We Are Where the Nightmares Go and Other Stories by C. Robert Cargill was reprinted in the latest issue of [b:Lightspeed Magazine: May 2020, #120|53449323|Lightspeed Magazine May 2020, #120|John Joseph Adams|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1589977813l/53449323._SY75_.jpg|81478723] and is available online here. Cargill's story is originally from [b:We Are Where the Nightmares Go and Other Stories|39295152|We Are Where the Nightmares Go and Other Stories|C. Robert Cargill|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1529081648l/39295152._SY75_.jpg|56628930]. Also, I love absolutely in love with Lightspeed's latest cover. GORGEOUS.

The door is at the end, but there’s not only one path to it. Every way you walk is a path, and all of those paths lead to the door. Some of them just take much longer than others. Some of them are more difficult than others. There are some paths so scary, even I never wander them. This is a land of lost children, filled with children who never find the door and those who have lost themselves trying to find it.

This blew my mind, oh my gosh! It's so creepy and nightmarish and poetic. I absolutely loved it. A little girl crawls into a door under her bed and is transported to the land where nightmares go and has to find her way back out again. She employs the help of a frightening clown whom she dubs Siegfried, and together they go from nightmarish locale to nightmarish locale, trying to outsmart The Thing on the Other Side of the Door, who won't let the girl (or anyone else) out of the nightmare land.

Most dreams fade into nothing, drifting away like wisps of smoke. But some dreams, they last. They take root in the soul and hold strong against the tide. The nightmares that survive, the ones that come from the darkest places of your heart and refuse to fade away, they have to go somewhere. So they end up here, cast out like the trash, dumped where no one knows where to look, in the dark space beneath your bed.

For a horror story, it really reads so wonderful. The prose is beautiful and evocative. I'm definitely going to be reading more by C. Robert Cargill. ( )

What a gorgeous, gorgeous cover.