Nightmare Magazine

LIGHTSPEED & NIGHTMARE Kickstarter graphic. Left side: Bright light blue background with rays (as of light) bursting out from the center. Central image is an open book with a rocket blasting up out of it. Below the book is the LIGHTSPEED magazine wordmark; the word lightspeed is rendered in a orange-to-yellow gradient, with a white outline around it and dropshadow underneath it. Right side: Bright light yellow background with rays (as of light) bursting out from the center. Central image is an open book with a haunted house emerging from it. Below the book is the NIGHTMARE magazine wordmark; the word nightmare is rendered in a dark red to lighter red gradient, with a white outline around it and dropshadow underneath it. Top: the words "LIVE on Kickstarter"

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Oct. 2024 (Issue 145)

We have original short fiction from Gemma Files (“Little Horn”) and Simon Gilbert (“Perfect Water”). Our Horror Lab originals include a poem (“Possession”) from Martins Deep and a flash story (“NotRob”) from Isabel Cañas. Nicholas Belardes discusses birds in the latest installment of our column on horror, “The H Word.” Plus we have author spotlights with our authors, and a de•crypt•ed discussion of the horror canon from Joe Koch.

Cover art by Danilo Sanino / Shutterstock

Oct. 2024 (Issue 145)

Editorial

Editorial: October 2024

by Wendy N. Wagner

Halloween is the perfect time to try on your dark side for a few hours. In honor of the holiday, this month’s issue is all about our dark sides. It’s packed with eerie doubles, demons, and devils, all stand-ins for our worst impulses and unrestrained ids.

Fiction

Little Horn

by Gemma Files

Author spotlight

This whole business, it all started right about when I burned my church down. Not one I went to, or ministered at—I mean the one built around me, raised by my very own personal worshippers, so they could do their sacrificial reverence to me in private.

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: Gemma Files

by David Rees-Thomas

Horror has always been where I saw myself reflected most accurately, from a pretty early age. Over the last fifteen years, I’ve come to understand that that probably has a lot to do with my having always been an undiagnosed neurodivergent woman in a neurotypically-inclined world.

Poetry

Possession

by Martins Deep

This poem was born after a strange empathy opened my eyes to Matthew 12:43-45—the Bible passage where Jesus teaches about demons wandering in the wilderness after a demon-possessed man is healed. Here, I tried to capture the persona’s body as a living space.

Nonfiction

The H Word: The Monstrous Bird

by Nicholas Belardes

Birds aren’t monsters. Then again, maybe? Every mammal, fish, or insect has the ability to stimulate our imaginations—I’ll give animalia that. But birds, something special about them has the ability to tap into the darker depths of our creative core.

Fiction

Perfect Water

by Simon Gilbert

Author spotlight

Something tells you this two-pump station isn’t a contactless kind of place. Google Maps gave up the ghost several miles ago. You go inside and pay in cash. Diolch, you add, your one word of Welsh; the cashier replies with something you don’t follow.

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: Simon Gilbert

by Devin Marcus

The whole idea for the story sprang from a visit to North Wales for a friend’s wedding, in a really rugged, scenic spot along the coast. I was travelling back with friends and we stopped to wander about on the cliffs and the idea for a ghost story began to take root!

Fiction

NotRob

by Isabel Cañas

When my daughter was a newborn, I found I only had the attention span to write micro and flash; I wrote a lot of it. I was also sleeping very little at night and crashed most afternoons, which for me is when the weirdest dreams happen. “NotRob” was one of them.

Nonfiction

de•crypt•ed: Koch on James

by Joe Koch

This story’s been bothering me for a long time. It has the sort of title that sticks in your head: The Turn of the Screw. I knew the title before reading the book, or perhaps I read it and forgot, as I read so many books on the shelves of the rich whose houses my mother cleaned.