The house crouched at the bottom of a short slope, a little way back from the old road that ran straight, with military precision, through the village. The village had been there for centuries, the road even longer.
Overnight the mist seeped upwards from the soil and wrapped the house, the road and the adjacent countryside in swathes of damp, grey muslin. Everything the muslin touched was smeared with a thin layer of frost, reducing the immediate landscape to timeless tones of uniform grey. Everything, that is, except the darker grey of the man-shaped shadow standing motionless within the mist’s embrace, just beyond the garden fence.
Ink Stains, a quarterly anthology published by Dark Alley Press, is about shining a stark light on the shadows of life, exploring those dimly lit corridors, and unearthing those long-buried secrets. We don’t believe good will always triumph over evil or that someone will always be around to save the day. Sometimes all we have is ourselves. And the stories that keep us turning the page.
In Volume 10 we consider - Death. Murder. Betrayal. An inevitable undoing. The selfish and terrible actions of humans rarely go unpunished in a world where Fate is a cruel mistress and Karma can be more vengeful than a woman scorned. Hell is real, and it exists here on Earth as several characters in the stories contained within can attest as they face war, jealousy, domestic violence, and supernatural forces. Some face Hell on a literal level as others discover it is of their own making. Authors Michael Barron, Eric M. Battaglia, Eddie Cantrell, Michael R. Collins, Patrick Hackeling, Matthew Lett, J.A.W. McCarthy, Karen Metcalf, Ben Nein, Liam Quinn, RL Schumacher, Caleb Stephens, C.J. Thomson, Jackie Valacich, and J.S. Watts weave together dark tales that question how far one is willing to push to get what they desire and explore the consequences of those more interested in themselves than their fellow men and women.
