Mother, Mirror

"Take one part Lord Dunsany, two parts H.P. Lovecraft, some Steven King extract, a quarter-cup of Thomas Pynchon, and mix well. Mitchell Wylie's work attacks the page with a kind of pointillist precision, nailing down a unique vision of fantasy psycho-horror." — Scott Fitzgerald Gray, author of A PRAYER FOR DEAD KINGS AND OTHER TALES

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The other nursing lass stares up at the main parts of this new herald of the now encompassing abyss — the just as hideously or more so slain priest. He who had dug their elders' resting plots and sermoned their burials. The healer who blessed their marriages and then births, had baptism augured and scroll-schooled their children for decades. Who had secretly fathered the child who her childhood-sweetheart husband loved with all his heart, and held with her for long breathless minutes of promises, before he rode to the east village.

Her husband's hope — to bring help and save her and her and him and them, save them all if he could. Save this fragile innocent she holds to her baffled pallid breast, in which she feels neither heartbeat, though that is all she wants of this endlessly unredeemable moment of madness.

Then it happens.

The Demon shows itself to her…