Category: Theme Issues

Daddy was a preacher,
stern and full of fire,
paranoid of sinners,
adulterers, and liars.
He left when I was five,
Mama nursing little Tommy,
When she cried, I asked her why. She’d say:
“Not for him, but– why, God, me?”

It was hard for Mama, taking care of us,
in a drafty, falling-down home;
the rent was cheap, but nights were cold,
so we never slept alone.

Mama took in sewing.
We raised chickens, selling eggs.
She started working at a bookshop–
no more Bibles, blood and plagues.
The sewing room was vacant,
cleaned and rented out
to the widow, Ginny Meadows,
our new Grandma, just about.

Ms. Ginny made us cookies,
and we learned to help her bake,
We all became a family,
happy, happy, give or take.

That’s the year that Mama
first got sick with cancer.
How to live? was the question,
but only death gave an answer.
Ms. Ginny fretted fiercely
‘bout losing us and home.
State notified our Daddy,
our family’s carcinome.

He came back with a vengeance,
crystallized our grief.
He sent away Ms. Ginny,
as if she were a thief.

He preached about our wickedness,
tried to toughen Tommy up.
He called me names, like Jezebel–
at seventeen, he locked me up.
I’d never even kissed a boy,
but Daddy didn’t care.
He thought all women evil
and wouldn’t chance it on a dare.

The first night he mistook me
for his wife would be my last.
I fought him hard and wished him dead,
which made him damn me fast.

His fists flew with a fury,
bludgeoning my head.
He beat me to the ground,
until I lay there, dead.
“Twas an accident!” he swore;
and the coppers did believe him.
Left Tommy with him there,
to mourn and sing my funeral hymn.

And now I’m trapped, forever,
inside this house of sadness.
Doomed to haunt my dear old Dad,
who lives inside his madness.

“Who’s there?” he’ll say,
as I moan, drifting in the room.
“Tis I,” I cry, in whisper tones,
to drive him to his tomb.
“Let him live in shame,” says Mama,
“tortured by his past.”
“Yes,” I agree, “He’s doomed to live,
in torment, sure to last.”

We roam the house in frightful form,
at night, disturbing sleep;
while Tommy is our precious hope
for life we aim to keep.

We breathe our frigid air at Dad,
watching as he shivers.
Mama flips a crucifix–
religious fear delivers.
Daddy pales and prays to God,
but Mama? She just laughs.
“I hope you die in fiery Hell!”
while I rattle photographs.

Daddy has begun to drink
and Mama’s proud of us
for making life unbearable
for that awful blunderbuss.

Poor Tommy has the worst of it–
left in chaos, amid clamour.
We try to give him comfort,
in our cold, unearthly manner.
He seems all right when he’s asleep,
his worry lines relaxing,
but I worry for his sanity,
in this house that keeps collapsing.

Tommy keeps his head down
and listens to the songs
that Mama always sings to him,
trying to right the wrongs.

Still, Mama tries to push him
to grievous acts of harm,
telling Tommy Dad deserves it,
for all whom he’s strong-armed.
I wish she wouldn’t do that,
but I cannot blame her, truly;
since Daddy is a bastard,
slowly killing him’s our duty.

—

Michele Cacano is a neurodiverse writer, artist, and massage therapist born and raised in Harford County, MD, now settled in Seattle, WA. Her poetry is informed by a love of place, travel, history, words, and language. She is the organizer of the Seattle Writers Meetup, a weekly critique and support group est. 2007, and a founding member of Camp S’more Writers. Her work has been published in anthologies from Bag of Bones Press, Mind’s Eye Publishing, Firbolg Publishing, Thirteen O’Clock Press, as well as magazines such as Penumbra and Haunted Waters Press. She can be found on Chill Subs, Twitter, and Instagram @MicheleCacano, and @SeaWritersMeet. 

