“Do you believe in ghosts, Gram?”
“Why, child?” The old woman looked up from her knitting in the sun. “Spirits troubling you?”
“I don’t know.” Rue tucked her legs up under her, [...]
Horror
After the Lake
Father
…and on that prodigious day, the day of His return, He will come for me, and we shall reign like a virulent black storm over this place. We will be [...]
Chain Letter
All that morning and into the afternoon, Anne sat by the window in her apartment telling herself that this time she wouldn’t go back. She wouldn’t go to the house.
She’d [...]
Judy and Norman
On the way to the cemetery, Judy found a badly dead frog in a rain puddle. His brittle, dry leaf skin hung over his bleached skeleton like a loin cloth [...]
Young Turks
Goddamn, life is fucking funny sometimes, Faolan O’Connor thought as the hard rubber toe of his shoe connected with Victor Conrad’s teeth. There was a good, solid crunch, and Conrad’s [...]
Lockbox
Burnt meat and smoke.
Anna Saar looked down and tapped her feet drunkenly, out of time with the game-show music piping out of the speakers at the other end of the [...]
Bluetick
Walter Shelton patted and smoothed the mound of red clay with the back of the shovel. Another long, hot Georgia day was done, and Helen no doubt had corn bread, [...]
Lilith
It was an evil night in an evil place. The moon’s reflection mocked the shadowy trade where night merchants in dark alleys dealt what day commerce would not. From this [...]
How to Torture a Vampire
He wants pain. Pain is his thing, what he needs, the thing he begs for. Down on his knees with tears in his eyes, he implores me to find a [...]
Sea of Ash and Sorrow
Since that day in New York, that day of gray ash and sorrow, when it rained white dust, he’d been looking. There was a black hole in him. Parts of [...]
Unbirth
I pull another clump of hair from my scalp. It doesn’t hurt anymore. Doing that, I mean. Pulling the hair out. I only do it so I can see it [...]
A Bedtime Story
Once upon a time, when you were very small, you met a monster. At first you were scared, because all you saw were green scales and tentacles, and gaping jaws [...]
The Machine
My father used to peek into my room every night to make sure I was asleep. He never said a word; he just quietly watched my breathing. I would hear [...]
Board Approval
Despite what the tourism map says, you are not here. You are a second-class person, soon to exist no longer. That’s the reason I’m here, quite simply. You’ll be gone [...]
Up
6:57 p.m.
Lucas flopped his hand onto his cell phone. Two seconds later it rang. He flipped it open and pulled it under the pillow to his ear.
“Christ, mom, I’m up,” [...]