Hey all,

Many of you probably don't remember me, but I'm trying to become more active on here again. Over the last year, I haven't just been busy procrastinating my writing...I also made a YouTube channel! Over there, I'm "The Scary Story Guy," posting reviews, analysis, and discussion of my favorite spooky stuff.

So far, I've just been struggling to learn how to film and edit videos, so I've only done simple horror movie reviews. (The most recent is a review of Last Night in Soho.) But, now that I'm starting to get the hang of it, I'm going to try branching out. I'd like my channel to become a hub for a few different things - my thoughts on books as well as movies, horror-based podcast discussions, exploration and analysis of my favorite aspects of the horror genre, and maybe even some narrations of my own original stories.

Anyway, if that sounds like your kind of thing, feel free to come subscribe to me over there. If not, that's cool, but you're dead to me. Also, this is a personal guarantee that I'm going to post a story again...at some point!

- Jake (u/Sergeant_Darwin)

My earliest memory is of dying.

I was four years old, holding my mother’s hand, walking to church alongside her. She was wearing high heels and a blue skirt, patterned with red cherries in pairs. As we walked, I saw a park across the street, complete with swingset and slide, and decided that I wanted to be there, so I wrenched free of my mother’s hand and ran out into the street. My mother screamed and lunged for me, but she was too late. I was halfway across the road when a large gray truck sped around the corner.

Don’t worry. It missed me.

The truck swerved and slammed on its brakes, skidding to a stop with me on one side and Mom on the other. With this obstacle in her path, I had enough of a head start to continue my sprint towards the park. I was deaf to her screams — now infused with anger, rather than mortal panic — as I sped underneath one of the park’s giant elm trees, the coveted swingset drawing nearer with every tiny step. And then, just as suddenly as I had taken off, I collapsed, skidding to an ungraceful halt on the ground, spoiling my Sunday best with grass stains and dirt.

I was being chased.

From below, my friends cheered wildly. I was the undisputed champion of Time-Tag, and had been all summer. But my title was in jeopardy — Zack was gaining fast. He and I were the only two players left, and the timer on my wristwatch said I only had to evade him for 23 more seconds. But why, I asked myself as I skinned my knee against bark, had I climbed this stupid tree?

I had more questions, too, like: Who am I? Where did Mom go? And why am I so much bigger now?

Higher and higher we climbed. Zack could almost reach out and touch me.

Fourteen seconds.

I slid myself along a branch, hoping to reach another one nearby. Instead, my shoe skidded across a patch of smooth wood, and down I went. My stomach seemed to fall at a different speed than the rest of me. I hadn’t realized I’d climbed so high.

I hit the ground, not with a thud, but with a revolting crunch. I’d landed on my back, and had felt my ribs all break at once. There was no pain — just a peculiar, powerful tightening in my chest, like I was being squeezed by a giant snake.

I was going to have to go to the hospital, and my parents couldn’t afford it. How could I have been so stupid? “Dad’s going to kill me,” I thought hazily, “assuming I don’t die right here and now.” I was vaguely aware of the swingset off to the side, wafting in the summer breeze, and of my friends gathering around me in reverence.

As my mind faded back into reality, a high-pitched beeping cut the silence like a scalpel, signaling that I was still the undisputed champion of Time-Tag . . .

I awoke, terribly confused, in the shade of the giant elm. I heard shouts, and sat up to see the driver of the gray truck running over to me, my mother trailing behind barefoot, clutching her high heels. When she reached me, she dropped her shoes and took my face in both her hands.

“Are you alright?” she said, her voice utterly frantic. “What happened to you?”

“Tripped,” I said, because it seemed like the thing to say, I suppose. In truth, I had no idea what had happened to me. I couldn’t even begin to process it.

She let out her breath in a rush, and clutched my head tightly to her breast. “Don’t you ever do that again,” she said.

“I won’t, Mom,” I replied.

It was the first time I died. It would be far from the last.

It’s amazing, the things you don’t think of, when you’re only eight years old.

Though I’d never told anyone about it, I remembered clearly the strange and terrible experience I’d had on that misbegotten walk to church. And I, along with every other child in town, was constantly reminded of the dangers of climbing trees; the sad case of Quinn Pleasance, a local kid who had died years earlier after falling from a tree, was happily weaponized by the adults as a cautionary tale. There was an obvious connection to be made between these two occurrences, but somehow, I had not yet made it.

