Horror – Page 2 – Nicanor Abbott

Whence the Horrors

Author’s Note: A little different tune today. A bit of fiction about a particularly scary personal rabbit hole.

April had been a month-long deluge. We used twice the socks; the puddles and rivulets of runoff begged to be jumped in and over, especially after long days in stuffy classrooms with no lunchtime recess. Mom hung our wet pants over the shower curtain rod; they dripped on to a frayed towel spread on the floor beneath. Our sneakers practically lived in the dryer.

Between the school library and the public library, I had gained access to a Halloween-colored collection of books on the horror film classics: The Wolfman, Dracula, Frankenstein. The school library also owned a book on horror films wherein I first met Count Orlock and Erik Claudin. The public lIbrary’s series from Time-Life Books—The Enchanted World—completed my tour of the terrible fantastic; I was set for a month of pleasure reading.

“What have you got there?” Dad asked.

I showed him the book Wizards and Witches. He frowned at it, as if blaming the book for arriving in my hands.

“That’s garbage,” he said, and walked away.

After that, he didn’t ask what I was reading, opting to lace his question with judgment.

“Still reading garbage?”

Of course, the Playgirl he found under my mattress six years later was far worse to him than anything I had brought home before. As I reflect on it, my only regret is that I didn’t start reading comic books sooner, since those were banned in our house as well.

I rolled my eyes and held up whatever I was reading so he could read the cover.

“Yep. Garbage,” he invariable decreed.

That night I awoke to the light of the full moon shining through my window. The clouds had parted, the patter of rain ending just in time for me to notice the silence. No chirping of crickets or cries of spring peepers. No whirrs or croaks, no skittering of rodents over detritus. Not even the rustle of leaves. We lived on the edge of the woods. Silence was wrong.

“Hey Justin?” I asked. I could see the hulk of my older brother in bed beneath the far window. Overweight and a heavy sleeper, he snored badly. But now I heard nothing.

“Justin, I know you’re awake. Answer me!”

I slid out of bed and crossed the creaky old floor. He didn’t stir. I pulled on his shoulder. He rolled back, eyes glassy, lips blue.

Heart pounding, I ran from the room. The attic door was next to our bedroom, and I heard the clomp of heavy boots descending the creaking stairs. I smelled formaldehyde and ozone. The groaning started before I reached my parents’ bedroom.

“Mom! Dad!”

I pounded on their door, grabbed the knob, and flung it open.

They were dead, too, wrapped in thick webs. Something skittered under the bed. I turned. Something with yellow-eyes snarled from the darkness of the bathroom.

I raced past my sisters’ room, sure of the horror I would find if I opened their door. Instead I bounded downstairs, and struggled with the kitchen door, sparing a glance just as Orlock in his rat-toothed glory crept from around the corner that led to the cellar.

The door was locked. Something grabbed me from behind. I awoke.

It happened again the next night, after which I was too afraid to go to sleep. I pictured them waiting, horrors taking shape in the cellar, in the attic, under the bed, their clomps and growls and snarls held at bay just for me. The stink of them—wet wolf and the rusty smell of blood—came to me in my waking hours.

My father decreed that I had too active an imagination, and confiscated my books. I didn’t want to tell him that he shouldn’t take my Mad Scientist book because Fredric March might be the most handsome Dr. Jekyll I’d ever seen and I really wanted look at him some more.

The third night, I made it outside and across the yard. But Margaret Hamilton’s Wicked Witch caught me in the driveway. I skidded across the stone and gravel, tumbling to all fours as her green claws dug into my shoulder and scratched wet grooves down my back. My limbs gave out. A cackle filled the damp, foggy night.

My palms and knees hurt the next few days.

I made it across the street a few nights later. Nearly hit by a car. The witch caught me running up the road, screaming for help. I didn’t know if the car was real. I felt the whoosh of wind and the blare of a horn. It smelled like fire as it passed, contrary to the icy wind that followed in its wake. But I didn’t dare turn. There was no time to look back.

The first time I reached the neighbors, I actually paused to reconsider. These were not nice neighbors: the windbag, the milquetoast, and their spawn. But I pounded on the door anyway. Screamed for them. Something with claws yanked me off the porch and dragged me across the yard.

Finally, one night they answered. A quartet of shambling corpses. Emaciated cheeks and the stink of rotting flesh. Lolling eyes and broken grasping fingers. Not even the unsafe places were safe. I was alone. They swiped at me; I fought back. Tried to pull me inside. I ripped free of their clutches, tearing my t-shirt, and ran up the road, barefoot, crying, alone…

And then I awoke.

The next evening, Justin called me a faggot at the dinner table.

