Issue Twelve: Candlelit Curses

ISSUE TWELVE

WINTER 2025

CANDLELIT CURSES HAUNTED WORDS PRESS

Haunted Words Press Issue Twelve: Candlelit Curses

Published digitally December 2025

Edited by Halle Merrick

Cover artwork by Ting Loh-Trerise: Descend

This magazine is copyright Haunted Words Press Copyright to all work is retained by the original contributor

Any resemblance to real events or persons contained in the fiction work herein is entirely coincidental. Views and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the editor.

Twitter: @haunted_press Instagram: @hauntedwordspress BlueSky: @hauntedwordspress.bsky.social Website: www.hauntedwordspress.com Contact: hauntedwordspress@gmail.com

CONTENTS 3

Introduction Middle Grade My Candlelit Supper William Draycott

Witch-dinner Esmé Laura Forster

Back with a Splat Hannah Simpson

The Haunting Kundhana Kangala

A Kid for Christmas TMD

Season of the Witch Thomas Wilby

A Blessing and A Curse Ute Orgassa

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MG | GOTHIC | SECRETS

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MG | FOLKLORE | MAGIC

9

MG | FANTASY | WITCH

10

MG | HORROR | HAUNTING

14

MG | HORROR | INNOCENCE

16

MG | HORROR | WITCHES

36

MG | MAGICAL REALISM | WITCHCRAFT

37

Young Adult The Release

YA | HORROR | METAMORPHOSIS

40

YA | LITERARY | LOVE

44

YA | HORROR | ESCAPE

45

YA | HORROR | OCCULT

59

YA | TRAGEDY | ELEGY

63

YA | HORROR | DEMONS

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YA | FANTASY | TRANSFORMATION

75

YA | LITERARY | REGRET

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YA | HORROR | FAMILY

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Tetiana Yatsechko-Blazhenko

one candle at midnight Yuu Ikeda

Bad Night Will Alexander

Violet Delights Cece Daise

Requiem of Willows That Weep Gabriel Nightingale

High School Superlatives Danielle Robertson

The Candle Kept the Beast Jaydell

Curses of Convenience Livia Jayne

To Be Good Lottie Keen

Author & Artist Bios

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INTRODUCTION It’s that time of year again. The trees have lost their leaves, the wind has frozen and whispered chills into your bones, and the winter issue of Haunted Words Press is upon you once more. Let’s start this off as we do with all issues - with a great big ghostly thank you, to you. Yes, you! You, who contributed to this issue. You, who reads each and every piece we publish. You, who has never read anything we’ve written before but has found this issue and decided to give it a read one wintery night. Thank you. Your wonderfulness, your words, your art, your time, your love, is what sustains us, it’s what keep Haunted Words going, and as we welcome to this, our twelfth digital issue, our fourth year of publishing, we are still, as always, eternally grateful to you and for you.

Now then. Issue Twelve is a collection of work from seventeen stunningly talented contributors across the globe, who’ve made the (correct) decision to home their work with us. Some of them we welcome back to Haunted Words, some of them are new, all of them are fantastically talented, as always. There’s short stories, flash fiction, and poetry, all brought together under the theme ‘candlelit curses’ with a gorgeous piece of cover art, all for middle grade and young adult readers. We’ve got rituals gone awry, centuries-old curses come to fruition, fantasy worlds, wicked witches and wandering wolves, and a little bit of family bonding.

We are beyond thrilled to welcome you to this, our 2025 winter issue, and we hope you adore it just as much as we do. We think you will, it’s pretty good, if we do say so ourselves. So, without further ado, we welcome you to turn the page, and fall headfirst into Issue Twelve: Candlelit Curses.

- Halle Merrick, Editor in Chief

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MY CANDLELIT SUPPER WILLIAM DRAYCOTT MG | GOTHIC | SECRETS Within – and in-between – odd places such as under eaves, between ladders, below spandrels, and the space in the cracks beneath doors, exist the strangeways; seen seldom by adults who stand always at right angles and never at wrong ones. On hands, knees, and feet, children go regularly to these places, seen only from floors, upside down, or from periscopes. Should it be any wonder, then, that children often see things their parents do not? Feel things that go unfelt by busy-minded grown-ups?

If you looked deep inside those awkward spaces, at odd angles long forgotten, you might find candlelight flickering. What would you do if you did? Would you follow it?

I did, when I was a boy.

I looked into the flame and went with it for a while. I can’t tell you how. I can’t tell you why. I can’t tell you how I got there, or how I got back — only that I was invited.

I was traveling down a darkened corridor, carrying a much needed candle; it glowed meekly in the black. Old portraits lined the walls. Cobwebs stuck to my hair and clothes.

The carpet was worn and red, beneath my feet, guiding me through the house.

I passed by room after room filled with furniture draped in disintegrating sheets. The door at the end was ajar; amber light flickered around its edges.

I stepped inside.

4

The ballroom was huge and alive with the dance of a thousand fluttering flames on a thousand wicks. The room was aglow in their light. An oaken table brimming with candles, stretched out before me, laden with several place settings of silver cutlery and delicate bone china. Huge copper serving dishes overflowed with meat, sweets and fruits. Grand wooden chairs lined the table, holding piles of dusty rags.

I reached out to take a peach, and a voice from behind startled me.

‘She likes us to wait until everyone’s here.’

I jumped and turned around.

A girl – scrawny, gaunt, with pale, watery eyes.

‘Who does? And who are you?’

‘I’m a guest. I wore my favourite dress,’ she said and gave a twirl. ‘Did you not know you were coming?’

I looked down at my pyjamas. ‘I guess not.’

‘Next time, wear something nicer. She likes us to be delightful.’

‘Who likes us to be delightful?’

The girl looked at me as if I had told her the tooth fairy was real. She pointed upwards.

‘The lady of the house.’

The ceiling stretched abnove us in a vast void beyond the reach of the candelight. My

5

eyes strained to see - a pale shape shifted around up there.

A beautiful voice filled the banquet hall.

Creeping and reaching go shadows, cast fleeting by candlelight’s quickening tongues.

I gather myself in the corners above; below, in the black, you assemble Never noticed, like shadows, Never seen, I won’t hide from the flickering wick of your candlelight guide.

A woman, pale and wondrous, slowly emerged from the gloom. Her smile was warm, but her white lips remained still as she sang.

Wisps of silk that I spin array all around Webbed curtains drift listless on breeze — Lightly catching on shoulders and head tops, which tickle and itch with unease.

My webbing is playful My webbing is tricksy — and jealous, possessive, and mean.

Tonight they will dine, together you’ll find, my friends, my adorers, and me.

Pile in side by side, by dark they arrive, in singlets, by twos and by threes.

By night we’ll be dining — my candlelit supper is thriving:

6

my sweet guests in the firelight; and me.

The air had grown sweet, heavy and cloying. The copper platters steamed faintly.

Beneath the rags, something shifted; a sigh, a whimper.

I adjusted my eyes to focus on the shape of her as she entered. Candles illuminated her entirely. The curves of her pale torso melted into the black chitinous body of a gigantic black spider. Slender legs tentatively manoeuvred her shifting mass down the walls above us. Her lips parted, revealing needle-like fangs as she extended her human-like arms in a gesture of greeting.

I turned to the girl, whose arms were outstretched to the creature as if she wanted to be picked up — her eyes were wet with tears.

‘She takes a little of what’s inside all children, until the flame sputters out. She’s so, so hungry.’

I looked at her, my mouth agape.

‘Go,’ she said. ‘Before you start to like it here.’

Beneath the rags on the chairs, shapes writhed, thrashed and moaned. The lady was nearly upon us.

I ran.

I closed my eyes and I ran.

... and I didn’t look back.

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I found myself back in my bedroom, lying – as I had been – with my head flopped over the side of my bed, viewing the window pane from an irregular angle. I sat up and rubbed my neck. It was sore from lying in that funny spot.

Only it burned where two bumps had raised — two bumps which felt remarkably like a spider bite.

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WITCH-DINNER ESMÉ LAURA FORSTER MG | FOLKLORE | MAGIC The madcap mountain Chantilly atop the choc afloat, Mallow pom poms bounced like buoys amidst the sprinkle boats, Chocolate whirlpool, lick the spoon-spoon, dote and dote, and dote.

The little kids had chub but now the witches don the bloat.

Mind is melting in the hot-pot, Hansell left no crumbs, They filled the mug, they filled their mouths, the witches filled their tums, In the hot-pot-cauldron floating now are Hansell-thumbs, The foolish know what wisemen don’t: the fun the fun the fun!

Chocolate, chocolate, choccy-choo, chew, chew, Chocolate, chocolate I love you, you I eat you in my evening stew-stew A whisker pinch of kitty’s liver, A sprinkle spritz of cacao zest, I love the chocolate but chocolates best when paired with human flesh.

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BACK WITH A SPLAT HANNAH SIMPSON MG | FANTASY | WITCH I love my grandma. I really do, she’s probably my most favourite person. I just hate her house. It’s a cottage in the middle of nowhere, Port Haven, and it’s so creepy. There are taxidermy beavers and badgers and one big bear lining the walls. There’s moss growing on the windowsill, her spice rack is really a potion rack and the floor is littered with the feathers of her pet crow Morrigan, who, by the way, is always squawking!

I hate to say so, especially when she’s been so kind to me, taking me in for months while my mum’s been in the hospital, but I just cannot stand her house. That’s why, while Grandma locked herself in the kitchen, and blasted her old-timey chanting music, I slipped outside. Just for some fresh air, for an escape from those beady-eyed badgers watching me at every turn.

Grandma’s garden is much prettier than her house, with glittering windchimes hung from every tree and tied to the gazebo, and a nice big vegetable patch teeming with potatoes and carrots and thyme. There are mosaic tiles of deep maroon like stepping stones, leading all the way to the koi fish pond. And when I stepped my way over to the koi fish pond, I peered over to see… nothing.

It was the strangest thing, there wasn’t a single fish in the pond. There were definitely fish there last time I was here, that was only a couple months ago. Grandma hadn’t mentioned getting rid of them. Maybe it was just the dark? I thought, and so I leaned further over to try and catch a glimpse of the fish in the darkness, but I leaned too far and I slipped on the edge and fell backwards into the mud with a splat.

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I pushed myself up and brushed myself off and when I looked up I wasn’t in Grandma’s garden and I wasn’t in my world. I was in a forest of tangled trees which watched me with big blinking eyes, and the moon shone down a glowering red light. And weirdest of all, there were no owls, no crows, no mockingbirds, no worms, no badgers, no beavers, no squirrels, there was nothing. There wasn’t even the hint of them. No smell, no sound.

It was as if the world was completely still.

And then, I heard the thud, thud, thudding of something far off in the distance. And then, the thud, thud, thudding of something much closer.

I turned to see a horde of great big drooling beasts running towards me. They were covered in rough, matted fur and they had three big tusks hanging from their mouths to complement their three big blinking eyes.

I was awe struck for just a second, and then I remembered that these great big drooling beasts were running towards me. So, I ran too. Ran and ran through the living trees, until I came upon Grandma’s house.

Or, almost Grandma’s house. Except, this house didn’t have a garden. This garden only had weeds. Black, coughing weeds. And this house had eyes. They watched as I approached the house. They watched as I approached the door. And when I knocked, they blinked. All three hundred and forty five eyes. All at once.

Then, the door clicked open.

I walked in to find the house swarmed with owls, crows, mockingbirds, worms, badgers, beavers, squirrels, goats, and goblins. Koi fish swam through the air. In the centre of all the bustling, squawking chaos, was a woman. The most beautiful woman. With long slick black hair and pale freckled skin.

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She was wearing a grand feathery gown and her hair was styled like an olden starlet, like the ones Grandma and I would watch. The ones where women fainted at horses and killed men with their lipstick. She had flaming eyes, speckled with flickers of gold. She was also looking straight at me.

I turned to run back out and take my chances with the beasts, but with a click of her fingers the door was locked and all of the creatures in the cottage had turned their attention to me. I was stuck, with her staring right at me with those flaming eyes. It was like staring into the sun; so beautiful and so painful altogether.

She floated towards me. Her feathery sleeves swaying as she did. ‘Come, child. Let us speak privately,’ She said, as she grabbed my hand and led me up the stairs and to my room. Well, not my room. What would have been my room, in my world. This was more of a barn than a room, with hay bales, tufts of straw and nesting paper coating the floor.

