The Dark Issue 88: The Dark, #88

By James Bennett, Meg Elison, Kurt Newton and Richard Strachan

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:

 

"Last Train to Glory" by James Bennett
"The Little God of the Staircase" by Meg Elison
"The Concert" by Kurt Newton
"Gangler" by Richard Strachan

• Language: English
• Publisher: Prime Books
• Release date: Aug 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215132647

Book preview

THE DARK

Issue 88 • September 2022

Last Train to Glory by James Bennett

The Little God of the Staircase by Meg Elison

The Concert by Kurt Newton

Gangler by Richard Strachan

Cover Art: Night Mother by Mona Finden

ISSN 2332-4392.

Edited by Clara Madrigano and Sean Wallace.

Cover design by Garry Nurrish.

Copyright © 2022 by Prime Books.

www.thedarkmagazine.com

Last Train to Glory

by James Bennett

London, 1854

Luella lamented that seventy-one was too old to receive the news about Cross Bones Cemetery, with its dead poking out of the ground. The family lawyer, Arthur Barrows, had come to her townhouse one evening last week and in his usual mordant manner informed her that due to the new Burial Act, a symptom of the epidemic that had seen so many riding old Charon’s ferry-boat down the Thames of late, that her Uncle Auley was marked for exhumation.

Thousands had fallen to the ‘blue death’, spluttering their last in cramps, vomit and rice-water stools from the slums of Mile End to Portman Square. Death made no distinction between rich and poor, though that in itself was not the cause of her dismay. In a rustle of crinoline, she slumped into her invalid chair like an exhausted moth, then rang a bell for Maud to bring her a large glass of sherry. Hands shaking, she urged Barrows to furnish her with the details, the grim cause of her undoing, even while she detested the sound of them.

Yes, yes, she said, snapping her fan at him. "I read the Times. Apparently one can’t dig a new grave in London without cutting into an old one. The population hasn’t helped matters. This is rotten luck. She didn’t want to show him how perturbed she was, for the sake of Maud, her nurse and companion, more than anything else. Can’t we have him removed to one of the new cemeteries at Nunhead or Camberwell?"

I’m afraid not, madam. Barrows, the grey at his temples matching his pallor these days, gave a grimace of unease. Sir Chadwick’s influence, while unpopular, still looms large. It’s nigh on impossible to secure a burial within the city limits. It’s said that the decay is filtering into our water supply. Imagine that! We’re drinking the dead.

Luella had been unable to spare Maud, after all, the girl paling and leaning against the doorframe.

Goodness, she said, crossing herself. I heard there are bodies stacked up under the arches, ma’am. It’s ghastly.

There is, however, a solution. Barrows offered a lukewarm smile. The necropolis out at Woking Common. Brookwood. They’ve already overseen their first funeral. Stillborn twins. The plan is to dig up the . . . excess and bear the coffins by train to the site. Rather ingenious, wouldn’t you say?

Luella wouldn’t, because a sudden fear gripped her and she needed another shot of sherry.

Good Lord. Tell me his coffin lies undisturbed!

Barrows, who’d softened his report of bones in the topsoil and the sweet-sour stench that was drifting through the windows of tea rooms and offices in Southwark, loosened his cravat, his morbid enthusiasm having run away with him. Courtesy of his father, he’d doubtless heard the rumours about the Crakepole family as most of her employees had.

As far as I’m aware, madam, your uncle remains interred face down in a pauper’s grave, with no official deed and no headstone. He shuddered, perhaps at the illegality, reminding her of his father that night forty years ago, faced with the unthinkable. Oh, Walter. How I miss you. Nevertheless, father recorded the plot and—

And the amulet?

She spoke in a distracted wheeze; there was no way that Barrows the Younger could know about the relic unless he’d dug up her uncle himself, which was of course ludicrous. In her mind, a terrible thumping, a terrible twitching, circled like an angry ghost . . . The lawyer looked at his shoes and declined to respond.

Ah, but you heard about it, all right.

Frustrated, she commanded Maud to wheel her into the drawing room so she could search for the record in her escritoire. Damn her old wound and the mahogany monstrosity it had consigned her to! Had she full use of her legs, she’d be running through the rain to Cross Bones this instant, checking the grave was intact for herself.

The date had been set in January. Today was the ninth to be exact, a miserable morning south of the river with winter in the air and her joints, the blanket spread over her knees not quite enough to warm her. Maud, a poor lamb in cape and hood, had joined Luella and Barrows at the graveside as the men dug and the priest in attendance—present at Luella’s insistence—muttered prayers and sprinkled holy water. Truth be told she’d insisted on all her own labour, and at some expense, refusing to leave the matter to either the London Necropolis Company or the County Council. To this end, she’d parted with eighteen shillings for the three ‘coffin tickets’ and a pound for the coffin itself aboard the grim sounding ‘Death Line’ to Surrey. Brookwood was to be Auley George Crakepole’s final resting place—hopefully, a permanent one. As such she’d made her arrangements. No public