[{"id":24120,"date":"2026-09-23T03:02:53","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T10:02:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nightmare-magazine.com\/?p=24120"},"modified":"2026-08-11T12:18:29","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T19:18:29","slug":"author-spotlight-phoenix-alexander","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nightmare-magazine.com\/nonfiction\/author-spotlight\/author-spotlight-phoenix-alexander\/","title":{"rendered":"Author Spotlight: Phoenix Alexander"},"content":{"rendered":"

The thing I loved most about this story was its emphasis on gaining other perspectives and finding an outlet for the unsavory emotions that we all, as humans, feel on occasion (though hopefully not as severely as this protagonist). For Shelley\u2019s boyfriend it was art. For our MC it was living within the ancient, static confines of his \u201ctotem\u201d stone. How valuable is writing to you for processing difficult emotions, situations, and circumstances?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a great question. I try to separate out the writing that \u201cprocesses difficult emotions\u201d with writing that I want others to see; for the latter, I want to be invisible to the reader. This isn\u2019t therapy! I want to get out of myself. I journal a lot\u2014personal writing intended just for me, without any thought of artistry or composition. I encourage everyone to do it, if only to see, quite baldly, how complex and simple we are at the same time. We\u2019re just wanting creatures! \u201cI didn\u2019t get X thing and I am sad.\u201d \u201cI\u2019m so happy this happened.\u201d \u201cI didn\u2019t sleep well and am worried about this event tomorrow.\u201d \u201cI really adored this painting I saw the other day . . .\u201d and so on.<\/p>\n

It helps get out the mental dross, which can be quite boring and mundane. I do find this kind of writing meditative in the sense that I can observe my feelings \u201coutside\u201d of myself, because we\u2019re all confined within our minds, for better or worse. For fiction, I want to connect with readers. It\u2019s not enough to just process my feelings (and of course, some feelings are completely anathema to me, like wanting to hurt people!) I think so much of contemporary discourse about writing and reading involves statements of needing to \u201cbe seen\u201d in fiction, to find recognition\u2014but there\u2019s also, for me, a deep pleasure in experiencing narratives of difference, to sit in lives, for a while, that are not my own.<\/p>\n

I know that I, personally, have a couple different forms of inspiration and motivation for my own writing. Most times, it\u2019s best for me to approach the work early in the day, before my mind wanders too far afield and I when I feel at peace in my house. Or in the silence of the very late hours, when the rest of the world is asleep. But occasionally, a story will just fly out of me when I am working through something difficult: It gives those tough emotions a place to go, and occasionally that can be highly motivating, ra-ther than distracting. Does that happen for you? Do you feel you\u2019re more productive when you\u2019ve lots to process or when you\u2019re at peace? Does it vary by project if so, what does that var-iance feel and look like for your process?<\/p>\n

Another great question, and a riff on the \u201ctortured artist\u201d idea. I\u2019m with you: I prefer to write earlier in the day, and certainly not after, say, 8 p.m. It\u2019s like having coffee: The characters and themes posses me, and the mental work keeps happening even if I\u2019m not at the computer.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s exhausting!<\/p>\n

Funnily enough, \u201cNot Even a Fly\u201d was one of those stories that \u201cflew out of me\u201d (no pun intended). I knew the character, and the setting, and the narrative arc, and\u2014usually the trickiest aspect of a story for me\u2014the POV, instantly. I tend to jot down notes on my phone as I go through a day, and the note that inspired this one was: \u201cEven the mosquitos are sleeping.\u201d I had (and have) no idea what it means, or where it came from. The image did strike me, though, as something quite evocative, if not profound. There was a sense of stillness and of intimacy and of being unnoticed\u2014something that the main character experiences\u2014that sparked something. I felt the character\u2019s need to speak quietly, to creep through the world, unnoticed by even the smallest things\u2014or, at least, not disturbing them. Playacting successfully for the span of a human life. What kind of things would such a person hide? Finally, there was a shiver of pleasure at the thought: a sense of surreptitiousness, like I been let in on a joke. That\u2019s when I knew the story was ready to be written. It demanded it.<\/p>\n

Sometimes I know where stories come from (an idea, a pet peeve, or so on) but other times they just emerge, like this one did. I\u2019ve made peace with the process! Sigmund Freud has a footnote in The Interpretation of Dreams<\/i> that says something along the lines of (and here I\u2019m paraphrasing) no matter how we may try to determine the meanings and symbolism of our dreams, there is a point of no return, the dream\u2019s \u201cmycelium\u201d that descends down into an abyss that we have no access to, that evades all kind of rationales and logics. I like that idea of mystery; I never want to produce easy or simplistic stories.<\/p>\n

I imagine that this capsizing ability would make one more sympathetic to other living creatures. Did that factor into the choice to make your MC pacifist with his violent emotions and his abilities? How crucial was using the stone as his capsizing mechanism of choice in shifting that perspective?<\/p>\n

Yes, absolutely!<\/p>\n

I think the MC is actually quite repulsed by other life forms\u2014he possesses a complete lack of empathy, but more than that, he finds the idea of other human bodies quite distasteful. He enjoys the fly, because it is so simple, and allows him to focus on the physical sensations of its body (that displace his own violent disgust at his cousin)\u2014but that \u201ccapsizing\u201d happens by accident, and it\u2019s deliberate that he chooses not to use another living thing as a vessel.<\/p>\n

The scariest part for me is that, in some ways, the MC can at least pass<\/i> as a somewhat sympathetic character: He would define this as a kind of victory in that he does not physically hurt anyone, no matter how much he wants to. How many people do we know, or pass by, that might have the most horrendous feelings and never act on them? Narcissists are somewhat easy to identify in life, as are people who are loud, or rude, or aggressive. But what about the quiet ones, the \u201csleepers\u201d? In other words: If a human being goes through life behaving ethically, while having the most terrible thoughts, is that a kind of moral victory? I think this is all a way of saying I\u2019m fascinated by people: the little glacier tip we present in everyday life, and the submerged vastness of our histories and upbringings and beliefs and genetics that we carry with us, beneath the surface.<\/p>\n

The stone is a calming presence for the MC\u2014and was actually inspired by a moment I had in a crystal shop, in LA, where I was suddenly aware of the \u201cpresence\u201d of all those geodes around me, experiencing them as an observing chorus. It was unnerving, but also oddly comforting. That\u2019s what the MC gets from the stone: an odd comfort, and a refuge, an act of being lifted out of his body\u2019s terrible wants.<\/p>\n

If you could have any \u201ctotem\u201d to capsize into, what would it be and why?<\/p>\n

Probably a big sparkly geode, per the previous answer! I like the boundedness of the mineral: the beauty of it, being able to \u201csee\u201d out of, say, a plane of quartz, but with vision filtered, reality one tangible abstraction away. Being connected, too, to something ancient and planetary. I think that would be peaceful.<\/p>\n

What horror stories, be they books or movies, have most influenced your work and your style as a writer? What\u2019s one horror book and one movie you believe every budding horror writer must<\/i> see.<\/p>\n

Oh gosh, how long have you got!<\/p>\n

First of all: Alien<\/i> (1979, Ridley Scott). The dyad of sensuality and cruelty represented by H.R. Giger\u2019s xenomorph has been creative rocket fuel for me over the years. That would be my \u201cmust see\u201d film for any aspiring horror writer.<\/p>\n

I did read a lot of Stephen King over the years, and I think \u201cNot Even a Fly\u201d feels like quite a King-esque story, or at least my interpretation of one! Perhaps I flatter myself too much. He\u2019s so great at pulling you through a story, and building an almost unbearable sense of dread.<\/p>\n

However, for a book recommendation, I would pick Doris Lessing\u2019s Briefing for a Descent into Hell<\/i>. It\u2019s not really a horror novel, despite the title\u2014but it\u2019s a magnificent example of writing a truly bizarre narrative, enfolding horror and grief, with utter commitment to the art, no matter how strange it gets. It has so much heart, and is so full of feeling. I think any great horror story brings with it a sense of sorrow and a terrible tenderness that we might, in the moment, not know what to do with.<\/p>\n

What else have you got coming out? What are you working on, and where can people read more of your incredible work?<\/p>\n

This has actually been a wild year in terms of publications for me! I have stories forthcoming in Lightspeed<\/i>, Haven Spec<\/i>, and a reprint in Apex<\/i>, and I\u2019ve just finished a novel manuscript ready to query with this fall.<\/p>\n

