The story I’m sharing tonight is one I submitted to an NYC Midnight Contest. I don’t remember the prompts or the word count length. I revised it and then submitted it to a contest on the Vocal website. It didn’t win anything there either.
I removed it from the Vocal website when I cancelled my membership there and held onto the piece, thinking I’d include it in another book of short stories one day. Since then I’ve started working on a novel and the short stories have been put on hold.
Writing a novel is a long slog compared to churning out short fiction. The reward, I think, comes when you finally finish the thing and can put “THE END” to the last page. Completing a short story, the reward comes much faster. I did, however, received a boost in motivation last month when I entered the Novel Beginnings contest held by the ProWritingAid software app. My first 5,000 words was selected for the long list of 183 writers out of over 14,000 entries. I didn’t make the next round, the short list, but I’ll rest on that first win as it has inspired me to keep going and keep writing until I reach that last page of my novel. For now, I hope you enjoy this short story, but be warned – it’s horror and a bit dark.
All the Beautiful Girls
The first girl disappeared on a cold fall evening. Wet, gray leaves cloaked the ground, robbed of their color by the low-lying fog. Claire Avery knew the missing woman, not by sight, but by reputation. The sort of blonde, fizzy girl whose smiling photo had graced the pages of her high school yearbook. Claire would never be that girl. Her jaw was too sharp, her teeth too crooked, her nose too large—no one ever sought her out. The university put up notices, warnings to the students—do not walk alone at night, do not let anyone follow you into the dorms.
The school, a small midwestern college, had only recently begun admitting male students. After the second missing girl, those few young men scurried across campus with downcast eyes, as though the fact of their gender showed their guilt.
Claire’s roommate, a timid student majoring in music history, fled from the school and returned to her hometown. She left behind a wooden cross nailed to the wall. Left to herself, Claire filled the room with empty food containers, discarded notebook papers, and stacks of textbooks. She pushed her dirty laundry under the empty bed, where it filled the space with the stink of acetone and alcohol from her chemistry labs.
The morning after the second disappearance, Claire was showering in the communal bathroom when she heard one of the resident advisors call out, “Man on the floor!” Claire snatched her robe and towel and twisted the handle to cut off the water. The pipes clanged a protest as she hurried into the hall.
One of the maintenance workers, a tall man with long arms that reached almost to his knees, passed by her. Jerry. He had helped Claire carry supplies to and from the chemistry lab. They’d chatted about movies and a mutual interest in old black and white films. More conversation than she had ever had with her fellow students. He strolled past, his flat gray eyes focused down the hall, not seeing her. He held a heavy wrench in one fist. The tool bag around his waist clinked with each step.
A week passed with no sign of the missing women. Were they resting in some weed-filled field, discarded like litter? Campus security tacked up flyers with photos of the girls. At first glance, they appeared to be the same person, so alike they could be twins. People left flowers, candles, toys under each poster—offerings at an altar. More gifts than Claire had ever been given. She stole a tiny purple unicorn from the pile. The dead did not need presents.
November blew in with frost and the hint of snow. While most of her dorm mates left for home and Thanksgiving food, Claire opted to stay at the university. She and a graduate student, a woman whose eyes were always red and swollen with allergies, would be the only people in the dorm. The grad student warned her, “They’re going to do some plumbing repairs this week. We’ll have to shut off the water.”
“No problem,” Claire assured her. Lately, she hadn’t the energy to bathe. Her hair hung in greasy strands. She dressed in layers to hide the stink of her unwashed body.
Monday of Thanksgiving week, Claire woke to a rhythmic, pounding thud. It came from the basement, as though the building had gained a heartbeat. The door to the cellar stairs, usually locked and bolted, stood open. She clung to the rail and made her way down the steps.
Dust, carried on the moist heat from the boilers, wafted up to greet her. The flickering fluorescent light revealed a shirtless man in the center of the basement floor. Sweat streaked his back. He raised a massive sledge hammer and slammed it down on the concrete. The blow echoed in the space. Claire felt it travel up the soles of her feet, shuddering across her legs and thighs.
As though he felt her watching, the man turned. Safety glasses covered his eyes, making his face resemble some alien creature. It was Jerry. Claire lifted her hand, about to wave. “What are you doing here? Get out!” He waved a gloved hand, shooing her away.
“I’m sorry.” Claire backed away, stung that he hadn’t recognized her. She swiped at her eyes and rushed back up the stairs to her room.
“Slab leak,” the grad student explained later. “He’ll fix it, then pour new cement. Water should be off about an hour tonight.”
That night, Claire wandered the dim hallway. Barefoot, she descended the stairs to the basement and shone a flashlight across the broken floor. Dirt and broken concrete lay piled in one corner. A hole in the center revealed a crisscross of copper pipes. The gap in the earth below them was as deep as a grave.
Back in her room, Claire watched from the window as Jerry hauled bundles wrapped in black plastic across the lawn and through the side entrance. She imagined him bent under the burden as he descended the basement stairs. Bags of concrete, or something else?
Hours later, when Claire figured the job was done, she went downstairs. He’d left the basement door padlocked, but when Claire tugged at the rusty lock, it sprang open. She lit her way into the basement with the light from her phone, then clicked on the dim fluorescent fixtures.
The overhead lights revealed the slick wet surface of new concrete, a sheen of water shining on top. Claire knelt next to the dark gray square. She breathed in the sweet, musty odor of the cement. Another smell lurked underneath, rotten and foul. Leaning forward, Claire pressed her hand into the soft mass. She put her weight full on her palm, leaving a deep imprint on the cement.
A shadow fell across the stairway. Claire’s breath caught in her throat. Steps thumped across the wood. She scrambled back until the cold cinderblock wall pressed against her. The shadow crept forward until finally, he stood revealed. Jerry. He must have seen the glow from the basement lights. A glint of silver flashed at his side. A knife.
Claire held out her arms, smiling against her fear as he lifted the blade. Did he see her at last? She hoped it would be quick, she hoped they would put her picture beside theirs—all the beautiful girls.
Some of my first short stories were ones I wrote for the Medium website. One of the publications there was called The Weekly Knob. The editors posted a writing prompt, usually an object, that had to be included in the story. You had a week to come up with something. There was no word limit or specific genre, so this was perfect inspiration for me. In 2020 I compiled many of those stories into a book and published it on Amazon.
