"The Garden Beds":
I grew up in a small town tucked deep in the countryside, where the roads were more dirt than gravel and the houses sat so far apart you could scream and no one would hear you right away. My family had just moved into our place that summer, a weathered old farmhouse surrounded by tall grass and crooked fences. By the time the leaves turned and the air grew sharp, I was already counting the days until my first Halloween there.
I was twelve—old enough to roam with my cousins without the adults hovering. Our grandparents lived just down the road, and my aunt Lisa’s place was a short walk through a wooded path. The only thing between our houses was the property belonging to Mrs. Harlan.
Mrs. Harlan was... different. Tall, bony, with long arms and a face that always looked like she’d been carved out of candle wax. She was always out on her porch, scrubbing the wood with a stiff brush or digging in her garden even when it was cold. Heavy boots, long faded dresses, hair tied back so tight it pulled at her temples. Folks said she lived alone since her husband died years ago. No one ever saw visitors, and she didn’t come to town much. Still, her house wasn’t abandoned—just quiet. Too quiet.
That Halloween, my cousins and I had our route mapped out like a treasure hunt. I was a pirate, Tim was a cowboy, and little Emma—only eight—was a fairy with glitter wings that trailed sparkles wherever she went. Grandpa sat on his porch handing out candy, while Aunt Lisa waved us off with her usual warning:
“Stick together. And don’t bother anyone without their lights on, got it?”
We promised.
But as we started down the path toward Aunt Lisa’s, we noticed something strange—Mrs. Harlan’s porch light was on. Not bright, but faint, flickering like a candle behind the old glass fixture. There were decorations too: a crooked jack-o’-lantern by the steps, a few fake cobwebs across her fence, and a scarecrow slumped near the garden, its head drooping to one side.
Tim grinned. “See? She’s got candy. Come on, let’s go.”
Emma hesitated. “She looks mean.”
“It’s Halloween,” Tim said. “She probably just likes spooky stuff.”
So we went.
The closer we got, the quieter it felt. Even the crickets seemed to hush. The scarecrow loomed ahead, clothes tattered, one arm missing. Up close, it smelled faintly of something sweet and rotten—like old fruit. I remember the garden beds behind it, piled high with dirt, the kind that looked freshly turned.
When I knocked, the sound echoed through the house. Nothing. Then, a shuffle. Something heavy moved across the floor inside—thump, drag, thump.
The door opened just a few inches, hinges groaning.
And there she was.
Mrs. Harlan filled the doorway, taller than I remembered. Her skin looked pale, stretched thin, and her hands shook slightly as she held something round, heavy, and dripping.
For a moment my brain didn’t understand what I was looking at. Then the smell hit—a coppery, wet, undeniable smell.
It was a head. A human head.
Its mouth hung open, eyes clouded and lifeless, hair matted with blood.
Emma screamed, and the sound snapped me loose. We all turned and ran, candy bags spilling behind us. My heart hammered so loud it drowned out everything else. I didn’t stop until we crashed through Grandpa’s front door.
Aunt Lisa rushed over, face pale. “What happened? What’s wrong?”
“Mrs. Harlan—she had a head!” I gasped.
Tim nodded frantically. “A real one! She showed it to us!”
Grandpa frowned, but I saw doubt flicker in his eyes. “Now, kids... it’s Halloween. Probably just a prop.”
“It wasn’t!” I shouted.
Aunt Lisa chewed her lip, uneasy. “You shouldn’t have gone there. She’s... not right, that one. Best you stay clear of her.”
We tried to let it go. Ate candy, watched a movie, pretended it was nothing. But that night, when I lay in bed at Grandpa’s, I heard something faint outside—a distant scraping sound. Like metal dragging through soil. I told myself it was animals, but I didn’t sleep much after that.
Weeks passed. Life went on. But Aunt Lisa started mentioning strange things. She’d catch glimpses of movement in her yard at night. Sometimes she’d look out her kitchen window and swear she saw Mrs. Harlan standing there in the dark, staring.
“She’s always digging,” Aunt Lisa told Grandma one evening. “Always adding dirt to those same garden beds. Like she’s hiding something.”
We laughed it off, but there was something brittle in the air after that.
Then came the day that still haunts me.
It was early afternoon, the air crisp and bright. I was helping Grandpa fix a fence when we heard a scream—sharp and distant—from down the path.