‘What were those things? Out there! They were, they were-’

‘Big drooling beasts, yes. They are a quite peaceful kind.’ The Lady interrupted me with a soothing hand on my shoulder.

‘Didn’t look like that to me!’ I said in a huff, backing away from her and almost slipping on the straw.

She steadied me. ‘Then, look closer my dear. They were on their daily stampede through the forest. A morale boosting activity.’

‘Didn’t boost my morale much.’

‘Child, why have you come here?’ she asked. Her voice dripped with honey and her eyes dripped with fire.

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‘I didn’t mean to, It was an accident!’

‘Ah, not yet then. I will send you home now, child,’

‘What?’ I tried to ask, but before I could, the lady swooped her foot underneath mine so that I tripped over onto my back with a splat. A splat?

*

When I got up, I found I was back at my Grandma’s house. The kitchen was still locked with the music blasting.

I went upstairs and started to get ready for bed, and when I opened up my bag I found a sleeping, drooling baby beast tucked away between my fairytale books and my apple tarts. The beast was snoring and cuddling itself around one of my apple tarts as if it was a teddy bear.

I looked towards my bed where Mr Binkle, my teddy bear, was lying, and I knew there wasn’t really any other choice.

I packed Mr Binkle’s into my bag for the baby beast to cuddle up to and fished some shinpads out of my drawer.

Then, I fell backwards with a splat.

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THE HAUNTING KUNDHANA KANAGALA MG | HORROR | HAUNTING I am not a story.

I am the silence between screams.

I am the breath you hold when the floor creaks and no one should be home.

I do not want to be remembered.

I want to be regretted.

I want my name to taste like ash when you whisper it in the dark.

I want my words to rot inside you.

To fester.

To breed.

To become something you can’t cut out without bleeding.

I want to be the shadow that doesn’t move when you do.

The reflection that blinks when you don’t.

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I want your dreams to choke on me.

To wake you gasping, clawing at sheets that feel too much like skin.

I want to be the reason you never feel alone even when you are.

I want my voice to echo in your bones long after your body forgets how to be warm.

I want to be the thing you buried and still hear scratching.

I want to be the haunting you begged to forget But never will.

Because I never leave.

I never fade.

I never die.

I become you.

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A KID FOR CHRISTMAS TMD MG | HORROR | INNOCENCE In the remote, snow-choked village of Ghrimwald—nestled like a forgotten secret between the jagged teeth of the northern Carpathians—winter came not with warning, but with vengeance. The first frost arrived in late October, weeks before the solstice, creeping across windowpanes like skeletal fingers clawing from the other side of the glass. Trees groaned beneath a weight they hadn’t carried in decades. Smoke from chimneys twisted unnaturally, curling back toward the earth as if afraid to rise.

Children, wide-eyed and shivering despite layers of wool, whispered after bedtime of strange sounds in the night—deep, rhythmic thuds that shook the snow from pine boughs, leaving behind prints too wide for wolves, too deliberate for bears. Not deer.

Never deer. These tracks bore the mark of something older. Hungrier.

The elders—those weathered souls whose eyes held memories of famines and silent nights—would cross themselves at the mention, repeating the same warning like a prayer:

‘When the air tastes like iron… he walks.’

And that night, as if in reply, every fire in Ghrimwald sank low— as though even the flames feared to burn too brightly.

*

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At the heart of the village stood St Hedwig’s Chapel, its stones blackened by centuries of smoke and sorrow. The bell tower leaned slightly, bowed beneath the strain of time, and within it hung a bell forged not of bronze, but of an alloy said to contain melted-down church silver and the teeth of repentant sinners. The villagers called it Die Stille Glocke the Silent Bell.

Legend claimed it would ring only when the veil between worlds grew thin enough for darkness to step through.

It had not tolled in over a hundred years. Not since the Great Winter of 1825, when three children vanished without a trace and the snow turned crimson near the well.

But on the third night of the early freeze, as the wind shrieked through the pines like a chorus of lost souls, the bell rope - dry-rotted, brittle - began to tremble.

No hand touched it.

No wind stirred it from below.

And yet…

Bong.

A single, shuddering note rolled across the village - deep enough to rattle teeth, slow enough to echo in the marrow.

At the edge of the forest, something stirred.

And from the throat of the black woods came a reply not a howl, not a growl, but a low, guttural chime.

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As if chains were being dragged across frozen bones.

Little Ilsa Kruger was seven winters old, with hair the colour of winter wheat and a laugh like snow sliding off a roof. She vanished on the third night, just after curfew. Her mother, Marta, had tucked her in with a kiss and a whispered carol. When she checked at midnight, the bed was smooth, the covers neatly drawn, the porcelain doll still propped against the pillow.

Only the window held a new signature: frost etched into the unmistakable shape of a forked hoof - steaming faintly in the cold.

By dawn, the entire village was out with torches and hounds. They combed the forest for miles, shouting Ilsa’s until their throats burned raw.

Nothing.

Only a woven basket - crafted from river reeds and bound with black twine - found half-buried in a drift near the old birch grove

Inside: a single lock of blonde hair, tied neatly with red thread.

And on the snow beside it – the faint impression of a child-sized handprint…

frozen solid.

*

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That evening, the tavern—normally a place of warmth and gossip—sat in trembling silence. The fire burned low, as if remembering the night before. At last, old Henrik Voss, the innkeeper whose face resembled cured leather, broke the hush.

‘Krampus,’ he rasped, fingers tightening around his mug. ‘Not the masked fool they parade in city markets. Not the drunkard’s jest at Yuletide. The real one. The punisher.’

He leaned closer, breath fogging in the air.

‘Saint Nicholas carries gifts. Krampus carries scales. And this time… he didn’t come for naughty children.’

A woman near the back whispered, ‘Then why?’

Henrik’s eyes darkened.

‘Because something worse than sin sleeps beneath our feet. Something we buried.

Something he was meant to guard.’

No one spoke after that.

Outside, the wind began to keen like a grieving mother.

*

The manor stood atop Gallow’s Ride, a crumbling relic of baronial arrogance, its windows shuttered since the plague year. Yet tonight, one window glowed—a sickly, flickering amber that pulsed like a heartbeat. Drawn by dread and duty, a dozen villagers climbed the slope, boots crunching on ice-laced stone.

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Halfway up, chains rattled in the fog—not from the manor, but from above, as though dragged across the sky itself.

Then, against the bruised moon, a silhouette passed: towering, crooked-horned, shoulders hunched beneath a shaggy pelt that stank of wet earth and burnt hair.

In one hand, a birch switch, knotted with red ribbon and teeth.

In the other, a blade—black, narrow, and cold as a starless sky.

It wasn’t made to cut flesh.

It severed hope.

Stripped it clean, like bark from a dying tree.

*

At dawn, they found the trail.

Hoofprints—massive, cloven, steaming faintly—led from the manor gate down toward Blackwater Lake. Between each step, dark pools marked where something heavy had paused, dripping. Not blood. Not exactly. Something thicker. It smelled of copper and frost.

At the lake’s edge, Ilsa’s boots sat neatly side by side, as though she’d removed them before stepping onto the ice.

But the prints did not end there.

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They continued—across the frozen surface—as if the lake itself bowed to receive their maker.

And then…

Nothing.

Mid-lake, the trail simply ceased. The ice remained unbroken. Untouched.

Yet the villagers knew: Something had gone through.

Father Anselm, the village priest whose faith had long ago calcified into ritual, met them at the chapel door. His hands trembled as he unlocked the forbidden chest beneath the altar. Inside lay a scroll wrapped in wolf pelt, sealed with black wax stamped with a cloven hoof.

‘The founding families,’ he began, voice hollow, ‘made a pact in 1725. A bargain with… him. Prosperity. Protection from war and famine. In exchange, every hundredth winter, one child—pure of heart, unblemished by sin—would be given. A ‘gift’ to the dark that guards the boundary.’

He unrolled the parchment.

Names, fading with age, rippled down the page.

The last line was blank.

Waiting.

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‘The chapel was built to seal the pact,’ Anselm whispered. ‘They thought stone and scripture would dismiss it. But oaths like this…’

He lifted his gaze, eyes wet and terrified.

‘…they don’t expire. They wait.’

This was the hundredth winter.

And Krampus had come to collect.

*

That night, the moon hung low—so close it seemed to brush the treetops, its face swollen and crimson like an open wound in the sky.

Krampus walked the village streets openly, chains slithering behind him like serpents made of frost. At his side, in the woven basket, sat Ilsa. Silent. Her eyes wide and glassy, her breath drifting in pale plumes. She did not cry. Did not struggle. She simply watched, as though already dreaming of a world beneath the ice.

Doors slammed. Shutters bolted. Candles were snuffed in fear.

Only one figure remained in the square.

Marta Kruger.

Barefoot in the snow.

Holding a single beeswax candle.

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Its flame did not flicker.

It burned steady—blue-tinged at the edges— as though fueled by something far older than wax.

*

Marta didn’t plead. She didn’t scream.

Instead, she spoke words no villager had heard in generations—words the Church had forbidden. Words that tasted of ash and elderberry and blood spilled beneath oak trees.

‘Take me,’ she said, her voice ringing clear as the Silent Bell. ‘Not her. I offer my breath, my years, my name. Let her forget this night. Let her live.’

The candle flared—not with warmth, but with a cold, white fire that cast no shadow.

The wind stopped.

The chains fell still.

Even the moon seemed to hold its breath.

Krampus paused.

His horned head tilted.

From beneath the tangled pelts came a sound—not a growl, not a sigh, but the hush of winter accepting a debt.

Slowly, he lowered the blade.

Nodded once –

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a judgment passed.

Then turned, chains rattling softly now, and walked back into the forest—

the basket empty at his side.

*

They found Ilsa at sunrise, curled beneath the Silent Bell, wrapped in her nightgown, shivering but alive. Her hair—once gold—had turned bone-white overnight, like frost given form. She never spoke of what she saw.

But sometimes, on still nights, she will stare toward the treeline and whisper,

‘He’s still watching.’

The villagers now bind the bell rope in iron every November 1st. They keep a candle burning in every window from dusk until dawn, all through the Yule season.

Not for God. Not even for Saint Nicholas.

For light— because light, they’ve learned, tempers evil faster than any prayer.

And though the frost no longer tastes of iron…

…some nights, when the moon hangs low and breath turns to steam in the air…

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a clatter of chains still echoes from the edge of the woods.

Because Krampus does not forgive.

He only waits.

And Ghrimwald knows— the next hundred years are already counting down.

*

Ilsa Kruger did not speak for seventeen days after her return.

She ate little. Slept less. Stared at windowpanes as though expecting another face in the reflection. The villagers treated her with cautious reverence—some as a miracle, others as a warning. Children were told not to play too near her house, lest her silence prove contagious.

But on the eighteenth night, beneath a waxing gibbous moon, Ilsa walked to the chapel alone.

She laid her bare palm against the iron-bound bell rope and whispered a single word:

‘Soon.’

No one heard her but the wind.

And the wind told the trees.

And the trees told the snow.

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*

By late December, something impossible happened:

The frost began to melt.

Not with the slow mercy of spring, but in jagged, feverish patches—as though the earth itself had begun to sweat. Puddles formed overnight, steaming faintly, smelling of wet iron and crushed pine needles. Wells ran warm. Livestock grew listless, eyes glassy and pupils blown wide, as if they’d glimpsed something staring back at them from the water troughs.

Old Henrik, the innkeeper, was the first to notice the birds had stopped singing. They had not fled—only fallen silent.

As if warned not to draw attention.

Then came the dreams.

Every villager, from cradle to deathbed, dreamed the same thing:

A child’s hand rising from beneath the ice of Blackwater Lake.

Not Ilsa’s.

A different child— hair black as coal, eyes like polished river stones.

The child mouthed two words, over and over:

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‘He’s lying.’

*

On New Year’s Eve, another basket appeared.

Not at the edge of the woods— but on the steps of the chapel.

Wrapped in birch bark.

Tied with a lock of white hair.

Inside lay a small wooden doll, crudely carved, its face smooth and eyeless. But its hands were clenched into fists…

And between them, a note written in ash and melted snow:

‘The pact was broken.

One taken. None given.

Now the debt doubles.’

The priest burned the note at once.

But the doll?

It would not burn.

They buried it deep in the churchyard.

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By morning, it sat on Marta Kruger’s doorstep.

