Curses
Bargains, wishes, prophecies and inheritances that come due. In a curse story the ending is fixed from the first page, and the horror is watching it arrive.
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Retention Schedule
I work at a records storage warehouse outside Kent, Washington. Two hundred thousand banker's boxes, every one barcoded, every one with a destruction date. Last Tuesday I found a box with my name on it in an aisle that isn't on the map. It's scheduled for destruction tomorrow.
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The Ash-tree Classic
In 1690 a woman is hanged for witchcraft on evidence from the squire of Castringham Hall, and the great ash tree outside his window has been watching ever since.
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The Masque of the Red Death Classic
While a plague ravages his country, a prince seals himself and a thousand guests inside a fortified abbey for an endless masquerade.
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The Fall of the House of Usher Classic
A man answers an old friend's desperate letter and arrives at a crumbling mansion where the house itself seems to be listening.
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The Monkey's Paw Classic
A visiting soldier brings the White family a dried monkey's paw from India, a charm that will grant three wishes to anyone foolish enough to use them.
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The Haunted Dolls' House Classic
A collector snaps up a magnificent antique dolls' house, and that night watches a tragedy play out among its tiny rooms.
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The Yellow Sign Classic
A painter in New York keeps seeing a pale, puffy-faced churchyard watchman staring at his studio window, and the watchman looks a lot like a corpse.
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The Signal-Man Classic
A traveller climbs down to a lonely railway cutting to talk with the signalman, who has been receiving warnings from a figure by the tunnel mouth.
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The Dead Valley Classic
As boys in Sweden, two friends took a shortcut over the hills and found a valley where nothing grows and nothing sounds.
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Roadside
Part of my job on the highway crew is pulling unpermitted roadside memorials. On one stretch of Highway 395, white crosses keep appearing for people nobody remembers dying. Then I found out they hadn't.
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Metes and Bounds
A land surveyor is hired to retrace an 1884 deed in the hill woods before a sale. The deed carves out a single acre that is "not to be entered." Its corners are not where they ought to be.
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The Bus-Conductor Classic
A level-headed man explains why, after a night in a country house, he will never board a particular kind of horse-drawn hearse.
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Casting the Runes Classic
After a scholarly society rejects his paper on alchemy, the vengeful Mr. Karswell finds a quiet way to show his displeasure.
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Pot Forty-One
On my first season crabbing the Bering Sea, one of our pots came up with a man's wedding ring tangled in the mesh. The man it belonged to was standing next to me on deck, wearing it.
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The Withered Arm Classic
A dairymaid abandoned by a farmer has a vivid nightmare about his new bride, and soon after the bride's arm begins to wither.