Wearing my nonfiction hat, I have an article on Pokopia (yes!) forthcoming in the LA Review of Books<\/i>, and a book chapter on genre fiction in the forthcoming The<\/i> Cambridge Companion to the Fiction of the Harlem Renaissance<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Links to all of my works can be found on my website, phoenixalexanderauthor.com<\/a>, and I\u2019m on Instagram @alexander.phoenix and BlueSky @dracopoullos.bsky.social.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I think so much of contemporary discourse about writing and reading involves statements of needing to \u201cbe seen\u201d in fiction, to find recognition\u2014but there\u2019s also, for me, a deep pleasure in experiencing narratives of difference, to sit in lives, for a while, that are not my own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1313,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[20,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-author-spotlight","category-nonfiction","section-author-spotlights"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAuthor Spotlight: Phoenix Alexander - Nightmare Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nightmare-magazine.com\/?p=24120\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Author Spotlight: Phoenix Alexander - 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Dj\u00e8l\u00ed Clark\u200b, Ken Liu, Hugh Howey, Seanan McGuire, Rebecca Roanhorse, Veronica Roth, Jeff Vandermeer, and more. The campaign \u200bends \u200bOctober 15\u200b, so back now!<\/strong><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p class=\"no-indent-no-line-above dedication\"><strong>CW<\/strong>: violence and bodily harm.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Let me tell you how I learned to capsize.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>When I was eight years old, two things happened to me: I realized I wanted to hurt my cousin, and in that same moment God or the Devil or some other force in the universe kicked my consciousness out of my human body and into a fly that circled and alighted on her jam sandwich, circled and alighted, circled and alighted, tasting in the tentative way that flies taste. I felt its soul pushed out to make room for me. I wanted to scream: My vision was suddenly fractal, the sense of my own smallness and lightness breathtaking. But I knew it was a mercy because I watched myself, in my old body, calm, vacant, eating my cookies with a smile on my face, not bunching my cousin\u2019s ginger curls in my fist and pushing her face into the mud until she stopped breathing.<\/p>\n<p>Those few moments saved her life. I flew, and the sensation of air thrumming beneath my wings was as loud as a chainsaw. It was so glorious. We ate our food and washed our hands and mouths and I followed us indoors, fly-bodied, and when the impulse passed, I leapt out of the fly and back into my boy-body and wiped lingering soapsuds from my cousin\u2019s mouth, smiling at her with peace in my heart, no longer wanting to close her throat with my fingers until those pink, chewing lips turned blue.<\/p>\n<p>In the days that followed I tried again, so hard, to leave my body. (I called it \u201cleaping,\u201d then, when I didn\u2019t know any better). The phenomenon made sense; one of my earliest memories as a toddler was of looking down at my body, at the world around me, at the sky, even, and then imagining the world entire as one lonely globe in infinite space and thinking <i>is this it? This cannot be it<\/i>. And it isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>But what I called \u201cleaping\u201d didn\u2019t happen again for a long time. Elementary school became middle school became high school and my body, my <i>own<\/i> body, grew. I was neither popular nor bullied. If I had to pick a word, it would be \u201cunnoticed.\u201d I didn\u2019t attract negative or positive attention. I was just <i>there<\/i>. When I hit puberty, I grew tall, the muscles thin on my bones. It was fun to keep my hair long and shaggy, like a wolf. Some days I would part it in the middle and sweep it back, like girls do, just to see how people would react. No one ever really reacted.<\/p>\n<p>Except one day someone <i>did<\/i>: a quiet boy, Lewis, another of the unnoticed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou have the greenest eyes I\u2019ve ever seen,\u201d he said to me one day when we were sitting cross-legged in the corner of the school field, partially hidden by benches of weathered wood that crackled like bones. Then: \u201cCan I kiss you?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSure,\u201d I said, and he leaned in, and I saw his face close-up (the freckles, the slight sheen of oil on his epidermis, the lightness of his lashes) and felt nothing\u2014but when our lips touched I became leviathan and imagined I had not a mouth but <i>jaws<\/i>, and went to bite off as much of his face as I could\u2014<\/p>\n<p>And then I was out. Not a fly, this time, nor even a living thing. A stone on the ground by his feet. I became suddenly ancient: a thing seeing centuries, and in that displacement the realization of a peace so almighty it brought tears to the eyes of my human body. I \u201csaw\u201d Lewis pull away, moved by what he thought I was feeling. \u201cIt feels good, doesn\u2019t it,\u201d he said, and it did, but not for the reasons I could ever describe to him. I stayed in the rock watching the two bodies kiss until the ecstasy of my violent ideation faded like a dream and then something told me it was time to come out, something nudged me out, and I was back in my body.<\/p>\n<p>I walked away from Lewis to my class, weeping at the returning softness of my human anatomy. The stone I took with me. It was so much easier than leaping into a living thing. The stone was a lifeline in my pocket, and I resolved to make it my refuge whenever the leviathan rose again.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>You don\u2019t need to know the rest of my boring and uneventful life, so I\u2019ll skip to the good part. I was telling you about capsizing, remember?<\/p>\n<p>Here are the boring and uneventful things:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I finished high school without killing anyone.<\/li>\n<li>I met a girl in college (she was a Music major, I was in Econ) and we dated, and then we married.<\/li>\n<li>I never kissed another man again after Lewis and never even wanted to, but I don\u2019t regret that experience, because I found the stone.<\/li>\n<li>The stone kept everyone around me safe. The stone was there, a refuge, when I got my wife pregnant and she gave birth to a daughter, a gorgeous little girl with green eyes like mine, and her mother\u2019s supple skin, the stench of human processes ripe in her little body.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Here comes the good part.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>I didn\u2019t need any friends, but my wife did, you know how women are. So, one weekend, it was late summer (I remember the way the leaves were falling from the trees and beginning to stink on the ground in that bitter New England way), she decided to arrange a camping trip with her friend Shelley and Shelley\u2019s new boyfriend.<\/p>\n<p>(If I tell you the boyfriend\u2019s name it\u2019ll give the game away, because Shelley\u2019s now ex-boyfriend is quite infamous these days, and I don\u2019t want to ruin the surprise for you).<\/p>\n<p>By some stroke of bad luck\u2014probably God again, or the Devil, or some other force in the universe\u2014Shelley had a severe case of food poisoning the night before our trip and had to cancel. I naturally assumed the whole thing was off.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh no,\u201d my wife said, grimacing as she got off the phone with her friend. \u201cShe wants us to go with her boyfriend anyway. And we already booked the babysitter.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I was annoyed at that idea.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cReally? You want to go camping with me and a guy we don\u2019t even know that well?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I turned the stone, that old friend, in my pocket with one hand.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe already booked the babysitter,\u201d she repeated. The cool of the stone against my palm was a tether.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll right.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We picked up Shelley\u2019s boyfriend the next morning. He appeared in the doorway like a ghost, wrapped from head to toe in a gigantic waterproof garment so huge about his frame it was almost comical. The hood was drawn tight around his face, which was just this pinched pink thing staring out from a mass of plastic. His eyes were dark, the pupils huge. I remember that vividly. I kept meeting his gaze in the rearview mirror as I drove us up the 91, through the flat fields of Connecticut and up into mountain country.<\/p>\n<p>My wife tried to make conversation with him, forcing joviality, but he was monosyllabic. She reached across to my thigh and squeezed it. I knew the gesture was as much to comfort herself as me. Her skin was cool, so cool I felt it through the fabric.<\/p>\n<p><i>There\u2019s no need to worry my dear<\/i>, I wanted to tell her. <i>I\u2019ll protect you from anything<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>She scrolled on her phone for a bit, and then she fell asleep.<\/p>\n<p>I looked up into the mirror again as the sun faded and tall umber striations of trees began to rear around us, the sun struggling through the mess of vegetation. The sky was lurid. I saw that Shelley\u2019s boyfriend was watching me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHave you been camping before?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo.\u201d He replied quickly, and loudly: a stark contrast to his gruntings in answer to my wife\u2019s conversational nonstarters. \u201cHave you?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo.\u201d I grinned in the mirror. He grinned back. His lips were very thin, almost to the point of nonexistence. \u201cYou know you can take your hood down. It\u2019s not raining in the car.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m good.\u201d Something tingled in my stomach at his expression. Then, he offered: \u201cYour wife is really welcoming.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe is.\u201d I looked to the road. Gray asphalt, potholed. Darkening trees.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cVery, um . . .\u201d he paused so long I wondered if he had lost his train of thought entirely. \u201c. . . persuasive.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The tingle in my stomach turned into a spike.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYeah. Yeah. Persuasive.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He didn\u2019t say anything after that, and I didn\u2019t ask him to elaborate. It was pleasant to drive without chatter, with only the rustle of his waterproof and my wife\u2019s gentle snoring as background noise. I mulled over what he had said.<\/p>\n<p>We got to the campsite with a miraculous sliver of daylight remaining and assembled the tent: a vast, two-room monstrosity that my wife had put on her credit card. The inside was like the interior of a living thing, flaps and membranes making a sham of privacy for its inhabitants.<\/p>\n<p>After we grilled burgers outside and listened to my wife make some facile but charming comments about the stars, she told us that she was turning in for the night. Shelley\u2019s boyfriend said he would stay out to do some sketching, and I said I would keep him company. He offered no protest.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDon\u2019t stay up too late, boys!\u201d my wife said brightly, and then, leaning in to kiss my cheek, whispered with breath that tasted of cooked meat, \u201cthank you, honey. He could do with some male company.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But the boyfriend in honesty ignored me. As soon as my wife left, he took out a sketchbook from one giant pocket of his raincoat and began to draw, furiously, with a charcoal pencil. I sat and watched him do it. The campsite was quite empty apart from us, the season turning too cold for most, and my wife was right: The stars were, indeed, brilliant. Starlight and firelight evidently allowed him to see clearly enough to do his art.<\/p>\n<p>Or maybe it was his huge pupils, the way they absorbed light.<\/p>\n<p>Soon I, too, started to feel the heaviness of exhaustion. My back ached from the driving and my head felt too thick for my shoulders. I stood up with the pretense of clearing something from the fire and peered at his sketchbook page.<\/p>\n<p>The man\u2019s drawing was riotous.<\/p>\n<p>A long-haired woman grimaced in the foreground, her form a brutal arrangement of lines, huge black pits in her skull, hair frazzled up behind her like the bride of Frankenstein. The background was even more violent. There were black jags that could have been trees, could have been prison bars, and hastily rendered crouched forms of beasts with tears falling in little perforations from their faces.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s a scary-looking woman,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n<p>He looked up at me with a rageful expression I knew too well and almost shouted in response.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s not a woman.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I went to ask him who it was and\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. and then I didn\u2019t need to.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll right. I\u2019m going to bed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>Of course I couldn\u2019t sleep. I didn\u2019t even undress. I slid into the sleeping bag next to my wife, feeling her radiating body heat, and listened for every noise. Each flap of tent fabric was a threat, every rustle of undergrowth a murder. I wasn\u2019t frightened. I was excited. I took the stone out of my pocket and left it at my feet, because something told me I wouldn\u2019t need it.<\/p>\n<p>After some time (perhaps I dozed; I think I dreamed of women crying tears that were razor blades sliding out from under their lower eyelids, carving paths down their faces as they fell), I heard the unmistakeable weight of a man approaching the tent, the zipped entrance unfastening, the heft of his body blundering around the compartment next to us. My eyes had adjusted to the dark so I could see his silhouette: the outline of his form only a plastic membrane away. I remember he was breathing so hard. More unzipping, and his form seemed to shrink as he cast off the waterproof garment. How skinny he seemed underneath all that! His shadow falling across our compartment wall seemed almost skeletal, too unhealthy for a living human.<\/p>\n<p>After some shuffling around\u2014this way and that, like he was uncertain\u2014I saw his silhouette gather at the entrance to our compartment. Slowly, very slowly, he pushed fingertips into the gap near the floor and started, tooth by tooth, to lift the zip. He peeled the door open. The fabric sagged outward, brushing my feet, and I saw his head bob into our chamber.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCome any further,\u201d I said softly, \u201cand I\u2019ll tear your nose off with my teeth and slit your throat with the bone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He froze.<\/p>\n<p>Adrenaline roared through me like a song. I didn\u2019t move. <i>Just give me the opportunity to do this<\/i>, I said\u2014to who, I couldn\u2019t tell you. <i>Just don\u2019t stop me for once<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>He remained frozen, but it was too late to stop the leviathan in me. I leapt forward on my hands and knees and tackled him out of our compartment and into his, where we fell into a crackling tangle of bedding and sketchbook leaves that tore from their bindings as I kicked out. The man remained still and unresisting. Panting, I sat over him and saw the blank expression on his face, the slackness in his muscles. But he was conscious, of that there was no doubt. His eyes followed me.<\/p>\n<p><i>Are you<\/i>\u2014 the thought came in, impossible, like floodwater pouring under the door of a house. <i>Can you<\/i>\u2014<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat\u2019s all this noise?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>My wife appeared in the doorway, crouching on all fours.<\/p>\n<p>I remember her breasts hanging low in her nightshirt.<\/p>\n<p>I remember wanting to take them off.<\/p>\n<p>Her breasts and her skin, too, flushing beautifully like braised chicken meat.<\/p>\n<p>No. I had to leap. The stone was too far. <i>Please don\u2019t let me lose this. . . please<\/i>. . .<\/p>\n<p>Blackness caught my eye, underneath my hands. The other man\u2019s drawings. Mad creations of violence and suffering: howling things, mouth-open things, juvenile trash scratchings of obscene ideations. I leaped into one of those and left my body to peace.<\/p>\n<p>How dark the forest of his mind was! I reveled in the thickness of each slash of charcoal, feeling his power, his determination, the satisfaction of it. What could be better than carbon smeared across a page? I murdered in those drawings, smashing myself into atoms, leaping across his sketched forms, the mounded treasure-piles of cowering women. No one ever screamed or fought back or ran here. I was king and God in this domain. It was glorious.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t know when I came to.<\/p>\n<p>It was daylight, and we were sat around the fire again, and the morning was gray and cold. Shelley\u2019s boyfriend sat opposite me with a cup of coffee in his hands, and I felt warmth, and looked down to see a cup of coffee in my own.