Three in the morning. A quarter heavy with sleep, heaving its groggy way into the sunrise. Little Tatu lying on her bed, eyes open, heart racing. Then she hears it—the hum soft and low, like a slight breeze in the air. And then there she is, the dead girl, alive. She only comes to her […]
Brigid, a native of County Cork, was nineteen in 1889 when she moved to Boston to marry Michael O’Flannery, who ended up hanging her out the window by her hair. They had not set eyes on each other prior to when she came to live with him. He was an older brother of one of […]
1. When she was twenty-one, Mrs. Voss visited a tarot reader at one of the Arts and Culture festivals that a local ladies’ society used to hold on the shore of Lake Michigan some weekends in early summer. The day had been tremendously hot for the season. She can’t remember the future, but she remembers […]
This is not a haunted house story. This is what happens after. Because Jia hasn’t stayed in a single place for long ever since she left the House. In those ten years, she’s gotten to be an adept cryptographer in the hidden ciphers of AirBnB, an expert in the secret lexicons of middling reviews, sussing […]
Under the bridge, there’s a veiled woman. She’s said to be merged with the dark, to be the shadow of a human being, or a creature, or some other kind of horrid thing. Over the years, paintings have been rendered to capture her likeness, to describe something—someone to warn the others in the city. Often […]
The kid appeared on the first of May. LP was in the kitchen, doing the dishes in desultory fashion, cursing Kurt’s refusal to shell out for a dishwasher (“Already got one and she cooks too,” accompanied by a slap on the ass was his standard reply), and staring at the overgrown foliage of the back […]
General Estiano hired me to take care of the body, but he avoids speaking to me. The only times we did talk was by telephone, when he insisted that this job would require my full attention and care. “A family matter,” he said, “I’m sure you will understand.” What awaited me in the front room […]
This time, he thinks before he opens his eyes, this time he’s made it to Duat. For a moment too, he almost believes it. There is the scent of the goddess’ perfume melting slowly over her head. There is the desert grit that coats his face before it is carefully wiped away. And the priest’s […]
Is your tape still running? Oh, they don’t use tape anymore? That’s clever. Very good. But really, you came all this way to interview me about the family and what happened to the land and now we’re talking about ghosts! Now, in the twenty-first century, the magic future century we were all promised? No. I […]
There was a strange agitation to London that summer from the very beginning, a hormonal moodiness, a belly heat, if cities could be said to go through such things. We had enough sunshine to roll around in, but twilight snapped to dark between one sentence and the next, like someone’d tossed a quilt over the […]
