The Virgin of Santos de la Tierra
Reading Time: 6 minutes When a Virgin is seen in a small Mexican town it’s a miracle – the town is blessed… or is it?
Horror
Gods and Monsters Installment 22: Delicate Dust
Reading Time: 6 minutes In the mornings, if he wakes beside the dust of a beautiful stranger, he knows he’s drained the world of a bit of color, a bit of beauty, however deadly.
Shadows
Reading Time: 5 minutes Jason’s daughter, Sarah, approached him one morning and said, “Daddy, the Shadow Man is back.”
Gods and Monsters Installment 21: Out of Dust – The Lenni Lenape
Reading Time: 8 minutes Out of the earth, up through the floor, dust rises. It clings together, forming a translucent woman. She is brown as earth. Her face is worn. Her eyes are shadows in the night. Red paint dots her cheeks and ears. Her hair is made of darkness, the part decorated by a circle of crimson. “I am Amimi, matriarch of the Lenni Lenape,” she says.
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Hands Down
Reading Time: 2 minutes How will a child react to his father’s unsettling business decisions?
Two Old Friends in the Garden
Reading Time: 5 minutes An old man’s dedication to his garden goes beyond the grave.
Gods and Monsters Installment 19: Lonely Journeys
Reading Time: 7 minutes I drove that ancient pick-up all the way out into the Catskill Mountains. Even after that trek, that good old Ford was running strong. Still is. I rented a place out in the woods about ten miles from Greene Village, New York. It was tiny; just bed, bath, and stove, but I didn’t need more.
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Gods and Monsters Installment 17: Moirai Mechanics
Reading Time: 7 minutes “Where did you get the gun, River?” Jackson asks. River looks down. His right hand is wrapped around a cold black gun.
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Hell in a Handbag
Reading Time: 4 minutes The earliest account is from our foremother, Rhoda. You know her better as Red Riding Hood. That’s right, she was a real person. Back then, the handbag was still a handbasket, but more on that later.
It Shambles Closer in the Dark
Reading Time: 2 minutes In the dark, something shambles toward you, its squelch squelch squelch sound getting louder, and louder. Is it here for you?
Demonology
Reading Time: 3 minutes With his life spiraling out of control, and a desire for revenge taking over his mind, a man takes drastic actions.
The Faster They Eat Her
Reading Time: 26 minutes Young Daisy must evade the clutches of forest-dwelling witch Madame Sosostris and Malcolm, the town brute, as she tries to solve the mystery of her friend Violet’s disappearance.
Stone Cold Beauty
Reading Time: 4 minutes Totally narcissistic, Electra loved admiring her herself in the mirror. One day a wish turned her to stone gazing in a mirror at herself for eternity. She was mostly happy with this situation, until her old, dying husband visits her and gets a wish of his own.
Home Delivery
Reading Time: 10 minutes Desperate for cash, Nick and his friend plot a home invasion. They picked the wrong house.
Harvesting Souls
Reading Time: 10 minutes A young woman faces her vengeful parents returning from the dead.
Bed Bugs
Reading Time: 10 minutes A couple unknowingly house a blood-sucking parasite under their bed.
Clowns In The Woods
Reading Time: 31 minutes An anxious young man gets more than he bargained for when he accompanies his fiance’s family on a hunting trip.
Betty And The Demon
Reading Time: 17 minutes When Irish-born Father Donahey retires to Winterset, he finds the community is awash with supernatural creatures, some friendly, many decidedly not.
Control Alt Delete
Reading Time: 21 minutes Ben is reveling in his tragically achieved freedom. He thinks he has it made, except for an elusive partner. Then an unknown woman first DMs then stands him up. His troubles have only begun when he realizes how thoroughly someone has infiltrated his technological fortress.
From Below
Reading Time: 15 minutes In the aftermath of a climate apocalypse, Jeremy and Alex survive by supplying food to the wealthy people living above the water, in the penthouses of Old Manhattan. But the wealthy aren’t the only ones that are hungry.
