The Dark Issue 91: The Dark, #91

By James Bennett, H. Pueyo, Steve Rasnic Tem and Morana Violeta

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:

 

"Sulta" by James Bennett
"Belly-Slitter" by H. Pueyo
"Y is for Yesterday" by Steve Rasnic Tem
"The Cat" by Morana Violeta (translated by Clara Madrigano)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sean Wallace
• Release date: Nov 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215069271

Book preview

THE DARK

Issue 91 • December 2022

Sulta by James Bennett

Belly-Slitter by H. Pueyo

Y is for Yesterday by Steve Rasnic Tem

The Cat by Morana Violeta (translated by Clara Madrigano)

Cover Art: Girl Handing a Lantern to the Watcher by Tithi Luadthong

ISSN 2332-4392.

Edited by Clara Madrigano and Sean Wallace.

Cover design by Garry Nurrish.

Copyright © 2022 by Prime Books.

www.thedarkmagazine.com

Sulta

by James Bennett

They say the camera never lies, but Tate knows that isn’t true. These days, a tog like him has as many tricks up his sleeve as your average Instagrammer, from polarizing filters to adjusting white balance to colour saturation. It’s no longer simply a question of how much light you let in through an aperture, the range of a lens or the power of the flash. That’s why when he got back to New York, the pictures he’d taken in Mørkfjord puzzled him. The shrine on the isthmus, no more than a pile of old rocks, had been cramped and dark. Hell, all of Norway was dark, the days swathed in the depthless blue of the polar night. He’s no amateur, but still. The photos shouldn’t have come out as clearly as they have.

He’s scowling at his laptop when Walt hunts him down in his study, a wineglass swinging under his nose as his arms close around him, a chin resting on his shoulder.

Are you gonna sit here all night? You’ve been gone for weeks, Tate.

"Got a date with Unseen Globe in the morning. This is probably a good enough excuse; freelance photojournalism pays the bills and boy, is the mag going to love these shots. A Nordic Bronze Age shrine where no one has set foot for thousands of years? Where even the locals never set foot? Come on. Took enough to get a pitch meeting. I want to straighten my pics up a little."

He remembers the little old man on the jetty. The knot of his face, his salt-stiffened beard.

No one goes out there, he said. Some things should go unseen.

"Mm. There’s something I want to straighten up a little."

Tate laughs, but holds his ground. Walt, it’s kind of a once-in-a-lifetime deal.

And it is. The magazine is going to pay a heap of bucks for his snaps of Mørkfjord. But that’s nothing compared to the exposure, the name for himself he’s on the verge of making. Tate Miller. The new Ansel Adams. He’s wanted this ever since leaving high school in Queens. Walt can understand, but not feel it.

Weren’t you cold up there? Bet it made winter in the city feel like a sauna. Walt sets his glass down on Tate’s desk, close enough to his Sony Alpha 9 that he winces. It cost him six thousand bucks, after all, and Walt isn’t going to pay for a replacement on a Brooklyn schoolteacher’s wages. His hands are moving towards his lap now, broad and smooth. Don’t you wanna warm up some?

That’s when Walt’s head comes level with the screen and he sees her. Sulta. Sulta is what they call her in Mørkfjord, anyway. In lowered voices. With hooded looks. It means ‘starving’ as far as Google Translate goes. No wonder it took so long to tease it out of the villagers. A finger of ice from the isthmus creeps into his West Village apartment. Then under his cashmere sweater, his skin prickling like the day he found her.

Jesus. What the fuck is that?

The image on the screen should be a blur, considering the conditions when Tate reached the shrine, the sun conquered by the horizon for weeks on end and the afternoon gloom sinking into black. Remarkably, the carvings inside came out OK. The petroglyphs too, strange and looping, that surround the graven stone. The cracked disc of the idol’s face, her hair snaking across the surrounding wall. Her mouth a broad slot of shadow. A hole through which the wind sings, arctic and shrill.

No one visits her now.

Not a what. A who. Tate shuts the laptop lid, the altar eclipsed. Sulta. She’s a goddess. They call her the Hungerer.

Walt releases him. He’s standing and looking down. To lighten the mood, and because