I continued writing short stories and submitting them to different publications on Medium. The Weekly Knob changed their name to Hinged. Sometime in 2022 I stopped writing unique stories for Medium and I just reposted from my website over there.
My most prolific writing years were the ones I spent writing for The Weekly Knob. I loved getting the prompts every week and I interacted with so many lovely writers who were also posting on Medium. The practice and encouragement I got on Medium helped me to become the writer I am today.
Change comes to us all. Websites come and go, publications fold and so do publishers. I will be sharing here some of the stories I posted on Medium, just to make sure they have a permanent home. I had thought about gathering them for a another book of short stories, but I tell myself I have enough work to do just finishing the novel I’m working on. And the overall goal is to share the tales, so here’s the first one, originally published in August, 2021. I think the prompt was “hinge.”
(If you are one of the people who read this story back when it was first published, I apologize, but perhaps you’ll enjoy it a second time.)
The Cry at Cliff’s Edge
On the first anniversary of her daughter’s death, Ginny Stroud drove to the sea. In her late thirties, Ginny had dark brown hair that she kept clipped close to her scalp, like a young boy’s. A thick scar, twisted and rose-pink, traced from her scalp down the side of her face. Another scar, hidden beneath her jeans, traveled from her hip to just above her knee. Beside her, on the passenger seat of the car, lay a stack of paperback books, her leather purse, and a silver handled cane.
Her little red car, so nimble and reliable when navigating crowded parking lots and slick city streets, chugged up the winding road that led to the Inn at Cliff’s Edge. She had found the hotel on a blog devoted to quiet, less-traveled vacation spots. The place didn’t even have a website. Ginny looked forward to the isolation of being surrounded by people who did not know the tragedy that had shattered her family the year before.
The road, a narrow, one lane asphalt drive, appeared chiseled from the cliff face. A low guardrail stood between her car and the drop to the white-capped grey ocean below. With one hand on the gearshift, Ginny pressed as close as she dared to the towering rock on the passenger side of the car. A large white bird swooped across the road at a curve, and Ginny, distracted, allowed the car to drift onto the loose gravel at the edge.
“Oh!” The involuntary cry escaped her as she steered back into her lane. Her heart drummed in her ears and she shook her head at the near accident. Would it have been so bad after all, if she’d broken through the guardrail and plunged into the cold water below?
At the hotel, she tossed her clothes into the antique dresser in her room and kicked off her shoes. Her room, on the second story of the inn, faced the ocean. Opening the French doors that led outside to the iron railed balcony, Ginny leaned out to breathe in the cold, salt scented air. Below, an overgrown trail led to a wooden gate with peeling paint and rusted hardware. Vines twirled through the arch at the top of the gate, and scrubby pine trees obscured the view, but Ginny supposed the path must continue on the other side.
Tired from the drive, she stretched out on top of the quilt covering the bed. She thought to text her sister to tell her she’d arrived safe and sound, but a check of her phone revealed no service. She would use the hotel phone and call that evening, after dinner.
Hours later, she woke to odd shadows cast by moonlight filtering in through the open balcony doors. Disoriented, she sat up, dizzy with the shock of waking up in unfamiliar surroundings. Memory filled in her day — the long drive from her home to the coast, checking into the hotel, and at last — collapsing on the bed. Ginny had swung her feet off the side of the bed when she heard the cry.
It sounded like an animal cry, but the noise fluttered up the scale, then dropped to an unmistakable human sob. Ginny sprung from the bed, wincing at the sharp pain in her hip. She fumbled with the cane propped beside the bed and, grasping it in one hand, limped barefoot to the French doors.
“Hello?” Ginny leaned over the balcony’s rail, peering into the night below. A scant yellow light illuminated the shrubs at the hotel’s foundation, but did little to light the pathway to the gate. The cry echoed again, fading as though the owner were striding away, down the trail on the other side of the gate. It could be a child, Ginny thought, lost out there in the dark. She reached for the inn’s phone beside her bed, then changed her mind and slipped on her shoes.
“Are you sure?” At the hotel’s desk, Ginny questioned the clerk. “It sounded like a child.”
The night clerk, an older woman with gray streaked black hair, shook her head. Deep lines bracketed the woman’s mouth. “There are no children with our guests. You probably heard the hinge on the gate. It’s old and when the wind blows…”
“I suppose that could have been it,” Ginny allowed. Her stomach rumbled, reminding her she hadn’t eaten since breakfast that morning. “I don’t suppose the kitchen is still open?”
“No.” The clerk shook her head. “But I could open the pantry, make you a sandwich if you’re not too particular.”
“A cold sandwich sounds wonderful.” Ginny read the woman’s name from the white plastic badge pinned to her shirt. “Thank you, Marie. I’m in room 215.”
The clerk smiled, the expression softening her face. “You go on back upstairs and I’ll have someone bring it up.”
Back in her room, Ginny phoned her sister. “I’m here. Safe and sound.”
“That’s good, at least. I still don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be alone right now. Have you talked to Dennis?”
Ginny shook her head as she answered. “No.” She’d read somewhere that many marriages didn’t survive the death of a child. Her husband, Dennis, had moved out two months ago. She didn’t expect they would reconcile. She didn’t have the energy to even try.
“Please tell me you won’t hole up in that place alone all weekend. I don’t like to think of you all by yourself tomorrow. Go outside. Is it pretty there at least?”
“It’s lovely, Stef.” Ginny described the inn — the ivy-covered stone walls, the lofty view of the ocean below. She didn’t mention the old wooden gate. “There’s a farmer’s market tomorrow in the town. I saw the sign when I passed through this afternoon. I’ll drive down and check it out.”
“That sounds like a good plan.” Her sister paused. The sound of her breathing filled the phone receiver. “No one ever blamed you, Ginny.”
True, no one had ever assigned fault to her, at least not where she could hear them. Maybe Dennis had doubts, in the nights he had paced sleepless through their home, over whether Ginny could have done anything differently that day. The burden of the accident lay like a slab of stone on Ginny’s heart.
Ginny clutched the phone so tightly her knuckles grew white. She was about to answer her sister when a knock sounded. Her sandwich. “I’ve got to go, my dinner’s here.”
“All right. Remember — we love you.”