My Brain Through Your Brain
Reading Time: 5 minutes When Katie’s brain seems to jump out of sync she discovers another, almost identical, mind living inside her own. This duplicate mind gradually is not what she seems but instead something far more dangerous.
SEALAB IV
Reading Time: 11 minutes 2,000 feet below the surface, are they the observers? Or the observed?
The Scrivener
Reading Time: 16 minutes Brother Silas is unhappy with his lot at the abbey. He sees no alternative until a unique manuscript comes his way.
I’ll Be Home For Christmas
Reading Time: 2 minutes The holidays take on an ominous tone when a woman receives a phone call from the son she murdered.
Phantom
Reading Time: 9 minutes A little boy sees the ghost of an old man in the mirror. Or is it the old man who sees the ghost of a small boy?
Chef’s Special
Reading Time: 4 minutes Davis was the species’ third victim on the Pathfinder XII. I liked Davis, he called me a Culinary Magician.
Whispers Of Death
Reading Time: 8 minutes A teenager pushes another teenager into an abandoned well and leaves him there to die. But the victim has other ideas.
Deadbolt
Reading Time: 13 minutes Jess thought she’d left Derek behind, casting away his ring in the floods of a Seattle storm. But Derek was promised forever, and with another storm brewing, he’s going to remind her just how long forever is.
10207
Reading Time: 6 minutes Probably nothing bad happens after you donate your body to science, right?
Magic Makes Fools of Us All
Reading Time: 4 minutes An unusual family plots a summer camping trip that will satiate their blood-lust. It doesn’t go entirely as planned.
Ashes
Reading Time: 17 minutes Thirty years after the Burn, Jackson, an aging ex-soldier, is just trying to survive. A moral person in a world where morality isn’t a particularly good survival trait, Jackson has to choose between his self-interest and doing what’s right.
The Update
Reading Time: 3 minutes When an almost heavenly woman, Sister Mary, dies she expects she’ll go straight to heaven. But the stranger who shows up for her soul has a trick up his cell phone.
A Visit from the Tooth Fairy
Reading Time: 2 minutes An obsessed tooth fairy finds a new way to collect now that their favorite child is all grown up.
Small, Precious Things
Reading Time: 4 minutes William is a dutiful son and a caring doctor who keeps a special collection to honor his dead mother and estranged father.
Nocturne in Black and Gold
Reading Time: 9 minutes “Nocturne in Black and Gold” exists in some poetic world outside of reality and yet—feels easily relatable. This story bypasses your flesh and bone and gets right into your soul. What happens when your doctor is a tiger?
The Leviathan
Reading Time: 26 minutes A seemingly simple solution to a backyard problem quickly gets out of hand.
Interlude In Gehenna
Reading Time: 18 minutes He should have killed the man when he had the chance. Now there was nothing to do but wait for retribution in a town just a shade removed from hell.
A Voice From the Past
Reading Time: 18 minutes The young archaeologist Edward Campbell, is obsessed with the idea of knowing what happened to his father, who died years earlier while exploring an unknown tomb he discovered in an isolated area of Egypt.
Auschwitz Dancer
Reading Time: 16 minutes The spirit of famous Jewish ballet dancer, Franceska Mann, is stuck in time in a parallel dimension in 1943 at Auschwitz Concentration Camp, Poland.
A Feast for Saints
Reading Time: 4 minutes An 18th century New England Christian tells of the terrible truth behind Thanksgiving.
Portrait
Reading Time: 8 minutes In 1921, a London painter’s encounter with a beautiful Romanian woman leads to a portrait sitting with hellish consequences.
Clean Slate
Reading Time: 21 minutes On a Saturday morning, Grace Merritt vomits up a pocket watch that she’s never seen before.
Enough
Reading Time: 3 minutes This is the tale of a young photographer looking to catch her big break by capturing the perfect shot in the woods supposedly haunted by the ‘Snow Witch’.