The Curious Case Of Susan Styles

Catherine Lord

“Susan Styles,” the name is not a romantic one, and yet it is associated in my mind with a curious series of incidents, which, were I a member of the Psychical (or ghost investigating) Society1 I might have brought under the notice of that body.

I first heard of Susan Styles some two years ago. (Continue Reading…)

Swing Batter Batter

by Richard Dansky

A baseball clubhouse is a weird place. You’ve got California prep school kids rubbing elbows with good old boys from Texas and Louisiana, and guys from the Dominican and Venezuela mixing with guys who grew up in the inner city and still found their way to baseball. Nothing in common, and yet, all sharing a love of the game. Most of us, anyway – every so often you run into a guy who’s just playing for the paycheck, but the truth is that baseball’s a beautiful game, and it’s fun. You want to be out there in the field. You want to get up to the plate and take your hacks. You want to play. (Continue Reading…)

Time Enough At Last

by Lynn Venable

For a long time, Henry Bemis had had an ambition. To read a book. Not just the title or the preface, or a page somewhere in the middle. He wanted to read the whole thing, all the way through from beginning to end. A simple ambition perhaps, but in the cluttered life of Henry Bemis, an impossibility.

Henry had no time of his own. There was his wife, Agnes who owned that part of it that his employer, Mr. Carsville, did not buy. Henry was allowed enough to get to and from work–that in itself being quite a concession on Agnes’ part.

Also, nature had conspired against Henry by handing him with a pair of hopelessly myopic eyes. Poor Henry literally couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. For a while, when he was very young, his parents had thought him an idiot. When they realized it was his eyes, they got glasses for him. He was never quite able to catch up. There was never enough time. It looked as though Henry’s ambition would never be realized. Then something happened which changed all that.

Henry was down in the vault of the Eastside Bank & Trust when it happened. He had stolen a few moments from the duties of his teller’s cage to try to read a few pages of the magazine he had bought that morning. He’d made an excuse to Mr. Carsville about needing bills in large denominations for a certain customer, and then, safe inside the dim recesses of the vault he had pulled from inside his coat the pocket size magazine.

He had just started a picture article cheerfully entitled “The New Weapons and What They’ll Do To YOU”, when all the noise in the world crashed in upon his ear-drums. It seemed to be inside of him and outside of him all at once. Then the concrete floor was rising up at him and the ceiling came slanting down toward him, and for a fleeting second Henry thought of a story he had started to read once called “The Pit and The Pendulum”. He regretted in that insane moment that he had never had time to finish that story to see how it came out. Then all was darkness and quiet and unconsciousness. (Continue Reading…)

We, the Ones Who Raised Sam Gowers from the Dead

by Cynthia Zhang

Yes, to answer your questions, we were the ones who did it; we were the ones who dabbled into the forbidden arts, who so casually threw away the good Christian values of our country for a flash of bloody vengeance. We are the ones you want, the ones who raised Sam Gowers from the dead.

Who were we, you ask? No one, really. We were baristas and booksellers and outreach directors for local nonprofit organizations, ad copyists and sales assistants and grad students in French and Francophone Literature. We worked nine-to-five or three jobs part-time or not at all, some of us the lucky beneficiaries of fellowships or wealthy older men, others perpetual couchsurfers or street corner philosophers with a talent for urban scavenging. We were amicable exes and messy polycules and complete strangers to each other, a smile at a bar, a shared glance at the farmer’s market, a million small signs that said I see you. (Continue Reading…)