The Dark Issue 87: The Dark, #87

By Michael Kelly, Frances Ogamba, Elana Gomel and Phoenix Alexander

Each month The Dark brings you the best in dark fantasy and horror! Selected by Clara Madrigano and Sean Wallace and published by Prime Books, this issue includes four all-new stories:

 

"Swim the Darkness" by Michael Kelly
"Shape-shifter" by Frances Ogamba
"The Farewell" by Elana Gomel
"Father's Flow" by Phoenix Alexander

• Language: English
• Publisher: Prime Books
• Release date: Jul 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201324216

Book preview

THE DARK

Issue 87 • August 2022

Swim the Darkness by Michael Kelly

Shape-shifter by Frances Ogamba

The Farewell by Elana Gomel

Father’s Flow by Phoenix Alexander

Cover Art: Stray Shadow by Fonklor-32

ISSN 2332-4392.

Edited by Clara Madrigano and Sean Wallace.

Cover design by Garry Nurrish.

Copyright © 2022 by Prime Books.

www.thedarkmagazine.com

Swim the Darkness

by Michael Kelly

We don’t choose the skin we live in, she’d said.

Our little fish girl. She knifed through water like a hungry seal, sleek and black.

Our little fish girl, swimming the darkness.

It had started as a small pinkish patch of skin on Olivia’s cheek. It was diamond-shaped, the size of a small button and hard to the touch, like plastic, like the skin of a doll, and shiny and iridescent like fish scales. We paid it little heed at first, thinking it was a rash or eczema, which ran in the family. It would go away. It would go away. Except it didn’t. It spread. Ichthyosis. And it spread.

Ichthyosis.

Our little fish girl.

She might live into her teens.

That seemed a cruelty.

So, I am going back. It isn’t calling me. Not like it called Dad. Not like it called Olivia. Especially Olivia. No, I am going back because I have nowhere else to go. That’s what I tell myself.

Grief is an open wound, raw and always healing. You wear it like the skin of the dead. You can never completely slough it off.

Olivia had been gone a year now. But the grey fugue that held me had changed. It was still a weight, but I carried it differently. It was like black clouds in a dark sky—sometimes, if you were fortunate, a little light peaked through. Sometimes. It was manageable, like a dark stone in my pocket that I could pull out and throw away. But I didn’t want to throw it away, didn’t want that release. It was too final. I wanted some small measure of pain. Deserved it, even.

Olivia is still with me, of course. Just in another form. And she always will be.

Over distant hills the sky is leaking red, like a bloody mouth. The road is a grey, twisting ribbon, endless and uncertain. The car wheezes and sputters. Angie loathed the car. She probably loathed me. She hated that I didn’t take care of the car, the house, our marriage. Or Olivia.

Olivia. I grip the steering wheel tight, roll down the window. The tang of the sea air makes my eyes water.

I should have paid attention. She’s suffering, Ethan, Angie had said, exasperation in her clipped tone. She hides it behind smiles, is all.

Angie was right, I should have paid more attention. It would go away. Should have taken better care. She said that’s what men did—took care of things. But I wasn’t very good at being a handyman. Wasn’t good at romance, being a husband, or a father. Not anymore. Not really. Instead, I spent time in the study, or, more increasingly, at the cottage.

Angie would call from outside the study door, I’m going to bed, Ethan. I’d mutter something about being up shortly, but I never was. It’d be hours before I silently crawled into bed. In the dark, in the near quiet of night, I could feel her silent, tomb-like recriminations. It got to be that the cottage suited me better. Suited us both better.

And Olivia. Poor Olivia. Smiling. Always smiling, despite the pain, despite her daily rituals: the ointments and emoluments; the washing and scrubbing; the endless medications and hospital visits.

This narrow two-lane road wends through hilly countryside. Thorny brush and tangled branches claw at the vehicle as it bumps along the pitted road.

I’ve been driving a couple hours and should be close now, but the scenery has taken on a peculiar quality. Perhaps, in my grey fugue, I’d made a wrong turn.

I had made many wrong turns, I knew. Done things I shouldn’t have—and hadn’t done things I should have. This, though, finally, is the right thing. Angie deserves the house. She doesn’t need me, a constant reminder of what was and what would never be. And after Olivia . . . she’d never want to visit the cottage. And who could blame her?

Why would you go back there? Angie said. Especially now. First your father. And then Olivia. Why?

"For Olivia," I answered, and Angie just stared.

The road grows narrower and bumpier. The sky pulses redly. A thin sheath