*Between the Beacons, the Line Stays Open*
The diary had only one entry, and it was written like a confession made to a tape recorder. I am telling you now because the interview room lights still buzz like sea-static, and because I survived, but not in the clean way you want.
The Initials That Would Not Stay Still
I took the lantern the way I used to take a piece of chalk, like holding it steady could keep a room from tipping into panic. This town has one story everyone avoids, and it begins when a dog refuses a doorway like it can smell the shape of what waits inside.
Attendance for the Drowned Theater
I shouldn’t be telling you this. Not as a warning, but as a lesson. If you ever find a cassette labeled only with a date, do not play it in a place that still remembers applause.
Eleven Fifty-Nine, Forever
I don’t believe in ghosts, but I have held an obituary that kept losing the parts that proved a person ever lived. Someone I knew taught in a suburb where the town clock would not reach twelve, and the dreams there learned how to dial a phone.
The Contract for a Dependent Occupant
I took the lantern even though my hands did not feel like they belonged among these stones. It started with a single knock, and the letters I carry still refuse to stay in the right order.
The Perfume in the Pause
I take the lantern, and the light feels like it is listening back. Someone I once knew swore he came back from the leaning trees wrong, and the proof was a tape that would not finish, and a hum that learned your voice when you stopped to hear it.
The Watch That Runs Backward
I don’t believe in ghosts, but there’s a case in the old files that still rattles me — a tale of vanishing objects, looping hours, and a curse that turned a family’s legacy into a hall of mirrors.
The Crescent Rule: A Nocturne at the Edge of the Neon
They said no one should go there after dark, and my source was adamant: the book’s faded margin warned, “Some guests never leave unchanged.” What follows is not legend, but a record.
Faces Out of Step: The Endless Descent
I shouldn’t be telling you this, but beneath the mud and wire of an old war, there’s a stairwell that leads to places and faces you’re not meant to see—some of them might even be your own.
The Carnival Where Names Vanish
I once heard about the old carnival where silence holds its breath and a melody waits beneath the dust, ready to claim the names of those who listen.