The Work of Smith House

By P.C. Verrone

The photos hardly did Smith House justice. Its stone façade loomed above the red oak, black cherry, and eastern hemlock that had thronged the country roads for most of my drive. Towers with parapets sprouted at odd angles, and a hundred arched windows stared as my car approached the iron gates.

The middle of nowhere was not exactly where I wanted to find myself, but I didn’t have much choice. Developers had bought my rent-controlled apartment, and my freelance graphic design gigs could hardly pay for a new place in the city. I had a bed back in Kansas, but I sure as hell wasn’t about to go back to live with Dad and the rest of them. So, I found myself scrolling through listings of sublets and artist residencies that might let me shack up for a few weeks until I figured out my next move. Then, I stumbled on Smith House.

I was a city girl at heart, but I could do worse than a mansion in the Berkshires. The call for applications also contained these magic words: Residents are welcome to stay without charge for as long as they feel artistically nourished. The only issue? The call was for “Indigenous Cultural Bearers.”

The Indigenous part I had down, but I doubted my graphic design exactly fit what they were looking for. Still, I was desperate. So, I wrote beadwork as my discipline.

It was only a little white lie to get a roof over my head. Besides, these places typically didn’t care what you did while in residence. Every artist retreat I’d ever attended began with the hosts emphasizing that we shouldn’t feel pressure to produce, and that rest was an important part of the process. One acceptance email later, I was throwing all my earthly possessions into my Dodge Wrangler and ended up on the front steps of Smith House.

The heavy door cracked open and a white woman in round glasses and a gray turtleneck poked her head out. “You must be Miss Crow,” she said. “I’m Miss Fairewell, Mister Smith’s assistant and coordinator for the residency. Please come in.” (Continue Reading…)

The Yellow Wall Paper

By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer.

A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity—but that would be asking too much of fate!

Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it.

Else, why should it be let so cheaply? And why have stood so long untenanted?

John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.

John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures. (Continue Reading…)

Jerry Got Bit

By Richard Dansky

Linda’s words hung there in the air, a bad omen that had arrived uninvited. Before I could say anything, she looked at her watch, then back at me. “We don’t have long before Vic finishes up with those losers and comes looking for me, so we’ve got to be quick. The only other thing you need to know is that they’re not human. They look human, and they talk human, but they ain’t. They’re faster and stronger than us, they can smell you before you ever see them, and those teeth ain’t for show. They’re predators, we’re prey, and the only advantage we’ve got is that they haven’t figured out yet that serious firepower can even the odds. They’re arrogant, ‘cause they think they’re just better.”

I thought about that for a second. “Sounds like they kind of are, really.”

She threw a wadded-up tissue at me. “Whose side are you on, anyway? Now get ready.” (Continue Reading…)

Graves Basin

by Daniel Roop

Mr. Hoskins, across the dinner table, had seemed confused when I tried to introduce the topic of the democracy of the dead. Ever the businessman, he politely shifted the conversation to areas he could more comfortably navigate. Trying to ingratiate himself as we chewed mouthfuls of pork loin, he asked Ches, “And young man, what do you want to be when you grow up?”

Ches swallowed far too large a bite far too quickly in his excitement to blurt out, “Lotsa folks say my great-great-great-great aunts was witches, but that ain’t so. Daddy says they was more like scientists, and that’s what I wanna be. A scientist.”

Mr. Hoskins nodded and sipped his sweet tea, trying to decide which part of that answer to further interrogate in order to seem interested without giving offense. Witches? A farmer’s son growing up to be a scientist? Where to begin? (Continue Reading…)