“Love you too,” Ginny whispered into the silent phone.
She fetched a couple of dollars and some change from her purse for a tip for whoever had delivered her food. When she opened the door, Ginny spied a tray on the hallway floor, with her sandwich wrapped in paper and resting on a white napkin on its center. A noise at the end of the hall, near the stairs, drew her attention and she glanced that way in time to see a young boy grasp the handrail. He turned toward her before he started down the stairs. Ginny glimpsed dark brown eyes and a shock of black hair that fell across his brow before he fled down the stairs.
“Hey!” Ginny called after him. She waved the money grasped in her fist, but his steps echoed as he disappeared from view.
The next day, at the farmer’s market, Ginny studied the people weaving amongst the booths set up on the town square. The clerk, Marie, had said there were no children staying at the inn, so maybe the boy was local, lived in the town. He looked too young to be working at the inn, but maybe the rules were more relaxed there.
At one booth, Ginny bought a loaf of bread and a jar of local honey. The vendor’s daughter sat on a quilt on the ground playing with dolls. Tears blurred Ginny’s vision — the girl looked so much like Lottie. Sometimes she went weeks glimpsing no one who reminded her of the child she’d lost. And some days she couldn’t even venture out to the grocery store, afraid she might one day lose herself and chase after some stranger’s daughter.
Back at the inn, Ginny felt she needed a distraction. She explored the grounds. In particular, she wanted a closer look at the gate. Brushing aside sticks and tangled weeds with her cane, she ventured along the path. Exercise, her doctor had declared, would do her good.
The gate at close view looked more mundane than mysterious. It might have once been painted white, but now only patches of color remained on the grey wood. There was only one hinge, a large ornate piece of metal with curled emblems stamped on the surface. A shiny brass padlock hung from the hasp on the gate, unusual for its newness. Had someone unlocked the gate the night before? If the padlock had been in place, the wind couldn’t have swung the gate and made the noise that Ginny heard.
The screws holding the hinge in place felt loose when she pushed against them. She ran her fingers across the surface of the hinge and then wiped her hand across the hem of her shirt. Rust, red as blood, stained her clothes.
“You shouldn’t do that.”
Ginny spun to see the source of the warning. The dark-haired boy from the other night stood behind her on the path. As he strolled up to join her at the gate, Ginny saw he was older than she’d first thought, closer to thirteen than the nine years she’d assumed.
“This is not a good place,” the boy said.
“The inn?”
“No.” The boy waved a hand at the gate. “This. The path, the gate. It’s too close to the edge. You should walk on the other side.”
“But there’s no ocean view over there.”
The boy frowned, considering her. “All right, but don’t go past the gate. That’s why it’s locked, you know.” He stepped beside her and placed a hand on the gate, pushing. The hinge creaked, shifting against the wood, but the lock held. Satisfied, the boy stepped aside and turned to leave.
“Wait,” Ginny called after him. “Do you live here? What’s your name? I’m Ginny.”
Walking backward, the boy answered. “Anthony. I live with my grandmother. She works here.”
Something about the boy’s solemn face and dark hair reminded her of the night clerk, Marie. This must be her grandson.
“Marie?” When the boy nodded, Ginny asked, “Where is your mother?”
Anthony stopped and stared past her. “She’s gone,” he said, and then he spun and jogged away.
That evening, Ginny had an early dinner in the inn’s cozy dining room. The place filled with customers, even before sundown. She didn’t think the Inn at Cliff’s Edge had rooms for that many people. It must be the closest restaurant for many of the locals. The clatter of plates and the drone of conversation filled the air. Marie had smiled and waved at her as she walked past the desk to the dining room, and Ginny wondered if Anthony was around.
She lingered over coffee and a slice of apple pie after her meal. The sun dropped low and cast an orange glow on the horizon when she paid her check and limped outside. Her hip ached from too much activity that day, but she felt restless and she wasn’t ready to turn in for the night, wasn’t ready to be alone with her memories of this night the year before.
In the fading light, the gravel path seemed to glow and Ginny picked her way along, tapping at the ground with her cane to make sure she didn’t encounter any unexpected obstacles. When she reached the gate, she noticed the hinge had come loose from the screws holding it in place on the post beside the gate. The padlock still hung from the hasp, but without the hinge, the gate leaned open, revealing the white rocks of the path beyond. Ginny stepped through the opening.
Brush and vines crowded against her, but the trail itself was oddly clear and level, as though someone had swept away the sticks and larger rocks. Pine and salt spray scented the air, and Ginny heard the faint sound of waves breaking against the cliff face below. She couldn’t see the end of the path, and she wondered if it led down to the shore or if it broke off at the edge of the cliff. The further she walked, the darker it grew and just as she felt she should turn back, she heard the cry from the night before. This time it ended, not with a sob, but with a tiny voice calling, “Momma!”
Ginny shook her head to clear it. How many times over the past year had she spun at that cry? Knowing it couldn’t be her daughter, but unable to resist the call of a child.
“Hello?” Not Lottie, Ginny scolded herself, but some other child in need. “Where are you? I’m coming.” She pushed along the trail, toward the voice.
Turning a corner, the path emerged into a clearing. A small figure stood at the center of the space with her arms held out toward Ginny. A girl child. And if the girl’s face wavered, the bones shifting and reassembling, Ginny didn’t care.
“Lottie?”
The child motioned her closer. Behind her, the trail disappeared at a drop-off. Ginny hobbled forward. Tears blurred her vision, but she kept going, toward the girl, toward the end of the path.
“No!” Small hands clutched at Ginny’s back. She whirled around to see Anthony. He grabbed hold of her cane. “Come back. She’s not real!”
“I don’t care.” Ginny shook her head. But before she could turn back around, an angry growl sounded.
“Run!” Anthony pulled her along.
Ginny stumbled after him. She dared a glance over her shoulder at the thing pursuing them. It grew and shrank, warping from the blond daughter Ginny had lost to the stocky figure of an older man, then to a slim, black-haired woman. The thing’s skin melted and stretched, like putty over a frame of wire and bone. Its mouth dripped a thick, tar-like substance over shark-sharp teeth. The transformations slowed its progress to a shuffling crawl, but Ginny feared they wouldn’t reach the gate before the creature caught them.
“Go on!” She pushed Anthony away, and he ran up to the gate, prying it open further so Ginny could stagger through.
