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Thank you to everyone who submitted a short story for our contest. Each one sent chills down our judges’ spines! The winning author will receive a $50 gift card to La Parolaccia Osteria. Read on for the winning entry and runners up!
The Winner
A Night of Terrier
They're gone – just like that. I wish they'd return, but I'm alone now.
It's dark, but the Halloween lights from a neighbor's cauldron cast an orange glow down the worn hallway. I hear a creak. Then a cackle. I almost whimper. Then silence. This old house is uncomfortably quiet tonight.
Stomp stomp.
Footsteps approach, growing louder and closer. I wait, on alert, unsure if they're for the neighbor's house.
Stomp stomp.
The footsteps draw nearer. They're coming here; I know it.
I'm worried. It's been hours since they left, maybe days. They'd know what to do. But what if they never return?
Stomp, STOMP.
They're here! I hold my breath as the doorknob rattles. They can't get in! The locked door holds briefly, then opens with a soft click, revealing a momentary flash of blinding light as I screech in defiance. I won't let them in!
But when my vision clears, no one is there.
Something rustles behind me. I turn slowly. It's them! They've returned! I bask in their pets and praise. They call me a good boy.
Later, as I nosh on my milk bone, I think: I am a good boy, aren't I?
Jessica Bradt
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The Pyramid
The first few years were uneventful, inasmuch as we spent countless hours writing grant proposals huddled in a broom closet "office" set up for us by Professor Sharon Serbus. We took turns at the dingy window to see the pyramid across the quad, glittering in the sunlight or glowing at dusk. "Follow the money," they say, but the only folks funding telepathy and ESP "anomalies" were the NSA, and they were tight-lipped about everything.
With our first grant we hired Damien, a graduate researcher from ... Hungary? Romania? He was a natural at sniffing out test volunteers…50 participants a week! We hired-on three good prospects full-time for "training," as Damien calls it. They predicted Aaron Judge breaking the American League slugging record, but I caught them sniffing out Powerball numbers after that, and Ed disappeared within the month after a hit. The others have buried their heads into something else, though, something big and hush-hush, having assembled a collection of pretty old books. They even started learning Latin!
Grant’s about up…time to get writing. Looks like there must be a game on tonight; the pyramid is glowing brightly! It's ... orange? RED?
Dan Hyman
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Duplex Daughters
I had moved into a duplex unit on Vista Street back in 2001. It was a two-story unit and I was the third resident in this unit. I had felt a presence but no physical sighting of a being, ghost, or vision per se. One day I was carrying a basket of clothes downstairs from the second level and after taking a couple steps down, I felt something push my foot outward, resulting in me missing my next step. I fell backwards and landed butt down on one of the steps. No physical damage, but a little sore where I landed. I got up and proceeded to take my laundry to the laundry room past the kitchen.
A few days later I was chatting with the neighbor connected to mine and stated that there was something I wanted to ask her. Her first reply was "Have you seen her?" Like she knew before I could comment on what I experienced. I told her I had not seen anyone but did feel a presence. She then shared with me the history of the duplex. The original owners had lived in her unit and the two daughters had lived in the front where I was renting. One of the daughters had died in the front unit. Well, this raised the hair on the back of my neck. My neighbor also shared that the tenants before me had experienced some weird events too, and felt the presence of something.
Some months later, there was a night that the television turned on by itself with the volume up louder than usual, which woke me up from upstairs.
Was it the ghost of the daughter who lived there or was it something else? We will never know the truth.
Dale Maul
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The Hook Rug
The old house, a flipper’s nightmare, had gone through six owners in succession when we made our offer—more than we could afford but less than other houses were going for. Something drew us in despite exposed wiring, the hole in the floor where the furnace once had been, sagging plaster, or the bit of carpet yarn on the stairs.
The next morning, my partner spotted the second strand of carpet yarn, like you’d make into a hook rug. I put it aside and went on patching plaster.
The third bit of carpet yarn sat on the stairs I’d swept the previous night as I headed for the door where three strangers stared at me. “This,” the older man said, “was my grandmother’s house.”
He showed a photo dating from the twenties. A middle-aged woman sat in our living room… with a half-finished hook rug on her lap. “She swore she’d finish that rug,” he said. “She died first. Right here.”
If my partner goes more than a day or two without working on the rug she’s making from the yarn bits that keep showing up, we hear footsteps in the attic and sometimes the TV turns on by itself. The rug is coming along nicely... I wonder what it will show when it’s finished.
Rob Preece
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