Dane McBride stared at the glow of his monitor, the tab count creeping upward in a scatter of job searches, overdue bill reminders, and half-finished troubleshooting logs. Midnight had passed an hour ago, but his clients expected things fixed before sunrise, and the invoices he’d...
I’m typing this from a hospital bed with one good hand and bandages across my face, the injuries still too raw for me to look at without spiraling. The staff here thinks I had an accident. They keep using that word. Accident. As if I bumped...
I grew up in a small town just outside of Charlotte, North Carolina. Technically, it was in South Carolina, but still a part of the metropolitan area. We were close enough to the city to enjoy some of the city amenities, but far enough away...
Part I Robert Yoder never liked the crawlspace. It sat in the far corner of the basement, wedged beneath an old set of wooden stairs that led to the backyard storm door. The house was built in the late sixties, and the crawlspace—according to his mom—once held...
Nathan Rye was six years old the first time he heard the wall move. It was a Tuesday. He remembered that much, mostly because Tuesdays were spelling test days, and because his mother had said it out loud when she tucked him in. “Long day, Tuesday,” she’d...
I have a skull in the corner of my office. It sits on a shelf a little above my eye line. It watches me, and fills me with great dread. I acquired it at an open air bazaar in China. If you wish for a street or...
I hated John Sweeney from my first breath. That might be a slight exaggeration, but not much of one. The feud began in my grandfather’s day–a dispute over an insult which escalated into a blood vendetta over the next two generations. So, I guess you...
My hometown of Mildensboro is shrinking. Cherie, my wife, was the first to call it. One night, on our back porch over a beer, she pointed toward the old water tower out past the treeline and remarked that it sure seemed closer than she remembered....
There’s a lotta darkness in this world. That’s a lowercase ‘d’ dark, mind ya. There’s also the capital ‘D’ kind, but that’s another kinda thing all together. Now, some people’ll tell ya that it’s the big Darkness that ya gotta watch out for, and in...
In a world reduced to rubble, where the living cling to routine just to survive, Joseph Emerick finds that his greatest enemy isn’t the wasteland around him—but the darkness inside his own mind. Haunted by a voice that whispers from the shadows, Joseph struggles to...
When a recently divorced man moves into a quiet new town, all he wants is peace, anonymity, and maybe a fresh start. But a mysterious invitation to a Halloween party at an abandoned warehouse promises the chance to meet people—and maybe forget his troubles for...
Kai Arkwright thinks he’s immune to fear. But when he and his friend Morgan sneak into the Oregon woods at midnight and discover a dead oak hung with bones, their night of mischief turns into a nightmare. Something ancient waits beneath that tree, and it...
It was eleven a.m. when Carl finally rolled off the couch and onto the floor, abruptly waking him. "Dang it Trevor. Try that again." he shouted as he jumped up with his fists up and ready for a fight. He and his brother, Trevor had been...
< We should stand together in solidarity, in this brave, new world. > The small cassette player cracked, but the voice speaking sounded polished and highly educated. It was a stark contrast to the surroundings where it momentarily resided. Winds swirled through a landscape of dust and...
Alright, so I know if I just jumped right into what I need to say, you’d think I was crazy, and just click off. My phone battery’s mostly full, so I have time to type out an explanation. Time...
The prospect of discovering a shipwreck containing riches beyond our comprehension was what drew us to scuba diving in the first place. Needless to say, we were disappointed pretty quickly. The likelihood of discovering a wrecked ship is infinitesimal, let alone a wrecked ship containing...
I didn't know why everyone was Googling September 23rd, but I do now. I wish I hadn’t found out. My name is Oren Pierce. I write about fringe culture and the ways people convince themselves the sky is falling. That was the plan last week when...
Leave it up to me to try to do something beneficial, and end up ruining my life in the process. All I wanted to do was go to the gym and right as I stepped through the threshold, BOOM! I trip and fall and my...
When a man notices strange, distorted faces peering from his neighbor’s upstairs window, he tells himself it’s a trick of the light—or children playing. But the nightly appearances grow more frequent, more unsettling, and impossible to ignore. As his obsession deepens, and his girlfriend begins...
The fluorescent lights hummed with their own strange cadence, a nervous flicker dancing above the library doors. The building always felt different once the last bell rang, but tonight it felt worse. The classrooms had gone dark, the lockers stretched like empty shells, and the...