<\/p>\n<p>He looked like a different man. Thin, yes, but healthy, his expression kind, his hair soft and fine against his skull. He was dressed in simple jogging bottoms and a comfortable-looking jacket.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDid you sleep well?\u201d he said, steam curling up into his nostrils.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo. I had . . . what did you do? Where is my wife?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe\u2019s asleep. I didn\u2019t hurt her.\u201d He took a sip, his eyes never leaving mine. The pupils were small and rodentlike in daylight, drowning in white sclera, the proportions of his eyes seeming to have inverted overnight. \u201cI didn\u2019t sleep well, either.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A surge of dopamine rattled my body, and the coffee cup wavered in my hands.<\/p>\n<p>Thank God, thank God she was unharmed! The stone\u2014<\/p>\n<p>As if reading my mind, the other man placed his mug on the ground and offered the stone to me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was inside the tent.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I leaned forward to take it and he withdrew his hand, sharply, unsmiling. This was no act of petty cruelty. This was a lesson.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDo you know what I do when things get really bad? In my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hatred curled my lips. \u201cLet me guess. Draw?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo.\u201d He held out his other hand, palm facing upward. \u201cSometimes it\u2019s all too much, being me, and I\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. capsize.\u201d He rotated his hand so that the palm faced downward. The back of it was papery, the veins prominent. \u201cI just leave my body for a bit. I saw you do it, too, last night.\u201d As best I could, I reverted my expression to neutrality. He wasn\u2019t going to get a single thing from me. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t recommend living things,\u201d he continued \u201cThat gets complicated. But objects are usually safe. Something mundane. Immobile. A plastic Tupperware, for instance. An air freshener hanging in a car. A radio knob. Drawings, sure. Or\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. a stone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He tossed it at my feet.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThank you for the advice,\u201d I said. After the anger subsided, I realized: I meant it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>I saw Shelley\u2019s boyfriend one final time.<\/p>\n<p>It was years later (they had broken up, a fact which, it turns out, saved Shelley\u2019s life), and my family and I were watching TV one night, when on the evening news a reporter went into details of a horrific murder that had taken place a few towns away. A man had broken into an all-female college dormitory and tied up and disemboweled all six women, tying their intestines together and fashioning them about himself in an obscene dress. (Yes, the news report went into this detail, because the media knows we love monsters). By some horrid miracle, all but one of the girls survived and were rushed to the nearest hospital for reconstruction. The attacker himself had called the emergency services, wanting to be found in his barbaric costume while the girls writhed in agony around him. The girl who died had had her nose bitten off and her throat cut. The report didn\u2019t say, but I knew it, I knew it viscerally, that he had slit her throat with the cartilage.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh my God,\u201d my wife went rigid with shock. \u201cIsn\u2019t that\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. didn\u2019t we go camping with him once? Jesus, fuck! Jesus!\u201d She kept repeating that word, and our daughters\u2014there were two now\u2014alternated between giggling at her cursing and teetering on the edge of tears, seeing the horrific news report, seeing their mother react like that. I changed the channel as his mugshot appeared on the screen, along with his name.<\/p>\n<p>That night, in his honor, I capsized, turning in the blades of the ceiling fan, looking down at down at my own body, smiling open-eyed in the dark while my wife tossed in nightmares next to me.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>Later, I saw the footage of him being walked into the courthouse and recognized his absence immediately. There was a blankness in his eyes and a smile on his face that, while menacing to those without our abilities, was just a shell of an expression. Perhaps his consciousness hid in the jangling metal links of handcuffs, or the leather of the police officer\u2019s holster. For all his bragging, for the lexicon he had given me, after all that: He had failed. What do they say? <i>There but for the grace of God go I<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>My family are in their respective rooms, quite near me now, as I type. I\u2019ve come to learn that writing is another form of capsizing. My wife is asleep in our bed. The two girls, our daughters, are in their bunk beds. Sarah always takes the higher bunk because she can reach up and touch the glow stars we made into galaxies on the ceiling, and Diana prefers the bottom bunk because it\u2019s by the plug socket and she can charge her phone and watch TikToks. I still have the stone, but I don\u2019t need it much these days. When the thought comes to slit their throats and use their blood for my pleasure (or, or, or . . .) I trust that I can capsize, emptying myself into anything: a pair of scales, a shoe, a frond of carpet. A sentence.<\/p>\n<p>But, before you judge me, know this: I capsize less and less now in my middle age, and I\u2019m proud to say that I\u2019ve gone a lifetime without deliberately hurting a single living thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I was eight years old, two things happened to me: I realized I wanted to hurt my cousin, and in that same moment God or the Devil or some other force in the universe kicked my consciousness out of my human body and into a fly that circled and alighted on her jam sandwich, circled and alighted, circled and alighted, tasting in the tentative way that flies taste.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1313,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[5,440],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-short-stories","section-fiction","status_flag-original"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.4 - 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Unless a progressive take on the genre shows the traditional home and its family unit to be sources of terror (think of <i>The Texas Chain Saw Massacre<\/i>\u2019s family dinner from hell). But the road stop diner, which offers a meal but little comfort, has also been ripe for terror.<\/p>\n<p>With the setting used in 1930s gangster films, by the 1940s, film noir used the claustrophobic spaces for loners to interact. The 1945 noir <i>Detour<\/i> opens with Al Roberts (Tom Neal) at a dour diner counter, before a flashback shows how he met Vera (Ann Savage), a femme fatale who sends his world haywire. In the same year as Ulmer\u2019s film, the CBS radio series\u00a0<i>Suspense<\/i>, often blending crime and horror, featured the episode \u201cShort Order\u201d (1945) with a \u201cdisfigured\u201d loner visiting a diner. This noir-style tale moves into gothic territory when the visitor begins to hex the owner, while driving off customers of the struggling business. Another flavor of hybrid horror appears in the 1946 noir film <i>The Killers<\/i> (adapted from a 1927 Ernest Hemingway story), when the prologue depicts two hoods arriving at a suburban diner to assassinate the Swede (Burt Lancaster).<\/p>\n<p>The diner enters horror proper through parody, during the 1950s era of atomic-age monsters, in <i>The Blob<\/i> (1958). Known for a scene at a movie theater (The Colonial of Phoenixville, PA, still in operation and hosting an annual Blobfest), <i>The Blob<\/i> includes another filmed at Chef\u2019s Diner in nearby Downingtown, one no longer extant. This train car structure, like many diners from the early twentieth century, suggests transience; here, a \u201cship of fools\u201d group, including a young Steve McQueen, reacts under duress from the monster attack. The moment highlights the diner\u2019s claustrophobic, non-homey nature as the group attempts to stop the monster with electricity. Cleverly, the scene mirrors the creation of atomic-age monsters like Godzilla, in reverse.<\/p>\n<p>By the early 1970s, the diner had become associated with outsiders escaping their lives to start anew, as seen in films like <i>Alice Doesn\u2019t Live Here Anymore<\/i> (1974) and an oft-discussed scene in <i>Five Easy Pieces<\/i> (1970). Meanwhile, horror at the time revealed repressed terrors associated to the homelife (with a sanctuary house torn apart under a zombie siege in <i>Night of the Living Dead<\/i>, 1968) and the family dinner (i.e., <i>Texas Chain Saw<\/i>). The diner reemerged in horror after the New Hollywood era ended (circa 1977), with the rise of traditional genre treatments by Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Though one scene in Spielberg\u2019s debut, the 1971 TV film <i>Duel<\/i> (blending suspense and the monster movie), shows the victim protagonist eyeing diner patrons to locate the truck driver that\u2019s after him.<\/p>\n<p>The closing scene of Joe Dante\u2019s <i>The Howling<\/i> (1981) uses a diner\/bar for a gag, where a vampirish female, possibly ready to shape-shift into a werewolf, orders a rare burger. A shot under the closing credits, of a flattened ball of ground beef grilling in close-up, shows the greasy spoon as raw and dirty, elements that would continue in diner horror of the \u201980s. The moment also adds a tone of horror-comedy, an emerging trend that would make use of the diner, and one Stephen King would take up in his directorial debut, later in the decade.<\/p>\n<p>King has included many memorable scenes in diners in his early fiction, including \u2019<i>Salem\u2019s Lot<\/i> (1975) and <i>The Stand<\/i> (1978), usually to portray working class life. (A later work, the sf\/alternate history tale <i>11\/22\/63<\/i> (2011), involves a diner as a liminal space that contains a time portal.) His 1973 existentialist sf-horror tale \u201cTrucks\u201d (collected in <i>Night Shift<\/i>, 1978) makes the diner a principal setting, where characters hole up, a la <i>The Blob<\/i>, during a monster attack (here possessed machinery in a proof-of-concept for his 1983 novel, <i>Christine<\/i>). King\u2019s 1986 film adaptation of the story, <i>Maximum Overdrive<\/i> (which he (in)famously also directed)<i><\/i>, is\u00a0set almost completely at Dixie Boy Truck Stop and Restaurant, a purpose-built set constructed roadside, near Wilmington, NC. The diner scenes align with the horror-comedy trend, with gags like an electric knife slicing a waitress\u2019s hand, in kind with a deep-fryer mutilation scene in 1984\u2019s <i>The Toxic Avenger<\/i> (that scene occurring in a fast-food joint). Meanwhile, a 1997 USA Network adaption of \u201cTrucks\u201d returns to the tone of the source story.<\/p>\n<p>Jackie Kong\u2019s 1987 low-budget horror film <i>Blood Diner<\/i> began life as a sequel to <i>Blood Feast<\/i> (Herschell Gordon Lewis, 1963) that evolved into a standalone. Kong\u2019s film takes up from the horror-gag potential seen in parts of <i>Maximum Overdrive<\/i> and <i>The Toxic Avenger<\/i>. The convoluted premise, focusing on two brothers resurrecting their serial killer uncle to do the same for a venerated goddess, involves the body parts of immoral girls. The victims are lured to the brothers\u2019 vegetarian diner, which also seeks a virgin required as a feast for the revived\u2014hence, the \u201cchick\u201d requisites of an \u201980s slasher laid out, along with a deep-fried head and other cooking-horror scenes.<\/p>\n<p>While horror-comedy owned the diner in features, the small screen went straight for terror, via the emerging trend of the Vietnam war film. \u201cNightcrawlers,\u201d a standout episode of the 1985\u00a0<i>Twilight Zone<\/i>\u00a0revival directed by William Friedkin, depicts a Vietnam veteran with PTSD seeing the repressed horrors of war invading the establishment. If viewers were thrilled at the clever portrayal of his perspective, they also felt the weight of his victimization, as he bears witness to tragedies, while the Reagan era chose to repress such. Meanwhile, <i>Twilight Zone: The Movie<\/i> (1983) uses a diner as an entry point on a journey (at the start of Joe Dante\u2019s segment), though by the 1990s, breakfast joints became the fodder of cult robbery flicks, thanks largely to Quentin Tarantino.<\/p>\n<p>More recent diner horrors, like <i>Legion<\/i> (2010) and <i>Last Straw<\/i> (2023), use the setting for budgetary reasons. In the latter case, the confined space offers a \u201csiege horror,\u201d invoking suspense hybrids like\u00a0<i>The Strangers\u00a0<\/i>(2008) and\u00a0<i>The Purge<\/i> (2013). In <i>Last Straw<\/i>, waitress Nancy (Jessica Belkin) feels trapped in a retro diner, complete with old-school mini jukeboxes. Owned by her father and seemingly a once-promising endeavor, the joint now exposes her to ogling customers, cops, and eventually, raiding masked teens. The film presents the diner as a leftover, dourly repressive, from which youth would rather break free, while the 2025 Vietnamese horror anthology series <i>Devil\u2019s Diner<\/i> (2025, Netflix) has no connection to the traditional eatery.<\/p>\n<p>The road-stop counter will likely stay retro in horror, since foodie culture has exploded in recent years on social media and documentary television. Releases like the horror-comedy\u00a0<i>The Menu<\/i>\u00a0(2022) and gritty ones like\u00a0<i>The Bear\u00a0<\/i>(FX, 2022-2026) suit the fanbase interested in cuisines. And yet the diner continues to evoke a ghostly memory of the family dinner. It\u2019s a setting that can lock in terror, for a loner who stumbles in or one making a job out of the joint. With so many lost in excessive commerce, a\u00a0new wave of diner horror may be on the horizon. As we know too well, such a milieu creates plenty of loners.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When horror focuses on middle-class homelife, family values often prevail, with the monstrous threat defeated by the end. Unless a progressive take on the genre shows the traditional home and its family unit to be sources of terror (think of <i>The Texas Chain Saw Massacre<\/i>\u2019s family dinner from hell). But the road stop diner, which offers a meal but little comfort, has also been ripe for terror.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1313,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[6,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nonfiction","category-the-h-word","section-nonfiction"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The H Word: Roadside Dread\u2014Horror at the Diner - Nightmare Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nightmare-magazine.com\/?p=24112\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The H Word: Roadside Dread\u2014Horror at the Diner - Nightmare Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When horror focuses on middle-class homelife, family values often prevail, with the monstrous threat defeated by the end. 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Dj\u00e8l\u00ed Clark\u200b, Ken Liu, Hugh Howey, Seanan McGuire, Rebecca Roanhorse, Veronica Roth, Jeff Vandermeer, and more. The campaign \u200bends \u200bOctober 15\u200b, so back now!<\/strong><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p class=\"no-indent-no-line-above dedication\"><strong>CW<\/strong>: cannibalism and bodily harm.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Your heart stopped cold when you were walking to school in knee-high snow the morning after your parents separated. Maybe because you didn\u2019t zip that padded snowsuit all the way up and your fur scarf was in the wash and the windchill of -10\u00b0F nipped your neck and seeped down your ribcage. Maybe because all night you believed that things would be back to normal in the morning. Your heart stopped all of a sudden, and you knew it was aching to beat again, throbbing in your chest. They tell you that a stopped heart feels like a toothache.<\/p>\n<p>What they don\u2019t tell you is that you can live on. It gets colder in your extremities, your skin hardens, you get used to cold toes. Life goes on. You grow taller every year, and adults don\u2019t really notice a child with a stopped heart because most children don\u2019t use their hearts right anyways and come off as heartless. The pediatrician calls it an idiopathic case of stopped heart; maybe it\u2019ll start working again when you grow up. Your mom repeats this every day until you go to college, where she calls once a week to ask, has your heart started again. When you get into the messy business of falling in love, your lovers don\u2019t really notice because you attract people with messed-up hearts and they think yours is like theirs, maps of arteries crossed and capillaries broken in places, but beating and warm, blood gushing to their extremities. When things end, badly, they cry that you\u2019ve got a useless heart stopped cold, unsuited for being with people, unable to feel.<\/p>\n<p>At your last pediatrician visit, you\u2019re twenty-two and he tells you there are options, glossy brochures for heart donation programs, university-sponsored electro-radiation trials, and the experimental cryo-CBT-combination-therapy. They all have risks, like dying. You look into heart donation, but it makes you queasy, taking on another person\u2019s heart, their longings, memories, nightmares. One cold winter when your stopped heart aches so much you can\u2019t bear it anymore, you take your heart out cold and leave it in Tupperware. In the morning, you cut off a quarter-inch slice to pan-fry with eggs and season it with salt and Szechuan peppercorn. For a week, you cook your heart in slow-simmered soups, and you digest your heart, feeling warm. As December becomes January, you feel something beating again in your stomach.