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 last saw my girlfriend around seventeen years ago. Although for me, it was last week. I know that doesn't make much sense. I'm not even sure why I'm writing this. It's not like anybody will believe it. And even if they did, the truth would...
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...
Part I The night the boys broke into the Sanctuary, the Covenant bells had barely stopped ringing. Sherman Cantrell sat through the last of the evening prayers with his head bowed and his chest aching, listening to Elder Lamont Havel drone through the closing litany. The old...
Part I Sara didn’t realize how much of the town was gone until she hit Main Street and found more plywood than glass. The old diner was a vape shop now. The hardware store her mother used to drag her through on Saturdays stood empty, windows painted...
Part I Dana Quill first heard the name in a voicemail that cut out halfway through. “The Pit,” the caller said, his voice low and ragged. “They’re not doing cage fights down there. They’re… growing things. If you want a story, this is it. But don’t come...
Part I Mindy Ayers noticed the new girl’s reflection before she noticed her. The conference room’s wall of glass caught everyone at the table in unflattering profile, except for the woman near the head. On the far right pane, Mindy’s own reflection blurred where the fluorescent light...
Part I Shawna Coleman rode home from her own wedding with the bouquet in her lap like contraband. The car’s interior still smelled faintly of hair spray and champagne. A few stray grains of rice clung to the fabric of her dress. Drew drove one-handed, his tie...
Part I Dr. Meredith Rowan preferred to schedule new patients at the start of the week, when her mind felt the cleanest. Mondays had a crispness to them, a sense that the slate had been rinsed overnight. By Thursday, the edges often blurred. Trauma work could...
Part I Stephen Hampton didn’t expect to find himself back in uniform, even part-time, but his phone began vibrating on the kitchen counter just after six in the morning. He recognized the number—Patricia Simmons rarely called him outside of holidays or bad news—and answered before the...
Part I Christian Ward had driven into strange towns before, but Hollow Creek greeted him with a kind of quiet that suggested the place was thinking. The highway wound through the Appalachian foothills in a series of broad, predictable curves until the last stretch, where the...
Part I Alden Richards watched Ambrose Massey through the cracked pane of the bar’s side window, the glass warped enough to twist the man’s head into a mild distortion. Neon from the sign outside bled over Ambrose’s hair as he sat in his usual place near...
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...
It was supposed to be the summer that finally gave him a chance at feeling normal. In 1984, sixteen-year-old Wyatt is sent to Camp Chattahoochee—an escape from the state home, from cruelty, from the ghosts of the family who abandoned him. Instead, he finds first...
Brad Carter only wanted one thing: to save his daughter. When he finds a strange, warm egg deep in the woods, it feels like fate—an impossible discovery at the exact moment he’s drowning beneath medical bills and running out of time. What hatches inside his...
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...
Samantha Barkley has spent years fighting to keep her home bakery—and her family—from collapsing under the weight of impossible expectations. When a vindictive client destroys her reputation overnight, Sam finds herself desperate, exhausted, and cracking under pressure. Then a stranger tells her about someone called...
Part I I work nights at our old middle school. It’s a small place—two floors, one gym, a cafeteria that still smells vaguely like canned green beans even when it’s spotless. Budget cuts mean the day crew leaves at five and I handle the late shift...