“Well, you should be more of a man, Brian,” my father said. Mom just stared at her salad. Jane leered at me, complicit in her silence. Little Alice chewed her cud, blissfully ignorant. And suddenly I knew what those horrors had been trying to say.

I determined to face my fears this time—not to run—sure that I was alone. Anything I did in my life, I would do for myself. Love and support did not exist; help wasn’t coming. No one would care for me like me.

The nightmare didn’t return.

I’m older now, and there are days, really bad days, when I think I could dream it again. I am no longer the lonely boy in the house on the edge of the woods. But I can sit in the park, or at a restaurant, or drive home on a perfectly blue day, birds chirping in the trees, and feel a hand, clammy against my neck, or glance in the rearview mirror to see a pair of glowing eyes staring back. Or hear the unnatural creaking under my bed as my husband snores gently beside me.

No, the nightmare hasn’t come back.

And it’s my job to keep it that way.

The First Room in the Palace

Author’s Note: Alex has been in my head for a long time. Their story will take place when they are older, but whenever I see them these days, I see Eliot Page playing an adult Alex, which makes me very happy.

“You’re a woman now,” Tessa declared proudly as she sat down.

Alex nearly spat out her cereal. “Jesus, Mom.”

“Well, it’s true.” Tessa’s spoon tinked against her mug. Constant Comment. One sugar.

“Do we have to talk about it at breakfast?” Alex blushed and disappeared behind the cereal box again.

Bradley never looked up from his tablet. “Did you really think you wouldn’t?” he asked his daughter.

“You’re laughing at me, Daddy!” She flicked a Lucky Charm at him. It stuck to his polo.

“Only smiling,” he conceded, dropping the cereal on his napkin.

Tessa paid no attention to her husband.

“So after breakfast, I thought we would light the candles in the meditation room, set the rosemary incense burning—”

“And I’ll struggle with The Art of Memory again while you sit on the cellar floor and talk with The Circle. That book is hard to read, Mom.”

“But you’re getting it.”

“Yeah—one page a day. And its got hundreds of pages…”

“Thank heavens I was able to help you pronounce some of those Greek, Italian, and Latin words!”

“My friends don’t have to learn Greek and Italian! Sarah’s parents don’t make her do it!”

“Well, Sarah’s not like you, is she?”

Alex appeared downcast. “I don’t know anyone like me.”

Tessa touched her daughter’s cheek. “That’s a good thing though, right?”

“Sometimes,” Alex conceded, though she still sulked a little.

Tessa tried again. “So when we get to the meditation room—“

“I’ll practice foreign languages—” Alex groused.

“Listen to your mother,” Bradley said before sipping his Earl Grey. Lemon, not milk. No sugar.

Alex rolled her eyes sarcastically. “Oh yes, mother of mine?” She smiled adoringly. “What will happen when we get to the cellar?”

“Meditation Room. And nevermind.” Tessa fake pouted.

“What?” Alex pressed, suddenly curious, grabbing the sleeve of her mother’s green sweatsuit jacket.

“No, no… It’s not worth discussing.” She sipped her tea and looked away theatrically, holding a hand aloft to block the sunlight as she examined the overhead light fixture. “Bradley, I think we should dust the chandeliers today.”

“Sounds good,” he replied. “Afterward, the two of you should see if Marblehead Little Theatre needs a pair of drama queens.”

Alex stuck her tongue out at her father, then resumed begging. “Tell me, Mom. Pleeeease?”

“I thought you didn’t want to talk about it?” Tessa asked.

“I don’t want to talk about… woman stuff. Especially in front of Dad.”

“I don’t want you to talk about it in front of Dad, either,” Bradley deadpanned.

“But you’re willing to listen?” Tessa grinned conspiratorially.

“Yes!”

Her mother made a show of cupping a hand to her ear. “I don’t think they heard you in Boston.”

“I’ll get louder,” Alex threatened with a Cheshire Cat grin.

Tessa shook her head. “Please don’t. I just thought for your eleventh birthday, I would help you create the first room in your memory palace?”

Alex nearly knocked over her juice.

“No way!”

Earlier attempts had failed, but whenever she asked for help, her parents exchanged cryptic glances and said, ‘when you’re ready.’ Alex had gotten heartily sick of only visiting limited places in her parents’ palaces, and not being able to build her own.

“So does this mean I’m ready?” She shook with excitement.

“Well, you are a woman now. It’s time.”

“Really?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Dad, are you coming, too?”

Bradley smiled but shook his head. “Your Mom has had ants-in-the-pants over this ever since you were born. This is for the two of you. Besides, it’s a woman… thing.”

After breakfast, Alex followed her mother down the cellar steps and into the cold, low-ceilinged meditation room beneath their red brick home on Salem Commons.

