Author: Paul O

After posting Marigold Rowell’s excellent tale, The Transom, we asked the writer a whole bunch of questions. You can read or listen to the tale here.

Q1. Where the hell did the idea for the entity come from in this story, and how can I banish it forever?  

The Transom was actually inspired by an episode of The Dick Van Dyke show, in which several characters plan to sneak into a locked office through a transom window over their boss’s door.  I thought how creepy it would be to glance up and see someone peering down at you through a high transom. That person would either have to be standing on a ladder, or be ridiculously tall.

To banish this entity forever, make sure you keep the curtains closed at night. And always take the elevator.

Q2. Do you tend to plot your stories out, or do you let them flow and just see what happens?

A mix. I write the beginning pages, and at that point I know if the story feels like a story. It’s very much a gut instinct thing. Sometimes, I will realize it’s a cool concept with no plot. Or, I’ve got the wrong angle of approaching the idea. Or I need to wait for additional inspiration to drop out of my subconscious.  If the beginning passes the sniff test, I’ll make a rough outline of the rest. Usually, I’ll stick to that, unless I get a really good idea.

Q3. I’m awed by the level of your descriptions in this story. Is that something you purposefully focus on? Any tips to share on how to nail vivid descriptions? 

I’m a visual person (I also draw and paint), and my writing process is basically transcribing the movie that I’m watching in my head. I do focus on descriptions deliberately. I’m a fan of onomatopoeia and subtle rhymes. I also love words that sound spooky. Lugubrious. Spine. Cloying. Abyss. Glower. Visceral.  Fun stuff like that.

My best advice would be to choose your descriptive words carefully, read your story out loud, and don’t be afraid to add a little purple prose here and there.

Q4. How much of your time do you spend writing short stories versus other projects?

That’s a tough one to answer, since I usually have multiple projects going at once. I’ll work on something until I get stuck, then I’ll switch. A few years back, I wrote a novel, which I’m now shopping around to literary agents. (Wish me luck!) But, I’ve been in short story mode for a while. The longest thing I’ve written recently is a novelette of 15k words or so, which I finished last year.

I do go through periods where I don’t want to write at all. That’s when a lot of my artwork happens.

Q5. What other works do you have on the go? Anything you’d like to promote?

I’m in the upcoming anthology Suffering the Other from Dim Shores Press (slated for March/April of 2026). All the profits from this anthology will benefit two charities: Transgender Law Center and the National Immigration Project. I’m very proud to be included in the project, and I encourage everyone to check it out.

I’m planning to release a few ebooks on my Ko-Fi page, as soon as I finish editing them. (Soon!) One is a novella titled Quahogs, about giant mutant clams attacking a sleepy Massachusetts beach town.
You can find me at https://marigoldrowell.carrd.co, which has my latest news, plus links to my social media.

Upon reading Jessica’s tale, I had to pepper her with questions to get their thoughts on writing and where the idea came from. You can check out The Immortal Question here.

Q1. How did you come up with the idea for this story? Please don’t tell me from personal experience…

I was thinking about the differences between being immortal and being invulnerable, I believe. Depending on who you ask, “immortal” is sometimes defined as someone who won’t die of natural causes, but can still be killed, while other times it means fully invulnerable. It really gets down to what one defines as “mortal,” I suppose. In any case, I wondered about the limits of immortality, and how it might affect the people around the immortal being. Then, naturally, I wondered how it might all go wrong.

Q2. I love how human this story is. No family is perfect, and these small (or large) jealousies happen in every family. Did you know from the outset that this story would be about that?

Not really! That was something that just came out as I wrote, as I questioned who the narrator is and why they would be so willing to look after their brother—and then be so willing to figure his condition out. I suppose jealousy and magical powers go hand-in-hand in my head; I was always so jealous of the characters in the fantasy and sci-fi books I read as a kid. The leap from “a character is immortal but comatose” to “and the person taking care of him is jealous” probably came from there. The fact that the narrator isn’t jealous of Benny’s immortality is kind of unintentionally ironic, isn’t it?

Q3. I love the sound and repetition of ‘And yet…’. What made you write in this way?

These kind of repetitions (Chuck Palahniuk uses them constantly and calls them “choruses”) always strike me as so gimmicky even though I adore them, and it felt like the perfect way to encapsulate how things should be going versus how they actually are. I planned to go back through and replace them with less repetitious wording later, but my beta readers all said it added so much. A good lesson in why you should sometimes ignore that inner critic who hates everything that’s ever been done before.

Q4. How much of your time do you spend writing short stories versus other projects?

Short fiction is a relatively new area for me, and I’ve been dabbling in it for the past few years. Although I love writing novel-length stories that nobody else will ever read, and I love that slow build of characterization and world, shorts are where I feel I can truly contain the entire story in my head at one time. This makes it a lot more straightforward (if not easier) to revise, edit, and rewrite, and a heck of a lot quicker to submit for others to read. Still, probably 25% of my writing time is spent on short stories, and the rest is put into that novel vault that you’ll probably never hear from again.

Q5. What other works do you have on the go? Anything you’d like to promote?

Nothing at the moment! This was my first accepted submission anywhere, something I’ll probably be eternally grateful for, and I’m just pleased as punch to be included. Hopefully it isn’t the last you’ll hear from me.

The car had sped down Hell’s Canyon Road, alongside one of the steepest, deepest cliffs in the United States. There were no signs of braking. No alcohol or drugs in Benny’s system. My brother had suddenly, spontaneously gone over the edge, straight down. Judging by the distance, he must have been going ninety-five. The Prius had been mashed into a pulp, and my brother along with it.

He should have been dead. And yet…

And yet.

“Nearly miraculous” is what the doctor said. She was tall, clipped, no-nonsense, which made her wide-eyed surprise at his recovery all the more intense. “He should not be alive. Nothing that came out of there should be.”

Benny had lost an arm outright, one leg so mangled that they removed it on-site, and what remained was only half of my brother—less, even. In the months since the crash he had lost even more muscle mass, wasting away while the rest of his body healed. Now his tan had faded, hair was turning prematurely gray. To me, he was unrecognizable.

The fact that he survived was one in a million, a billion, the doctor repeated. So we couldn’t, shouldn’t expect more. There are some things the brain just cannot recover from, and at this point he was not going to.

Benny, the perfect firstborn, the man I was supposed to aspire to be. Now he wasn’t a golden child, though. He was a braindead one.

The doctor said nothing, the insurance investigators said nothing, but I knew this was his way of making revenge. That he had done this to himself. A suicide attempt or something. It’s always the ones who you think have it all, isn’t it? Just like Benny. And just like Benny, he hadn’t thought of what I would have to do once he was gone.

Don’t take this the wrong way. I loved my brother. I did. He had been my best friend growing up, and, after our parents were both gone, my only family. Despite our differences (there were many) and our disagreements (there were more) he was, at the end, my brother, and I was his. When I first saw what had become of him after the wreck, I bawled my eyes out.

The thing is that after five, six, nine months of overseeing all of your brother’s operations, of watching as nurses turned him over and sponged the shit that dribbled out of his ass, well, you start to only remember the things that you hated about him. The way that he never lorded his success over you, even though you deserved it. The way that he knew not to give you more than a little bit of money at a time. The way you’d see the sadness in his eyes, sometimes, when he looked at you.

Now when I looked at him, pulling one eyelid open, I’d see nothing. A glassy, dead stare. Like a hole in the side of an abandoned house, revealing cobwebs and dust and a curious absence of people.

…and yet.

And yet it was so, so hard to tell the doctor what she was waiting for, what she was fearing I would say. Like everyone else in the world, she had gravitated to Benny, decided that he was one of her flock to look over, that his successes were her successes. He had always got that treatment, always because people wanted to support him without him asking. Even completely braindead, without that charming smile, that spark hidden behind his pupils, people tripped over themselves to help him.

Nothing could help him, now, of course. Which is why I eventually told the doc what she was waiting for: that I was ready for her to let it, at last, end. To cut the power. Pull the plug. Stop the machines that were doing their damndest to keep my perfect brother alive.

Nodding, swallowing her sudden, unprofessional tears, she made a motion to the nurse. There was a small flurry of activity as the wires and tubes tethering my brother to this side were disconnected. Then one last switch was flipped.

Life exited the room as the droning machines lost their power, as their capacitors ran down. The only electronics left on were the sensors, to tell us the exact moment that Benny’s soul ran out, too, if it was even still in there. All of our eyes were on the little readout as it showed his heart faintly, faintly beating.

One.

Two.

…three, four, five…

He should have been dead. He should have died. It should be over. That well of relief that I had been waiting to wash over me, the dam of “finally, this part of my life can end,” should have broken.

And yet, miracles of miracles, Benny would not die.

***

I moved into one of Benny’s houses, a nice modernist place around Payette Lake. Everything in it had rounded corners and clean, white surfaces, exactly how Benny liked it. Managing his finances was a full-time job, which is why I used some of that deep reservoir of money to pay someone else to do it. Benny wouldn’t have let that happen, but Benny always wanted to do things himself. I think at one point he had three full-time jobs. The only job I had ever held for any long period was as a part-time drug dealer, which satisfied me the same way playing with Benny’s chemistry set had, back when I was a kid.

Now my only job was taking care of Benny.

