There is a house.

There is always a house with a monster locked in its basement or an old witch with a patch over one eye who can show you how you’ll die. The house is always old and rotting with a wooden porch that creaks beneath the feet of children foolish enough to get too close, a tire swing with no tire, cracks in the windows, and a lawn so unkempt that the smallest of those children could get lost inside stalks of tall, reedy grass.

There is a house.

But this one is different.

This one sits along the edge of the Allegheny river in a tiny town called Foxburg, Pennsylvania, a place some would compare to those found in old storybooks filled with fairy godmothers and wishes come true. The house does not have a basement full of old antiques tainted by dark magic or an attic that’s floorboards creak even when nothing lurks overhead but the spiders spinning their sticky webs.

In fact, there is no basement.

In fact, thirteen year old Violet Hinkle sleeps in the attic and gets to watch the stars come out each night through the tiny window Mr. Hinkle constructed in the ceiling when they found out Mrs. Hinkle was pregnant again and Violet would have to switch rooms. Violet likes the privacy and never minded the move (especially not after the skylight was finished) and ten year old Danny is kind of jealous of his big sister’s set up, even though Danny’s room has a window that’s way better if you’re planning on sneaking out of the house. He only did it once, and he didn’t get caught (because Violet came with), but Danny doesn’t like secrets so he won’t do it again.

One hundred and eighty three people live in Foxburg, Pennsylvania.

If you’re getting married, you do it at Riverstone Farm, just one street back from the Hinkle’s house. If you’re getting cold feet, you walk the half mile down the road to Memorial Church of Our Father for some guidance, and if you’re getting really cold feet, you walk the mile and a half back the opposite direction to drink it off at the Allegheny Grille. If said cold feet still persist after that, you head east to St. Petersburg. You do not cross west over Foxburg bridge.

So there is a house and there is a lovely family of four and there is a small town where new faces are seldom seen but always met with kindness, and that is where the story should end instead of begin.

It does not happen on Halloween night. It does not happen in the wake of a thunderstorm that sweeps over the Hinkle’s rooftop and floods its floorboards with horned demons and bloodsoaked chaos.

Violet Hinkles turns fourteen years old, and nine days later, Mr. Hinkle wakes up with a crick in his neck.

It’s nothing to worry about, he assures his wife as he kisses her and the children goodbye. Perhaps this would simply be an expression in other homes, but George Hinkle makes sure to leave a soft whisper of his presence on the cheeks of the three people sitting around the breakfast table before he walks out the door each morning. Today is no different, except for that crick.

By the fourth day, Mrs. Hinkle insists he go see the doctor, so he does. Dr. Kane, too, says it’s nothing to worry about-- just a product of poor sleep. He asks Mr. Hinkle about his sleeping positions, his recent dreams; prescribes a little something for the pain and provides a little piece of paper about spine curvature and proper pillow placement. Mr. Hinkle doesn’t remember much of his dreams, vague outlines of soft, purple shadows and thin lines of silver thread that unwind to spool around his feet. He laughs at the alliteration of the Proper Pillow Placement sheet and follows the advice.

Four days after that, he wakes up unable to lift his left cheek from the top of his shoulder. There are perhaps two inches of space in between, a number not nearly high enough in Mrs. Hinkle’s distraught opinion. She sends the children off for the beginning of their final week of school before summer begins and then stands at her husband’s shoulders, rubbing soothing hands down along his neck and back while he props his cell phone up against his right ear and calls in sick to work for the third time in twenty-six years.

The next day, the fingers of George Hinkle’s left hand do not work. They curl in on themselves like the talon of a red-tailed hawk, and Mrs. Hinkle barely waits for the bus to pick up Violet and Danny before driving her husband directly to the hospital.

Dr. Grumsfield doesn’t quite know what to make of it. Symptoms of Lou Gehrig's with the progression time of a marathon runner on Speed and with no signs of signature neurological damage. After school, Mrs. Hinkle asks their neighbor, Alan, to pick the kids up and bring them to the hospital. Once there, Violet is overly talkative, ignores the wires coming out of her Daddy’s arms and elects to tell him about the boy in class who pulled her hair three times during social studies class but won’t dare do it again because she swears she glared at him so hard, he peed his pants. Danny is quiet. He curls up on the bed next to his father and burrows into him, doesn’t move until Mrs. Hinkle says they have to go, but they’ll come back to visit after school the next day. The kids protest, but they have their final tests of the year, and they can’t be missed.

