The Dark Issue 85 by Angela Liu

Author:Angela Liu
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: dark fantasy, fantasy, horror, magazine
Publisher: Prime Books
Published: 2022-05-29T12:48:28+00:00

Tegan Moore lives and frequently injures herself on twenty forested acres an hour outside of Seattle, Washington, where she wages war against the slugs for the souls of her brassicas. She has been published in magazines including Tor.com, Asimov’s, and Clarkesworld. You can find more of her stories at www.alarmhat.com.

Linden in Effigy

by Kay Chronister

Our mothers were fearful that summer. They sewed rabbit skins into our clothes and threw the scraps from our haircuts into the fire. When they said I love you, it sounded like a warning. Meanwhile we swam in swollen creek beds and hemmed our hand-me-down dresses so they would ride high. We cast adoring looks at half-formed boys from across the room. The boys of our town felt nothing back, they were incapable of the passions that possessed us like fevers; they were like pieces of cardboard that we decorated with our desires. If we had gotten one, our mothers sighed to one another, we wouldn’t have known what to do with him. They all lamented having daughters. How could you not, in Linden, lament having a daughter?

The witch died in the middle of May. Everyone said that after she was gone, her daughter stayed in their sagging old bungalow for three days without telling anyone what had happened. The mailman came and saw that last week’s letters were still there, and he told Mr. Hest at the corner store, who told Mrs. Hest, who told the minister’s wife, and soon enough, a crowd had gathered before the house where the witch and her daughter lived. Someone was brave enough, at last, to confirm that the witch was dead. Then there was the orphan to be dealt with. Obviously, we could not have someone coming down from the city and placing her; she was to be our witch someday. But no one wanted her in their home. At last, they drew straws, and my father got unlucky. The witch’s daughter was to be, for a while at least, my foster sister.

The witch’s daughter had almost no possessions. Dragging a mostly empty carpetbag into the bedroom we were sharing—my bedroom, formerly—she slowly laid everything out on the floor. An aluminum lunch tin, lacy yellow socks, a Barbie doll with ragged-looking black hair. We were fifteen, much too old for Barbie dolls by then, and I was embarrassed on her behalf.

When she was finished unpacking, she stood motionless in front of her belongings. She hadn’t said a word since she’d been left at our front door by the minister’s wife, not even when she saw the sprigs of camphor nailed to my bedroom walls. Camphor for sense and sweetness, my mother had said as she secured the bundles with twine. Camphor was supposed to soothe women’s problems; I suppose being a witch’s daughter is a problem peculiar to women, but I still couldn’t figure what my mother thought a remedy for menstrual cramps was going to do if the witch’s daughter made up her mind to work a spell on me while I slept.

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