Welcome to Issue #133 of Nightmare Magazine! And welcome to October and the wonderful Spooky Season—my very favorite time of year. I hope you are enjoying pumpkins in all their fabulous forms (be those edible, drinkable, or artistic), hugging horror novels close to your chest, and dreaming of ghoulies, ghosties, and things that go bump in the night. It’s our time, horror people.

I have always thought of October as the cozy horror season. At what other time can a horror fan get away with admitting they love Disney movies? (I am so ready for a rewatch of Something Wicked This Way Comes.) It’s the absolute best time for a party, too. I go all-out every year, decorating our whole house to a special theme and cooking scads of weird snacks. It’s the way I tell my friends and family that I care about them.

And let’s face it—we could all use a bit more care these days. It’s not bad enough that we’re dealing with the constant strain of climate change-induced disasters, with more and increasingly dangerous wildfires and storms: certain groups seem hell-bent on bringing ever more cruelty into the world. Large and very vocal swathes of humanity seem to have embraced hatred and stopped caring what might happen to other people.

Which is why this issue is the Caring Issue.

Both of our pieces of short fiction this month came into my hands via unusual routes. One was sent to me by a writer who has worked with us before at Nightmare and Lightspeed and who is also a volunteer at a very special writing program. One of her students had written a remarkable story, and she wanted us to read it. That student is David Janisch, whose story “The Cello in the Cell” is a powerful condemnation of the American prison system.

Our other short, “The Sound of Children Screaming,” was written by my friend Rachael K. Jones, who has spent several years teaching special needs children. When Rachael started telling me about this story, which will resonate for anyone connected to America’s public school system, I begged her to send it to us at Nightmare.

Both of these stories are beautiful, well-written pieces that shout about the way our society has simply stopped caring about certain populations of people. As allegories both delightful and painful to read, they do the kind of work that only speculative fiction can do, and I am honored to present them to you.

But the allegories and insights don’t stop there! Dan Stout’s flash story “Clown Town,” while both nasty and brief, showcases the blindness of suburban life and the way it disconnects people from each other while consuming nature. Frances Ngo’s poem “when you see the dead” addresses the horror of “snarge,” a word coined to describe the birds inhaled by jet engines, but is beginning to be adopted as a term for animals killed in all kinds of collisions. Because what is more terrifying: that we kill over a million animals on our roads every day, or that we don’t seem to care about it? And on the nonfiction side, independent film director JP Bradham joins us at the H Word to talk about how marketing has disconnected us from each other and trained us to consume more and more.

I knew all of these works had to go in our October issue—October, that most sacred and wonderful month for horror people!—because if there’s one thing horror does exceptionally, it’s connecting people and making them care. We care about zombies and apocalypses and monsters and all kinds of things that don’t even exist. We look into the face of nasty, repulsive, scary stuff and set our hearts on the characters confronting them.

We’re great carers, we horror people. (Unsure about that? Check out the Scares That Care charity at scaresthatcare.org, a horror fan-powered charity that has donated more than $300,000 to sick women and children.) It’s why I’m proud to be one.

So I hope your heart feels full when you settle down with this powerful issue. It’s packed with all the great stuff I just mentioned and a wonderful interview with horror writer Keith Rosson, plus spotlight interviews with our short fiction writers. Plus, it’s full of our staff’s hard work and love.

This issue might not be pumpkin-flavored, but I think it’s just what your October calls for.