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p class=\"dedication\">Author\u2019s note:<\/p>\n<p class=\"dedication\">I wanted to juxtapose two concepts: \u201cstopped cold,\u201d which implies a sudden malfunction or halt, and \u201cthe heart,\u201d the organ that is often symbolic of emotions and the human experience. What happens when something essential inside of you stops but life goes on?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Your heart stopped cold when you were walking to school in knee-high snow the morning after your parents separated. Maybe because you didn\u2019t zip that padded snowsuit all the way up and your fur scarf was in the wash and the windchill of -10\u00b0F nipped your neck and seeped down your ribcage. Maybe because all night you believed that things would be back to normal in the morning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1313,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[5,437],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-flash-fiction","section-fiction","status_flag-original"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Useless Heart \/ Stopped Cold - Nightmare Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nightmare-magazine.com\/?p=24129\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Useless Heart \/ Stopped Cold - Nightmare Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Your heart stopped cold when you were walking to school in knee-high snow the morning after your parents separated. 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It\u2019s back-to-school season around here, which means new notebooks, cooler evenings, and a sudden overwhelming craving for apples. If you\u2019re like me, September also makes you more excited about reading great new fiction! After a summer of beach reads and revisits of old favorites, my brain starts to wake up and crave fresh new voices.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve certainly got some creepy new work for you in this issues. Daniel Roop joins us with a story of a family who fights all things weird and the evil in \u201cThe Red Veil,\u201d a story that blends <i>The X-Files<\/i> with bizarre taxidermy. Phoenix Alexander brings us \u201cNot Even a Fly,\u201d the tale of a pacifist with the heart of a serial killer\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. and a mysterious superpower. Our flash fiction this month is Artemis Chen\u2019s icy story of a girl with an unfeeling heart: \u201cUseless Heart\/Stopped Cold.\u201d And Deborah L. Davitt writes about violence and regret in her poem \u201cSweet Certainty.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If you, like me, believe the 24-hour-diner is America\u2019s most beautiful creation, then do no miss our newest H-Word essay, which is about diners in horror fiction. Adam-Troy Castro also joins us with a media review, and of course our spotlight interview team has sat down with our short fiction writers to explore all their inspirations.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a very fun issue that ought to help you shift into spooky season!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome to issue #168 of <i>Nightmare Magazine<\/i>. It\u2019s back-to-school season around here, which means new notebooks, cooler evenings, and a sudden overwhelming craving for apples. If you\u2019re like me, September also makes you more excited about reading great new fiction!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1313,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial","category-nonfiction","section-from-the-editor"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Editorial: September 2026 - Nightmare Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nightmare-magazine.com\/?p=24110\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Editorial: September 2026 - Nightmare Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Welcome to issue #168 of Nightmare Magazine. 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From the opening line, you show us the power of what lies beyond a door, and how that can hold as much, if not more power than the reveal of super-natural terrors. What about the unknown, do you believe, has always been so terrifying for people?<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s a great question, and I\u2019d like to answer it in two different ways. First, from the perspective of our thoughts. So, there was a study done about twenty years ago that showed the average person had somewhere in the range of 50,000 discrete thoughts per day. Numbers can be dry, but I think this is fascinating, so I hope you stick with me here. Of those 50,000 thoughts, 80% were negative, and 95% were repetitive. So that means, on average, a person has something like 38,000 negative, repetitive thoughts per day. Point being\u2014if we\u2019re left in silence, without something solid to focus our attention on, we\u2019ll fill it with something that\u2019s probably not very pleasant. And unless we\u2019re a Zen Master or a contemplative mystic, we\u2019ll probably have trouble letting those thoughts fall away.<\/p>\n<p>Secondly, I think the unknown is terrifying because the author is letting the reader do part of the work themselves. You know your particular ghosts and demons better than I do. So I just hope to give you some space to let them run wild, to sew flesh on the bones I present.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\">You don\u2019t see tons of horror stories (or stories in general) set in Wyoming. Are you from there or what drew you to that location for the headquarters of the Red Veil?<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m not, and haven\u2019t even visited (though I hope to one day). I have friends and family who have been, and have told me of its beauty. I chose Wyoming as a setting to accomplish a couple of things. I wanted a location remote and sparsely populated enough that a group like the Red Veil could believably exist there without being bothered. And I loved the idea of a breathtaking, expansive sky. Something that made you feel your insignificance when you looked up at it, a mix of awe and existential terror.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\">Follow up: If you\u2019ve spent time in that part of the world (I\u2019m from Montana, myself), have you ever felt any sort of inexplicable presence, power, or aura there similar to those described in the woods of Appalachia?<\/p>\n<p>As above, I haven\u2019t, but I can share something that seems relevant to your question that also touch-es on the unknown. I knew someone, native to the western states who visited Appalachia one summer. He said he hated it, and could never get comfortable here. He said, \u201cIt feels like the green is trying to take over.\u201d It was too claustrophobic for him.<\/p>\n<p>For myself, being a native of Appalachia, when I spend time in flatter states, I can never get comfortable because I feel too exposed. There\u2019s no topography to nestle me, no mountains to huddle beneath, protected. I feel like, in the flatlands, whatever horror is out there has a clear shot at me.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\">Are you a military veteran yourself, or do you have close personal ties to any? If so, how has that experience influenced your speculative fiction and how does speculative fiction influence your journey through the processing of those experiences? If not, what inspired you to center a horror narrative around a veteran protagonist?<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m not a veteran, and I tried very hard to faithfully research what Sorrel and Luke\u2019s time overseas would have been like (though obviously research doesn\u2019t replace experience). Sorrel being a veteran with combat experience made sense to me for a number of reasons. He would be capable in physical conflicts. He would have seen some things that haunted him. He wouldn\u2019t be inclined to shy away from a fight, but would be aware that winning one fight doesn\u2019t solve every larger problem. Also, there are thematic resonances with those experiences that I\u2019ll leave for the reader to explore.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\">Have you been around much taxidermy in your lifetime? If so, what is the most impressive piece you\u2019ve ever seen? How about the most disturbing or unsettling (if there is one)? If not, do you find taxidermy to be unsettling and did that factor into its role in your story?<\/p>\n<p>I have! I work in a rural area in East Tennessee and see taxidermy almost every day. I find it to be both beautiful and unsettling. I don\u2019t have an example of one particular piece that struck me, but I have a vivid memory of being in a home where they kept taxidermied hunting trophies in a room that was probably 20\u2019x15.\u2019 The walls were covered by at least two dozen deer heads. Having that many frozen eyes staring at you is pretty unsettling.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\">What else are you working on right now and where can the good people of the internet realm read more of your tremendous fiction?<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m primarily working on short fiction and poetry at the present, and kicking around the idea of a Red Veil novel at some point.<\/p>\n<p>As far as recent publications, the wonderful horror podcast <i>Pseudopod<\/i> celebrated their twentieth anniversary in August, and my original story, \u201cGraves Basin\u201d (also set in Scruggs County) was featured on the August 7 episode. Later that month, <i>Pseudopod<\/i> also released a great two-part original story by Richard Dansky. Definitely worth checking out<b><\/b><b><\/b>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have a vivid memory of being in a home where they kept taxidermied hunting trophies in a room that was probably 20\u2019x15.\u2019 The walls were covered by at least two dozen deer heads. Having that many frozen eyes staring at you is pretty unsettling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1313,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[20,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-author-spotlight","category-nonfiction","section-author-spotlights"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Author Spotlight: Daniel Roop - Nightmare Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nightmare-magazine.com\/?p=24118\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Author Spotlight: Daniel Roop - Nightmare Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I have a vivid memory of being in a home where they kept taxidermied hunting trophies in a room that was probably 20\u2019x15.\u2019 The walls were covered by at least two dozen deer heads. Having that many frozen eyes staring at you is pretty unsettling.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.nightmare-magazine.com\/?p=24118\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Nightmare Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/NightmareMagazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-09-09T10:02:18+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.nightmare-magazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/NM-default-embed-graphic.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"576\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Wendy Wagner\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@nightmaremag\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@nightmaremag\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.nightmare-magazine.com\\\/?p=24118#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.nightmare-magazine.com\\\/?p=24118\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Wendy Wagner\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.nightmare-magazine.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/e18966e64745715561f9bf38938089c9\"},\"headline\":\"Author Spotlight: Daniel Roop\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-09-09T10:02:18+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.nightmare-magazine.com\\\/?p=24118\"},\"wordCount\":939,\"commentCount\":0,\"articleSection\":[\"Author Spotlights\",\"Nonfiction\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/www.nightmare-magazine.com\\\/?p=24118#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.nightmare-magazine.com\\\/?p=24118\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.nightmare-magazine.com\\\/?p=24118\",\"name\":\"Author Spotlight: Daniel Roop - 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Dj\u00e8l\u00ed Clark\u200b, Ken Liu, Hugh Howey, Seanan McGuire, Rebecca Roanhorse, Veronica Roth, Jeff Vandermeer, and more. The campaign \u200bends \u200bOctober 15\u200b, so back now!<\/strong><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p class=\"no-indent-no-line-above dedication\"><strong>CW<\/strong>: violence.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>There was a door.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s the best place to start, I guess, given that there\u2019s no good place to start.<\/p>\n<p>Luke and I were drinking bourbon and smoking in his attic bedroom. He\u2019d brought me to his family compound in northwest Wyoming right after we were discharged. I was more thankful than I knew how to say for his friendship, for his generosity in giving me that initial sense of direction. After our last few months in Zabul Province, seeing some of the worst things humanity can do to one another, I was broken. Luke, kind as he was, bore witness to that. He saw my night terrors and pillow-muffled cries in the weeks after I fired on that IED\u2019d-up teenager in Shah Joi\u2014the kid\u2019s face bearing no hint of triumph, just fear and desperation. Luke saw my lack of an anchor, of any family in West Virginia I cared to return to in the shape I was in, and brought me to his home.<\/p>\n<p>That night, I sat in a green office chair and Luke propped on his bed, reclined against the yellowed sheetrock. A shaded desk lamp emitted an amber glow, the only light in the room. As we joked and bullshitted, the smoke haloed his head. After some time, it thickened and spread until it seemed to cover his entire body. I finally worked up the courage to ask.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou told me, if I came here, you\u2019d show me something worth fighting.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI did.\u201d He sipped from his glass, slowly. Luke was never in a rush.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn Zabul\u2014you said, <i>I know it seems meaningless\u2014all of them sure<\/i> we\u2019re <i>the enemy, and us just as sure that<\/i> they\u2019re <i>the enemy. But there<\/i> is <i>an enemy<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s right, Sorrel. I said that.\u201d I heard the click and catch, saw the cherry as he lit another amidst the haze.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo, we\u2019ve spent the past month fishing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd doing well. I still can\u2019t believe you snagged two whitefish. They take a delicate approach. I bet it\u2019s been\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhitefish aside, I don\u2019t figure that\u2019s why I\u2019m here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo, I suppose it\u2019s not. I just thought you needed some time first to rest and recalibrate.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThink I\u2019m as recalibrated as I\u2019m liable to get.\u201d I refilled my glass.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFair enough.\u201d He took a long draw, exhaled, leaned forward, a masthead parting fog. Luke was straight out of casting for a Viking movie\u2014yellow mane to his shoulders, beard to match, six-and-a-half-feet tall, stout as oak. And, incongruously, kind as Ferdinand the Bull from that picture book. \u201cYou\u2019re sure you want this, Sorrel? It can just be a fishing trip. Honestly, there\u2019s no hard feelings if you just needed to decompress before you journey elsewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m sure.\u201d I wasn\u2019t sure, of course, but I knew I needed something to ground me. I needed one thing in this world to feel certain about.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOkay, then. It\u2019s just\u2014I\u2019ve never brought someone in like this. It\u2019s hard to know where to start.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt the beginning, I reckon?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He chuckled. \u201cNo one\u2019s got that kind of time. It goes so far\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. well, here, I guess. You were a college boy before Afghanistan. You\u2019re a reader. You know the Chesterton quote about the door?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<i>Humor sneaks under the door<\/i>\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh god, do I wish. No, not that one. The other quote. I\u2019ve had a few too many, and I\u2019ll get details wrong, but it\u2019s something like, <i>Older children are excited if a story begins, \u2018There was a door, and behind it was a dragon.\u2019 But the youngest children are excited by a story that simply begins, \u2018There was a door.\u2019<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re not children, Luke.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo, Sorrel, we\u2019re not. We haven\u2019t been children for a long time. Regardless\u2014there <i>is<\/i> a door.