my chest and use them as kindling to keep me warm.

My mother steps around me to hang wet laundry above my head. Bright droplets of linen-scented water soak deep into my hair, all the way to the roots.

I lay on my back, and this way, the grass is taller than me.

Ants crawl over me.

The earth trembles beneath me, and I hear the first whisperings, saying, Shhh, shhh.

I stretch my fingers above my head and yank out handfuls of grass and cover my face with it. I breathe in the green.

My mother gasps and drops the laundry in a wet heap in the yard and yanks me up. She brushes me off and grips my shoulders too hard and says, Judith, be careful! You could disappear in that grass, don’t you know that? Some people—they sink into the ground. They vanish right in front of you. I’ve seen it. Listen! What if I couldn’t find you someday? What would I do? She shakes me. What would I do? Her cheeks flush and her eyes seem far away for a moment before they snap back to me. Heat from her hands radiates through my shoulder blades, and when she finally lets go, I run inside and drink glass after glass of ice water to quench the fire still burning under my skin where her fingers pressed in.

At dinner she says nothing, only sets blood-red Jell-O and burnt potatoes in front of me. I watch the Jell-O wobble, and my stomach wobbles with it, and all I can smell is green. I cannot eat a thing.

That summer, I learn to soak up sunlight like a flower when no one is watching, to drink my fill of jade brightness from the stems of plants until I am cool like the dew and full like a bead of water suspended on the edge of a petal, ready to drip.

1965

War rages in the jungle half a world away. My friends’ brothers disappear into the steaming ground. My mother bakes Henry an 18th birthday cake and ices it with thick chocolate frosting. She smiles and claps as he blows out the candles. It is the last moment I remember her happy. Every day after, she