*

Ilsa started drawing in the margins of hymnals— not just the horned figure the villagers feared, but a second presence.

A tall man in tattered bishop’s robes, his face featureless save for two sunken hollows where eyes should be.

She named him:

‘The Hollow Saint.’

‘He walks with Krampus,’ she whispered to her mother one night, her voice thin as ice.

‘But he doesn’t punish the wicked. He replaces them.’

Marta tried to dismiss it as trauma.

Then young Tomas Feller vanished.

Gone from his bed.

No frost on the glass.

No hoofprints in the snow.

Only a single birch leaf –

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desiccated, and impossibly green— resting on his pillow.

And from within the chapel, the Silent Bell rang twice— though no rope moved.

*

Driven by terror, Father Anselm descended into the catacombs beneath St. Hedwig’s—a place sealed since 1825.

There, behind a wall of cracked slate, he found not bones…

…but records.

Dozens of ledgers, bound in human skin, detailing every ‘gift’ given over the centuries.

But the final entry was not from 1725.

It was dated 1625.

And beneath it, in ink so fresh it still glistened, someone had written: ‘The first child was never taken.

The first child refused.

And what refused… remains.’

As Anselm finished reading aloud, the ground trembled.

From below came a sound

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like stone grinding against bone.

And then—

a child’s laughter.

Cold.

Familiar.

Not Ilsa’s.

Older.

Hungrier.

*

The truth unraveled like rotten thread:

The original pact had not been broken by Marta’s sacrifice.

It had been broken centuries earlier—when the very first chosen child, a girl named Elke, fled into the woods and cursed Krampus.

She did not die.

She waited.

And in her waiting, She learned to wear the cold like a second skin.

She learned to become the thing that collects.

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Krampus wasn’t just a punisher.

He was a jailer.

And Elke—the first child who refused the pact— had been imprisoned beneath the village, bound in frost and silence,

fed only by the fear of those who came after.

But Marta’s act of defiance had cracked the seal.

And now…

Elke was free.

And she wanted more than one child.

She wanted all of them.

*

On the longest night of winter, every child in Ghrimwald woke at once.

Without speaking.

Without dressing.

They stepped from their homes in unison, barefoot through the snow, heading toward Blackwater Lake. Their eyes were wide, unblinking, their breath rising in perfect, silent spirals.

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The adults ran after them—shouting names, seizing arms—but the children moved as though pulled by strings of frost.

At the lake’s edge, they stopped.

And from the water, a figure ascended.

Not Krampus.

A girl in a tattered white shift, hair black as crow feathers, skin blue with cold.

She held out her hands.

‘Come,’ she whispered, her voice like cracking ice.

‘The debt is paid in song.’

And then the children began to sing—

An old carol, reshaped into something slow and scraping, each note freezing the air around them.

The lake began to open.

Marta Kruger stood at the center of it all, clutching Ilsa to her chest.

But Ilsa stepped back.

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‘No, Mama,’ she said softly. ‘It’s not him. It’s her. And she’s been here all along.’

She walked toward Elke.

The children parted around her like reeds bowing to the current.

‘You took my winter,’ Ilsa said.

‘Now I take your name.’

And she grasped Elke’s outstretched hand.

The lake erupted in white mist.

The singing ceased.

The children collapsed—unharmed, but unconscious.

When the mist settled, Elke was gone.

And Ilsa…

Ilsa stood taller.

Her white hair now veined with black.

Her eyes carried centuries.

*

Krampus returned that night— not with chains, but with silence.

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He stood at the treeline watching Ilsa as she moved among the sleeping children, tucking scarves around their necks, whispering forgotten lullabies into their ears.

He did not raise his blade.

He did not drag his chains.

Instead, he bowed—once, deeply— then vanished into the snow.

By morning, the villagers found his birch switch leaning against the chapel door, tied with a red ribbon.

A gift.

Or a warning.

*

Ilsa lives in the manor on the hill now.

The single window always glows—not with flame, but with a soft, blue-white light that turns aside blizzards and keeps the wolves circling at a respectful distance. She never ages. Never leaves.

But each Yuletide, she places a basket on every doorstep.

Not filled with coal.

Not birch switches.

A single white candle.

34

And a lock of hair— sometimes blond, sometimes black.

The villagers burn the candles through the longest nights.

They say if you listen closely, you can hear two voices in the wind now— one deep and rattling, the other soft and young—

singing an old song that keeps the true dark at bay.

But the lake remains frozen all year.

And on still nights, if you walk too close to its edge…

you might feel a small, cold hand rise from beneath the ice— not to pull you under, but to warn you.

Because the pact was never about punishment.

It was about balance.

And balance, like winter, always returns.

This year, as the first snow falls, Ilsa places a new basket at the edge of the woods… …and inside, there’s room for two.

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SEASON OF THE WITCH THOMAS WILBY MG | HORROR | WITCHES You know you’ve gone down the wrong path When you hear their cackle and laugh Scary faces in the trees A creepy chill on the breeze The witches’ cauldron bubbles and brews Mixing up poisonous strews There she stands, the menacing witch Shrieking at an unholy pitch Spiders crawl through her hair ‘I shall eat you!’ She declared Fear snatches your soul As she is ready to put you in her bowl It’s too late for you to turn back You’re already with witches’ snack

36

A BLESSING AND A CURSE UTE ORGASSA MG | MAGICAL REALISM | WITCHCRAFT It was a rainy day when Sonja realized that she didn’t want to be around Anne anymore.

The two of them had been friends for a long time. Not by choice. Their mothers were friends and whenever the moms visited, Sonja and Anne were expected to play together; to pass the time. And it had been great for a while to have someone like Anne over to play with. She was loud, she had a million ideas, and she was fun. A bright fire to Sonja’s more calm and flowing ways. Anne suggested games and Sonja followed along. Anne insisted on ice cream on hot days and got Sonja some in the bargain. And when they ended up in the same class at school, Anne had been instantly popular and had brought Sonja into that circle, even if only peripherally so. Things had been good. Well, maybe okay. Not bad, for sure.

Things changed when Sonja made friends of her own. When she didn’t have time to play the games Anne wanted. When she was too busy learning in school to do Anne any favors, and when she suggested her own games. Anne told her sweetly that she had promised things Sonja had not promised. Anne made sure Sonja got picked last for anything, and Anne delighted in not telling Sonja what the popular group was up to. It was all subtle and harmless. Each single thing Anne did was not worth mentioning, not worth thinking about. But together, the weight of all these slights and pinches pushed Sonja down. Until she was not looking forward to going to school anymore and did not want to leave the house in the afternoons either.

One day Sonja had a better grade on a school paper than Anne and after Anne sweetly

37

congratulated her on it, she made fun of Sonja during recess for only playing baby video games and not the cool ones. Anne made everyone laugh at Sonja. The laughter rang in Sonja’s ears all the way home. That evening Sonja looked out into the rain and wondered what the word friend even meant. She was confused. She was sad, and she was angry.

The angry feeling was the most surprising. Sonja decided to talk with her aunt about all of it. Her Aunt Gemma who understood her thoughts best.

Aunt Gemma listened to Sonja during her next visit. A nice cup of tea and two sympathetic eyes made Sonja feel better. ‘What do you think happened?’ asked Gemma after Sonja told her story. Muffles interrupted by demanding some pets and swishing his fluffy tail under Sonja’s nose. Sonja petted him. The cat settled.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘That is part of the problem.’

Aunt Gemma leaned back. ‘I think confusing you was part of the plan. And I also don’t think that Anne is a friend of yours.’

‘Oh,’ Sonja responded.

‘A friend is a person who is happy for you and with you, is it not?’ Aunt Gemma asked.

‘Someone who celebrates when good things happen to you and does not hold that against you. Someone who doesn’t need to outshine you and someone who does not always have to have things go their way.’

‘That makes sense,’ said Sonja.

‘Aren’t you all of those things for Anne?’

‘Yes. But she says I am not good enough.’

‘You are plenty more than good enough,’ replied her aunt. ‘Now what are we going to do

38

about the whole situation?’

Sonja had no idea. She could not avoid Anne. She could not change Anne. She could not be who Anne wanted her to be. What else was there?

Aunt Gemma lit a candle. ‘You know, we could try a little bit of magic’ she said.

Sonja perked up. She had seen her aunt work spells before. It usually involved a whole lot of concentration and something close to cooking. Sometimes it was just an incantation.

‘I would very much like that.’

Aunt Gemma wrinkled her brow. ‘What to do? I need to think on that. It should be connected to both of you. Because it affects both of you. Oh, I know!’

Sonja smiled as her aunt got a notebook out and scribbled away. The candle flickered and the flame grew. Aunt Gemma moved her hands over the paper and a glittery mist formed over the letters.

‘What will it be?’ Sonja asked.

‘I am giving you both the same words. Depending on how you live your life it will be either a blessing or a curse. Do you trust me?’

‘Yes!’ Sonja had never been so sure about anything in her life. Her aunt targeted first Anne and then Sonja and intoned, ‘May the people see you for who you really are!’

39

THE RELEASE TETIANA YATSECHKO-BLAZHENKO YA | HORROR | METAMORPHOSIS When Tina was six, her parents sent her to her grandmother in a remote village. Both were buried in work, and the girl could not be left alone.

The village was surrounded by forests. People came bу boat, sometіmes even bу plane.

For Tіna, who had no toуs except what she made from pinecones and husks, the world was alive with whіspers: bіrds sang, branches creaked, and the marshes breathed fog.

She spent most days at the priest’s house. His daughter, Halia, sixteen and kind, brushed Tina’s hair into braids and shared cherry pie. Their house stood on a hill, its walls covered with paintings, old and cracked. One haunted Tina most — a Judgment scene. At the bottom, among flames and the damned, crouched a wolf. Its painted eyes glowed white, following her no matter where she stood.

At nіght, she dreamed of the paіnting. The wolf’s jaws opened sіlently, іts paws scraped agaіnst the canvas, as іf begging to be let out.

One afternoon, after Halіa went to fetch water, Tіna saw the аttіc lаdder left open. She clіmbed. The flоor was littered with walnuts; the аіr smelled of dust. Then two lights appeared іn the dark. Eyes.

A wolf stepped forward, its fur bristling, its teeth glinting.

Tina stumbled down the ladder and fled. All night she twisted under her blanket. Why

40

didn’t it bite?

The next day she returned.

‘You came back,’ the wolf said.

She froze. The words came from its muzzle, guttural yet human.

‘I don’t eat children,’ it rasped. ‘I was a man once. A hunter. Ingvar. But I was cursed.’

Tina clutched the ladder. ‘Cursed?’

‘The priest’s wife saw me watching her midnight rites. She bound me with fire and words. And with paint. Look at the Judgment downstairs. The wolf in the flames — that is me. Erase me, and I will be free.’

His yellow eyes held hers. ‘Only you can.’

Ingvar was waiting.

The girl did the wolf's bidding. She erased him from the painting forever.

That night, claws scratched her window. She opened it. Ingvar crouched outside. She climbed onto his back.

The marshes whispered in fog. Fireflies glowed around faces that vanished when she blinked.

‘Do you hear them?’ Ingvar asked, his voice rasping. ‘The forest wakes now that I am free.’

41

Night after night, she rode with him. He showed her hollow oaks glowing red.

Sometimes she laughed; more often she shivered.

Ingvar’s voice grew rougher. His teeth longer. His eyes blacker.

‘You freed me,’ he told her once. ‘Now you belong to me.’

Weeks passed. Then one morning her mother came to fetch her. Tina wept, clung, begged to stay, but her grandmother said nothing, only crossed herself.

Back in the city, she waited at her window. But no scratching came.

Years later, she returned. The priest’s house sagged empty. The paintings dulled. She searched the Judgment. Where the wolf had been was only a pale smear on the canvas.

That night she woke to a sound. Scratching.

The window creaked open though it was locked. A heavy breath filled the room, rank with swamp and ash. Two white eyes gleamed in the dark.

‘You set me free,’ the voice whispered. ‘And you freed me — now you'll never be free.’

The shape filled her room. It grinned with teeth that didn't stop.

Her scream never reached the night air.

Іn the mornіng, the bed by the wіndow was empty.

Her grandmother swore she had been taken іn the nіght, but no one belіeved.

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Years passed. The house rotted. The paіnting cracked. And іf you look close, at the bottom corner where the flames lіck hіgh, you wіll see not one wolf, but two.