      “You don’t know all the cruel and unhealthy things that a dude like that might do.” Ned grabs a napkin off the table where we’re having beers, wipes sweat off his neck, dabs at his brow. “Everybody in the neighborhood runs scared of the man like he’s a walking piece of Evil on Earth. Have you seen those prison tats on his arms, and on the knuckles of his hands? Hey, I’m sorry that he’s beating his wife–but when he stomps over to your place the next day and smiles, saying It’s quiet around here while giving you the gun finger, shaking it in your face–then let me tell you, brother, you’ve gotta stay quiet. You don’t get involved. And get a For Sale sign on your lawn, soon as you can. The thing is, he’s a bad man. Know what I mean?”

                                                                          *

      I gave myself a week to process the information. I’m touched by Ned–his genuine fear for the neighborhood, plus his concern on my behalf–the way people should be. Caring. Looking out.

     But the thing is, Neddie, you don’t need to worry about me. I’ve been living in the midst of all these sins for a while now, and after due consideration–I’ve made my kind of peace.

     The thing is, I don’t expect apologies for the rudeness, the injustice, the overt fallacies of superiority that loaded and lode-stone people strut around with, magnetized for money, drama, selfishness. The tart tongues, the unthinking dismissals, the laughs at a lesser person’s expense. They see you as the little piggy living in a house of sticks, act like they’re the big bad wolves who huff hot air and dare more than you.

     The thing is, and the thing I will never tell you, Ned: I’m the middle school kid who put twenty Ex-Lax pills in Mr. Johnson’s coffee pot after he wrote me up for cheating when I didn’t. I’m the teenager who slipped the proverbial turd into the punch bowl at Lily Beazley’s Sweet Sixteen party a month after she made fun of my zipper being down. I’m the college waiter big shot customers impolitely bark at–who goes into the kitchen’s shadows and spits into his fashionable bowl of ancient grains and salad greens. I’m the one my nepotistic boss fires, dismissing me when it was actually his impatient son who made the colossal and costly mistake for his family’s business–I’m the premeditated individual who one year later happily discovered the old man’s vintage sports car didn’t have a modern locking cap that might have prevented the fine pour of sugar into the gas tank.

     I’m the simple fella who knows how to navigate the nets, both light and dark. I’m the wanna-be chemist who searches for and finds the perfect fix-it recipe: Drano, tin foil, and a little water. The guy who wears gloves and plucks a used but still-capped plastic drink bottle out of a random person’s garbage can–along with DNA that isn’t mine. The one who carefully plants it on the front lawn of Mr. HELL tattooed across his right-hand knuckles, FIRE inked across the left. I create a sweet spot of foreign waste right outside his door.

     The one who doesn’t rush the process, who doesn’t make a peep while slowly combining it all together, who sets it just so and then drives on, past sleeping dogs–losing gloves, shoes, foil, and the Drano can down various sewer grates of the moon-shady city. I’m the calm soul who reads the over-editorialized paper the next morning, about how the poor man found this odd bottle with liquid on his grass, cursed litter bugs and rubbish, lifted the irritating, innocuous bottle; I serenely read how he shook it uncomprehendingly, confused by the solids inside. I perused the newspaper’s extra feature box with its dire words of caution, warning good citizens about how the insides build up, then explode with enough force to remove your extremities. The paper corroborated every volatile detail I’d stirred up–about how such a wrongful mix will scald and burn with the intensity of an inferno. I go back to the main article, to the writer’s documentation of how Mr. HELLFIRE’s eyes boiled to tears, how he no longer has hands–to announce himself with, to beat anyone with, to point fingers in malice and judgement.     

The thing is, dear Ned, the world is full of men. All types. You just never know who a bad man might be.

—

Scott Hutchinson’s previous work has appeared in Liquid Imagination, Reckoning, The Raven Review, Weirdbook, and Heroic Fantasy Quarterly. New work is forthcoming in Flash Fiction Magazine, Fiction Southeast, Vestal Review, Hearth and Coffin, and Slipstream. 

This is a Halloween piece by Abby Whittington entitled “Dreadful.” It shows a character haunted by their past.

Since Abby has offered to withdraw their artwork from the Halloween contest in order to serve as a judge, I wanted to showcase that awesome work here!

