Another Name for Darkness

ANOTHER NAME FOR DARKNESS

SANS. PRESS TEAM CHASE ANDERSON DIE BOOTH TABITHA CARLESS-FROST MATTHEW R. R. DAVIS TONY DUNNELL JAMES DWYER SEÁN FINNAN SARA MARIA GREENE MICHAEL IMOSSAN JESSE KRENZEL CHRIS KURIATA SHELLEY LAVIGNE E RATHKE SIDNEY STEVENS JOHANNA ANTONIA ZOMERS

Edited by

PAULA DIAS GARCIA, SAM AGAR, MARC CLOHESSY AND ISSY FLOWER

Another Name for Darkness

Published by Sans. PRESS

Limerick, Republic of Ireland, 2023

Edited by Paula Dias Garcia, Sam Agar,

Marc Clohessy & Issy Flower

Cover & Illustrations by WOLFSKULLJACK

Book Design by Paula Dias Garcia

Collection © Sans. PRESS, 2023

Individual contributions © individual authors, 2023

Cover artwork © 2023 by WOLFSKULLJACK

Reprinted with permission of the illustrator.

All authors and artists retain the rights to their own work.

Another Name for Darkness receives financial assistance from the Arts Council.

Vellum flower icon Created with Vellum

EDITOR’S NOTE

PAULA DIAS GARCIA

Considering the inspirations that helped build Another Name for Darkness – from the visual imagery to the quotes chosen for our submission call – it was hardly a surprise for our team when many of the stories pointed out how often darkness was hiding inside, both in ourselves and those very close to us.

Sometimes malicious, sometimes borne out of neglect, the darkness in these stories didn’t come crashing through in the night; rather, it seemed to have been there all along, thriving in forgotten spaces, waiting for its turn to bare its teeth. The question asked of us – and that we now turn to our readers ­– is not what would you do if it came for you? but a much more haunting how sure are you that it hasn’t arrived?

As we checked under our beds and shone lights in our wardrobes, we’ve come to realise something quite important about these stories. The beating heart of this collection – the one we could hear pulsing throughout – was not one beating behind the walls in a claim for revenge; it was a thriving, fiercely alive entity that refused to concede defeat.

If darkness has many names, its opposition is just as resourceful – the characters in this collection are just as willing to grow claws and fight for themselves. Nothing is a final barrier – not death, not natural disasters, not the upheaval of the world as we know it. Each time, they find a way to keep moving against the fading of light – sometimes through magic, sometimes technology, and often through offering yourself the love denied by those around you. From quiet epiphanies to building whole new realities, all paths are taken to escape the shadows.

And so many times in these stories, we found that those fighting the darkness found the compassion to reach out to those who hadn’t been able to fight – from estranged loved ones to creatures of legend – which is maybe where the heart of this collection really lies, in our relentless capacity for connection, and the power it holds.

It has been both amazing and terrifying to follow so many lurking threats for Another Name for Darkness, and we truly appreciate the opportunity to keep on doing it for as long as you’ll have us! To every single writer that shared their story, to the booksellers, to the Arts Council, to all of our readers – thank you!

Out into the dark we go once more, and we hope you’ll follow.

CONTENT WARNINGS

Please be advised that discussions of death, grief and sexuality may be present throughout the book.

Buried Deep: aftermath of a natural disaster;

The Lanky Skin-and-Bones Lady: injury detail, self-harm, harrassment (mentioned);

A Walking Wound: sexual abuse (referenced), violence;

Moth{er}: child neglect, mental distress, gaslighting, insects;

Coffee: sexual assault (implied), violent death (implied);

The Brother Lorax: unspecified climatic disaster,

death of children (mentioned), weapons;

The Woodworker: child neglect, car accident (mentioned);

Encore: car accident, injury detail;

A Cut Rock Does Not Bleed, It Shines: injury detail, mental distress, disordered eating.

On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore—

Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore

Quoth the Raven Nevermore.

THE RAVEN, EDGAR ALLAN POE

Each man’s death diminishes me,

For I am involved in mankind.

Therefore, send not to know

For whom the bell tolls,

It tolls for thee.

FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS, JOHN DONNE

CONTENTS

Editor’s Note

Content Warnings

Buried Deep

Seán Finnan

Ash Bark

Die Booth

The Lanky Skin-and-Bones Lady

Chris Kuriata

Coming to Terms

Tabitha Carless-Frost

A Walking Wound

Matthew R. Davis

Moth{er}

Chase Anderson

Personal Space

James Dwyer

Coffee

Sara Maria Greene

The Brother Lorax

e rathke

The Dublin Auntie

Johanna Zomers

Eden

Michael Imossan

The Woodworker

Sidney Stevens

Encore

Jesse Krenzel

A Cut Rock Does Not Bleed, It Shines

Shelley Lavigne

The New Caledonian

Tony Dunnell

The Authors

Also by Sans. PRESS

BURIED DEEP

SEÁN FINNAN

What a different earth I am faced with. Occasionally it catches me and momentarily I am breathless. A feeling of faintness comes over me. Dread and absolute panic. I tell myself to calm down, that things change. The important thing is to remain calm. The sun just dries the crust. The smell of early summer is gone and replaced now by the must of sodden decomposition, of wet clay. Spring came before winter this year. I watched the shoots of daffodils wither from the freak frost on Christmas morning, the ground outside flaked with the delicate white flowers of blackthorn, falling like cold ashes upon the grass’s fresh growth. Our first winter of loss. All buried beneath. If it was the first spring that claimed them, it was the second spring that condemned us. Nothing ever lets me forget. I watch a robin come to earth, sit on the mound of dirt before me, and chirp this almost freakish air. I hear it when I close my eyes. Daily she comes. The same habit. Stops her song, flicks her head in my direction before plucking an earthworm from the soft brown ground. Lifts off. Swirls around in the bare brutish sky before coming back to earth. Gravitates towards where the hedge that held her nest should be. Will scratch the ground, attempt to feed the chicks that rest beneath, to keep being a mother, providing for the progeny that are no longer there. On another day, I watched a blue tit fly straight into the ground, as a cormorant would dive into the open ocean. Death on impact. Warm in my hands I turned it over. Small black eyes open and lifeless, its pale yellow feathers had already turned grey. I told Lar what I had witnessed and he just grunted at me. Nothing new there. This constant silence is my penance of some sort. A punishment. If you hear the thunder knocking on your roof in the future, take it from me, it is a war cry. Make no mistake. We’d gotten too comfortable. We turned up the TV. The weather presenter said red alert. Lar poured me another glass of wine, laughed and browsed Netflix. The rain hit the sun window with the ferocity of shells pulsing from an automatic gun. God, you’d think that might have been a warning. Instead it was as soothing as any sedative. I drifted away on the couch.

I sometimes wonder what it would be like to perform an exorcism on the earth. Whether archaeology is a form of it. The act of digging into the ground, the expulsion of objects hidden beneath it, resurfacing things that, like demons, occupy our present, begin to taunt it. Can you really read love in such things? Whether people loved as they do now, in sickness and in health, until death did them apart? What if, I think, inside, this man is already dead? When someone is no longer present, when each day they drift further inwards, obsess over loss, at the injustice of it all, where do you go? Dig deep now and uncover the past that you have lost.

‘Dig,’ he says to me again.

I take the weathered shovel from Lar’s calloused hands. I catch his eyes looking at me for one bare second, searching for something. His beard, its own bird’s nest, can no longer hide the gauntness of his face; the contours of his cheeks map a territory that feels alien, distant, no longer mine.

What if I can never bring him back? This resentment just builds and builds. Everything that he has ever worked for one day gone. Like salt in water. Tasting it only in bitter memory.

His hands are already red raw, while mine are chaffed, cold and pink.

The robin is still picking at the ground. Seagulls look down upon us as they pass by. All of us in unfamiliar landscapes. I feel a thud of guilt as the earth slaps against the ground. This morning I told him I loved him. Pressed my hand into his. He asked me to turn up the radio, then grew frustrated that we’d only made the news on one miserable day.

‘Nobody cares.’

You got that right.

Was the venom always there? Percolating slowly and eventually saturating his mind and body. Or was it one of these things that just needed a catalyst, a big event to set the spark? Do some people cope while others grow? Do some become scapegoats while others saints, some mopping up the blame so that others drift through memory without a blemish? Didn’t I push him? Try to move her on from the mantlepiece? Scatter them, man, I said to him when all around us the trees budded green slips, while the remaining blood orange petals of our tulips closed rank around the stigma. We can make it special. His mother was never fussy, never deigned to specify. I offered to drive. Anywhere you want to go to, Lar. Cliffs of Moher. Lough Ree. The Camlin if needs be. The right moment may never come.

A split second.

Now where is she?

Buried beneath.

And what am I left with?

These thoughts.

Every memory of the past double-edged, open to being interpreted anew. My own worst interrogator. Always on search for a new meaning. Distrustful of my answers. Burying deeper. To prove to myself, perhaps, that the evidence was always there.

‘I’ll protect you,’ he said, and grabbed me in close. I said I’d never heard such thunder.

‘It’s like the clouds are angry.’

‘What are we doing here, anthropomorphising the clouds like primaeval runts,’ he says, his teeth a purple hue from the wine.

I tell him to go fuck himself or words to that effect.

‘It’s only thunder,’ he said, clapping his hands together. ‘Air meeting air.’

The lights flickered before the darkness. The kitchen sink belched raw sewage. A neighbour’s roar. The rain fell in a tumult and the earth expanded. Lar cried out from the window.

Dear Lord, what might have happened if I hadn’t scrambled? Just grabbed her there from the mantlepiece. Lugged the vase under my arm. Followed his request. Perhaps all might have been forgiven. Perhaps we might be partners now, soldiers trudging through the tough times. It takes a crisis to know love, they say. Is this it? Do I know now?

‘Dig,’ he says, looking up from the pit, the earth mounded around him. Sweat bubbling upon his forehead. ‘Dig.’

