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Check out what's happening in this month's news:

• Word of the Month
• New Releases & Preorders
• Flash fiction: "You Remember These Things" by K. York
• Artist Alley: Cara at Death's Head Divination
• Unsettling Truths: Memorial tubes and "floaters"
• Forest Market Feature: INDIGENT by Briana N Cox

WORD OF THE MONTH

horripilation (noun)

hor·rip·i·la·tion
hor-uh-pi-LAY-shun
/hɒˌrɪpɪˈleɪʃən/

1: a bristling of the hair of the head or body (as from fright or excitement) : goose bumps

Can be used as a verb, horripulate.
The Devil's Reign reads like a memoir with a supernatural element designed to entertain and horripilate the reader…

NEW RELEASES & PREORDERS

NEW RELEASE

Two ghosts.

One curse.

Desperate for a fresh start after her husband’s death, Marche Baker moves into the vacant house on Victor Street. The neighbors seem nice enough, and the house itself shows promise of becoming a decent home for Marche and her young daughter, Stella.

But something isn’t right.

Stella insists there’s a lady cloaked in black haunting her dreams; meanwhile, gruesome hallucinations plague Marche whether she’s asleep or awake. Then she makes an unsettling discovery—the previous women who’ve lived at 919 Victor Street have a bloody history of dying prematurely.

And history seems keen on repeating itself.

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Love blooms as swiftly as it devours.

Pull back the layers to delve into the devotion and longing, the lust and the love, the triumphs and tragedy in this sapphic horror collection.

Featuring stories by Rebecca Bennett, Samantha Bryant, JJ Carpenter, Alchemy Dawn, Cat Delani, Wren Handman, Mirella Higuera, Toshiya Kamei, C. A. Larkin, Frey Lylark, Ren Mercer, Kassandra Morgan, Liz Pinto, Liddell Rayne, Chantell Saunders, David M Simon, LB Waltz, Annabelle Wang, and Rachel M Wilman, as well as illustrations by Matsubara K., David M Simon, Nik Sylvan, Dona Vajgand, and Kuza Vampire.

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FLASH FICTION

"You Remember These Things" by K. York

He walks because they told him to.

The rain makes everything sound farther away than it is. Or closer. He’s not sure anymore. His shoes scuff against the cracked road, upsetting flakes of asphalt and dirty puddles. A choking fog has swallowed everything—the street, the houses on either side, the sky, the streetlamps and moon and stars—until his world has shriveled, no longer existing past the reach of his outstretched hands. 

“Don’t stop, Dad. No matter what.”

His son’s voice had been keen with urgency. Not like the sounds now—the ones in the fog.

A wet, hollow clicking threads through the downpour. It comes and goes without a pattern, rapping like knuckles against bone. Beneath it, possibly even just part of his imagination: shuffling, dragging. Weight that’s forgotten how to carry itself, or maybe is trying to learn.

“Yeah,” he mutters, voice thin, a ghost of what it used to be. “Yeah, I hear you.”

They do not answer, but something even further off lets out what might be a scream. It rises, stretched taut. Then snaps silent so abruptly that he flinches and his steps falter.

This is a road, he reminds himself. Ashen-faced and with a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel, Chester had told him they just needed to follow it. They had somewhere they needed to be. “We just stay on it. Keep moving. We don’t stop, Dad. No matter what you hear, don’t stop, got it? Not for me, not for Julie, no one.”

“I’m still going,” he says to nothing. 

His thirty-year-old daughter had been in the back seat with him, clutching his hand in a way he couldn’t recall her doing since she was small. Her fingers were warm. Warm as they swerved. Warm as the glass shattered. Warm as the car lurched.

Warm until they weren’t.

He keeps a steady pace, though he’s not sure why.

“Don’t stop, Dad.”

“Why not,” he mumbles. “So I can keep bumbling through the rain like a damned fool?”

The chittering increases in speed and pitch and number, ’til it turns to a buzz turns to a hum turns to words… Mouths trying to form human sentences from their guttural intonations. Clok-click-nok-tiktiktik-hissssss twisted in the right way sounds a lot like—

“Dad?”

His steps hitch and he slows, but does not stop. Does, for the first time, look into the surrounding pitch on either side and behind him as though he’ll see something this time beyond the assault of rain and heavy fog. 

“Nope,” he mutters, telling himself his old eyes aren’t really seeing shapes out there. And if they are—no, they aren’t. Keep going. “No, sir. Don’t you do that.” 

“Dad, wait up!”

A spark of anger ignites somewhere within his tired bones and aching joints. That something would be out there, daring to sound like his son when he knows his son is—

Has to be—

Last he saw of Chester, unseen hands were dragging him through the broken windshield and into the dark while Julie choked back a scream and scrabbled at the back door to get her father and herself out.

“It’s okay, you can rest for a while, Dad.”

Julie this time.

“No, ma’am. You told me not to stop.” He taps two fingers to his temple. “I don’t forget things like that.”

