K. Marvin Bruce

  It wasn’t Lindsey.   Instinctively he darted behind a tree and held his breath.   He heard footsteps but saw no one.   Thoughts of Billy returned.   The boy had been convinced the ghosts were calling him.   When Terah had got him on the trail back to their tent he boy stood panicked, flashing his light into the treetops.   “The voices,” he cried, “they’re coming after me!”   Although it’d been summer, Terah shivered. “Billy, you’ve got to believe me!   There are no voices!”   He’d had some psychology at college, but nothing had prepared him for this.   Indeed, his religious classes hadn’t exactly convinced him that his faith was wrong, but he’d come to doubt the supernatural.   Science courses found a mechanistic universe much easier to comprehend.   Could Billy really be seeing ghosts?   The way he darted his flashlight beam around was creepy, unsettling. Now Terah found himself in the woods on a sunny January day....

  Terah woke up.   He didn’t remember falling asleep.   When he looked over at the hammock, it was empty.   The fire was dead.   At his age he had to piss with an apocalyptic urgency, but he knew he couldn’t do it here without offending Mich.   He knew the trail to the “bathroom” but he had no light.   Then he remembered the lighter. Never a smoker, Terah had always envied his step-dad’s lighter.   Fire on demand.   When he’d found a Zippo, scared and battered, at All Saints—they’d probably used it to light their candlelighters—he’d pocketed it.   He’d always considered it for starting fires, but where there was flame, there was light.   He fumbled in his pack until he found it.   Flip, zip!   Let there be light!   He walked as quickly as he could, his left hand squeezing his penis, until he found the place.   His zipper was already down and he was out and jetting a stream of relief into the pit.   He couldn...

The ghost story, as we know it, was originally associated more with Christmas than Halloween.  That makes sense, since the solstice is darker than the equinox.  Both days stand as transitions—Halloween is the beginning of the darkness, and Christmas is midnight. If you’re like me you may have comfy memories of childhood holidays.  That snug and warm feeling of being at home, well-stocked with food against the cold outside.  The hope of presents and a day of not worrying about the realities outside. Nightmares, however, know no holidays.  I awake in the dark and the light is but a mere sliver of the day.  Long before dinnertime the sun has set again.  Breakfast and supper are in the dark.  Is it any wonder the ghosts linger around the Christmas tree? My first published story, now on a defunct website, was the 2009 winner of the prix d’écriture de Noël in Fiction in Danse Macabre .  A scary Christmas story?  This was what gave...

A friend who is also a writer sent me a story to read.  It is a rare and distinct pleasure to read what other unknown writers write.  I wasn’t sure what to expect, but his story, as always, captivated me with secrets he wasn’t telling.  He writes well. My friend studied mythology in college.  His stories draw from the characters of the Classics.  This isn’t a bad place to look for ideas.  I sometimes use the Bible for the same purposes.  The old stories never seem to wear out. Another friend, this one assures me he is no writer, sends me a story every year.  He writes ghost stories for his nieces and nephews and he includes me because I ask him to.  His stories are uncanny, but they don’t scare.   Both friends write stories with cars.  I stopped to think about this.  Cars have created their own little microcosm where stories play out.  One of my published stories, “Fashion Wear for Gentlemen” takes place mostl...

I recently read a novel which, because I like only to say kind things of authors, I shall not name.  Suffice it to say that the author had written two successful novels before and I hoped for a mood to match the season in this one.   It was a ghost story, so I thought I was definitely on track.  It was set in a different historical period, but that's fine by me.  Past ghosts are just as troubling as present ghosts.  The story, however, couldn't ever strike a mood.   The setting was in a time of an epidemic.  As well as war.  But the optimism—can I even call it that?—of the narrator seemed not to allow for what Edgar Allan Poe once said was essential for stories: the "single effect."  It was a story scattered all over the place.   Perhaps most jarring to me was the use of language that seemed inappropriate to the time setting of the story.  Phrases that seemed modern, or lighthearted, sprang up in awkward places....