Thanks for all the WONDERFUL submissions! If you are one of the winners, we’ll be in touch personally to give you the good news, and then the winners will be announced here on our website during the week of Halloween.

Every Halloween, Grandpa and me go trick-or-treating together.
This year I’m dressed as a necromancer, with black eyes and a
big pretend nose and everything. The veil I’m wearing is my mum’s,
the black one she wears for funerals and watching the horses; the
gown is all ripped and hasn’t fit my sister since her accident, so she
says I can have it; I borrowed the false nails from the cleaning lady
at school (as long as I promise to give them back); and the skull, the
one tucked under my arm, that’s Grandpa’s. (I wanted a cat, but we
couldn’t catch one.)
Grandpa always dresses as a ghost. He jokes, “When you’re
as old as I am, you don’t need a costume.” (He does really; it’s
Granny’s bed sheet with two eyeholes ripped in the middle.) “If she
isn’t lying on it, I might as well wear it.” Grandpa says the strangest
things. But he says we’ll give all the residents a good fright tonight
and get lots of treats. To help us see where we’re going, he’s brought
a candle. The other ‘trickers’ on the streets prefer flashlights: lighter,
brighter, and you don’t need to worry about tucking your sheet
under your chin to stop it catching on fire. Also, when the weather’s
gusty, a flashlight doesn’t blow out. But Grandpa is adamant:
“Candles don’t need batteries! And no, they don’t blow out,
not if you keep your teeth together.”
Strange things…
At the end of our street there is a big house, with big windows
and a big garden which goes all the way around. Mr. and Mrs. Bury
live here, alone. Just like their house, they are both very big. “Which
means they’ll have treats. Unless they’ve scoffed them all already,
big buggers.”
With Grandpa keeping watch from his eyeholes, we sneak
up to the front door. I call through the letterbox, “Trick or treat!”
Heavy footsteps, the door opens, and we’re greeted by lounge light,
the aroma of baking, and the big Mrs. Bury.
“Good gracious! A witch? At this hour?” she gasps, clasping
her hand to her heart. “Words escape me! And what could be
glowing under that sheet? A lantern?”
“It’s a ghost. A ghoooost,” I say in my best ghost voice. As
a rule, Grandpa doesn’t waste his breath on strangers. Even when
he’s a ghost. “And I’m not a witch,” I correct Mrs. Bury, “I’m a
necromancer.”
“Are you now? Then you won’t want any treats. Necromancers
don’t like treats. It’s poison to them. Everyone knows that.”
I didn’t.
“Such a pity,” Mrs. Bury sighs, “I’ve gone and wasted the
entire afternoon baking sweet goodies for nothing. Oh well, I guess
I’ll just have to throw them all–”
“No!” I shriek, lifting my veil and pretend nose. “It’s me,
