The Dark Issue 79 by Suzanne J. Willis

Author:Suzanne J. Willis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: dark fantasy, fantasy, horror, magazine
Publisher: Sean Wallace
Published: 2021-11-17T19:49:28+00:00

Matthew Cheney is the author of Blood: Stories (Black Lawrence Press) and Modernist Crisis and the Pedagogy of Form (Bloomsbury Academic). His fiction has been published by Nightmare Magazine, Conjunctions, Weird Tales, One Story, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and elsewhere. He lives in New Hampshire.

The Last Sound You Hear

by Steve Rasnic Tem

Connor’s grandfather leaned over him, cracked lips making a tortured “O.” In that long moment all he could hear was the depthless pulse of the world.

His grandfather wasn’t a mean man. He never raised his voice to Connor, and he certainly never raised his hand. The old man supplied his grandson with unsettling lessons in the strange and the obscure, the dark and the grim. “I want to prepare you,” his grandad said. Exactly for what, Connor was never told.

Distant and isolated on the western edge of their desert town, his grandfather’s house lay partially sunk into red rock and sand, a quiet retreat at the end of a dusty lane. Connor liked that he could hear no traffic here, except the occasional stretched rush of a plane far overhead, punctuated by some sleepless coyote’s yip. His grandfather said there were other sounds to be heard further out in the desert, but Connor wasn’t yet ready for them.

The house had three outside doors: a front door which made a terrible screech, a screened back door full of holes, and a side door into the parlor which Grandad called the coffin door. “After I die that’s how they’ll get my coffin in and out. But don’t let your mother drag me out of here prematurely,” said with a wink. The original family home back in Massachusetts supposedly had such a door. Now his grandfather was happy to have one too. Connor’s mom scoffed when he shared the tale, advising him to take Grandad’s stories with a pinch of salt.

Starting when he was twelve Connor rode his bike every Saturday to his grandad’s house. They had lunch and hung out. Hanging out meant a demonstration would take place, sometimes an experiment, always another lesson.

“That whole house is an experiment!” his mother said. True enough it was packed with projects, lab equipment and electrical gadgets, amateur taxidermy and yellowing charts on the walls, dusty books and art supplies and specimens in dirty jars and all of it disorganized, jumbled together, filling every room, covering the floor. Things rustled in Grandad’s house, even though he didn’t own any pets. Connor could hear a curious stirring whenever he visited, but he could never locate the source. “A fire trap!” Mom cried. “We shouldn’t let you go over there!”

But she did. Connor’s parents felt sorry for him, and he took advantage. The trip was never easy. Connor was frail and had to take his time. He’d been in the hospital for so many procedures he couldn’t remember everything wrong or done to him, not that his parents shared everything the doctors said. His lungs had issues and his heart wasn’t right. He tried not to think about it.

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