No matter who Jax asked about the old times, before his people made webs over the dead city, the answer was always similar. Nobody knows, the old stories don’t say. Under the shrugs, a signal almost too faint to hear:… Continue Reading
The lights on the Christmas tree sparkle, there is wrapping paper scattered all over the floor and the house rings with laughter. The smell of the Christmas lunch wafts in from the kitchen and my sherry glass is full. “Grandpa,”… Continue Reading
She hated him. Granny’s favourite. He’d pushed her and hurt her, and she’d said something nasty to him and repeated it several times. Her grandmother had put her hand over her mouth, spoken about soap and water and vile language… Continue Reading
A heron perched in a mangrove tree glanced at the old pickup. Its tires crushed the shells lining the driveway leading to the back of a coral-pink house. An unshaven man in shorts and a sleeveless River Monsters tee-shirt hopped… Continue Reading
Doll in hand, Sophie dances along the flagstone path into the garden, and pulls herself up onto the lichen-spotted wooden bench. “Are you there?” she calls, and waits for an answer. She sits, wordless, knees pulled up in front of… Continue Reading
Feed me the sun, said Grandma, so I can get warm again. I woke up crying, my hands still curved from pressing Grandma’s cold, soft, swollen feet in my dream. Outside it was gray and damp but without the relief… Continue Reading
The three of us — Frank Mullins, Jim Tanner and I — were enjoying a couple of cold ones at Tony’s Bar and Grill. Just another dull Thursday afternoon, in which we were partaking of our favorite pastimes, drinking and… Continue Reading
A few weeks after my grandmother’s death, her quilt began crawling from her bed in the early hours and roaming downstairs. You’d hear the rustle as it went past the door, and in the morning find it curled somewhere, like… Continue Reading
For Jacob, the greatest mystery about visiting Great-Grandma was her hands. In her face Great-Grandma portrayed the illusion of a tired, feeble old woman, but her hands betrayed her terrible power. They were tense blue claws riddled with hard bumps;… Continue Reading
My arms were scratched raw. I’d been at it for ages. I’d been up on the tussocks of the bank trying to reach the berries at the very top and a wasp had stung me and it didn’t half hurt. … Continue Reading