Part One: Once a Butcher's Wife Calla Lily Cottage stood among the rose bushes and assorted potted plants atop of Willow Vale, basking in the mid-afternoon sun. White walls adorned with climbing ivy, a thick thatched roof, and aging lop-sided windows gave the building a distinct...
Some nights are worse than others. Some nights, I wake up alone in the dark with a cold chill settling upon me, seeping into my flesh. Other nights I toss and turn until I wake with a half-remembered image of my brother Aaron’s face. In...
Paige watched with wide eyes as her friend was ushered into a cage with iron bars jagged with rust. An iron arm swung the cage over the edge of the filthy fishing boat. Paige pressed her hands together, her eyes welling with panic. ”No, please!” she pleaded. “She...
Sickness overcame Emily without warning. While we strode, arms linked, through downtown after a late movie, taking turns trashing it—Emily became silent, and stopped walking. I thought maybe she’d stepped in gum, or forgot something at the theatre, but on her face grew an expression signaling...
My wife Vicky means more to me than my own life. I’ve consulted doctors after hours, anonymous clinical helplines, even a suicide hotline for Christ’s sake. The only course of action that I have left is to release her into professional medical care. As weak...
Growing up, I never saw a single carved or smashed pumpkin. The only smashed pumpkin I ever saw was thrown down personally. It was years ago. I was still young. Maybe we’d gotten the idea from a story on the radio or a comic. A...
I live in a small, but lively town in Massachusetts. Its local legends have fueled my love affair with the paranormal. It's a subject that fascinates me to this day. Coupled with insomnia, this passion led me to spend many a late night at the...
The air filled with smoke, but to Texan farmer Don Murphy, it was all part of his daily routine. Unlike most men, Don lived for his workdays. Even at fifty-seven he never grew tired of the fragrant fog of burning wood, the vast blue skies, and...
This is the 2nd in a multi-part series. If you haven't already, please read the 1st part here. Part II To this day, I don’t know what came over me, but as the cops entered the room, I was overwhelmed with the idea that they meant me...
Part I Something extraordinary began happening to me this past month, and I’m not sure whether I ought to be relieved or terrified. For all I know, it’s been going on for several months, or possibly years. Hell, maybe it’s been going on my entire life,...
Is Doctor Disrespect one of your heroes? I know he was one of mine. Yes, was. I guess I still respect the guy. But he went down one motherfucker of a rabbit hole and dragged me down with him. I’m seventeen and I wash windows. That’s why...
It was a cloudless, sapphire-blue sky that day. We had the camping trip planned for a month, and it took even longer than that for us to coordinate our vacations, so that we could all be there together. It was a reunion I had dreamed...
Nestled just off the Appalachian Trail, near the border of Virginia and West Virginia, where forests grew thick and pressed in on all sides, sat a small region known as Dry Branch. Barely more than a collection of campgrounds, Dry Branch rarely received visitors, save...
“Is it true? Did every cop in the precinct call in sick tonight?” I asked my friend who lives across the street from the police station. “Yeah, Wayne.” I heard him answer as I could also hear him racking his shotgun. “Can’t say I blame them,...
I met the love of my life on my lunch break. I was cramming a BLT into my mouth while leaning forward on the painted wooden bench in the park near my office. The weather was perfect. Lush green leaves were swaying in the whispering breeze,...
Tommy Ihlman was only seven years old when his parents bought the house on Tamara Lane. Though it was no mansion by any stretch of the imagination, the five-bedroom raised-ranch style home seemed like a palace compared to the one-bedroom studio apartment he and his...
A few days ago I got a text message from an unknown number reading “I got your proof.” I stared at the words for a bit, thinking it was a wrong number. Then I remembered the last time I’d spoken to Jeremy. Jeremy, my younger cousin,...
“Daddy, why is mommy so cold?” She was dead. Maurice knew that much, but why was she so cold? His father, a stout man named Gregory, was silent. Everyone knows we die. Not even children deny it. Yet knowing a fact and believing it are different....
The sky was dark, threatening rain as Ryan got out of the car, slamming the door behind him. Uncle Selwyn’s house...
I have been doing this for many years. Sure I have changed schools a couple of times, had to even move states to help with my wife’s elderly parents. But I have always viewed the kids on my bus as an extension of my family. At the...