He got his own special room, the one with a gigantic round window, outfitted with all of the necessary medical doodads that basically kept him from stinking up the place. Nothing that would actually help to keep him alive, apart from the ones that transferred nutrients into his blood, to take the place of eating. I didn’t want him starving to death, after all. That would be cruel.

Wasn’t this half of a life cruel enough? They said he didn’t think, didn’t even dream, as he lay there. He wasn’t sleeping, because this was the most awake he’d ever be again. Dead, but not dead. Alive, but far from alive.

Some nights I’d sit in there with him with a bottle of vodka and a jar of olives, mixing martinis in my stomach. We’d talk. He was a shitty conversation partner, but then it was nice to finally have the upper hand in something. I’d tell him how he had been so good at school that I felt no reason to even bother trying. How things had come so much easier to him than to me, and how he had been praised for his good luck. How I had never had so much as a pat on the back for getting a promotion. I guess moving up the food chain from drive-through worker to burger flipper isn’t that impressive to a dude who could make a few thousand bucks via one smart phone call.

He didn’t have any smart things to say now, the fucker. Nothing that made me nod and feel bad about myself until he left the room.

Out of boredom and some unplaceable urge I dug through his things, pretending I was a treasure hunter on a TV show. There were a few nice finds: stacks of the same sort of paintings that hung on the clean white walls of his house; odd, tacky jewelry that was probably worth thousands to a collector; some antique books written in a language I hadn’t known existed. Was he into mysticism, I wondered? Voodoo? Now I would never know. There was a box of letters, too. Some were hand-written ones from Mom and Dad, because apparently daily calls weren’t enough. I was mildly surprised that he had printed out texts and nudes from old lovers—it seemed so rude, maybe even illegal. I had no idea Benny could think the word “illegal”. There was even a note addressed to me, scribbled on his letterhead. “It’s my fault” is all it said.

It sure was.

I would beg, plead with him, tears rolling down my face, vodka scorching my throat, to die. To leave me free of him, finally. From the day I was born he had hung over my head, telling me without a word that I wasn’t good enough, and now, after what nobody but me would admit was a suicide attempt, he was still doing it, even though he did nothing but shallowly, slowly breathe. By all rights I should have been done with him. We both finally agreed that the world would be better without him.

And… yet…

I don’t know when I changed my mind. When it became clear to me that I had one path forward. I woke up one morning, the sun dappling off of the still surface of Payette into the kitchen, and knew that it was finally time to be rid of Benny. This part of my life, nearly three decades, was going to end, today.

I had watched it in enough movies to feel like I was just going through the motions of a play, seeing out a conclusion that was already going to happen. The pillow clenched between my hands, I looked down at Benny’s face. His eyes weren’t fully closed, a slight gap between the lids revealing the greys of shadows. I didn’t mind; I didn’t feel watched. I didn’t even feel acknowledged.

I pressed the pillow down across his face, smothering his nose and mouth.

I counted, slowly, and had a flashback to the day we had pulled the plug. A laugh bubbled up my throat as I realized this wasn’t even the first time I had tried to kill my brother. Now his chest was stopping its steady, slight rise and fall. The whisper of breath that came out of his nostrils ceased, blockaded by silk pillowcase and downy stuffing.

I counted, and counted. When I reached sixty I kept going. I got to one hundred and couldn’t stop. After all, he had survived an impossible crash. I needed to be sure.

At two hundred Mississippi I at last lifted the weight from my brother’s face, and leaned back. It was done.

He was dead.

I held one wrist and pressed my fingers against the veins there, half remembering my short stint in the Scouts before also remembering Benny’s Eagle ceremony. No, those memories would be leaving, now. They’d be gone soon enough, along with Benny.

…and yet, a slight thump against my fingers.

 “No,” I croaked, my mouth drier than it had ever been. I fumbled for his neck, pushing two fingers into the major artery there, but already saw that his chest was rising again, that air was being forced, gently, ever-so-gently, out from his lungs.

His pulse was weak but persistent, until both of my hands clamped down around his throat and squeezed as hard as they could.

I saw the monitors at his bedside fall silent. I saw the steady line of his heart rate stop. I watched it for one long moment, then another, and another. It felt like hours, but the clock said that I kept his throat closed for five minutes. When I at last relaxed my grip my fingers refused to open, they were so cramped.

A moment of silence, of stillness. That dam began to let the waters out and my heart felt like a weight was lifted.

Then the monitor beeped.

His chest began to rise as his lungs filled.

And I screamed.

***

Life became a purgatory. Time passed for me about as quickly as it did for Benny—that is, it slowed to an impossible crawl. Days blurred into a single never-ending haze. I’d fall asleep whenever or wherever I felt like. I’d eat rarely, but eventually nothing was left. I started to drink most of my meals. Trash and empty bottles piled up, turning the whited sepulcher into an animal’s den, but I didn’t care. I didn’t even bother opening the shades or turning on lights.

I drank and I watched Benny.

I suppose, at that time, I could have left him, couldn’t I? I knew there was no point in monitoring his pulse, in keeping up with his vitals. I knew then what I know now, even though I hadn’t quite confirmed it as officially.

He could. Not. Die.

So why not abandon him? Why not dig a hole and bury him, or throw him in the lake? Why not just leave the house, board it up, refuse to sell it? Leave him there until his gross, wispy beard was down to his toes. I could go back to the city, reconnect with my old friends, get back into cooking like I had always wanted to. After these months of hospice care, and rent, and everything else, the money was already running out. But I was allowed to spend more, more of his money, because now it was my money.

There was also the fear of getting caught, of someone I gave a shit about finding me in my squalor, surrounded by trash and my older brother’s decrepit, living corpse. They would see me and know me, at last, for what I was: a parasite who couldn’t do anything right, not even let his brother die.

And, in the end, he was still my brother. He always would be.

I fired the nurse that came by every other day. I stopped the nutrient drip and the saline. It saved several thousand bucks, and besides, why bother? I was tired of changing the bags, anyway. With no liquid entering his body, he stopped pissing himself, too, which was great. I didn’t bother cleaning him but after a time the smell went away. It’s not like you could tell that smell from the rest of the house. And though he starved and thirsted more than I think I could possibly imagine, though he became a pile of twigs under a sheet, he lived on.

“Miraculous,” the doc had said. She hadn’t known how right she was. This was beyond a medical mystery, or pure luck. There was something else going on here, something beyond what I could understand, but I tried. God did I try.

And yet, eventually, I got bored. And tired. And lonely. And so one day I snatched up a butcher knife from the kitchen and plunged it into his chest.

The point slipped right between his ribs, punching through like the skin was paper, like his lungs and heart were nothing more than crumbly hamburger. Blood spurted and spread and I did it again, then again. I left five gaping holes in his sweat-stained, urine-dyed, filthy hospital gown, then dropped the knife and curled up on the floor, sobbing.

I fell asleep in that position. When I awoke I was stiff as a week-old carcass and forgot, for a moment, where I was. What had happened.

But Benny was fine, or at least what counted for him. The wounds were scabbed over, looking almost like someone had stitched them up. I knew from the blood on the knife, still wet to the handle, that I had stabbed through his entire chest cavity. And. Yet.

It was at this point that I truly began to experiment.

***

For the first time in years I had a purpose, something gifted to me from my brother, something that he couldn’t take away or put on an allowance. I felt that old curiosity well up inside me, a drive that I hadn’t felt since I was a kid.

I started with some simple cuts. Those took as long to heal as you’d imagine: a week for a small one, a bit longer if I went a little deeper, but if I made the cut too deep, the rate of healing would increase.

The more life-threatening a wound was, the faster it would scab.

Things escalated quickly from there.

Head wounds healed the fastest, but only the ones around his brain. When I removed an eye, nothing came of it, although the skin healed over so quickly that I swore I could see cells form.

Afterwards I crushed his skull with a hammer. The mess was… indescribable. At the time I didn’t think anything more of it than if I was fileting a fish, or making a meatloaf. He was hardly a person at that moment—just a weird, insane biology lesson, draped on top of a bloodstained and rotting bed.

Of course, the instant passed, and after my thoughts caught up and realized he was a person I vomited more and longer than I ever had before. Then his head began to inflate, skull fragments reassembling under the skin, the shape of him—the shape that said “Benny” to me—realigning. I’ve never been able to remove that image from my memory.

The game continued. Was there anything he couldn’t come back from?

Not from amputations, that’s for sure. I removed the rest of his limbs myself with a hacksaw, and though they healed over nicely, they didn’t grow back.

Naturally the next thing I removed was his heart.

After all, that was what clued me in that he was still living, wasn’t it? His heart pushing a thin stream of blood to his other organs. That must have been what kept him coming back. His head was already so much sparkless gray matter—they don’t call it “braindead” for nothing. But the heart, that was what was keeping him alive.

I looked up how open-heart surgery was performed and ordered a bunch of equipment from some online black sites. Spreaders for holding the rib cage open, bone saws for cleanly cutting away the defensive tissues and cartilage. The accountant had long since quit after I messed up paying her, but I had already taken out a couple of loans, so it was no big deal to get another. Benny’s credit was good.

When I removed the sternum plate I saw knicks in his bone from my butcher knife, the only evidence remaining that I had stabbed him straight through, multiple times. With a few slices the heart was out, sitting in my hand. I wondered if it was all over. As I watched, blood drained out of his ventricles and pooled in his chest.