That night, Violet glances up through the skylight her father made for her and sees nothing but a deep, purple sky and tiny threads of silver light that barely count as stars.

At school the next day, the boy who pulled her hair sits on the opposite side of the room from Violet and immediately stops clicking his pen when he notices her looking at him. She finishes her test early, excuses herself to use the bathroom, and instead sits in the hall against a row of lockers and runs her thumbnail along the length of her wrist until the bell rings.

Back at the hospital, Mr. Hinkle’s left eye will not open and his left pinky toe sticks straight up into the air, seemingly petrified. The nurse who changes his IV lines coughs violently into her arm and quickly excuses herself. An hour later, Dr. Grumsfield meanders unsteadily into the room, his skin sickly pale. Mrs. Hinkle, who has been sitting diligently beside her husband’s bed since seeing the kids off to school, immediately rushes to his side to keep him from collapsing onto the floor. As she is helping him to the seat she’d only just vacated, her neighbor Alan walks into the room with Violet and Danny in tow. Violet runs to find a different doctor to take care of the first, and Danny grabs the cup of water meant for his father and tilts it so that the liquid trickle past Dr. Grumsfield’s suddenly cracked lips.

It all happens very fast after that.

To be continued...

“Please, don’t touch me. Move your hand”, yelling at my grandmaa who was sleeping beside me, I woke up.

It was her daily habit to touch me past midnight, though I don’t know whether she did that to check my presence or the other soul in her wanted me to feel his presence.

The days were just like the normal ones, routine works etc with no feeling of a stranger’s presence besides me.

Since, my childhood I was being told that my grandmaa’s soul is possessed by a man’s soul. The man’s soul entered my grandmaa’s soul when she was 10 years old and till date it resides in her body.

And sleeping with her since my pre schooling time, I never felt this story to be a truth. But, as i grew up. I would find myself haunted with the presence of the ghosts and evil souls in my dreams everyday. It got hard to sleep soundly;so i started reading books and when I was damn tired that I couldn’t afford blinking of eye, I went to sleep.

And, when I was in a deep sleep, suddenly I used to feel a touch.A touch which could even make a coma patient alive.

I was so scared to open my eyes as the story of the other soul which had got vivid deep in my thoughts, would start replaying. So with close eyes, I moved my grandmaa’s hand aside by yelling. Because when I yelled at her, I felt like she was back to her body.

Somedays, I could sense an inappropriate touch past midnight. But the moment I yelled, it was back to normal. My grandmaa would get back to her senses.

Everynight, I felt something stange, a few days my grandmaa would cry in agony and other days, i woul be haunted with the presence of souls in my dreams, each and everyone with their high level of scary faces and actions. Trust me, there is no evilness like the evil faces I meet in my dreams.

No one other than me experienced these activities, even if they did sleep with my grandmaa for a nite or two.

The days when I would be out for a vaction or a trip away from my grandmaa, I never felt that strange activities except the feeling of someone calling me to be with them.

It went on, the days passed and then the years, everytime I ignored it with some psychological concepts.

It took me 25years to realise the truth of that paranormal activities around me. The strange feelings of being called upon.... The evils in my dreams...

It was that day, the day that breaked all my psychological concepts, I experienced something which I couldn’t gulp till date.

Sorry, I mean Night.. Just thinking about that night makes me feel goosebumps..

 A cold chill passes down the spine whenever I hear a name ‘ghost’.

“It was a usual night just like daily, I was trying hard to fall asleep when suddenly I felt a touch with a voice..... And that was...............”

-- continued in the next part

Jemima rubbed her forhead. It ached just above her left eye but she couldn’t understand what the cause of the pain was. Last thing she remembered, she was sitting at her bus stop after finishing her shift at the diner. It was the late shift again. She hated the late shift. The diner always seem to bring in the creepy crawlies, you know, folks who just gave off a vibe that made you feel you needed to put your guard up. She waited on a woman that made her feel that way tonight, but more so than usual. She wore medical scrubs, had her curly brown hair twisted up in a clip, but over the course of the day, her hair had loosened into tendrils around her oval face, turns out she had a lot of grey. She wore glasses across a freckled nose and tired, sullen eyes, dark circles draped beneath them. Jemima thought she looked as though she’d been crying all her life. She looked to be around 45 or 50 years of age. Something about the woman made Jemima feel sorry for her, but she’s so dangerous. Why does she seem so dangerous? Her badge read that she was a Plastic Surgeon at the local hospital.

