Postscripts to Darkness Volume 3 is dedicated, in loving memory, to our sister of the sinister and fellow devotee of the weird, Leslie Crate (Lesleigh Frankenstein). Ave atque vale, old friend.
Illustration by MANDEM
Suddenly the stairs end and the hard surface beneath my feet flattens. I move through a doorway and into the night. The sky is illuminated by a nearly full moon, and scattered with chips of stars. Pale light reveals the child to be a boy dressed in a long robe hanging nearly to his ankles, which are as bare as his feet. It is the kind of roughly woven garment worn in the desert, scratchy against the skin. Desert. The word stirs inside me, followed immediately by the realization that the small town, sleeping or abandoned around me, is poised between the western Sahara and the Atlantic Ocean. At the next instant I become aware that the ocean must be near: a sound of surf heaves now to our right, now to the left. Disproportionately loud, even magnified, the waves wash each thought from my mind before it has barely formed, before it can be pursued. Still turned from me, the boy pauses in front of a black palm whose branches, rustling in the breeze, cast shadows that sway and shift across him. Hypnotized by the sight, I don’t notice immediately that the boy has moved away, that I stare at only shadows.
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From “The Palm at the End of the Mind,” by Patrick Roscoe
Volume 3 features the following stories and art:
Empty Spots, by Carly Berg (ill. Dominic Bercier)
The Drawer, by Alyssa Cooper (ill. Alyssa Cooper)
Filmy Residue, by Lucas Dawes (ill. James Greatrex)
The Obstruction, by Kriscinda Everitt (ill. Mark Stephenson)
Shade Creeper, by Alexander Gonzalez (ill. Richard H. Fay)
What They Wore, by Kyle Hemmings (ill. Cynthia Colosimo)
New God, by Maj Ikle
Absolution, by Michael Kelly (ill. Dominic Bercier)
Thirteen Seconds, by Christian Larsen (ill. Mark Slater)
I’m Almost You, by Stephen McQuiggan (ill. Tais Teng)
The One Who Always Gets to Sit in a Chair, by Ralph Robert Moore (ill. Marge Simon)
Carl and Monty’s Prairie Wager, by James K. Moran (ill. Richard H. Fay)
Lines, the Goa, by David Newson (ill. Teresa Tunaley)
What Happens in Vegas, by Karen Robiscoe (ill. Brenda Dunn)
Request Stop, by Frank Roger (ill. Greg Chapman)
The Palm at the End of the Mind, by Patrick Roscoe (ill. MANDEM)
Priority: Murder Kill, by Jason Philip Wierzba (ill. Teresa Tunaley)
Bone, by Kera Willis (ill. Brenda Dunn)
Volume 3 also features cover art by Miles Tittle and an interview with International Horror Guild winner Gemma Files, author of the Hexslinger Series, conducted by James K. Moran. (“Horror should leave a stain. Horror should leave a scar. It should change people. It should teach, for good or ill. All the stories I’ve loved best are like that.”)
Postscripts to Darkness 