Nightmare #168, September 2026

“The Red Veil” by Daniel Roop

“Useless Heart / Stopped Cold” by A. Artemis Chen

“Not Even a Fly” by Phoenix Alexander

Reviewed by Henry Gasko

Nightmare magazine proudly states that “We believe that horror is for everyone” and it has always tried to present a wide range of perspectives. This issue, with only three stories, demonstrates both the successes and failures of that mission.

The first story, “The Red Veil” by Daniel Roop, is the least successful of the trio. The story attempts to develop a Lovecraftian atmosphere of cosmic horror: an evil beyond human understanding is menacing our world even though no one other than the protagonists are aware of it. In this case, humanity’s defenders are an extended family in Wyoming who have been doing this service for mankind from time immemorial. Now, for some reason, one of them invites an army buddy to join the group even though there are dozens of cousins already on hand.

The buddy, is eventually told the real reason he has been brought here: to fight this nameless evil. Of course he readily agrees, and is duly branded with their symbol, a Red Veil, which is meant to offer some supernatural protection. He undergoes indoctrination and training and soon enough they hear that the evil is again on the loose, this time in the backwoods of Tennessee. They fly off in their private jet in a scene that combines Ghost Busters with Thunderbirds Are Go, but without the humor of the former or the charm of the latter.

I am probably making this sound worse than it is. The writing is competent and the twist is clever enough: the evil entity manifests itself in the bodies of animals that have been stuffed by an expert taxidermist. And the final confrontation, complete with an unfortunate salesman caught up in the blood bath, features a portal of “muddy blackness” which opens to reveal the “festering pestilence” of another world.

Unfortunately the story takes a long time getting to that point. The two army buddies spend a lengthy sojourn fly fishing before the story proper begins. This is followed by manufactured friction about the recruitment from other members of the family, tension which ultimately comes to nothing. Then the story takes a further detour to describe how the salesman came to be in this area, complete with conversations in his office about his poor sales history. But no sign until the story’s last quarter of the evil, or even any foreshadowing of the threat it poses and why it must be defeated.

Perhaps it is common these days to provide not even a supernatural rationale for this type of portal to exist and for the evil it unleashes into our world; after all Buffy did it all the time. But why this family should have been tasked for ages to fight whatever it is, and how they decide that reports of a taxidermy contest in Tennessee should alert them in Wyoming are mysteries without a hint of explanation. So while there are some belated pyrotechnics at the end, the most disappointing aspect of the story is the failure to provide even a little context for the eventual confrontation, let alone any stakes worth fighting and dying for.

The remaining two stories are a total contrast, demonstrating how horror can provide the thrill of the supernatural while also commenting on human nature in a unique way. The first of these is “Useless Heart /Stopped Cold” by A. Artemis Chen, a short piece of only 400 words, which treats Hank Williams’ wonderful song “Cold, Cold Heart” literally. This is one of the few stories where the second person point of view does work. It describes how the main character, the “you” of the story, suffers a heart that grows cold after their parents’ divorce (“your” gender is never revealed) and finally stops, and how it is possible to live a seemingly full life despite that condition, at least as far as the outside world is concerned.

In the final story, “Not Even a Fly” by Phoenix Alexander, a young boy who is almost overcome by a strong impulse to hurt someone manages to overcome the urge to violence by “capsizing” his mind, his word for transferring it into a nearby object, in this case the body of a fly. His consciousness hovers in the fly’s body, watching his now-enervated human form until the feeling passes. And even though the scene itself is described in realistic detail, it is already obvious that something more than a body swap is at stake.

This is confirmed in subsequent scenes where he faces several occasions where his inner beast appears. But each time he is able transfer his “self” to some object nearby while his anger subsides. This might have been the end of the story. However the author chose to continue this examination of the male tendency to violence by introducing another character who suffers from the same condition but is ultimately less successful in controlling it. And while we could argue whether the rage the two men feel is inbred in all males, as the story seems to suggest, it does offer hope that, with sufficient effort, the toxic urge can be overcome.