Then the veins and arteries, still dangling and tangled where his heart used to be, moved.

My mouth hung open as slowly, ever so slowly, new, tiny blood vessels slithered out where I had cut away the old ones, then blossomed, snaking into the open air and filling, beat-by-beat, the shape of a human heart.

When I screamed I don’t know if it was from fear, or rage, or revulsion. I don’t know if it was from the pure madness that gripped me in that moment. I had seen the impossible so many times already, but this was new. This was a step too far.

In just a few minutes there were now two copies of Benny’s heart in the world: one that had fallen to the floor, the other beating, ever beating, in his open torso.

When I saw that the bones were pushing together, ribs re-forming to protect their holy ward, I stepped outside for some air. I didn’t come back for several days.

***

Months passed. When the bank came to collect, it shook me from my drunken, fetid stupor. The money, the cars, the other properties were all gone, but I still had the Payette house, and I still had Benny.

The solution was simple, honestly.

A new will entered my lungs as I cleaned up the floors stained with human tissue and blood and other organic debris. Benny was still on his bed, his heart once more beating, his lungs filling with air and emptying, pushing fresh oxygen to the remaining extents of his body. Like him, I was a new man. And after a solid week of emptying trash and scrubbing walls, the freshly bleached and white house was like new, too.

Cleanly-shaven, in fresh clothes for the first time in months, I washed Benny. With care, I tended to the marks the previous year had left on him. The scars both old and new. The wounds both cleanly healed and ragged. His tattered head I went over with a razor, not even thinking about the fact that, somehow, his skull was perfectly round once more.

I took out a quick loan, one last loan. I ordered ice, and fridges, and shelving. Lots of shelving.

Most of my adult life had been spent buying and reselling odds and ends. In the final equation, selling organs wasn’t that different from selling drugs. You use channels that the everyday person would never think of to find those in need, and you make a connection happen. My customers don’t ask where their miracle lungs or kidneys or livers come from, and I don’t bother trying to explain. They think that they’re exchanging someone’s life for theirs, or their loved one’s. I don’t tell them that it is literally impossible for my brother to die, and they are exchanging nothing but money.

How many people are walking about right now, due to my brother’s condition? How many lives have I saved with his perfect hearts, his tumorless bladders? I don’t know. I don’t keep records. I take the money and I wash it through some of Benny’s side ventures. It satisfied all of the banks, and it keeps the lights on and my liquor cabinet full.

I don’t know if the cops are trying to find where this black organ market originated from. After all, if nobody’s reporting an organ missing, why would you even care?

I can’t escape from my older brother, and he’ll never escape from me. When I look down at him, at his frail, wasted, tiny corpse of a living body, I can think of nothing but revulsion, and jealousy, and pure, white-hot hate.

And yet…

Editor’s note

This story is what happens when a great idea meets a centre theme that works. If you have siblings, this one will hit a note. It did for me, at least. Jealousy and family dynamics meets a horrific situation, and it’s all very well written.

Read the interview with Jessica here.

We took the chance to ask L.M. Conkling questions about writing and What She Brought Home. 

Q1. How did you come up with the idea for this story?

I heard Hank’s voice in my head, and he was insistent that he had a story he wanted to tell. I couldn’t deny him!

The dream of having children, and the inability to attain that dream, haunts a lot of people, myself included. That thwarted desire drove the actions of the characters in my story. I wanted to contrast the strength of the love Hank and Ramona had for each other with the love they’d hoped to give to a child. It’s why Hank makes such a extreme sacrifice, and why Ramona tries to save him from his own actions.

Q2. My favourite thing about this tale is that it centres on family and the want of one. Did you spend a lot of time thinking about that theme or did it come out naturally?

I didn’t spend too much time thinking about the theme, but more about the emotion of the situation. The theme developed naturally from there.

There are reams of stories in folklore about barren couples who yearn for a child, and the devious beings who step in to fill that desire. This story is partially inspired by the old stories of fae foundlings, and that temporary joy childless couples must feel when they imagine, for a moment, that their wish has been granted after all.

It was very important to me to show that, even without children, Hank and Ramona were a family already. In its best iteration, family is where we can be safely vulnerable. I wanted to show Hank’s unwavering support of how his wife processes her grief, even though it resulted in a farmyard of rescued animals and a house full of unused children’s clothes. To be able to show this love in action was important to understanding the characters of the story. Just as Ramona’s ability to see a situation clearer than her husband, then move to protect him, is also love in action. She is the one who first feels uneasy, even as her husband is falling in love with the child. Ramona recognizes danger. I imagine that after the story ends, and she realizes what has happened, her clear-eyed and insistent love will be what saves them.

Q3. Pets are such an underused element when it comes to raising tension. I love how subtle it is when you have Dominic and the dogs staring like there’s something wrong. As readers, we feel this strongly. Where did this idea come from? 

This is directly from real-life experience. I grew up on a small farm in California where we often had spooky experiences, and I learned to watch the animals. We had indoor cats and I’d notice that they would often be watching the empty air intently right before something unusual happened. Nowadays I live in town, in an older house, and we have dogs who often will bark at nothing (especially in our hallway) and watch things that aren’t there. I’ve learned to notice when they seem interested, and when their hackles start to rise. If it’s the latter, I intervene.

I also desperately want a donkey, so adding Dominic into the mix was pure enjoyment on my part.

Q4. How much of your time do you spend writing short stories versus other projects?

This past year I’ve primarily focused on short fiction, working to polish my ability to contain a full story in a brief medium. Learning to make a character and their experiences memorable in this way has given me the skills to make them sparkle in a longer format. Also the delicious feeling of completing a first draft in one sitting can’t be beat.

Q5. What other works do you have on the go? Anything you’d like to promote?

I’m currently working on expanding a short story titled “Strange Habits of Secretive Sheep” into a novel. It has been so much fun to dig in and get to know the characters of a story I initially wrote over a decade ago. They are even more twisted than I originally thought.

I’m very excited that my short horror “Without My Spoon” was selected to be in an anthology titled “Fun in the Dark #1,” which will be published by Kilter and Rammel this April.

My wife brought something home.

 This was far from the first time, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. She’s brought home dogs, kittens, rabbits. An iguana. Once it was a rat she thought was a guinea pig because it was missing its tail. I was able to find homes for most of them, though we did end up keeping two of the dogs and three of the cats. And a miniature donkey, but that was my choice. I love that damn thing. I named him Dominic, and he likes to be held like a baby.

But this time she didn’t bring home an animal. She brought home a child.

“He was all curled up in a little ball,” she told me, her cheeks flushed while she rocked the child she’d wrapped in a quilt. “On the side of the road. He was freezing.”

“We need to call the cops. Social services? Child protective services?” I wasn’t sure who to call. I also wasn’t entirely sure that she’d really found this little boy like she said she had. She’s always wanted a child. But one of us wasn’t capable of producing one. We’d never had the tests to see who it was, because what did it matter? We don’t have the money for any fertility treatments, just like we can’t afford to adopt. Which is why I couldn’t blame my wife when she scooped up every animal she ran across that might need a little mothering.

This was different. This was a human child.

My wife is a good woman. A kind woman. But my heart sinks at the idea that she may have convinced herself she’d rescued this child, when she really just took him.

“I’ll call, I will. Let’s just get him warm and fed, and make sure he feels safe.” She continued to rock the bundle, more at ease cradling his little head against her shoulder than I’d ever seen her. Natural, like she’d finally found her footing on a rocking boat.

“Do you want to see him?”

I’d purposefully held off from looking at the child’s face. My wife wanted to be a mother, it was true. I also had always wanted to be a father. I was scared I’d get attached.

Have you ever had a little kid look at you? Like really look at you, in the eyes, and you could see they were an endless font of trust and innocence that you’d lay down your life for? I’ve had glimpses of it. From my nieces and nephews. Hell, even from little kids at the grocery store. They stared and stared at me, sometimes smiling, sometimes perplexed. And each time my hands itched to hold one, to have my own.

“Hank, come here. Hold him for a minute.”

“Aw Ramona, my hands are dirty. I just came in from outside.” I stepped back, directing my gaze out the window while my wife advanced toward me. Dominic was watching the house, his big furry brown ears pricked forward, on alert. Maybe he could hear us talking. Maybe he wanted a treat.

One of our cats was sitting on the fence beside Dominic, above the old historical site designation plaque, his narrowed feline eyes shooting daggers at me. Arranged in front of them were both of the dogs, gargantuan scarred mutts with blockheads and sleek fur. The normally goofy pair were perfectly still, their small round eyes focused on the house, looking right through the window to where I stood. They probably could smell the kid. It’s not like they’d know they were smelling a kid, just that it was something new, and they were curious. Maybe we’d go out in the morning, let the kid pet Dominic.

Maybe not the dogs. You never knew what’d trigger an old bait dog. And I didn’t like the way they were making eye contact with me right through the pane of glass. It felt like they were on edge.

My wife continued to move toward me, ignoring my protests.

“It’s not like the little guy is super clean. Just keep your hands on the quilt. I’m going to see what we have for him to eat.”

Before I knew it, she’d deposited the bundle in my arms. He was warm, but unmoving. Too still for a little kid. He wasn’t a dead weight though; I could feel the tension in his muscles.

Against my better judgement, I pulled the quilt back from his face. And stared.

