There was roadkill all up and down the highway this morning. It is nine AM and sunlight is sifting through the treetops. The lake is still and black and crawling with bugs. Thin grass grows beside it, tamped down by the boots of men I’ve never...
James was an eight-year-old boy with the heart of a dog and the energy of a hummingbird. His mother died when he was only five, so he lived with his grandmother, Babcia. They were very poor: their house was a tiny, dilapidated thing, with a...
The boy hated the nights when his big brother snuck out. He would stare at the empty bed in the bedroom they shared, under the large open window in the eave. Through there, every now and again, he could hear the unmistakable metal thuds of...
Most children say they want to run away from home but few ever do it. My brother Joey was definitely in the latter category, using the excuse of freedom and independence to constantly break our parents’ rules. He was a dreamer, an adventurer, someone that refused...
The carpet smells of decay and mud as I flatten my face against the floor in an attempt to hide under our queen-sized bed. An incessant banging at the door resonates through my brain, feeling like I’m being impaled with an iron spike. Each knock slams...
Henry never believed the stories. A marketing trick, that’s all they were, meant to lure tourists who wanted to be fooled. That’s what he told the curator, in so many words, during his job interview. The curator gave Henry a tour of the museum just after...
I grew up in a place called Lair’s Fane or ‘The Fane’, as locals called it, a solid two-and-a-half hours from anywhere worth going. I lived with my grandmother in her rustic, weathered farmhouse just beyond the edge of The Fane, set adrift in the...
Some said it was the moon’s glow that would hit the aged broken glass of the church’s upper lofts on certain nights. Others claimed it was merely their imagination...
The Original Sin We were just open-minded kids. We wanted to see as much of the world as possible. God forgive us; we didn’t mean to deceive anyone. We didn’t mean to give that creature a whiff of our scent, but we did. I’m sure now...
Walter was cool. Walter was tough. Walter was 13 years old. As the only teen on his block all the other kids that lived on Revenant Falls Lane were in awe of Walter. They were especially ravenous for the kinds of stories he could tell them that his...
“Come on, Jim, you know it’s going to suck.” I didn’t nod, though I wanted to. Mark was right, as usual. Most of camp had sucked, to be honest. Tom, on the other hand, tried once more to be the voice of reason, even as he tugged...
My name is Mortimer Lipschitz. I know the name itself suggests otherwise, but I shit you not. That's really my name. I used to wish it wasn't. On all that's holy, I wished it wasn't. But I suppose that the name was never really the...
I moved into my new apartment nearly a month ago. The building’s exterior looked a little run down, but the rent was unbeatable for where it stood. The other tenants all seemed quiet enough and the hallways didn’t smell like piss and stale beer like...
“Christ,” I muttered to myself, as the first flakes of snow started to fall. They gathered in fuzzy clumps over the windshield before my wipers cleared them away. I’d been waiting for fifteen — no, twenty minutes now — in my sister’s driveway. Had I...
I looked at the phone. I waited for the text to come back. It was maybe about ten, fifteen minutes. That hideous face popped up on the screen, with the reply. “You didn't do the last task I asked of you. Now, there will be consequences.” The last...
“I want to hear about the Spindler.” Logan listened as the voices of his three friends talked. He watched as the fire before him dwindled. “You sure you wanna do that, Lexi? In these woods?” Logan’s back was firmly set against the back of a broad, old oak;...
Jack Mckay huddled in the cold midnight street with a pale green sleeping bag encasing his lower half. Spindled trails of light reflected off the gleaming roads from damp lampposts. But the cold wasn’t what gave Jack his nightly jitters—not by a long shot. The...