Both with painted eyes that follow you.

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ONE CANDLE AT MIDNIGHT YUU IKEDA YA | LITERARY | LOVE at midnight, one candle shines.

to her, it's the sole warmth.

to her, it's the memory of the sole one who she used to love.

the shadow of the faint fire is her loneliness.

the swaying vague fire is her tears.

the modest fire is her last hope.

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BAD NIGHT WILL ALEXANDER YA | HORROR | ESCAPE Dust and age. That’s what the old barn smells like to me.

It sits at the far end of a grassy field, down a track that is too short to be completely safe but long enough that it doesn’t look suspicious from the road. No one would think to check in here. There's other, more obvious places to look. Like the old farm house on the corner down the road. Windows shuttered, the smashed-in door swinging in the wind. No chance. That’s the first place they’d look. It screams come and find me.

I left Jamie’s car a couple miles down the road, behind a tall bramble hedge. She’s older than me. She won’t be needing it anymore. She's been saying she’s gonna buy a new one anyway, if we get through this night.

I walked my way to the barn, then just a black splodge on the horizon, from the car.

Past cattle munching chunks out of the thin grass, revealing wet smelling mud and chalk beneath. Over the hills. Dodging cow pats. Each time a car would sail along the road, its engine screaming, I’d crouch. Hold my breath. Disappear into the grass. But now I’m here. Standing in front of the barn.

Well, calling it a barn is doing it a favour. It’s more of a frame. Four metal beams, crosshatched near the top, holding up a shallow roof. The roof looks old, like it could fall down at any moment. It looks like it's made of asbestos. I don’t know much, but I know that asbestos is bad. It gives you cancer or seizures or something. But being found is worse. So I go in, stepping over the drooping electric fence that surrounds it, just trying

45

not to breathe too much.

In the centre of the barn are piles of hay bales. Each one is packed into a neat cube and wrapped in black foul smelling plastic. It almost blocks out the smell of dust and age, but not quite. They’re stacked up one by one in a rough sort-of-pyramid. The top almost touches the asbestos roof, but the way they are stacked leaves a gap between each bale.

They’re small enough for me to crawl into. This, I decide, is a perfect place to rest. At least for a while. The gaps are the perfect size for me. I’m short. I can squeeze in there if I take my rucksack off. Hidden in the shadows, no one will see me.

But, before I climb in I stop and take a last look out over the fields. The sun is dying over the glowing lights of the village. Looking at them gives me goosebumps, makes my stomach heavy with dread. Looking at them, I want to cry. The crests of the fields are casting long dark shadows that reach out towards me. The shadows make me uneasy.

I shuck off my rucksack and stuff it deep into one of the crevices at the bottom of the stack. The packed-ground beneath it is dusty and streaks the fabric with dirt. I don’t care. I climb up into my hole and push myself deep, so that I am eaten by the shadows.

The plastic reeks. I take one last look out towards the village, where the clouds are shifting from orange to red to purple, and close my eyes. Waiting for the day to be over.

*

Spaghetti hoops are bubbling on the stove. I’m standing on a stool, stirring them with a wooden spoon so they don’t stick to the bottom of the pan. I can hear Jamie and Sophie bickering through the walls. They’re loud. I can’t hear the exact words, I’m not sure I want to, but I know they’re not nice. The toast pops and I flinch.

‘Yeah, sure…’ I hear through the crack in the door. The voice sounds venomous. I sigh,

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dish out the toast, dump some hoops on them and then sprinkle some dusty grated cheese from the fridge on top. Brown food, Mum used to call it, because it looks like a bowl of brown mush. I stand in front of the closed door to the dining room when the voices get louder. I can hear snippets through the thin door.

‘No- it’s not-’ the words sound like knocks on the door, ‘Oh get lost-’ I pull a brave face, breathe in deep and head in.

They’re sitting at the table, Jamie is at the head and Sophie is pacing at the other end of the room. When I enter they both turn and look at me and I want to shrivel away inside my skin.

‘Food’s ready,’ I say and put down their bowls on the table. I head out, grab mine and cross back to the table and start to eat without looking at either of them. This should have been their job, they’re older than me, but they’ve been too busy dealing with their own stuff that without me here they would starve to death.

The window is open, but the trees outside block most of the light from entering the room. To make up for it, they’ve lit a few candles along the table. The flickering light paints the walls in shades of gold.

‘Thank you Joshy, this looks lovely,’ Jamie says, but I can tell she’s just saying that to make me feel better. Sophie doesn’t say anything as she starts eating at the other end of the table. They’re meant to be girlfriends, but I don’t think people in relationships act like this. We sit in silence for a while, the candles on the table flicker and fizz. ‘How was school?’ Jamie asks. I say it’s the same old, and she seems content with my answer and goes back to eating. The silence stretches on.

*

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Something is outside. I can hear it rustling in the grass.

I wake staring up at the hay bales inches above my face. It's so dark. It takes my eyes a minute to adjust. All I can smell is the plastic. I lay still, straining to hear any sound. I don’t breathe. The wind is strong tonight, it’s whooshing through the barn. Whistling through the gaps in the hay bails. I can’t hear anything moving. It must have been my imagination. I huddle up inside my jacket and close my eyes.

Then I hear a howl that shakes me from my skin. For a moment it feels like my heart stops. I lay there, frozen solid. Listening.

Grunting, from just outside the barn. Huffing through a large snout. I hear grass and packed earth being trampled. I take a deep breath and slide myself along the hay bales and poke my head out of the pyramid.

It's a cow.

Just a cow.

I breathe out a breath I hadn’t realised I’d been holding. The cow is tangled in the electric fence. It stands there, just looking at me.

I look around again, scanning the field before I pull myself out from the hay bales. My knees buckle as I land on the ground and I stagger to catch my footing. The cow sighs and steps back. ‘Shhh,’ I say and step towards it. I reach my hand out, and wait for it to come to me. It sighs again.

It’s so huge. I remember Mum telling me when I was little that cows are the most dangerous animals in England. And that I should stay away from them. But this one doesn’t look too bad. It is watching me through its kind, dark eyes.

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It slowly moves towards me and rests its snout against my palm. It huffs. I step down on the fence with my boot and slowly push the cow back. It takes a step away from me. And another. And then it is far enough away that I can take my foot off the fence and let it spring back up. ‘Shoo,’ I say and push my hands at it. ‘Go on, go.’ I mime a little kick and it scampers backwards and turns around. But then it stops.

I look out across the hills, in the direction the cow is looking. There's something moving out there in the darkness. Dashing across the field. Only a shadow in the night’s halflight. I take a step back, trying to make it out the best I can. It’s large. Moving fast. A dark splotch moving in a dark field. I narrow my eyes.

It's another cow. Or at least I think it is. It’s about the same size. And the same shape.

And it's fast, but not too fast. Oh shit, I see another one coming in the same direction from the other end of the field.

And then I see it. A flash of light. It disappears, and then it's back again. All the way over by where I parked Jamie’s car. It looks like a flashlight. It arcs out across the field, searching for something. Without another thought I run back into the barn, pull on my rucksack, and head in the opposite direction.

*

‘Why are you even here?’ Jamie spits across the table. The candle light catches the side of her face, the line of her jaw, her lips curved down in anger.

‘What do you mean?’ Sophie says.

I want to disappear.

‘Why are you here?’ She says again, “You came here in a foul mood. You haven’t said

49

one word since we started eating. Why are you even here if you’re going to be like this?’

Sophie sits in silence for a while picking at the food on her plate. Her eyes don’t leave the table.

I’ve finished my food. I push my seat back and stand up and then Sophie looks up, right at me. ‘Sit down,’ she says. There’s something in her voice that makes me freeze. I pause, then sit back down.

‘Hey, don’t talk to him like-’ Jamie is saying. And then Sophie turns her gaze on her and she shuts her mouth. A long, heavy silence stretches out across the room. It blends with the half-gloom of the evening to make a suffocating smog that swallows everything in the room. Sophie sits completely still, watching Jamie.

‘What do you love?’ Sophie says at last.

‘What?’ She looks at me and I don’t know what to say.

‘It’s an easy question Jamie. What in life do you love?’

‘Uhhh,’ she thinks, ‘I love my family. I love Joshy,’ she nods over at me. ‘Do you love me?’

‘Yes. You’re family.’

‘Am I?’

‘Yes.’

I look down at my watch and begin to count off the hours until Dad is home. There’s too many. ‘Why are you asking these stupid questions?’ Jamie asks.

50

‘What about Emily?’ Sophie asks and sits deadly still. Her gaze doesn’t leave Jamie. I turn to my sister and watch her face harden. Who is Emily? I wonder.

‘Who’s Emily?’ Jamie asks.

‘You know who Emily is,’ Sophie says.

‘I don’t know an Emily,’ Jamie says.

‘Oh my god, cut the bullshit Jamie.’ Sophie says and claps her palm down on the table. It echoes through the room. The candle flames shiver. I look at Jamie and her face scares me. She is sitting perfectly still, her eyes staring into nothingness. I haven’t seen her like this since Dad told us Mum wasn’t coming back. I don’t want to look at her, it makes me feel sick. ‘Do you love Emily?’ Sophie says.

‘No.’

*

I’m jogging, which is hard to do in the dark. I keep catching my feet on tufts of grass and almost falling face first in the chalky mud. I’m over the crest of the hill now so I can’t see the flashlight over by the car. I don’t know if I’m being followed. Or if I’m safe. Just walk, I tell myself. Just walk and soon it’ll be getting light and everything will be fine. Just walk.

But I don’t think I can any longer. My legs are aching and there's this stabbing pain in the bottom of my left foot. I slow a little and look back over my shoulder. I can’t see anything behind me. Just the dark hills rolling away into nothingness. I can’t even see the sky anymore, it’s so dark.

I want to be back home. In bed. Asleep. Thinking about what’s going to happen at school

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tomorrow. I was going to show my friends this video I saw on YouTube. It’s this cool Minecraft castle that we were gonna build together. I was going to go mining and someone was gonna get the wood and then we would make it together. But now I’m here and something has happened to Jamie and I don’t know where Dad is and I don’t know what’s going to happen. And I’m scared.

Shut up and keep walking. Walk, I tell myself. And so I do. I block out the aches and the pain and place one foot after another. And walk.

I’m headed to this place Dad used to take us on our dog walks. Alfie, the dog, is gone now but some Sundays we still walk up there as a family. The only trouble is it's hard to make out where you’re going in the dark. I think I’m going in the right direction. I’m on the right side of the road, and headed away from the village. And there is a copse of trees up ahead. If I’m right, that's the one.

I am right, I find out when I get to the trees. I recognise the chalk track leading through the treeline. I stand at the edge of the woods for a second and look back the way I came.

Darkness. Just darkness. For a moment I think that I’m just being silly, and that this is a dream. I’ll wake up in bed and everything will be fine. But then the wind blows and catches in my hair and in my clothes. A chill runs right through me and I know that this is real, and that I’m standing alone in the dark. I shiver.

I enter the woods. Somehow it is even darker in here. I don’t look to the sides of me, just straight ahead down the track. I imagine something watching me between the trees. A pale face staring out at me, ready to pounce. I feel goosebumps ripple up my arms and down my back and I take a deep breath. Ahead the track curves round a bend and I follow it.

And there it is. Right there in front of me. It’s a big metal box, like the ones you see on cargo ships. Except it’s here, plonked in the middle of nowhere. Dad says the MOD uses

52

it when they’re training, but that he’s never seen anyone inside it. It’d be just my luck that there would be an army man in there tonight. I jog up to it and head towards the end with the door. It is swinging open in the wind, and I stop outside and listen.

Nothing.

I poke my head round, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness. It is empty. Thank god.

One side is a plain metal wall, but on the other are three square glass windows. They look out at a line of trees, and then beyond that to more hills. I step inside and close the door behind me. With the wind whistlinig in my ears the whole time, I hadn’t realised how silent the night really is. It’s creepy.

*

Sophie whispers something under her breath. She sits back and stares right at Jamie.

Right through Jamie. It looks like she is dissecting her with her eyes, cutting my sister into little slivers until she is no more than a bunch of bones.

‘What’re you doing?’ Jamie says.

Sophie’s whispering grows louder and louder and I realise she is chanting gibberish.

Jamie climbs out of her chair and then Sophie looks at her and stops chanting. The room freezes. Jamie pauses mid-movement, standing like a statue leaning over the table. I turn to Sophie and see that she is smiling. ‘What’ve you done to her?’

