First Lines of Kevin Lucia's "Liminal Spaces"

 "I'm sitting, crisscross-applesauce, in the deepest part of the deepest end of the Twin Oaks Community swimming pool, but down here, I may as well be sitting on Mars. My eyes are closed, have been closed, for about five minutes."

- from "Written in Water," by Robert Ford, the first story in Liminal Spaces: An Anthology of Dark Speculative Fiction edited by Kevin Lucia.

Lucia writes that this anthology offers takes on "dark specultative stories about the in-between. ... Neither here nor there. Strange stories about poeple and places lost in a shadowy, hazy middle-ground." Thus these are tales a person or a place with a dark- often occult - secret, and the fun comes from the journey of discovering that secret. I enjoyed it but like with most collections there mixed results based on your personal taste. For example, Jessica McHugh's "Back to One" and Chad Lutzke's "Womb with a View" were too grotesque for me. But most were quite entertaining. My highlights were "The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own," Gwendolyn Kiste's take on the Black Dahlia; "Mirror, Mirror" Joshua Palmatier's fantasy offering; "O Adelin," Michael Wehunt's Lovecraftian post-apocalyptic tale; and the twisted logic of Norman Prentiss' "Cabinet People."