His hair was deep brown with auburn highlights, like mine. “Like redwood bark,” my wife would say. This little boy had the sweetest round cheeks, long eyelashes, olive skin. Eyes so dark I couldn’t tell the pupil from the iris.

Tears had cleared the dirt in long ribbons down his face, and he pulled one small hand from the swaddling quilt and wiped his nose, inhaled with a wheeze. Was he sick? Or just snotty from crying?

“Hey little man.” I realized I was swaying softly, bouncing him in my arms. “You’ve had a rough time of it. Did you wander off from your house? Huh?”

I’m not great at guessing kids’ ages, but I’d say he was around four or five, judging by his full set of baby teeth. Old enough to be talking, right? I couldn’t feel a diaper through the quilt so either he’d taken his off or he was potty trained. I was hoping for the latter.

“Here, Hank, see if he’ll eat this.” My wife handed me a plastic cup with dry cereal. “I will make something else, too, but I thought we should get something in his stomach. I’m making hot cocoa, too.”

She was trying to hide her smile but my wife has never been good at concealing her emotions. Joy was beaming from her like a halo. My suspicions resurfaced, even though I couldn’t quite believe she’d take a little kid from his family. Not intentionally, at least.

I decided to believe her. She found this kid on the side of the road. Maybe he’d been abandoned, maybe he’d wandered away from home while no one was looking. Either way, he was a kid and he needed help. We could do that.

I took the plastic cup from my wife’s hand, supporting the kid with my other arm. “You hungry, little man?”

He stared at the cup, then at me. Those black eyes were so dark.

“It’s ok. It’s for you. And Ramona,” I pointed toward my wife with my chin, “is making you some more food. Hot chocolate too! Do you like hot chocolate?”

One tiny hand snaked back out of the quilt. He moved so slowly, watching my face as he reached for the plastic cup. In a flash his hand darted into the cup, grabbing a handful of cereal and stuffing it in his face.

We’d had dogs who acted like this. Who’d grab offered food as quickly as possible, often running afterward so that it couldn’t be taken from them. The vet called it ‘food insecurity’. It was a reaction to past abuse and starvation.

“Whoa, kiddo! Slow down. This is all for you, you don’t have to be scared. No one is going to take it away from you.”

I sat on our battered recliner (the one that won’t recline anymore) and perched the kid on my lap. Both of his arms were out of the quilt now. They were stick-thin, covered in dirt and scratches. Under it all I thought I saw scattered bruises, round and long, the kind fingers would make if someone had grabbed him. A haze of red threatened my peripheral vision. I couldn’t stand when people punched down, targeting the most vulnerable. For a moment I was glad my wife had taken this kid.

But no. She had found him on the side of the road. Maybe he was running from abuse. The least we could do for the little guy was make sure he was safe for one night before he got tossed into the system.

“Ramona?”

My wife popped her head around from the kitchen. “Is he eating?”

“Yeah, poor little guy was hungry. Do you want me to give him a bath while you’re cooking?”

“Aw Hank, that’d be great. I think we may have something he can wear in the hall closet.”

My wife used to collect little kid clothes. At first it was tiny onesies, all pastel colors and cute animals. “Just so we’re ready,” she’d tell me. “So we don’t have to buy a bunch when the baby comes.”

Then, when there was no baby, she started picking up slightly larger pieces. Like she was dressing our imaginary child, one that was growing each day. She couldn’t acknowledge that our dream of parenthood was gone.

“They are just so cute,” she’d sigh, folding them carefully before tucking them on a high shelf. “I’ll find someone to give them to. They were a great deal.”

She’d always say that. Act like they were on clearance, or she’d found them at a thrift store. I’m sure sometimes that was true, but other times I noticed we ate a lot of beans for a week or two after she came home with a ‘great deal’.

The last few years she had lost the urge, and there hadn’t been anything added to the collection. But all the older pieces were still there, washed and folded, carefully stored in labeled bins: “0-6 months,” “7-12 months,” 1-2 yrs,” etc., all the way up to clothes that could fit a small teenager.

The kid had finished his cup of cereal and turned his big black eyes to me.

“I bet you’re still hungry, little man. We’ll take care of that. For now, how ‘bout we clean you up? You’ll feel a lot better.”

When I stood he dropped the cup and clutched his arms around my neck, burying his head in my shoulder. It may be a little soft to admit it, but in that moment a rush of warmth washed through me from my head to my toes. No one was going to hurt this kid again. I’d kill anyone who tried.

“I know, I know.” I patted his back, swallowing the lump in my throat. “You’ve had a big day. But you’re safe now.”

He clutched me tighter, sniffling. I could feel his breath on my neck, how he shook inside the quilt. He was so tiny. Defenseless.

I thought it was his fingernails at first, digging into my neck. But then he bit down harder, nipping my skin.

“Whoa there!” I pulled him away from me, laughing to hide my surprise. “I get that you’re hungry, but I’m not for dinner! Ramona is making you something good, I promise.”

He stared up at me, one of his pearly tiny baby teeth worrying his lip. His black eyes welled with tears.

“Hey, don’t cry.” I patted him on his back, rocking him again. Since I’m not a fool I kept him away from my neck, perching him on my hip. “I’m not mad. I’m just surprised. But we don’t bite each other here. That’s not nice.”

“He bit you?” My wife appeared from the kitchen, her eyebrows knit together in concern. “Did he break the skin?”

“Nah, it was just a little nip.”

Turning her attention to the kid, my wife smiled. “Like Hank said, we don’t bite each other here. Do you have words? Can you use your words to tell us what you need? Or your name?”

The kid stared at her blankly.

“It’s ok, little man.” I bounced him one more time. “We’ll still feed you.”

My wife’s smile was a little thinner than it had been. Behind her, I could hear the sputtering of fat in her old iron skillet. “I’m reheating those pork chops from last night. I’ve got ketchup to go on them. All kids like ketchup, right?”

“You hear that?” I exaggerated my features, widening my eyes and smile. “Pork chops and ketchup! Yum.”

The kid looked at me, sniffed the air. His face paled under his olive skin.

I lowered my voice. “You don’t like pork chops?’

In the kitchen the skillet rattled on the stove. In my arms, the kid stiffened like a board. Something was scaring him. That old iron skillet that Ramona had inherited from her grandmother did have a particular scent when she was cooking, but most cast iron did.

“Tell you what,” I whispered, “you give it one bite and then if you don’t like it I’ll get you something else. Deal?”

The kid just stared at me.

I hoped he’d eat. It would break my wife’s heart if he didn’t.

From the kitchen, I heard her call. “Food’ll be ready when you’re out of the bath. And Hank?”

“Yes, my dear?”

“Use the baby soap and shampoo. It should still be good; it’s on the same shelf as the clothes.”

“Will do.”

I’ve bathed a lot of dogs in my life. A few cats. Even a chicken once, and the smell of that experience will haunt me the rest of my days. But I’ve never bathed a kid.

Men in this world aren’t allowed to be trusted with kids. I’ve internalized that. Not that I’m a creeper or a pedo—the idea disgusts me—but I know that to most people out there, the idea of a grown man bathing a kid is a little suspicious.

Here’s the thing: just like when the cat got covered in motor oil, or the dogs had fleas, this kid needs a bath to feel better. Cleaner. More comfortable. And that’s what we’re going to do.

The kid wouldn’t let go of me as I collected clothes, a towel, the shampoo, and soap. When we stepped into the bathroom his entire body tensed, and I felt rage at whoever had hurt him flare up again.

“We’re just going to clean you up. Nothing to be scared of, little man. You’re going to feel so much better. How about you help me with the water? How warm do you like it?”

He still wouldn’t let go. I knelt down by the tub, turned on the tap with one hand while balancing him with the other.

“Here, give me your hand.”

I pried one of his hands loose, held it toward the water thundering from the tap. “Is this too hot? Too cold?”

The water splashed over his hand and his entire body stiffened, and warmth seeped through the quilt. His bladder had let go.

“Whoa, okay buddy. There’s nothing to be scared of.”

He wasn’t crying. He lay rigid in my arms, his eyes wide and staring. Water dripped off his hand, and the skin had turned fiery red.

Had it really been that hot? Had I burned the little guy? Shit!

“Oh little man, I’m sorry! Was that too hot for you?” Balancing him on one arm, I reached out to turn off the tap, but passed my hand under the splashing water first.

It was barely lukewarm.

My face creased in confusion. What had happened?

A grinding sound drew my attention back to the child in my arms. His mouth was working, teeth gnashing. His eyes rolled up in his head, the whites pearlescent and shining. We had an epileptic dog who did this right before he had a seizure so I felt prepared for what might come next.

I laid him down on the thick bathmat, figuring it was safer for him if he started seizing. He’d already wet himself so I didn’t have to worry about that, but I did roll him on his side, so he wouldn’t asphyxiate on froth. I steadied him with my hand on his bare, bony shoulder.

“Shhhhh, it’s ok. You’re alright. You’re safe. No one will hurt you here. Breathe. In,” I drew in a long breath as an example, “and out.” I noisily exhaled.

The kid didn’t react. His eyes were trembling in their sockets, still rolled back and white. His tiny teeth were grinding, and I swear I could hear squeaking like fingernails on a chalkboard.

“Ramona!”

“What?”

“Get in here, something is wrong!”

