Ghosts, Scares and Things that go Bump in the Night

  Alison was sixteen when the old woman grabbed her wrist in the market square, fingers gnarled like driftwood. “You think your sharp words and cruel tricks don’t echo?” she hissed, spittle flecking Alison’s cheek. “You think you can poison every well around you and drink from sweet water still? Mark this—if you do not mend your heart and live a good life, your firstborn shall pay in flesh and bone. They shall never grow beyond the hour of their greatest hurt. And neither shall you.” Alison wrenched free and laughed. She told the whole village the woman was mad. Then she went home and spread a fresh lie about the baker’s daughter just to prove she could. She never mended anything, just stayed the same, hurting everyone with her lies and evil tricks. By the time Alison was thirty, the village of Farley Bank had learned to step lightly around her. She made neighbours’ lives quiet hells—fences sawn through, crops blighted with blight she herself carried, whispers that turned friends a...

 A Halloween Horror Story The bitter cold air tasted of frost and rot — sharp, sweet, cloying, as crushed ivy left too long in the damp dark. Halloween hung low over the countryside, a bruised purple sky bleeding into the treetops. Lisa, Bev, and Fran were driving out to collect their best friend Mari, who’d been staying with her great-aunt deep in the backwoods. They’d promised her bonfires, caramel apples, glittering costumes, and a night where nothing could go wrong. Lisa drove, her hands clamped so tight around the wheel her knuckles blanched. Bev sat hunched in the passenger seat, scrolling through dead-end map apps, and Fran curled in the back, clutching a plastic bag crammed with their outfits and a jar of battery-powered jack-o’-lantern lights that flickered on and off as if breathing. “Mari said this lane cuts ten miles off,” Lisa said, though her voice wavered. “Said it’s pretty this time of year.” It was not pretty. The paved road thinned, cracked, and di...