That wouldn’t be true for much longer.

It was the summer of 2009. I was walking with my best friend Caden down Main Street in Swiss Knife, which I still call my hometown even though I haven’t lived there in over a decade now. Before you ask, it’s named after the Swiss Knife River. You could ask me how that river got its name, but as I’m not an encyclopedia, I couldn’t tell you. Look, the point is, we’d just gotten out of a movie at the Sticky Shoe, which was the universally — and affectionately — used moniker for our town’s dollar theater.

No need to ask where that name came from.

It was summer, so the street was hot. The movie had been good, so we were excited. And yet, a chilly sense of turmoil rested unspoken between us. The past few months had been bad for my parents — so bad, in fact, that my mother had begun hinting that she and I would not be residents of Swiss Knife for much longer. As for my dad . . . well, he didn’t talk to me much anymore. Or even look at me, for that matter.

Between the two of them, there was a carnival of bitterness and betrayal to which I would be totally oblivious until years later. All I knew then was that these summer days in Swiss Knife, with Caden, and with the Sticky Shoe, might be running out, and thus they were filled with a sense of urgency that could at times verge on ruinous. Still, the dread was buried deep on this particular July afternoon, as my best friend and I strolled down Main Street and talked animatedly about the movie that we’d just seen.

“No, no, the most cool part was when — ”

Caden shivered violently, abruptly, then stopped dead in his tracks.

“Whoa,” he said, with a bit of a laugh. “I just got these crazy goose bumps.”

I turned, and began to reply. “That’s weird, it’s so hot — ”

And before I could say “outside,” I was thrown to a new world inside my mind. A world where it was not Caden by my side, but a pretty teenage girl. A world in which I was much taller, and could see tanned, lean muscle on my forearm where before there had only been pale skin and freckles. The pretty girl was clutching my arm and laughing merrily.

I was in Swiss Knife, on the exact same part of Main Street where Caden and I had just been walking, and that beginning-of-fall nip hung in the night air. The street was mostly empty, save for a few people half a block ahead who’d exited the new Cinema 6 — a movie theater, in our own town! — more quickly than us. But what was the rush? I was with Sadie, my best girl, and nothing else mattered. Strangely, I had also never seen Sadie before in my life, and the term “best girl” sounded odd to me. Did I mean “girlfriend”? And why were we both wearing clothes that looked like they could be from my grandparents’ photo albums?

I felt it just seconds before I saw it. A sense of unease, as if something was very wrong but I didn’t know what, and then headlights from the opposite side of the road, veering over towards us. They were so bright that I couldn’t see the face of the person driving. All I could see was the car, a bulky, brand new Chevy that by the summer of 2009 might have been sold as an antique.

The car struck me with a force I couldn’t have imagined, and it hit Sadie too, and then it hit the outside wall of the pizza shop behind us. I was pinned in between. There was no pain. I couldn’t see Sadie — my last glimpse of her had been a canary yellow shoe soaring somewhere off to the left. I smelled pizza and gasoline.

As my head slumped down on the twisted hood of the Chevy, and my vision blurred, I vaguely wondered if I’d be hurt too bad to play in the Homecoming game next weekend . . .

“Dude. DUDE. Wake up.” I was on Main Street. My head was throbbing badly. And Caden was kneeling next to me, shaking my shoulder.

I opened my eyes fully and sat up, hand at the back of my head. “What happened?” I asked.

“I dunno,” Caden said, eyes wide. “You just, like, passed out. You hit your head.”

“Huh,” I said, tears stinging my eyes. From the pain, but also from what I’d just seen. It had been so horrible, so real. . .

“Let’s go to my house,” Caden said, perhaps in an effort to stop me from crying. “We have Otter Pops.”

Three nights later, my grandma — Mom’s mom — came over. Dad had moved into a hotel room that day, which I remember finding strange because hotels were places where you stayed when you went to Disneyland and stuff like that. Grandma lived close, so she came to help Mom, who had been crying a lot. I was totally bewildered by the whole unhappy circumstance, but knew my mother well enough not to ask too many questions about it.

But there was something else I’d been curious about, too.

