The Dark Issue 16: The Dark, #16

By Pear Nuallak, Stephen Graham Jones, Cassandra Khaw and V.H. Leslie

Each month The Dark brings you the best in dark fantasy and horror! Edited by award winning editor Sean Wallace and brought to you by Prime Books, this issue includes two all-new stories and two reprints:

“With Her Diamond Teeth” by Pear Nuallak
“The Spindly Man” by Stephen Graham Jones (reprint)
“Some Breakable Things” by Cassandra Khaw
“Ghosts” by V.H. Leslie (reprint)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Prime Books
• Release date: Aug 24, 2016
• ISBN: 9781536549362

Book preview

THE DARK

Issue 16 • September 2016

With Her Diamond Teeth by Pear Nuallak

The Spindly Man by Stephen Graham Jones

Some Breakable Things by Cassandra Khaw

Ghost by V.H. Leslie

Cover Art: The Dollmaker by Vincent Chong

ISSN 2332-4392.

Edited by Sean Wallace.

Cover design by Garry Nurrish.

Ebook design by Neil Clarke.

Copyright © 2016 by Prime Books.

www.thedarkmagazine.com

With Her Diamond Teeth

by Pear Nuallak

It begins with a girl in the water.

My stilt-legged home rises from a dark, slow-moving river; in it, I learnt to swim, buoyed by coconuts. For much of my nineteen years its murky depths held no fear.

In the water there’s fish, in the fields there’s rice. In the kingdom of Ayutthaya, none of us are left wanting; the abundance of water criss-crossing our land yields life.

But when I saw glittering jaws open and water closing over my sister’s face, the fact of death’s proximity dropped into my lap. I cradle this knowledge, warm it in my palms, move my lips as if in prayer: she is taken, she is gone.

Girls are always being taken, it seems. Within a temple’s sanctuary, you peer at the murals, painted women stolen by painted men, each face serene as praphodhisat. Safe at home, you sit with jostling family, the storyteller filling your ears with tales of heroes and brides.

You know what brides look like, of course: sculpted in beauty, skin smooth and lambent, hair long as a river and lustrous as silk. I’ve looked at women, wondering if they might be my bride—an impossibility, and in any case I’m ill-suited to marriage.

Once I spent an afternoon reflecting upon this. Lamentations on the irregularities of my face prompted Taphaothong to offer sisterly encouragement: You’d better die and be reborn. Her touch was soft, her voice was tart. My little sister always knew just the thing to say. She was lovely as a crow, sharp-eyed, dark, cackling.

But when my sister was taken, she was unexpectedly quiet. We were in the river with our entourage when I heard the slap of flesh-on-flesh. I looked over to Taphaothong and admired the bright, leech-thinned blood of her shoulder.

The water roared. My sister turned.

A crocodile strikes before a person can react. The screams always come too late, choked with blood and saliva and river water.

But this creature gave us long moments of its time. We saw a beast rising from the deep, we saw its remarkable size, the gleam of liquid eyes, skin and teeth fortified with a multitude of raw diamonds, and we said nothing, for in that moment we knew awe.

It gazed at Taphaothong, nictictating, still and silent, utterly reptilian. It struck, all speed and muscle, her whole, limp self held aloft in its jaws for just a moment before they went down into the water.

Once the ripples stilled, the screaming began. There’s one scream in particular I recall, startlingly bestial, like a wounded water buffalo. Against the panicked calls of my name and hers, it was a noise unmoored from language, from reason. Servants can be such a noisy lot.

This is how it is done: when my sister is taken, I’m given as a bride.

Father, the governor of our town, is a man vigilant of his property; naturally, he’s troubled by news of a man-eater snatching his daughter. The creature must be slain and Taphaothong’s corpse returned. He offers a share in his possessions (one daughter, some money) to the man who succeeds.

As a girl now sisterless but marriageable, you understand how to reimagine my likeness: a face pure and lovely in grief, lustrated with each beat of wet lashes; a mouth full and solemn, requiring kisses begun with assuaging sweetness and finishing in salt.

I’m not bitter. How could I, when bridehood so becomes me? I should be withered with sorrow but I’m a lotus in full bloom.

Fear and uncertainty courses through the whole town. A man-eater in the water whose diamond fang wards him against harm, unstoppable death lurking in that which gives life.

My world shrinks to the walls of the house. Mother approves. She’s convinced I’ll be wed, desperate for order and happiness in a time of despair. After all, a daughter is merely a condition which permits bridehood.

My hands want only to drive sharp instruments into fabric and flesh. Embroidery and fruit carving, those feminine arts, satisfy my needs. There’s