Tessa lit the candles and incense as Alex waited to enter the pentagram painted on the floor.

“Thus far you have been held at bay, Alexandra,” Tessa said as she handed her daughter a cushion. “But today you will find your power. Today you enter the star.” She directed her daughter to sit in the nearest triangular arm. Cellar windows at her back cast trapezoids of light on each side.

“You sound a little like grandmother did.”

Her mother smiled and shushed her with a finger.

“You know what to do. Open your chakras and meet me on my front porch.”

Alex nodded, closed her eyes, and disappeared. The speed with which she did so pleased Tessa quite a bit.

On its exterior, Tessa Hawthorne’s memory palace looked like a farmhouse in a Kansas field. Alex walked up the narrow path through the high grass. On the right, a large blue egg sat beneath an apple tree. On the left, a burnt cross flaked away in the wind. Her mother emerged from the house and sat in a rocker on the white porch. The screen door closed quickly, but made no noise when it slammed into place.

She motioned her daughter to a second rocker.

“That was great grandfather’s,” she said.

Alex nodded. She had seen it in old photos.

“Now before we start building, I should ask you a few questions. Do you know what your palace will look like? Have you given any thought to the exterior.”

“Uh-uh,” Alex said. “I don’t… I’m not comfortable—exactly—with the exterior. But I know what’s on the inside.”

“Odd,” Tessa said. “I thought for sure you’d make it Sleeping Beauty’s castle.”

“I was nine, Mom.”

“It was only two years ago.” She chuckled. “At least you didn’t put us through the princess routine. God knows what Aunt Stella and Uncle Archibald would have said. And Artemis would never have let me live it down.”

“Jason says his mother likes us a lot more than she lets on.”

Tessa let the comment go. Alex and Jason had been friends almost since birth. Artemis and her wife had long believed he would be an ideal suitor for Alex, but Tessa wasn’t so sure.

“So we’re going to build inside, not outside. That’s fine. I’m curious though, Al: why did you put those in my yard?”

“What?”

“The egg. The cross.”

Alex looked nonplussed. “You didn’t put them there?”

Her mother laughed. “Heck no! The apple tree is mine, and I let the grass grow long. But I didn’t put those others out there.”

Alex squinted to examine them more closely. The egg seemed alive. Shades of darker blue, almost to black, swirled around the shell, as if being stirred from inside. The cross looked… wrong. Something bothered her terribly about it.

“I don’t know, Mom. I might have put the egg there. But I don’t know why. The cross… there’s… I don’t know.”

Tessa patted her daughter’s knee. “Something disturbing. Don’t worry. We’ll figure it out later. Let’s go in and build.”

The front door opened into a cluttered living room. Newspapers and magazines covered the coffee table. Flowers and ribbon candy sat on the buffet. Home-sewn pillows sat on each chair and sofa cushion while afghans and quilts draped each back. Three oil paintings adorned the wall above the sofa: a wood-framed depiction of the farmhouse. A castle in a green valley framed in gold. And lastly, their home in Salem in a frame of interlocking oak helixes. A corner case was stuffed with knick-knacks; more of them sat on the end tables.

“This is the Sheehan genealogy. All my ancestors…” she picked up a snowglobe of a child playing a wintery park scene. “Right down to you.”

Alex peered into the globe trying to determine which memory it was. While she examined the globe, her mother took quick inventory of the room.

“So…” Tessa took the globe back. “Do you want to build downstairs or upstairs?”

“I think… I want to build my bedroom. That seems like a good idea.”

They ascended the stairs past a wall of portraits that always seemed to be watching.

“Who are they?” Alex asked.

“Family,” her mother replied. “But not by blood. Coven watchers.”

“That one’s empty.” Alex pointed to a small bronze frame with a black and white photo.

“That’s strange? Imogene in Portland. I’ll check with their coven after we finish.”

A green runner ran the center of the upstairs hall. Alex poked her head into the first room. It seemed to be filled with fog. She tried to see the contents, but nothing would come into focus, like the objects or the room were resisting her.

“You don’t want to focus in here,” Tessa said. “The charm protects us from them in more ways than one.”

“What are they?”

“Memories, Al,” Tessa said. “Everything in a memory palace is memories.”

“But a memory can’t hurt you.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Tessa said, and ushered her daughter out. “A memory palace contains everything a witch needs. We need good things—happy memories, flowers, family. A good potions lab—”

“You mean the kitchen,” Alex laughed.

“Yes. But we also need the bad memories, too…if only to learn from them. And sometimes…” She motioned to a place where a door should have been but wasn’t. “One needs a room of one’s own.”

“Does Dad have a room up here?”

Tessa chuckled. “Of course he does. But it’s not quite a room.”

“Can I see?”