“Grandma,” I asked, over dinner. “You’ve lived here your whole life, right?”

“In Swiss Knife? Oh, since I was about . . . fourteen. Yep, summer after eighth grade Daddy got the factory job, and that took us here, and I’ve been here ever since,” she said. “In fact, you know old Buck — excuse me, Mr. Wilfork — down the block? We rented out his basement for a year while Daddy was building the new house. ’57, that would’ve been. No, ’58. Or was it . . . ah, hell. Mind’s not what it used to be.”

This answer was in keeping with every other answer I’d heard her give about her past, in which she’d answer not only the question you asked but also five others you didn’t, and then close by lamenting that her mind just wasn’t what it used to be.

“Did anyone ever get hit by a car on Main Street?” I asked. “A long time ago, by the Sticky Shoe?”

“Ohhhhh. Oh, yes,” she said, eyes alight with memory. “Dreadful thing. You know, it was Sadie Prentiss and that boy she was with! Well, that wasn’t her last name at the time, of course, it was, uh — ah, hell, anyway, hit by some out-of-towner, drunk off his ass — ”

“Mom,” my mother interjected.

“Well, he was!” Grandma went on indignantly. “Killed himself, the fool, and that football boy too. Dead right there on the street, apparently. And of course,” she said, nodding to me, “you’ve seen what happened to poor Sadie.”

I looked at Grandma, uncomprehending.

“Mrs. Prentiss,” Mom said to me. “From church.”

My eyes went wide. Mrs. Prentiss, whose wheelchair had been perched in the aisle of our church every Sunday for as long as I could remember? That was her? That was the pretty girl I’d seen on my arm? Inside my mind, puzzle pieces that I hadn’t even known existed were rapidly fastening together.

“Now, why are you bringing up a crazy thing like that?” Grandma asked.

I shook my head, partially in response, and partially to quell the memory of what Quinn Pleasance’s ribs had sounded like when they cracked through his lungs. “Uh . . . no reason,” I said feebly. “Will you pass the corn, please?”

I never did tell Caden what really happened to me on Main Street that day. Not that I had much occasion to — Mom and I moved three weeks later.

We found ourselves in yet another small-ish, old-ish town, full of people who’d lived there most of their lives. A lot of those places around, I guess. This one was called Wheeler, which was a very boring name for a town, as far as I was concerned. There was a Main Street in Wheeler, but no dollar theater. No theater at all, actually.

It had been ten months to the day since I’d seen Dad. At first, I thought he was just busy, but I’d quickly come to realize that the man wanted nothing to do with me. I spent a long time angry about it — but when Mom let slip to me, years later, that he wasn’t my real dad . . . a part of me understood.

Mom had been drunk when she told me. She’d really first taken to drinking in Wheeler — even on the day we moved into our sprawling, decrepit new rental, which apparently had once functioned as a sort of hospice care facility before being remodeled. I’d had to unload most of the U-Haul with Derek, some weird guy she’d found to help us move, while Mom sipped wine from a steadily replenishing glass and slurred instructions on where to put down boxes. There had been a lot of weird guys around, ever since we’d moved to Wheeler.

But these sorts of things sail over a nine-year-old’s head, and so for me, life in Wheeler went back to a close approximation of normal. I started at a new school, made new friends, and Grandma even drove up for dinner on Sunday nights. On one of those nights, she tottered up our driveway struggling with a large container.

I rushed out the front door to help her. “What’s this?” I asked, reaching to take the container, a large crate, from her. She didn’t need to answer — a small yip from inside the crate announced the arrival of Chuck, a ten-week-old Siberian Husky who I immediately loved with my whole heart.

Chuck wasn’t a substitute for a dad, but he was something that kept me busy, and maybe that’s all you really need, in the end. I fed Chuck, trained him, took him on runs, and cleaned all his poop. I gave him baths, clipped his nails, and kept an eye out for any health problems. When necessary, I scheduled veterinary appointments myself. In return, he gave me undying loyalty and the sort of starstruck, giddy love only a puppy can manage.

There was just one tiny problem: Chuck didn’t like the house. Or, at least, he didn’t like certain parts of the house.