She begins chanting again and Jamie slumps and smacks down onto the table. Her head cracks against the old wood. ‘Jamie!’ I cry and climb up from my seat. ‘Stop. Stop Josh.

She’s okay.’ Sophie says.

‘No she’s not. Look at her. What’ve you done to her?’

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‘She’s gonna be fine.’ She says and smiles at me.

I pick up my fork and cross over towards her and hold it out like I’ll cut her with it. I don’t think I’d be able to if I tried, but what else can I do? I hold it like a sword pointed at her. ‘What have you done to her?’ I’m trying to pull a brave face, to keep my voice loud and steady, but I can’t. The words flutter out of me and fall flat on the table.

‘Josh sit down, nothing is going to happen,’ she says and shakes her head, ‘She’ll be okay.’ And then, before I know what I’m doing I bring the fork down where her palm is flat against the table. I bring it down hard, and it goes through the back of her hand. I feel it crunch beneath my fist. She looks up, locks her big eyes on mine. And then she screams. I step back and watch the dark blood bead around the fork stuck in her hand.

What have I done? Tears well in her eyes and she stops screaming and she looks at me, pure anger in her eyes. ‘Fucking die,’ she says under her breath.

At the other end of the table Jamie starts to twitch. At first just her hand, tensing on the table top, but then full body twitches that shift her in her seat. I take another step back, looking between Jamie and Sophie, who stares directly at me.

Suddenly Jamie falls backwards out of her chair, flipping it over and shattering it against the floor tiles. She rolls around on the pieces of wood. It looks like she is in pain. Her face is scratched into an expression I’ve never seen her make before. I start to cross over to her, and then she freezes. And I stop in my tracks.

She is staring up at me from the floor, her body twisted over the ruined chair. Her lips are smiling up at me. Her eyes aren’t. And then she begins to scuttle.

I turn and run. I don’t know where I’m going. I slam the dining room door behind me and sprint to the end of the hallway. She’s banging on the door behind me. I look around, and run up the stairs. I’m at the top when I hear the door splinter and Jamie

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scratching across the floor. Tears are streaming down my face. My palms are sweaty, knees weak, I feel heavy as I run. I need to get out of here.

I make it to my bedroom, slam the door and look around. The dresser against the wall is heavy, it’s perfect.

I get behind it and slam my full weight into its side. My feet slip against the floor, but I dig in, use all my weight, and it begins to slide. And just in time to. Once it is in front of the door I step back and lean against my bed and then Jamie slams into the door. The dresser wobbles but doesn’t move. Again. And again. Nothing happens.

I sigh a shuddery breath and start to look around. What can I do? Where do I go? My walking boots are sitting next to the door. I grab them and pull them on. Jamie slams into the door again and I hear it crack. I look around. I don’t remember my room being this small. The window! I head to the window and look out. Soon it’ll be getting dark outside, but the street is empty. Jamie’s car is on the road outside. She slams into the door again. Crack.

Has she left the key in the car again? Dad keeps telling her not to but she still does it.

Smack. Crack. I look back at the door. A splinter line runs down the centre of the door.

Screw it, I think, and unlatch the window. I grab my rucksack from my desk, pull it on and climb up into the window frame. Smack. Crack. I hear a piece of splintered wood smack against the dresser. I look back, see Jamie’s bloodshot eye scowling at me through the crack. How do people in horror films make this look easy? I jump.

I land on the grass with a thud and then I’m rolling across the garden. I come to a stop and climb onto my feet. I hear a crack from upstairs. I don’t look back. The car is a couple metres away, I sprint to it and try the door.

It’s unlocked! I climb in, slam the door shut behind me and look around the dashboard

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for her keys. I check the little pockets next to the seat. Not there. The box under the passenger’s side dashboard. Not there. I flick down the eye-shields, and the keys fall down into my lap.

There’s a bang from outside. I look up into my room, and see nothing. But then I see her, banging against the glass of the front door. She’s trying to get out. The door shudders as she smashes into it. Again. And again. I shake my head, start up the car and try to move off.

I’ve only done this a few times, with Jamie up on the plain. And she’s not the best teacher. I stall it, and the car splutters to death. I try again, move my feet on the peddles, and the car lurches forward and dies again. The glass in the front door smashes.

I try again, moving my feet slowly, and the car begins to move. I steer out into the road as Jamie pulls herself through the window-sized hole in the door, and shift gear. I speed up. Faster. And faster. She’s running in the street behind me. Without checking I pull out onto the high street and round a bend. I look back in the mirror, and Jamie is gone.

*

Banging on the metal wall. I wake with a start. I’m crouched in the far corner of the metal box, under one of the windows. Bang. Bang. Bang. It echoes around the box. And then a voice, ‘Josh! Joshy!’ I don’t move. Another Bang. ‘Josh, are you here!’ It’s Jamie’s voice.

I pull my knees up against my chest and try to make myself as small as I can. A flashlight flickers across the trees outside.

‘Joshy, are you there!’

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My blood runs cold. Tears are welling in my eyes and I burrow my face into my knees.

I’m going to wake up in a bit and I’ll be lying in bed. Dad will be standing in the doorway telling me I have school in an hour. The smell of bacon will drift up from the kitchen and my stomach will rumble and I’ll eat my sarnie as Dad drives me to school on his way to work. Please. Please.

The door swings open and I look up and see a shadow standing there. Darker than the night sky. It takes a step into the metal box. And then another. Each footstep echoes in my chest. My ears start ringing. I begin to sob.

‘Joshy,’ she says.

She takes another step. And another. And then she is right there and I begin to kick. I kick and kick. One of my feet smacks into her shin and she yelps and I kick again and again. But she is bigger than me and she reaches over my legs and yanks me up by my arms. I claw at her. ‘Josh, stop it!’ Her voice is harsh. And then she is pulling me in against her chest and I’m sure she is going to bite into my neck or something. So I thrust my shoulder upwards and smack it into her jaw.

‘Josh, stop hitting me.’ And then she squeezes me and I realise she’s hugging me. ‘Josh, you’re alright. Calm down.’ And then I collapse against her. And I cry.

She lets me sob against her chest for a minute. I look up to her and try to see her face in the darkness. ‘You’re okay?’ I ask.

‘I’m good,’ she says, ‘I’m sorry I scared you. Sophie’s gone now. Don’t worry.’

‘What did she do to you?’ I ask.

‘I don’t know. But she didn’t mean to. She says she’s sorry.’

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‘She’s not.’ I say and Jamie doesn’t say anything for a while.

‘Maybe. But don’t worry. She can’t hurt you now.’

‘Where is she?’ I ask.

‘Don’t worry.’

‘Where is she?’ I shout.

‘She’s at home. Dad tied her to the heater in the living room.’

‘Where’s he?’

‘Out looking for you.’

‘I want him.’

‘We can call him in a bit. Are you okay?’ I don’t answer her.

She takes me outside and I see that the sky is going red over the hills. The sun will be rising soon. I want Dad. I want everything to go back to normal. I don’t want to see Sophie ever again. My mind is racing. I’m shivering hard against Jamie’s chest. I think about her turning again, about her bringing her teeth down on my neck and biting down on me. But I block the thoughts out. I just stand there in her arms, letting her hold me.

She’s warm. And I feel so cold.

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VIOLET DELIGHTS CECE DAISE YA | HORROR | OCCULT It was only meant to be a joke.

I scream as Enid starts foaming from the mouth before she collapses.

Violet and I had found a book hidden in her attic. It had been written by Violet’s ancestor Ethel, who was burned at the stake during the late 1600s by her own family after her ‘curse’ caused the death of a newborn. It was filled with a variety of ‘spells’.

The dusty leathery book had been locked inside an old trunk hidden behind a heavy dresser in Violet’s family’s locked attic.

It had weird symbols etched on it, as well as candles and flowers. Every page had a different spell, like FIXING SMALL CUTS and MAKE A FLAME and TRICK TO FALLING IN LOVE. Violet’s eyes had lit up when we read one particular page titled KILL YOUR ENEMIES SWIFTLY, and our best friend of six years, Enid, had just gotten with Violet’s ex-girlfriend. She had confided in me about her dates with Martha and how they were thinking of making it official. She had begged me to let her tell Violet herself.

I immediately told Violet.

Violet said it was going to be funny. That we’d have a good laugh about the stupid ritual after. That Enid would forgive us. That she deserved a bit of a scare for getting with Martha only a month after Violet and Martha had ended things on a sour note.

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I had agreed because magic wasn’t real. And because I wanted to make Violet happy. I don’t like seeing her upset.

We told Enid we were going to cast a spell to ensure Martha and her lived happily ever after. Enid hadn’t asked too many questions because she was so excited that Violet wasn’t mad at her anymore. We were going to have a sleepover, just the three of us, while Violet’s parents were out of town.

Enid continues to choke, the white foam quickly turning red. I trip over the candles we laid out while trying to get to her, and I start screaming at Enid to breathe. Violet starts yelling at me, something about needing to be careful and not wanting to die. I try to give Enid CPR like how actors do in movies but I don’t know how to. I push at her chest but my hands are shaking too much, and I’m desperately praying that she’ll miraculously stop choking and start breathing.

It doesn’t work.

Enid stops convulsing, her body twitches slightly before lying eerily still.

I turn away, I’m dizzy and my vision is going spotty, I feel like I’m about to pass out. I crouch, put my head between my knees and take a few shaky breaths before I look up at Violet.

I tell Violet that we need to save her, that we need to call an ambulance. My hand catches onto one of the candles that managed to avoid my initial scramble and I scream.

Violet puts her hand over my mouth and shushes me. She wraps her hands around my waist, pinning my arms down, and tells me it’s not worth it. I feel like I’m being suffocated, there’s no room to breathe.

I don’t know what to say. It’s only now that I feel that my cheeks are wet. I turn to

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Violet, desperately hoping that she can fix this.

Violet just whispers to me that everything will be okay. Everything is going to be fine.

Enid is dead. There’s nothing we can do about it. Violet tells me that we’ll go to prison.

They’ll never believe it’s an accident. We need to hide it and pretend it never happened.

She asks me to promise not to tell anyone, not to text anyone tonight.

I’m scared. But I trust Violet. And I don’t know what else to do.

Violet hugs me tighter and reminds me that we have to get rid of the body. I can’t look at her. I don’t want to touch her. I don’t know if I mean Enid or Violet. Violet begs me to help her put Enid into her car.

I do.

Violet walks me back upstairs, tucks me into her bed and kisses my forehead before she leaves.

I can’t move. All I can do is think.

I think back to how I’d thought I saw Violet twist her ankle while playing football but she was walking fine when I went to check on her. How she had made a campfire after telling me to turn around when we went camping a few days ago, even though we’d been trying for ages. I think about how I had walked into school two days ago with the strangest urge to kiss her, about how she’d stared at me all day like she’d known what I was thinking.

I want to go home. I want to rewind time to three hours ago. I snuggle into Violet’s bedsheets, and smell her lingering lavender perfume.

I’m still awake when she comes back hours later. She doesn’t tell me what she’s done

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with Enid and I don’t ask.

Her hair is damp from the shower and she curls around me, wrapping one arm around my waist, caging me against the wall.

I’m scared for the morning. And even though I let her hold me tightly, I’m scared of Violet.

Because I’m not sure it was meant to be a joke. But it’s Violet. And I want to believe she’d never hurt anyone, including Enid.

Violet kisses my shoulder. I close my eyes. I tell myself over and over again.

It was only meant to be a joke.

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REQUIEM OF WILLOWS THAT WEEP GABRIEL NIGHTINGALE YA | TRAGEDY | ELEGY I laid myself beneath the doors of death, Where flames dared not rise.

Uttered into the darkness of everything lost, I saw leaves fall and willows weep for the sun, so I set them ablaze to be rid of the noise.

Set me free, I heard the church bells toll.

I heard a hymn in the distance, as sweet as an elegy delivered by a beloved friend only to find it was the sound of my own cries.

It brought me immeasurable happiness, enough to sip the last of life from me.

Set me free, I heard the church bells toll.

I stood tall like a graveyard guard in black, to mourn my own soul’s departure.

I ripped out my blackened heart to sacrifice it to the wickedness of fate, that wove the webs of my misery.

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Set me free, I heard the church bells toll.

I heard a wail in the distance.

