Nightmare Magazine, Issue 94 (July 2020): Nightmare Magazine, #94

By John Joseph Adams

NIGHTMARE is an online horror and dark fantasy magazine. In NIGHTMARE's pages, you will find all kinds of horror fiction, from zombie stories and haunted house tales, to visceral psychological horror.

Welcome to issue ninety-four of NIGHTMARE! This month, Carlie St. George spins us a new story of ghosts, trauma, and life in California: "Spider Season, Fire Season." Adam R. Shannon's story "We Came Home from Hunting Mushrooms" uses an extremely strange phenomenon to talk about how our minds cope with loss. We also have reprints by Joe R. Lansdale ("The Folding Man") and Ama Patterson ("Hussy Strutt"). On the nonfiction side of things, Brian Evenson has written the latest installment of our column on horror, "The H Word." Our staff brings us author spotlights with our authors, and we have a book review from Adam-Troy Castro. Plus our ebook readers are being treated to an excerpt of Keith Rosson's new novel, ROAD SEVEN.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adamant Press
• Release date: Jul 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393941002

John Joseph Adams

John Joseph Adams is the series editor of The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy and the editor of the Hugo Award–winning Lightspeed, and of more than forty anthologies, including Lost Worlds & Mythological Kingdoms, The Far Reaches, and Out There Screaming (coedited with Jordan Peele).

Book preview

Nightmare Magazine

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Issue 94, July 2020

FROM THE EDITOR

Editorial: July 2020

FICTION

Spider Season, Fire Season

Carlie St. George

The Folding Man

Joe R. Lansdale

We Came Home from Hunting Mushrooms

Adam R. Shannon

Hussy Strutt

Ama Patterson

BOOK EXCERPTS

Road Seven

Keith Rosson

NONFICTION

The H Word: Horror in Strange Times

Brian Evenson

Book Reviews: July 2020

Adam-Troy Castro

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS

Carlie St. George

Adam R. Shannon

MISCELLANY

Coming Attractions

Stay Connected

Subscriptions and Ebooks

Support Us on Patreon, or How to Become a Dragonrider or Space Wizard

About the Nightmare Team

Also Edited by John Joseph Adams

© 2020 Nightmare Magazine

Cover by Chainat / Fotolio

www.nightmare-magazine.com

From the EditorBEST AMERICAN SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY 2018

Editorial: July 2020

John Joseph Adams | 129 words

Welcome to issue ninety-four of Nightmare!

This month, Carlie St. George spins us a new story of ghosts, trauma, and life in California: Spider Season, Fire Season. Adam R. Shannon’s story We Came Home from Hunting Mushrooms uses an extremely strange phenomenon to talk about how our minds cope with loss. We also have reprints by Joe R. Lansdale (The Folding Man) and Ama Patterson (Hussy Strutt).

On the nonfiction side of things, Brian Evenson has written the latest installment of our column on horror, The H Word. Our staff brings us author spotlights with our authors, and we have a book review from Adam-Troy Castro. Plus our ebook readers are being treated to an excerpt of Keith Rosson’s new novel, Road Seven.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Joseph Adams, in addition to serving as publisher and editor-in-chief of Nightmare, is the editor of John Joseph Adams Books, an science fiction and fantasy imprint from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He is also the series editor of Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, as well as the bestselling editor of many other anthologies, including The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, Robot Uprisings, Dead Man’s Hand, Armored, Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, and The Living Dead. Recent projects include: Cosmic Powers, What the #@&% Is That?, Operation Arcana, Loosed Upon the World, Wastelands 2, Press Start to Play, and The Apocalypse Triptych: The End is Nigh, The End is Now, and The End Has Come. Called the reigning king of the anthology world by Barnes & Noble, John is a two-time winner of the Hugo Award (for which he has been a finalist eleven times) and is a seven-time World Fantasy Award finalist. John is also the editor and publisher of Lightspeed Magazine and is a producer for Wired.com’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Find him on Twitter @johnjosephadams.

FictionDiscover John Joseph Adams Books

Spider Season, Fire Season

Carlie St. George | 3743 words

I. Spider Season

The house is haunted, of course. That’s why the rent is so cheap. It doesn’t matter that it’s only April, that ghosts dream quietly when the world is in full bloom. Nearly any haunting will be small: flickering lights, a mysterious lullaby, an intrusive thought chasing the living from room to room. Fatalities are incredibly rare, though most people, even the disbelievers, fail to find that reassuring.