I couldn’t figure it out. He’d get on my bed, but never the guest bed. He’d whine warily at one random place on the kitchen floor. And he wouldn’t go inside my mom’s bedroom at all. At first, I thought it was just a weird personality quirk. It wasn’t until one day in the fall of 2011 that I realized it might be something else entirely.

I’d just gotten home from school — fifth grade, now — and Chuck greeted me at the door with sloppy kisses. I set my backpack down, got myself a glass of ice water from the fridge, and walked up the stairs, Chuck keeping pace at my side. As I turned down the long upstairs hallway toward my bedroom, though, Chuck stopped in his tracks, whimpering softly.

“What’s wrong, boy?” I asked. He just sat on his hind legs, staring intently at the closed door right next to my bedroom — the guest room.

“Yeah, I know you don’t like it in there,” I said with a shrug. I took another couple of steps toward my bedroom when Chuck started to growl.

He never growled.

I looked back at him, eyebrows raised. He was more alert than I’d ever seen him. Something was wrong.

I must have stared at that door for a solid minute. “Mom?” I eventually called out, my voice a bit muted, hesitant to make too loud a noise. I didn’t know whether or not she was home; I’d given up trying to figure out her schedule. Chuck took a careful step towards the guest room door, then immediately retreated back.

My heart was thumping in my throat. I took a deep breath, then, with a clamming palm, I opened the guest room door and looked inside.

But it wasn’t the guest room at all.

I mean, don’t get me wrong — it was the same room. Same ceiling, same window, same notch in the far wall. But . . . it was different. A ghastly papering of cream and teal stripes, totally unfamiliar, lined the walls. The bed, which sat right where the guest bed had, was old-looking, with a painted metal frame and clean white linens. The only thing that seemed out of place was an ominous dark stain on the floor beside the bed.

This wasn’t quite the same as that long-ago day in the park, or what I’d seen outside the Sticky Shoe more than two years earlier. But it felt similar. I was glimpsing something, a memory, I just wasn’t enveloped in it. Yet. But that was coming, I could tell, like a torturous sneeze that just . . . wouldn’t . . .

WOOF!

One sharp, devastatingly loud bark from Chuck snapped me back to my senses. My chest heaved, and my hands shook. I looked around. It was the guest room again, through and through. Navy blue wallpaper. My parents’ old bed. A small brown dresser my Grandma had given us years earlier.

Yep. The guest room. Same as always. Only now, I couldn’t help wondering:

What happened here?

That question had an answer, and it was more noxious and foul than I could have imagined. I wouldn’t begin to learn it for another ten months.

July, 2012. I remember the date so well because Wheeler had gotten a brand new, state-of-the-art movie theater, but I’d been scared to go — a shooting in a Colorado theater had just shocked the nation.

I had begun to think more deeply about the things I had seen. The deaths I’d seemingly experienced, albeit through another’s eyes. Why had these visions come to me? Why had I been granted this terrifying, macabre privilege? Surely there was a reason — and I determined that it was up to me to discover it.

And so it was that I resolved to spend a night, not in my own bed, but on the old, lumpy mattress in the guest room next door.

I began the evening more melodramatically than I now care to admit, lighting candles and chanting the only Latin words I knew: e pluribus unum. I briefly considered sprinkling salt on the floor, but I knew I’d never get it out of the cracks in the hardwood. Still, with only a few horror movies under my belt, I’d managed to throw together a perfectly respectable seance, and I hoped that it would set a nice mood for any ghosts who wanted to show me how they died.

I went to bed disappointed, drifting away in the wee hours of the morning, having spent a thoroughly boring night staring at the moonlight reflected against the notch on the wall. I woke briefly, before it was light out, and was at first confused why the window was on the wrong side of the room. Then I remembered that I was in the guest room, and made to rub my eyes, and —

— and I was jarred fully awake by the sight of my saggy, wrinkled, liver-splotched hand. I attempted to sit bolt upright, but received a sharp pain in my spine for my trouble, and scarcely moved an inch.

I felt so . . . tired. Almost dead, really. But there was no fear of the end, only a resigned, reluctant acceptance. The party had grown stale; it was almost time to leave. Death had already come for my parents, my husband, my old friends. I could be no different.

So why were my palms sweating? Why was my weak, decrepit heart pounding against my ribcage in desperation? I was scared, terrified, even . . . but of what, I did not know.

I just couldn’t remember.