It was the lady in black — she wept over my grave, she wept and wailed, and tore her eyes out till blood reached my parched lips.

And I rejoiced with a wicked smile.

Set me free, I heard the church bells toll.

I laid my head upon the executioner’s block to be rid of the wicked nightingale that resided in the empty corridors of my heart, that sang the songs of my beautiful dejection.

To lay myself to rest where willows wept, to find eternal sleep in peace.

Set me free, I heard the church bells toll.

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HIGH SCHOOL SUPERLATIVES DANIELLE ROBERTSON YA | HORROR | DEMONS Wendy and I summoned a demon. We really didn’t mean to do it.

Was it my own close-knit relationship with morbidity? Or a suggestion tossed out after a day at my father’s office? Maybe a bit of dark humor coughed up into existence?

Was it Wendy’s fascination with the otherworld, her nose picked up from the pages of a book long enough to sniff the air, to find electricity, to speak something into reality? It might have been a combined effort—our years of suffering at the hands of our classmates rising like yeasty dough—culminating in our own shared demon.

Dad tells me I need to stop being so lofty with my language.

But I’m not lying, you know. About the demon.

You might’ve thought that the demon I’m referring to was some kind of metaphor, something deeper. ‘The demon of alienation,’ or ‘the demon of revenge.’ The kind of thing that English Lit teachers go gaga for on exams.

But I mean a literal demon. I mean a real fire-and-brimstone, cursing-up-a-storm, smells-like-hell demon.

Looking back, it’s hard to tell who even thought of the idea in the first place.

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*

‘Clara, hand me a Tylenol. I already have a headache.’ My friend, Nora, waves her hand in the vicinity of my backpack as we settle into the back row of the auditorium. “The premise of the High School Superlative is stupid and dated. It’s a total relic from the days of sock hops and going steady.’

I hand Nora a Tylenol, and she swallows it down with a swig of her energy drink. I, in turn, swallow down my retort: We all know you’re going to win one of the superlatives, Nora. No matter how much you pretend to loathe them.

Each senior was handed a paper ballot during homeroom a few weeks ago. A list of superlatives graced the page, embellished with small faces portraying a variety of emotions and realities. Whoever on the yearbook committee created the ballot went a little psychotic with the emojis.

Best Friends. Most Athletic (a smiley face in the shape of a football). Most Likely to Succeed.

Class Clown (a smiley face with its tongue sticking out). Best Dressed. Most School Spirit.

Most Unique (a smiley face splattered with rainbow paint). Most Popular.

We were instructed to nominate two students per superlative. The yearbook committee tallied up the votes. The winners will be announced at this morning’s assembly, hence the need for the Tylenol. The winning superlative duos will then be photographed together for a special spread in the yearbook.

‘Something tells me there aren’t going to be any surprises,’ another classmate jokes.

Nora laughs. Then they both look at me and stop laughing. I stare so hard at the pattern of my uniform skirt that the tartan begins to sway before my eyes.

The microphone feedback is a shriek, drawn-out and shrill. The principal says some

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swill about ‘time-honored traditions’ and ‘the thrill of being nominated and recognized by peers,’ as if we are being recognized for curing cancer.

Then the mortification begins.

*

‘Best Friends: Stacy Ray and Violet Harrison.’

‘Most Athletic: Sharon Yates and Evie Thomas.’

‘Most Likely to Succeed: Aviva Morton and Nora Fellowes.’

‘Most Unique: Wendy Smith and Clara Hayden.’

Most Unique. Most Unique.

The din of voices, the microphone feedback, the rush of blood to my face. My existence is boiled down to the heartbeat-thump of embarrassment.

‘Clara,’ Nora hisses, hitting me on the arm. But it hardly registers. Across the auditorium, I meet Wendy Smith’s eyes. While I imagine my own eyes must look panicked, hers are angry—a flash of deep blue, a shark’s mouth in the abyss of the ocean.

Most Unique. My classmates’ laughter swells and washes over me like a wave. I pray I might drown.

*

Wendy Smith and I, despite our shared superlative, are not friends. We have been thrown together through the circumstances of our birth, which, it’s been decided, are the weirdest of our classmates’ circumstances. My father runs a funeral parlor. Wendy

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had been born with a caul—and therefore had the rare gift of second sight.

There’s a joke here about an apprentice embalmer and a self-proclaimed medium walking into a Catholic high school, but I don’t know the punchline.

‘Most Unique,’ I sigh. ‘They might as well have voted us Weirdest Kids in The Class.’

‘If that were an option, I’m sure they would have,’ Wendy says, her voice tight. We are standing at my locker after the assembly. All pairs have been instructed to meet in the gymnasium after school tomorrow for our superlative photo shoot.

After Wendy’s mother mentioned at the incoming freshmen luncheon that her daughter had been born en caul—inside the amniotic sac—curiosity had gotten the best of me.

With the help of my dad’s medical textbooks, I learned these births are also called veiled births. I’d imagined an infant peering out into the world behind a gauzy veil. A wizened soul in a fresh, pink newborn body.

The medical textbook pictures made my stomach turn. Gauzy veil daydreams: shattered.

Wendy didn’t often flaunt her supposed medium tendencies, the same way I didn’t often flaunt my family’s ties to the funeral industry. But I’d seen relatives of my classmates dead—up close and personal—and in some cases, she’d offered those same classmates some solace in the form of whispered communications from beyond the veil.

And this was enough to brand us Most Unique.

‘I don’t know why we need superlatives,’ Wendy says. She tugs at the collar of her uniform shirt as if it’s a hot brand on her skin. ‘It’s an opportunity for the popular kids to call attention to the fact that they’re hotter and better than the rest of us. As if we needed a photo shoot in the yearbook to remind us of our years of mediocrity.’

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‘Years of mediocrity,’ I echo. I think of my years at school like lukewarm soup in a plastic thermos, almost-but-not-quite satisfying. Maybe five degrees below the satisfying mark.

‘They probably expect us to do something weird during the photo shoot,’ I joke.

‘Perform a mime routine, like wearing the black and white stripes and trapping ourselves inside an invisible box. Or maybe we could read tarot cards. You have those, right?’

‘Sure, sure,’ Wendy says. ‘We’ll do a whole spread. We can string you up like The Hanged Man while I sit on throne like The Queen of Pentacles.’

‘Pentacles?’ I ask.

‘Yeah,’ Wendy shrugs. ‘Like a pentagram—a five-pointed star—in a circle.’

‘That’s some witchcraft right there.’ I huff out a laugh. ‘I see your pentacle and raise you a séance.’

‘Maybe not a séance,’ Wendy says. ‘Some other kind of summoning.’

‘I’ll bring the chalk. We’d really give them a show.’

Wendy’s eyes flash, glittering blue marbles.

‘Why don’t we give them what they want?’

*

Wendy and I, we decide to be ridiculous about the whole thing. The yearbook staff looks

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on with question marks for eyes as we draw a pentagram on the floor of the gymnasium with dry-erase marker (the chalk wouldn’t make a mark).

We turn on a slew of battery-operated candles from the dollar store. Wendy pulls out the deck of tarot cards, which she does, in fact, carry in her backpack. I’m surprised that we haven’t been stopped yet by one of the nuns or the yearbook faculty advisor. I flip open the cover of some dusty book I borrowed from the public library down the block.

As a startled yearbook staffer snaps photos, Wendy and I pass the book back and forth, trading paragraphs of incantation in silly, booming voices. It’s probably the loudest I’ve ever spoken in school, and it feels good.

‘We are probably going to Hell,’ I say, my grin matching Wendy’s. It feels electric, to say that in a gymnasium with a crucifix in sight of the backboard. ‘We are probably going to —’

There is a loud crack, and the halogen lights above us flicker and begin to buzz.

Someone screams as a bulb pops, sending glass shattering down to the glossy wooden floor. Wendy drops the book as we stare, open-mouthed, at the crude pentagram that’s begun to glow.

A great energy surges up from the floor, and a heat unlike anything I’ve ever felt courses up my body, curling my toes and licking at my calves. My nose burns with the smell of sulfur.

And then it’s just me and Wendy, outside of space and time.

Oh, and the demon? He’s there, too.

*

I can’t look at him. At the demon. Not really.

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My eyes water every time I venture to look directly at him, as he huffs, bullish and angry, breathing hot ash on our foreheads like some mockery of Catholicism’s Ash Wednesday. His beastly fingernails dig into the flesh of my arm, and the fabric of my uniform shirt tears as easy as tissue paper underneath his grasp.

‘What do you want?’ I croak. My throat is on fire.

The demon’s laughter is thunderous. Wendy whimpers at the noise, reaching for my hand. When she squeezes, it hurts almost as much as the demon’s nails.

‘What do I want?’ The demon asks. ‘Why, you summoned me.’

‘We didn’t mean—’ I admit it: I start to cry. You might not think a funeral director’s daughter would be frightened of death. You might think I could look at it logically, the idea of dying. But when a literal nightmare is clawing at your arms and the heat of brimstone is searing your nostrils and your eyeballs and your whole world is fading fast out of view: you fear it. You fear death just like anyone else.

‘I guess I’m not unique at all,’ I sob.

‘Since we’ve gotten that out of the way, what do you want?’ The demon asks. But I cringe and return my eyes to the safety of my patterned skirt. How could I have hated this pattern mere hours before? Now it’s a balm, or an anchor. This standard-issue tartan is the only thing keeping me from descending into madness.

But then, Wendy clears her throat.

‘Anything?’

‘He’s a demon, Wendy,’ I whisper. ‘He’s not a genie, granting wishes.’

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‘We summoned him,’ Wendy says. ‘He asked.’

The demon lets go of my arm, and I feel a sticky trail of blood sluice towards my shaking fingertips. His laughter is so loud that my eardrums threaten to rupture.

‘You’re being ridiculous,’ I say, but Wendy’s eyes are hardened with the same anger I saw in the auditorium.

‘All my life, I’ve been the weird one,’ she says, her voice quavering. ‘Gifted, special, an old soul. And now unique, on top of all of that? But I don’t want to be Most Unique. I don’t want to be that at all. I want to be Most Popular instead—’

The want is barely past her lips when the demon strikes, a monstrous claw backhanding Wendy across the cheek in a move that sends her spiraling across the jagged terrain of the demon’s domain. Her skull cracks as she collides with stone.

Wendy twitches, her neck bent and her blue eyes widened towards the ceiling. For a moment, I swear I see the shimmer of a veil across her visage, and then she falls still. A scream rips from my flame-ravaged throat.

The demon turns his hot breath back on me. ‘And what do you want?’

I will my mouth to shut. I will my eyes to shut. I keep my fists balled at my sides, and my blood drips down to the floor in a staccato beat.

The silence stretches between us like taffy—the kind you can break your teeth on. The kind that reminds me of easy summer afternoons when the thought of school is a hazy memory. Finally, the demon snorts, singeing my eyebrows.

‘So be it,’ he says. And with another crack and a great flash of flame, the demon

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disappears.

We are back in the gym. The glowing pentagram is now a smudged swipe of ink. And Wendy’s body lays still on the shiny floorboards.

*

Picture this: a velvet-soft yearbook cover in a rich, deep blue.

Stacy Ray and Violet Harrison, Best Friends, sling their arms across each other’s shoulders.

Sharon Yates and Evie Thomas, Most Athletic, stand proudly with a soccer ball balanced underneath her cleat and a tennis racket in her hand, respectively.

Aviva Morton and Nora Fellowes, Most Likely to Succeed, sit poised at a desk, their graduation caps arranged artfully on their heads.

Most Unique has not been included, due to unforeseen circumstances.

And more impressive, really, than the Superlatives pages: a tragic, yet tasteful In Memoriam spread for the dearly departed Wendy Smith.

Gone too soon, they all say.

My favorite memory with Wendy is..., they all say.

Suddenly, she is everyone’s best friend. Suddenly she is the most important member of our graduating class.

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I clutch my yearbook in the crook of my arm, throbbing with the pain of phantom claw marks.

Turns out her wish came true. She was made Most Popular, after all.

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THE CANDLE KEPT THE BEAST JAYDELL YA | FANTASY | TRANSFORMATION I used to think the beast was in the woods. I was wrong. It was waiting under my skin.

Each full moon, we light the candle – wax carved with runes, streaked with old blood and wolf fat. My mother’s hands shake as she passes me the flint.

‘You must keep it burning till dawn,’ she says. ‘If the flame dies, the darkness remembers the beast.’

