Chapter I Joe Chaney is Dead It was a waterlogged afternoon in the bantamweight town of Arden Hurst, Virginia, and a mournful multitude stooped over a hole in the ground, slowly filling with tears for Joe Chaney. It was a slapdash funeral in the slanted rain. Joe was dead that winter from a silent heart …
A nebula of gnarled coast live oak trees hunched over the scene like fallen sons of God. The Escondido police dropship spotted the body near the side of the road on the way to a regular city water ration run. The body was wrapped in an unknown plasticine substance that stuck to the fingers like …
Papers of all kinds are what my mother collected. I say “collected,” but the reality show doctors on my TV call it “compulsive hoarding.” I often lay awake at night looking at my stack of unread books and wonder if I will transform into the same person in my old age; this action would be …
Shebna’s feeble voice reverberated like a drunken piano chord in the damp seven-foot square room. He thudded against the wall, all skinny wrists flailing and wrenching in volcanic blasts of weakened bone, muscle, and sinew. His home is a mosquito farm. A choked whisper of a man that knew nothing of his captors beyond scattered …
Monday November 1, 1926 My dearest Anna, …I’m so delighted we can connect each evening with these electric dispatches. Your photo of our sweet baby Margaret was kindling for my hearth this morning. Today I have heartening news and another spark for that intense conflagration inside me—we finally broke through into the Hadal Zone this …
She heard it again, that ominous creak in the dark. With the blackout rendering her bedside lamp powerless, Susan felt trapped in her bed, closed off from escape by the darkness. Fear slowed her mind, but eventually she remembered the flashlight on her phone. She turned on the phone light and the room was bathed …
I’ve been somewhat addicted to writing two-sentence horror stories over the past couple years. I don’t even spend time trying to come up with them though. They just pop into my head (usually when I’m half asleep) and I make a note of them if I’m not too tired, in which case they disappear into …
This is Ronny, the sweetest A/V nerd that ever walked the earth. He would never do anything to hurt anyone, until one day when he was hired by a motel manager to install security cameras. It seemed like an innocent gig at first, like any other. But when he realized he wasn’t being asked to …
Halloween, 1918 Jory hums a pleasant tune as he washes his hands. The white tiled walls of the embalming room reverberate his sonorous voice like a concert hall. Behind him, Peter’s body lies prone on a metal table. Still humming to himself, Jory dries his hands and sets to work. He shaves the back of …
What are the things that keep you up at night? Those things when you close your eyes, you are filled with fright? You know, those things when you rest your weary head, And all of a sudden you are filled with dread. The things that the darkness of night make seem all the more real, …
