Gethsemane

Since her first appearance in the novel Threshold (2001), Dancy Flammarion has proven herself one of Caitlín R. Kiernan’s most enduring and popular (and long-suffering) characters. Subterranean Press released the first collection of Dancy short stories— Alabaster —in 2006, followed by a second— Comes a Pale Rider —in 2020. In the interim, there was a three-volume Dark Horse Comics graphic novel series, also called Alabaster, which won a Bram Stoker Award in 2013. Kiernan’s first Dancy story in seven years, “Gethsemane” goes south to the cane fields and swamps of the Georgia-Florida line, pitting a weary Dancy Flammarion against ancient horrors dragged from the sea’s black abyss and now lurking in an abandoned alligator farm. Offering up sirens, seagulls, pork rinds, and a haunted woman determined Dancy will help rid her town of monsters, “Gethsemane” reunites readers with the world of Kiernan’s “pale rider.”