In my hour of weakness, I forget what it means to be strong It's calling to me, beckoning me with its hypnotic song I feel the breeze brush my skin, it’s been so long Its melody moves me yet my gut tells me that this is wrong Dense fog blankets the city street Cold, wet pavement slaps against my bare feet Its voice grows louder yet remains ever-sweet As I follow blindly along the path of concrete Streetlights extinguish a...

It was difficult to be the type of person Serenity was in this day and age. Her last boyfriend Crenshaw did not understand her attraction to buildings over people. He didn’t understand why she hoarded, collected housing magazines and architecture manuals like others collect other more normal things. It was the geometry and beauty of them. They held a kind of symmetry that humanity didn’t. And so when she found this house,...

We had moved, thousands of miles away. Dad claimed it was a job transfer, but I knew the real reason. I knew it was because of the shadow in the house.  At first, my parents didn’t believe me. Said I was just hearing things; all in my head. Then, out of the blue, Dad announced a job offer, ironically very far away.  I felt safer the first night after the move. There was something oddly comforting about the new home’s unfa...

There once were three ordinary friends from an ordinary neighborhood in the ordinary town of Edinburgh, Scotland. One day, as they gathered for coffee, they decided they needed to get away from the city and so a camping trip was planned. Being tired of the ordinary, they decided that this particular camping trip should be at a less than ordinary site.  It was agreed and all three of the friends went to work making a list...

I never jerk awake. I open my eyes and listen before I move. Without going into the reasons why I forced myself as a young boy, to not be afraid of noises in the dark. My door was always closed and I never slept with a nightlight. I relish the dark. As I lay there, my head still on the pillow, my mind was trying to replay why I woke up. The room was dark. The only light in the room came from a small digital alarm clock wi...

Everybody's gone out againEveryone has left me hereAlone am I to trudge on throughThoughts and lonely fearThey know not what they play withA composite soul of dreadIf only someone welcomed meAs if they were one of the deadOh, but what's this?Yet another being is hereCome closer, dear friendCome closer, have no fearWhy you appear to be fineWould you like a peek inside my mind?A long forgotten wastelandBarren and to malice ...

The walk seemed different today. I lived near these woods almost all my life. I played in the woods. I built many little hovels using branches and undergrowth as cover. Instead of going through neighbor's yards to get to the woods, I walked down the street to the private road that bisected the woods. A local university owned the woods and the road. The university received the woods in an endowment as a place to study and...

Chapter Nine They all began to talk at once as soon as it sunk in that it appeared that Hugo was correct in his assumption of where my remains were lying. Sophie went to one of the bell pulls and rang for a servant and asked him to fetch six men and some heavy hammers and meet Mr Hugo out by the kitchen. She took charge and instructed Elaine, Mary, Anne and the children to remain downstairs, except Richard, who as Earl, h...

Chapter Eight With the loss of Alice and Arthur, the spirit had gone out of the other children in respect of their ghost hunting activities during that winter. So they looked forward to the summer to resume their hunting for my grave in the gardens, but this was curtailed by another death, that of Thomas. He’d been out to see to the fields, and when he hadn’t returned for dinner, Sophie got worried and sent out some serva...

Chapter Seven This letter made a staggering impact on the family when it was produced that night at the dinner table by Sophie. ‘Odds bodkins!’ Thomas exclaimed. ‘This would definitely have killed father if he’d seen this. So Richard was my grandfather and not Edward,’ he mused. ‘Percy!’ This was what Percival was called by the older members of the family, but was Mr Percival to the younger ones. ‘Send one of the servants...

Chapter Six Call it a quirk of fate if you wish, though I am more of a quirk than the fact that both Grace, wife of Henry, and Sophie went into labour at the same time to produce their offspring in unison. In some way I was pleased that the doctor was seeing to Grace and it was an experienced midwife who attended Sophie at the moment of the births. Grace produced a daughter that they named Alice, while Sophie bore a son,...

Chapter Five When I wasn’t watching the children play and grow, I spent time looking over the shoulder of William while he was at his desk in the study. This was a definite no go zone for female members of the family as this was where all the business of the estate was handled, and not for female ears. It was fast becoming a financial nightmare for William. The income coming from the harvests and sales of livestock was no...

Chapter Four Sophie, if you remember, was the baby that smiled at me at her birth, the daughter of my sister Joan. She was six years old now, and had been brought over to the hall with her parents for the ball being held in the main hall. I had already wandered around among the guests and now I had returned upstairs and had sat down on one of the sofas that were placed in the corridors that led to the bedrooms. I thought...

Time. That man made name for the passing of the seasons and the years. To me, it had no meaning. It was limitless as far as I could see. I was nearly twenty years of age by this reckoning, and likely to remain so for eternity. But I still wanted to fight time. I wanted my brother to leave that world at the quickest moment possible, and to this end, I was devoting most of my time in his haunting. I felt a certain pride in...

Chapter Two In that instant I was outside of my body to see the pistol ball come erupting out of my chest in a gout of blood and gore and watched myself pitch forward to fall on the carpet. Caroline screamed and then fainted as I turned to see Edward standing near the moving drapes, the pistol still smoking from the fatal shot that had killed me. We both heard the sounds of running feet coming towards the chamber and Edwa...