“What?”

“Ramona!”

She must’ve heard the panic in my voice because I heard her running toward the bathroom. Our house is old and rickety, and her footsteps shook the floorboards.

“What’s going on, is he ok?”

I caught the door before she could fling it open and brain the poor kid.

“No, I think he’s having a seizure. Call 911.”

She paused. “We’ll get in trouble for keeping him.”

“Ramona!” I never yell at my wife, but I did that day. “Call them.”

Her eyes widened and she scurried away, leaving the door ajar. After a few moments I heard her say, “Yes, we need help. A child is having a seizure.”

The kid was still gnashing his teeth, but at least he’d started blinking. It was better than that vacant white stare.

Or at least it was, until his eyes rolled back down.

Where before the pupil and the iris were black, now his entire eye was black. Sclera too. Like ink had flooded under his lids, dyeing the jelly of his eyes.

I couldn’t help it. I scrambled back from his little body.

The quilt had fallen away and I could see that the redness from where his hand had touched the water was creeping upward, sending spikes of fiery color up his tiny arms. The bruises and dirt were fading under the redness, but whether they were simply being covered or if they were disappearing I couldn’t tell. I’ve seen blood poisoning before, watched it do the same thing. But it took days to advance like this. It certainly didn’t move so fast I could watch it spread in real time.

“What…” The kid’s voice was garbled, rough. Deeper than his little chest should’ve been able to hold.

“Is…”

I had pushed myself into the corner of the bathroom, the edge of the toilet cutting into my spine.

“In…”

He rolled over, tried to sit up. Fell backward.

“Your…”

When his head turned toward me, black streaks were bubbling from his tear ducts and running down his face. His eyes had widened, morphed into massive almond-shaped shadows. His baby teeth had elongated, sharpened.

“Water?”

He leaned to the side, vomited up the dry cereal. The mealy mass was tainted with black phlegm, thick as tar.

The quilt fell away when he rolled toward me, his little chest nearly concave, outlining ribs.

Too many ribs.

And hipbones that didn’t make sense; they jutted from his skin in terrifying knobs and bows, stretching skin that was fast becoming a network of snaking red lines.

The door pushed open, and my wife stuck her head in.

“They’ll be here in—oh my god!”

She leapt backward, dodging the weak swipe the boy aimed in her direction.

“What’s wrong with his eyes?”

“I don’t know!” I wanted to wrap this thing back up in the quilt, take him back to where she’d found him. Leave him on the side of the road.

I also didn’t want to get any closer to him.

“Did he hurt you, Hank?” My wife inspected me, her eyes assessing for damages.

“No, but I think he’d like to.”

In answer, the kid rolled toward me and clicked his teeth together. Wanting to finish what he’d started with that little nip on my neck earlier.

“Stay back, little man. I don’t want to hurt you.”

He garbled a rough laugh. Again, too deep. Too thick for that twisted chest to conjure. “Hurt…”

“Help is on the way.” My wife’s voice still had that touch of motherliness. The instinct to protect. Even as she kept her hand on the doorknob, ready to slam the heavy door into the kid’s head if he made a wrong move.

My wife is kind, not stupid.

“Bite…” The kid gnashed its teeth at me again, black tears still spilling down his cheeks. “Help?”

“You stop that right now. You can’t bite him.” My wife was fierce, strict. She protected what was hers. She would’ve made a great mother.

The kid’s face fell, and for a moment he looked like a scared little boy again. My heart flipped over in my chest.

I would’ve made a great father. I’m a softie. A foil to my wife. I’d be the one who always gave in to a child’s demands.

“Ramona, I think he needs… something. Or he’s going to die.”

“He doesn’t need to bite you.” She began to open the door. I stuck my foot out to stop her from advancing further. “Hank, don’t be stupid. Look at its eyes. This isn’t a child. Let it die.”

I ignored her. I didn’t have time to explain that keeping this thing alive until the paramedics arrived was protecting her. If they found what looked like a dead kid here, we’d both end up in prison.

I also knew she’d never understand that I couldn’t just watch a kid die in front of me. Even if he wasn’t human. Wasn’t mine.

“Little man,” I kept my voice gentle. The kid rolled toward me. “What do you need?”

His breathing was becoming more labored. The tendrils of red were moving up his neck now and I had a feeling that when they reached his eyes, he would be gone. If I was right, we didn’t have much time. He was tiny, and he needed help. Like I said, I’m a softie.

“Bite… Small…”

I shuddered. My wife pushed against the door, but I’m much bigger than she is. I was able to keep her out easily.

I heard sirens.

“Ok little man. Do you need meat or blood?” I felt ill. My stomach washed with acid, my eyes blurred. Alarm klaxons were sounding in my head. My wife was crying on the other side of the door.

“Hank, please!”

“I’m not dumb, Ramona. It’ll just be enough to keep him alive for a few more minutes. Then he can be the county’s problem.”

“They’re almost here, just wait!”

“Meat.” The kid’s voice still warbled, but sounded more solid. Hopeful.

I hate how in the movies the character will offer the wrong part of their body for sacrifice. Like how, when drawing blood for some rite, they will slice right across their palm. Who does that? So when I offered the kid my arm, I turned it, presenting him with the chunk of muscle on the outside of my forearm. No major arteries, no way to bleed out. It’ll hurt, but not be fatal.

His teeth had grown even longer, sharper. Monstrously huge in his mouth. I saw them too late, gleaming in the light before he bit down, tearing a hunk of my arm away.

I don’t think I screamed. I think I keened.

His saliva burned me, dripping into the open wound like acid. Before I could draw away he twisted my arm and sunk his teeth into my wrist.

“Hank!” My wife’s panic and my surprise at the kid’s attack allowed her to slam the bathroom door open, hitting the kid so hard he was flung away from my arm.

He crouched on all fours, blood dripping from his tiny baby fangs. His eyes were still black.

He was smiling.

Blood was pouring from my wrist, gushing in waves that synced with my heartbeat.

A pounding from outside. “Paramedics!”

My wife screamed for help.

The front door crashed open.

The kid sprang. I think he meant to make one final attack on me, hoping for a last few drops of blood before he was taken away.

I watched my wife kick out and connect solidly with his rippling ribcage. His slight body flew across the room, landing with a splash in the tub.

The kid thrashed and groaned, his skin red and blistering.

I had turned off the tap. But I hadn’t drained the water that had already collected. He tried to pull himself up from the water, but my wife stomped his little hand, sending him back into the tub.

Thankfully the paramedics didn’t see that bit, or we would’ve been in big trouble. As it was, the only reason we didn’t get charged with abuse—since the kid looked like he’d been boiled alive—was that the paramedic who pulled him out attested to the water being nearly cold. It was agreed that the kid must’ve had a reaction to something in our water.

It wouldn’t have been unheard of. We live out in the country where the town meets the forest, and we have well water, so of course anything can leech into it. Filters get out of most of the bad stuff, but occasionally we’ll turn on the tap and it’ll have an odd smell. Sometimes like sulfur. Sometimes like roses.

We only knew that we drew our water from a little well that used to be dedicated to St. Brigid because a demolition crew found that old historical site marker in the ruins of an old barn. They’d been finishing up the day the realtor showed us around, and that man didn’t miss a beat when he saw an opportunity to sweeten the deal on the property.

“I’ll bet this well has been blessed so many times that the water here is permanently holy,” the realtor had laughed at his own joke. Apparently he had been right on the money.

I lost a lot of blood, but I survived. We weren’t charged with anything, seeing as we’d had the child less than an hour and had planned on turning him over to the county in the morning.

We were told he survived, that the paramedics stabilized him, and no one mentioned weird black eyes or too-sharp teeth. I felt good about that. My wife did not. She was scared he’d come looking for us.

I don’t think he will. I think he’ll find someone else. He got what he wanted from us.

Sometimes late at night when I get up to go to the bathroom, while I’m washing my hands in water that has begun to tickle more than it should, the mirror tells me a story I don’t want to hear. One that includes black ink staining the whites of my eyes when they are still heavy with sleep.

But then I blink and it’s gone.

Editor’s Note

I picked this story because it made me feel everything the family was going through and their want to have a child. That, and the characters (and animals) just feel so homely that you can’t help but get sucked into the tale.

I spoke to the author which you can read here.

After posting the amazing story, Poster Child, we peppered the author, Nina Morgan, with questions to see what she had to say about the tale and about writing in general.

*Please note, there may be minor spoilers for the tale ahead.

Read Poster Child.

Q1. How did you come up with the idea for this story?

I was thinking a lot about depersonalization and how you can feel “missing” even when you aren’t. On a larger scale, so much dehumanisation is happening right now in our culture in the United States and it’s very decentering. Then I passed by an actual missing person’s billboard and thought, what if you looked up and saw yourself? How would that play out?

Q2. I love how tense this story is, and without going into too much spoilers, I love how the tale isn’t naturally ‘resolved’. Was this a conscious choice to leave us hanging? Do you have anything to say about the power of an unresolved tale?

I’ve always thought what you don’t know is much scarier than what you do–that’s why we’re afraid of the dark, after all. I wanted the reader to be left with Jessa’s fear of not knowing what would happen next, because questions like that are the ones that get stuck in your head.

Q3. How much time did you spend fleshing out the characters? The dialogue and inner thoughts add so much to this story. 

