Rex

“The head has the same eyes as the fish, beady and unblinking, only they’re cloudy and flat, sunken deep into its skull. Its hair grows wild, tangled with beetles, twigs, and burs, and it trails the head like a tail. The flesh itself is rotten and foul, dead as the Heaven and Hell tree, once the tallest old oak on the reservation—its branches stretching for the stars, its roots reaching for the abyss below—and as ragged around its missing neck as the hem of my jeans.” The chain he wore on his wallet rattled as he lifted a foot over the fire, showing off the frayed cuff of his pant leg, streaked with mud. “The mouth”—he paused, clenching his jaw to steel himself—“that’s the worst part of it. It can stretch as wide as it wants . . . wide enough to suck you between its wormy lips.” She thought of the catfish again, their mouths gaping and wide, flanked by whiskers that had curled and turned black after her father had hacked off the fish heads and tossed them into the fire he’d stoked to cook the fish fillets. “It’s got a tongue of old leather and teeth like shattered glass, jagged and sharp.”
― Nick Medina, Sisters of the Lost Nation

“I don’t know her well enough for that. We’re friendly, but it’s not like we have the kind of rapport that I can say, ‘My childhood friend was watching you and thinks your daughter is under demonic threat. Would you care to meet her?”
― Leopoldo Gout, Piñata

“A scientiss?” moaned Dennis. He put his hand on Denzil’s shoulder. “He woan have no money. C’mon, Denzil. Less go.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, The Necromancer

“But occasionally, someone will climb the hill, someone who has lost a husband or a child, someone who has somehow learned the secrets of sleepers, of the presence of a portal”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Winter People