Dark Horses: The Magazine of Weird Fiction No. 43: August 2025

Dark Horses

by Wayne Kyle Spitzer, Lawrence Dagstine, Gray McClary

dark horse
/ˈdärk ˈˌhôrs/
noun
1. a candidate or competitor about whom little is known but who unexpectedly wins or succeeds.
"a dark-horse candidate"

Join us for a monthly tour of writers who give as good as they get. From hard science-fiction to stark, melancholic apocalypses; from Lovecraftian horror to zombies and horror comedy; from whimsical interludes to tales of unlikely compassion--whatever it is, if it's weird, it's here. So grab a seat before the starting gun fires, pour yourself a glass of strange wine, and get ready for the running of the dark horses!

In this

THE BITE OF THE CHERRY BLOSSOM
Lawrence Dagstine

BLACK MAGICK 101
Gray McClary

GLADIATORS IN THE SEPULCHRE OF ABOMINATIONS
Alexander Zelenyj

LEX TALIONIS (THE RULE OF CORD)
R.C. Bramhall

SADIE
Wayne Kyle Spitzer

NORMAN NODDING
Stephen McQuiggan

THE CROOKED ROAD
Stephen Shewmake

THE GOOD SHIT
Brian J. Smith

BEYOND UNKNOWN
Barry Vitcov

WISP
M.P. Strayer

155 pages, Paperback

Published July 20, 2025

About the author

Wayne Kyle Spitzer (born July 15, 1966) is an American author and low-budget horror filmmaker from Spokane, Washington. He is the writer/director of the short horror film, Shadows in the Garden, as well as the author of Flashback, an SF/horror novel published in 1993. Spitzer's non-genre writing has appeared in subTerrain Magazine: Strong Words for a Polite Nation and Columbia: The Magazine of Northwest History. His recent fiction includes The Ferryman Pentalogy, consisting of Comes a Ferryman, The Tempter and the Taker, The Pierced Veil, Black Hole, White Fountain, and To the End of Ursathrax, as well as The X-Ray Rider Trilogy and a screen adaptation of Algernon Blackwood’s The Willows.