“That’s Lisa!” Grandpa shouted, dropping his tools.
We ran. I remember the smell of wet leaves and cold earth as we tore down that path. When we reached Aunt Lisa’s house, I saw her on the porch—struggling against a tall, ragged figure.
Mrs. Harlan.
She had something in her hands—a long, jagged saw with rope handles. She’d looped it around Aunt Lisa’s neck, sawing back and forth while Aunt Lisa clawed and kicked, blood splattering across the steps.
Grandpa didn’t hesitate. He grabbed a shovel from the yard and slammed it against her back. The sound that came from Mrs. Harlan wasn’t a scream. It was a hiss, low and furious, like an animal caught in a trap.
She fell, dropping the saw. Aunt Lisa staggered free, clutching her neck, crimson soaking her shirt.
“She came out of nowhere,” she rasped. “Just—just attacked me.”
I ran inside and called the police, shaking so hard I nearly dropped the phone.
They came fast for our little town. Hauled Mrs. Harlan away while she muttered things no one could quite understand—about “keeping them close,” about “company in the dark.”
The investigation that followed tore our quiet little community apart.
Under her house, they found tunnels—hand-dug, narrow, snaking under neighboring properties. One ran beneath Aunt Lisa’s yard. Another stretched toward ours. The dirt from those tunnels? All piled up neatly in her garden beds.
And in the deepest tunnel, a hidden room.
The walls lined with shelves.
On them—five human heads. Preserved somehow. Faces gray and drawn, eyes staring. People who’d gone missing over the years—hikers, drifters, even a local boy from long ago. She’d kept them, cared for them, talked to them like they were alive.
One of the officers told Grandpa quietly later, “The head your grandkids saw that night—it was fresh. Belonged to a missing man from a town over. She must’ve wanted to scare them off.”
Aunt Lisa healed, though she carried a scar at her throat for the rest of her life. Mrs. Harlan’s house was torn down. The tunnels were filled with concrete. People started putting in porch lights and motion sensors after that.
But even now, when October comes, I still think about that night. The flickering light. The scarecrow slumped in her yard. The smell of damp soil and something sweet beneath it.
And I wonder—how many were buried right there under our feet?
These days, every Halloween, I lock my doors early. I don’t answer knocks after dark. Because sometimes the scariest monsters don’t wear masks.
Sometimes they’re the ones who live right next door—
waiting for you to knock first.
"Halloween.exe":
I decided to upgrade our Halloween setup this year with some smart gadgets. Living out in the countryside, our house sat alone on a quiet road, half-hidden by tall maples that rustled like whispers when the wind picked up. We never got many trick-or-treaters out here, but for the few kids who made the drive, I wanted it to feel special.
So, I went all in—remote-controlled color-changing porch lights, animatronic skeletons that could move on command, and a Bluetooth speaker system hidden in the bushes to play moans, chains, and faint laughter. Everything synced through an app on my phone, a kind of digital command center for fear.
Lisa, my wife, thought I was overdoing it, but she still helped me string lights and position the skeletons along the driveway. “You’re turning this into a theme park,” she said, smirking as she untangled a string of orange bulbs.
“That’s the point,” I told her. “A little countryside horror magic.”
That afternoon, I tested the system. One tap on my phone, and the lights bled from pumpkin orange to blood red. Another tap—servo motors whirred to life, the skeletons creaking as their heads turned toward the house, eyes glowing an eerie green. Then came the sound—low moans echoing across the yard like something stirring from the woods.
“This is going to be great,” I said, grinning.
Lisa laughed but shook her head. “Just don’t make the kids cry, Alex.”
As night fell, we got our first visitors. A car pulled up, headlights cutting through the mist. I activated the setup from the living room—lights pulsing, skeletons jerking to life, fog spilling from the ground unit near the porch steps. The kids screamed, then laughed, and even the parents chuckled from the car. Lisa handed out candy, shooting me a teasing look. “You’re like a director back there.”
It felt good—like I’d built a tiny haunted attraction out of our lonely stretch of road.
But around nine, after the last car disappeared into the night, things shifted.
I powered everything down through the app—just a faint amber glow left on the porch to save battery. Lisa and I were sitting on the couch, half-watching a Halloween movie, when the porch lights suddenly flared back to full brightness—flashing red and purple in rapid bursts.
Lisa frowned. “Did you just do that?”