Thank you! The most consistent positive feedback I get (and the one I’m the most proud of) is that my characters feel like real people. It is typically the thing I spend the most time on- I want to say Mia and Jessa lived in my head for about a month before I actually sat down and wrote this. I spend a lot of time day dreaming up characters, even just for my own entertainment.

Q4. How much of your time do you spend writing short stories versus other projects? 

What’s funny is the longer the work is, the faster I write. Last year I wrote the first draft of a novel length project within 3 months. A 10k word short story took me about a week. But shorter stories and poetry I drag out forever, stopping for a few weeks at a time then going back. I find it takes a lot more careful thought and consideration to pack a punch with less words.

Q5. What other works do you have on the go? Anything you’d like to promote?

I have a series of novels I’m editing and will query at some point, but for now I’m just trying to get as much work as I can out there. I have some published poetry pieces in Spill Words Press (here), Ink and Oak (here) and one upcoming in Carolina Muse Magazine. I’m so excited to be a part of A Midnight Kind of Place, it’s my first published short story! I oscillate between horror and romance, which may seem like opposites, but writing them is actually pretty similar. I like to joke that what we don’t know is terrifying existentially, but BEING known is terrifying interpersonally. Tension is tension! 

(published 13 February 2026)

It was January 10^th the first time we saw them. Those billboards had stood by the side of the highway for nearly two decades, marking the halfway point of our drive home from school. Hell, we hardly noticed them anymore. But on Wednesday, January 10^th, my own sister’s face stared down at us from those billboards, grinning through the rain under a bright red word in all caps: MISSING.

My sister sat right beside me in the passenger seat.

“Wait, Jessa, did you just fucking see that?” she exclaimed, whipping her head towards me. “Was that me?”

It’s funny, the things your brain will deny. How many days of my life had I looked right into that same face? Almost all of them.

“No. No, it can’t be,” I said, shaking my head.

But then we saw the second one. That same toothy grin smiling down on us.

MISSING.

“Oh my god, what the fuck? Hang on, wait,” I said, pulling off on the shoulder a little too quickly, slamming my flashers on.

“Jesus Jessa, don’t kill us.”

Our eyes fixed on the second billboard. Beside the picture was her name. Underneath that, stats about her. Correct stats. 5’1 dark hair, brown eyes, 110lbs.

“One ten?” she said, offended.

“Fuck off, Mia.” I rolled my eyes. “I haven’t been one ten since, like, sixth grade.”

She got out of the car and snapped a picture of the billboard, rain be damned. I jumped out and followed her, pulling my coat around me tighter. I’m not sure what we were hoping to find by walking closer. There was nothing at the base but the gravel Mia’s combat boots crunched through. Nothing on the other side. We backtracked along the side of the highway, rain cutting through our Goodwill coats, to inspect the other one. It was identical in every way. The rain slowed to a fine mist, but we were soaked and shivering.

“What are we supposed to do? What does this even mean?” she said, putting her hands on her head. She suddenly looked very young to me. Short, but somehow all legs, braces we can barely afford stretching across her grimace. She simply cannot be fifteen.

“I’m calling Mom,” I told her.

Our mother was incredulous at first, because of course she is, who wouldn’t be? We sent her the picture, and it’s like I can feel her blood freeze through the phone.

“Go straight home and lock the door,” she ordered. “I’m coming home early.”

We drove home in total, frigid silence.

When we pulled into our drive way, we count down from three, and dart into the house as fast as possible. While we do technically live in a neighborhood, the houses are spread out and surrounded by woods. Anyone could be in those trees. I walked from room to room, throwing open closets. What I looked for, I do not know.

Our mom gets home ten minutes later. She works as a teller at a bank in town. Her boss is kind of a dick, so she must have been genuinely scared if he let her go.

“Come here,” she said to Mia, scooping her up in an embrace. Mia started to cry. Don’t be a baby I thought, then caught myself.

Mia is two years younger than me, a freshman in high school. Petite and whiny, she isn’t just a baby, she’s the baby.

I don’t mean it to be bitter, it’s just true. She’s a lot of things. Funny, dramatic, loyal, good at making up little dances, decent at soccer, great taste in music, horrible taste in boys. My bratty, beautiful little sister.

Who was not missing.

Who was right there, where she belonged.

“I’m calling the police,” my mother asserted. She pulled out her phone, then paused. “There’s nothing you need to tell me, right girls?” She asked, her eyebrows raising.

“Like what?” Mia cried out. “Oh yeah, sorry I forgot to mention, I saved up my Christmas money for a few years to buy a billboard ad and prank you guys in the scariest way possible.”

I snickered at that in spite of it all. Once, when she was around ten, Mia fell from the swings and cracked her head clean open. She walked in the house, blood streaming down her face, and said, “I wanted to see what Jessa went through when you dropped her on her head as a baby, but it got out if hand.”

A little blood never stops a true smart ass.

“I don’t know Mia, this has never happened to me before!” our mother exclaimed. “Do we call the emergency or non emergency number?”

Already tired of pacing, I sank into our ancient, overstuffed sofa.

“I guess like, we aren’t technically in danger,” I added lamely. “Are we?”

The police didn’t have a lot to say to us. They suggested we contact an attorney.

“I don’t understand how this isn’t a crime,” Mom protested. “She’s a minor. They don’t have permission to use her photos.”

They said they will look into who purchased the billboard usage and get back to us. They also let us know that the number posted on the billboard to call is not actually connected to the police department in any way.

“Have you tried calling it?” they asked.

“Well, that’s what we thought we were doing now,” my mother said.

I pulled out my phone and dialled.

“The number you have dialed is not in service.” The Tonotone voice filled my stomach with a strange dread.

The police took all the details to make a report, and then we got off the phone. Silence hung heavy in the living room. I glanced at the endless amount of crosses my mom has above the couch. Heaven help us, I guess.

I threw myself into internet research, trying to see if I can find who owns the billboards. But there was no ad company name on them to call. They’ve been there for a long time, as long as we’ve lived here, so surely someone must know. We post across town social media pages, we call local ad agencies.

No one has answers.

We call my father, who drives a semi and isn’t slotted to return for another week. He insists on coming home right away, but my mother points out we need the money from the job. The only concrete information we’ve gotten so far is that legal fees are expensive.

The next day, Mia’s face still loomed above us. She covered her eyes as we drove by it. She didn’t want to go to school, and I couldn’t blame her, but Mom thought she’d be safer there, surrounded by people.

I wasn’t so sure.

“Why?” is the word that has left Mia’s mouth, all our mouths, thousands of times over the course of twenty-four hours.

It’s not cheap to rent a billboard, let alone two.

My family doesn’t have enemies. Mia is biologically ours. She’s never lived anywhere else but with us. We take down her social media and we all sleep in my mother’s bed.

The next few days, nothing has changed. This is torture in itself. It feels like something more should happen. Our neighbors phone us, concerned. Her friends swap theories but quickly run out of things to say. What else can be said?

Hours drip by like an incessant, slow leak. They pool at my feet, turning into days, the water rising. A few lawyers get back to us, but they say it’s such an unusual situation they aren’t sure what can be done. Especially if we have no idea who’s behind it.

A week passes. Mia starts soccer practice for the spring season. It’s a welcome distraction. Her face still greets us every day from above.

“I’m being haunted by myself,” she mutters.

The assumption living in my mind, based on nothing, is that this won’t go on forever. It can’t, right? Will we see it coming home from college? Will she have to explain this anomaly to future visiting friends? Boyfriends she brings home to meet our parents?

No. Surely not. Her face remains smiling in the cold.

“By spring at the very latest, we’ll have answers,” I tell myself.

We almost start to find it funny, having run out of other things to feel about it.

“Watch this be the start of my modeling career,” Mia says, flipping her hair. “Who else can say they were on billboards by fifteen?”

Another week and a half later, when my mind is still set on this ending any day now, the flyers start.

They’re posted everywhere.

Thousands of them, all over town.

MISSING: MIA JOHNSON

The same stats as the billboard. The same smiling picture.

“Is there something about me you never told me?” Mia desperately pleads to my parents. “Am I adopted? Is my birth mother looking for me?” She collapses on the ground in tears.

“Am I even fucking real? Am I even really here?”

We tell her over and over:

You’re real.

You’re here.

You’re our flesh and blood.

We have mountains of proof. Birth certificates, photos, baby teeth. You’re not missing, Mia. You’re with us.

But she’s becoming more and more sullen by the day, as if each new flyer we see drains a little more life force, like an opposite of Dorian Gray. Her friends have started to avoid her. The town thinks we are the ones doing it. To what end, I’m not sure.

She skips dinner. She doesn’t talk. It’s no longer funny.

“What does it even mean to be missing?” she says. “Maybe I should be.”

“Don’t say that. You aren’t missing to me,” I say.

On Friday, three weeks and two days since this all started, Mia’s friend Stephanie is supposed to drop her home from soccer practice at six. But six slinks by like an alley cat, and no Mia. She doesn’t respond to my text, nor my phone calls. As it turns over to seven, I give Stephanie a call.

“She told me she didn’t feel good, so she wasn’t going to practice today,” Stephanie says. “I thought she went home with you?”

Ice shoots up my spine.

“No, she didn’t tell me that. She wasn’t at practice. She’s not answering my texts.”

