Toby

By Brittany Groves

It’s a long walk from Founders Cemetery, but I am old, dying, and don’t mind the wait. (Continue Reading…)

The House That Stands Over Your Grave

by Kyle Piper

The first time the topic of the old house on Gray Street comes up, Lew and Kennedy are working on their math homework on the floor of Lew’s bedroom. It’s the first time Kennedy has been over, and when she calls Lew’s little two-bedroom rambler a nice house, he thinks it’s a mean joke until she tells him how bad the place she just moved out of was. That brings up the topic of crappy houses, (Kennedy’s old apartment was infested with bees, Lew’s older brother lost part of a finger helping their dad repair rot in the crawlspace here), and eventually Kennedy mentions the total wreck her dad had driven them past on Gray Street, behind the cemetery. That brings it out of Lew without so much as a thought to the credibility of the claim: just, “Oh, yeah, the haunted one?” Now Kennedy looks like she’s trying to stare a hole through his head so she can determine approximately how much bullshit it houses.

“Did you…” she starts cautiously. “Have you seen any ghosts there?”“Oh, I’ve never been inside. But I mean, I walk pretty close by it all the time. It’s super creepy.” As he says this, Lew realizes how completely stupid it sounds, but he can’t figure out how to express what he feels when he looks at that house through the jagged chain-link fence that separates its backyard from the cemetery where he so often stands. That crumbling stack of ivy-crowded wood looms over the back end of the cemetery, keeping watch over the little eroding rectangles that Lew doesn’t think even count as gravestones. Unkempt vines and brush and pale, pinkish mushrooms poke out through its backyard fence into the graveyard as though the house itself is reaching out to claw at the world around it. He’s sure it’s why the back end of the cemetery is the cheap end. Anyone who can afford the big fancy headstones puts them up front where you can barely see the house and don’t have to look at it when you visit. Lew knows that when he dies, his family and friends will have to stare at that decaying pile just like he does.

“I can definitely tell that it’s creepy,” Kennedy says, “but my gym teacher is creepy. That doesn’t mean he’s a ghost.”

“Okay, that’s not what I meant. Literally everyone who’s gone in there has seen something weird. You can ask anyone who’s done it.” (Continue Reading…)

Oneirophobia

By Todd Keisling

The fluorescent lights here in the basement of St. Joseph’s are noisy by design. You wouldn’t think it of lights, the kind of noise they put off, but the ones down here have a hum that digs into your ears like a gnat. You don’t think you hear them, but you do, and now that I’ve told you about them, all you’re going to hear for the next hour is that lifeless drone.

Mmmmmm.

That’s the sound of this room. It’s the sound buzzing away in the background of the world, an involuntary reaction to existence that goes on and on in its tiring way, leeching time from you, stealing life. For many, the noise is the sound of bureaucracy, consumerism, corporate toil; but down here, one floor away from all those Hail Marys, it’s the sound of consciousness. The dull buzz of being awake.

Like I said: by design. The folks who come down here to our little meetings twice a week do so with the expectation of avoiding sleep. It’s why you won’t find any cots, quilts, or pillows left over from when this place was used as a shelter. It’s why all we have are these rusty metal chairs that squeak when you unfold them and a couple of card tables near the entrance for carafes of coffee and other goodies.

Anyway, hello. Come on in. Help yourself to some refreshments. The coffee is good and strong. No decaf here. There may even be a few pastries left if you’re lucky. I hope you’re not diabetic or have a heart condition. Nothing but sugar and caffeine on that table, believe me. Oh, and the theater masks. I’ll get to them in a minute. (Continue Reading…)