“You’d have to ask him. He’d probably say yes, but we must respect—“

“Each others’ space, I know.”

“Good girl. So… why don’t you bring the door into being. Make it a good memory, so that you have good feelings moving between us.”

Alex closed her eyes, focused, and heard her mother exclaim with delight.

“Last year’s family Christmas photo?”

The frame was silver. Flecks of light glittered and twinkled along its edges. The frame did not hold a door, however; it just hung on the wall.

Tessa ran her hand up the trim. “It’s better than our photo. This silver is real.”

“What?”

“Feel it. It’s not painted wood. You made a silver doorway.”

Alex ran a finger along the metal, proud of her accomplishment.

“Okay. This is it. Make your room, Alex. Put whatever you like in it—whatever you need. As long as you can see it, come to it and build the rest of your palace from here. Just like Grandmother taught me. And her mother taught her. All the way back to Ireland.”

Alex closed her eyes again. Imagined a space—a place—of her own. She squeezed her eyes tighter. Paused. Reconsidered. Became worried.

Tessa took her hand.

“Relax, Al. You know what you need. Just breathe it into being. It will be okay.”

The intake of breath might have been hers. She kept her eyes shut.

“You didn’t make a door,” Tessa said.

Alex opened her eyes.

A cottony wall of white stood before them, filling the silver frame entirely.

“Well, I…” Alex frowned. “I wasn’t sure about… you know, maybe this is enough for one day.”

“Nonsense. Let’s see the other side of the cloud.” Tessa’s excitement turned to worry when she saw her daughter’s face. “Wait. What is it, Al?”

She bit her lip. “I think… I’m not sure what we’re going to find on the other side.”

“But you did make it, right?”

Alex nodded. “I just. I know you’re excited. But I don’t know if…”

“If?”

She hesitated. “If it will meet your expectations.”

Tessa pulled her daughter into a hug. “Al, when I created my first room, it included a lifesize poster of Alice Cooper.”

“Who’s Alice Cooper?”

“Someone my mother did not approve of. Whatever you’ve got on the other side of that cloud, Al, we’ll face it together. Alright?”

Alex pulled away, dubiousness in her expression; Tessa took her daughter’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “You first, since it’s your room.”

She squeezed her mother’s hand in return, took a deep breath, and held it as she passed through the cloud.

They stood still for what felt to Alex like an eternity.

“Well,” her mother finally said. The rest of her words disappeared in a fit of throat clearing.

Alex’s room was midnight sky. Stars had been plastered to the ceiling. The closet door stood open, filled with baseball tees, flannel shirts, and jeans. Several pairs of Chuck Taylors in a rainbow selection lined the closet floor, and a rack of ballcaps hung on the wall. A telescope similar to her father’s stood by the window. She had included a shelf reminiscent of the one in her physical bedroom: books on magic, books on art and sketching. Books on nature. But also books about war and combat. Sun Tzu.

“Where did you see those?” Tessa whispered, pointing to a whole section on gender identity.

“At the Barnes and Noble.” Alex replied softly.

Tessa noticed an empty picture frame on the nightstand. “Are you going to put a picture in?”

“Not sure,” Alex said. Their heart thumped rapidly. Sweat broke out on their brow. They wished their mother would make the next move. But when Alex turned, Tessa was gone. Well, I guess she did.

Alex took a book titled Gender Identity off the shelf and flopped onto the bed. Ten pages in, their Dad poked his head through the cloud.

“Mind if I come in?” he asked.

They motioned for him to sit at the desk.

Bradley let the silence linger, watching Alex read to the end of a section, then motioned to the doorway. “You know, if you put an actual door on there, no one will be able to just stick their head through.”

“I’m not keeping this room.” Alex said, still focused on the page.

He looked around. “Really? Cause I like it.”

Alex huffed.

“Hey,” Bradley spoke gently. “Alex? Al? Put the book down.”

“It’ll be gone when I leave. I need to read it now.”

Their father smiled. “That’s not how it works, and you know it.”

Alex lay the book open across their chest.

“Your mother sent me,” he said. “She’s worried about you. And she feels bad.”

They pursed their lips, skeptical.

“She does, Alex.”

“Then why did she leave?”

“You shocked her, you know?” Bradley looked out the window on a sandswept desert view. It wouldn’t always look that way. Alex’s mood would change it.

Alex rolled over to face their father.

“I know. I almost didn’t make this one. I almost made my friend Sarah’s room. But then I changed my mind.”

“So is this really your room? I see you have my telescope and my star charts.”

“It’s like Jason’s room. I like his ballcaps.”

“Ah.”

“But some of it’s mine. The sky is mine. The books are mine. I knew I needed them.”

“Are you happy with this room?”

Alex frowned.