"What the heck is a Plastic Surgeon hanging around this late at night?" Jemima wondered. "Are they on call like Obstetricians? "

Oh well, it didn’t matter to her enough to ask. She didn’t want to think too much about the woman. She’d look over at the doctor sitting alone in her booth, she’d be careful to look through the corner of her eye, and everytime she did, the doctor would be staring at her. Just blatantly staring with a small smirk on her tired face. Jemima sighed and looked at the clock. 3am. Time to clock out and go home. Thank God. Jemima walked over to the doctor to giver her her check.

“Here you go. Take care.” she slid the check across the table to the doctor. The doctor reached her hand up and grazed Jemima’s fingers with her own. Jemima was startled by the touch and looked at the doctor with wide eyes. She was rubbing her fingers against her thumb as if she touched something viscous.

“Cold hands...but a warm heart, I’m sure.” A look of mischief washed across the doctor’s face.

“Oh...yeah.” Jemima laughed uncomfortably. She turned quickly and walked to the kitchen, grabbed her belongings, clocked out, and headed to the bus stop. She sat down and took out her phone to text her mother, let her know she was on her way home. A sharp pain penetrated her kneck, like a wasp sting, then Jemima saw the syringe fall on to her lap and a hand clapped over her mouth. She recognized the touch. It was the doctor. Jemima felt in her bag for her mase, but blacked out.

She wasn’t alone sitting in the waiting room. Other girls of Jemimas age sat in the waiting room of the office of Doctor Wanda Brently, Plastic Surgeon, or at least that’s what the placard read on the door. Jemima noticed a picture of the doctor with her arm around a young girl who looked as though she and Jemima could be sisters, twins even. The other girls in the waiting room did too. One girl had the picture girls hair, another her lips, the other her eyes, and the last girl her exact skin tone. There were pictures of the young girl all over the room, actually.

"Is that her daughter?"Jemima thought.

Jemima got up from the chair to make a run for it, but fell just as soon as she did. Her ankles were chained and bound to the floor, just like the other girls.

Just as Jemima sat back down in her chair, a nurse opened the door to another section of the office and walked out. As she did, she put reading glasses on her wrinkled nose. She wore her curly gray hair in a clip just like the doctor and even had the same facial features. If she were a betting woman, Jemima would win big. She was the doctor's mother. The woman carefully read the name tags stuck to the girls shirts.

“Skin, there you are. Come with me, dear. We’ll get you put all back together.” the old woman unlocked the chains from the girls ankles and escorted her toward the back section of the office.

Jemima looked down at her name tag that read “heart.” And wait, what did she mean “put back together.”?

The girl with the skin looked back at the other girls, fear in her eyes and courage too. She looked at the older woman, then twisted loose from her grip. She ran toward the door, but fell dead once the woman put a bullet in her skull.

Everyone screamed.

The girl with the name tag “hair” vomited. Jemima watched in shock as the old woman placed her 22 back in her pocket, grabbed Skin’s ankle, and drug her to the back section of the office; blood trailing behind.

“Beautiful, bold, but dumb as a box of rocks. Don’t worry dear, we’ll get you put all back together.”

Clouded, like the sun from underwater.

Only this room is dark.

I hold my hand up to the cool, shining surface and wipe.

The dust lifts into the hazy air.

I see it fall through the muted light, fighting its way through the shadows.

My fingers find the sharp edge, and I slice through to wetness.

Glittering, gliding, ebbing.

Scarlet and silver playing in moonlight.

I know a secret.

You keep it locked inside of you.

Your heart’s out here in the open, but there is one part that you keep well hidden.

There is an explosive light.

I may be fiery reds, pinks, and blues, but you are surely rose skies and rivers of champagne.

I wear that fire on the outside.

But you have a fire there too.

Stronger than any that rages from my broken insides.

You have a pale yellow outlined in a burning, bright gold.

A warmth of protection.

Hidden deep inside you.

It’s enveloped me.

And I swim in your liquid sun.