The Dark Issue 95: The Dark, #95

By Bibiana Ossai, Steve Rasnic Tem, Ash Caballero and Seán Padraic Birnie

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 two all-new stories and two reprints:

 

"The Faceless, The Watch Guard, and Sugar" by Bibiana Ossai
"Fish Scales" by Steve Rasnic Tem (reprint)
"Town Z" by Ash Caballero
"Hand-Me-Down" by Sean Padraic Birnie (reprint)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Prime Books
• Release date: Mar 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215942550

Book preview

THE DARK

Issue 95 • March 2023

The Faceless, The Watch Guard, and Sugar by Bibiana Ossai

Fish Scales by Steve Rasnic Tem

Town Z by Ash Caballero

Hand-Me-Down by Seán Padraic Birnie

Cover Art: Encounter Between Man and Ghost in Mysterious Dark Forest by Tithi Luadthong

ISSN 2332-4392.

Edited by Clara Madrigano and Sean Wallace.

Cover design by Garry Nurrish.

Copyright © 2023 by Prime Books.

www.thedarkmagazine.com

The Faceless, The Watch Guard, and Sugar

by Bibiana Ossai

The Faceless

The night grows younger, warmer, and fonder. Rock hands held hers with a firm grip. The fourteen-year-old young girl wore navy-blue fur boots, jean and a carrot blouse. The rock hands belonged to her Papa whom she accompanied to a convention at twilight. They floated through the crowd side by side with their footwears gliding the dusty road. It was an early morning with a pitch-black sky which the young girl called lonely because its friends, the stars were not with it.

Mashed in the small space between her parents, the girl skipped and giggled into the rowdy air with her heart full. She played with a sense of security in the palm of her Papa because she knew he would never let go. But the road grew smaller as the number of bodies that treaded the same path increased. Before she knew it, a stranger bumped into her causing the knot her palm had formed with her Papa’s to untangle itself. Her body the weight of a feather floated away from her parents.

Afraid of being starless, she shoved her palm into the hands of other bodies in search of the rock that belonged to her Papa but she found none. In the corner of a shop with only one lit street lamp, she crouched her body with snot and tears falling from her eyes but her voice was drowned by the loud music blaring from speakers and the roadside traders.

Out of nowhere that she knew of, a shadowy figure in a cloak made of tar and pointy edges stood in front of her. Across its very face was along slash mark that looked like a grave of earthworms as they crawled in the dark hole. It had no eyes and no nose with its fingerless hands. She stared at the figure for a long while, frightened yet wanting to be with her parents again. The figure beckoned her to follow him by creating an illusion of the road that led to her home.

One rat step after the other, with a big smile and dry tear lines on her face, the young girl walked behind the figure hoping to find her parents. That hope was shattered however, when she ended up in a spooky forest with cotton white sand, a miniature ginger bread house, twisted and gnarled trees with their branches reaching up to the sky like bony fingers. The branches are like coiled wires—thick and tangled such that they blocked out what little light remained. The air was thick with a musty, ginger smell. The fallen leaves rustled in the wind and she could hear the sound of twigs snapping only under her feet. Every rustle, every creak, seemed to be a warning of something sinister lurking in the shadows. The shadows seemed to close in around her, as if the trees themselves were alive and reaching out for her.

She looked up to find the moon that resembled the face of a sad Rabbit. The shadow figure turned around and for the first time since they began their journey, she paid attention to who or what she had followed. She noticed this time around that the figure had no face. Had she imagined the face without eyes and nose before, she thought to herself. This made her shudder as she walked, her heart pounding in her chest. She continued walking, for there was no turning back.

For a moment, she closed her eyes trying to evoke the images and real-life presence of her parents.