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>His voice was thick with bourbon and tar, heavy as moon rock, not quite of this world. He leaned back, nearly disappearing, as I asked,<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd behind it?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSomething else.\u201d He unscrewed the lid, tilted the bottle. \u201cSomething worse.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We talked into the night. Or Luke talked, and I listened and gaped and questioned, and while I can\u2019t say I was excited, I was enthralled. I tried to grasp what he said, my old reality now too slippery, wriggling out of my hands like a whitefish, gone downstream in a silvery flash. I don\u2019t know why I believed what Luke told me that night. I suppose it was some alchemical mix of knowing his character from our years in service together, my desperate need for meaning, and some latent awareness within that had felt the outlines of this truth, but didn\u2019t have the knowledge to cover it in flesh. Luke\u2019s family did. By the end of the night, I told him I was in. His expression unreadable, he said, \u201cThen we\u2019ll start tomorrow.\u201d He clicked off the light, his cigarette the last dim glow amidst the darkened haze.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t think I slept an hour that night. I started at the ceiling, every creak in the rafters, every rasp of wind, every animal sound in the surrounding old growth distorted in my mind. What other secrets had this world been keeping?<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>For that first month, every breakfast had been the same since the September day I arrived at Luke\u2019s home. We woke early, slouched over oatmeal and eggs at the starburst Formica table, sipped coffee from chipped mugs, and planned the day\u2019s fishing. Occasionally another family member, one of a brood of cousins, or Luke\u2019s older sister Thena, would pop in briefly, but we stayed clear of the rest of the compound deeper in the woods.<\/p>\n<p>The morning after our talk, breakfast was different. I woke to the side-by-side ATV starting and found Luke outside, his breath ghosting the air. \u201cHop in. It\u2019s time to really meet the family.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As he dodged ruts in the faint, mile-long trail into the woods, I peppered him with questions. The cousins, on their brief visits to the house, had been indistinguishable in waders and coveralls, one evasive bearded guy after another, mumbling half-sentences into their coffee. Luke\u2019s sister Thena was the only one who\u2019d stood out. An angry white scar ran half the length of her jaw under her right ear, which was usually hidden by her hair. Red? Maple? Specificity sounds too desperately poetic, and generality doesn\u2019t touch her. Fire? Fire blazing above faded, muddy camo? That\u2019s as close as I can get.<\/p>\n<p>When we\u2019d first met, Thena had been distant, bordering on suspicious, casting sidelong glances, dodging any questions I lobbed her way. After a week or so of Luke and I fishing and me leaving well enough alone, Thena turned mildly flirtatious, though it was obvious that was more for her amusement than any genuine attraction. That first breakfast after the talk, she changed again, ramping abruptly into outright hostility.<\/p>\n<p>Twelve of us gathered around a battered oak table in the huge kitchen\/dining room. Another half dozen milled around between counter and fridge, refilling coffee, grabbing jelly or Tabasco. Everyone was livelier, more talkative than our prior encounters. Uncles, cousins, Luke\u2019s mother\u2014too many to keep names straight. I knew Luke\u2019s father had passed years back, but didn\u2019t know how, leaving his aunt Sascha as the acknowledged leader of the family. That morning, she sat at the head of the table, Luke and I next to her on one side, Thena across from us. Luke cleared his throat.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAunt Sascha, you remember we talked when I got back home, and I laid out my case for Sorrel\u2019s appropriateness. You said I could proceed, and we had our first real talk last night. He says he\u2019d like to join.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Thena slammed her mug on the table, sloshing coffee onto her eggs. \u201cLuke! What the actual fu\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sascha laid her hand gently on top of Thena\u2019s. She quieted, seething behind thinned lips.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIs this so, Sorrel? You believe you understand our work?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes, ma\u2019am.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Thena exploded, \u201cOh, Sascha, you know he doesn\u2019t understand anything! There\u2019s no way he\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sascha stood up, which objectively wasn\u2019t much of a change. She was maybe five-foot-one, maybe ninety pounds soaking wet, maybe sixty or seventy years old, and maybe possessing the most gravity of any person I\u2019ve ever met. Sascha shifted the world with a small change in posture, then spoke softly, with genuine warmth.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThena, dearest, you\u2019re upset. We might as well hear your objections.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYeah, we might as well. Sascha\u2014the Veil is family, right? Family only. There\u2019s no way he understands what he\u2019s getting into. There\u2019s no way to know we can trust him. He\u2019s\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Before I knew what he was doing, Luke reached across me and pulled my shirt up above my stomach. He pointed to the wide scar running the length of my left ribcage, the pitted hollow at my side. \u201cThat\u2019s from where he came back to drag me out of a firefight in Arghandab. I trust him.\u201d He let my shirt fall. I looked down at the floor.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was nothing. You\u2019d have done the same.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt wasn\u2019t nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We clinked mugs. Thena rolled her eyes and continued.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<i>Fine<\/i>, you trust him. Then why the hell would you do this to him?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe wants\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe doesn\u2019t know what he wants. He\u2019s a child.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m maybe a year younger than you, Thena. I have seen some things.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She spat, \u201cYou don\u2019t know what you <i>haven\u2019t<\/i> seen.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI know what Luke told me last night.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou <i>heard<\/i> it. You don\u2019t know it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sascha waited patiently, head tilted. I felt like punching a hole through the wall, like running away into the woods, like crawling under childhood blankets. I didn\u2019t know how I felt.<\/p>\n<p>Thena, spent, folded her arms across her chest, her anger past articulation. The rest of the family sat silently, no more opening cabinets or clinking jars. Sascha spoke.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSorrel, you\u2019re about to cross a line that isn\u2019t easily uncrossed. You understand there\u2019s no easing into this life?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI do.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Thena laughed under her breath.<\/p>\n<p>Sascha nodded. \u201cThen, we begin.\u201d She gestured to the cousins to bring the equipment, to begin heating the iron. \u201cDo you need to be strapped down?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo, ma\u2019am.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And I didn\u2019t. I didn\u2019t budge an inch as the branding iron pressed into the flesh beneath my right collarbone, didn\u2019t tear up as the skin sizzled and bubbled, didn\u2019t grimace at the smell of my own body burning as Thena stormed out muttering, \u201cIdiot,\u201d not knowing whether she meant Luke or me.<\/p>\n<p>Afterwards, Sascha handed me a small tin holding a plastic bottle of lemon juice and a shaker of sea salt. She patted my shoulder. \u201cLuke will show you what to do, Sorrel. Welcome to the Red Veil.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>Clear across the country in northeast Tennessee, that looming door waited for me, though I didn\u2019t know it yet. What happened there leading up to the month I was initiated and began my training with the Red Veil, we pieced together later, after gathering some particular records: a series of smartphone voice memos and a spiral-bound weekly wall calendar from Iris Mortuary. The memos were recorded by Thomas Lupton, a young, aspiring insurance salesman, living in Knoxville. The calendar entries, logging her daily activities, were written in blue ink in a cramped hand by Tobithia Holt of Frog Catch Lane, Scruggs County<b><\/b>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"heading3-center\"><b>Voice Memo: Locking In, September 8, 1:28<\/b><\/p>\n<p><i>Okay. So, I\u2019ve been listening to Salescast, and Trevor was talking about ways to grow your skills and, y\u2019know, I\u2019m already doing a lot of what they said. Motivational clips to start the day, reframing challenges as opportunities, stuff like that, but one thing they said that I haven\u2019t tried is voice recordings, like a daily journal of your process. How do you prep for clients, what\u2019s your mindset as you connect? How do you, uh, debrief and determine what went right or wrong? And you grow from that, right? So I\u2019m starting that today. And in spite of how rough it\u2019s been so far, yeah\u2014I\u2019m feeling hopeful. Health insurance is a good thing. I\u2019m selling something that people need. I\u2019m selling them a sense of certainty<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p><i>Trevor says the first step, when you start out with this recording, is to be honest about your current status. So, honestly, it\u2019s absolute shit. I\u2019ve been on the job here in Knoxville two months, and sales are barely trickling in. The first month I blamed the prospects, but I\u2019ve gotta be more accountable. If everyone in the office is closing better than me, then I\u2019m the problem\u2014so it\u2019s time to work on me<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"centered\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>Thena and I visited Thomas\u2019s cramped apartment after the incident. We entered the tiny bathroom where, from the acoustics, he likely stood at the lime-encrusted mirror and made these recordings. A flypaper strip hung from the ceiling, dotted with fuzzy black husks. Grimy mustard linoleum peeled up where the floor abutted the tub. A faded inkjet photo of Kobe Bryant with <i>Mamba Mentality!!!<\/i> written at the bottom was taped above the sink. Great things can start in tiny rooms, sure, but.<\/p>\n<p>An hour or so north, on the same day, Tobiatha wrote:<b><\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"heading3-center\"><b>Iris Mortuary Calendar: September 8<\/b><\/p>\n<p><i>Missed Kingsberry something terrible today. Watched<\/i> Price is Right <i>three times. Bob Barker was handsome as ever. Ate a mater sandwich for lunch. Mayo and pepper on white bread. They chittered at me for growing them the old way. You\u2019d think they\u2019d like things done the old way. Ha! I laughed when I told them that, but they never laugh back<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>After my branding, Luke taught me what to do. Every day, I had to use the sea salt and lemon juice to irritate the brand as it healed, to amp up the keloid process. The sigil was defensive, protective, and for it to work effectively, the scarring had to be well defined. It hurt like hell, of course. After the irritation, I\u2019d spread on Neosporin, trying to ignore the throbbing pain as Luke and Sascha initiated me further into the Red Veil.<\/p>\n<p>Even Sascha didn\u2019t know how far back the Veil went, as records only tracked so many prior centuries. But their family knew no history without it.<\/p>\n<p>They brought me deep into the compound, below the surface, basement, and subbasement, past the clinic and armory, and farther down into narrow tunnels leading to the reading rooms. It\u2019s not my place to reveal all they contained, but I can say this much.<\/p>\n<p>There are things meant to stay outside our world. Things whose forms are written in a different language, incompatible with the language of our universe. Some of them, at times, seep in by circumstance. Others actively seek a way in, conspiring, pounding against the paper-thin walls of our reality. We\u2019ve yet to encounter any that mean us any good, or that can exist here without our world tearing and rending around them. So, we try to bar them entry, or\u2014god or whoever forbid\u2014if they\u2019ve entered already, we try to end them and minimize the damage. It\u2019s no more or less than that, and it\u2019s far too much.<\/p>\n<p>Thena, once during that first week, checked on my brand and confirmed Luke had taught me correctly. \u201cEven an idiot doesn\u2019t deserve for that shit to get infected.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Which I took to mean I was still an idiot, sure, but once I was in, I was their idiot.<\/p>\n<p class=\"heading3-center\"><b>Voice Memo: Paint the Day, October 2, 0:57<\/b><\/p>\n<p><i>So, I\u2019ve not been as regular recording these as I said. Really, I\u2019ve not been doing a lot of what I said. I\u2019ve sure as hell not been selling. From how Pete looks at me from his office over his stupid bifocals, I know I\u2019m gone if things don\u2019t improve. The Salescast guys say it\u2019s good to vent frustration, and to be as specific as possible, to paint the picture of your day, and that can help you notice patterns holding you back. So here goes<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p><i>I spend half my days cold-calling disconnected numbers. When someone actually answers, it\u2019s a quick hangup, or the same monologue every time\u2014\u201cyou\u2019re the twelfth call just this morning and don\u2019t you have something better to do than harass people while they\u2019re trying to watch<\/i> Wagon Train <i>and I\u2019ve told you people a dozen times to take your name off my list.\u201d That\u2019s half the day<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p><i>The other half is worse, going door-to-door through government housing and subsidized apartments for the elderly, for these grouchy old men in sweat-stained UT baseball caps and old crones in faded housecoats. They bitch about the world going down the toilet while I nod, but the minute I start a pitch, they shoo me away. That\u2019s my day<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p><i>That\u2019s my sorry ass life<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>I spent most of my time in the reading rooms, Luke and Sascha guiding me through the intricacies of the texts, the gathered histories of the Veil\u2019s past encounters. At first, I expected I\u2019d learn foolproof techniques, surefire methods to deal with the predictably reoccurring situations I\u2019d face. But most of the incidents bore little resemblance to one another. It\u2019s like that Vonnegut character said: <i>History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised again<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>Early mornings, we covered combat training, most of which, for me, was a matter of shaking off the rust of the past few months. There were more subtle, advanced forms I\u2019d learn from Thena and their eldest cousin over the next few years, but they all agreed that I was capable enough to handle myself on that end for the moment.<\/p>\n<p>The arcane workings were another matter entirely.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p><b>Iris Mortuary Calendar, October 29<\/b><\/p>\n<p><i>Kingsberry come down to visit today! Just for a bit, but Lord it\u2019s good to see his face. I know he stays busy up there with his work. Fried bologna sandwich for lunch. Fell asleep watching Drew Carey and woke up to Bob Barker. They love their games. They chittered at me, pushy as can be. I told them, No\u2014I\u2019m not gonna call nobody. Makes me feel bad to do it that way. They\u2019ll show up on their own<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>Luke and I sat on the roof, sipping moonshine under the late October sky, he for enjoyment, me to ease the pain.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell,\u201d he said. \u201cThat was one piss-poor attempt.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The first three fingers of my left hand were still smoking, blackened at the tips, shiny and stinking with one of Sascha\u2019s salves where Luke had doctored me after my latest failed attempt at a working.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWasn\u2019t my best moment.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSad to say, but so far, it probably was.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We laughed until tears snuck from the corners of our eyes, until I caught my breath enough to agree. \u201cYeah, it was. When the hell am I gonna be able to do this?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHonestly, Sorrel, it\u2019s not a linear process. At some point, you catch it and a leap happens. For most people, this is the hardest part.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor you, too?