CHM #49 July 2024 (Patreon)

This issue is a special one, a tribute to one of (if not) the best living writers of cosmic horror and weird fiction, Thomas Ligotti.

Our Ligotti tribute issue fittingly begins with Jon Padgett’s lyrical and haunting “The Indoor Swamp, Revisited.” We then bring you into the world of a devilish prankster with Matthew M. Bartlett’s “Good Evening, Mr. Darkgarden.” We then have a pair of stories that revel in the impersonal disconnection of work, Susan R. Morritt’s slaughterhouse horror “I’ve Got the Sauce, If You’ve Got the Pasta” and “The Server Room” from CHM Alum Patrick Barb.

We follow those chilling tales with LC von Hessen’s “The Carnival Is Dead and Gone,” where a lonely young man buys a blank expanse of flesh he hopes to grow into a companion, and Lucy Zhang’s “Skipped Practice,” which brings us two young piano virtuosos struggling to navigate a carnivorous environment. We cap the issue with a trio of unsettling tales, TJ Price’s “The Nightmare-Eater” and Erik McHatton’s “The Man Who Collected Ligotti,” as well as D. Matthew Urban’s “I Vecchi,” where a man searches for layers of meaning in an inappropriately titled painting. We wrap up the issue with a reach back into the crypt for Herbert J. Mangham’s “The Basket.”