Kicking in the boarded doors to the ossuary, Clinton shined his LED spotlight into the small church. The bright blue light illuminated pews, a pulpit, and a giant, in disrepair crucifix above that, all draped in cobwebs. The skeletal remains of nearly a hundred people...
Suitcase in hand, you head to the station. There is no way in hell that you are going to forgive that lying, cheating bastard ever again. He can’t be trusted anymore, and you know it. You know his lies about working late nights. The smell of...
Part I I have never been a superstitious man, and can honestly say that I do not believe in vampires, ghouls, demons, or anything else that those youngsters with their vivid imaginations and smartphones like to dream up. But there is one thing that happened a very...
Dave pulled up in front of his friend Ryan’s trailer. He was glad for Ryan when he got land and got out of the trailer park but now that he had to drive out here in the dark after a cryptic text message, he decided...
Stars, hide your fires! Let not light see my black and deep desires: The eye wink at the hand! yet let that be, Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see. — Shakespeare, Macbeth When I promised my, shall I say, partners (who will remain anonymous as long...
I’ve been walking around for the past five and a half weeks without feeling like I’m truly alive. The positive test showed up first, and the symptoms came to plague me shortly after. Our son was kind enough to agree to stay with us until...
“It’s 11:05 and you’re listening to WSAH 101.1 FM, Whittenberg’s classic rock for the discerning listener. And since it’s after 11, the powers that be say, we’re allowed to take requests. Soooo, if you’re so inclined give me a call at 221-867-9724…” * * * *...
Ted pulled his car off the paved road and onto the gravel driveway where his worn tires grumbled. “Yeah, I get the feeling.” It had been a long sales day for them both. When Ted had started selling water purifiers, everyone was in a panic about lead...
Being a police detective means you see a lot of horrible things. Things you can’t unsee. They haunt your dreams at night, and the images spill over into the daytime. Waking nightmares – ever hear of those? I get them all the time. Pretty soon, every time you...
Every time I fall asleep, I have the same horrifying nightmare – a flashback of what we went through. In the dream, we’re back on Xangrath again. Everything is just the way it was, and my heart aches for reasons my sleeping mind can’t comprehend. My...
The couch reeked of cigarette smoke, ashes, and body odor. It was faded yellow like the wallpaper, its springs creaking loudly as I sat down. It smells like him, I thought to myself, surveying my late father’s living room and its precarious stacks of old books...
There hadn’t been a murder in Franzburg for over five years. Not since old man Weathers killed his wife over a Monopoly match gone sour and a marriage gone even sourer. Up until last week, that was. Now I’ve got three different files sitting on my desk,...
“Let’s go hiking!” she said. “It’ll be fun, babe!” she said. Yeah…yeah, it’s definitely real fuckin’ fun right now… I’m sorry, I gotta…gotta stay calm, right? Okay… okay, let me start again. It was around 10:00 this morning when Selena woke me up with a thing of doughnuts...
“The warmth is completely gone now, she took it all away…she’s behind me…she’s angry with me. Ice…everywhere…I have my gun. Can’t let her…ice everywhere…so…cold…” Those were my brother, Christopher’s last words; hastily scrawled on the last page of his fiancee, Darla’s personal journal that was found...
I spent my childhood in a small town. Long, winding single-lane roads with speed limits that topped out at seventy miles per hour were common. Modest-sized houses on large lots dotted the landscape, innumerable trees providing privacy and anonymity. One of those houses was mine. ...
Danny was always afraid of the dark. The kind of kid who'd slept with a nightlight until he was way too old. One who’d never dare to step out of his room if the hallway light was off. I remember our first sleepover, when tucked away beneath...
I believe there are imperceptible forces, energies and intangible things, which, arising from some sub-dimensional source, act on our minds, influence our thoughts, and perhaps even create entirely new thoughts—ideas which we wouldn’t have normally, naturally considered. The human brain largely remains a mystery and is still yet...
I have only a few things to say, a few terrible events to relate, and then I must go and join my best friend. She is in the other room, struggling against her restraints, crying out wildly, madly, shrieking like a thing inhuman. In many...
The worst thing about trying to stop your brain from re-entering your skull is that, with it being your brain, you can’t exactly resist the commands it issues. You can struggle, dimly, bodily, but in the end, the brain wins out. It gets back into...
I’m sitting in a bar right now, somewhere in the more southern portions of Missouri; Howell County, I think. I haven’t bothered to ask. The police are on their way, the owner of the bar called them the moment she saw me stumble through the...
