“And so the little girl, well-warned against the wolf and snug in her bright red cloak, skipped along into the woods to see her grandmother…” Guilhaume Barthélémy wiped his balding pate in consternation as he listened, the nursemaid’s thick Germanic accent now lilting lightly over the words. Her new fluency hardly registered, however, in the […]
Although he couldn’t save his wife, Matthew said he was lucky to escape the woods. Later, it came out that, on the first day of the hike, he hit her on the head with a stone and pushed her off a cliff. Apparently, it was planned all along. Her body struck the rock wall twice, […]
Marcy and her thirty-two-year-old son, Ricky, were sitting on the couch watching the evening television. In front of them was a small table with food, both on the plates and scattered around. The program was a soap opera that they rewatched numerous times. Cigarette smoke dimmed the already weak lighting. The peeling wallpaper was adopting […]
Northwood Asylum for the Criminally Insane was a stone-faced bastion in the rugged Appalachian coal country of northern Pennsylvania. I was a trusty there, an inmate who had garnered a modicum of independence by virtue of having a record of passable behavior, and also of providing a service that was desirous of the miscreants charged […]
Mortuary Affairs Specialist Corporal Alan Donohue knew he was dead. He felt certain as he pulled the zipper up on number 152’s cold, white face, he’d never been so certain about anything in his life. It wasn’t a clean pull. The tab managed to get stuck on a loose flap of rotting skin, making the […]
Maggie’s father, John Fox, summed it up: “A houseful of women is like a sack of cats.” Mother Ann didn’t like it any better and she was relieved when they got rid of Leah. Her stepdaughter provoked her, sneaky and deliberate. That superior smile of hers held not a drop of Christian joy, so when […]
“Ethan, are you ready yet?” Jessica’s voice drifted down the hall, sharp, like the clack-clack-clack of her heels against the hardwood floor. “We’re going to be late.” Impatient, as usual. “Almost, Dear,” Ethan called back. His fingers slid through his hair which he coaxed into perfection. The brush lay forgotten on the counter. His movements […]
If it must be said again, let it be said now: There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy, dear reader. You will find them through the looking glass, in the infinitesimal seams that vein the rational world, or in the darkest corner of one man’s soul. The […]
Wispwood held many secrets. The vine choked ruins, the howls in the night, the fairy sightings the old folk still swore were true—but the greatest secret of all was the one Lila uncovered one summer on her Aunt Maddy’s farm. It was the secret of the Wispwood Pendant, the very one which hung around Aunt […]
So I prophesied as I was commanded: and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone. And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above: but there was no breath in them. […]