Bradley waited as long as he could. “Well are you?”

Silence.

“Because if you are, you should keep it.”

“You’re just saying that.”

Her father shook his head. “I mean, maybe put a door on that wall…” he pointed opposite the closet. “So you could come visit my palace directly. And you could hang a full-sized poster of Mika there, too. You know Mom doesn’t like Europop.”

Alex rolled their eyes. “She already hates me.”

“No she doesn’t.”

“Then why did she leave?”

Bradley sighed. “A couple reasons. The first one is you caught her off-guard.”

They offered a put-upon sigh. “Sorry I can’t be what she wants.”

“Did she tell you that?”

“No.” Alex crossed their arms and stared at the wall.

“Then I think you need to talk with her. She’s downstairs.”

“She never left the palace?”

He shook his head. “She never left.”

“I was sure she would leave me here alone.”

Bradley put a hand on their shoulder. “Then you don’t know her as well as you think.” He stood up.

“Can I read this a while longer?”

“Bring it with you.”

“It’ll disappear.”

He shook his head. “A witch’s memory palace doesn’t work like a human one, Alex.” He paused. “Um… Is it okay to still call you Alex?”

They smiled. “Alex is fine.”

“Well, if your book disappears, I’ll take you to the store and buy you one myself. Or we’ll order it off the web. But you will have a copy of that book.”

“You’re serious?”

He nodded and smiled. She returned it, albeit timidly.

Tessa sat in her memory palace kitchen drinking a mug of chamomile. When Bradley and Alex joined her, she poured them each a cup. No sugar.

She smiled at Alex, but it was strained. “I’m sorry I didn’t respond to you the right way. I… I don’t know what to make of it.”

Alex held up their book. “Neither do I.”

“I see that. Can I try to explain what I was thinking? Will you listen?”

A nod. They clutched the book tightly in both hands.

“First, I thought my presence was unfair to you and your father.”

“What?”

Tessa nodded. “I told you about my family tradition. The women passed the first room tradition down. But if I had paid more attention, I might have focused on you more than myself. Your father would have helped you make your first room.”

“Well you didn’t have to walk out.”

“I felt angry and disappointed—“

“You never let me storm out.”

Bradley frowned. “Just listen, Alex. Please?”

“I was wrong to leave,” their mother said. “I’m sorry I did it, but it’s done. And I’m still not comfortable with this new you.”

Alex’s mouth dropped. “But I’m still me!”

Tessa motioned for them to calm down. “I know you are. I know that. Whatever my challenges are with this new… this version of you, they are my problems alone. Not yours.”

Alex frowned and stared at their tea.

Bradley sighed. “Like mother like… um…” he trailed off.

Tessa raised an eyebrow. “It seems we all I have a lot to learn about this… different–“

“Same.”

“Same… but different, you. We’re going to need time, and we’re going to need you to be patient with us.”

“And to help us understand,” Bradley added. “Like what pronouns do I use with you? He? They?”

“I don’t know yet,” Alex said. “Can we use ‘they’ for now?”

Her father nodded. “That’s fine.”

“So you’re both really okay with this?”

Tessa smiled. “You’re my d… My s…” She sighed. “My child. I love you, and it will be fine. I promise. Besides, the only person who needs to be okay with this is you. Are you okay with it?”

In Alex’s new room, an image of the three of them drinking tea appeared in the empty frame. A full-sized poster of Mika unrolled itself from the center of a brand new door. Outside, the blue egg cracked, and a winged horse, shining sable, leaped into the sky and faded away.

“Yeah,” they said. “I am.”

Nevermore

Author’s Note: There’s a McDonald’s down the street. On occasion I eat breakfast there. The ravens usually eat there, too.

“Oh dear.” Vera fretted as Cor preened her feathers. They huddled on a sycamore bough, rubbing beaks and comforting each other against the chill evening wind. No respite from the weather came in shadow of the red brick edifice, its walls tangled in English Ivy, its slate roof glittering and white from a heavy snow. Nor, really, did the pair expect to find comfort there. They preferred the safety of their nest. Needs must, they had decided, so here they were.

“What?” Cor looked up just in time to hear a white wood window slam shut.

“He finally did it.”

Cor searched the lower boughs. “Oh, don’t tell me.”

“He went inside.”

Thundering followed. “He went… how can…? He knows better!”

Cor swooped to the branch nearest the window, then to the snowy ledge itself, flapping against the wind. Vera joined him a moment later, gazing through the dirty glass at the crackling hearth fire.

“Well, at least he’s warmer,” she offered hopefully.

“Until he gets killed,” Cor groused. Hugo was not his smartest brother. Devoted? Unquestionably. Smart. No.

“Do you think he’s suicidal?” Vera whispered, as she straightened one of Cor’s feathers.