“Help me.” He pulled the gate closed and held it while Ginny fumbled with the screws on the hinge.
“They’re too loose!” The hinge wobbled. The drilled holes were too worn for the screws to hold.
“Just close it. As long as the hinge is on the gate it can’t get through.”
Ginny slammed the last screw into place. Something large and heavy brushed against the wood on the other side. It snuffled and scraped at the gate, but the portal held. At last, it fell silent.
“It looked like my daughter.” Ginny’s legs trembled, and she sank to the ground.
Anthony nodded. “It’s different for everyone.”
“Who do you see?”
“My mother.”
“What is it?”
Anthony shrugged. “I don’t know. It lives there, on the edge.”
There were so many questions Ginny wanted to ask. Why did the hinge keep it from coming through the gate? And why hadn’t anyone tried to get close to the portal? They could at least hide the gate and keep curious people from trying to go through.
But she didn’t ask any of these questions. Not because she felt Anthony couldn’t or wouldn’t answer, but because the answer came to her as they walked away from the gate.
The next day, as she packed her things into her car to leave the Inn at Cliff’s Edge, Anthony waved goodbye to her from the front porch of the inn. Ginny remembered the wistful look on his face the evening before, when she asked him who he saw when the creature appeared. She knew that feeling, that desire to glimpse a beloved face just one more time. The answer to why the gate still stood was the trade-off. She’d go to the edge again herself, if she could, to give life to an evil that fed from one’s grief, in order to pretend the lost walked the earth again.
This is one I wrote for an NYC Midnight story and it’s different from my usual horror style. The original version didn’t advance in that contest. I had included an odd bit about Holly’s ex that didn’t fit with the story. I was trying too hard to include a dark moment and it didn’t fit. In revision I dropped the boyfriend and concentrated on the relationship between Holly and her father. Sometimes less works best. I hope you enjoy it.
The Auctioneer’s Song
They made good time getting to the auction house, despite Holly not driving fast enough to suit her dad, Loyd. Mindful of the cargo in the trailer behind them, she had putted along in the slow lane, taking her time braking and turning.
“Sales gonna start before we pull into the lot,” Loyd muttered. One side of his mouth drooped in a scowl—a remnant from the stroke he’d suffered six months ago. His right hand curled inward, the fingers gnarled and twisted like branches on a mesquite tree.
“Won’t do us any good to be early if we don’t have a live, uninjured animal.” Holly pulled up to the auction barn and left Loyd to supervise the unloading while she carried the paperwork to the office. They had sold off the cows last summer, but kept the bull for the stud fees. Now, the sale of Midnight Max, their Grand Champion Black Angus, would mark the end of their cattle days.
After dropping off their papers, Holly wandered through the sale barn. The scent of hay and manure, the noise of slamming gates, lowing cattle, and whinnying horses—brought back memories. As a young girl, she’d march beside her dad, inspecting the animals for sale, and occasionally voicing her childish opinion. Loyd had always listened, as though her eight or ten years of experience back then matched his.
Outside, her father chatted with a group of men standing under an oak tree. Their faces were all similar—tan, weathered, and wrinkled. Dressed in the same uniform of starched Wranglers and denim shirts, half the group wore baseball caps with feed store logos. The other half, including her dad, sported wide-brimmed Western hats. Loyd stood in the middle of the group, his good hand gripping the hickory staff he carried as a cane. He kept his damaged hand tucked in the pocket of his jeans.
As she joined them, Jim Cole, the auctioneer, reached to shake her hand, then dropped his when he spotted the metal hook at the end of her sleeve. Instead, he touched the brim of his Stetson and dipped his head to her. “Glad to see you here. It’s been a hot minute, hasn’t it?”
“It has,” Holly agreed. Jim had been running the auction for as long as Holly’s memory allowed. “I know you’ll get us a good price on our bull.”
She recognized their neighbors, Grady Burton and his wife, Sue. Stepping forward to hug Holly, Sue said, “Thank you for your service. It’s good to have you home again. I know Loyd appreciates having you around to help.”
Beside her, Loyd cleared his throat. “I might be old, but I can still haul my own water. As for my girl, I hope she’s seen enough of the world to realize this is the best place for her.”
This was a discussion Holly had put off. Injured in active duty, her disability payment had been automatically approved by the VA, so money didn’t have to figure in her decision. If she stayed with the ranch, she’d have to find something to keep her busy enough she and Loyd wouldn’t knock heads like a couple of angry bulls. Or, with the right type of prosthesis, she could continue her military service.
Jim Cole spoke up, saving Holly from answering. “I’d better get going. Auction can’t start without me.”
On their way inside, Holly and Loyd passed a large open corral holding dozens of horses. They milled about, snorting and switching their tails. Several of them, including mares with their colts, lay on the ground, unable to dodge the trampling hooves. Three men had cornered a bay gelding against the near rail of the corral. He reared and kicked as a red-faced, blond cowboy cursed and shook a rope halter.
“Hey!” Holly gripped the gate.
The bay lowered his head, bony sides heaving. Holly could count his ribs, and his hip bones stood out. Foamy white sweat covered his coat.
“Lady, you don’t want this one.” The blond cowboy tossed the halter on the ground. “He’s got a mean streak. Probably be sent to slaughter.”
Loyd touched her shoulder. “Whoever owned him didn’t treat him right. He’s got spur marks and tack sores. Starved, too.”
“Those horses will go to the slaughterhouse, won’t they?”
“Can’t save them all, sweetheart.”
The sound of the auctioneer greeting buyers reached them, and reluctantly Holly followed her father to the sale arena. They found seats in the gallery as the ring handlers herded in the first lot, six Hereford cows. The animals circled, lowing. Jim Cole began his call, the words a ringing cadence flowing smoothly as a hymn. When she was a child, Holly had tried to decipher the words in between the bids. “They don’t matter,” Loyd would say, “Listen for the dollars. Everything else is flavor for the flow.”
She learned to pick out the phrases that repeated between the numbers. “I have, would you give me, I am here.” The lyrics to the auctioneer’s song, the siren call that would help determine the animal’s worth.
Midnight Max sold before noon. “I’m sorry to see him go,” Holly said. “I hope…” Her voice trailed off. She knew better than to get attached to the cattle.