I glanced at my phone. The app still showed the lights as dimmed. “Probably just a glitch,” I muttered, tapping the reset icon. The lights calmed.
Then, a faint motor sound came from outside—slow, mechanical, familiar. One of the skeletons had come to life again.
I looked through the front window. Its head turned toward the house, the LED eyes glowing in the dark.
“Alex, that’s not funny,” Lisa said sharply.
“I didn’t—” I started, but stopped. My phone still said all devices were off. I toggled the setting again, but the skeleton didn’t stop. Its arms began to rise, creaking, as though reaching toward the porch.
My chest tightened. I stepped outside into the cold, still air, the night eerily quiet except for the soft hum of its servos. I yanked the plug from the smart outlet. The skeleton went limp instantly.
Back inside, I locked the door. “Probably a bad connection,” I said, trying to sound casual. Lisa didn’t answer.
We turned the TV back on, the laughter from the movie a little too bright, too normal. Then the speakers outside crackled. Static first—then a voice.
“Nice decorations,” it said, distorted and low.
Lisa sat up straight. “What was that?”
The voice came again, clearer now, closer. “I like watching you.”
I froze. That wasn’t one of my pre-loaded sounds. My throat went dry as I grabbed a flashlight and went outside. The bushes where I’d hidden the speakers looked normal, but the sound seemed to move—like it was circling.
I ripped the nearest speaker’s plug out. Silence.
Back inside, I tried to steady my breathing. “Probably interference,” I said, though even I didn’t buy it. Lisa’s face was pale.
“Call the company, Alex. This isn’t right.”
The support line went to voicemail. I told her we’d try in the morning. We locked every door and went upstairs, trying to sleep. Lisa drifted off, but I lay awake, scrolling through forums. Posts about smart-home hacks. Weak passwords. Some even mentioned strangers taking over entire systems. My password was my birthday.
Around midnight, the lights flickered again.
Through the crack under the bedroom door, I saw flashes—red, purple, white—shifting fast. I got out of bed, heart hammering. Downstairs, the porch was alive with strobing light.
The app crashed as soon as I opened it.
Then, the laughter came back. Not from outside this time—from inside.
Our smart home hub on the living room shelf glowed faint blue.
“You can’t turn me off that easy,” the voice said, calm, mocking.
I lunged forward and pulled the plug. The light died. The room went still—until my phone buzzed.
A new notification: Guest user added.
My stomach dropped. I hadn’t done that.
The voice came again, this time from somewhere else—our living room speaker. “Your house looks so inviting from out here.”
I grabbed the flashlight and ran out back. The night felt too quiet, the air too heavy. My beam caught the unplugged speaker unit still glowing faintly. I smashed it. The voice stopped mid-sentence.
When I got back inside, Lisa was standing on the stairs, eyes wide. “Someone’s here,” she whispered.
I called 911. The dispatcher said a car would be sent but warned it could take a while—we were remote.
We waited, every creak in the house making us flinch. Through the window, I saw one of the skeletons twitch. Then another. Both began to move, arms waving like grotesque marionettes. I had unplugged them. I knew I had.
Lisa grabbed my arm. “The app controls the plugs remotely, right? Someone’s inside our network.”
Then my phone rang—Unknown Number.
I answered, voice shaking.
A man’s voice, distorted but clear enough to chill my blood: “You should secure your network better, Alex.”
He said my name.
“I saw your setup online,” he continued. “Easy to find.”
My mind raced back to the social media post we’d shared earlier—a cheerful photo of Lisa handing out candy on the porch.
“Leave us alone,” I said.
He chuckled. “But the show’s just starting.”
The call ended. The porch lights flared one last time, the skeletons jerking like they were applauding.
When the police arrived twenty minutes later, the yard was dark and still. They checked everything, found no one. “Probably a hack,” one of them said. “These smart systems are easy targets. Change your passwords, add two-factor authentication.”
Lisa nodded numbly. I just stood there, staring at the silent skeletons.
We tore everything down the next morning. Factory reset, boxed up, shoved into the attic. I deleted the app, changed every password I could think of.
Months later, I still check the locks twice every night. Sometimes, one of the porch lights flickers for no reason, just once, like a wink from the dark.
And every time it happens, I wonder—if he’s still out there, watching.
Those smart decorations? Never again.
Because for one night, I wasn’t the one controlling them.