I never quite understood what she meant by that – the darkness, the beast... what exactly was waiting? Something in the woods?

Mother’s eyes move from flint to candle. ‘Make haste.’

Father looks on, brow furrowed. My grandmother draws the blanket tighter around her shoulders.

‘The moon’s child should have been buried at sea,’ she spits.

‘Bite your tongue,’ father scowls, leading grandmother to her bed of furs.

Their eyes never linger on me for long, as though if they look too closely, they might see the thing they are afraid of.

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But I am just a girl – what is there to fear? I am not the creaking wood. No moon’s child, nor beast.

Yet they keep their distance, so I learned to stay small – to move softly, breathe evenly, and smile when spoken to. I have spent my life trying not to move too loud, too fast, too wild. Trying not to give this darkness a reason to notice me.

Outside, the wind gnaws at the walls. The fjord is a sheet of black ice, the moon swollen and red as if bitten, moving across the inky sky.

The others now sleep, huddled close, but I keep vigil beside the flame. The air tastes of iron and tallow.

Glancing back at the candle, it seems impossible that wax and flame could hold anything at bay. It sounded like one of those riddles adults tell to make fear behave... and yet, the stories always linger at the edge of my mind.

They say the first of our line stole fire from the pyre of the Allfather, slew the shadowwolves who guarded it, and rendered their fat into candles that would never die. A witch of the north cursed us for that theft. Your blood will burn brighter than any flame, she said. It will devour you – and when the moon bleeds blue, one born beneath it will hold the night in their blood.

When I was younger, I used to ask: Why devour? Why the moon? The wolves in the old tales never seemed cruel to me – just wild, alive. My mother called them monsters. But the monsters always felt... free.

Sometimes, when I tend the flame, I read the scraps of old vellum we keep hidden in the chest – drawings of wolves prancing beneath the full moon, almost tender. Even now, as I turn the pages, they look back at me with eyes too human, like they remember

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something I have forgotten.

The candle wavers, throwing shadows that crawl, and a snap of twigs startles me from my thoughts. The air reeks of wet fur. Paws pace somewhere unseen. My blood drums a frantic rhythm, though it is not mine alone – something else stirs, listening for its own name.

I swallow hard, twisting the hem of my tunic, glancing at the shapes of my sleeping family. Their breaths rise and fall. I peer back out into the dark beyond the window, fog curling across the snow.

‘Hello?’ My voice cracks, tiny against the night.

The candle on the old, worn table splutters.

My mother stirs. ‘What is wrong?’ she asks, bleary eyes squinting in the dimming light.

‘The wick has burned too low,’ I whisper.

She jolts upright, eyes catching the flicker of the failing flame. ‘It cannot,’ she rasps, already fumbling through the drawer beside her bed.

She pulls the ritual knife free and thrusts it toward me. The blade glints dull in the candlelight, the runes along its edge blackened with old wax and something darker. I hesitate.

‘That is for blood. I cannot use it. I do not know the magic –’

‘– It will be fine,’ she says, breathless, pressing the knife into my hand. ‘Lift the wax from the wick, lest it die.’

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I reach for the candle, careful – but my fingers slip. The blade kisses my thumb, and I gasp, drawing back, clutching my hand. Blood wells, bright against the growing night. It patters onto the molten wax before I can stop it.

The flame stutters, a sharp hiss cutting through the silence. Wax bubbles where the blood lands.

‘Give it to me. Quickly. The knife! I must reset the ward.’

Mother snatches the blade, readies her hand... but the flame surges, roaring upward with a burst that shatters the stillness, as though it had been waiting for this very drop of blood. My blood.

‘No!’ Mother’s voice echoes, raw with fear, as the candle snuffs out and darkness swallows the room.

For a heartbeat, there is only the thick, crawling silence.

‘...Fen?’

‘I am here, Mother.’ I fumble with the flint, tiny sparks scratching at the gloom. ‘All is well. I can fix –’

Pain, sharp as teeth, blooms through my bones.

‘Mother!’ I cry. My skin crawls, writhing beneath my touch.

‘Fen!’ Her voice is near and impossibly far, stretched thin across the still air.

My fingers curl into claws. My spine stretches, bone by bone. Fur pricks my flesh. The

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taste of iron fills my mouth.

The beast is not in the woods at all. It is inside me, waking.

I stumble out into the snow, gasping. The cold should kill me, but it feels like nothing.

The moon gleams white on my skin – no, not skin, not anymore. The forest watches, ancient and quiet. The wolves have come to circle, eyes gold in the dark.

They bow their heads. Not in fear. Not in anger. In welcome.

I do not run.

The beast within does not devour me. It is me – the part I kept small.

I lift my face to the moon. The wind roars through the valley like a chorus of old gods finally exhaling.

I open my mouth. And I sing.

Somewhere behind me, my mother cries my name – the one she gave me. But the night gives me another.

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CURSES OF CONVENIENCE LIVIA JAYNE YA | LITERARY | REGRET your name became tmesis a kind of therapy to prove I could resist the temptation of uttering your name and crying all at once you’re un-Xing-believable and in-Xing-sensitive to replace the curse I would otherwise use you’re dis-Xing-likeable and abso-Xing-lutely absurd you’re the curse I use instead now you’re strong enough to have people shaking in their boots – I am I’m shaking in anger and righteousness and for the sake of justice and all that’s holy and good in this world please don’t let anyone tell you you’re an angel ever again even a fallen one because there’s nothing worse than a convenient curse pretending they’re the answer to your prayers

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TO BE GOOD LOTTIE KEEN YA | HORROR | FAMILY Already, I am a little stressed by the idea of a date. But me being me, and my family being who they are, I’m clinging onto this chance. Attempting normality, I take to brushing my teeth as I taste the metallic twang of my gum bleeding. My new molars haven’t yet sunk into my mouth quite right yet. I’ll give credit to Mum; these ones are very white. Staring into the mirror my eyes then become very apparent; they aren’t exactly the same colour, the left much more green. I should really put my eye drops in but instead I roll the eyeball back, catching where the optic nerve didn’t quite get sewn back properly. Bad habit. I’m only giving my parents more work to do by making it worse. For now, I chuck my glasses on and rush out to grab my bag. As much as I want to stare at my face forever. Someday it won’t be me I recognise in the mirror. No use mourning it now.

Mum finds me downstairs, twirling her car keys round bony fingers. She’s been begging my dad to fix them. It’s ‘not the look she’s going for’ and that she ‘wants those nice warm hands that Nancy down the road has’. Safe to say she was disappointed on Christmas when she opened a box to a selection of hand creams.

‘Oh Fern, why are you wearing those?’ She’s removing my glasses, placing them carefully on the side table. Mum cups my face, ‘See? Perfect.’

My vision blurs in that left eye, the regret of itching it comes back. She starts walking out to the car while I start walking to the end of the long drive. I can feel the gravel through my shoes, the soft breeze cuts through the mist. The hairs on the back of my

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neck stand on end. The cold should be gone by now, being March but alas, I guess that’s what living on top of the hill outside of town does. It’s really the last thing I mind. I look back at the looming house, taking up all the sky in my view. In the top window, the light is on, and the wind gently sways the curtains. Maybe she’ll finally get those hands she so desperately wants.

‘You excited for this evening? What was the girl’s name?’

I’m picking at my nails already, ‘Sadie.’

‘Ah! Sadie, she’s lovely, isn’t she? She’s got that beautiful curly hair!’ She’s smiling ear to ear at me. ‘Haven’t you always wanted curls love?’

I want my hands to be in her curls, wrapped around my fingers. No, I don’t want her curls.

‘Do you not like my hair Mum?’ Fair, my hair is a shapeless mess half the time, but the mullet at least frames my face.

She hesitates, ‘Well yes, I do, but my hair isn’t exactly natural, is it?’ Her laugh fills the car as I sink into my chair. ‘And I’d kill for those eyes she has.’

As Mum parks up by school, I go to grab my bag, but she kills the engine. My body tenses. The sensation is chilling but god am I going to miss my nerves.

‘Listen, I know this might not be the best time, but I just wanted to say your dad’s heart is starting to fail again.’

I nod. ‘Do I need to be concerned?’

‘It’s being handled just...’ There’s a shake to her borrowed voice and for the first time I

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think she may be worried. She’s staring out the window to all the kids filing into the school. She sighs. ‘He will be fine.’

‘Are you sure?’

Her cold hand is on my thigh, ‘He’ll get a new heart, a young healthy one. Now go on Fern, you’ll be late.’

The tone of her voice lingers in my mind all day. So much that when Sadie bounds towards me at the last bell the date has slipped my mind. I can’t believe I can forget like that.

I open my arms to her, and she runs into me, her head curls into my chest. She’s so warm. She’s looking up at me; her eyes golden from the sun. The approaching summer is beginning to bring out her freckles like constellations in the sky. ‘You ready?’

I adore the feeling she eludes that I can’t quite put my finger on. I think she makes me feel human.

I take her hand, leading her out of the school gates walking towards the bus stop. We both agreed to go down to the beach to watch the sunset before the clocks jump forward and we are both out after curfew. Well, I lied about the fact I had curfew; I saw her face squirm up when she mentioned it, so I did my best to make her feel better. I know if I did that with my face my father would tell me I would get wrinkles and want to rip my skin off. But the desire to ‘fix’ didn’t carry through the genes to me. I love watching emotion fill her face. I love the ache on my own cheeks when she makes me laugh. I watch the blur of pinks and orange against the sea as I feel the wind against my back. I feel the sand between my fingers, still warm from the persistent sun.

‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’

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I am confused; her face is fully turned to me. I savour feeling the muscles in my laugh, ‘I can’t really see it.’

‘Oh, you don’t have your glasses.’ She’s smiling as she takes hers off, placing them on my nose. They are cold and zoom everything in a little too much. I don’t even think about looking at the beauty over the sea. My borrowed eyes only want to look at her.

‘Better?’

‘Definitely.’

‘Ok, but you’re not looking at the sunset, Fern,’ she giggles, her face turning red under the amber glow of the sun. I want to wrap up this moment and relive it over and over.

Her blinks are slow; she’s glancing at my lips. This might be my one chance with my own lips.

‘Do I need to be?’ My own hands find the warmth of her face; I’m trying to desperately memorise the texture of her skin.

‘No...’

Sadie doesn’t know what to do with her hands; I let my hand guide hers to my waist.

Which I pray is okay. My thumb graces her lips. ‘Can I?’

‘Please,’ she almost sighs, leaning into my hand as I pull her close. Immediately, her nose has hit the glasses, and we are erupting into laughter.

I take off her glasses, handing them back as I look into her eyes. ‘Maybe you might need these?’ Her eyes are begging until they turn to a little disappointment.

She says it quietly, that it’s almost a whisper, ‘Do you want to try that again?’

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I cup her face with both hands, leading her to me as for the first time, we kiss. There’s a warmth to her lips I didn’t expect. I can taste strawberry lip balm. I am close enough to smell her sweet perfume instead of it just being left on my hoodies. She is gentle with me, she is cautious.

I am reminded of who I could be. I cherish the evening, promising myself I won’t forget even a second of it. We lie on the beach as the last flickers of the sun have disappeared.

My head is resting on her chest; Sadie’s hands are delicately brushing through the same hair my mum had insulted this morning.

‘Sadie?’

‘Mhm,’ she murmurs, I feel every calm breath she takes.

I had never let anyone this close to me before; I wasn’t quite sure how it made me feel.

This might be the only time I have someone like this.

‘I know this is a strange question, but do you think I’m different?’

The few seconds she takes chill me. ‘Fern, what do you mean by that?’

‘Like from everyone else at school? Because of my family and such.’ I know from the outside we don’t raise much suspicion. But our macabre nature certainly does. We’ve always been known as ‘strange’.

I stare up at the stars in the silence, they seem to twinkle back, ‘I don’t think being different is a bad thing, and you really aren’t as weird as some people would say.’ Sadie nudges me. ‘Besides, why do you think I like you?’

I laugh as if I am just an insecure teenager. ‘I just feel like that a lot.’

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‘You really don’t need to.’ Sadie has never seen me like everyone else; she sees something else in me. Something I could never be. I let her take my hand and she’s tracing my palm with her finger. With these hands that are all mine. ‘You like me?’

She laughs and I wish I could capture that sound forever, ‘Oh, Fern, don’t be silly, of course I do.’