Except he does forget things like that. Where he’s going. What he’s doing. Names of the nurses and doctors. He forgets whether he’s eaten or slept. Forgets sometimes if the world has always been just like this.

But here and now, he remembers what they said. He remembers that they had a destination. That he has something in his pocket that needs to get somewhere—something important.

Don’t stop walking. 

No. Matter. What.

He pats his coat, feeling for the small package tucked securely in his breast pocket. Yes. He remembers.

“There’s nowhere to go,” the thing that isn’t his son crackles.

His foot catches, drags. He nearly falls. For a moment—for a terrible, exhausted moment—he almost wishes he couldfall so he could rest. Just for a second. 

“Please.”

His daughter again. He can see her now—not solid, not clear, but somewhere else, in his periphery. The lines that comprise her, even if everything else feels off.

“I’m tired,” he admits.

“I know,” she says.

He swipes an arm across his eyes; he lost his glasses days ago, not that they’d be doing him any good now, anyway. God almighty, he hopes he’s not walking in circles. At least let him be moving forward, like he was told. At least let him do this right.

“Just stop,” the voices say. Together this time, overlapping but not quite in sync.

They repeat. Again and again, faster. Until the words crack at the seams and fragment into multiples from every direction. 

He curses under his breath. “They died for this,” he says, louder than he means to. “For me to keep going.”

“And they’re gone now, so you can stop.”

His steps slow.

Keep going, the kids had said. But for what? If he isn’t marching onward for them, who the hell is he doing it for? Has he forgotten?

The fog presses in close, intimate. 

“Dad, listen. This is important. Whatever you do, don’t stop walking.”

He’s forgotten so many things. Where he is and where he’s going and what, exactly, is out there in the dark, waiting for him to falter. So very many things, but not that.

He takes another step, widening his stride this time. Solidifying his resolve. 

The not-voices retreat. Not gone, but withdrawn, reconsidering. Then, one last attempt:

“Dad—”

He keeps walking.

The rain swallows the rest.

—

Kell is a chronically fatigued cryptid hiding in the redwoods of Northern California, surviving off too much soda and not enough sunlight. She writes stuff that's queer and dark where no one is ever safe.

More from Kelley:
Website | Ko-fi (exclusive content, signed books) | Social Media

ARTIST ALLEY

artist: Cara at Death's Head Divination

From the artist: "Celestial Snake - Acrylic on up-cycled wood."

From Kell: I came across Cara's work on Threads and was blown away. The colors, detail, and stylization was so fresh and bold. I can't stop looking at their Instagram!

About the Artist: Cara (they/them) / Death's Head Divination was originally just a baby chronically ill occultist in need of a non-commercialized statue of Hel for their own spiritual practice; thus, thrifting and repainting forgotten Mother Mary statues turned into their signature OOAK Hel Mary creations. Years later, this devotional art project has transformed into a desire to turn discarded conveyor belt decor into lasting reflections of what it means to be human, through themes of death, nature, and folklore. Their art is a means of survival in a world that discards those that don't fit the mold. You can find them touring with Oddities & Curiosities Expo in the summer and fall months along the midwest and east coast, and hibernating otherwise with a heating pad, iced matcha, and a good book.

instagram | ko-fi | book content

UNSETTLING TRUTHS

Did you know that most American-made caskets since the late 20th century come with a hidden little compartment called a memorial tube?

Many moons ago, I worked at a mortuary. One of my many administrative jobs was to create a record for these tubes. It was simple: a small slip of paper containing the name of the deceased, their date of birth, death, and the date and location of interment.

To me, this seemed common sense—a method of identifying remains years down the road when headstones might otherwise be unable to. But it extends a little beyond that.

Sure, this helps in the above case, as well as ensuring when a body is exhumed, the correct person is located. But this practice was also essential for floaters.

See, coffins are buried deep for a reason, and one of those reasons is to ensure it stays buried. But even then, sometimes it isn't enough. Saturate the soil too much, maybe throw in a flood (or a hurricane), and not only are tombstones sent astray, but the coffins, too.

An example popped up (no pun intended) in 2021 during Hurricane Ida. Jean Lafitte, New Orleans was one of many towns who spent the aftermath of Ida wading through the muck and debris, accompanied by floating caskets. In the water, in backyards, in the trees. PBS released a short article about Jean Lafitte in particular worth a read.

In fact, this sort of thing is just common enough in the area that in 2018, the state of Louisiana formed its Cemetery Response Task Force to address the issue. The LCRTF is tasked with the collection, identification, and return of displaced remains after natural disasters, while also helping with funding and repair of cemeteries damaged during these events.

It's morbid work, to be sure. While I don't plan to be buried in a casket, if I am, I hope my memorial tube identification reads: "I'm out on a day pass and got lost. Please return me to _________."

—written by Kelley York

FOREST MARKET FEATURE

Our Forest Market partner feature this month goes to Briana N Cox. In this surreal literary horror, we have a body-horror creature-feature that takes a brutal look into a medical system that fails those most in need.

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