I've already dealt with switching over to a new publication year for the E-Rag. It's a momentous occasion and I always meet it with something of a sense of awe. There is the remembrance of what has passed and the expectation of what is to come. Now it is very close to the close of 2003. It's been quite a year.

In 1972 the film going community was shocked, appalled, stunned, and downright pissed off at a new writer/director with a rather ironic name called Wes Craven. Somehow he was allowed to make another film, though it didn't come to fruition until five years later, and he did it again.

It fell softly. It fell slowly. It fell lazily. The stirring winds gusted it in circles in the air. This was a strange and beautiful place. The white flakes fell to the soft white ground. She stood gazing raptly at the little flakes as they fell, as they danced with the wind, as they paid visits to her eyelashes for brief moments before disappearing.

Warning: May be unsuitable for some readers. This story contains mature subject matter, disturbing situations, and coarse language. Reader Discretion is Advised.

The story contained within is the continuation of last issue's story "Perspectives at Dawn". Please excuse this temporary change in the line up. The "story inspired by a song" article will return in Issue 3-3.

The Ninth Gate is a thriller about a book specialist, Dean Corso, who is called upon to authenticate a rare book of which only three copies are known to exist. The book collector Boris Balkan has one of the copies of "The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows" a 17th century book said to have been co-authored by an Italian man and Lucifer himself.

Sandy Allen's friend Graham has managed, after a long search that was beginning to seem impossible, to get his hands on a copy of a never before seen horror film. The 1938 film, made in England and starring both Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, was so controversial that it was practically banned before it was even finished.

Ben climbed up onto the odd second front porch of the house. His arms and legs felt like lead. His own mother had betrayed him. She had even gone so far as to try to kill him. He felt sick that he had trapped her in that unearthly place. Tried to kill him or not she was his mother. He had left her to a fate possibly worse than death.

This issue we have delved into some very different areas of horror. We have been party to things that many others will never fathom. It is an experience that is personal to each of us, private to our darkest heart. There are strings of commonality we may all share, though. Now is the time to think about it as a whole; one solid, cohesive unit. It is time for the Sommatoria.

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