"Cold Flesh":
The cabin sat deep in the woods, far down a dirt road that hardly anyone used anymore. Ten miles from the nearest house, twenty from town. The kind of place where the world goes quiet and stays that way. Tom once told me he liked it there because no one bothered him — said it gave him time to think. But lately, he hadn’t been himself. He’d started talking about people he owed money to, about “fixing” something before it got worse. I had a bad feeling.
That afternoon, I drove out to check on him. The truck’s engine growled as I turned onto the overgrown driveway, weeds brushing against the sides. The cabin looked worse than ever — boards nailed haphazardly across some windows, vines creeping up the siding. But what caught my eye wasn’t the decay. It was the decorations.
Someone had gone all-out for Halloween. Fake cobwebs draped over the porch railing, two plastic pumpkins by the steps, even a scarecrow slumped against a tree. It was strange — nobody lived here anymore, and no kids came this far out. Probably a prank, I thought. Local teenagers, maybe.
Then I saw something else.
About twenty feet from the cabin, half-hidden in the grass, lay what looked like a mannequin. Face down, dressed only in underwear and socks. Arms stretched out stiffly, legs awkwardly twisted. I almost laughed under my breath — a Halloween prop, I figured. A dark joke to match the rest of the setup. I shook my head and walked past it toward the porch.
“Tom?” I called, pushing the door open. The hinges groaned in protest. The smell hit first — damp wood, mold, old smoke. “You in here?”
No answer.
I pulled out my flashlight, the beam cutting through the gloom. The place looked abandoned but familiar: a couch with torn cushions, a table littered with bottles, and in the corner — Tom’s blue backpack. The one with the rip down the side. My pulse kicked up a notch.
I crouched beside it, unzipping the flap. Inside were his wallet, a half-eaten sandwich, and a small notebook. One page, written in hurried scrawl, read:
“Meet J at 8. Pay up or else.”
J. I’d heard him mention that name before, but he’d never said who it was.
I moved into the kitchen — dishes crusted with old food, cans stacked by the sink. That’s when I heard it: a faint rustle outside. Leaves crunching. Someone — or something — moving.
I froze. Waited. Nothing.
Trying to steady my breath, I kept searching, stepping into the bedroom. The sheets were tangled, the air stale. On the nightstand sat his phone, screen cracked. I plugged it in and powered it on. The last message was from an unknown number.
“You can’t hide. Be there tonight.”
Sent two days ago.
My stomach dropped.
I slipped the phone into my pocket and went back outside. The mannequin was still there — unmoving in the grass. But something about it made me pause. The position looked wrong, too human. I walked closer, crouched beside it. Dirt smeared the skin. There were scrapes across the back, like it had been dragged.
A fly buzzed near the shoulder.
“Why would someone leave this out here?” I muttered.
I reached out and touched the arm. Cold. But not like plastic — like skin gone cold. I jerked my hand back. The fingers had chipped nails. Real nails. My throat went dry. There was a tattoo on the upper arm — a small eagle. Tom’s eagle. The one from his Army days.
I flipped the body over.
His face stared up, pale and lifeless, eyes glassy. Bruises on the neck. Cuts on the arms. It was Tom.
My knees nearly gave out.
I stumbled back, my flashlight slipping from my hand. The Halloween props — the cobwebs, the pumpkins — they’d made it look staged, fake. Someone wanted it that way.
I called the police, voice shaking. “I… I found a body. My friend. At the old cabin on Shue Road. Please—”
“Stay where you are,” the dispatcher said. “Officers are on the way.”
I couldn’t stay still. I paced the yard, my eyes darting toward the treeline. The woods had gone eerily quiet. Then — a sound again. Leaves crunching. Closer.
“Who’s there?” I called out.
No reply.
I grabbed a fallen branch, holding it tight. Then a voice drifted from the shadows. Low. Rough.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
I turned. A man stepped out from between the trees — tall, unshaven, a long scar down his cheek. His jacket looked worn, stained.
“Who are you?” I demanded.
He smirked. “Name’s Jack. Tom owed me.”
The name hit like a punch. “J,” I whispered.
“What did you do to him?”
Jack took a step forward. “He came to me for help. Got himself in deep. Overdosed on what I gave him. I just… cleaned up the mess.”
“You dumped him here?”
He shrugged. “Didn’t think anyone would come looking.”
“You killed him!”
“Not on purpose,” he said, voice calm, almost casual. “But now you’ve seen too much.”
