Cemetery Dance bills itself as the World Fantasy Award-winning magazine of horror, dark mystery, and suspense.

Fair enough, it is just that.

Cemetery Dance also bills itself as a bi-monthly publication.

Hold on. Not quite.

Issue #58 of CD was released in February, 2008 (a nice Charlie Grant tribute issue). Then it sort of…disappeared…for a long time. Fans of the horror genre became rightfully worried. The man behind the curtain of CD, Richard Chizmar, had dropped out of the public eye. Submissions to CD went unanswered. The flagship of horror short fiction looked to be disappearing into that abyss that has devoured so many other fine small press publications.

But in December, 2008, Chizmar and crew re-emerged. The long-delayed issue #59 was released. Chizmar wrote a from-the-heart editorial about the reasons for the delay and, more importantly, the exciting future of the magazine.

So how well did the editing team of Cemetery Dance do producing their big comeback?

The issue’s fiction opens with a Brian Keene flash fiction titled “Burying Betsy.” Before Keene became a star for Leisure Books with his zombie novels, The Rising and City of the Dead, he was a short fiction writer of some acclaim. It’s nice to see Keene flexing his short fiction talents once more.

“Burying Betsy” does a nice job of immediately drawing the reader into the story with a compelling open paragraph:

We buried Betsy on Saturday. We dug her up on Monday and let her come inside, but then on Wednesday, Daddy said we had to put her back in the ground again.

Keene does an effective job hiding the twist that you know must be coming in such a short piece. He channels the fear many parents share and provides a nice spinetingler.

Darren Speegle’s “The Horticulturist’s Daughter” reads like the darker work of Kelly Link (rather high praise, I should think). Where “Burying Betsy” deals with a father trying to protect his daughter, Speegle’s fictional father fights to understand the mystery of his stepchild, Jonna. The story is an odd bird, much less horror and more a mood piece about the surreal dynamics of a family. Speegle splits the narrative into two voices—the father’s and the mother’s. Unfortunately, the mother’s tale failed to find any emotional resonance and prevented it from being an outstanding story.

“Painkeeper” by Lawrence C. Connolly turns the fiction to more traditional horror concepts. A mysterious man named Gabriel abducts Catherine, a “painkeeper.” Catherine has the ability to remove pain and illness from others and accept it into her body. Naturally, Gabriel wants Catherine’s help—in this case, to save his father who is gravely ill. There’s some nice imagery as Gabriel and Catherine reach the father’s house (and a predictable plot twist), but nothing here raises the story above being simply a well-told horror short.

“Bog Man” by Paul Finch was my least favorite story of the issue. Frankly, I struggled to read this one to its completion. Two archaeology students are working on their research thesis into the late hours of a Friday night. Said “bog man” is encased in a Perspex casing. There’s some hanky-panky, a couple of obvious misdirections, and then bog man comes to life. The whole thing reads like a crappy B-movie horror script, though in retrospect, that might have been Finch’s goal.

Steve Vernon’s “A Wiggle of Maggot, a Curl of Bacon” is one of three magnificent stories in this issue. I must confess, I was apprehensive and rather dismissive of Vernon having a story in the magazine. He’s been a longtime contributor and frequent reviewer for CD. The mistake in this line of thinking was that I’d never read any of his published short fiction. This story is nothing short of outstanding.

Like many great stories, the plot is deceptively simple. Here, an elderly man goes fishing with his grandson. The grandson is injured and the grandfather must save him. The grandfather shares flashbacks to his time as a United States Marine during the Korean War, where, in a set piece as tense as seen in any war movie, he and his unit try to hide from (and escape) a North Korean infantryman. Vernon shifts effortlessly between the twin narratives of the war and his battle to save his grandson’s life. Vernon also gives the grandfather a voice that will amuse and haunt long after the story is over.

“No Sergeant Trumble,” I said. “We are not lost. I’m lost. You’re right where you need to be. Following me.”

I’m looking forward to reading Steve Vernon again. “A Wiggle of Maggot, a Curl of Bacon” is perfect horror.

Eric Brown’s “Ghostwriting” is a serviceable story about a man coming to grips with the death of his daughter. Rhodes is a writer, who is temporarily forced to use voice recognition software to finish his latest novel due to breaking his right wrist. Stuck with writer’s block, he falls into a bit of an emotional spiral. Then his daughter starts communicating with him via the voice recognition software. There are some nice moments of true heartbreak, but overall nothing terribly memorable.

Stephen Mark Rainey provides a nice, spooky story in the form of “Gaki.” A college professor befriends a slightly odd gentleman named Jester. Jester invites the professor to a private party held behind a trailer park along a heavily wooded riverbank. There the professor has some absinthe and meets a pair of unusual women.

Rainey, a veteran of the horror industry, knows how to create an effective story about obsession and possible possession. “Gaki” is highly recommended.

The 136-page issue of Cemetery Dance ends on a high note with Sarah Langan. “Fenstad’s End” is the story that inspired Langan’s popular novel, The Missing. “Fenstad’s End” has a bit of a The Road vibe in that a man finds a purpose in life in the protection of a child in a post-apocalyptic world. Fenstad has done some…bad things. He is forced to come to terms with his past sins and forge a reason to continue. This is another story I highly recommend.

Issue #59 is a victorious return for one of the genre’s most beloved and well-respected publications. With three standout stories by the likes of Rainey, Langan, and Vernon, Cemetery Dance shows us that it still has an important place in the zeitgeist of the horror community.