Jenny Hindley. From number thirty-three. Look!”
“Well, that changes things,” Mrs. Bury smiles, producing
from behind her back a tray of steaming, golden-brown gingerbread
men. “Go ahead, my dear, take as many as you like.”
I do. I really like gingerbread. “And so does my grandpa.”
“Then you must take some home for him. Wait there, I have
a cookie jar you can borrow. It’s around here somewhere.”
“That’s okay, Mrs. Bury,” I say, pulling back the bed sheet
and offering up Grandpa’s skull. “They’ll be safe in here.”
Mrs. Bury looks uncertain. “But there’s a candle in there, dear.”
“Oh, I’ll take it out.” I also extinguish the candle, just to be
safe. Mrs. Bury still looks uncertain, even a little surprised, but, at
my insistence, she begins filling the skull.
“When you next see your grandfather, be sure to ask him
what he thinks of my gingerbread.”
“Why wait?”
I lift up the skull, and ask:
“Do you like Mrs. Bury’s gingerbread, Grandpa?”
Seeing that I’ve pressed Grandpa to my ear, as though he
were a smelly old seashell, I explain to the very surprised Mrs. Bury,
“He’s very old, and speaks very softly. He’ll only speak to me when
no one’s– what’s that? Super delicious? Good and chewy, just the
way you like it, so much so,” I turn to Mrs. Bury, “that Grandpa
wants to take it all. Please.”
Mrs. Bury clutches her heart again; her big mouth is hanging
open. Similarly, I open Grandpa’s jaw all the way until the bone
makes a clicking sound, like the sound your finger makes when you
pull it back too far. Grandpa doesn’t mind. “I’m used to it.” This
doesn’t seem to reassure Mrs. Bury; even with my help she struggles
to put all the little men into Grandpa’s mouth without dropping
them, or knocking their little legs against Grandpa’s two remaining
teeth. One of the teeth pops out and bounces down the path like a
little rusty coin. When I comfort Grandpa with a kiss on his bullet
hole, Mrs. Bury trembles uncontrollably.
“Are you cold, big lady?”
I reach inside Grandpa’s mouth, all the way in.
“Perhaps a nice warm gingerbread man would–”
“No, that’s alright, dear,” Mrs. Bury gulps, staring at me and
Grandpa like she’s seen a ghost – like an actual ghost. “I’ll just go
back inside. You run along, now. You and your…grandpa.”
“We will,” I call over my shoulder, skipping away down the
path. “Say goodbye to Mrs. Bury, Grandpa.”
“Goodbye to Mrs. Bury, Grandpa,” he cackles, spitting
gingerbread limbs all over her lawn. “Hey, don’t forget my tooth!”
Mrs. Bury latches the door. The curtains behind her big
windows snap together. Me and Grandpa hurry along to the next
house: Mr. and Mrs. Bannister. Like Mr. and Mrs. Bury, they are
also childless. But they make tofu in the shape of eyeballs, Grandpa’s
favourite. “You’ll have to chew’em for me, though.”
I can’t help but laugh.
“Grandpa, you’re so strange.”

