Dark Stars

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  FOREWORD

  BY JOSH MALERMAN

  Horror is having a moment.

  Maybe it always is, I suspect that’s true. But right now? This is our moment, any and all writers, anybody alive and doing it. And maybe even some of the dead ones, too. From teenagers trying their hands at their first short stories to men and women a hundred years old who still thrill at getting it down on paper: horror is indeed having a moment. And us twelve, the twelve writers between the covers of this book?

  We’re part of it.

  Thing is, there’s a pandemic afoot. For that, we couldn’t get a photo of the twelve of us together. Sorry about that. We couldn’t fly to one place let alone stand arm in arm, our smiles to be seen. I like to imagine it, though, Alma Katsu somewhere in the middle, the rest of us fanning out from there. John Taff quietly staring the camera down, proud and at ease, for having brought the group together in the first place. In this photo (that does not exist) I imagine myself and Caroline Kepnes with drinks in our hands, John Langan and Chesya Burke on the verge of laughing from a joke one or the other made. Stephen Graham Jones, Gemma Files, Usman Malik all seated on the porch rail, the darkening sky behind them; some blood and shadow in the air. In this photo (that does not exist) Priya Sharma is mixing paint in a plastic cup, prepared to paint eyes on the rest of us. Livia Llewellyn is pointing at Ramsey Campbell, who either just spoke or is just about to speak, seconds away from saying something the rest of us will cheer.

  But … no photo. And that’s okay. What do writers do to mark the occasion when there’s no camera in sight?

  We write it down, of course.

  Dark Stars is our photo, a snapshot of the twelve of us at this moment in horror, this moment horror is having.

  It’s everywhere. Yes. Horror is on your Christmas tree and in your cereal. It’s on your shoes, your jacket, your hat. It’s in your Twitter handle and, for us lucky ones, it’s in your dreams, as there’s no shortage of imagery (obscure and not) in your numerous daily feeds. But I’m not even talking about the ubiquitous state of the genre; I’m pointing a bony, bloody finger at the books, the stories, the scripts, the tales. Horror is something like black taffy these days, enough elasticity to stretch across any room (even the word “room” feels a little confining while discussing the modern state of horror: Is it a room actually? Could be something else), and you’ll find that elasticity here in the pages of this book. Most of us writing today grew up when horror was having another moment, the holy/unholy 1980s. We were drawn to the paperbacks with black spines and red titles as if they were needles and the rest of the store was made of hay. But our book life didn’t start and end there, most of us didn’t build a home in horror and never leave town. We ventured out. We read the classics. We read self-help books. We read adventure novels and romance novels and books with no plots and books with titles that sounded more profound (at the time) than The Darkness or The Dead. We stretched our reading and, for that, stretched our eventual writing with it. You’ll find it everywhere in the new horror releases these days: more than a mash-up, modern horror has reach. Diversity helps that, of course. Diversity in writers, diversity in readers, diversity in language, cover art, titles, pen names, real names, places of birth, countries of birth, countries we call home, states of mind we call home, too. And while none of this is to suggest the best horror stories of any era were so bland as to be singularly horror and nothing besides, we’re currently stretching things more than they’ve ever been before.

  Let’s stretch that photo (the one that does not exist). You take one side, I’ll take the other, and we’ll pull. And the twelve of us pictured will actually stretch, becoming elongated things with elongated faces, our expressions no longer determinable, the purpose of our gathering completely impossible to guess at. New monsters, we say. Even us, even as we write them, even as we read them, too. And there’s John Taff, still eyeing the camera, still in control, still saying (without speaking), I knew this was a good idea. Because John has not only experienced previous moments in horror, but he read the books that acted as snapshots of those eras, too. Kirby McCauley’s Dark Forces comes to mind. So does Paul Sammon’s Splatterpunks. And John, aware as anybody that horror is in motion, that horror breathes (horror is one of the only genres that can flourish when it doesn’t breathe, too), John said, Somebody get a camera.

  Say cheese.

  I can’t speak for everybody else in this book, but I’ve never been one to zero in on the “marketplace.” Before having anything published (but after signing with my agent) I received an email detailing current trends in the publishing world. It scared me silly, the idea of actually following these trends, strategizing in any way according to them. It wasn’t that I frowned upon someone who would, it’s just that it seemed to be the opposite of what I was feeling: an unchecked enthusiasm for all things unsettling, all things that go bump in the (day or) night. I wasn’t looking to tap into any modern taste, I just wanted to freak somebody out. I wanted to touch the same darkness our predecessors touched, and I hoped it was still there. But this hope was foolish, no? For isn’t it up to us, our era, to create that darkness? I suspect my peers in this book feel the same. It’s the kind of thing you can feel in a person’s writing. And what would you rather be presented with? A skilled storyteller with the passion of a stone, or a person who can’t stop themselves from telling you their story, what happened, all “talent” be damned?