“She’s gotta just be, with like, a friend or something. Maybe Ashley.”

I call Ashley. I call Lola. I call our neighbors.

No one has heard from Mia.

Our parents are starting to panic. My father and I climb in his pickup, racing to the school. I don’t know why she would not go to practice but stick around campus, but where else would we go? The flickering streetlights spark a fear in me deeper than I knew possible. It’s so cold out.

We find nothing at the school. No one has seen. I call out her name in the woods behind the buildings. Just in case. My father drops me home, defeated, but continues to drive around town.

At ten, my mother calls the police.

“I thought you told us she wasn’t missing. Now you’re saying she is?” they say.

“That’s just it, we’re worried it has something to do with the posters,” my mother pleads. “Whoever is doing this to us. What if they’ve taken her for real?”

“Usually, these teenagers pop back up in a few hours or the next day. She have a boyfriend?”

“No!” my mother insists.

“Not that you’re aware of at least.”

“Mia didn’t run away. She’s not that kind of girl,” she pleads.

“That’s usually what parents say.”

So that’s what we get. People who don’t know Mia insisting we don’t know her, and no real help in finding her.

That night is sleepless. My father drives till dawn. I stay up staring at my phone, calling Mia’s every five minutes. Just in case someone, hopefully her, was able to get somewhere to charge it.

Time warps in a crisis like this. Each hour distorted as if reflected in fun house mirrors. Stretched and then compressed. Multiplied and duplicated, until you can’t tell which way is forward.

At six am, I fall asleep without realizing I did until my school alarm wakes me back up at seven. I always thought I couldn’t hate that noise more, but turns out I can.

My mother and I go to the school together. With the help of the principal and the janitor, we get her locker open.

It’s completely empty.

The books, binders, little pink magnets holding up pictures of her friends, all gone. We talk to her teachers, her friends, and an announcement is made over the intercom.

Nothing.

Twenty-four hours slip by with nothing.

Finally, the police step up.

Searches are organized. Neighbors dispatched.

I watch my sister’s face on the news now.

How many days of my life have I spent looking at that face?

Almost all of them.

We see her walking out the back door of the school, a way she doesn’t normally go, on CCTV footage from the school’s cameras. At 5pm, when no one is around. What was she doing from 3:30 till then? That no one seemed to see?

Time, no longer warped, is now in a dead sprint forward. Every blinding second taking us further away from her. Every day nothing, nothing, nothing.

It doesn’t take long for more rumors to start.

Her family planned this. 

It’s an elaborate hoax.

It’s a mental illness.

I don’t trust the parents, something is off there. 

The dad’s a trucker? Suspicious.

She was trafficked. The missing poster was an ad.

She was into the occult.

She’s definitely dead.

Every one, a new knife in my stomach. I think things can’t get worse. Then, about a month and a half since this started, I am driving home from school when a new face greets me from the MISSING billboards.

Another highly familiar one.

Another round of accurate stats.

Another name I know.

Another toothy grin, bearing down the side of the highway, white like the February snow.

My own.

Editor’s Note

I love how this tale ends – it doesn’t feed us anything by way of answers, which, to me, is why it resonates so much. That, and the characters are all lovable and believable, something that is tough to do in such a short space.

I peppered Nina with questions about the tale and how they came up with it, which you can read here.

Later in February, we’ll be posting regular episodes featuring the very best new voices horror has to offer. Of the 400+ submissions we received in the open call, we chose 20 of the very best tales.

We’ll post each tale here.

I have examined maps of the city with the greatest care, yet have never again found the Rue d’Auseil. These maps have not been modern maps alone, for I know that names change. I have, on the contrary, delved deeply into all the antiquities of the place; and have personally explored every region, of whatever name, which could possibly answer to the street I knew as the Rue d’Auseil. But despite all I have done it remains an humiliating fact that I cannot find the house, the street, or even the locality, where, during the last months of my impoverished life as a student of metaphysics at the university, I heard the music of Erich Zann.

That my memory is broken, I do not wonder; for my health, physical and mental, was gravely disturbed throughout the period of my residence in the Rue d’Auseil, and I recall that I took none of my few acquaintances there. But that I cannot find the place again is both singular and perplexing; for it was within a half-hour’s walk of the university and was distinguished by peculiarities which could hardly be forgotten by anyone who had been there. I have never met a person who has seen the Rue d’Auseil.

The Rue d’Auseil lay across a dark river bordered by precipitous brick blear-windowed warehouses and spanned by a ponderous bridge of dark stone. It was always shadowy along that river, as if the smoke of neighbouring factories shut out the sun perpetually. The river was also odorous with evil stenches which I have never smelled elsewhere, and which may some day help me to find it, since I should recognise them at once. Beyond the bridge were narrow cobbled streets with rails; and then came the ascent, at first gradual, but incredibly steep as the Rue d’Auseil was reached.

I have never seen another street as narrow and steep as the Rue d’Auseil. It was almost a cliff, closed to all vehicles, consisting in several places of flights of steps, and ending at the top in a lofty ivied wall. Its paving was irregular, sometimes stone slabs, sometimes cobblestones, and sometimes bare earth with struggling greenish-grey vegetation. The houses were tall, peaked-roofed, incredibly old, and crazily leaning backward, forward, and sidewise. Occasionally an opposite pair, both leaning forward, almost met across the street like an arch; and certainly they kept most of the light from the ground below. There were a few overhead bridges from house to house across the street.

The inhabitants of that street impressed me peculiarly. At first I thought it was because they were all silent and reticent; but later decided it was because they were all very old. I do not know how I came to live on such a street, but I was not myself when I moved there. I had been living in many poor places, always evicted for want of money; until at last I came upon that tottering house in the Rue d’Auseil, kept by the paralytic Blandot. It was the third house from the top of the street, and by far the tallest of them all.

My room was on the fifth story; the only inhabited room there, since the house was almost empty. On the night I arrived I heard strange music from the peaked garret overhead, and the next day asked old Blandot about it. He told me it was an old German viol-player, a strange dumb man who signed his name as Erich Zann, and who played evenings in a cheap theatre orchestra; adding that Zann’s desire to play in the night after his return from the theatre was the reason he had chosen this lofty and isolated garret room, whose single gable window was the only point on the street from which one could look over the terminating wall at the declivity and panorama beyond.

Thereafter I heard Zann every night, and although he kept me awake, I was haunted by the weirdness of his music. Knowing little of the art myself, I was yet certain that none of his harmonies had any relation to music I had heard before; and concluded that he was a composer of highly original genius. The longer I listened, the more I was fascinated, until after a week I resolved to make the old man’s acquaintance.

One night, as he was returning from his work, I intercepted Zann in the hallway and told him that I would like to know him and be with him when he played. He was a small, lean, bent person, with shabby clothes, blue eyes, grotesque, satyr-like face, and nearly bald head; and at my first words seemed both angered and frightened. My obvious friendliness, however, finally melted him; and he grudgingly motioned to me to follow him up the dark, creaking, and rickety attic stairs. His room, one of only two in the steeply pitched garret, was on the west side, toward the high wall that formed the upper end of the street. Its size was very great, and seemed the greater because of its extraordinary bareness and neglect. Of furniture there was only a narrow iron bedstead, a dingy washstand, a small table, a large bookcase, an iron music-rack, and three old-fashioned chairs. Sheets of music were piled in disorder about the floor. The walls were of bare boards, and had probably never known plaster; whilst the abundance of dust and cobwebs made the place seem more deserted than inhabited. Evidently Erich Zann’s world of beauty lay in some far cosmos of the imagination.

Motioning me to sit down, the dumb man closed the door, turned the large wooden bolt, and lighted a candle to augment the one he had brought with him. He now removed his viol from its moth-eaten covering, and taking it, seated himself in the least uncomfortable of the chairs. He did not employ the music-rack, but offering no choice and playing from memory, enchanted me for over an hour with strains I had never heard before; strains which must have been of his own devising. To describe their exact nature is impossible for one unversed in music. They were a kind of fugue, with recurrent passages of the most captivating quality, but to me were notable for the absence of any of the weird notes I had overheard from my room below on other occasions.

Those haunting notes I had remembered, and had often hummed and whistled inaccurately to myself; so when the player at length laid down his bow I asked him if he would render some of them. As I began my request the wrinkled satyr-like face lost the bored placidity it had possessed during the playing, and seemed to shew the same curious mixture of anger and fright which I had noticed when first I accosted the old man. For a moment I was inclined to use persuasion, regarding rather lightly the whims of senility; and even tried to awaken my host’s weirder mood by whistling a few of the strains to which I had listened the night before. But I did not pursue this course for more than a moment; for when the dumb musician recognised the whistled air his face grew suddenly distorted with an expression wholly beyond analysis, and his long, cold, bony right hand reached out to stop my mouth and silence the crude imitation. As he did this he further demonstrated his eccentricity by casting a startled glance toward the lone curtained window, as if fearful of some intruder — a glance doubly absurd, since the garret stood high and inaccessible above all the adjacent roofs, this window being the only point on the steep street, as the concierge had told me, from which one could see over the wall at the summit.

