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 […]
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 […]