December is not most people, not when it comes to the dead, but she promised herself twenty years ago: when I’m grown up, when I can choose, I’ll never live with a ghost again.

Unfortunately, part of adulthood is discovering you can’t always afford better choices. Especially when a child is growing inside you. Especially when someone is hunting you both.

The house is white and sprawling and isolated, a short distance from the Mendocino Coast. There are more spiders than ghosts her first week there, all seeking shelter from the rain. December finds them on walls, in her bedsheets, curling up inside her shoes. She talks to them often, names them, wonders what they might name her in return. It’s always best to befriend house spiders, something she learned when she was young. Dozens might be crawling around at any time; more, if you’re counting the dead ones.

The human ghost in this house is Olivia de la Cuesta, murdered five years ago in a botched home invasion. By all accounts, she was bright and ambitious, two months shy of leaving for her freshman year at college. December lives in the house two weeks before Olivia’s nightmare begins to manifest visibly: wet footprints, all over the hardwood floor. When she steps in them, December can feel sand between her toes.

Sometimes, there is music: Ellie Goulding, slurred and strange.

Sometimes, December brushes her teeth and spits out Olivia’s blood instead of toothpaste.

It’s not a restful environment, certainly not ideal for a woman eight months pregnant. December will have to be vigilant, although it’s unlikely Olivia will be capable of any real harm until she manifests at her full strength, when the days are darker and the nights are longer, when spirits are at both their most dangerous and most coherent. Ghosts are tricky in winter. To be dead is to be disoriented, but if December can establish contact in the next few months, if she can slowly, repetitively, build trust between them, then she just might wake Olivia up by the new year. They could all live together safely. Maybe even happily.

But it’s always a risk, depending on others for happiness, the living as much as the dead. If you need someone to follow, they’ll stay behind. If you need them to stay behind, they’ll follow. They’ll never let go.

Another contraction. Braxton-Hicks: false labor, real pain. December eases herself down on the couch, as she feels a small, dark spider crawl across her bare feet. What should I call you? she asks the spider. The baby’s name, of course, she already knows.

He won’t find us here, December promises her child, but this is a lie: it’s only a matter of time.

II. Beach Season

She wakes up in the dark, too quickly, a dream still spun about her. Where is she? What is she doing here? There was laughter, she remembers that. There was blood everywhere, bright red and gushing. What’s happening, where is she, where—

Her bedroom. Of course, it was just a nightmare. It’s okay, she’s safe. Maybe still a little drunk: her skin feels strange, her head heavy. Her feet are still damp and dirty from the beach. She’d locked the door behind her, changed out of her jeans, forced herself to drink a glass of water—but the prospect of showering had been just too much. Standing was effort. So was taking off her hoodie or brushing her wind-tangled hair. She’d needed the relief of horizontality.

It’s still so very dark out. She couldn’t have slept for long.

There’s music: Ex’s and Oh’s playing from the vicinity of her pillow. Groaning, she pushes the earbuds away, fumbling for her phone, and dropping it at the sound of footsteps down the hall.

There’s someone in the house.

Her parents are out of town. Could they have come back early? They’ve basically been a wreck since finally accepting that no, she isn’t going to live in this house forever; she’s getting her degree in bioengineering, and then she’s going to see the world. They could’ve come home—but that would be a waste of money, and Mama never wastes money already spent. No, it must have been her imagination. There’s no one here, it was only a dream, there’s no one—

The footsteps are louder. Voices, too. A man, laughing.

He’s right outside her bedroom door.

She stops breathing. (Was she breathing before? She can’t remember, she can’t think, everything hurts.) There’s a hand on the door, pushing it open—but it stops, as someone else calls out. Footsteps again, walking away, leaving her bedroom door half open.

Slowly, she slides out of bed, wincing at the chill of the hardwood floor. She has to get out of here. There’s barely any space to hide in her closet, no room at all under her bed. If the man comes back, if he sees her . . . but the window, it always sticks, impossibly loud in the dark of night. They’ll catch her, whoever they are. They’ll grab her by the ankles and pull her, screaming, back inside.

The back door. It’s the only way.

She slips out of her bedroom carefully, eyes still not fully adjusted to the dark. She can’t see the men, but can they see her? Are they watching her, even now? She creeps down the hall in slow motion, inching past the guest room, past the baby that woke her with their incessant screams—

Wait. Baby?