Darkness surrounds us. We can find darkness anywhere: in a strange greenstone etched with mysterious symbols; at a small town's annual picnic; in aghostly house that is easy to enter but not so easy to leave; behind thedumpster in the alley where a harpy lives; in The Nowhere, a place where carkeys, toys, people disappear to; among Polar explorers; and, most definitely,within ourselves. Darkness flies from mysterious crates; surrounds childrenwhose nightlights have vanished; and flickers between us at the movie theater.Darkness crawls from the past and is waiting in our future; and there's always achance that Halloween really is a door opening directly into endless shadow.Welcome to the dark. You may never want to leave.
This inaugural volume of the year's best dark fantasy and horror featuresmore than 500 pages of dark tales from some of today's finest writers of thefantastique. Chosen from a variety of sources, these stories are as eclectic andvaried as the genre itself.