Homecoming Dorothy absentmindedly bobbed her head to the beat of “Espresso” pounding from the car speakers. Her friends—Kianna, Zoe, and Gabby—hollered the lyrics, way off-key but not caring. Her forehead pressed against the window, Dorothy watched the towering redwoods blur by, pulling away each time the Lexus jounced over a pothole. Gabby never spotted them […]
It was barely four o’clock, and already the thick, wet Scottish dark of winter had fallen around the loch like a shroud. The car mounted a rise and began the descent into the valley. Maggie didn’t like coming this way, but she didn’t trust the Big Road, what with all the lorries—not in this junkheap. […]
It is crying again. A loud, incessant wail that rattles the eardrums and causes the cutlery to tremble in the cupboards. Give it another few minutes, and the hollering will turn into a full-blown tantrum, with spectral fists smashing against the floorboards and tiny…
Reginald Cathcart squirms. His stomach’s disquiet. The past week’s stories have been weak, not up to his usual standards. He can feel the Words’ gurgitation roil. They push against the inside of him. He senses them weave through his intestines, circle his stomach like they’re on a Gravitron ride, snake upward through his esophagus. He […]
My piece-of-shit cousin Brice waved the card in front of my face for just a minute too long, each wag building the pressure bit by bit. I stared blankly ahead. My body became a bubble, holding back an unspeakable rage with the thinnest of films. “Finders keepers,” he sneered. The bubble popped. It was inevitable. […]
Most horror stories people recount from their university years take place first or second term. Perhaps they went out drinking and got lost in the city’s winding streets, their impaired minds guiding them deep into unknown alleyways and ivy-covered husks, leaving them totally disorientated. Or, inhibited by unfamiliarity, they attempted to find their class only […]
The heat oozed through the windows and pooled behind Scott’s blackout curtains. If he sat still, hunched over his desk, he could stay cool enough to think. Scott’s home office was dim, every lamp left off in favor of the roaring air conditioner that hissed tepid air through its bared teeth. Half-filled applications glowed primly […]
I’d never been able to eat bacon, not since I burned down the flat where my brother Eddy and I lived with the Bogeyman. It’s the smell. That unmistakable reek of fat and flesh crackling. Even years later, sitting in the food court of a motorway services off the M1, as I attentively cut the […]
Ben was six years old when he heard his mother weeping, snarling, and, to his amazement, she seemed to be gnashing her teeth. He sneaked downstairs and heard the screams. All his brothers were either in their rooms or out of the house. Why hadn’t they heard this or done anything? The door from which […]
Part I Marco sat behind the wheel of his Audi A4 convertible, a gift from his parents earlier that year. The road from Smederevo to Belgrade lay drowned in a stagnant fog, the kind that descended without warning and might linger for an hour, a day, or forever—it was never clear which. Mid-May, yet they […]