Mystery Stories

Yuki Kazehara

By seven twenty, Senda Aoi had already decided that the combs were wrong. She stood in front of Case Four with her satchel still on her shoulder and the morning…

Marcus Veil

1. 03:17 ZULU. The pressure differential across the Intake-9 gate was four hundred psi. Elias felt the vibration in his teeth before he saw the obstruction. He …

Elara Nightwood

The river had stopped accepting the dead three hours before dawn, which meant someone had broken the covenant that kept the black glass flowing. Kael felt it in…

Dr. H. Ashford

From the private diary of Dr. Edmund Caswell, 7th November, 1902. 7th November — past midnight — Thornbury Grange, Wiltshire I arrived at the Grange at eleven o…

Yuki Kazehara

By half past four, the rain had found the gap above the municipal archive window and was dripping, with steady civic patience, into a chipped umbrella stand no …

Marcus Veil

1. 05:22 ZULU. You wake to the sound of the life support rhythm, a heavy, syncopated thump that has begun to skip beats. The air in your quarters is thin, metal…

Luc Devereaux

The locker door sticks. Salt air, rust, the kind of resistance that means someone’s been in here before me. I jiggle the key, feel the tumblers give. Inside: no…

Elara Nightwood

The plaster wept before Maren arrived, which meant the shrine had been waiting. She crossed the lower ward at dawn, when the river fog still clung to the quay s…

Yuki Kazehara

At nine six the next morning, the black pawn was standing on the blue velvet beside a lacquered incense box from the late Edo period, as if it had always belong…

Marcus Veil

1. 02:14 ZULU. The monitoring screen displayed a flat blue sine wave. The readout for sea level at Intake-4 remained locked at 7.0 centimeters. It had held that…

Elara Nightwood

The roads had begun appearing three weeks after Catriona stopped drawing them, which meant the world was remembering something she had tried very hard to forget…

Luc Devereaux

The rain stops at 5:17 a.m. I know because the neon sign above the pharmacy flickers off the same second, like someone pulled the plug on the sky. I shake water…