#may-stringer house

“Unfathomable to mere mortals is the lore of fiends.” — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Your early morning tour of the 'haunted' victorian mansion in Brooksville, Florida has been an absolute delight. Your guide, a young woman in period costume playing the part of a person from the late 1890's so convincingly, you half way believed her. As you leave, you pass another young woman who apoligizes for being so late and she'll begin your tour immediately. You point out that her colleague already took you on the tour to which she replies that she's the only one working that day. You look back at the house as ice runs down your spine.

You've now traveled 2,000 miles in a desperate attempt to escape your spectral torment, but it still isn't far enough. With the coming of twilight, you can still see the beam from the haunted lighthouse in Florida flashing across the horizon, searing itself into the depths of your eyes. Exhausted, you stumble back into your car and continue driving away.

As the storm surge from the hurricane fills your lungs, you are suddenly aware of all your past lives as your current one slips away. You are horrified to realize you have always died in hurricanes: in New Orleans, in Miami, in Galveston, in places so old they did not yet have names. And then you understand, no matter how many lives you live, you always will die in hurricanes.

As you drag the body into the back yard to bury it, you laugh as you see a sink hole has conviently formed there. With mirthless laughter, you roll the corpse into the sink and reach for your shovel. You freeze as the ground slowly closes of its accord until the hole is completely gone. Your shovel drops, forgotten, from your hand as you shuffle back into your house. The Florida soil demands to be fed.

As you lie sleeplessly in bed, your closet door slowly opens with a forboding creak. As you get out of bed and walk towards the closet door, you wonder for a moment what monster you'll become in someone else's closet. But the thought quickly passes as the hunger begins.

While renevating your bedroom, you discover an old diary hidden in the wall. As you read it, you learn it belonged to a young woman from the late 1890's, tormented by the gift of precognition - the ability to see the future. She writes of her anguish at seeing her family die despite all her attempts to prevent them from meeting the ends she had forseen. Gruesome sketches appear on some of the pages, showing the myriad ways her family and friends met their untimely fates. Then your blood runs cold as the young woman reveals that she can see a person in the distant future reading her journal, and that person is completely unaware that they too, are about to meet their end. As you turn the page, you see a sketch of youself, sitting at the same desk, reading the same journal, but the drawing reveals a hulking shadow from behind is falling across you. You turn to...