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.

Continue reading →

Illustration by Miles Tittle

We call it the Mouth but in aspect it was really a face. As it came to light (we used pine boughs to brush dirt from crannies), we found a round, moony countenance in the forest floor that confronted us with one open eye and one closed, and a mouth three times too large for them, out of ratio. The face spanked of the ancient. Its lids were hooded; it winked at us, no pupil in the gray stone sclera of the open right eye. The nose was two dainty points. There were lumps at either side of the moon that suggested ears. We dug, but didn’t find neck or shoulders in the ravine’s floor. We dealt with the disembodied.

From “Long After the Greeks,” by Ranylt Richildis

Here’s what you’ll find in Volume 2, which launches August 2012:

Continue reading →

Illustration by Brenda Dunn

I was young when it happened. I was looking from the neat apartment I had just moved into, down from my window into the garden just beneath me. I remember it was a lovely garden. There were dark roses, like spilled wine, and a curtain of heavenly blue morning glories. I was daydreaming about the garden that I wanted someday. It would have such roses and glories, and also moonflowers and jasmine, dahlias and evening primrose. Snapdragons, honeysuckle. Lilies, tiger lilies. […] My body met the ground six storeys below with crushing force. I landed feet-first, shattering the bones of my feet, my ankles, driving them up into the splintered pulp of my shins. All my soft organs, shaken and stirred, bubbled weakly and ceased to function. The white-hot glare of my impact did not last very long.

From “Snapdragons and Tiger Lilies,” by Tisha Moor

Here’s what you’ll find in our inaugural issue:

Continue reading →