QSFer Rob Costello has a new queer horror book out: The Dancing Bears: Queer Fables for the End Times.
A lost boy under the spell of a seductive killer suffers the sting of betrayal while on the hunt for fresh blood. A misanthrope obsessed with death carries on a torrid affair with the malevolent spirit haunting the house in his favorite novel. The dead son of an abusive horror novelist returns from the grave to tell his father what really happened the night he died. An ex-child star desperate for a comeback meets a sinister stranger who reveals the terrible price of attaining his heart’s desire. A headstrong girl determined to seduce her ex-boyfriend discovers what being trapped in the closet really means.
The Dancing Bears: Queer Fables for the End Times showcases eleven darkly speculative tales of the queer and uncanny. With eight previously published and three brand new stories, this debut collection features young queer characters grappling with love and desire in a heartless world hurtling toward the abyss.
Get It At Amazon | Publisher
Excerpt
From: “Whatever Happened to the Boy Who Fell into the Lake?”
Picture Tick at twelve years old, on the day he nearly drowns himself to join Mama.
He’s all knees and elbows and goggling green eyes, with fish-belly skin that lobsters in the sun, and greasy black hair that Randall never bothers to make him wash, except if you count all the times he’s held Tick’s head underwater in the bathtub to teach him to keep his mouth shut about her.
Now, picture a hazy June morning. Declan and Tick by the lake. Declan’s blond hair shining like gold in the sunlight, his bronzed skin smelling of soap and grass and black licorice. Tick thinks he’s the most beautiful boy in the world, though he hasn’t quite figured out what
noticing that says about him. He will soon enough.
The two of them stand side by side on the high rocks that look out upon the swimming hole far below. Their toes curl over the edge. They hurl stones into the lake to see who can throw them the farthest. Like all their games of physical prowess, Tick lets Declan win, because holding himself back is the only way he knows how to show love.
He has Mama to thank for that.
Eventually Declan runs out of stones and goes hunting in the woods for more, while Tick hangs around, teetering on the ledge, thinking of her.
He’s dreamed of her the night before—he dreams of her most nights—and as he stands in that little corner at the back of nowhere, he pictures once more the imaginary underwater tunnel that, even though he’s old enough to know better now, he still secretly hopes is down there at the bottom of the lake, traveling deep beneath the mountains to her new home far out at sea. It’s the same silly fantasy he’s wished for since he and Randall arrived in Shelter Valley. The one where she swims all the way to the Adirondacks through that tunnel to save him, taking him back with her below the waves to where he belongs: by her side.
By her side, where they’ll explore cities of coral with other undersea kids who wear rainbow anemones in their flowing hair. By her side, where she’ll introduce him to the lady mermaids who yearn for legs to dance upon the shore. By her side, where he’ll climb into her clamshell bed to fall asleep in her arms while she tells him stories of cruel fathers like Randall left far behind on dry land, as friendly sharks swim around to guard them, and no more waking to shouts in the middle of the night, or cigarettes branding the folds of his arms, or fist-shaped bruises recording screams on the secret places beneath his clothes.
He knows he should let go of these childish daydreams, but he can’t—he still believes in her. And besides, if there’s any magic left in the world, down below must be where it lives. Down where time ebbs and flows with the tides. Where mothers like her ache for the sons they left behind on shore. Yes, he’s far too old to cling to such foolish fantasies, but it doesn’t matter. The one thing a childhood of secondhand Disney DVDs has taught him is that wishing for something badly enough can sometimes make it come true.
And on this strange, inexplicable morning, it does.
A voice in the wind carries her name to him through the leaves and brambles. When he glances down at his reflection rippling upon the surface of the water, it isn’t himself he sees gazing back anymore: It’s her.
So, he jumps in after her.
His cries for her are the first thing the lake swallows as it takes him under. His mouth gushes air until no words escape, not even her name. As the green water slithers around him, the undertow coils about his ankles, pulling him down. But he doesn’t struggle. He’s a stronger boy than Randall gives him credit for being. He wills himself limp, sinking further into the water’s keeping. He’s daydreamed of joining her in that secret, submerged place for so long. He’s wished for it, prayed for it, that beautiful below where sky turns to silver waves and currents refresh like breezes. A world so enchanting and lovely, she chose it over him.
But as he sinks deeper and deeper, thinking, “Mama, I’m here! Mama, I’m ready!” she doesn’t come for him. Instead, the darkness presses in. A terrible pain swells in his chest, and his will to hold back crumples beneath the urge to breathe as panic breaks free, jolting him with kicks and spasms. He flails for the surface, grasping at the tendrils of light above. But he’s waited too long, gone too deep, and soon nothing remains but the fading pings of his heart as the lake swallows him down ….
He blacks out for whatever happens next.
He doesn’t remember anything after that.
He just knows that when they discover him days later and 300 miles away on Rockaway Beach, he is unconscious, naked, and grinning.
But here’s the thing: Sometimes magic changes nothing.
Author Bio
Rob Costello (he/him) writes dark fiction with a queer bent for and about young people. He’s the contributing editor of WE MOSTLY COME OUT AT NIGHT: 15 QUEER TALES OF MONSTERS, ANGELS & OTHER CREATURES (Running Press Teens, 2024) and author of the story collection THE DANCING BEARS: QUEER FABLES FOR THE END TIMES (Lethe Press, 2024). His stories have appeared in The Dark, The NoSleep Podcast, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Hunger Mountain, Stone Canoe, Narrative, and RURAL VOICES: 15 AUTHORS CHALLENGE ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT SMALL-TOWN AMERICA (Candlewick, 2020). An alumnus of the Millay Colony of the Arts, he holds an MFA in Writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and has served on the faculty of the Highlights Foundation since 2014. He is co-founder (with Lesa Cline-Ransome, Jo Knowles, and Jennifer Richard Jacobson) of the R(ev)ise and Shine! writing community, and he lives in upstate NY with his husband and their four-legged overlords. Learn more at: www.cloudbusterpress.com & www.revise-and-shine.com.
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