“Who knows?” Hugo had been inconsolable after Mungi’s death.

“You think we should have let him alone the way we did?”

Cor shivered, ruffling his plumage. Vera tisked and set about preening him again.

“You think we should have kept him away from the window at least? Maybe the house entirely?”

Cor hopped a few times, adjusting his placement on the sill and clearing the snow. He peered in at the somber man who, he noted, had stopped pacing for the first time in days. Instead, the bedraggled fellow had pulled a chair of wood and velvet up to the doorway.

“Oh,” Cor observed. “The fool found himself a perch out of reach, anyway.”

Vera ceased preening long enough to see for herself. “Well that’s a good thing, anyway. Don’t you think? They look like they’re having a chat.”

“Since when do the humans listen to us?” He cocked his head and blinked. “They just don’t have the capacity.”

“Well, I hope they work things out.”

Vera’s optimism grated for an instant. Cor had grown accustomed, even happy for it, but now wasn’t quite the time.

“Maybe. But Hugo’s as mad as the landlord, that’s for sure.”

“Well you can’t blame either of them,” Vera snapped up a beetle that emerged from a crack between the bricks. “Losing love so young and all.”

Inside, the landlord had begun gesticulating wildly. He pulled at his hair. His dressing gown hung open on his lanky frame.

“I can blame my brother for his stupidity. And the landlord—if Hugo meets his doom—will have three souls on his hands. He might as well leap into the fire and finish the job.”

“Now Cor, Love, I miss Mungi as much as anyone—“

“Not as much as Hugo.”

“Well no,” Vera conceded. “The two were quite a pair. Boys of a feather, and all. But the whole thing was an accident.”

“It was stupid,” he cawed. “Carriage tipping, indeed. Oh!”

The landlord had stood up. He screamed and shouted at Hugo, flapping his arms and pointing at the window. Hugo held still. Cor hesitated to acknowledge the spark of hope that kindled when his brother hadn’t risen to the ire of his agitated interlocutor. Certainly, Hugo had reason. But reason never entered the equation where humans were concerned.

“He’s… look out, Vera!”

The pair leaped from the sill as the landlord threw open the window. Raucous caws filled the crisp air and loose feathers drifted on the wind to the snowy earth. The man screamed at them, shaking his fist, then disappeared from view.

The couple returned to their nest in a tall pine nearby and watched the open window. They croaked and kraah-ed throughout the night, hoping for a sign from Hugo. Other ravens soon joined them in song. Mates preened and cooed in the safety of deep crooks and crotches of limbs. Uncoupled young cawed and clicked and played in the lower branches and across the snow. On the morning of the first day, the chimney smoke abated. By evening it was gone.

On the moonless third night, the songs of the growing unkindness met with reply: a soft caw from inside the room. Cor swept down and landed on the sill.

“Brother? Are you there?” Cor asked the darkness.

The reply might have been a single human word. Cor understood, then cawed to the others, to his beloved Vera. They descended upon the house.

Olmstead

Author’s Note: I wanted to tell a story that would challenge the traditional horror story, which, at least in American culture, is often used to reinforce values that young people are expected to fulfill without question.

“It’s like a tombstone.”

Jason cracked his gum and peered through the wrought iron gate as the school bus pulled away. Olmstead House sat on the rise, partially obscured by icy naked oaks and snowy thickets.

“Yeah?” Derek ran a thumb along the teeth of his house key. After his punishment for losing the first key, he attached the second one to three linked chains: a Pirate Parrot tag from his mom, an Allegheny Mill penlight from his dad, and a Pokéball chain he won in fourth grade for getting the highest score on a math test. If he was lucky, Jason would invite him over. He could have dinner with his best friend’s family and stave off using his key a couple more hours.

“Uh-huh. Look—“ Jason had sprouted early and stood a full head taller than the rest of their sixth grade peers. Now he draped an arm around Derek’s shoulder and pointed through the gate.

“See there, where the roof stands above the trees? And the windows? They could be letters being worn away, couldn’t they? Now turn—“

They pivoted to look down the hill. Jason held Derek’s threadbare coat to steady him. “Main Street ends right here at the gate.”

“Or begins,” Derek corrected. “It’s how you see it. It also tees into Ridge, so maybe it doesn’t end at all?”

“The name ends, Derek. It becomes something else.”

“Okay. I was just saying.”

Jason rolled his eyes. “Sure. Now look—”

They surveyed the bleak downtown. Cinder-caked snow piled on the sidewalks. The display windows of Lena’s Clothier had been painted over. Casey Drugs was boarded up. Derek’s mom waitressed second shift at The Fine Diner until they shuttered last August. Within a week she abandoned Derek and his father. The Dollar Mart, a desperate survivor where Jason’s mom worked day shifts, sat diagonal from Casey’s. Few pedestrians—mostly bank employees—shuffled along the five block stretch. Weeds reclaimed blighted, empty lots. Cars spewed toxic blue fumes as they passed. Not every streetlamp lit up; darkness crept into the corners of Coleridge.

