The crypt of St Bride’s is cold, colder than the air outside, and I welcome it, find it invigorating, for I did not sleep well, nor have I done since my return. Florie, long gone, chose last night to haunt my dreams. Her face and figure—not as I saw them that final occasion—were perfect and […]
I. Discovery I suppose I’m chasing the wildflowers. I first found them while digging for worms. It’s not very often an earthworm dies of old age, but this one called to me, bloated and weary, with its body caked in pollen and a belly full of decay. The soil was soft and moist to my […]
Esteuan sees the bent figure at dusk and thinks nothing of it. His day has been long, beginning before the sun brightened the sky, ending as the sun takes a last gasp and puts herself away for the night. Exhaustion bends his own broad shoulders against this darkening sky and he presumes it is another […]
From: x_ <pinedemon@x.x> To: Aly Duarte <alyalyoxenfree@gmail.com> December 18 2017 3:36 am Subject: The Pine Arch Collection —Play the attached video and you can see, almost from the start, that something isn’t right. But you don’t know what. A sort of—familiarity. The trees are gasping in the fog. All you can make out for two […]
PART ONE All we wanted to do was kill a clown. And not just once, either. I mean, one clown, sure, one would be enough, one would be plenty. But he was going to die all night. Dick’s ex was a nurse over at Idalou, and during their two years together, Dick had learned enough […]
When the walls are thin, every neighbour is a felon and a murderer. Police sirens scream every night, between twelve to three am. This nightly cacophony brings rise to speculations. Who will be robbed next? Who will be killed? Every night, you wonder if it’s going to be you. Tonight is the same. Tonight it […]
Once a month my mother, Ash, killed just enough to last until the next. She slunk home triumphant at dusk and hung the bodies in the shed: pheasants, rabbits, the occasional deer in season. The blood trickled under the door and out onto the step. Local cats convened, their tongues rasping in the dark. By […]
We buried the first ones, nice and proper. It sounds foolish now, but what could we do? After all, they were still our children. I even dressed my Sarah for the occasion—decked out in her Sunday best, yellow cotton bright against the dark brown of her skin, pattern hand-stitched to cover a mismatched body. We […]
The village school was not quite at the highest point of the steep main street, but it was elevated and isolated enough for Stacy to see the sea through the chain-link fence that bordered the far side of the playground. She could smell the sea from here too, crisp and salty, especially on a day […]
There were a number of old wooden signs that pointed the way to it. They could be found at crossroads, jutting from the grass verges, listing the local towns and villages on their pointing fingers. At the bottom, in small letters, one would invariably find: CORWICK—4 MILES I soon began to realise that it was […]
