The Pale Emperor
I had always wondered what the bottom of a lake looked like, and now I know. It looks like the sun setting over the horizon, where the farthest depths of sky are black, but you can ...
The Pale Face
God, I need to get this down. I need this knowledge out of my head. I’m being, what’s the word to use? Haunted? By a being. A horrid aberration. I can only call it pale face ...
The Pale Girl
I don’t know how it happened, only how it started. I thought it was just my overactive imagination, but then things escalated. I know for sure that I’m being haunted and it’s driving me off the ...
The Parker Express
Part 1 This is your captain speaking. I've just turned on the seat belt sign. We're expecting a fair amount of turbulence coming up, so we ask that you please remain seated until the sign is ...
The Passenger
Several months ago a friend of mine alerted me to a puzzling incident on an inner-city bus. Being a bus driver himself, he had heard many of the usual generic stories that would be exchanged around ...
The Passenger
“So….” The voice paused. “What exactly happened here?” The rain had been beating down all day long. It was late by now and the weather reports had said that there was no sign of it stopping ...
The Pastel Man
Consider this a warning. In the event it ever comes to you during a moment of weakness, as it did me all those years ago, say no to the Pastel Man. It doesn’t matter how much ...
The Patchwork Quilt
An elderly woman hummed softly to herself, smiling happily as she worked; the needle glinting as her brittle hands slid it through the material, piecing the scraps together with thread. Agatha Lymric, better known as Miss ...
The Pawn Shop Puzzle
You visit a pawn shop and buy a puzzle. Most of the pieces look weather worn and faded. When you start to assemble it, the picture it forms grows increasingly familiar. You realize it is the ...
The Pea Farm
“I really don’t think this is so smart,” a young woman, no older than twenty-one said. The fear and anxiety rang clear in her voice. “I’ll be fine,” a male voice responded. He took her soft, ...
The Peculiar Painting
The grandfather clock struck eleven as the wealthy old man rubbed his eyes, tired from reading one of his many dusty books that were stacked neatly on a tall oak bookshelf near the creaky chair on ...
The Pendant
You jolt awake to some noise off in the distance. You look at your red lettered clock: 3:21. You hear it noise again. Someone's knocking on your door. There's no reason to be afraid, you remind ...
The People in the Attic
The sun commits suicide upon the pointed spikes of the mountain slopes, and is reincarnated as a floating blue ghost glaring through the boarded window. The walls chuckle quietly, coughing as some small rat scurries to ...
The Perfectly Behaved Boy
There was once a very well behaved eight-year-old boy named Miles. He did all the things that good children are supposed to do, nearly all the time. He ate all his vegetables, unless they were carrots ...
The Periphery People
“Yesterday upon the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there,” the man at the bar said to me, nursing a fresh two-fingers’ worth of Ketel vodka in a tumbler he cradled between his thick, calloused ...
The Phone Call
Pay phones have nearly become extinct in this day and age, gone the way of VHS tapes and keeping your dinner to yourself rather than sharing it via social media with thousands of others. So when ...
The Photograph Pile
A young girl walking home from school found a small pile of Polaroid photos lying in the gutter. There were twenty in all, neatly wrapped in a rubber band. She picked them up, and as she ...
The Photographs
A few months ago a friend of mine, who is an up-and-coming nature photographer, decided to spend a day and night alone in the woods outside of our town. She wanted to get photos of the ...
The Piano Man
When I graduated from college, my best friend Diana and I embarked upon a grand tour of Europe. Halfway through our trip, we had planned to spend three days in Prague, but had completely failed to ...
The Piano’s Song
She sits upright before us, like a tree trunk still and dynamic, and her frail fingers are placed alert on the ivory. Her old lungs fill and release once as the room slowly revolves around. We ...
The Pillow
Awake. Lisa bolted upright in bed, hazy vapors of fear still wavering in her periphery. The details of the dream were quickly escaping leaving only the overwhelming terror that had just gripped her psyche a moment ...