“Don’t fret. He’s got good years left.”
Holly expected Loyd to rise, but he waved a hand. “We’ll pick up the check later. Let’s stay and watch the rest.”
Toward the sale’s end, the handlers brought out the bay gelding. The horse limped, its head down.
“I can’t watch, Dad.”
“Hold up. We can’t save them all, but we could save this one.”
Around them, the bidding continued. Holly leaned to whisper to her father. “I suppose if we bought this horse I’d have to stay and help with him?”
“Damn shame if you didn’t.”
At the next call of would you give me? Holly raised her hand to cast the winning bid.
Jonas had settled before the fire, tamping tobacco into his pipe, when a blow sounded against the door. His wife, Ruth, flinched and rose from her chair.
“Fetch the rifle,” Jonas said. He gripped the iron poker from the hearth.
He would not have known the visitor if not for Ruth’s gasp of recognition. White frost clung to his beard and dusted his coat. His sunken eyes stared under the shelf of his brow. In the night behind him, snowflakes as large as doves fluttered.
“Samuel!” Ruth lowered the rifle.
Jonas pulled the man, their neighbor, into the house. What terrible mission had brought him four miles to their home?
Trembling, Samuel set down his lantern. “We’ve lost Aaron.” Samuel turned to Jonas. “I need your help to bury him.”
“The ground’s too hard. Wait until the sun warms the soil…”
“It’s been two nights already. I waited, hoping the snow would stop.”
Ruth grasped Jonas’s arm. “He must be buried before the third day.”
The last coffin Jonas had carried had been his mother’s. She passed in the spring, when his shovel turned the ground as easy as planting a field. They buried her right after her last breath. Sometimes, he heard her voice call his name.
“We’ve hours until dawn, but we’ll need a fire to warm the ground.” Jonas shrugged into his coat.
“Wait!” Ruth scurried off and came back carrying two bundles. “Take this.” She thrust the packages at Samuel. “Salt pork and hardtack. Sorry I don’t have more to send.” Color rose in her face. “Tell Mary I’ll be around when the roads clear.”
Samuel tucked the food into his pockets. “I’m grateful. Truth is, we’ve run short of supplies.”
Jonas paused in the doorway when Ruth called again. She rushed to him and wound her wool shawl around his neck. “Stay safe, Jonas.”
The wind ceased when the men were halfway to Samuel’s home. Clouds scattered, revealing the moon, like a white pearl in the indigo sky. No sound but the crunch of their boots across the snow-covered fields. Their breath hung like smoke overhead.
At Samuel’s home, they found Mary’s mother seated in a rocker at the hearth with the younger child, a girl, playing on a rug at her feet. Samuel handed the old woman the food. “From Ruth.”
The grandmother rose. “She’s with him still.” She gestured to the closed door across the room. Her wrinkled face knotted in anger. “The devil takes us if we’ve come to this. No bread to fill our sorrow, no drink to wash our pain.” She motioned to Samuel. “Go fetch Mary.”
“I’ll go,” Jonas said.
The boy lay on his parent’s bed in the cold room. They had dressed him in black pants that stopped short of his ankles and a white shirt that matched the pallor of his face. His mother slumped from her chair and rested her cheek on the mattress. She clutched one of the child’s hands.
Mary jumped when Jonas touched her shoulder. “Please, not yet. Would it be bad to have him back?”
Jonas thought of all the ones he had lost. Would it comfort this family, to be haunted by their child? “You shouldn’t tie him to this earth.”
“I’d do anything to keep him longer.”
Jonas eased her to her feet. “The dead are never gone. We carry them with us always.”
Samuel hitched a horse to their sleigh while Jonas carried the boy outside. He wrapped the body in Ruth’s shawl. Bundles of firewood rested in the back of the sleigh. Rather than put the boy there, his father held him in his lap while Jonas drove the sleigh.
At last, they reached the graveyard behind the church. The moon cast the snow in blue light. Bare-branched trees cast long shadows on their work as they stacked wood on the grave’s soil. The fire lit, the men warmed their hands in its heat. A howl sounded from the woods on the other side. Jonas glanced at the horse tethered on the cemetery’s fence. “We shouldn’t leave them there, with hungry wolves near.”
While Jonas tended to the horse, Samuel laid his son beside the fire, as though to warm him. He brushed aside the shawl and cupped the boy’s cheek. “If he died in the spring, we’d live with his ghost.” Samuel drew the cloth back over the boy. “But I couldn’t bear the guilt of it, to face him now. He’d been sick. When he died, I felt relief that there would be one less mouth to feed.”
“Hunger makes wolves of us. You can grieve the dead and worry for the living.” Jonas rested his hand on his friend’s shoulder.
When the fire had died to coals, Jonas swept them from the grave and sunk his shovel into the ground. Samuel staggered to his feet, but Jonas waved him away. He dug, mindful of the passing hours and disregarding the blisters that burned on his hands.
Jonas finished digging as a line of burnt orange stretched across the horizon. A blanket of soft gray fog rolled in. Together, Jonas and Samuel eased the boy into his resting place. The sun rose, scattering the mist and warming the earth. The ice melted from the tree branches and clear droplets of water fell over the grave.
I don’t remember why I wrote this story. Possibly it’s one I entered in a contest on the Vocal website. Like Medium, Vocal is a site where writers can publish stories and collect a few pennies when people read them. I wasn’t successful there and finally closed my account once I reached the $20 minimum to cash out. I won’t mention how long it took to earn that money.
And that, dear readers, is one example of why I don’t recommend trying to make a living writing short stories.
This one’s a ghost story, but it’s not too scary.
The Orchard
Mae Emery returned, as she had each year since childhood, to her Aunt Judy’s orchard. The sultry dog days of summer gripped Pennsylvania, but Mae couldn’t get warm. She wrapped her body in bulky sweaters and stiff jeans, clad her feet in heavy boots. Workman’s clothes.
“I’m so glad you’re here. Your mother would want you to be with family.” Aunt Judy pulled her close as soon as Mae stepped from her car. The last of the season’s blossoms swirled around their feet like snow.
“It’s good to be back.” Mae studied the older woman, searching for some sign of the breast cancer her aunt had survived years ago. They didn’t talk about things like that back then, Mae’s mother had told her, as she herself lay dying from that same disease.
