Second Saturday Stories

The unsupported floor above her strained and groaned. In the darkness she tried to get her feet underneath her but they continued to slip on the loose stones. In her frantic state she felt like skeletal hands were yanking her towards the gaping void that just swallowed Clark.

Set in the Atomic Age with ties to the sinking of the Titanic 40 years prior, The Wraith highlights the battle between technology and nature, and the futility of one attempting to conquer the other.

She looked it up years later, when she wasn’t convinced she had dreamed the whole thing. She found a latin textbook in the library and didn’t dare bring it home. She flipped to the glossary and ran her finger down the great weathered pages until she found it: Evil. Cruel Evil. 

One night Esther shouts into the void and this time she gets an answer. But will she find answers that finally put her questions to rest, or has she instead invited something malicious into her safe space?

Love was an unwelcome warmth in her world, a vulgar display of what she could no longer endure. A concept she could no longer fathom.  But the rage,  oh, she could do much with the rage. 

The teens make contact with something using a spirit board, but is it The Butcher? or has something more sinister started playing with them? 

“‘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.