Second Saturday Stories

“‘Eyewitnesses report strange lights at night on the grounds, some have even sworn to hear voices calling on the wind, but very few have actually ventured beyond the safety of the bulrushes to witness the inner workings of Marshwood for themselves.’ That is until today.”

Set 40 years after Lucinda Hessen became The Butcher of Oak Patch, the story finds three teens breaking into the institution where Lucinda lived out her final days. The amateur ghost hunters are seeking fame, accolades, but most of all proof of the unexplained by capturing evidence of The Butcher’s ghost. 

Lucinda caught him by the back of his coat and hauled him into the weed choked dirt. She slapped and scratched, gnashed her teeth and pushed the child when he attempted to rise. The twilight peepers offered their unified cheeps as addition to the sound of her raging torrent.

When the ultimate tragedy strikes and Lucinda loses her daughter, she will have to face the snarling and festering rage that has been building inside of her, unleashing it in a blazing streak of violence that will lead to the eventual battle for her soul.

She looked to the sky and contemplated ascension. What God would do this? What curse had she brought upon herself? The words the children pelt at her echo in her mind like a savage incantation.  Witch. Witch.  Pelt the Witch.

Set in both the time of the Titanic and the Atomic Age The Wraith is the perfect summer horror to keep you up on a dark and stormy night.

she silences him with a slap that renders the Scotsman speechless. “Enough.” Lucinda said. She took his momentary shock to snag a woolen top coat from a nearby rack.  “Now it’s a trade, instead of just robbery.” She moved her throbbing foot from the jam and Haggie’s door slammed in his face.

In the morning she made her demand. She wanted to see the man again. The nurses make eye contact, they chuckle and tut at her until she turns her steel gaze on them and they freeze. From her small cot in the corner Molly hides her face from this scorn she’s seen before in her mother.

Through the fog of medication and confusion she battles to keep her daughter close, and punish anyone responsible for the terrors that still haunt her. 

In the middle distance the rider’s dirty grey coat fluttered in the wind, almost out of range. Roy had his six gun ready. He extended his arm and took aim. The rabbit’s foot attached to the handle of his colt dangled and swayed in the wind. Roy’s heart beat at double time as he watched his target get smaller and smaller. He heard it in his ears as he adjusted for wind and began squeezing the trigger.