Deconstructing Hillsdale

By D. Morgan Ballmer

What do you recall about the horrific events that unfolded in Hillsdale Heights on December 2^nd, 2014? I remember thinking that the town seemed populated by ghosts, mostly. All over Jefferson County living room windows framed our friends and neighbors as they bathed in the cold glow of their televisions, transfixed by the ongoing standoff. The reports didn’t make any sense. Even when it ended, nothing made any sense.

The media attempted to paint a portrait of the gunman, Randy Hollstrom. They sprinkled buzzwords throughout their coverage as if ‘veteran’, ‘loner’, or ‘PTSD’ somehow explained what we were seeing. Our eyes screamed that the words we were hearing did not match up with the footage. Perhaps after so many hours our hunger for peace of mind outweighed our appetite for the truth.

There was no real way for the news to tell the story anyway. Think of those 3-D sculptures which appear as an elephant when seen head on, but take four steps to the right and suddenly it looks like a giraffe. Same with the Hillsdale event – you look directly at the facts and you will never see the evidence that matters. You have to approach it sideways. (Continue Reading…)

Haunted

by Sarah Gailey

Read the full text here.

The Black Stone

by Robert E. Howard

“They say foul things of Old Times still lurk In dark forgotten corners of the world. And Gates still gape to loose, on certain nights. Shapes pent in Hell.” –Justin Geoffrey

I read of it first in the strange book of Von Junzt, the German eccentric who lived so curiously and died in such grisly and mysterious fashion. It was my fortune to have access to his Nameless Cults in the original edition, the so-called Black Book, published in Dusseldorf in 1839, shortly before a hounding doom overtook the author. Collectors of rare literature were familiar with Nameless Cults mainly through the cheap and faulty translation which was pirated in London by Bridewall in 1845, and the carefully expurgated edition put out by the Golden Goblin Press of New York, 1909. But the volume I stumbled upon was one of the unexpurgated German copies, with heavy black leather covers and rusty iron hasps. I doubt if there are more than half a dozen such volumes in the entire world today, for the quantity issued was not great, and when the manner of the author’s demise was bruited about, many possessors of the book burned their volumes in panic.

The Room in the Other House

by Kristi DeMeester

I’ve counted the moments we once had over and over. Tried to hold them in my hands as if they were solid, but in the end, there is nothing except for the dark scar tracing against my palm. If I squint, it looks like a worm. If I squint, it’s almost like you’re still here.

We found the house when we weren’t looking. Driving along back roads because there was nothing else to do. We’d had too much to drink the night before and needed coffee and open air that tasted of rainwater and the cloying scent of rotting wood. You took the turns too fast, and I squealed and pretended to be angry, but you grinned through all of it, and it was the kind of dangerous smile I loved.

“What if we just never went back?” you said, but it was a conversation we were always having. There was the house we’d just moved into. The one with the extra two-stall garage and bonus room. Space for your workshop. Space for all of that scrapped metal you called a “project.” There was the dog we adopted together when we decided this thing we were doing was more forever than not. There were Monday mornings and paychecks and doctor’s appointments and phone calls. We were not the kind of people to disappear.

And then you did.

(Continue Reading…)

Passover

by Caspian Gray

One day there came a body that didn’t burn.  Tomek found her, because he was young, and because it was his job only to clean the ovens, not to fill them.  The body was covered in ash, streaked with it, but the hair wasn’t even singed.  Worse, it was a naked woman.  She would have been beautiful if he had found her anywhere else.

Tomek screamed.

The two men nearest him–friends of his father, both of them–came running.  No one from the pens ever escaped, but there was always that threat.  Even working in the rooms that held the ovens, you couldn’t forget the threat of them.

“I’m sorry,” said Tomek, when the men looked at him.  “It’s nothing.”

“Nothing,” Waclaw repeated.  “So don’t scream about it.”

Tomek nodded, trying to block their view into the oven with his body.  The men paid him no attention.  They had work to do of a more difficult, complicated nature than merely cleaning up. (Continue Reading…)