The Dark Issue 62: The Dark, #62

By Kali Napier, Steve Rasnic Tem, Stephen Volk and Laura Mauro

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 two all-new stories and two reprints:

 

"Needles" by Kali Napier
"Saudade" by Steve Rasnic Tem (reprint)
"Agog" by Stephen Volk
"When Charlie Sleeps" by Laura Mauro (reprint)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Prime Books
• Release date: Jun 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393022008

Book preview

THE DARK

Issue 62 • July 2020

Needles by Kali Napier

Saudade by Steve Rasnic Tem

Agog by Stephen Volk

When Charlie Sleeps by Laura Mauro

Cover Art: Blue November Storms by Vincent Chong

ISSN 2332-4392.

Edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Sean Wallace.

Cover design by Garry Nurrish.

Copyright © 2020 by Prime Books.

www.thedarkmagazine.com

Needles

by Kali Napier

Mam sets aside the petticoat she’s hemming, makes a note in the piecework book, and unpicks the sleepy stitches in Maeve’s sampler.

Try again. She passes the scrap of hessian back to her daughter, sighs. Needlework teaches the virtues of patience, silence, and control.

Virtues. Maeve stabs new thread through the eye of her needle. The chill air of the Devonport night curls under the parlour door and, eyes heavy, she folds up her legs, skirts tucked, and inches closer by Mam’s side on the settee.

Mam resumes work. The baby whimpers in his cradle by the hearth.

Sins. Flames lick at the coals. Maeve sees their flickering shapes on the inside of her eyelids. Opens them at his heavy footfall in the hall.

Da, she murmurs. Mam’s fingers undulate across the petticoat hem.

He leans against the jamb of the open doorway.

Maeve catches Mam’s profile in the corner of her eye. Mam mutters soundlessly.

Da clears his throat. Don’t trouble yourself. And passes them by.

Mam’s lips compress. She says nowt to Maeve and Maeve is never to ask.

An ember bursts in the hearth, showering sparks like a firework. Maeve thinks of that morning, coming upon Mam in the cold kitchen, the stove not yet lit. Ann and Pauline still asleep upstairs in the bed the sisters shared. Maeve’s feet made little sound on the stone flags, else Mam would have buttoned her blouse, put away the damp cloth, fussed, lighting the stove and fixing the porridge. But she had not. And Maeve had seen.

The bruise-like ink smudges on her mother’s shoulder in that grey morning light.

She nestles her cheek against the harsh wool of Mam’s yoke capelet, feels its prickle slough her skin. On the fringe of her lashes Maeve can see Mam’s hand in motion.

Fetch him some ale. Mam nudges Maeve off her shoulder. Maeve does as she is bid.

In the back yard she kicks aside the bloated mouse carcass and lifts the lids of the crates until she finds a stoppered bottle. The cold claws at her. She bundles her shawl around her hand against the chill of the bottle and darts back to the warmth of the kitchen, wedging the door against the wind and vermin.

Da slurps at his soup, pulls the end crust off the loaf of bread to mop his dish. He sits at the end of the narrow table, knees splayed to the sides and the bulk of his backside sags over the stool. Maeve braces the bottle between her knees, tugging at the cork.

He waves his hand over to her. Give it here, girl. There’s no muscle on those arms of yours.

She thinks about his hand closing over these skin-and-bone arms. Places the bottle on the table and steps away.

Blackness.

The light from the electric bulb collapses to a wiry flame against her eyelids, a maelstrom of thoughts gathering. She shakes the coursing energy from her fingertips before Da finds fit to punish her for her lack of self-control. A sinner.

But he stays in his place across the kitchen, curses. Goddamn it.

She feels her way to the darkened hall. More cursing. Clattering of the soup dish on the stone flags. She tucks herself into the alcove beneath the stairs. Her brother Michael teases about her cubby hole, but he’s away on the boats. The hall clock ticks somewhere above her head. She turns her ear towards her mother in the parlour but hears nothing above the judder of the front door in its frame as the wind blows against it. Sounds of Da, thudding and grunting.

Then the glow.

Her father holds the candle close to his chest, cupping the flame with a fleshy hand. The floor and walls of the hall bask in the dancing halo around him. Maeve clenches to stop herself from pissing, barely moving as he passes her into the parlour.

A fuse’s blown, he says. Shall I bring you a lamp?

No, dear, the fire’s enough. Her mother yawns loudly.

Maeve waits, watches him pass. The back door scrapes the stone flags.

Her shoulders sag. She reaches into her pocket, rubs along the inside hem until she finds it: one of Mam’s needles. She presses her fingertip against its point. Pushes harder until an exquisite pain jags her finger. Again, another jag of pain, until she has pricked a seam across her fingertip, warm with blood.

The hall clock strikes noon. Maeve flinches, flattens her shoulder blades against the wall beneath the clock. She’d rather be in the kitchen with Mam, or out playing Ring-a-Rosie with her sisters, even pushing the baby in the cart up and down the lane. But she’s to wait on their visitor by the ajar parlour door.

The priest sits inside with Da, where the bulb’s aglow. Mam will be cutting back on bacon for their tea, tallying the minutes the Father’s lit up by their current. Da’s no mind of the time, making small talk that costs us.

The parish roof’ll be fixed this March, Cameron. ’Tis many along this row doing penance, Father Ryan says. That high nasal voice. Maeve presses her back against the cold plaster, scratches at the fresh scab on her finger. Pain, control. Silence.

I give what I can, Father. Da’s grovelling at the priest’s robes.

I’ve no doubt of your faith, Cameron. The clock ticks twice in the pause. Ah, now. Your Maeve, she’s growing up. Have you thoughts for her?

Maeve stiffens, at the turn in talk. Tingling rushes from the top of her