This is the inaugural issue of Underland Arcana, where the numinous, the esoteric, the supernatural, and the weird collide. It contains stories from Michael Barsa, Elou Carroll, David Hewitt, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Jessie Kwak, Tristan Morris, Stephen O'Donnell, Jonathan Raab, and Rebecca Ruvinsky. Ghost stories, apocalyptic stories, stories about cats, stories about things that haunt the corner of your perception, stories hidden inside other stories, stories about cocktails and rivers and those last moments before everything goes black, and stories about the quiet fear that gets louder and louder and louder. These are the stories of Underland Arcana.

“Ominous, fantastic, and wonderfully malevolent…. I felt the spirits of Shirley Jackson, Edgar Allan Poe, and Albert Camus’ Meursault, whispering to join the fun.”— Alice Sebold, best-selling and award-winning author of The Lovely BonesA car lies at the bottom of an icy ravine. Slumped over the steering wheel, dead, is the most critically acclaimed horror writer of his time. Was it an accident? His son Milo doesn't care. For the first time in his life, he's free. No more nightmarish readings, spooky animal rites, or moonlit visions of his father in the woods with a notebook and vampire make-up.Or so he thinks.Milo settles into a quiet routine—constructing model Greek warships and at last building a relationship with his sister Klara, who's home after a failed marriage and brief career as an English teacher. Then Klara hires a gardener to breathe new life into their overgrown estate. There's something...