I promised you I wouldn’t, so I didn’t. I know you said the words in jest when you dropped me off at school, “Don’t die, honey!”, with that hoarse laugh and sideways wink you do, but I rolled my eyes and said “OK, mom, I promise,” and I don’t break my promises. (Continue Reading…)
“You ever can’t sleep?” the trucker said.
Forsyth glanced up out of his thoughts. The man standing at his table was big and worn out, his eyes raw and heavy even in the shadow of his cap’s bill. He had a young face with an old beard matted on the left side, as though he’d been trying to nap against the window of his cab.
The trucker slid into the booth but Forsyth didn’t answer his question at first. He felt the contradiction of road life, that of the lonesome loner. It could be nice to have company when he stopped off someplace, but he’d never been much for talk. He glanced around the diner. A couple more long-haulers sat on high stools at the counter, knives and forks chattering against their plates. The waitress was somewhere back in the kitchen. Even for a graveyard shift the place had a tired air. (Continue Reading…)
A gust of wind boiled off the James without warning, flattening cattails and clumps of spikerush as it swirled around the inlet where I was painting, and of course it caught my canvas. The morning’s work rushed away from me like a sailboat before a storm, taking my field easel with it. Just as I was sucking in breath to howl with frustration—it shuddered to a stop in midair. Two pale hands held it fast, reaching around from the back. (Continue Reading…)
Voices
by Ira Brooker
It was just after sundown when we heard the first voice, a faraway voice, whispery, wheezy, barely distinguishable from the howl of the wind that bore it. “Lessss… innnnn…” was what I heard. Not quite words but near enough that I ran to Mother on the other side of the room.
“Mother, did you-” I began. She silenced me with a raised index finger.
“Yes, I heard it,” she said. Her face was cautious, a look that was not quite fear but concern that soon it would be time for fear. Tomas huddled close to the hem of her skirt, happily pushing a stone around the barnwood floor. “Hush now and listen,” Mother said.
I kneeled beside Mother and we listened. The wind was strong, stronger than I had heard yet this season, screeching across the prairie in a fury that told us snow was imminent. We listened hard, trying to ignore Tomas’s occasional babbles and squeals. After a few moments the voice came again, clearer this time, closer, but still that eerie whisper. “Let… usss… innnnn…” (Continue Reading…)
On October 30th, 1968, Luther killed a pair of wannabes a little way behind a roadhouse in southern Virginia. He’d smelled the power on them while they played with a pickup band for tips from truckers taking a late lunch. A scent like sage and engine grease cut through the rockabilly trash and the tortured picking that chased chords from chart-toppers that never should have been attempted on that battered, out of tune guitar. They hadn’t looked like much, the pair of thickset men with matching dirty-blonde mustaches and weathered jeans, but the scent was unmistakable for an Enthusiast like Luther. He’d thought of stepping up to play himself, hooking them that way, but his guitar was out in the lot, in the last car he’d stolen, and he had sudden flashes of the last time he’d played without it, the booing laughs and the bottles when he stayed and tried to save the set. (Continue Reading…)
Outside the Minster, every eventide,
You’ll see him wait- the smiling Ghostly Guide.
Top hat on head, dressed in Victorian fashion,
He’ll tell you stories full of gore and passion.
“For just three pounds I’ll chill your blood,” he cries.
And people pay him, though they know he lies.
At half past seven by the Minster clock
He’ll gather them to him, like a dog his flock
And fleece them.Then when all have paid him money,
He’ll charm them with a voice as sweet as honey.
Dead Romans,phantoms, corpses limp and gory
Drag bloodstained footprints through each shocking story.
From Minster on to Bedern and the Shambles
He’ll lead his nightly paranormal rambles.
Then, at the end, he’ll finish with a joke-
A jolly, cheerful, normal sort of bloke. (Continue Reading…)
Little Orphant Annie’s come to our house to stay,
An’ wash the cups an’ saucers up, an’ brush the crumbs away,
An’ shoo the chickens off the porch, an’ dust the hearth, an’ sweep,
An’ make the fire, an’ bake the bread, an’ earn her board-an’-keep;
An’ all us other childern, when the supper things is done,
We set around the kitchen fire an’ has the mostest fun
A-list’nin’ to the witch-tales ‘at Annie tells about,
An’ the Gobble-uns ‘at gits you
Ef you
Don’t
Watch
Out!
Onc’t they was a little boy wouldn’t say his prayers,--
So when he went to bed at night, away up stairs,
His Mammy heerd him holler, an’ his Daddy heerd him bawl,
An’ when they turn’t the kivvers down, he wasn’t there at all!
An’ they seeked him in the rafter-room, an’ cubby-hole, an’ press,
An’ seeked him up the chimbly-flue, an’ ever’wheres, I guess;
But all they ever found was thist his pants an’ roundabout--
An’ the Gobble-uns’ll git you
Ef you
Don’t
Watch
Out!
An’ one time a little girl ‘ud allus laugh an’ grin,
An’ make fun of ever’one, an’ all her blood an’ kin;
An’ onc’t, when they was “company," an’ ole folks was there,
She mocked ‘em an’ shocked ‘em, an’ said she didn’t care!
An’ thist as she kicked her heels, an’ turn’t to run an’ hide,
They was two great big Black Things a-standin’ by her side,
An’ they snatched her through the ceilin’ ‘fore she knowed what she’s about!
An’ the Gobble-uns’ll git you
Ef you
Don’t
Watch
Out!
An’ little Orphant Annie says when the blaze is blue,
An’ the lamp-wick sputters, an’ the wind goes woo-oo!
An’ you hear the crickets quit, an’ the moon is gray,
An’ the lightnin’-bugs in dew is all squenched away,--
You better mind yer parents, an’ yer teachers fond an’ dear,
An’ churish them ‘at loves you, an’ dry the orphant’s tear,
An’ he’p the pore an’ needy ones ‘at clusters all about,
Er the Gobble-uns’ll git you
Ef you
Don’t
Watch
Out!
The undertaker lived with his wife in a long, low house in the farthest corner of the cemetery, built of dark brown stone that looked perpetually damp and covered almost completely with trumpet vines and creeping ivy. It had been the town’s mortuary once, before the mortuary facilities moved into a larger and more modern building a few blocks down the street. (Continue Reading…)
Jamie had been visiting the thing that lived in the culvert for about three weeks now. He spent more time with it than he ever had with anyone his own age, or even anyone outside of immediate family members. Jaime was a curious child, but not particularly social. Friendships existed in the abstract. The companionship of even a strange culvert-dwelling thing was not easily cast aside. (Continue Reading…)