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHell no. The weapons stuff was harder for me. Of course, I was ten or so then. But the workings always came naturally to me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The gap I was trying to make up had never occurred to me, stepping clumsily into this family who\u2019d breathed this impossible stuff since childhood, like fish who\u2019d never conceptualized life outside of water. And here I\u2019d come, floundering into the deep end without gills.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLuke, how old were you when you got your brand?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n<p>Thena\u2019s voice preceded her as she stepped around the corner of the roof to join us, tumbler in hand, asking, \u201cWhich one?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou haven\u2019t seen \u2019em? Show him, Luke.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Luke pulled off his hoodie and t-shirt, and in the fall moonlight, an intricate web of thin white lines covered his entire torso. He pointed to the one below his right collarbone. \u201cThat one there, at twelve, like the rest of the family.\u201d Thena nodded, pulled down the neckline of her shirt to reveal the same brand as mine. Luke\u2019s fingers traced the lines as he talked, \u201cThis one at fourteen, this one at sixteen, and well, yadda yadda, you get the idea.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf he dropped his pants, you\u2019d have to listen to fifty more stories about those. I\u2019m still not convinced they\u2019re safe.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMight not be,\u201d Luke said. \u201cMight be necessary, though.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I tried not to let the shock show on my face. Was this devotion or cruelty? \u201cDid\u2014did someone make\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh god, no. After the first one, all the rest were my choice.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow much protection do you need?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPlenty, but these aren\u2019t just protection. Most come from the family\u2019s studies, but I adapted some myself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Thena tipped her glass towards Luke. \u201cStar-fucking-pupil.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He returned the gesture. I tried to toast them as well, but my glass slipped through my damaged hand, bounced and rolled off the roof, shattering on the gravel below. Thena gut laughed, \u201cAnd his sidekick, Cinder-Fingers. Jesus Christ.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It felt good to laugh that hard for that long with two people I was growing to love. It felt good to not know it would be one of the last times I\u2019d do so. The sky above seemed to hold nothing but possibility, and our own voices echoing towards the still-friendly stars.<\/p>\n<p class=\"heading3-center\"><b>Voice Memo: A Real Change, November 15, 1:04<\/b><\/p>\n<p><i>Like I said last time, I\u2019d been thinking about a change, and today the opportunity came. Trevor says you\u2019ve gotta be ready to pounce on opportunity, like our ancestors, not like meek little punks waiting for life to just give you something. You have to take, and today I took my chance. It\u2019ll sound stupid and boring, but I\u2019ve gotta be honest about my current standing. Which is at the bottom, still<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p><i>So, today Pete asked for volunteers to cover Scruggs County, an hour north, in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. Wide spot in the road, at best. No one even made eye contact with him, but I shot my hand up. Jake and Alice looked at me like I was insane, but what else was I gonna do? This is my last chance<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p><i>After the meeting, I invited Max to lunch\u2014he\u2019s been with the agency the longest and used to cover Scruggs. We ate pecan pie at Shelby\u2019s Deli, and he gave me so much helpful advice. I told him I didn\u2019t understand why it was so hard to sell certainty in an uncertain world, which I\u2019d thought was a pretty good line I\u2019d come up with. But he said, \u201cThomas\u2014you\u2019re not selling certainty. You\u2019re selling companionship.\u201d And a lightbulb went off. I think I\u2019ve got it now<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>By mid-November, my hand had healed enough to practice workings again, but they weren\u2019t going any better. Luke reassured me that was normal, that for most folks it takes being present at an encounter to make the switch flip.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLet me be clear,\u201d he said, as we sat in the reading room. \u201cI don\u2019t mean some bullshit\u2019s going to happen where you have a dramatic face-off with something, and you go all Super Saiyan in the heat of the moment. I mean that there\u2019s something about being in the presence of this stuff that seems to rewire you a bit, that opens you up somehow.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOkay, so when\u2019s this first encounter? When will I be ready?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s not about being ready. Ready never comes. It\u2019s about what the world needs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A few weeks later, the world revealed its need.<\/p>\n<p class=\"heading3-center\"><b>Iris Mortuary Calendar, November 22<\/b><\/p>\n<p><i>Dusted the taxidermy room. Took a minute to find it this time. I just about giggle with joy when I look on what Kingsberry\u2019s done. Made chicken and dumplins for dinner. They chittered as I ate, talking about how hungry they were. I told them something\u2019ll show up soon, but I don\u2019t rightly know what soon means to them<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>For Thanksgiving that year we had pheasants instead of turkey, and it was delicious. You never went hungry at the Veil, like we were fattening ourselves up for every possible slaughter. The day after, Luke woke me up by dropping two newspapers on my chest, issues of the <i>Scruggs County Sentinel<\/i>. \u201cTake a look.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019d circled one article in both papers in red pen, each of them appearing on a features page about the Scruggs County Fair. I read the first one.<\/p>\n<p class=\"heading3-center\"><b>August 4, 2015<br \/>\n<\/b><b>Holt Wins Fortieth Ribbon with Fabulous Fox<\/b><\/p>\n<p><i>Kingsberry Holt, 84, of Frog Catch Lane, once again captured the blue ribbon in the Scruggs County Fair taxidermy contest. Mr. Holt, as most attendees know, has won this event for forty consecutive years, and this year\u2019s entry again showed off his considerable skill: a red fox captured in such lifelike fashion that it looked ready to leap off its mount and dash back into the woods<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p><i>Ben Stapleton, head of the judging committee stated, \u201cMr. Holt has a real gift. He\u2019s able to capture the vitality of these creatures like nobody else. I\u2019m already excited to see what he\u2019ll enter next year.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p>The second article was dated two years later.<\/p>\n<p class=\"heading3-center\"><b>August 5, 2017<br \/>\n<\/b><b>Holt Removed from Competition<\/b><\/p>\n<p><i>At last year\u2019s county fair, it was a surprise to all when Kingsberry Holt failed to place in the taxidermy competition for the first time in four decades. Ben Stapleton, head of the judge\u2019s committee that year, said at the time, \u201cIt was a shock, but Mr. Holt\u2019s work has shifted slightly away from his traditional strengths. I\u2019m sure by next year he\u2019ll rally and be back to the same old prize-winning Kingsberry.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>Sadly, that wasn\u2019t the case this year, as Mr. Holt\u2019s approach has continued to decline. When his entry was unveiled the judges immediately rushed to cover it back up. Unfortunately for Mr. Holt, and for any children present, his creation, which is truly difficult to describe, bore no resemblance whatsoever to his past heralded entries. Holt attempted to plead his case, and as the situation escalated, deputies escorted him off the grounds in what appears to be a sad end to his history-making career<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>Luke tossed me my pack as Thena poked her head into the room. \u201cMove it, boys. Time\u2019s wasting.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Luke nodded at me. \u201cThis is it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On the drive to the airport, I asked a thousand questions between pounding black coffee and choking down two hard-boiled eggs. I got no answers that satisfied me.<\/p>\n<p class=\"heading3-center\"><b>Voice Memo: Scruggs Success! November 29, 1:02<\/b><\/p>\n<p><i>This is the change I\u2019ve needed, and who would have thought it\u2019d happen in Scruggs County? I\u2019ve closed twenty policies in two weeks, more than I did in three months in the city. I\u2019ve been trying everything Max told me\u2014tone down the aggressiveness, let the conversation breathe, repeat their names\u2014and it\u2019s like magic. That lightbulb going off was the real deal\u2014I\u2019m not selling certainty. I\u2019m selling companionship. The figures I rattle off, the policy details\u2014all that matters less than my smile. My mouth matters less than my ears. I just drive these backroads and find the loneliest people I can, nod and listen\u2014or pretend to listen\u2014repeat a few words back, slide the paperwork in front of them, hand them a pen, say, \u201cThen what happened?\u201d or \u201cI declare!\u201d and nudge them into a signature. They feel heard. They say I\u2019m like family. It\u2019s like a kind of backwoods mentalism<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>The Veil had been around long enough, and had invested well enough, that we took the family\u2019s private plane from Wyoming to Tennessee, which eased any concerns I had about getting through security. But I still had other questions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is an encounter?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSure is,\u201d Luke said. From everything we can tell, Kingsberry Holt is getting close to something. We don\u2019t know if it\u2019s intentional, or if he\u2019s just developed some, well, weird habits that are drawing attention. Maybe he\u2019s just stumbling around in ignorance. Maybe he\u2019s reached out to something, or something\u2019s reached out to him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd you figured this out from two articles?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Thena swallowed a chaw of beef jerky. \u201cSascha and the family have other ways of divining. They haven\u2019t been wrong yet. We don\u2019t gas up the jet for random podunk National Enquirer-looking shit.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Over the next few years, Thena and Sascha would teach me these methods of divining events. One future midnight, sweat cooling on our bodies, sheets twisted at our feet, Thena and I stared at the ceiling and debated the best name for these events: encounters, doors, incidents. \u201cYou should really just call them clusterfucks,\u201d I said. She patted my cheek and said, \u201cSee, you <i>have<\/i> learned something.\u201d But that night was years and encounters away.<\/p>\n<p>On the plane, I said, \u201cOkay, then. I\u2019m ready.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Thena leaned over. \u201cThought Luke told you. Ready\u2019s not on the menu. You\u2019re here, and that\u2019s enough. Your job is to stay down, follow orders, and learn. Let the adults handle this.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Luke patted my shoulder. \u201cMight not have been the nicest tone there, but she\u2019s right. This should be a simple enough job, but we don\u2019t take chances. You\u2019re here to watch.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And so, I did. I stayed down. I followed orders. I watched as it all happened.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>The December morning Thomas eased his car onto Frog Catch Lane, he was making a voice memo and forgot to turn off the app. What follows is excerpts from that recording, interspersed with our experience of the event.<\/p>\n<p class=\"heading3-center\"><b>Voice Memo: Frog Catch, December 1, 14:47:01<\/b><\/p>\n<p><i>Another beautiful morning in Scruggs County, and another day, I have no doubt, of success. Today it\u2019s Tobiatha Holt, 83 years old. Lives alone out here, and god this isn\u2019t the middle of nowhere\u2014you can\u2019t even<\/i> see <i>nowhere from this place. It\u2019s 11 a.m., and a great day to close, like your boy\u2019s been doing since this transfer. In fact, it\u2019s going so well I\u2019m viewing a new apartment next Wednesday, a place that finally won\u2019t need roach traps<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p><i>I\u2019m wearing my lucky checkered turquoise shirt today\u2014of course I still love Trevor and the Salescast guys, but I\u2019m branching out into more self-awareness work now, too. Shayla on<\/i> The Mindfulness Minute <i>talks a lot about colors, and she said turquoise conveys compassion and clarity, and that\u2019s exactly the vibe I want to send to these old folks<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>As Thomas creeps down Frog Catch Lane, we hear on the recording the crunch of gravel under tires, pinging on the undercarriage. We hear Thomas pumping himself up for the sale, hollering the chorus of an early aughts rap song with a few words no white boy should say. We hear him pull the car into the driveway and turn off the engine, hear him mumble, \u201cKobe in the fourth. Black Mamba. Let\u2019s do this,\u201d and open the door. We hear him get out, lean back in, rummage in the backseat for his briefcase.<\/p>\n<p>Then the chittering explodes around him.<\/p>\n<p><i>Chee-chee-chee! Chee-chee-chee!<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>A crack as he jolts and his head hits the doorframe, gravel grinding as he stumbles and whirls to meet<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cMotherfu\u2014Jesus Christ, what the\u2014stupid ass birds\u2014\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p>Thomas doesn\u2019t know the names of these birds\u2014guineas\u2014as they skitter around him, their wide gray bodies low to the ground, tiny white heads bobbing, <i>chee-chee-chee<\/i>; doesn\u2019t know they\u2019ve been used by moonshiners for decades as watchdogs for revenuers. We hear them scatter, flutter, chittering around him as he proceeds up the gravel walk. He steps onto the creaking weathered porch and knocks.<\/p>\n<p>Tobiatha\u2019s home, as we saw when we arrived later, was a centuries-old two-story farmhouse, paint peeling off in plate-sized sheets, nestled by willows and magnolias, with a shoulder-high hedge at the front, grown wild and unruly with time.<\/p>\n<p>On Thomas\u2019s memo, the door swings open and the conversation begins.<\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cMs. Holt?\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cWho are you?\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cMs. Holt, it\u2019s a pleasure to meet you. I\u2019m\u2014\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cAlright then, we\u2019ll talk in a minute, but these commercials\u2019re almost done and my story\u2019s got ten minutes left. You can come in and wait but you hush till it\u2019s over.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>A door swinging closed, the shuffling of house slippers, the tap-tap of Thomas\u2019s wingtips on worn wooden floorboards, a plop into a recliner, a squeak as it swivels, the complaining springs of decrepit couch cushions as Thomas settles in to wait<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p><i>Minutes pass with the TV\u2019s blare. End music swells, the chair swivels<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cNow what did you want, Mr. . . .?\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cLupton, ma\u2019am, but please call me Thomas. You have a beautiful home, Ms. Holt.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cPish, it\u2019s seen better days. Kingsberry kept it nicer when he was here, painted, cleaned the gutters, but I\u2019m too old for that now.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cWho\u2019s Kingsberry?\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cMy older brother. He\u2014well, you\u2019ve just about made me go off rambling. You go on and tell me why you\u2019re here.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cTobiatha, I\u2019m here to help you with your health insurance, but I\u2019d love to get to know you first.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cWell, that\u2019s awful sweet. We can all use a little help sometimes, and ain\u2019t too many people try to help older folks. But\u2014if you\u2019ve really got the time, I\u2019d love to show you something first. I don\u2019t get much company and it\u2019s really something to see.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>A squeak of springs, a strained exhale from her rising, shuffling house-slippers, tapping wingtips<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>We were still five hours out as they entered the hallway for the first time.<\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cYou started to say something about Kingsberry?\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cI did. Kingsberry was my brother, and a fine hunter. More than that, he was the best taxidermist this county\u2019s ever seen.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>The click of a light switch, Tobiatha saying, \u201cAren\u2019t they beautiful?