That summer and into the fall, Mae worked in the gift shop alongside her aunt. The orchard had been in their family for generations, passed down at last to Mae’s mother’s older sister, Judy. Less than a hundred miles from Gettysburg, the farm attracted tourists and local families both. As the pears ripened, the orchard filled with workers. The bell above the gift shop’s door chimed as customers flooded in, searching for trinkets and t-shirts. Mae forced a smile upon her lips while her hands dished out pies, jars of pear butter, and doughnuts warm from the fryer.
Evenings, Mae retired to her tidy room above the store, scented with cinnamon and the sweet smell of candles in the gift shop below. Snuggled underneath a faded quilt, she slept beside a view of the trees from her window. Aunt Judy had offered Mae her mother’s old room in the main house, but Mae could not imagine resting there. At night, the house settled with creaks and pops like footsteps on the wooden floors.
Below her window, at the edge of the orchard, the orange flames from the pickers’ campfires glowed. If the wind blew from the right direction, it would carry their soft conversation. Mae could pretend their words were those of the ghosts rumored to haunt the orchard.
One night, when the full moon cast its glow, Mae dressed and strolled barefoot among the trees. The leaves rustled like restless spirits. The grass on the ground as familiar as the rug beside her bed. This was the one place she thought might melt the cold center of dread and sorrow she carried.
She found the canteen, propped against a trunk, as though someone had dropped it there. Worn wool cloth covered the rusted tin container. She tipped it over the grass and a stream of dry soil spilled from the spout. A flash of white drew her gaze. Mae froze. Something drifted out from the trees at the end of the row. Mae drew in a breath. A boy’s pale face appeared in the moonlight. He wore a jacket, long trousers, and a flat-brimmed hat, the colors muted by the dark.
“Hello?” Mae stepped toward him.
His eyes were blank as pennies. He stared past her, alert, as though watching for someone else to come through the trees. A snap, a heavy step on a twig, sounded behind her. A brush of cold flicked against her neck. Mae spun. The row was empty. When she turned back, the boy had disappeared.
Clutching the flask to her chest, Mae jogged back to the gift shop. When she reached her room, she slammed and locked the door then collapsed against it, panting and shaking.
The next morning, before the shop opened, Mae brought the canteen to her aunt. “I found this last night in the orchard.”
Judy turned the flask over, her fingers tracing the circles stamped into the tin. “This is very old,” she said. “Things turn up now and then. Civil War stuff, mostly bullets. Metal lasts longer.” Judy handed the canteen back to Mae. “What else did you see?” she asked.
“There was someone there, a boy.”
“Dressed strangely?” Judy asked. When Mae nodded, Judy said, “A spirit. I haven’t seen him in years.” She brushed the hair back from Mae’s face. “Sorrow calls to sorrow,” she said.
That night, Mae studied the canteen. How had it come to be there, in the orchard? Who had left there it, for her to find? Soft notes of guitar music drifted in through the open window from the pickers’ cabins. Mae carried the canteen outside.
An older man, face creased and lined by days spent in the sun, sat next to a dying campfire. He nodded hello as she strolled by. Mae had known many of the regulars, the pickers who returned season after season. She’d taken turns working the trees, her back aching at the end of the long day, bent from the weight of pears.
Most times, her mother stood at the bottom of the ladder, steadying it and pointing out the ripe fruit. High in the green of the branches, Mae couldn’t see every side of the fruit, but together, they saw all the pears. This was the first year she hadn’t worked among the trees.
With the canteen tucked under her arm, Mae crept through the orchard. The guitar music faded, and not even a whisper of wind moved the leaves. This was her world—the pears, the trees, everything around her constant and comforting. If she belonged here, then so did the boy.
“It’s okay,” she said. She lifted the canteen, an offering.
Then, all around, spectral figures wafted through the trees. They passed by Mae, the stream of ghostly men parting as they flowed around her. Soldiers. Ghosts, filled with fear and sadness, but with courage as well. They marched forward, unseeing. In the distance, a drum beat a tap, tap to their steps. Mae waited as wave after wave of blue-coated foot soldiers appeared.
She spotted him. He marched, beating the drum strung at his waist. Mae held out the canteen. The boy’s icy fingers brushed hers as he gripped the container and it faded to transparency. Canteen slung over his shoulder, the boy took up the drumbeat and joined his company. The soldiers passed—mounted men silent except for the creak of their saddles, foot soldiers gripping their rifles, cannons mounted on caissons whose wheels did not disturb the grass. Mae lifted a hand in a half-salute and stood watch until they faded and broke up like mist over the ground.
This story is one I wrote last year for the NYC Midnight Scary Story contest. The judges liked it enough that I advanced to the second round in that contest. One of the prompts that had to be included was a character that was a nomad. I don’t remember the other prompts. The story also had to be 500 words or less, a real challenge when you have to include specific things.
I’m not entering any NYC Midnight contests this year. They have been a good incentive to stretch my creativity, but I’ve put off writing a novel for too long and now is the time to concentrate on that. For now, I hope you enjoy this little tale. It’s a ghost story of sorts, but not too scary.
The Homecoming
Every October, Evangeline was drawn back to the place she had known as home. No matter how far she traveled, like a bird she returned, drawn to dark mysteries in the East Texas house.
She parked the RV in the weed-filled drive and waited as the witch came outside. The old woman’s name refused to rise in her recollection, but her face was one Evangeline could imagine as her own reflection, twenty years forward.
“You’re here,” the witch said. “Come inside.”
Evangeline left the motor home, with its collage of bumper stickers from places pinned on a map. Never settling, lest she mistake familiarity for forgiveness.
The porch creaked with her steps, the wood gone soft and gray. Beside the house, laundry hung on a line—cotton dresses and sheets that snapped like sails in the wind.
She followed the old woman down a hallway with portraits on the walls. A young man in a soldier’s uniform, a bride in an oval frame, a family of stern-faced folk. Last, a photograph, colors faded to blue-green, of a mother and child. Broken glass hung in the frame. Someone had carved out their faces, taken a sharp edge to the paper. Evangeline trailed her fingers across the clinging shards of glass. A carmine drop of blood bloomed on her thumb.
Inside the bathroom, water dripped into a claw-footed tub. The scent of mold and rain-damp leaves, of things left to rot, drifted out. Evangeline covered her face to hide from the room.
