Dark Spores: Stories We Tell After Midnight Volume 4

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Title: Dark Spores: Stories We Tell After Midnight Volume 4
Series: Short Stories
Published by: Crone Girls Press
Release Date: December 24, 2024
Contributors: Meghan Arcuri, Rachel A. Brune, Samantha Bryant, R. E. Carr, James Chambers, Rick Claypool, Randee Dawn, Teel James Glenn, Maxwell Ian Gold, Timothy Granville, Rob Grimoire, Carol Gyzander, John Hartness, Pedro Iniguez, Jo Kaplan, Nicholas Kaufmann, Ariana Khaim, Gwendolyn Kiste, Nicole Givens Kurtz, Jamie Lackey, Gordon Linzner, M. Lopes da Silva, Lee Murray, Victoria Nations, Candace Nola, Gregory Norris, Tonia Ransom, Daniel Roop, Jef Rouner, Rebecca Rowland, Sumiko Saulson, Shannon Scott, Angela Yuriko Smith, Sara Tantlinger, Elizabeth Twist, Clay McLeod Chapman (foreword), Carol Gyzander (editor), Rachel Brune (editor), and L. Marie Wood.
Pages: 346
ISBN13: 978-1952388156
Enter the dark, mycelia-laden world of mushroom horror:
- A food blogger hunts for a killer recipe.
- Ceaseless rain drives a lonely man into his fungus-covered town.
- A grieving son purchases a kit to regrow his dead mother.
This anthology explores the mysterious world of fungi, spores...and things that dwell in the dim forest under the rotting leaves. Here you'll find 31 stories and 5 poems of quiet, cosmic, and body horror-plus subtle humor. Works examine themes of loneliness, desire, consumption, and connection with what lurks in the shadows.
Edited by Carol Gyzander and Rachel A. Brune, Dark Spores is the fourth volume in the Stories We Tell After Midnight horror series. Devour these stories-before they devour you!
Featuring works by Meghan Arcuri, Rachel A. Brune, Samantha Bryant, R. E. Carr, James Chambers, Rick Claypool, Randee Dawn, Teel James Glenn, Maxwell Ian Gold, Timothy Granville, Rob Grimoire, Carol Gyzander, John Hartness, Pedro Iniguez, Jo Kaplan, Nicholas Kaufmann, Ariana Khaim, Gwendolyn Kiste, Nicole Givens Kurtz, Jamie Lackey, Gordon Linzner, M. Lopes da Silva, Lee Murray, Victoria Nations, Candace Nola, Gregory Norris, Tonia Ransom, Daniel Roop, Jef Rouner, Rebecca Rowland, Sumiko Saulson, Shannon Scott, Angela Yuriko Smith, Sara Tantlinger, Elizabeth Twist, and L. Marie Wood.
With a special foreword by Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Ghost Eaters: A Novel.
Cover: Lynne Hansen, LynneHansenArt.com
Review by Joe Compton of Dark Spores from Go Indie Now's Fresh Buttered Popcorn blog (1/31/25)
From the review, of "Pretty Maids all in a Row": "Randee can close with the best of them... I love the way this is written. There is a cadence here that flows like a Netflix show, one of those that has a deep guarded secret."
From "Pretty Maids All in a Row" by Randee Dawn:
Releasing a long breath, Carolyne turns back to the chaotic yard, wondering how to begin. Sometimes she feels like the weeds in it: Transplanted to Brooklyn not by choice, but circumstance. Terence is the breadwinner in the family – she's the throwback stay-at-home mom – so his promotion meant relocation from deep Long Island to the five boroughs. But their finances, and the existence of their nearly-four-year-old twins Melanie and Roger necessitated a neighborhood, not a cramped apartment. And so: South Brooklyn. Here, people live squashed together and yards are afterthoughts, far from the rolling green front and back spaces Carolyne played in as a child on the Island.
They've been here since February, and now that spring is arriving Carolyne has determined that they will not have an afterthought yard. They will have a prizewinning one. She must exert control over something. Maybe not her toddlers, whose daily activities bore her. Maybe not her husband, who spends more time on the road than at home. But this yard – she can bend this space to her will.
Something seems to shift in the lower grasses. The pink-gray protuberance is small, but she can't take her eyes from it. A low hum rises to fill the morning, the sound of thousands of chorusing insects, but the noise doesn't seem to come from the yard. It feels like it originates in the base of her skull. Carolyne steps into the yard. The odor grows stronger as she approaches the spot where the opossum had been … held by those strange grasses. She shuts her eyes for a moment, willing away a sudden wave of claustrophobia.
When she opens them again, the hum in her head – a soothing massage of noise – grows louder. Gripping a trowel in her hand, diamond ring tapping on the plastic handle, she knows the tool is woefully inadequate for the task of renovating the yard. I'm gonna need a bigger trowel, she thinks, mind unable to ignore, yet equally unable to focus on, the pink-gray thing as she nears it.
It's a tail. No question.