The Dark Issue 104: The Dark, #104

By Frances Ogamba, Joshua Lim, Fatima Taqvi and Ai Jiang

Each month The Dark brings you the best in dark fantasy and horror! Selected by award-winning editor Sean Wallace and published by Prime Books, this issue includes two all-new stories and two reprints:

 

"The Grit Born" by Frances Ogamba
"Klang Crow" by Joshua Lim (reprint)
"Garlands for Your Bridal Chamber" by Fatima Taqvi
"Of a Thousand Arms and More" by Ai Jiang (reprint)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Prime Books
• Release date: Dec 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223500438

Book preview

THE DARK

Issue 104 • January 2024

The Grit Born by Frances Ogamba

Klang Crow by Joshua Lim

Garlands for Your Bridal Chamber by Fatima Taqvi

Of a Thousand Arms and More by Ai Jiang

Cover Art: The Red Newborn Baby Laying in Thorn Branches by Tithi Luadthong

ISSN 2332-4392.

Edited by Sean Wallace.

Cover design by Garry Nurrish.

Copyright © 2024 by Prime Books.

www.thedarkmagazine.com

The Grit Born

by Frances Ogamba

The dawn is just uncurling from itself, leaning towards a hot dry season day. Egoabia watches as grains of sand jet out of her son’s eyes and ears: jagged, cavern clay. Ude’s body deflates, slowly, slowly as if his skin were a covering merely cradling all the things he embodies. A small wind blooms in their direction, startling the garden egg leaves and pepper plants lounging in a corner where a mossy wall straddles the house. The heap of sand, wooed by the wind too, begins to crawl, shifting in segments like an earthworm. It is Ude’s soul moving. Egoabia can hear his feathery laughter as the heap bloats in parts, pulsing forward and backward to a rhythm. The heap gathers into a tangible form and stretches tall into the air. The form shortens and thickens, shooting out two arms and two legs. Other body parts form next: neck with the folds intact, shoulders which people sometimes clap in admiration. The holes in his silvery eyes seal closed as the ochre hue drains out of his skin, unearthing a coffee brown. The world stills for Egoabia each time she witnesses this Rebirth. Her son returns, panting, sweat cresting his face. A new life for another moon.

Egoabia whips him a feast of soft new yams and fresh palm oil. His eyes well up at every swallow. Tubers are his favourite. Things born of sand. The itch to build new skin comes once every month. Egoabia imagines that he is realigning his body, refastening it into new patterns. She identifies the pangs now, how they draw him like strings, pulling and pulling until Ude starts convulsing. It began two years ago, in Ude’s third year. Egoabia had been working on the Singer sewing machine, running stitches over a hole in a dress. The presser foot against the throat plate of the machine produced sounds that resembled the glugging of water, or the dissolving of her child’s body into fine sand. A needle had nipped her index finger as she shimmied away from the machine and ran to the backyard where Ude had been playing. Her scream died in her throat when she saw the last of him crumble and then crystallize into a somewhat bigger body.

Ude seems content to string discarded scraps cut from clothes into playthings while Egoabia works. His human interaction is limited to Egoabia’s customers who flood the house on weekends to give Egoabia specifications on measurement and style. They always call him ‘fine boy’, rustle his full hair, and ask the name of his school and what grade he is in.

He is not in school yet, Egoabia says, racing to her son’s defense.

Why? a customer asks, in a concerned voice, eyes questioning.

I am homeschooling him.

She hopes that announcing her decision will fetch her some free time in the chaos of living. But the pile of fabric to sew into outfits never runs dry. A scoop neck here, a kick pleat there. Waistbands and breast cups to resew.

Are you worried about the school fees? one of her rich clients, a large-bodied woman with a voice too thin for her size, asks her once. I can sponsor him, the woman beams at her own kindness as she spread her legs for Egoabia’s tape to go round her inner thighs. Egoabia knows that she cannot let Ude into the world. Other children will shove him about until they burst him open. And what will happen next? All that sand everywhere? She knows that her boy does not need the compression of school. Regulations on walking and speaking. He only needs Egoabia to ferry him to the backyard when the jerks of renewing his body run him through. He needs the small brown pebbles adorning the sand, overlooking the weep hole blocked by debris. He needs to journey in between forms while his mother watches, and when he resurrects, they’ll return to the house together as if