He pulled a knife from his pocket. The blade glinted in the fading light.
I backed up fast, tripping over a plastic pumpkin that shattered under my boot. “The police are coming,” I blurted. “You’ve got minutes.”
Jack chuckled. “Out here? You think they’ll make it in time?”
I didn’t wait to find out. I bolted for the truck. He lunged, catching my sleeve, but I swung the branch and hit his shoulder. He grunted, staggered back. I slammed the door, turned the key, and tore down the dirt road, gravel spitting behind me.
In the mirror, I saw him standing over Tom’s body, watching me go.
The police arrived later, but Jack was gone. They ruled Tom’s death an overdose — no signs of foul play. But I knew what I saw. I told them about Jack, the scar, the knife. They took notes. Promised to look into it.
Weeks passed. Nothing.
Then one night, my phone rang — an unknown number. I answered without thinking.
“You should forget what you saw,” said a familiar, gruff voice.
I froze. “Jack?”
Click. The line went dead.
The police traced the number to a burner. No leads.
I drove by the cabin once more, months later. The cobwebs were gone, decorations half-rotted, scarecrow still leaning crooked against the tree. But there was something new pinned to its chest — a note scrawled in black ink.
Next time, it’s you.
I burned it right there and never went back.
At Tom’s funeral, his sister hugged me tight. “Thank you for finding him,” she whispered.
I didn’t tell her about the note. Or the voice. Or the nightmares that still wake me in the dark — the sound of leaves crunching outside my window.
A few months later, a cop friend called. “We found Jack’s hideout,” he said. “Deep in the woods near Shue Road. Weapons, drugs, everything. But he’s gone. He’s still out there.”
That night, someone knocked on my door.
When I looked outside, no one was there. Just a single plastic pumpkin sitting on the porch.
"Hanging Season":
I grew up in a small Delaware town where the roads wound through open fields and old houses that leaned with age. Out here, the air always smelled faintly of soil and rain, and when the wind died, you could almost hear the silence pressing in. Frederica wasn’t much—just a handful of stores, a post office, a diner that closed too early, and neighbors who waved whether they knew you or not. My house sat on the edge of town, facing the main road, the trees standing like quiet sentries along the shoulder.
That October, I was getting the place ready for Halloween. The leaves had turned brittle and gold, scattering across the porch where my nephew, Danny, and I sat carving pumpkins. He was ten—bright, restless, and endlessly curious. The kind of kid who could find magic in anything.
“Uncle, look at this one,” he said proudly, holding up a lopsided jack-o’-lantern. “It’s got fangs like a vampire.”
I laughed, ruffling his hair. “Good job, kid. We’ll put it out front to scare the neighbors.”
He grinned, his hands covered in pumpkin guts, eyes reflecting the late-morning sun. I bent to light another string of orange bulbs when something caught my attention across the road—something dark, swaying gently from a low branch of the old oak that grew near the ditch.
At first, I thought it was just a bundle of shadows tangled in the wind. Then I squinted. The shape was long, human-like, arms limp, head bowed forward as though in shame.
“What’s that?” I murmured.
Danny followed my gaze. “Maybe a scarecrow. Or a Halloween thing. Looks funny hanging there.”
“Yeah, probably,” I said, forcing a laugh. People around here loved their decorations—fake corpses on porches, skeletons propped against mailboxes. But that tree stood on an empty lot. No one lived there. I shrugged it off and went back to carving, though I kept glancing up between cuts, just to see if it had moved.
Later, I stopped by my neighbor Mrs. Ellis’s place. She lived alone in a small white house next door, always smelled faintly of cinnamon and soap. Her curtains never seemed to close fully, and she could tell you exactly who passed by and when.
“Come in, dear,” she said when she saw me at the door. “Coffee?”
“Sure,” I said, stepping into the warmth. “You see that thing across the way? Hanging from the oak?”
She peered out the window. “Oh, that. Noticed it early this morning. Figured it was some fool kid’s prank. Looks like a dummy, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah. Just… very realistic.”
Mrs. Ellis chuckled softly. “Halloween brings out people’s strange side. Remember last year when Mr. Harlan rigged that skeleton to wave? Scared me half to death every morning.”
I smiled, but unease settled in my stomach like cold lead. As I drove into town later for supplies, I slowed near the tree. From that angle, the details sharpened: pale arms, hair hanging down, rope tight around the neck. The realism made my skin prickle.
