Category: Haunted Passages

John-Michael Bloomquist: Four Father Nescio Poems for Haunted Passages

Father Nescio and the God Pill—after Carl Sagan When the machines grew all our foodand drink, there was no need to workor study. We lived like passengersin a self-driving car traveling without adestination. When Christ, grieved over ourrestlessness, came back into our lives,she gave us Theophorin, a gel capsule of slicknanotech-spiders that wove us into…
Su Nadeau: “Juniper,” a short story for Haunted Passages

The twelve-thirteen train derailed on Tuesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. It was the only one that passed through this way. This meant Lupon and Wren devoted their time to clearing the wreckage so each train had the opportunity to wreck on its own. A quarter after noon on Saturday the train was heard before it was…
Amanda Chiado: “A Pretty Girl’s Hair,” a short story for Haunted Passages

“Where’s mama?” Bobby asks. “She went to the moon,” Dad says. He sucks hard on a Marlboro. Most of the smoke escapes out the window. I think of Mom drifting in a silvery spacesuit toward the strange botched face of the white orb. We three stare out the windows. Journey is Believing on a half-static…
Aaron Teel: “The Quality of Mercy,” a short story for Haunted Passages

When I was boy no older than you, but taller of course, and squarer of jaw, I came by moonlight on a fortune teller’s wagon parked alongside a smallish river or creek, stopped short of ascending the three wooden steps that led to the wagon’s candlelit window, and eyed its proprietor where she sat weaving…
“Our Mutual Friend”: A Short Story for Haunted Passages by Stephen Langlois

My daughter Arabelle, she was the first to hear them. They woke her Thursday night before last, tapping on her window. Maybe not tapping so much as clinking. I heard the same sound since. Right here in the kitchen and elsewhere, too. A quick, sharp, hollow sorta sound. The sound of digits what ain’t designed…
Haunted Passages: “Business Travelers,” a short story by Bernard Reed

Foster was in town again. We took a cab together and had a late lunch in an empty little restaurant, after meeting in the lobby of the La— Hotel when my shift there was over. It was his second visit that month. He was staying in a hotel called the Gw—, a swanky new one…
Haunted Passages: “Dear Becca,” a short story by Kate St. Germain

Dear Becca, I’ve wanted to write you for a long time. But on the last episode, GO FOR IT, you told us to go for what we want. So that’s what I’ll do. My grandma died almost 2 months ago. I had been taking care of her, actually I never moved out of our house.…
Emma Aylor: “Ossuary,” a poem for Haunted Passages

On the farm, our border collie lab killedsmall animals. I’d tell people they died from Joy. Once a groundhogjust next to its burrow, head open to skimmed winter sky and the pinkof its brain blurred and scraped at the edges; twice our hens, bodies stretchedin the cage corner, eyelids purpled and closed. Some she could…
Meagan Masterman: “The River Runs Red in Spring,” a Haunted Passages short story

The red in the river wasn’t blood, at first. It was iron. Just sediment eroded from mountain rocks that oxidized in the river long before its waters washed down to us. We lived in a small town that existed because of the river. Our forebears had floated logs down it to be hacked into boards…