Forget Me Not

 There are creatures lurking in our world. Obscure creatures long relegated to myth and legend. They have been sighted by a lucky—or unlucky—few, some have even been photographed, but their existence remains unproven and unrecognized by the scientific community.

These creatures, long thought gone, have somehow survived; creatures from our nightmares haunting the dark places. They swim in our lakes and bays, they soar the night skies, they hunt in the woods. Some are from our past, and some from other worlds, and others have always been with us—watching us, fearing us, hunting us.

These are the cryptids, and Systema Paradoxa tells their tales.

***

What is legend? What is truth?

A monster is said to lurk beneath the waters of Lake Erie. Jane and her twin brother Rob are haunted by just that. As children, they lost half their family to a terrible boating accident. They haven't left dry land since. Only, at the age of sixteen, they allow friends to lure them onto the lake.

But should they have held their ground?

When something nearly swamps their boat, years of secrecy are swept away and the children's father shares their family history with the supposed Monster of Lake Erie.

Will the tale bring closure or just more tragedy?

Carol Gyzander read classic science fiction and Agatha Christie mysteries non-stop as a child. Now that her own kids have flown the coop, she writes and edits horror, suspense, dark fiction, and sci-fi stories from the outskirts of New York City. Twisted tales that touch your heart!

Her story, “The Yellow Crown,” was nominated for the HWA Bram Stoker Award® for Superior Achievement in a Short Story. It can be found in the Stoker-nominated anthology, Under Twin Suns: Alternate Histories of the Yellow Sign from Hippocampus Press.
Carol has stories in over a dozen other anthologies, including Stories We Tell After Midnight from Crone Girls Press; Across the Universe: Tales of Alternate Beatles from Fantastic Books (amidst stories by Cat Rambo, Spider Robinson, and David Gerrold); Cat Ladies of the Apocalypse from Camden Park Press; and The Lost Librarian’s Grave: Tales of Madness, Horror, and Adventure from Redwood Press.

As editor-in-chief and one of the founders of Writerpunk Press, she’s edited four anthologies of punk stories inspired by classic tales, including Merely This and Nothing More: Edgar Allan Poe Goes Punk and Hideous Progeny: Classic Horror Goes Punk. She co-edited the Even in the Grave anthology of ghost stories, with James Chambers, from the NeoParadoxa line of eSpec Books.
She works with James Chambers as Co-Coordinator of the Horror Writers Association New York Chapter and as co-host of the HWA-NY Galactic Terrors online reading series (on the second Thursday of every month—see HWANY.org for details). She is also one of the overall Chapter Program Managers for HWA.

Carol’s a member of Horror Writers Association, Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, Broad Universe, and Historical Novel Society. Find her at http://www.CarolGyzander.com or on Twitter and Instagram @CarolGyzander.