The words have become a refrain.

Dig.

Dig.

Dig.

A split second decision, I tell myself. Not even. A fraction of that. Maybe even less than a TENTH. Basic instinct, Lar, that’s all it was. Nothing else. Just plain old basic instinct. Survival. System override. The need to GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE NOW.

I pierce the blade into the earth, the surface crusted, the ground beneath sodden. The earth groans. I think of the depths we have to reach and I too sigh in solidarity. He pants beside me. A man who has never worked a manual gig in his life. Watch him scramble with a bobbin to tie his hair out of his face. Whisper words beneath his breath. Above us splinter thick clouds of slate blue. Shafts of sunlight dart through the fissures and begin to illuminate the pit, the hole, the layers of dirt. The ground is a swell of mushy peat, a fibrous mishmash of twigs and roots. Entrails of heather too, some still with their dainty lilac flowers. The ground creaks and gurgles like a baby. Sucks too like a newborn grasping at their mother’s teat. I feel it latch onto my shovel. I pull. It resists. I pull again. This newborn land drinks deep. Thirst evident all around us. Half consumed trees spat out upside down. Nothing left of them but gangly sinewy roots, like the perished hands of the drowned grasping towards the cold and callous air. Telephone poles snapped and swallowed. Fences and sheds engulfed whole by the roaming sod. Our home then. Nothing more than one last bitter aperitif.

Day after day we have come here. Ever since. The man can’t even speak about it. Has barely said one word. I try and coax him. To speak about what has happened. How else can we move on? How else can we begin to once again pick up the pieces of our lives? The only thing right now that can animate him is his shovel. Barely eating, he’s more and more resembling a flagpole, his black hair waving in the wind, a marker stuck into this barren land. This whole thing is lunacy. Too much happening in my head all at once, I fuck the shovel against the ground. Glare at him. Challenging him to say something.

He doesn’t appreciate the gesture.

Mutters something beneath his breath.

Resorted now to the primitive, communicating with me through words that have yet to trouble themselves with a second syllable. I ignore this burgeoning chasm of silence. Shrugging it off has become second nature. I grab my phone and scroll through stories.

Ghosts of past lives light up my screen; on summer holidays, cocktails under orange sunsets, keys turned on freshly painted front doors. My fingers type die bitch beneath each one. Then up it pops. Again. Yes. Again.

An exclamation mark encased within a red triangle.

Not good.

Not good at all.

I glance towards himself and say, ‘Another storm on the way.’

Silence.

‘Could be another.’

What’s the word again.

‘A deluge,’ I mutter to myself, doing my best to mimic a feeling of cool composure.

And what do I get in return? Niente. The dumb waiter himself gaping at air like a suffocating goldfish.

‘We’re talking status red here, Lar,’ my voice, involuntarily, raising a notch.

His shovel snaps through fibre. The sun winks off a turbine’s swirling blade. The cuckoo’s mocking cry could not fill this void between us.

‘Lar,’ I hiss.

He pushes his long black hair from his eyes, wipes his dirt-ridden face with his T-shirt. Sweating away in his white cotton top and blue denim jeans, thinking he’s working the railroads or some shit. Slugs greedily from a battered plastic bottle of water. Personally now, my mercury levels are rising. Nobody and I mean nobody, not even Mother Teresa could be that absorbed in their work.

Need I remind you Lar that what we experienced was, dare I say it, an Act of God!

God, Lar.

God.

And Mrs. FBD, kitted out in her purple double-decker suit was crystal clear about that. A God damned Act of God. Meaning, my dear, that this whole situation was, dare I say it, outside of human control. There are some things that, believe it or not, surpass even my own most humble abilities. An Act of God, if you can circle this particular square Lar, is one of them. Yes. That’s right. I, Alison, was powerless before the careless acts of a wanton divinity. Was not in fact omnipresent. Was in fact helpless. Totally inept. Pure useless.

‘Dig.’

He mumbles this word between the gulps of water. Cooing to himself more than me. Keeping his sanity on side. Mine at bay. His grave is getting deeper. Clay and peat pile up. Notifications light up my phone asking me whether I am ok, whether I need help. DMs saying Alison Alison oh if there’s anything I can do just say.

Fuck off. Fuck off. Fuck off.

He stops then. Hits pause. Looks at me from a distance, considers my presence. Shadows pass over his face. I know what’s coming. Same thing he has said again and again and again.

You.

Were.

Right.

Be-side.

Her.

I can feel my heart jerking, my whole body about to spasm in defence.

‘I just can’t believe it,’ he utters. ‘You literally just left her there.’

That’s because my precious I was, you know, too focused on fucking living to worry about the dead. I don’t say this. Never have. I dance instead around the sensitivities of a grieving son.

‘How many times,’ I plead. ‘How many times do we have to go through this.’

I sometimes feel I am going mad. Man is traumatised. Stuck. Not able to go on, we spin daily on this merry-go-round of blame.

‘There was a LITERAL landslide,’ I say, pointing to the stubby hill in the distance. ‘From up there.’

He glares at me. Shakes his head.

‘A