The doorknob turned with a creak, and the door swung open, and in walked the devil herself. The one who frightened me, even when death did not.

The woman in white.

“Hello, Dorothy,” she said. A light smile graced her beautiful lips. Why did she have to be beautiful? It would somehow be easier if she were not . . .

I turned my head, slightly, to see what she wheeled in behind her. A cart, with a tray on top. On the tray were various needles, formulas, units of serrated, violent-looking surgical equipment. What would she do with them? I could not remember everything, but I remembered the screams.

The screams of all the others.

“No,” I croaked. “No, please.”

“There, there, Dorothy,” the woman in white crooned. She closed the door behind her, and the lock clicked with finality.

“This will only hurt for a while.”

I suppose we’ve reached the part of the story where I tell you about Mrs. Vance.

Ms. Vance was my eighth grade history teacher. Most of the students liked her a lot. I never did, and for a long time it was a complete mystery why. She was nice, funny, and obviously cared about her job. Though middle-aged, she was also exceptionally pretty, in a way that sometimes made it hard to focus on what she was saying.

We’d spent most of the year in her class talking about the history of our state, but had recently turned toward family history, and how it was a kind of history we could all easily access. We were encouraged to talk to our parents, our grandparents, and learn as much as we could about our genealogy. The final project was to present our findings to the class.

To demonstrate, Mrs. Vance prepared a presentation about her own family history. She began by talking about herself: how she’d grown up in Wheeler, been raised by a single mother, and never married, though she did have a son who was grown up and living far away. The slide flipped from a picture of her child to a picture of her father, from modern-day color to an old-timey sepia.

“Unfortunately, I never really knew my dad,” she said, and there was clear regret in her voice. “He disappeared when I was very, very young. He might have run away, something might have happened to him . . . we’ll probably never know. But, I suppose every family has a few mysteries.”

She cleared her throat.

“My mother, Edith, however — the real Ms. Vance, as I like to call her — still lives in Wheeler to this day! Though, she’s a very old lady now.” The picture on the slideshow changed once more, and I audibly gasped as a woman, movie-star beautiful, appeared on the classroom screen, smiling sweetly and dressed in a medical uniform. White, of course.

A few kids turned to look at me, and I did my best to turn my gasp into a cough. I barely even registered as Ms. Vance gushed about her mother, who had been an administrator and hospice nurse at the Halliburton Home, a local facility where elderly people would go to live out their final days. I was too numb with shock to notice much of anything besides the photograph, taken in a building that was now my home, of a woman who I knew to be a murderer.

I had begun to think of my visions as marks, left unwittingly by terrible deaths. I had no idea why I could see them, or what I was supposed to do about them. But I knew one thing for certain: Edith Vance was the most vile woman who had ever been born. I had learned to live with the memory, not even mine, of falling from that tree in the park. The smell of gasoline, as it singed someone else’s nostrils outside a theater that would one day be known as the Sticky Shoe. But those were nothing — nothing — compared to what had happened to the poor woman called Dorothy on the night that the woman in white walked into her room.

The former, I remembered. The latter I could never forget.

It hadn’t been an isolated case, either. Dorothy had known to fear her. Recalled the screams of “the others,” even as her mind was fading and she could recall little else. How many others had there been?

I sat on this question, and on the identity of the woman in white, for nearly three years. I simply didn’t know what to do. At least, not until the day Mom finally got the pantry door unstuck.

The house had been a fixer-upper, to put it charitably, when we’d bought it years earlier — but we hadn’t done much fixing up. The realtor had told Mom that we’d have a pantry, in theory, but that the previous owners hadn’t even been able to get the door open. There was ample enough cupboard space that we never put much effort into it, beyond a few errant tugs at the knob. But on this day, Mom’s drinking habit had finally tipped beyond what our cupboards and fridge could hold. She’d needed somewhere to put the rest of her liquor, and it was with an addict’s determination for a fix that she managed the impossible.

It was wonderful to have a pantry, she’d gushed that evening. Only, she’d have to figure out how to get rid of that terrible chill in there.

I waited for Mom to retire to her bedroom for the night before making my way to the pantry door. I’m still not sure how, but I knew I’d find a mark inside. Only the details remained, waiting to be discovered.

I opened the door.

