Nightmare Magazine, Issue 168 (September 2026)

We have original short fiction from Daniel Roop (“The Red Veil”) and Phoenix Alexander (“Not Even a Fly”). Our Horror Lab originals include a flash (“Useless Heart/Stopped Cold”) from A. Artemis Chen and a poem (“Sweet Certainty”) from Deborah L. Davitt. We also have the latest installment of our column on horror, “The H Word,” plus author spotlights with our authors. Adam-Troy Castro joins us with a book review.

Cover art by Joe Therasakdhi / Adobe Stock

Nightmare Magazine, Issue 168 (September 2026)

Editorial

Editorial: September 2026

by Wendy N. Wagner

Welcome to issue #168 of Nightmare Magazine. It’s back-to-school season around here, which means new notebooks, cooler evenings, and a sudden overwhelming craving for apples. If you’re like me, September also makes you more excited about reading great new fiction!

Publishes Online on 9/9

Nonfiction

Announcement: We’re Launching a New Kickstarter Sept. 15. Sign up to be notified when it launches!

by John Joseph Adams

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 […]

Fiction

The Red Veil

by Daniel Roop

There was a door.

That’s the best place to start, I guess, given that there’s no good place to start.

Luke and I were drinking bourbon and smoking in his attic bedroom. He’d brought me to his family compound in northwest Wyoming right after we were discharged.

Publishes Online on 9/9

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: Daniel Roop

by Clay Vermulm

I have a vivid memory of being in a home where they kept taxidermied hunting trophies in a room that was probably 20’x15.’ The walls were covered by at least two dozen deer heads. Having that many frozen eyes staring at you is pretty unsettling.

Publishes Online on 9/9

Fiction

Useless Heart / Stopped Cold

by A. Artemis Chen

Your heart stopped cold when you were walking to school in knee-high snow the morning after your parents separated. Maybe because you didn’t zip that padded snowsuit all the way up and your fur scarf was in the wash and the windchill of -10°F nipped your neck and seeped down your ribcage. Maybe because all night you believed that things would be back to normal in the morning.

Publishes Online on 9/16

Nonfiction

The H Word: Roadside Dread—Horror at the Diner

by Matthew Sorrento

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 The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’s family dinner from hell). But the road stop diner, which offers a meal but little comfort, has also been ripe for terror.

Publishes Online on 9/16

Fiction

Not Even a Fly

by Phoenix Alexander

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.

Publishes Online on 9/23

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: Phoenix Alexander

by Clay Vermulm

I think so much of contemporary discourse about writing and reading involves statements of needing to “be seen” in fiction, to find recognition—but there’s also, for me, a deep pleasure in experiencing narratives of difference, to sit in lives, for a while, that are not my own.

Publishes Online on 9/23