The jingle of keys in the distance brought me back to the
present. Lately, I’ve had more and more moments where I’m pulled
back to my past. Who could blame me? Being stuck in this cold,
dark, wet hell hole would make anyone reminisce.
“Where did you go there, boy?” Mickey said.
Mickey was the tough old bastard in charge of Lighthouse 43

my current place of residence. He was a stout man, broad
shouldered and strong. His hair and beard had gone grey a long
time ago. He wore all black from his boots up to his peacoat and
watch cap. His stormy grey eyes were fixed on me as he fingered a
ring with old iron keys that hinted at untold secrets.
I hiked up my shoulders and turned up the collar on my
coat. The bite of the wind-swept sea stung my face and ears.
“Back home. In Arizona,” I said.
Mickey let out a laugh, deep and full. I looked at him, the
humor escaping me completely. I tucked my hands in my coat
pockets so he wouldn’t see my clenched fists.
“You’re gonna have to put that aside, son. If you’re to make
it here, forget your life back home. You’re an apprentice of the
lighthouse now. Did you finish reading the manual yet?”
Truth be told, I hadn’t finished it. I spent the better part of
the day going through the tome, but it was difficult and technical
reading. I wasn’t exactly top of my class back home, but I wasn’t
going to be sent back. As much as I wanted to be anywhere but here.
“No. But I’ve read a fair amount,” I said.
Mickey gave me a curt nod and turned back to the gate. He
put in one of the iron keys and turned, the lock made a loud clang
as the bolt slid closed. He removed his key and gave the gate a sharp
tug. Satisfied, he headed back towards me.
“That’s more than I can say for my first day. I fell asleep
trying to get through the damn thing.” He smiled back at me and
gave me a quick pat on the shoulder. “This way,” he called back over
his shoulder as he walked past me on our way to the main building.
I shook my head and followed. Apparently, it was time for the tour.
Lighthouse 43 was a bit of a complex. The main tower was
three floors high and rhythmic white light shone from the top. The
lighthouse was built on the edge of the sea; nothing was around for
miles and miles.
I followed Mickey up the stairs, and we entered the first
floor. When the door slammed closed behind me, I was swallowed
up by silence. The absence of sound was jarring. The crashing waves
were almost deafening just moments ago. Mickey was already up
the stairs and to the second floor and I had to run to catch up. The
third story was made of floor to ceiling windows, with a massive
bulb overhead.
“Wow. This view must be amazing in the daytime,” I said.
Mickey nodded. “But it is the night that counts, son.”
“To the ships that count on us,” I said back.
Mickey gave me a look that made me swallow hard.
“This lighthouse does not stop ships from crashing into the
shores. We defend the world from what is beyond… in the Darkness.”
My blood turned cold and the flesh on my arms and neck
crawled. “From what?” I stammered.
Just then, a large flash of white light erupted in the distance.
Both of us turned towards the pinprick of light in the darkness.
Then there was another. Followed by another.
“Are those ships?” I asked.
Mickey didn’t take his eyes off the horizon. He unbuttoned
his coat and withdrew a large pistol from its depths. With his other
hand, he pressed a large red button that I hadn’t noticed before. The
lights inside the room suddenly turned red and the beacon of light
we were standing in hummed.
“Not hardly,” Mickey said.
Suddenly, a pulse of blue light and heat shot out from the
lamp overhead. The light turned dark blue and burned brightly in
the distance before flickering out. The beacon shot out again and
again, rotating slightly each time. The lighthouse was tracking
whatever was out there.
“What is out…”
A loud crashing sound came from below and cut me off.
Mickey gave me a stern look and we headed to the door and
looked down.
“Cabinet over to the right.” Mickey said, tossing me his
keys. “Quickly.”
I raced over to the cabinet, fingers fumbling with keys
until I found the right one. I reached inside and pulled out the
strangest shotgun I had ever seen. I racked the slide once and took
up a position on the other side of Mickey. The pulsing canon had
stopped and all that I could hear was my short, ragged breathing
and the slow clicking of something coming up the stairwell. A black
tentacle suddenly shot through the doorway and went through
Mickey’s chest. He pointed his gun straight ahead and fired, over
and over. The creature forced itself through the doorway, pushing
Mickey back as it came through.
I raised my gun point plank and fired a single burst into the
creature. The echo rang through the small room and both figures
fell to the floor. I rushed over to Mickey who spat up blood on the
floor. He gripped my hand once and then he was gone.
I am now the keeper of the keys. If I survive the night, I
will brave the darkness and hold fast. Let this journal entry stand
witness if I fall. I can hear more knocking on the steel door below,
and slow clicks coming from the stairwell.