“Sit.” The old woman pointed at the kitchen table. Scattered across the surface were dried herbs, a hen’s egg, a black candle, and a clump of clay molded into the shape of an infant.
After lighting the candle, the woman grabbed Evangeline’s hand and squeezed a drop of blood into the flame. A clock chimed three times.
“Hurry.” The witch pushed a wicker basket at Evangeline.
Outside, dark clouds threatened. She raced to save the wash. When she tried to return the basket, the witch blocked her. “You must face this.”
Evangeline shivered. The bathroom door creaked closed, hiding what waited inside. No giggling play, no splashing. Only drip, drip, drip.
“The spell didn’t work. I don’t remember,” Evangeline lied.
“It was an accident. Forgive yourself.”
Before she climbed into the RV, Evangeline kissed the old woman’s cheek. “I’ll see you next year,” she said. “Goodbye, Mother.”
The story below is one I wrote last year for the NYC Midnight 500 word contest. I’ve held onto it, thinking maybe I would expand it and put it into a book of short stories, but the longer I put that off, the less interest I have in editing. There are folders on my computer filled with half-finished stories. At least this one is complete, although it could have used a few more words. But it’s enough for now and it gives me something to post on the weekly blog.
One of these days I’ll pull those other stories together into a book. I don’t feel too guilty letting them sit. I’ve started work on a novel, and I’ll use that as an excuse for now.
This one is a horror story and it’s a bit dark, so be warned.
Counting Dead Flowers
On my fourth trip to the cellar, the rotten step collapsed. Luckily, most of my weight had shifted, my foot planted on the next tread. Cursing, I gripped the handrail, glancing over my shoulder at the gap where the middle board had been. Much of the stairs lay in shadows due to the burned-out bulb at the top.
I could imagine my sister Ivy chiding me for not replacing it. She’d be angry enough that I was here alone. “Don’t go without me. I’ll be there by Thursday at the latest,” she’d said.
Three days had passed since our father’s death. Eager to begin the search, I had sorted through the mounds of newspapers, broken dishes, empty takeout containers, and discarded electronics that filled the home like barnacles on a ship.
I’d arranged our father’s cremation. There was no point in a funeral—the man had no one other than Ivy and me. He had lived alone in this house for twenty years.
At the bottom of the stairs, I weaved through the cardboard boxes I’d moved to clear a path to the back. The place stank of mildew and the damp earth of the cellar’s dirt floor. My shadow, cast by the pale light of the bare bulb on the ceiling, hovered over the old chest that I had uncovered. Made of cheap particleboard, one end had rotted out, spilling the contents. A child’s jump rope lay coiled on top of the chest. Lifting the rope, I recalled the rhyming song we had chanted.
I know a secret. Can you guess?
which little flower he likes best?
Setting aside the rope, I scooped out folded sheets of paper, yellowed and dotted with black and green mold. Childish handwriting covered the pages that could still be read. I shivered, remembering the scratch of pencil against paper as I created a list of names.
Daisy, Rosy, Violet, Belle,
hide in the cellar, and don’t you tell.
Upstairs, the front door creaked open, followed by my sister’s voice. “Lily?”
Frantic, I tried to stuff the papers back into the chest, but they slid out, along with a stack of Polaroid photos.
Sister doesn’t care, sister doesn’t mind.
How many petals will you find?
Her heels tapped along the wood floors. I turned over the first photo. A pale face stared at me. One of the missing girls we’d planted in the cellar dirt. How many were there? I kept getting the number confused with the count at the end of our jump rope rhyme. One, two, three, four—we stopped when he had the first stroke, when I was twelve, Ivy fourteen.
“Where are you?” Ivy’s steps halted.
“Down here.”
She wanted to confess, to set the past right. Would a jury forgive our acting as lures for the innocent? No. We clipped them, gardeners deadheading blooms.
Counting the steps as Ivy descended, I picked up the rope. If the broken tread didn’t do the job, I would finish it.
The story I’m sharing tonight was my entry for the second round in the NYC Midnight Scary Story contest. I didn’t advance to the finals and I’m a choosing to look on that as okay news as this means I now have the weekend free to work on the novel that I’ve started.
I received some good feedback from the judges, and I considered whether I wanted to go in and re-work the story to submit somewhere. But I then decided that it would just be one way of putting off the hard work of novel writing.
The prompts for this story were: burial, skipping a meal, and a couponer. I do love the prompt based writing contests, as they are always a challenge to creativity. And now, here is the story in all its unedited glory. Enjoy! (or not – this one’s a bit dark)
Die Hungry
The line of people wound through the cemetery. At the edge of the graveyard, a backhoe idled. Hayla shuffled forward, clasping her vouchers. Armed guards strode beside them, like wolves stalking prey.
“It’s fine weather for Parting Day,” the bearded man in front of her said. He grinned, revealing rotten teeth.
Shrinking back, Hayla nodded. Was this his mandatory age of disposition? She had signed up on her fiftieth birthday, five years early, to gift the unused time to her daughter.
The man leaned close enough she could smell the onion stink of his body odor. “I heard they don’t embalm or cremate folks so they can test whether the virus is still around.”
“Don’t care,” Hayla said. “Better to be buried with a full stomach than die hungry and rise as a ghoul.”
“You think this is enough?” The man held a single orange ticket, the color of the free government vouchers. Hayla had five meal coupons, one in each color, collected in preparation for today. A full digestive system halted the disease.
She turned, eager to glimpse the feast table. The scent of roasted chicken drifted through the air. Her stomach rumbled. She shouldn’t have fasted yesterday, but she wanted to gorge today. She swallowed, her mouth slick with saliva.
“Get back!” One of the armed men shouted. Across from the queue, a dozen people, men and women, fought against the ropes binding them. The unfed. Hayla shivered. Buried under concrete, unable to claw your way out. The group struggled toward the feast line.
“Go!” A guard pushed Hayla into the bearded man.
Screaming, the bound group surged into the queue. Hayla tripped, falling hard on her side. A large man landed on her, crushing her breath. She rolled, pushing the man away.
Gunfire thundered, bullets thudding into victims. Hayla crawled across the grass, shuddering as people fell wailing around her. Within seconds it was over. Hayla staggered to her feet. She ran trembling hands down her body. Her meal coupons were gone.