  I think somewhere therein lies the moment horror is having. Did Poe feel the same? I suspect he did. His words are fire. I find similar smoke in the Weird Tales writers of the twenties, thirties, forties. And there’s no doubt Beaumont, Serling, Bradbury, Nolan, Matheson rode their own electricity all the way to the page. Can you feel Shirley Jackson’s urgency in her stories? I can. You can, too. We talk often about the fear of the unknown, how it will forever rank First in Fear, but let’s take one step into this concept: rather than leaving the unknown to the confines of the story itself, let’s wonder as to the unknown of the people who are writing it. The best way to really scare somebody is to surprise them, to come suddenly from the shadows you, yes you, created. The worst thing an era can do is ape the one before it. Where’s the unknown in that?

  Readers, meet Gemma Files. Stephen Graham Jones. Usman Malik. Chesya Burke. Livia Llewellyn. John Langan. Alma Katsu. Ramsey Campbell. Caroline Kepnes. Priya Sharma. John Taff. Me. Some of you have no doubt read many if not all of the names found within
. Some of you, if not all, are in tune with the moment horror is having. But for those of you who are not, who are coming to the genre today, by way of Dark Stars … welcome. My biggest hope is you don’t entirely recognize the style, the storytelling, the spirit within. Any of these stories could be a movie. Any of them could be told across a campfire, bottle in hand. But all have been written down.

  Because horror is having a moment and we all feel compelled to mark it.

  Now, let’s stretch Time, just enough so we reach the days immediately following the pandemic and the current state of things. Let’s stretch Time so that the twelve of us featured here find ourselves at a convention. We’re all in the lobby of the hotel in a fine city (any city will do right now, and usually does) and we’re talking horror. Maybe we’re offering opinions on one another’s stories or (more likely) we’re ecstatically discussing how wonderful it is to be at a convention again, face-to-face, attending panels, buying books, surrounded by like-minded people after spending a good deal of time with ourselves. And when the talk turns to how each of us managed to endure our own private lockdowns, the conversation will invariably touch upon the very book you hold.

  How did the genre flourish in such times? Because there was no stopping it. Where did we, the readers and writers, find solace at such a troubling moment in history?

  Why, through books, of course.

  And through seeing our names in print and sharing a table of contents with one another, some of the brightest voices in a genre that’s well and alive. And at that convention, I hope someone approaches us with a camera. And I hope they say, Hey, before you dozen go your own ways, while I got you all together, let me take a quick picture.

  And we all line up. Alma maybe somewhere near the middle and the rest of us fanning out from there. John Taff smiling at the camera.

  And just before he hits the button, our cameraman says,

  Say cheese.

  Then: Wait, you people write horror.

  Scream it instead.

  Josh Malerman

  Michigan 2021

  INTRODUCTION

  I had the idea for this anthology a few years ago, when Josh and I were brainstorming projects we could work on together. Because, I mean, who wouldn’t try to pin Josh Malerman down with projects to work with him on? I’m not crazy, you know. Working with Josh is like grasping the live end of an electrical cord, with all the ensuing energy and none of the imminent death.

  The idea was to come up with something that could follow on what Dark Forces, that seminal eighties horror anthology edited by Kirby McCauley, had done. Namely, bring horror to a wider audience.

  That sounds ridiculous, right? Horror needs a wider audience with people like King and Straub and Rice and Barker? With the popularity of television and movie properties such as Bird Box (Josh!), Us, The Haunting of Hill House (or Bly Manor), Hereditary, Midsommar, and Lovecraft Country?

  Okay, how about bring a wider spectrum of horror to the audience?

  Ahh, there, ding-ding-ding.

  Dark Forces succeeded in showing that horror was much more than a dark-alley genre. It wasn’t just the lowbrow backwater many literati (and many of my college English professors) proclaimed it to be. In classes, I was often told that, according to Henry James, my taste for the works of Edgar Allan Poe was “the mark of a decidedly primitive stage of reflection.”

  In all deference to James, suck it.

  Dark Forces didn’t so much prove that horror could be soaring and literary as remind. Poe, yes, but Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Bram Stoker, Wilkie Collins, H. P. Lovecraft, yes, even Henry James all proved that well before Dark Forces was published.

  But McCauley’s Dark Forces reminded readers that this quality was a fundamental bedrock of horror. It featured writers like Stephen King, sure, but also Joyce Carol Oates and Isaac Bashevis Singer and Ray Bradbury.

  So, I didn’t feel the need to readdress that. Horror can be literary. Check!

  What I wanted to show—okay, really remind readers of—was horror’s vast range, the huge canvas that it can paint upon. The numerous, diverse voices that are writing horror, reshaping it, making it their own. Range is important to me as a writer, and I wanted to flaunt the range of this genre to readers.

  Yes, horror can be literary. That’s important. But what’s even more important, especially now, is that we acknowledge just how expansive horror is. That horror can push more boundaries than just about any other genre and in ways other genres simply don’t … or can’t. That horror can stretch anywhere from the quiet, literary side all the way to bloody guignols, and all points between.