Owen Baker was never a good sleeper.
When placed in his bassinet, he squalled until his little
wrinkled face was crimson, and his mother picked him up and
soothed him. When he got older (when his head finally rounded
out and his spindly limbs plumped and when he graduated to a
crib in his own room), he still fought sleep. His screams pierced his
mother’s heart, and though she was new to parenting, something
about Owen’s night-cries always sounded worse than babies she had
heard before.
His mother read every parenting book. She tried every
method: the chair method, Ferber, feed-and-read. She let Owen
cry it out, as his staunchly no-nonsense pediatrician suggested.
She tried everything. Nothing worked.
The cry-it-out nights were the worst. She would sit in her
bedroom, tears coursing down her face, watching the clock on
her nightstand tick each painful minute away. One minute. Two
minutes. Three minutes. Ten. His cries were like little barbed hooks
in her heart that dug a little deeper as time crawled by.
She always caved before the clock showed fifteen minutes
had passed.
She would run down the hallway to Owen’s room as fast as
her legs could carry her. She threw open the door and turned on
the light to the same awful sight – her chubby-cheeked son lying in
his crib, red-faced and shrieking. Pointing one plump finger at the
shadowy corner of his room. The rest of his body was rigid, taut to
the point that lifting him into her arms was difficult.
Eventually, the Baker household reached a sort of détente.
Owen (by then a sturdy toddler) and his mother (by then a woman
with deep circles under her eyes and a recurring fantasy of driving
away and starting a new life under a new name) came to agreeable
terms. She would leave a lamp on in his bedroom when she turned
in for the night. Owen, in turn, could play quietly in his room.
His mother trusted that he would sleep at some point in the night,
though she never witnessed it herself. All animals sleep, after all.
But Owen was always awake when she turned in at night, and he
was always awake when she rose in the morning.
He missed out on some of the experiences of childhood,
like summer camp and sleepovers, but it didn’t seem to bother
him. He made friends easily as a child. Those boyhood friendships
never seemed to suffer from the issues around his sleep. He found
other bonds of boyish intimacy – through Little League, through
elaborate world-building board games – to replace those formed
around scary movies in basement rec rooms, tucked into acrylic
sleeping bags lined up side by side.
Otherwise, he was a healthy child. He grew into a healthy
teenager, and then a young man. He was tall, gawkishly thin, but his
mother could see how he might yet put on some weight and fill out
his frame with a few more years.
The puzzle of his poor sleep didn’t start to vex Owen until
he went to college. Now he had to share a room. Until then, his
entire life had been cossetted around his aversion to sleep: the lamp
that burned all night on his dresser, the cross woven from Palm
Sunday palm leaves that his superstitious grandmother hung over
his window. Now, Owen had to rethink the constant light source at
night. His roommate, a pre-law student jittery with nerves, refused
to leave the light on.
“What are you, two years old?” his roommate asked one
night early in their first semester. “Grow the hell up.”
For the first time since he was a baby, Owen Baker was
plunged into darkness. It wasn’t complete darkness, of course –
there were little bleedings of light from the digital clock on his
nightstand, from the crack under the door to the hallway. But there
was not enough light to push back the shadows that crowded at the
corners of the room.
One minute passed. Owen wriggled his toes under the layers
of sheets and blankets, and he squinted to see if he could make out
the movement. He could not.
Two minutes passed. He sighed and raised his head a bit,
shifted against the pillow.
Ten minutes passed. He felt the weight of the day make
his eyelids heavy. He closed his eyes and felt a lax warmth course
through his arms and legs. He sighed again, almost a little pleased.
Sleep wasn’t some elusive creature after all.
There’s no saying how long it took, whether it was fifteen
minutes or fifty or more. When Owen jolted awake, he could not
turn his head to study the clock on the nightstand beside him. He
was frozen stiff, with only his eyes open wide and staring. Unable
to move.
Unable to stop the shadowy figure in the corner of the ceiling
from peeling away from the rest of the shadows and descending onto
him. She had been a new thing when he was new too, splintered off
from something much older.
In his infancy, she had never been fast enough – the mother
had always returned to turn on the light just as she started her
creeping approach. When the light started burning all night, she
had to make herself small, tuck herself into some dark space where
the light didn’t reach. Under the dresser. In the narrow black space
under the closet door. Behind the stack of books on the shelf.
But as Owen had grown, so did she. She watched, waited.
Learned. Her lineage was ancient, and the nearly two decades she
waited had passed in a blink.
The patience had paid off. Now, in the nearly-dark room, the
roommate snoring in the bed across the room, she descended from
the ceiling. Her reflection was visible in Owen’s wide eyes, but he
could not scream. He could only lie there, rigid, as she sat on his
chest and took what was hers.