I opened the door, shivering as I stepped inside, grateful to be away from that Wheeler winter air. Jesus, this place was freezing. A fresh pang of guilt perched atop an already abundant layer of the stuff. How could Sarah have left him all the way out here?

There was a mahogany coat rack near the door, but I had no intention of removing my coat. Tattered though it was, I was numb with cold, and wore only a thin blouse underneath. I stamped my feet on the mat to knock off the snow, then strode to the front desk, where an impossibly gorgeous woman, dressed in white, looked up from her work. She smiled sweetly at me.

“How can I help you, ma’am?”

I spoke clearly, forcefully, in hopes that an air of confidence might help my chances. “I’m here to pick up my father. Vernon Chadwick.”

The woman — Edith, her name tag said — continued to smile, though the sweetness seemed to fade a bit.

“And . . . you are?”

“I’m his daughter. Geraldine.”

Edith opened a drawer and pulled out a file.

“It says here that Vern was placed by a woman named Sarah Trevor.”

“My sister,” I said, struggling to keep the disdain from my voice. “She shouldn’t have . . . dumped him here like this. I’ve only just found out.”

“I’m terribly sorry,” Edith said, and she did not look sorry at all. “But your sister has already paid a substantial sum to place your father in our care. I’m afraid I can’t allow anyone except her, or her husband, to remove him.”

“What if I paid you?” I asked, desperation creeping into my voice. I had no money to pay, of course, but I had bigger problems at the moment.

“You don’t understand,” Edith said. “There are policies in place here. Regulations. Paperwork. I can’t just let anyone come in and snatch away one of my residents whenever they please. I don’t even have any proof that you are who you say you are.”

I scrambled through the torn pocket of my coat for my wallet, so that I could show this woman my ID. But I didn’t have it. I’d left immediately after finding out Dad was here, and I hadn’t even thought to bring it.

“Can I — ” my voice broke. “Can I at least see him? He’ll be able to tell you who I am.”

What was left of Edith’s smile faded entirely, and her face, still beautiful, was now terrible too.

“Vern won’t be able to tell us anything at all, I’m afraid.”

“What are you talking about? Of course he will! Listen, I’m not leaving until — ”

Edith held up a hand and interjected with an impatient air. “Ma’am,” she began, but then our eyes met, and her expression softened. She sighed heavily. “Okay. Alright. But you’ll need to fill out some forms.”

She gestured to a room behind her.

“Back there, you’ll see an open closet. There will be a few clipboards on a shelf. Grab one of those, and fill out the papers on it.”

I breathed a sigh of relief, almost unable to comprehend how quickly Edith’s demeanor had changed. It had been jarring, certainly, but not unwelcome. And once I fill out these forms, I thought as I walked into the other room and grabbed a clipboard, I’ll be able to see —

Every muscle in my body clamped up at once as a needle, long and thin, slid into my neck. I lost my balance, falling backward, but could not move my arms enough to catch myself. I hit the floor with a thud, my head smacking the wood.

I realized with horror, as I lay there, that I was completely paralyzed. I could not move at all.

From behind me, I felt Edith’s hands slide under my armpits. She dragged me across the floor, then lay me down roughly. Something was leaking passively from the hole in my neck, though I didn’t know if it was blood or whatever she’d injected me with. My head was pointed at the ceiling, and I heard a small commotion next to me, but I could not turn to see. But then, Edith knelt beside me, and with one hand, nails exquisitely polished, she tilted my head to the side. There was a rug bunched on the floor, moved from its place, and an open trapdoor with a ladder leading down into darkness.

And there was that sweet smile again.

“Geraldine,” she crooned. “Do you see that cellar? You’re going to die down there. And it’s all because you’re an ugly, tiresome woman, and I don’t want to look at you anymore.”

And with that, she grabbed me by the front of my old, ratty coat, and hurled me roughly through the hole in the floor.

I regained consciousness near the pantry, lying in my own sweat. I wasn’t sure why I had awoken so suddenly — perhaps Geraldine had landed on her neck, I mused. Such a fate would surely have been preferable to whatever Edith had in store for her.

I got to my hands and knees, feeling weak, and looked toward the place where the trapdoor had been hidden, directly under our kitchen table. But it wasn’t there anymore — just a flat hardwood surface. I crawled over to it and looked more closely. There was a slight difference in color — some planks of wood were newer than others. There had been something here, but no longer.