‘Maybe you’ll meet my weird family someday.’ I add a giggle to my words as my body shudders. I need to tumble out of this fantasy.

There’s a moment of quiet. Then I hear her heartbeat. It’s so strong and so human.

*

I see her the next day at school, her face perks up at me as I kneel beside her desk. ‘Do you want to come over after school?’ The words leave my mouth with a sting in my throat. This time, I don’t savour the sensation.

The fat from her cheeks covers half her eyes. ‘To yours?’

I nod, ‘To mine,’ I pull her hair back behind her ear. ‘We can watch your favourite niche movies, I’ll cook, and you can stay if you like.’

‘Yes! Yes, I would love to!’ Sadie squeezes my hands.

Waiting in the carpark for my mum, she squeezes my arm as she approaches. The black car with windows way too tinted to be legal and a small dreamcatcher hung from the mirror. I sit in the back with Sadie; my mum’s gaze fixed on the rearview mirror. ‘Hi Sadie.’

‘Thank you for having me Mrs Good,’ her muscles are strained to smile; her eyes don’t

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know where to look.

‘Oh, it’s our pleasure.’

The car ride is relatively silent, I look at her as we drive into the gate, she swallows either in awe of the house or in terror. We never let people see the house; visitors are never an occurrence for the Good household. ‘Your father wants to see you,’ Mum says ushering me upstairs as she allows Sadie to go up to my bedroom.

I tap on the door of the study, hearing a croak from my father inside. The door swings open slowly with an agonising creak as I take a seat on the sofa next to him. His borrowed skin is pale and is showing his jigsaw of a skeleton. Dad has always been one to take it all a little further. But he doesn’t worry so much about the tidiness of stitching on himself. Mum is his pride. ‘Your mum said you are having trouble with your eye?’

‘It’s fine, it’s just a little big for my face is all.’

‘You need to let them heal properly, you know you can’t itch them.’ His cold fingers then open up my mouth, prodding at my teeth, ‘And your teeth? How are they? Looks like your mother did a good job, eh?’ He pauses, analysing one of my teeth, pushing his finger at it so much I think it’ll shatter. ‘Hm, this one’s a little yellow, isn’t it?’

My father walks over to his desk slowly, bringing out his grand box, separated into sections. ‘Dad, you are going to have replaced them all before I’m in my twenties.’

He pauses, separating a few from the box, putting teeth into a small trinket tray. ‘And that, Fern, is a privilege.’

To cut through the heavy air is my mother, carrying a decanter of water. ‘We have a guest, courtesy of your child.’

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There’s a smile from those borrowed lips before he excuses me and I rush to my bedroom. The door is closed. God, I wish it was open, then the decision is made. I’m lingering there far too long, and I take myself back to the night on the beach. I think any tiny thought I had then, I was stupid to think that could be my life. And now I can’t even do the decency of giving her a goodbye.

But it’s their blood that runs through my veins. Even if it’s been borrowed for hundreds of years before. I carry the Good name.

‘I wouldn’t, just let your father handle it.’

Mum shows me into her bedroom, closing the door to leave me alone. The long waiting starts.

I try to sit through muffled cries and screams for a while until I’m reaching for Mum’s headphones. I’ll try to pretend it’s just another guest we have had; maybe then I’ll sleep through it.

An hour passes and I peel the headphone from my ear. There’s a cry like a whistle through the pipes. My heart is sinking into my stomach, my bones twitch. Why is she still alive? They said it would be quick.

Back when I was fully me, I had crawled my way out of my bedroom, making my way up the spiralling stairs to the top room. The door was left ajar, no one expecting the child to find themselves up there. The walls of that room weren’t grey or cream like the rest of the house, they had painted them red. I thought it was very splotchy, some parts bright red when others were brown. Suddenly, the guest I had greeted sweetly at the door that evening was thrown to the wall. It was then I learnt what they had painted the walls with. My dad was knelt beside her then, taking the girl apart bit by bit like we were taking apart my building blocks.

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The next morning my mum took me to pre-school, glowing to all the other mums about her new blonde hair. I heard one ask how she made it look so natural, and I crossed my arms, scowling at her. I saw her trying to tie up her hair that morning to hide the red stains. I was sat down that evening, my mum had explained that they were doing this for all of us, that that girl will keep us alive much longer than she would ever live. That she was a noble sacrifice. But the next week I drowned out screams from upstairs with my cartoons and it was clear that they were rather indulging in a big game of dress up.

I oversleep school. I wake in my mother’s bed, an emptiness beside me. The house is finally silent again. I flutter my eyes closed, trying so hard to convince myself this is all a bad dream. That nothing ever happened to Sadie. But her soft warm skin, her golden eyes, her freckles, her laugh filling the air. No one should ever get that close to me again.

There is a gentle knock on the door as it opens. My mum leans over to kiss my forehead.

‘Thank you, my love, your dad’s new heart is lovely.’

I turn to look into a nightmare. Mother’s eyes have changed. The sun trickles in through her curtains, the eyes shine golden.

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AUTHOR & ARTIST BIOS TING LOH-TRERISE Cover Artist - Descend Ting Loh-Trerise is a Malaysian illustrator based in Cornwall. Ironically afraid of everything except drawing her own horror, her goal is to weaponise her jumpy nature and overactive imagination by turning them into dark, fantastical art. You can find her on Instagram @tinglohtreriseart, or email enquiries to tinglohtreriseart@gmail.com.

WILLIAM DRAYCOTT My Candlelit Supper William Draycott is Cornwall’s second most successful Uncle Buck impersonator. When in public he is often mistaken for a writer with words in THE YARD LAB, FREE FLASH FICTION, THE CRANKED ANVIL, SCAFFOLD LITERARY MAGAZINE, DARK HOLME PUBLISHING, PROSETRICS, HAWKEYE, and EXPAT PRESS. You can find him on Twitter/X @depreciationism.

ESMÉ LAURA FORSTER Witch-dinner Esmé is a writer of the magic, whether it be the magiic mingled with a Spring morning or the magic lost in childhood days gone by, Esmé looks for it wherever it dares reveal itself. She loves to write short stories and poems, and little vignettes. Esmé is exploring the beauty in the untamed and feral and wants to give a voice to the characters in folklore who are too often ignored: the witches, the goblins, the hungry! She can be found on Instagram @EZ4Ster.

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HANNAH SIMPSON Back With a Splat Hannah Simpson is a Creative Writing student at Falmouth University, and a contributor to Scene Magazine. She is an enthusiast of all things horror, though she gravitates towards women’s experiences and relationships with each other. She has previously collaborated in writing the play Time to Bloom with THE KNOTTED PROJECT and she is currently directing the Falmouth Feccles Society’s production of Robin Hood: The Legend Rewritten, which will be at Falmouth’s Princess Pavilion March 2026. She can be found on Instagram @hannahchimpsonwrites.

KUNDHANA KANAGALA The Haunting Kundhana Kanagala is a young poet who enjoys writing about grief, suffering, loss, and maturity. When she isn’t writing or at school, you will often find her either playing chess or having fun with her family and friends. You can find her on Instagram @kundhana.kanagala.writes.

TMD A Kid for Christmas TMD is a UK-based writer who specialises in dark fiction, folk horror, and emotionall charged supernatural tales. Their work blends creeping inevitability, sensory-rich realism, and character-driven dread. They are currently developing several long-form projects, including novels and atmospheric short story collections. When not writing, TMD creates crime puzzles, horror concepts, and narrative-driven art pieces. A Kid for Christmas is part of their ongoing exploration of winter folklore and the shadows that linger behind festive traditions.

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THOMAS WILBY Season of the Witch Thomas Wilby is a Journalism with Creative Writing student at Falmouth University. He writes all sorts of different pieces, but poems are his favourite. He enjoys writing them for his course and in his free time, finding it relaxes him and helps him to escape reality.

You can find him on Instagram @thomas_wilby05.

UTE ORGASSA A Blessing and a Curse Ute Orgassa was born and raised in Germany. She now lives with her family in the Bay Area. Her short stories have been published by SHORTWAVE PUBLISHING, HAUNTED WORDS PRESS, ALTERNATIVE MILK, PUNK NOIR, ALIEN BUDDGA, INFESTED, CURSED MORSELS, EPISTEMIC LITERARY, and CAT EYE PRESS. Her play A Different Track was produced by AWKWARD PIGEONS THEATER. She can be found on BlueSky @uteorgassa.bsky.social, and on her website www.uteorgassa.com.

TETIANA YATSECHKO-BLAZHENKO The Release Tetiana Yatsechko-Blazhenko is a writer from Ukraine. Her work has appeared in literary journals such as FOXYLIT and INDIGO. She is also a contributing author to literary anthologies Tidings (ANOMALY POETRY), Koromyslo, Kolos, and the poetry collection Whisper of Sisters. She won in the prose category fo the 2025 Odesa Miniature contest and placed second in the prose category of the 2025 Chuhuiv Miniature contest.

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YUU IKEDA one candle at midnight Yuu Ikeda (she/they) is a Japan-based poet and writer. She loves mystery novels, western art, sugary coffee, and the Japanese animation “ (Jujutsu Kaisen)” and “ (Blue Lock)”. She is the author of poetry collections Seasons Echoing Around Me, Phantasmal Flowers in the Eden Where Only I Know, A Chain-Smoker at Midnight, and more. You can find her on Twitter/X and Instagram @yuunnnn77.

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WILL ALEXANDER Bad Night Will Alexander is a writer of literary and horror fiction, often exploring queer characters in bad situations. Originally from Wiltshire, he now studies English & Creative Writing at Falmouth University in Cornwall. When he isn’t working, writing or reading, he can be found creating short films or walking down some little Cornish footpath. He can be found on Instagram @willy_.yum.

CECE DAISE Violet Delights Cece Daise is a third year university student studying English & Creative Writing. She is originally from Hong Kong but is currently studying in the UK. Most of her works have a darker edge to them. She loves board games, crime and dark fiction, mainstream pop music, and sweet treats. You can find her on Instagram @cecedaise.

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GABRIEL NIGHTINGALE Requiem of Willows That Weep Gabriel Nightingale is a game artist, but besides that, he is a seeker of beauty in sorrow, solace in ruin, and love in tragedy. His verses dwell where the Gothic and romantic entwine, giving voice too longing, death, the divine ache of existence and love piercing like a whet blade. He finds inspiration in philosophy, music, and the nocturnal calm that precedes dawn, in moments where silence itself begins to speak in verse. When he is not working, he can be found walking in nature seeking inspiration or listening to the waves.

He can be found on Instagram @Gabriel.Nightingale.

DANIELLE ROBERTSON High School Superlatives Danielle Robertson holds a BA in creative writing from SUNY Purchase and is a Tin House YA Workshop alum. Her short fiction for teens and adults has been published in anthologies by ONCE UPON A BOOK CLUB, TERRORCORE PUBLISHING, READ FURIOUSLY, and HAUNTED WORDS PRESS. She lives in New Jersey with her husband, their two children, and their overstuffed bookshelves. She can be found on Instagram @danjvrobertson, and her website www.daniellerobertson.net.

JAYDELL The Candle Kept the Beast Jaydell (they/them) is a queer, non-binary, neurodivergent author, poet and artist living on Dharawal Country in NSW, Australia. They write cross-genre tales of monsters and magic, desire and defiance - stories for anyone who has ever felt ‘other’. Their books include the queer YA urban fantasy They Them Wolf and its cosy, festive companion short story Operation: Jingle Paws. Their poetry and short fiction can be found in anthologies exploring grief, connection, and the quiet edges of transformation, including Remnants of Relics and From Me To You. They can be found on Instagram @jaydell_writes.

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LIVIA JAYNE Curses of Convenience Livia Jayne is a Western Australian poet writing stories with a dash of magic and curiosity. She loves experimenting with storytelling in different mediums and shares her creative journey on social media as @written_by_liv. Liv has self-published two poetry collections - Metapoetical (2022), and Crossroads (2023) - and is currently working on her third.

LOTTIE KEEN To Be Good Originally from Gloucestershire, Lottie Keen is currently a third year Creative Writting student at Falmoutuh University. She enjoys writing a variety of fiction and script, specifically enjoying dark fiction and tragedy. She has also explored other media, producing her own poetry film and an immersive theatre event. This is Lottie’s debut piece within a literary magazine. You can find her on Instagram @library_of_lcl.

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K YOU N A H T

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