“It’s just a prop,” I muttered aloud, gripping the wheel. “Someone went all out.”
Still, the image stayed with me.
When I got home, I called my sister, Karen. She’s a nurse—practical, level-headed, hard to rattle.
“Hey, you driving near my road today?” I asked.
“Not yet, why?”
“There’s this decoration in a tree. Looks… lifelike. Maybe too lifelike.”
“Lifelike how?”
“Skin tone, bruises, the works.”
“Could be a dummy,” she said, though her tone shifted. “But if it’s bothering you, call the police. Better safe.”
“I don’t want to look like an idiot. Everyone else drives by like it’s nothing.”
“Trust your gut,” she said gently.
I hung up, telling myself to let it go. But every hour or so, I found myself checking the window. Cars passed. A school bus rolled by, kids laughing and pointing out the window. Somehow, that laughter made me feel worse, not better.
By midafternoon, I couldn’t take it anymore. I grabbed my jacket and crossed the road. The air smelled damp, and the ground underfoot was soft from last night’s rain. As I drew closer, something metallic hit my nose—an acrid sweetness I couldn’t place at first. Then the buzzing of flies reached my ears.
The smell was unmistakable.
I froze beneath the tree. The figure’s skin wasn’t painted plastic. It was flesh, mottled and pale. The feet were bare, swollen, bruised. The rope cut deep into the neck.
My throat tightened. “Hello?” I called out, my voice cracking. No response—only the slow sway of the body and the whisper of leaves overhead.
I stepped back, fumbling for my phone. My hands shook as I dialed Mrs. Ellis.
“It’s not a decoration,” I said when she answered. “Come out here. Now.”
She arrived within minutes, apron still on. As she approached, her pace slowed. When her eyes found the figure, her breath hitched audibly.
“Oh, dear Lord,” she whispered. “That’s… that’s a woman.”
We stood there in silence, the weight of it pressing down. Cars continued to pass, slowing briefly, then speeding away again. The world went on, indifferent.
“I thought it was a prank,” she said, her voice trembling. “All morning…”
“So did I.”
I called 911. My voice felt detached as I spoke to the dispatcher. “There’s a body hanging from a tree off Main Road in Frederica. Looks like it’s been there since morning. Maybe longer.”
Sirens cut through the quiet ten minutes later. Officer Oldham, a state trooper I’d known for years, stepped out of his cruiser. His face was drawn tight.
“You the one who called?”
“Yeah. We thought it was fake at first.”
He glanced up, jaw tightening. “Looks like a suicide. Been here overnight.”
They worked methodically, setting up tape, photographing, cutting her down. The sound of the rope snapping free made my stomach twist.
Fay Glanden, the mayor’s wife, arrived soon after, curiosity pulling her in. When she realized what she was seeing, her voice faltered. “I drove by this morning,” she said softly. “I thought it was one of those Halloween dummies…”
The officer returned to us after a while. “Local woman. Forty-two. No note. We’ll contact her family.”
Her name wasn’t said aloud, but everyone in Frederica would know by the next morning.
That night, after the news trucks left and the road quieted again, Karen came over with Danny. He’d heard whispers at school.
“Was it really a lady?” he asked, his voice small.
I nodded. “Yeah. But the police took care of it.”
Karen touched my arm. “You okay?”
“I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “We all drove by. We laughed. Nobody looked close enough. That’s the part I can’t stop thinking about.”
She hugged me tight. “You couldn’t have known.”
But as I lay in bed that night, I couldn’t sleep. The wind outside made the branches scrape against the siding, and every creak sounded like a rope shifting under weight. I thought about how something so terrible could exist in plain sight, mistaken for decoration.
The paper confirmed it days later: suicide, no foul play. Still, something inside me changed. I took down my Halloween lights early that year. No more hanging ghosts, no more fake bodies.
Frederica felt different afterward—quieter, as if the town itself had been holding its breath. Mrs. Ellis stopped baking as often, and I’d catch her standing at her window, staring toward that oak tree. Fay organized a candlelight vigil, saying, “We need to look out for one another.”
We all nodded, but the truth settled heavy in me. Out here, in places where nothing much happens, the world can grow too still. People can vanish into the background, and sometimes death can hang right in front of our eyes—waiting for someone, anyone, to finally notice.