Dōngzhì
Winter feeds on the body, first the ears, then the nose, fingers, toes.
Betobeto Teketeke
I’m going to tell you a story, but on one condition: it must be read out loud.
House—Unpainted
A house down the street catches my attention. It sits half painted, the other half peeling white, with a quarter of the driveway paved. The cracks are still visible. A shadow passes by one window in the upper level. It looks like my daughter. I know it can’t be. I left her shadow inside the new house.
Departed
You float through our house to the sky // black with your skeleton storms.
The Bedroom Window
Ed’s brother is dead, but why won’t he leave?
The Atoll
We take shelter next to a low shelf of rock and watch the sun die a slow death on the horizon; an angry red eye drowned in a blaze of orange and yellow. Beneath it, the ocean is flat. A rippling, endless mirror, all of it one terrible display of beauty waiting to devour us like it did Hannah.
Traces of Us, Hot Enough for Dinner
On the anniversary of her fiancee’s death, our protagonist finds herself in a time loop where demons flood in every night and tear everyone to shreds.
Mama’s Hand of Glory
A woman has a planchette tattooed onto her hand before she dies, believing that it will permit her to talk to her daughter from the beyond. When the daughter discovers the hand defiled, something having taken a bite out of it, she must deal with the consequences.
Strap Your Bones Right to the Seat
Mason Reed has never taken the bus to school, but after his family moves, he is left with no choice. But what should have been a pleasant experience according to his bedtime stories, turns out to be a menacing challenge beyond anything he could have anticipated.
Satan’s Ridge
In this true story, Cody and his best friend Kyle spend their final summer before adulthood finding the secret shame of their tiny town in rural Maine—Satan’s Ridge, a haunted site purposely removed from the map. Sometimes forbidden places are forbidden for a reason.