She grabbed a guard. “I’ve lost my tickets!”
“Sure. And I’m the pope.” He pulled her toward a pile of bodies.
A bulldozer roared, scooping up the fallen. The guard raised his gun.
Hayla woke, lying cold in absolute darkness. Something soft and wet pressed her cheek. Someone moaned. She grasped their arm and pulled it to her mouth. Hungry. She was so hungry.
A sign on the trail at the old Cisco zoo. Photo by the author
One of the most common questions that authors get asked is some variation of “Where do you get your ideas?” For most writers, the answer is that we find them in our everyday experiences. This includes people who pen tales about ghosts, demons, and dragons. We don’t encounter those in real life, but we run across settings or objects that spur stories. Stephen King was inspired to write his novel The Shining after a winter stay at the Stanley Hotel in Estes, Colorado. The hotel’s isolated setting and a nightmare about his son gave rise to the plot of the horror story. And a very good one it is.
Not a ghost, but a ghostly garment for sure. Photo by the author.
A couple of years back, my husband Andrew and I visited the abandoned zoo trail in Cisco, Texas. I’ve got a separate post about that visit – you can find it on the Road Trip tab and read about it if you’d like. Strolling through that place I felt it would make a great setting. I filed away the memories and images to recall at some later date. They came to life in the Spring 2025 Writing Battle writing contest. I received the prompts “Small Town Secrets”, “Zoo”, and “Rich Aunt.” The minute I saw “Zoo” I knew where to set my story. Once I placed the characters in that abandoned zoo I found the secret that they were keeping.
There’s a story waiting inside this room. Photo by the author.
Getting words on the page is the hardest step for me, but the contest had a deadline so that gave me motivation. I ran my first draft through the ProWritingAid app to polish the grammar and eliminate most of the passive voice. After one last edit, I finished the story and submitted it to the contest. It didn’t win any prizes. However, I received some useful feedback from the other contestants. The trick to a good story is that it’s not the writing but the rewriting that makes it stand out. After editing the draft that I had submitted to the contest, I took my pages to my writing group and got their feedback. Then, I submitted the story to the Flash Fiction Magazine’s contest. It didn’t win there either, but one of the editors emailed me afterwards and offered to publish it in the magazine. With some edits, of course. I said yes and off we went on the last round of revisions.
When we encounter haunted objects, there’s story waiting. Photo by the author.
My story, All We Have Abandoned, went through at least six rounds of editing before finally being published. Here is a list of some things that were changed through that process.
The title went from Forsaken but not Forgotten to the current one – All We Have Abandoned. I think the second title brings out the emotions felt in my trip to the old zoo and also fits the plot of the fiction piece better than the first title.
Some of the early readers mentioned that they couldn’t picture the point of view character. I realized that I hadn’t mentioned a gender or even a name for this character until past the halfway point in the story. Way too late – if you don’t introduce the main character early, readers will form their own idea of who that person should be. This can be jarring if they get the wrong picture of them and have to adjust later. I moved the narrator’s name up to the first word in the first sentence and added the phrase “no longer a little boy” as a second reminder of his gender.
I got rid of most of the “rich aunt” details that I had to include in the contest story but kept a couple of things about her character. She wears rhinestone-studded sunglasses and carries a cane with a silver handle. Those details I think will allow the reader to imagine her and also no a little bit about her personality.
My original draft included a full paragraph of back story about the zoo history. Fascinating stuff to me, the author, but not so interesting to readers who just wanted to get into the story. Cutting those lines allowed me room to add a scene where the main character encounters someone in the past.
Speaking of the past, I had a problem with tenses. There’s a flashback while the characters stroll through the zoo, but I wrote almost everything in present tense. Some of my early readers were confused about the timeline until I fixed that problem.
I made a small change to the ending, substituting one word for two in the last sentence. In general, I think it is always a good idea to cut words and this one change gave the story more impact and an ending that will stay with the reader.
Now, if you’d like to read the final, published story, here’s the link to the post on the Flash Fiction Magazine page: All We Have Abandoned
This story is one I submitted to one of NYC Midnight’s writing contests. I don’t remember the prompts, but they had to be something amusing to result in the following tale.
The Cook in the Kitchen
Betty Norman held the dusty cookbook angled toward the sunlight spilling through the thrift shop’s window. Her husband Eustace tromped up behind her, his arms filled with a dozen mildewed copies of Popular Mechanics magazines and five dull-brass cabinet knobs. He propped his chin on her shoulder as she traced the spidery handwriting in the margins of the cookbook. Betty flipped through the yellowed pages. She tapped a brown stain on the cover, shaped like the state of West Virginia. “I bet there’s good recipes here.”
Smiling, Eustace agreed. “This one might do the trick.”
At home, she stashed her purchase between a worn Fanny Farmer cookbook and a hardcover copy of The Joy of Cooking. The shelves on the bookcase sagged beneath the weight of thousands of recipes. Despite all this instruction, Betty had never grilled a steak she couldn’t burn to bitter charcoal, had never baked a cake that rose above the batter. If she put eggs on to boil, the water would simmer away until the pan ran dry, without so much as firming up a single yolk. When it came to cooking, she was cursed.
Her mother hadn’t meant to put a hex on her. Betty’s mother had never let her help in the kitchen. Two cooks would spoil the broth.
Later that night Betty woke to the clink of silverware, and the hushed whisper of drawers sliding open. In the dark kitchen she discovered the new cookbook on the counter, surrounded by a dusting of flour. A stove burner blazed blue flame. Betty rushed to turn it off. A pale woman wearing an apron stood reaching for the refrigerator door.
“Hey!” called Betty.
Just then, Eustace stepped into the kitchen and flipped on the light. The woman disappeared. “You fixing a late-night snack?” He pointed to the open cookbook.
“Not me.” Betty shook her head. She picked up the cookbook and shook the flour from the pages. “We brought home a ghost.”
Sighing, Betty pulled a thin, cloth-bound volume from the shelf. She opened it and ran her finger across the bold, block letters scrawled across the margins as she said, “Mom. I need your help again.”
Betty stacked her mother’s cookbook atop their latest purchase. She and Eustace went off to bed, certain the ghost would be gone. Betty’s mother never allowed anyone else in the kitchen.
Let's Get Out of Here 