\u201d, Thomas\u2019s gasp<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>Thomas wasn\u2019t from this culture, had never seen this much death in one place, but we can tell from the conversation that follows what he\u2019s looking at. The room is covered floor-to-ceiling in animals, stuffed, posed, mounted. Three dozen deer heads line the walls, fifteen turkeys pose along the baseboards, peacocks flash many-eyed plumage, bobcats crouch at the doorway, ducks arrested in flight, foxes frozen mid-dash.<\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cThis\u2014I\u2019ve never seen anything like this.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cKingsberry was one of a kind. Lord, I miss him.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cOh, is he\u2014\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cHe\u2019s been dead over a year now.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p>You can almost hear Thomas gird himself, hear a hint of his teeth grinding, and we know from other recordings how much he hates when dead relatives get dredged up, how easily it turns into an endless litany of passed third cousins and departed great-aunts with no end in sight.<\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cKingsberry sounds like he was quite a man. I\u2019m sure he\u2019d want you taken care of now that he\u2019s gone. Can we go back in the living room, Tobiatha? I\u2019d like to show you something.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cOf course we can, honey.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>Light switch clicking off, shuffle and tap, the TV\u2019s insistent voices, plop, squeak, and swivel<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cNow, what do you want to show me?\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>Papers rustling, couch creaking as he reaches out with a brochure. \u201cTobiatha, I can help you with your health. I can help you get more things covered.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cWhat things?\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cVision, dental\u2014\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>and a wet flapping sound cutting him off, Tobiatha giggling as she says, \u201cI don\u2019t have teeth, and I see just fine. Oh, that reminds me. I wanna show you something. Did I tell you about my brother, Kingsberry?\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>Exhale and rise, shuffle and creak, Thomas\u2019s muffled muttering, barely audible, \u201cOkay, some dementia here. Work with it. Might even be easier.\u201d Tobiatha\u2019s voice carrying from a few steps ahead<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cYou just won\u2019t believe this, Thomas. Kingsberry, he won so many prizes for taxidermy that I think he finally just got bored. He said he wanted to try something different, that he was tired of seeing this world the same old way. I think you\u2019ll just be amazed.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>The click of the same light switch, the same room<\/i>, but Thomas\u2019s gasp is different this time. I can tell you what he saw, as later we caught afterimages ourselves before we burned the place to the ground.<\/p>\n<p>Thomas steps into the room, and the room is wrong. Antlers and tongues and ears, lips and hooves and claws in soft places, in the wrong places. Bobcats don\u2019t have this many eyes, opossums don\u2019t make these expressions, almost humanlike in their petrified suffering. It should be jackalope-kitschy, should be ridiculous, but the creations have an unearthly gravity.<\/p>\n<p><i>Thomas hunches and groans, vomit splatters on the floor, Tobiatha soothes him<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cIt\u2019s alright, sweetie. It\u2019s too much beauty for most folks. I think it was that beauty that drew \u2019em here. Let\u2019s go back to the living room.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p>This, we think, is when we arrived. I know I said we\u2019d been five hours out, and the time doesn\u2019t match, but time was different in that place. Even with the recording, we don\u2019t really know how many trips they made up and down that hallway to the taxidermy room, or how long each one took.<\/p>\n<p><i>Shuffle, squeak, swivel, Thomas whispering to himself to pull it together and close<\/i>, Days of Our Lives<i>, distant chittering somewhere, and before Thomas can begin<\/i>,<\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cDid I tell you about Kingsberry?\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cYes, ma\u2019am, you did. He sounds wonderful, and I know he\u2019d want you taken care of, so\u2014\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cOh, he does, and himself too, and he took care of all that before he died.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cA policy?\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cNot what you\u2019d call a policy, I don\u2019t reckon. More a relationship.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cYes, exactly! That\u2019s how I see it, too, Tobiatha. It\u2019s not just numbers. It\u2019s a relationship.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p>By this time, as best we can tell, we\u2019d parked the car halfway up Frog Catch Lane, grabbed our gear, and cut into the woods. It was a gorgeous day, too beautiful not to notice even amidst the circumstances, the sky impossibly blue. We crept through gray trunks and thorny underbrush, Thena on point, me in the middle, Luke at rear guard. We didn\u2019t speak, other than the time I whispered, \u201cWhy this approach for a simple job?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Luke whispered, \u201cTold you, we don\u2019t take chances. And simple\u2014simple is relative.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As we arrived at the edge of the woods, Thena motioned for us to stop, made eye contact with Luke and tilted her head to the yard. They knelt slowly, fired six silenced rounds into the guineas. We hustled along the hedge to the house.<\/p>\n<p><i>Swivel, creak, chitter, shuffle down the hall again. \u201cIt\u2019s really something to see, Thomas.\u201d Muttering. Chittering, closer, and now a muffled thump from above<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cTobiatha, did you say you lived alone?\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cIt\u2019s complicated, sweetie. There\u2019s so much I want to tell you, but I don\u2019t know how much you\u2019ll understand. I don\u2019t rightly understand it myself. I\u2019ve just learned to be grateful for them.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cWho?\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p>Thena eased open the screen door to the back porch. She tried the kitchen door, found it unlocked. As she turned the knob, Luke whispered, \u201cThis isn\u2019t right,\u201d and gestured back at a plastic bucket of tomatoes growing outside, just below the porch. Ripe. Red. Flourishing, in December. Thena shrugged, led us inside the kitchen, weapons drawn.<\/p>\n<p>We cleared the area, progressed past the enclosed staircase on our left at the entrance of the living room, and found the space empty except for the overcrowded furniture, years of saved butter containers and newspapers, and the blaring TV. Thena dug in the recliner, found the remote, clicked it off. In the silence, we heard distant voices down the hallway.<\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cI don\u2019t know, really. I can\u2019t rightly see them, but they help me. They keep me company. You know it\u2019s not good for a person to be alone.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cWho\u2014\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cI think it was Kingsberry\u2019s work that called to \u2019em.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>Chittering, a dull thud<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>Thena led us through the living room, towards the hall, when two thumps sounded closer behind us, above us. Luke drew up in the rear, yelled, \u201cShit, Thena, here!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I knew what Kingsberry Holt had looked like in life from the articles, and I would know what his last creations had looked like from the later flashes we\u2019d see, and as he lurched and sloughed down the stairs towards us, he was an unholy melding of the two. Whatever had reshaped him into some eldritch science project, whatever else he was by then, he was still meat. Thena leaned past me; she and Luke fired round after round into him, while I stood, stunned and useless. He stumbled back, screeching, pinwheeling god knows how many appendages, and slumped wetly to the floor at the base of the stairs.<\/p>\n<p>I choked out, \u201cWas this what y\u2019all expected?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Thena turned to Luke, said, \u201cHow did he do this to himself?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Luke, inspecting the corpse, said, \u201cI don\u2019t think he did. I don\u2019t like this, Thena. We need to move.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cThey do make things strange. Time gets strange. You know us old folks can hardly keep the days straight anyhow. I\u2019m not too fond of how things move, though\u2014rooms going all cattywampus. But they keep me alive.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cThey\u2014\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cAll I have to do is feed them.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>The light switch clicking on<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>We turned the corner, raced down the hall. No\u2014we tried to race, but it was outside our control. Some steps we rushed as if pulled by a current, others we crept as if our feet were mired in pitch, until we finally,<\/p>\n<p>finally catch up to them at last. We hear Thomas screaming but his mouth is closed. Tobiatha\u2014what? Glitches? Wavers? The air thickens, turns oily as we peer over their shoulders into the taxidermy room, now empty except for a huge mound of crumpled insurance brochures, tattered and torn white dress shirts, rust-stained slacks and khakis, and on top, ravaged as the rest, a checkered turquoise shirt. Tobiatha speaks.<\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cI\u2019d been wondering for a while who that one belonged to. Always thought it was pretty.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>Thena\u2019s grunt, the crunch of her rifle butt smashing into Tobiatha\u2019s nose, the confused grappling as Luke twists Thena around, yelling, \u201cShe\u2019s not the problem, Thena! We\u2019ve gotta move!\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>A pulsing hum in the air. Tobiatha saying, \u201cIt almost tickles. You can tell they\u2019re happy when they\u2019re about to feed.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p>Luke pulled us both away and we bolted, slowed, raced, froze down the hall, time tearing and patching, and I still jolt wake at night wondering what might have been different if we\u2019d paid more attention to the tomatoes. We dashed into the living room, hurdled the corpse, leapt up the stairs three at a time. Luke kicked open the entrance of Kingsberry\u2019s workroom, and we stepped into a maelstrom, air whipping relentlessly. And there it was.<\/p>\n<p>There was a door. An encounter, an incident, whatever you deign to call it, but above us in the slanted attic a circle burned, the ceiling flaking upwards into sparks and ash, and there in the opening, not the brilliant blue of December, but a muddy blackness, the air itself like an overturned rock revealing botflies and maggots and worse; a festering pestilence in the corpse of the world; the writhing, teeming heavens looming over all.<\/p>\n<p>Luke pushed Thena and I back towards the exit, shouting, \u201cGo!\u201d, then turned and began yelling other words, unknown to me, into the gaping maw above. Chittering ascended the stairs behind us, the air pulsed, took on that same oily feel, a shuddering stream of haze undulating past us towards Luke, recognizing the threat. His clothes began to smolder, intricate glowing lines rising through the cloth, lines that matched the pattern of his brands. I looked at Thena, who I\u2019d thought incapable of tears, as she grabbed my arm and dragged me away, as we nearly tumbled down the stairs in flight. As we stumbled into the yard, the entire second story exploded outward in brilliant blue flames, stuttered and froze at the terminal edges, vacuumed back in on itself, and was gone.<\/p>\n<p>Thena slumped onto her knees in the grass, pushing the backs of her hands against her eyes, muttering, \u201cStupid, stupid, stupid.\u201d Other than that incrimination of herself, or Luke, or me, we sat in silence for a while, ashes wafting down, clinging to our eyelashes. I started to say, \u201cI should\u2019ve\u2014\u201d but her glare stopped me. We both knew I didn\u2019t know anything.<\/p>\n<p>At last, she rose, and we gathered all the evidence we could, pulling the singed calendar off the kitchen wall, stepping over Tobiatha\u2019s denervated husk to retrieve Thomas\u2019s phone from his empty slacks, witnessing the dying afterimages of Kingsberry\u2019s creations before we struck the match.<\/p>\n<p>On the drive to the airport, I tried to ask Thena, \u201cHave you ever\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNot like this.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And that was all we said. She stared ahead, drove us towards the lowering sun, into the hollow heart of the horizon.<\/p>\n<p>We flew back to Wyoming. What else was I going to do? I realized by then that the best this world could offer me was companionship amongst the uncertainty. That\u2019s the best it can offer any of us.<\/p>\n<p>Some days it\u2019s almost enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There was a door.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s the best place to start, I guess, given that there\u2019s no good place to start.<\/p>\n<p>Luke and I were drinking bourbon and smoking in his attic bedroom. He\u2019d brought me to his family compound in northwest Wyoming right after we were discharged.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1313,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[5,440],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-short-stories","section-fiction","status_flag-original"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Red Veil - Nightmare Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nightmare-magazine.com\/fiction\/the-red-veil\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Red Veil - Nightmare Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There was a door. That\u2019s the best place to start, I guess, given that there\u2019s no good place to start. Luke and I were drinking bourbon and smoking in his attic bedroom. 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That\u2019s the best place to start, I guess, given that there\u2019s no good place to start. Luke and I were drinking bourbon and smoking in his attic bedroom. He\u2019d brought me to his family compound in northwest Wyoming right after we were discharged.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.nightmare-magazine.com\/fiction\/the-red-veil\/","og_site_name":"Nightmare Magazine","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/NightmareMagazine","article_published_time":"2026-09-09T10:01:49+00:00","article_modified_time":"2026-09-15T15:08:57+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1024,"height":576,"url":"https:\/\/www.nightmare-magazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/NM-default-embed-graphic.png","type":"image\/png"}],"author":"Wendy Wagner","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@nightmaremag","twitter_site":"@nightmaremag","twitter_misc":{"Est. reading time":"34 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.nightmare-magazine.com\/fiction\/the-red-veil\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.nightmare-magazine.com\/fiction\/the-red-veil\/"},"author":{"name":"Wendy Wagner","@id":"https:\/\/www.nightmare-magazine.com\/#\/schema\/person\/e18966e64745715561f9bf38938089c9"},"headline":"The Red Veil","datePublished":"2026-09-09T10:01:49+00:00","dateModified":"2026-09-15T15:08:57+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.nightmare-magazine.com\/fiction\/the-red-veil\/"},"wordCount":7843,"commentCount":0,"articleSection":["Fiction","Short Stories"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/www.nightmare-magazine.com\/fiction\/the-red-veil\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.nightmare-magazine.com\/fiction\/the-red-veil\/","url":"https:\/\/www.nightmare-magazine.com\/fiction\/the-red-veil\/","name":"The Red Veil - 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Sign up to be notified when it launches!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On September 15, 2026, we’ll be launching our first Kickstarter campaign in more than a decade, to <a class=\"keeptag\" href=\"http:\/\/nightmare-magazine.com\/kickstarter\">fund Year 15 of <i>Nightmare<\/i> and Year 17 of <em>Lightspeed<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Join us for a year of new short fiction from some of the biggest stars in science fiction, fantasy, and horror, including:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none;\">\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Charlie Jane Anders<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><span class=\"bold\">Travis Baldree<\/span><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><span class=\"bold\">Olivie Blake<\/span><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><span class=\"bold\">P. Dj\u00e8l\u00ed Clark<\/span><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><span class=\"bold\">Tananarive Due<\/span><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><span class=\"bold\">Grady Hendrix<\/span><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><span class=\"bold\">Hugh Howey<\/span><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><span class=\"bold\">Stephen Graham Jones<\/span><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><span class=\"bold\">Ken Liu<\/span><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><span class=\"bold\">Victor LaValle<\/span><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><span class=\"bold\">Seanan McGuire<\/span><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><span class=\"bold\">Silvia Moreno-Garcia<\/span><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Rebecca Roanhorse<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><span class=\"bold\">Veronica Roth<\/span><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><span class=\"bold\">Paul Tremblay<\/span><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><span class=\"bold\">Jeff VanderMeer<\/span><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Plus, we’ll have a new essay by <strong>Charles Yu<\/strong>, and <strong>John Scalzi <\/strong>is going to write “something”\u2014<i>what<\/i> exactly hasn’t been decided yet, but he promises it will be fun.