Vesper was not a horse girl. It was not for lack of trying. She wished she loved horses as much as her ex-best friend, Holly. Holly, with her graceful legs, and a perfectly rounded head that looked good in any helmet. Bike rides be damned, Holly looked like her head was made to be protected, whereas Vesper felt like her skull was too elongated, too narrow, for any helmet or hat to fit.

The girl is distraught, but the OB-GYN assures her some body hair loss is a common stress response, especially after trauma. Peering at the girl over half-moon glasses, the doctor cautions her that it might grow in a little thicker, but the girl hears thicket, like the untrespassable patches in the woods. She nods anyway—sure, fine; whatever.

Surely, that upbeat girl working the cemetery is pulling your leg when she gives you the address and the yellow plastic tag. Your grandparents—both behind the same plaque in the columbarium now—left something behind for you, she said. A bus, a train, a pedicab, and two hours later, here it is, as described: a sprawling warehouse, big as an airplane hangar.

I believe dark fantasy provides a wonderful arena for magic, myth, and the darker side of the human experience to meld into each other. Every now and then we get a story at Nightmare that feels particularly magical or mythical, and those are the stories I like to highlight in our November issue.

When my child was very small, I did my best to use my expertise as a horror film critic to inoculate them from all the scary things out there that I possibly could. Mine is a skillset with what we might gently describe as one with limited utility, but I hoped—however naively—that my knowledge of horror movies might in some way help them,

What do we talk about when we talk about the New Weird? The conversation typically starts with a familiar story: Around the turn of the century, an intrepid band of writers, primarily based in England, remade weird fiction into something weirder, more daring, more suited to the modern day: a new weird fiction.

Expose your stomach, let me burrow into
what made you make me. Tell me; how does
a name, a prayer, catch like a burr in your
throat; what makes you sidle closer,