Introduction
We often think of horror as the domain of jump scares and gory spectacle - but the deepest, most enduring horror is quieter. It lives in the pause before a footstep, in the chill that climbs the spine when no wind blows, in the eyes of a faithful dog who sees what we dare not. This is the kind of horror that lingers. It doesn't chase us - it waits for us to arrive.
The two poems in this collection explore that intimate kind of dread - the kind stitched into the fabric of a place, a name, a memory. They tell a single story from two perspectives: one personal, internal, and unraveling; the other clinical, distant, yet equally haunted. Together, they reveal how horror isn't just something we survive - it’s something we return to, again and again, because it touches something real. Something ancient.
So why do we love horror? Because it makes the unknown visible. It gives weight and form to the things we fear...death, loss, the past, the unexplainable - and offers us a way to sit with them, if only briefly. Horror reminds us that we are not invincible. But it also reminds us that we feel. That we’re alive.
There’s joy in that. Even comfort.
These poems invite you not only to witness a haunting, but to feel it—the way an old house remembers, the way a name lingers, the way a loyal dog will not leave your side when the dark begins to breathe.
Welcome in. But step carefully.
The stairs are listening.
__________________________
Bruegger Pauses at the Stairs
At the House at Southern and Kenosha
It is not the first time he’s done it -
halted there, mid-stride,
his paw suspended like a thought unfinished.
Bruegger, my hound,
faithful as the ticking of my own heart,
stands stiff at the base of the stair,
his body wrought with tension,
his eyes—those innocent chestnut orbs -
locked fast upon the darkness above.
He does not bark.
He does not growl.
Only watches.
Utterly still.
Like a sentinel at the gate of the dead.
The evening lies in ragged pieces behind us,
shredded by wind and the wailing of branches.
The moon, halved and pale,
drips its sterile light
onto the crooked frame of our home
at Boulevard and Street -
a house that leans like a broken psalm.
Within -
ah, within -
the air is close.
Heavy with dust and memory.
That smell again:
iron and smoke,
the ghost of herbs long dried,
and something sweeter,
putrid as a child’s forgotten toy
buried in the walls.
She lived here once.
She rules here still.
The Widow Maura -
called witch in hushed tones
when the wind wouldn’t carry the name too far.
They say her husband died screaming
and the child she never bore
was heard crying in the hearth
every winter for three years.
They say she walked barefoot in snow
and it never marked her.
They say she was buried in the floorboards.
Or not at all.
I tell myself I do not believe.
But then why does Bruegger stand unmoving?
Why do the lights dim
only at the stair?
Why do I hear her name
before I speak it?
The bulb above the landing flickers.
Once.
Twice.
Then steadies,
as if something stands beneath it,
breathing in the current.
I place one foot on the stair -
the wood sighs beneath me.
But it is not the sigh of a house.
It is relief.
As though something has waited
too long.
Bruegger whines,
a sound too soft to carry
but heavy with meaning.
He pulls at his leash,
but not to flee.
He won’t let go of me.
As if he knows I am already
being unstitched
thread by sacred thread.
The temperature drops -
suddenly, absolutely -
the cold climbing my spine
like a hand made of breath.
I see her then.
Or I see the shape she left behind.
A woman draped in garments
that do not flutter,
do not flow -
as though gravity holds her more tightly
than it does the rest of us.
Her eyes are black,
not with darkness,
but with depth -
a place,
a destination.
She does not speak.
Yet I hear:
“You’ve come at last.”
Bruegger howls.
His voice cracks the air like a mirror.
The walls tighten.
The stairs stretch upward
into a cathedral of shadow
and below my feet
I feel the thrum
of ancient blood -
hers or mine, I cannot tell.
The house breathes with her.
The curtains shift without wind.
A door upstairs opens,
though no one touches it.
Then -
she descends.
Not with steps.
Not with effort.
She arrives,
folding the space between us
like a page in a cursed book.
And she is near.
Her hand - oh God - her hand
touches nothing and touches all.
It moves through me like water through cloth,
like sorrow through bone.
She takes nothing.
She remembers me.
And I am undone.
My mouth opens,
but the scream is stolen,
swallowed before it can be born.
My body -
my self -
drifts from the edges inward,
as if I had never been solid,
never been real.
And then...
I am no longer.
Not dead.
Unwritten.
She turns.
And the house is silent again.
Bruegger stands alone,
howling at the empty stairs,
as the bulb above flickers -
then goes dark.
__________________________
CHANNEL 8 NEWS: Missing Man at Boulevard and Street
Reported by Jodie Thomas, Field Correspondent
This morning, the street is quiet.
The wind moves gently through the maples
on Kenosha Street,
as if brushing the day with forgetfulness.
Bird songs tremble on the wires above -
not frantic,
but uncertain.
Neighbors say he was kind.
Walked his beagle nightly.
Spoke little,
but always nodded in passing.
The sort of man
you never expect to vanish.
Until he does.
We’re here at the corner of Boulevard and Street,
where yellow tape stutters in the breeze
and two officers guard a sagging porch
like they’re afraid it might wake.
He disappeared three nights ago.
The dog - Bruegger - was found inside,
unharmed,
but howling
at the foot of the staircase
as though it would answer.
Inside -
I have to report what the police found.
Though I admit, I would rather not.
There were candles burned to the floor,
wax cooled into shapes
like bones or melted teeth.
A ring of salt in the upstairs hallway.
And deep scratches along the walls -
not climbing up,
but down.
There was no blood.
No forced entry.
Only one sound on the body cam
of the first officer who entered:
a voice, soft as dust.
It said:
“You came home.”
The wallpaper was torn
not in rage,
but reverence -
long strips pulled upward,
toward the ceiling.
As if summoned.
The temperature inside
couldn’t be measured.
Thermometers failed.
Breath vanished.
Time slowed.
And I -
(brief static)
I’m sorry.
I thought -
No, it’s probably -
The stairwell is visible from where I’m standing,
even from here on the lawn.
And though it is morning,
the shadows at the top
do not recede.
They stay there -
watching.
We’ve learned this house
once belonged to a woman named Maura Ellings -
widow, healer,
whispered to be a witch,
last seen in 1912
and never again.
Some say she buried herself in the foundation.
Some say she never died.
The officers have cleared the scene.
The home is sealed.
But Bruegger, the beagle,
refuses to leave the front steps.
Neighbors say he howls
every night at dusk.
There is something here.
I...I...
I’m sorry.
We’ll need to cut the feed -
(turns abruptly)
Did you hear that?
(turns back, whispering)
It’s coming from the stairs.
(end of transmission)
GBS
2005
0 Comments