Darkness surrounds us. We can find darkness anywhere: in a strange
green stone etched with mysterious symbols; at a small town's annual
picnic; in a ghostly house that is easy to enter but not so easy to
leave; behind the dumpster in the alley where a harpy lives; in The
Nowhere, a place where car keys, toys, people disappear to; among
Polar explorers; and, most definitely, within ourselves. Darkness
flies from mysterious crates; surrounds children whose 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
a chance 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
features more than 500 pages of dark tales from some of today's finest
writers of the fantastique. Chosen from a variety of sources, these
stories are as eclectic and varied as the genre itself.