Second Saturday Stories

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. 

When a mysterious stranger crosses paths with Roy his loyalty and his resolve will be tested. Stranded and outgunned Roy's life will depend on how well he can play cards, and how long his luck can hold out. 

She wouldn’t set foot on the Carpathia. Foolish as it was. She gripped the sides of the lifeboat, splinters digging underneath her fingernails. It wasn’t until Molly, small as she was, sick as she was, stood on the gangplank and extended her hand to her, did Lucinda finally relent. She would not remove the life vest. 

It won't be until decades later that a group of intrepid teens learns the chilling truth behind why Lucinda and Molly were aboard the mighty ship that night in April.

Next year comes, and next year goes, and I continue to be the solitary watcher on the shore, marvelling at the shanty town that seems to spring up when the new years clock strikes midnight.