<\/p>\n<p>Since 2012, <em>Nightmare<\/em> has been among the world’s leading publishers of horror short fiction, showcasing the work of award-winning authors alongside exciting new voices. Since 2010, <i>Lightspeed <\/i>has been doing the same for science fiction and fantasy short fiction. Between the two magazines, we’ve published nearly 10 million words of fiction; this campaign will help us bring to life another 450,000 words.<\/p>\n<p>In the past, you’ve helped us fund our acclaimed “Destroy” series of special issues: Women Destroy Science Fiction! (all women staff and contributors), Queers Destroy Science Fiction! (all queer staff and contributors), and People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction! (all BIPOC staff and contributors). Thanks to your support, those campaigns far exceeded their funding goals and resulted in us publishing companion fantasy and horror volumes as well.<\/p>\n<p>We haven’t run a Kickstarter since then, but in the wake of major changes to the publishing landscape\u2014especially Amazon’s Kindle Periodicals program\u2014have made reader support more important than ever. That’s why we’re launching this Kickstarter campaign to help ensure the magazines continue to thrive. Think of it as a subscription drive, but bigger and with more rewards.<\/p>\n<p>So go to the campaign’s pre-launch page (<a class=\"keeptag\" href=\"http:\/\/nightmare-magazine.com\/kickstarter\">nightmare-magazine.com\/kickstarter<\/a> will redirect you there) then click the <strong>NOTIFY ME ON LAUNCH<\/strong> button to sign up to be notified when the campaign launches, so you can be one of the first in line to show us your support.<\/p>\n<p>Hope to see see you live on Kickstarter on September 15!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On September 15, 2026, we’ll be launching our first Kickstarter campaign in more than a decade, to fund Year 15 of Nightmare and Year 17 of Lightspeed. Join us for a year of new short fiction from some of the biggest stars in science fiction, fantasy, and horror, including: Charlie Jane Anders Travis Baldree Olivie […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10805,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-default","section-from-the-editor"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Announcement: We're Launching a New Kickstarter Sept. 15. 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Our Horror Lab originals include a flash (\u201cUseless Heart\/Stopped Cold\u201d) from A. Artemis Chen and a poem (\u201cSweet Certainty\u201d) from Deborah L. Davitt.\u00a0\u00a0We also have the latest installment of our column on horror, \u201cThe H Word,\u201d plus author spotlights with our authors. Adam-Troy Castro joins us with a book review.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1313,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-issues"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Nightmare Magazine, Issue 168 (September 2026) - Nightmare Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nightmare-magazine.com\/issues\/nightmare-magazine-issue-168-september-2026\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Nightmare Magazine, Issue 168 (September 2026) - Nightmare Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We have original short fiction from Daniel Roop (\u201cThe Red Veil\u201d) and Phoenix Alexander (\u201cNot Even a Fly\u201d). Our Horror Lab originals include a flash (\u201cUseless Heart\/Stopped Cold\u201d) from A. Artemis Chen and a poem (\u201cSweet Certainty\u201d) from Deborah L. Davitt.\u00a0\u00a0We also have the latest installment of our column on horror, \u201cThe H Word,\u201d plus author spotlights with our authors. Adam-Troy Castro joins us with a book review.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.nightmare-magazine.com\/issues\/nightmare-magazine-issue-168-september-2026\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Nightmare Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/NightmareMagazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-09-01T07:01:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-09-02T04:58:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.nightmare-magazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/NM-default-embed-graphic.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"576\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Wendy Wagner\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@nightmaremag\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@nightmaremag\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.nightmare-magazine.com\\\/issues\\\/nightmare-magazine-issue-168-september-2026\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.nightmare-magazine.com\\\/issues\\\/nightmare-magazine-issue-168-september-2026\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Wendy Wagner\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.nightmare-magazine.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/e18966e64745715561f9bf38938089c9\"},\"headline\":\"Nightmare Magazine, Issue 168 (September 2026)\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-09-01T07:01:27+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-09-02T04:58:04+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.nightmare-magazine.com\\\/issues\\\/nightmare-magazine-issue-168-september-2026\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":4,\"commentCount\":0,\"articleSection\":[\"Issues\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/www.nightmare-magazine.com\\\/issues\\\/nightmare-magazine-issue-168-september-2026\\\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.nightmare-magazine.com\\\/issues\\\/nightmare-magazine-issue-168-september-2026\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.nightmare-magazine.com\\\/issues\\\/nightmare-magazine-issue-168-september-2026\\\/\",\"name\":\"Nightmare Magazine, Issue 168 (September 2026) - 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This scene in an early sound-era gangster film (with masturbatory undertones) presents the Chicago hood on the rise in his crime syndicate as a nightmarish machine of destruction. While <i>Scarface<\/i> doesn\u2019t deliberately connect the trend to horror films of the decade (aside from Boris Karloff playing rival Irish boss, Tom Gaffney), Camonte as a hunched over psychopath embodies crime invading a community, just as the 1930s Hollywood monster upended the traditional family unit by attacking a small village. In one scene, Camonte bombs a rival\u2019s speakeasy, while another shows his rampage leading to the death of a child; inspired by Al Capone, Camonte also orders a duplicate of the St. Valentine\u2019s Day Massacre. (His incestuous desire for his sister paints him as subhuman in an otherized portrayal of immigrant Italian Catholics.) As in reactionary early sound horror films, the gangster figure falls by the end, his exploits delighting some viewers while terrifying others.<\/p>\n<p>While the original cycle of sound-era gangster films went for an epic scope, tales of a hood on the lam offered a home invasion motif, closer relating the style to the monster movie. Early gangster invasions got a boost from a literary treatment in Robert E. Sherwood\u2019s 1934 play, <i>The Petrified Forest<\/i>, which was adapted for Warner Bros. in 1936. A budding romance in a roadside restaurant near the eponymous Arizona location is complicated by the invasion of Duke Mantee (Humphrey Bogart, in his first star-making role) and gang. The ordeal reveals the strength and desires of the unlikely lovers, though for them tragedy awaits, as does Duke\u2019s capture. Another play adaptation in 1948, <i>Key Largo<\/i>, uses the gangster invasion to play up the gothic angle: The head gangster, Johnny Rocco (Edward G. Robinson), occupying a coastal hotel during a hurricane, lurks like a monster haunting the building while holding hostages played by Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart (now a top star in a heroic role).<\/p>\n<p>Two years before Universal Studios added spy thriller elements to The Invisible Man series (<i>Invisible Agent<\/i>, 1942), the studio borrowed from the early gangster cycle to rework a mad scientist scenario. <i>Black Friday<\/i> (1940), a later entry in a series of titles costarring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, features a gangster accidentally running down a professor. With the latter on life support, a surgeon friend (Karloff) transplants part of the gangster\u2019s brain into the scientist, leaving the gangster dead to save the prof, who now acts like a thug. Karloff\u2019s role has an ulterior motive, as the gangster somewhere in New York City had hidden half a million dollars, which the surgeon wants to find using access to the brain. The body-switching horror moves with a well-worn hood plot: seeking hidden loot. Karloff passed on the double role of the professor and gangster Red Cannon, which went to Stanley Ridges, while Lugosi was assigned a minor gangster role\u2014with Universal profiting off his marquee billing while allowing him little screen time.<\/p>\n<p>The Karloff-Lugosi pairings began with <i>The Black Cat<\/i> (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1934), an in-name-only Edgar Allan Poe title (after Bela appeared in 1932\u2019s <i>Murders in the Rue Morgue<\/i>, <i>slightly<\/i> more faithful to its source). The pairings attempted to cash in on the horror stardom of both and lent themselves to hybrid treatments from the start. <i>The Black Cat<\/i> borrows from the old dark house motif with some mad scientist elements but overall delivers an early version of psychological horror. The films had been unavailable on home video in the early 2000s, and when Universal Pictures Home Entertainment released a DVD digipac of all four Karloff-Lugosis (with <i>Murders<\/i>), it became <a href=\"https:\/\/filmthreat.com\/uncategorized\/the-bela-lugosi-collection-dvd\/\">my debut review<\/a> for <i>Film Threat<\/i> (and the start of my film writing career).<\/p>\n<p>Hybrid genre eventually became my research focus, while gangster horror from the 1950s onward continued to fascinate me, as in Curt Siodmak\u2019s script for\u00a0<i>Creature with the Atom Brain<\/i> (1955, for Columbia Pictures), which borrowed from his own 1942 novel <i>Donovan\u2019s Brain<\/i> and the 1953 film adaptation. <i>Creature<\/i> uses gangland motifs to set up a zombie tale, while gathering \u201950s atomic age interest: in a bit of a gangland switcheroo, zombies invade gangster Hennessy\u2019s lair, where the monsters leave radioactive fingerprints, one from a male reported dead days earlier. The investigation reveals Hennessy\u2019s involvement with the death of gangster boss Frank Buchanan, who\u2014in a loopy mad scientist twist\u2014had funded research in Germany of reanimating the dead. Having returned to the States, Buchanan deploys orders to the zombies by radio command, a B-movie gangster now <i>literally<\/i> manning the SF-horror genre.<\/p>\n<p>If the crime genre emerges only briefly in <i>Night of the Living Dead<\/i> (1968)\u2014when a newscast declares, \u201cThere is an epidemic of mass murder being committed by a virtual army of unidentified assassins\u201d\u2014the blaxploitation cycle of the 1970s, already comfortable with the vampire film in <i>Blacula<\/i> (1972), embraced gangster horror with <i>J.D.\u2019s Revenge<\/i> (1976). Inspired by the possession craze following <i>The Exorcist<\/i> (1973), <i>J.D.\u2019s<\/i> centers on law student Ike Hendrix (Glynn Turman), who moonlights as a cab driver and one night, takes part in a hypnosis act. The moment allows Ike to become a host to the spirit of J. D. Walker, a 1940s gangster involved in gambling, prostitution, and the black market. Ike adopts the personality of J. D., who wants to avenge being framed for his sister\u2019s death, and the making-good young student now walks and talks like a street hood, even abusing his girlfriend. This version of the repressed returning, as discussed by horror theorist Robin Wood, shows the darker instincts of hetero-masculinity getting the better of Ike\u2019s liminal place, with one foot heading him towards the upper class and the other mixing him into city life, via cab driving. While the toxic portrayal of masculinity has turned off many viewers, the crime-horror hybridity, benefitting from Turman\u2019s powerful performance, delivers a harsh truth that some men reject, but too many men embrace. The finale\u2014<i>spoiler alert<\/i>\u2014if showing Ike overcoming the ordeal, questions whether he will continue to sublimate evil urges.<\/p>\n<p><i>J. D.\u2019s<\/i> served as an example for later gangster-horror treatments. Robert Rodriguez\u2019s <i>From Dusk Till Dawn<\/i> (1997) sutures a hoods-on-the-lam plot to a monster raid, the two connecting thanks to a light touch of humor in the direction and Quentin Tarantino\u2019s script (though when first meeting Tarantino, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/books\/edition\/The_New_American_Crime_Film\/cOnCHWLY_dsC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=new+american+crime+film&pg=PA7&printsec=frontcover\">Stuart Gordon scolded him<\/a> for creating vampires that die too easily). Meanwhile, Takashi Miike\u2019s swift directing hand in <i>Ichi the Killer<\/i> (2001) brings in splatter-level gore to a yakuza tale. The recent sensation, Ryan Coogler\u2019s <i>Sinners<\/i> (2025), brings a vampire raid to a southern juke joint, where two World War I veteran brothers, who also worked for Chicago mobsters, want to inspire a local community. The hybridity is at times slippery, as viewers realize that vampires could easily be switched out for raiding Irish hoods. But Coogler\u2019s eye on lurking threats invokes the best of the horror noire tradition, with tastes of the vampire film <i>Ganja and Hess<\/i> (Bill Gunn, 1973) and the folky monster in <i>To Sleep with Anger<\/i> (Charles Burnett, 1990), with Coogler\u2019s film a fitting example of Wood\u2019s return of the repressed to further a rich tradition.<\/p>\n<p>And with cinema proving rich for gangster horror, by the 1970s novels began to offer intriguing examples, some dovetailing on established trends (like demonic possession), while others tease out promising areas in both genres.<\/p>\n<p class=\"heading3-center\">Gangster-Horror Novel Recommendations<\/p>\n<p><strong><i>The Black Exorcist<\/i> (1974), by Joseph Nazel<\/strong>, reveals mobsters using satanic rites to master control of the city, in a clever turn to exploit the 1973 horror film sensation. The treatment also found inspiration in Donald Goines, whose crime novels, including <i>Dopefiend<\/i> (1971) and <i>Black Gangster<\/i> (1972), portray horrors inspired by the author\u2019s heroin addiction, which took his life at thirty-seven before he completed sixteen books.<\/p>\n<p><strong><i>Falling Angel<\/i>, William Hjortsberg\u2019s\u00a01978 novel<\/strong> (adapted into the 1987 film <i>Angel Heart<\/i>), opens as a private eye tale post-World War II. The search leads to hoods but, more dangerously, black magic leaving several bodies and the private dick, Harry Angel, questioning his own identity.<\/p>\n<p><strong><i>All the Sinners Bleed<\/i> (2023), by S. A. Cosby<\/strong>, posits a police shooting as the onset for a hunt for a serial killer, the last of small network responsible for horrendous crimes that must be cracked by Titus Crown, former FBI and the first Black sheriff in the southern county. It\u2019s also a fascinating portrayal of racism and religious extremism, taking up from Percival Everett\u2019s horror-tinged whodunit <i>The Trees<\/i> (2021), which centers on the trauma of lynching.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cI\u2019m gonna spit!\u201d Tony Camonte (Paul Muni) shouts in <i>Scarface<\/i> (1932) when first getting his hands on a Tommy Gun, before ripping gunfire into a wall. This scene in an early sound-era gangster film (with masturbatory undertones) presents the Chicago hood on the rise in his crime syndicate as a nightmarish machine of destruction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1313,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[6,424],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nonfiction","category-reviews","section-nonfiction"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Plumbing the Depths: Beasts in the City\u2014Horror Meets the Gangster - Nightmare Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nightmare-magazine.com\/nonfiction\/plumbing-the-depths-tk\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Plumbing the Depths: Beasts in the City\u2014Horror Meets the Gangster - Nightmare Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201cI\u2019m gonna spit!\u201d Tony Camonte (Paul Muni) shouts in Scarface (1932) when first getting his hands on a Tommy Gun, before ripping gunfire into a wall. 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