Author: T.M. Camp
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Terminus
The department has a new manager and she’s been placed in the cubicle with me, which means I have to shift the sprawl of my stuff in order to make room for her things (which are more important than dusty action figures, artifacts of personal flair, and binders full of meeting minutes no one if…
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“She won’t rest.”
My daughter is almost nine but we still use a monitor so that we can hear her if she wakes up in the middle of the night. My wife has gone to bed and I am up late, doing some work I brought home from the office. The monitor crackles and my daughter calls for…
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hereditary
Sitting at the dinner table, my daughter suddenly turns and looks over her shoulder. “What’s wrong?” She turns back around. “That was weird,” she says. “I heard someone say ‘Yeah’ behind me.” We go on with our dinner and I make a mental note to talk with my wife. We’re starting to see more activity…
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unseen
Dozing on the couch this morning… ….I come into the room and see a baseball cap suspended in the air at about waist height, nothing apparently holding it up. It is not frozen in place, immobile — rather, it drifts and bobs slightly, like a magician’s trick. I reach out to grab it, try to…
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not a cat, not a dog
This evening as I was taking my daughter upstairs to bed, she froze outside her open bedroom door. “What’s wrong?” Staring into her room, she said “I just saw a cat or a dog or something on my bed. It looked up at me and then slid under the covers.” I turned the lights on…
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trail
Walking to work this morning, something caught my attention: Small bits of red licorice scattered along the sidewalk, trailing over three blocks. I didn’t follow to find out to where they led. I know better. It’s October.
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rush
As I’m setting up the ironing board, something rushes towards me from the living room… low and broad and dark, like a wall of shadow. I do not flinch. It breaks around me like a wave around a rock, dissipates into streamers of fading black and gray… and then is gone.
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pest control
Here’s an e-mail i sent to my wife this morning, slowly starting to put together a plan to exorcise the entity that currently occupying our house… What I know (or think I know) about the entity in our house… It is not human. It never was human. It is a conscious, aware entity. It is…
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feet wrapped in rags
…the children come out from the alcoves and holes, ragged scavenger ghosts huddled together and shuffling along the dusty floor, their hollow eyes sweeping back and forth, mouths gaping . . . they are in thrall to an old woman, an older ghost, who herds them like cattle and feeds off of their misery… I…
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dancing
…in the middle of an utterly boring and banal dream, I pass by a group of young women dancing on the sidewalk and one of them catches my eye. She motions to me, to get my attention, and mouths “Where have you been?” I keep walking, dragged along in the wake of my nonsense dream,…
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nemesis
Talking with my wife today about recent events, particularly those involving our daughter. Making plans for when the exorcism should be performed, discussing when she might be able take our daughter out of the house for an hour or two. So I can work. She remarks that we should time it with the next full…
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not a bat
“She says she saw something in the back stairwell,” my wife tells me. Our daughter is eight years old and not prone to flights of fancy or making things up. Also, we have been very careful to not let her overhear any of our conversations about what is going on here at home. When I…
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sick girl
My seven-year-old daughter has been sick for a couple of days. High fever, probably the flu. She woke up tonight, sometime around 9 o’clock, frantic and consume dwith a fear that she could not (or would not) articulate. Glassy eyed, staring… Looking from my face to the face of her mother… She would not answer…
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a voice on the wind
Coming home late tonight, long after midnight… As I was walking up the driveway, a few stray flurries of snow in the air around me… I stopped. A voice, far off . . . one word, harsh and cold and drawn out breathless like the frigid night air. My name. Not my real name. The…
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danger
A kitchen, a house in the country — dry and dusty, very little greenery. A little boy with dark hair and a baby face sits at the kitchen table playing with an old wooden birdhouse. I see a yellowjacket crawl sluggishly over the back of the birdhouse. Inside I see the telltale paper comb covered…
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David
My assignment for the magazine put me into his inner circle, where I could sit and observe first-hand what his life was like. I had five days with him. It was fascinating. He was remarkably laid back and kind. He answered my questions thoughtfully and, to my eyes, didn’t try to hide any of himself…
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daylight come and me wanna go home
Sitting alone in the couch tonight, I slowly realize that I can hear someone singing. Somewhere in the house, a man is singing. It has a muted quality, as though it is coming from very far away. I stand for a moment and listen. I recognize it. The clear voice, the calypso intonation is unmistakeable.…
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morse
We awake to a burst of static from the baby monitor. This is not uncommon. It seems like almost anything can set it off, if we don’t put the damn thing in just the right spot. I reach over and shift the monitor on the nightstand, hoping to move it out of whatever signal is causing…
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music again
In my office tonight, getting ready to sit down and write… I stop. Music. Unmistakeable. Somewhere, someone is playing music. The house is asleep. I’m the only one awake. Yet there it is. Unmistakeable. I go out and stand on the front porch, just in case it’s a neighbor. Nothing. Back inside, the house is…