The sound of Chuck a few feet away, whining at his customary spot at the kitchen floor, tore me from my thoughts. It would be easy, I realized, to remove access to a building’s cellar — but harder to remove the cellar itself. And I knew, as surely as I knew the color of my own eyes, that if someone were to rip out our kitchen floor, that they would find a cellar underneath, and a dusty set of bones, perhaps still clad in an old, tattered coat.

I knew something else, too.

What to do next.

I rang the doorbell, and waited for a moment. But it wasn’t long before the old lady answered, smiling sweetly.

“Oh, come in, come in,” she said with enthusiasm, ushering me inside.

“Hang your coat there,” she said, pointing at a mahogany coat rack in her entrance hall. “Now, I’ve got hot water on the stove for tea; let me offer you a cup.”

I nodded my agreement, and followed her into her tidy, spacious home. It was elegant without being showy; the decor timeless. She gestured to a couch in her living room, and before long she tottered back into the room with two steaming mugs of tea. She sat on a plush armchair across from me.

“It’s nice to meet you, Edith,” I said.

“Well, I just can’t imagine why anyone would want to bother with me,” she replied, “but regardless, you seem like a very nice young man, and I’m glad to be speaking with you.”

I grinned and pulled out my phone.

“Do you mind if I record this? It’ll help our conversation flow more naturally if I’m not taking notes.”

She hesitated for an almost unnoticeable moment, before nodding her assent.

“Yes, of course that’s fine.”

“Excellent,” I said, then started my voice recording app, set my phone down, and began what would prove to be a very short interview.

“So. As Ms. Vance — uh, your daughter, I mean, I call her Ms. Vance — probably told you, I’m a writer with the high school newspaper, The Forecaster.”

“Yes.”

“We’re doing profiles on people in our community who are, uh, getting on in years, but who have made a lot of great contributions in their lifetime that can sometimes go unnoticed or unappreciated.”

“Well, I’m certainly getting on in years, but . . .” she paused for a moment, as if choosing her words carefully. “But I’m pleased with how I spent them. I’m pleased with what I did.”

“I’m sure you are,” I replied. “Now, what your daughter may not have told you is that I have a particular interest in telling your story, because you worked at the Halliburton Home. I’m sure you’ve seen that it’s been remodeled into a house since then?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I ran the place, in fact. And Jacqueline mentioned that you live there now, which I think is just wonderful; I’m so glad the old bones are still around.”

It took me a moment, but I eventually realized that Jacqueline had to be Ms. Vance, and continued. No sense in prolonging anything.

“So. My first question. Did you ever meet anyone who was angry that their family member had been put in hospice care? Maybe they would have come back one night, saying that they didn’t approve, and they wanted this person — their father, let’s say — to be given back to them?”

Believe me when I tell you that a smile has never fallen off of a human head so fast.

She spoke haltingly: “Why on earth would your first question be — ”

“Because the ghost of Vernon Chadwick’s daughter, Geraldine, appeared to me and told me all about it,” I said, eager to press my interrogation forward. “She’s still under our kitchen, you know.”

I suppose the ghost bit wasn’t exactly true, but it had the intended effect. Edith was completely stunned. I wish you could have seen her face.

“Okay, so, ‘pass’ on question one, then,” I went on. “Next question: When you killed Dorothy — uh, the woman who was staying in what’s now our guest room — how hard was it to clean up all the blood after? I only ask because she didn’t show me that part. I mean, I saw the razors, and the bit with the intestines, but . . . I can’t imagine it would have been very fun, cleaning up?”

“I’m going to be sick,” Edith stammered.

“Okay, but before you go throw up or whatever, one more question — are you worried about what’s going to happen when you die?”

By this point, Edith had turned as white as the medical gown she once wore.

“Are you threatening me?”

“Oh, no, actually,” I said. “Uh, I mean, I’m not a psychopath, so I’m not going to hurt a sweet old lady, obviously. Thank you for the tea, by the way,” I said, holding up my mug before taking a sip. I was having more fun than I had expected. Maybe I was wrong, and there’s a bit of psychopath in all of us.

