*Letters From the House That Would Not Keep Me*
I don’t remember how I got there, only the taste of salt in the air and the way the mirrors refused to agree with my face. If you find these letters, read the handwriting closely, because it will not stay mine.
*The Ledger That Wouldn’t Stay Closed*
It was just a game until it wasn’t, and I’m the one who watched the minutes fold back on themselves like cheap paper. If you ever inherit a letter that tells you to go to a dead school and “clear a name,” burn it and walk away.
*Between Beacons, Between Faces*
*The lantern makes everyone look like a stranger, if you stare too long. I once heard of a ship that drifted between two dead beacons, and of a man who came back, but wrong, wearing a face that was not his.*
*The Unopened Lullaby*
I shouldn’t be telling you this, but I have watched letters outlive their writers and still insist on being read. If you ever find a seven where it does not belong, do not answer what answers as you.
*The Backward Watch at the Silent Fair*
I swear this happened on the road last winter, when the sickness had the cities locked tight and the fields full of prayer flags. If you are new to these routes, hear me plain: when you find unfamiliar keys in your pocket, do not go looking for the doors they fit.
*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.