“See, everything on Main Street is dead or dying. It’s like the oldest graves at St. Francis’s. The stones crumble. The words get worn off. They fall over. The grass grows high until somebody mows it. Our town is weedy and abandoned, too, and here—“ He motioned back to the Olmstead House. “Here’s the tombstone.”

“I think you should be a writer.”

“My dad wants me to play football. I hate it,” Jason admitted, then fished for another topic. “Is your dad home tonight?”

“It’s Friday.” Derek slipped off a mitten and chewed a nail. “He’ll be at the bar until late.”

“You want to do something fun?”

“Is it inside or out? I’m getting cold.”

Jason flashed his mischievous grin. “Kinda both.”

“Huh?”

“Go home, drop off your stuff, and meet me back here in an hour.”

“Why?”

“Trust me.”

Forty minutes later, the boys met on Ridge Avenue, both trudging uphill toward the gate. Derek panted from the exertion. He preferred to curl up with a horror story instead of climbing icy hills in the dark. He pulled his hat down tighter.

Jason’s backpack humped off his shoulders, stuffed to bursting.

“What’s in the bag?”

His best friend ignored him. Instead of continuing toward the gate, they descended the hill. Derek half-trotted, half-slid. Where the fence angled into the woods, Jason left the sidewalk.

“Are you serious? My sneakers are already soaked.”

“Just step where I step,” he suggested, already three steps into a drift.

“Why?”

“Because I can get us into the mansion.”

Derek gaped. “Really?” He tried to match Jason’s long strides, often falling short but never wanting to lag behind.

After following the fence deep into the woods, they arrived at a gap where a section had fallen inward.

“Remember the story about the couple who tried to break in?” Jason asked.

“The one they tell at the library every Halloween? Of course!”

Jason nodded and clicked his flashlight, illuminating his face from below. “It happened just after Netta Olmstead died. She bequeathed the house to itself, and people came snooping from around the world. The couple claimed to be relatives. They snuck in right here. But Netta had placed a curse on the house, and nobody ever saw them again.”

Derek rolled his eyes. “I’ve read The Shining, Jason. You’ll have to do better. Lead on.”

Jason clicked off the flashlight and climbed over the fence. It creaked under his weight, collapsing into the snow.

“Damn,” he barked and fell over with a laugh. Derek traversed it much more easily, helped Jason up, and dusted him off.

The pair picked their way through the woods. Raspberry thickets scratched and tore at their coats. Burrs caught one of Derek’s laces and covered his shoe in a cluster. Jason accidentally let go of a low branch too quickly; Derek ducked to avoid getting whipped in the face.

“Watch it!” he snapped.

“Sorry.”

They emerged on the drive just below the house. Weather and disuse had reduced the paving to rubble, but that only made the walk easier.

“No ice,” Jason observed. “Less chance of falling.”

They stopped when the house came fully into view.

“Whoa,” Derek said. “I didn’t know it was so big. It’s huge.”

Jason laughed at the way his friend’s mouth hung open, the way his eyes grew wide. “Like the Overlook Hotel?”

Derek nodded. “Kind of. Not as big—but big enough.”

The house was chiseled gray stone, three stories high with a slate roof. A dozen windows were spaced evenly across the front face, with a large wooden door and small porch at the center. Thirteen windows spanned the second floor width. Five dormer windows marked a third floor.

“No lights on. Guess nobody’s home,” Jason joked.

“I half expected somebody to peer down at us from one of those upper rooms,” Derek admitted. “That’s how it always goes in the movies.”

The boys climbed the half dozen steps and looked back through the trees toward town. A few lights twinkled below.

“You can’t see how bad it is from here,” Jason observed.

“It feels like another world.” Derek shivered. “So how do we get in?”

“Well, According to Mr. Blundt at the public library…”

“…the house is locked against anyone but a true Olmstead.”

“You know my mother’s maiden name?”

Derek shook his head.

Jason smiled and reached for the door handle. It rattled, resisted, then opened with a crack that echoed through the trees. He swung the door wide.

“Pull out your penlight and follow me.”

The foyer connected to a central hall, with a staircase halfway back. Two sets of doors stood on each side, with another door at the rear.

“This way.” Jason turned toward the first door on the left.

“How do you know?”

“Trust me.”

They paused to study a portrait hung between the doorways. A high-collared man with a large nose and thick eyebrows glared down at them.