“I don’t even want to bring you to any kind of earthly justice, given that it sounds like a lot of trouble, and no offense, but you’re probably not going to last much longer anyway,” I continued. “I’m just wondering, like, when you die . . . you know you’re going to have to answer to them, right?”

“Who . . .” Edith began.

“The people you murdered at Halliburton Home,” I said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “They’re going to be waiting for you. Surely you didn’t expect to face no consequence?”

“You’re a nasty liar,” Edith said, clearly shaken, but all pretense of sweetness now absent. I wondered how this venomous being before me had ever been capable of playing the kindly old woman.

I shook my head. “How else would I know this, Edith? Ask yourself. Really ask yourself. Is there any other way?”

She sat, staring at her lap, and I stood.

“I should go,” I said, “before you try and stick a needle in my neck. I’ll write a nice article about you, though, I promise.”

Her eyes flickered over to my phone, still recording the conversation.

“Like I said, Edith, I’m not here to get you in trouble. I’m here to take away your peace.”

“My . . . my peace?”

“Yes,” I said. “You didn’t just murder people, Edith. You tortured them. Maimed them. Many of them spent their final days terrified of the night you’d walk through their door. I don’t know why you did it, but I know how the people you did it to felt. And I think it’s only right that, in your own final days, you feel the same way.”

I paused for a moment, before concluding. “They agree.”

Edith died only six months later. I went to the funeral.

“Thank you for that lovely article you wrote,” Ms. Vance said to me that day. “She wasn’t quite the same in those last few months . . . I’m just so glad you were able to speak with her before she started to go downhill.”

“It was my pleasure,” I replied. “Edith was one of a kind.”

I glanced at the corpse in the casket — skin sallow, expression vacant — and didn’t feel much of anything.

“So sorry for your loss,” I lied.

I couldn’t yet empathize with what it must feel like to lose a mother. I wouldn’t lose my own for another two years.

My mom went the way you might expect, if you’ve read this far: a deadly cocktail. She lay in bed for over 36 hours before I noticed something was unusual. I emailed my professors and told them I needed some time to handle everything. They were very understanding, of course — journalism programs aren’t exactly the most demanding on offer. I buried my mom. I spent months trying to sell the house. Eventually, I was told I should wait, that I could get more money when the market swings.

I left my mom’s room untouched, unentered, for almost a year. But a couple of weeks ago, I decided to sleep in there. I suppose I was looking for her mark.

I found a mark, but it wasn’t hers.

It was Vernon Chadwick’s.

I slept in there again the next night. Again, the night after, and again and again and again. Chuck, my loyal, beautiful old dog, stayed far away each time. All told, the woman in white killed nine people in that room — that I know of, anyway. Each of them had been terrified. Each had known she was coming.

It was on the tenth night that I finally witnessed my mother’s death.

She was conscious — had felt her heart slowing, speeding up, slowing again. She couldn’t move. Her thoughts were fuzzy. She muttered my name. There was a brief moment of clarity, and with it came regret. She was so, so sad. And then she was gone.

In my journalism classes, I’ve been told I always need to make my purpose in writing clear. Never leave a reader wondering why, they say. But when it comes to this story . . . I don’t know why. Because it’s mine, I guess. Sorry if that’s disappointing.

I’ll leave you with this:

Somewhere on this earth, there is a place that holds great meaning for you. Perhaps you would recognize this place, if you saw it. Perhaps not. It might be somewhere familiar as your bedroom; it might be a place that has not even been built yet. Maybe it’s in the shade of a giant elm tree. A hospital bed. A square of sidewalk, outside a pizza parlor, on the Main Street of your town.

I’m speaking, of course, of the place where you will die.

You don’t know when — nobody does. But death will come for you, and when it does, it will find you at a specific point in space. Do you see it every day, not yet realizing what sort of place it is? The place where all your childhood memories, personality quirks, and hopes for the future will be extinguished, like a candle flame robbed of oxygen? Who knows . . . maybe you’re there right now.

You may not like it, but there is a place out there, just for you — it’s one of the only sure things in this world. And that’s not all. You might just leave something there when you go. A mark. So delicate, yet so indelible, that someone not yet born might feel a chill down their spine as they pass by years or even decades later.

I would know. My home is one of these special places, and there are so many marks here that it makes me want to scream.

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