The Dark Issue 106 by Matthew Cheney

Author:Matthew Cheney
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: dark fantasy, fantasy, horror, magazine
Publisher: Prime Books
Published: 2024-02-29T19:41:37+00:00

Kristi DeMeester is the author of Such a Pretty Smile, Beneath, and the short fiction collection Everything That’s Underneath. Her short stories have appeared in Black Static, The Dark, among others, and she’s had stories included in several volumes of Ellen Datlow’s The Best Horror of the Year, Year’s Best Weird Fiction, and Stephen Jones’ Best New Horror. She is at work on her next novel. Find her online at www.kristidemeester.com.

Marshman

by Sara Omer

Before the archaeologists contacted you—a cryptozoologist—they initially reached out to an entomologist, since the first creature appeared to be, mostly, an insect. The peat bog in Sumpit had brined an unusual body, preserving the chitin wings and exoskeleton just as well as similar anaerobic environments in other parts of the world conserved hair, skin, primitive wooden tools, and leather.

Sumpit, a sprawl of swampland, is accessible by dirt roads that your GPS loses signal on. The area is colloquially referred to by locals as Some Pit or Summit. It’s a swampy basin that retains runoff from the surrounding farmland. Though its epicenter is the point located at the lowest altitude for hundreds of miles, massive clouds of bog gas sometimes flash in the sky, contributing to an illusion of mountain peaks of Olympic proportions.

There aren’t many forks diverging the road, so you feel confident rolling the rental car forward. You keep your eyes peeled for the tour company welcome center, anticipating its emergence behind every copse of tupelo trees. Herons pay you little attention as they wade through duckweed, stepping around cypress knees that jut from the water like woody stalagmites.

At a decrepit building, you cut the engine in the mostly empty lot and shove all your supplies into your pack. A planeboat bobs atop the water, tethered at a half-sunken dock. Swamp grass clutches the rusted metal sledge. The propeller blades shriek in metallic tongues as you and others step onto the flat-bottomed craft and arrange your gear. You adjust the strap digging into your neck, pop open your camera’s shutter, fiddle with the aperture, snap.

A scaley tail flicks away into the reeds, presumably a dinosaur of an alligator startled at your flash. The planeboat jolts forward, slicing through the murky water. Skeletal tendrils of mangrove roots brush the sides of the swamp boat, clawing the cage that houses the air propeller. High in the canopy above, animals shriek and shake branches. You try taking another photo, but darkness is quickly falling.

When your camera will be found, weeks later, and the film developed, a stranger will find the image blurred, an unrecognizable smudge of sallow moon and shadowed tree limb.

As the boat rocks over the marsh, you survey the other expedition members. One person’s pack bulges with climbing equipment. Someone else shoulders a rifle. Usually when you’re called away from the university out into the field, there’s a shoddy camera crew filming a docuseries. You’re often accompanied by other “special” guests: psychic mediums and superstitious fanatic conspiracy theorists, hapless fools who swear they were abducted by aliens, see ghosts, or encountered bigfoot.

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