“Coleridge Olmstead,” Jason said. “Town founder. Lumber and coal baron.”

“He looks as grouchy as his statue in the park.”

Jason nodded and turned. A severe, thin-lipped woman stared back from the portrait on the opposite wall. Derek yipped.

“That’s Leonetta Olmstead. The last owner. She swore that no one but a true Olmstead could ever live here again.”

“She doesn’t look a thing like you,” Derek noted.

“No? I guess not.”

“Your mom is really an Olmstead?”

Jason smiled and guided Derek into a drawing room. The floorboards creaked and groaned under their steps.

“I have to pee,” Derek announced.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Go back into the main hall, past the stairs, and through the back door. There’s a back hallway. The first door is a bathroom.”

“Where are you going?”

He motioned to the next doorway. “I’ll be in there.”

Derek eyed the doorway dubiously.

“You scared?” Jason asked.

“How do you know so much about this place?”

He chuckled. “I’ve been up here before. Now get going. I’ll wait for you in the next room.”

Derek scurried through the central hall, keenly aware of the eyes that seemed to watch from both sides. The washroom was outdated but somehow still functional. He set his penlight on the sink. Halfway through his business, he heard the tap of footsteps directly overhead.

“Jason, you jerk…” he began.

The footsteps ceased.

He rushed to finish and flushed quickly. The footsteps returned at a quicker pace.

“Oh, you’re such a—“

The door flew open. Derek screamed. Jason stared back at him, then down at his open pants.

“Come on!”

“Hold up—” Derek fumbled with his fly.

“No time for that!”

Jason yanked him out of the room. Instead of going back the same way, they ran down the back hall into a walk-in pantry with a spiral staircase.

“Is this a joke?” Derek asked. A heavier pair of footsteps joined the first. Muttering voices echoed downward. Jason pushed Derek ahead into a black and white checkerboard kitchen. While he slammed and latched the pantry door, Derek finally zipped up.

“What are you stopping for?” Jason snapped. “Go!”

Mobs descended from above, their footsteps thunder, their susserations insistent, growing into growls as they descended both staircases.

“I don’t believe—“

“Believe!” Jason said, pelting into the dining room. He slammed the door and shoved a chair under the knob to bar it shut.

Derek did the same with the drawing room door, catching a flicker out of the corner of his eye. He turned to find candles lit at the fireplace end of the table. Two places had been set with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Cokes. His favorite sour cream and onion chips. An Almond Joy above the plate.

He glanced over at Jason, who was trying to pull the window open. The crush of footsteps and angry voices surrounded them. Someone pounded on the kitchen door.

“We gotta get out.” Jason shook with panic.

The doors rattled. The muttering became audible. They called for Derek.

“I thought you were an Olmstead?” he hissed, eyes widening in fear.

“I am!” Jason pulled at the handle, but the window wouldn’t budge.

“Then why are they freaking out?”

“I think—cause I brought you in. They said—”

Derek glanced at the candlelit table, then at Jason. The doors creaked and groaned under pressure. The backs of the chairs snapped as they buckled. He remembered Netta’s curse.

“They said only family, right?”

Jason nodded. “I’m gonna break the window.”

“Wait.” Derek pulled Jason’s sleeve and took out his keychains. He detached the Parrot and Pokéball rings, and slipped the rest back into his pocket.

“Take it apart.” He handed over the Parrot then stripped the Pokéball charm from the ring.

“Quick. Gimme your hand.” Jason wiped his sweaty palm on his hoodie.

“Now!” Derek grabbed Jason’s hand and slipped the ring on his finger. It hung loosely, but it stayed. Jason stared at it stupidly, as if it was something new.

The doors bounced and cracked under the pounding. Voices shrieked Derek’s name. Called him an outsider. A trespasser. The drawing room door bowed inward.

“Quick! Now me!”

Jason fumbled the band, nearly dropped it, but slipped it around Derek’s ring finger as the kitchen door splintered down the middle.

“Do you?” Derek asked.

They locked eyes. Jason’s were wet. He nodded.

“I do.”

“Good. So do I.”

The chair blocking the drawing room door exploded, shooting splinters of wood across the room. Jason threw Derek to the floor and fell on top of him as shrapnel blew holes in the walls and shattered a window.

The door hung open, askew.

No one was there.

They stood up, checked for injuries, and pushed the battered kitchen door back to free the splintered dining chair. Nothing awaited on the other side.

“Put it back,” Derek said. “Just to be safe.” He blocked the drawing room door with another chair.

“But we need to get out.”

He shook his head. “This is my first date. Ever. I’d at least like to have dinner before we run for our lives.”

Jason’s laugh verged on hysterical. Derek joined in. From portraits and mirrors across the house, the Olmsteads waited, watching.