“I’ve always wondered whether ghosts were real.” Granny
sipped a steaming cup of sweet tea as she gazed at the apparition
hovering ever so slightly above the sofa cushions. “My grandmother
was a believer. The stories she told us children would curl your hair!”
The apparition nodded and glanced at the Tambour clock
sitting on the mantle. It was nearly midnight. Granny noticed the
apparition checking the time and smiled.
Before the apparition disappeared, Granny said, “For years,
I refused to accept that our house was haunted, but obviously, I was
wrong.” Granny shrugged her thin shoulders. “You’re the reason our
family could never sell this old house. Grandmother always said she
felt like a prisoner. My parents took over, but they couldn’t unload
the place either. I suppose I’m destined to live out my days here as
well. All because you died and refused to leave.”
The apparition said, “I’ll never leave, besides where would I
go? They say a spirit can’t rest after a violent death. No, I’ll always
haunt this place. And if it gets torn down, I’ll haunt whatever they
put up next.”
“Grandmother said you fell down the stairs and broke your
neck. So, actually, you don’t have to keep haunting the place because
it was an accident.”
“Do you really believe that old story? It was no accident. I
was murdered by my cheating husband, the rotten scoundrel! In
those days, we didn’t have furr . . . for . . .”
“Forensics,” Granny said, supplying the word.
“Yes, that’s it. Back then, I suppose a good wallop upside the
head looked much like a broken neck from a fall.”
“Grandmother said you drank too much. Probably missed a
step and fell.”
The apparition appeared agitated. “Your old grandmother
couldn’t tell a straight story if her life depended on it. Your mother
was just like her.”
“Why pick on Mother? What did she ever do to you?”
Granny said indignantly.
“And you’re as bad as they were,” the apparition continued.
“You scared your children half to death with those old stories, and
now you make your poor grandchildren listen to that same claptrap
like it’s gospel, but there’s no truth in it.”
The minute hand advanced another couple of notches as
midnight drew nearer. They caught each other looking at the clock.
Granny set her cup down firmly and sat up all prim and proper;
clearly miffed at hearing her family disparaged.
“I merely passed on the stories as they were told to me.
Besides, scaring the bejeezus out of children makes them want to
behave or else bad things might happen. It kept me and my sisters
in line.”
“Wouldn’t you like to know the real story?”
“Of course, but first tell me, is the “legend” really true? They
say your spirit must return to the turret next to the widow’s walk
each night before the clock strikes midnight else the demons will
drag you straight to hell. Is it true?”
“You finally got something right, old girl! I’ve never been
late, not in a hundred years, and not for all eternity. I’ll always be
here,” said the apparition.
Two minutes to midnight.
“Before you go, what really happened that night? Did your
husband truly kill you, as you claim?”
“I suspected he was seeing the parson’s wife and that night I
caught them together!”
Granny absently poured more tea. “Oh my! What happened
next?” Granny couldn’t let the apparition leave now; she just had to
know.
“They were up in the tower doing the “naughty deed” as we
used to say. They played me for a fool, but I fixed them good!” said
the apparition with feeling.
The second hand on the clock swept along ticking off the
final seconds. Granny heard the gears click into place as the old
clock prepared to chime the critical hour.
“Lord a’mighty! What did you do? Tell me quickly!”
“I stabbed them with a carving knife. They wanted to be
together so badly, now they’re stuck with each other for forever.”
The apparition cackled with glee.
“But how did your husband manage to kill you?”
“Just before he died, he gave me one last mighty whack that
broke my neck and I fell down the stairs. Old Sheriff Coots couldn’t
tell the difference between a broken neck and a stubbed toe. He
assumed I tripped and fell to my death.”
“Bless your heart! But you said a violent death won’t let a
spirit rest. What happened to your husband and his mistress? All
these years, why haven’t I heard them haunting this old place like
you?”
“I keep them locked up in the turret tower with me. They
treated me badly, and I’m going to enjoy tormenting those two until
the end of time!” The apparition laughed, but it sounded more like
a screech owl.
Just then the clock struck twelve; the familiar low melodic
sound filled the room.
“Oh no! What have you done? You kept me talking for too
long! I’ve got to get back to the tower. . .”
Suddenly, the apparition disappeared in a puff of smoke.
As the last chime marked the midnight hour, all was quiet, even
peaceful.
Granny heard soft footsteps coming down the stairs. Her
husband shuffled into the parlor rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
“I thought I heard you talking to someone down here. Who’s
calling at this hour?”
“I was talking to myself. Go back to bed,” Granny said.
“We’re meeting the realtors tomorrow, and I just wanted to ensure
there were no ghosts lurking about and cluttering up the place. I
don’t want anything to prevent us from selling this old dump. Not
this time.”
Her husband scratched the stubble on his jaw. “I keep telling
you there are no such things as haunted houses, so quit worrying.
Tell me, you don’t really believe in ghosts, do you?”
“Ghosts?” Granny smiled. “What ghosts?”