The old man’s glance brought Blandot’s remark to my mind, and with a certain capriciousness I felt a wish to look out over the wide and dizzying panorama of moonlit roofs and city lights beyond the hill-top, which of all the dwellers in the Rue d’Auseil only this crabbed musician could see. I moved toward the window and would have drawn aside the nondescript curtains, when with a frightened rage even greater than before the dumb lodger was upon me again; this time motioning with his head toward the door as he nervously strove to drag me thither with both hands. Now thoroughly disgusted with my host, I ordered him to release me, and told him I would go at once. His clutch relaxed, and as he saw my disgust and offence his own anger seemed to subside. He tightened his relaxing grip, but this time in a friendly manner; forcing me into a chair, then with an appearance of wistfulness crossing to the littered table, where he wrote many words with a pencil in the laboured French of a foreigner.

The note which he finally handed me was an appeal for tolerance and forgiveness. Zann said that he was old, lonely, and afflicted with strange fears and nervous disorders connected with his music and with other things. He had enjoyed my listening to his music, and wished I would come again and not mind his eccentricities. But he could not play to another his weird harmonies, and could not bear hearing them from another; nor could he bear having anything in his room touched by another. He had not known until our hallway conversation that I could overhear his playing in my room, and now asked me if I would arrange with Blandot to take a lower room where I could not hear him in the night. He would, he wrote, defray the difference in rent.

As I sat deciphering the execrable French I felt more lenient toward the old man. He was a victim of physical and nervous suffering, as was I; and my metaphysical studies had taught me kindness. In the silence there came a slight sound from the window — the shutter must have rattled in the night-wind — and for some reason I started almost as violently as did Erich Zann. So when I had finished reading I shook my host by the hand, and departed as a friend. The next day Blandot gave me a more expensive room on the third floor, between the apartments of an aged money-lender and the room of a respectable upholsterer. There was no one on the fourth floor.

It was not long before I found that Zann’s eagerness for my company was not as great as it had seemed while he was persuading me to move down from the fifth story. He did not ask me to call on him, and when I did call he appeared uneasy and played listlessly. This was always at night — in the day he slept and would admit no one. My liking for him did not grow, though the attic room and the weird music seemed to hold an odd fascination for me. I had a curious desire to look out of that window, over the wall and down the unseen slope at the glittering roofs and spires which must lie outspread there. Once I went up to the garret during theatre hours, when Zann was away, but the door was locked.

What I did succeed in doing was to overhear the nocturnal playing of the dumb old man. At first I would tiptoe up to my old fifth floor, then I grew bold enough to climb the last creaking staircase to the peaked garret. There in the narrow hall, outside the bolted door with the covered keyhole, I often heard sounds which filled me with an indefinable dread — the dread of vague wonder and brooding mystery. It was not that the sounds were hideous, for they were not; but that they held vibrations suggesting nothing on this globe of earth, and that at certain intervals they assumed a symphonic quality which I could hardly conceive as produced by one player. Certainly, Erich Zann was a genius of wild power. As the weeks passed, the playing grew wilder, whilst the old musician acquired an increasing haggardness and furtiveness pitiful to behold. He now refused to admit me at any time, and shunned me whenever we met on the stairs.

Then one night as I listened at the door I heard the shrieking viol swell into a chaotic babel of sound; a pandemonium which would have led me to doubt my own shaking sanity had there not come from behind that barred portal a piteous proof that the horror was real — the awful, inarticulate cry which only a mute can utter, and which rises only in moments of the most terrible fear or anguish. I knocked repeatedly at the door, but received no response. Afterward I waited in the black hallway, shivering with cold and fear, till I heard the poor musician’s feeble effort to rise from the floor by the aid of a chair. Believing him just conscious after a fainting fit, I renewed my rapping, at the same time calling out my name reassuringly. I heard Zann stumble to the window and close both shutter and sash, then stumble to the door, which he falteringly unfastened to admit me. This time his delight at having me present was real; for his distorted face gleamed with relief while he clutched at my coat as a child clutches at its mother’s skirts.

Shaking pathetically, the old man forced me into a chair whilst he sank into another, beside which his viol and bow lay carelessly on the floor. He sat for some time inactive, nodding oddly, but having a paradoxical suggestion of intense and frightened listening. Subsequently he seemed to be satisfied, and crossing to a chair by the table wrote a brief note, handed it to me, and returned to the table, where he began to write rapidly and incessantly. The note implored me in the name of mercy, and for the sake of my own curiosity, to wait where I was while he prepared a full account in German of all the marvels and terrors which beset him. I waited, and the dumb man’s pencil flew.

It was perhaps an hour later, while I still waited and while the old musician’s feverishly written sheets still continued to pile up, that I saw Zann start as from the hint of a horrible shock. Unmistakably he was looking at the curtained window and listening shudderingly. Then I half fancied I heard a sound myself; though it was not a horrible sound, but rather an exquisitely low and infinitely distant musical note, suggesting a player in one of the neighbouring houses, or in some abode beyond the lofty wall over which I had never been able to look. Upon Zann the effect was terrible, for dropping his pencil suddenly he rose, seized his viol, and commenced to rend the night with the wildest playing I had ever heard from his bow save when listening at the barred door.

It would be useless to describe the playing of Erich Zann on that dreadful night. It was more horrible than anything I had ever overheard, because I could now see the expression of his face, and could realise that this time the motive was stark fear. He was trying to make a noise; to ward something off or drown something out — what, I could not imagine, awesome though I felt it must be. The playing grew fantastic, delirious, and hysterical, yet kept to the last the qualities of supreme genius which I knew this strange old man possessed. I recognised the air — it was a wild Hungarian dance popular in the theatres, and I reflected for a moment that this was the first time I had ever heard Zann play the work of another composer.

Louder and louder, wilder and wilder, mounted the shrieking and whining of that desperate viol. The player was dripping with an uncanny perspiration and twisted like a monkey, always looking frantically at the curtained window. In his frenzied strains I could almost see shadowy satyrs and Bacchanals dancing and whirling insanely through seething abysses of clouds and smoke and lightning. And then I thought I heard a shriller, steadier note that was not from the viol; a calm, deliberate, purposeful, mocking note from far away in the west.

At this juncture the shutter began to rattle in a howling night-wind which had sprung up outside as if in answer to the mad playing within. Zann’s screaming viol now outdid itself, emitting sounds I had never thought a viol could emit. The shutter rattled more loudly, unfastened, and commenced slamming against the window. Then the glass broke shiveringly under the persistent impacts, and the chill wind rushed in, making the candles sputter and rustling the sheets of paper on the table where Zann had begun to write out his horrible secret. I looked at Zann, and saw that he was past conscious observation. His blue eyes were bulging, glassy, and sightless, and the frantic playing had become a blind, mechanical, unrecognisable orgy that no pen could even suggest.

A sudden gust, stronger than the others, caught up the manuscript and bore it toward the window. I followed the flying sheets in desperation, but they were gone before I reached the demolished panes. Then I remembered my old wish to gaze from this window, the only window in the Rue d’Auseil from which one might see the slope beyond the wall, and the city outspread beneath. It was very dark, but the city’s lights always burned, and I expected to see them there amidst the rain and wind. Yet when I looked from that highest of all gable windows, looked while the candles sputtered and the insane viol howled with the night-wind, I saw no city spread below, and no friendly lights gleaming from remembered streets, but only the blackness of space illimitable; unimagined space alive with motion and music, and having no semblance to anything on earth. And as I stood there looking in terror, the wind blew out both the candles in that ancient peaked garret, leaving me in savage and impenetrable darkness with chaos and pandemonium before me, and the daemon madness of that night-baying viol behind me.

I staggered back in the dark, without the means of striking a light, crashing against the table, overturning a chair, and finally groping my way to the place where the blackness screamed with shocking music. To save myself and Erich Zann I could at least try, whatever the powers opposed to me. Once I thought some chill thing brushed me, and I screamed, but my scream could not be heard above that hideous viol. Suddenly out of the blackness the madly sawing bow struck me, and I knew I was close to the player. I felt ahead, touched the back of Zann’s chair, and then found and shook his shoulder in an effort to bring him to his senses.

He did not respond, and still the viol shrieked on without slackening. I moved my hand to his head, whose mechanical nodding I was able to stop, and shouted in his ear that we must both flee from the unknown things of the night. But he neither answered me nor abated the frenzy of his unutterable music, while all through the garret strange currents of wind seemed to dance in the darkness and babel. When my hand touched his ear I shuddered, though I knew not why — knew not why till I felt of the still face; the ice-cold, stiffened, unbreathing face whose glassy eyes bulged uselessly into the void. And then, by some miracle finding the door and the large wooden bolt, I plunged wildly away from that glassy-eyed thing in the dark, and from the ghoulish howling of that accursed viol whose fury increased even as I plunged.

Leaping, floating, flying down those endless stairs through the dark house; racing mindlessly out into the narrow, steep, and ancient street of steps and tottering houses; clattering down steps and over cobbles to the lower streets and the putrid canyon-walled river; panting across the great dark bridge to the broader, healthier streets and boulevards we know; all these are terrible impressions that linger with me. And I recall that there was no wind, and that the moon was out, and that all the lights of the city twinkled.

Despite my most careful searches and investigations, I have never since been able to find the Rue d’Auseil. But I am not wholly sorry; either for this or for the loss in undreamable abysses of the closely written sheets which alone could have explained the music of Erich Zann.

Editor’s note

This is probably my favourite Lovecraft story. It’s so full of dread and I love the depictions of music throughout.