  Within these covers are stories that run the gamut from traditional to modern, from dark fantasy to neo-noir, from explorations of traditional horror tropes to unknown, possibly unknowable threats. It’s all here because it’s all out there now in horror. I’ve said many times that we appear to be in a kind of Golden Age of Horror. We’ve gone from a time, say sixty or seventy years ago, where there were just a few successful authors out there writing horror—say Shirley Jackson or Richard Matheson or Ira Levin or William Peter Blatty or Robert Bloch—to a positive fiesta of horror authors too numerous to name, yet too good to ignore.

  That’s what I wanted with Dark Stars, and that’s what I hope I’ve been able to bring to you. Some already have it, but every one of the authors in this book deserves the attention of and recognition from readers.

  I’ve taken nearly six hundred words to sum up, but the idea of Dark Stars is simple. And it’s this: expand your horizons, not just about what horror can be, but what horror is.

  John F.D. Taff

  Southern Illinois

  March 2021

  THE ATTENTIONIST

  BY CAROLINE KEPNES

  The first time he calls, I’m not there. I’m not home to answer. I’m down at the beach. It’s 1993 when alone means alone. The beach by our house is small and stupid if you ask my sister. It’s just a pond and it’s just me. I don’t know that he’s calling. I don’t know that someone out there is thinking of me, trying to find me.

  That is all I want, to be wanted, pursued, and I’m getting what I want and I’m not there to know it.

  Reg is home. She doesn’t come to the beach because she doesn’t like to be away from the phone. Once I heard my dad tell my mom that Reg has the soul of a beauty and the body of a worker. My mom told him he was terrible, but she also laughed. Reg is hopeful, hungry. Her eyebrows grow so fast that she has to pluck them every day and she picks up on the first ring because that’s who she is. The ringing phone is Reg’s favorite sound in the world and the irony is that to answer the call is to silence those bells. It’s a big day for Reg. The last night of the county fair and she wants to go but not just with me, with boys. The phone is a promise. A beacon of hope. Boys, knock on wood, if she’s lucky.

  “Hello?”

  That’s how she always answers. Her voice lifts as if the telephone is such a mystery. The caller is no dummy. He hears the longing in her voice. He probably knows how she is. The soul of a beauty and the body of a worker. He probably senses that she fantasizes about making out with a guy on the Ferris wheel, any guy, please, someone.

  “Hello,” he says. “Is Maeve there?”

  You’d think Reg would be upset that he wants me, not her, but we’re sisters. In her head we’re a monolith. What’s good for me is good for her. So she’s cutesy and perky, treating every word like a barren cupcake with so much potential.

  “Well … Actually…” See how she spreads out the words? Frosting on her cupcake. Creamy, or maybe sloppy. “Miss Maeve isn’t around right now…” And see that? See how she calls me Miss Maeve as if that’s a thing she calls me? It isn’t. He has Reg all figured out by now. Maybe he can see her through our bay window in the front of the house. Maybe he can’t. But he wouldn’t be surprised to know that she’s wearing these cutoffs that shrunk in the dryer. They’re tight. They cut off her circulation and leave red marks on her belly, but she
wears them so that if some man called and asked what she was wearing she could be like, tiny cutoffs and a tube top. She’s not a liar, my sister, and she wouldn’t say she was wearing the shorts if she wasn’t and all summer she’s been hopeful—What if we met brothers? What if a new cute guy moved into the house across the street—and all summer I’ve been real—We don’t know any brothers. That house is condemned.

  I’m embarrassed for her. Younger but older than me, the voice of reason. Impossible to imagine her on this planet before I came into the picture. But there she was and here she is, the happiest she’s been in weeks as the lights dim in the theater of her mind and she twirls the phone cord and licks her teeth.

  “Well,” he says. “That’s too bad. I was hoping to catch her.”

  She lies down on the sofa. Legs in the air, opening and closing. Bare feet. Can he feel her offering her body to him? God, she hopes so and she picks up a bottle of nail polish and shakes it. “Sorry to break your heart … Is there anything I can do to help?”

  To this day, she cries when she gets to this part of the story, like it’s her fault, the way things went down. She’s ashamed of her own desire. Her fantasy. Her excitement about stealing him. She couldn’t help it. He reminded her of Davey.

  * * *

  Real quick, let me tell you about Davey.

  Three summers before the summer I’m talking about, Reg was the one working at the club and she liked a member too. A guy named, well, Davey.

  She had good reason to think the feeling was mutual. They kissed at a party on a beach. There was a fire pit. She thought he kissed her because of the flames. Everyone’s beautiful by a fire. Davey knew what she looked like in the daylight and he told her he’d call. But he never did. Then his family moved, I don’t know where. I just know that Reg was different when the waiting gave way to this weird form of horrific acceptance.