Horror & Dark Fantasy
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I was also thinking of how predatory nostalgia can be. It can be comforting to sink into remakes and sequels and old favourites and I’m as guilty of this as anyone. But that comfort can also be a trap. Christie’s replica bedroom is one example, as are the other guests feasting on their past. The Concierge is a manifestation of the temptation to live in eternal stasis.
There is a place that doesn’t exist. Or rather, the hotel exists only in the moments where existence itself hesitates: between one time zone and the next, between the breath then the decision, between the life left and the one not found yet. It appears at the stroke of midnight for those who are neither here nor there. There are travellers mid-journey, refugees between borders.
We live in politically combustible times, when social media posts ignite wars and half of the Western world’s populace seems determined to usher in an apocalypse if only to spite their perceived enemies. Under such fraught circumstances, it might be tempting to disregard writing, reading, and viewing horror fiction and film as relatively feckless pursuits.
My foot is hidden under a pile of fallen leaves in a ditch near the highway. My hand, a mile or so away, buried under a shallow layer of dirt in what will be someone’s tulip bed next spring. My head—I don’t know where it is. Strange. Surely it’s what I’m using to think? I focus and my hand lurches, shakes off a coating of soil, lifts onto its fingertips and straggles into the driveway.
Gardens are pumping out the juiciest tomatoes, corn on the cob is at its peak, and every melon is bulging with sugar water. The days might be the hottest, but with fall on the horizon, the nights are growing longer—and there’s a real sense of eeriness in the lengthening darkness. This month’s offerings celebrate potent sensory experience set against a heightened light and dark.
I was one of the interpreters/co-navigators with a DeafBlind writer at a residency program, so we spent a lot of time together, and in between chatting about books and writing, we folded origami. I’d grown up folding paper cranes, but to fold with my DeafBlind friend required different techniques than making the folds by sight.
ANNOUNCEMENT: We’ll be launching our first Kickstarter campaign in more than a decade, to fund Year 17 of Lightspeed and Year 15 of Nightmare. Clicking nightmare-magazine.com/kickstarter will take you to the campaign pre-launch page. Once you’re there, click the NOTIFY ME ON LAUNCH button so you’ll be notified when the campaign goes live on September […]
On September 15, 2026, we’ll be launching our first Kickstarter campaign in more than a decade, to fund Year 15 of Nightmare and Year 17 of Lightspeed. Join us for a year of new short fiction from some of the biggest stars in science fiction, fantasy, and horror, including: Travis Baldree Olivie Blake P. Djèlí […]
Chloe Lauter is a writer and publicist based in Los Angeles. Her debut novel is The Flayed Man , a July 21, 2026 release from Penguin Random House’s Skull House Press imprint.
They say a mountain vista looks loveliest in the golden hour, and lunar landscapes most fully reveal themselves in quarter moons; light and dark embrace to lift each other.
