Ghost stories from South Africa

The Hollow Man

Mara had always dismissed her mother’s ghost stories as the fanciful ramblings of a woman who watched too many late-night horror films. She was a pragmatic sort, a nurse who...

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The Pale Ones in the Pre-Dawn Hours

In the quiet, dusty suburb of Kempton Park, east of Johannesburg, I spent my late teenage years in a house that seemed to breathe with the weight of forgotten things....

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The Persistent Warmth

The last week has been a fog of antiseptic and hushed voices. After Dad’s bypass, Mom’s recovery has consumed every spare moment, and Nana has been a constant, silent presence...

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The Velvet Box

The air in the house was thick with the smell of lemons and anxiety. My mother, Evelyn, was a whirlwind of frantic energy, her hands fluttering over the zippers of...

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The Static in the Walls

The last Friday of November, the rain fell in sheets, hammering the tin roof of our little farmhouse like a drummer gone mad. My ex, Paul, pulled up in his...

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The Dust-Covered Homestead

In the autumn of 1951, Elias Thorne finally bought his first car, a moss-green Humber Super Snipe. He was a quiet, methodical man, and the purchase was a long-cherished dream....

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The Spinning Chair

The Spinning Chair My mother worked the night shift at the Meridian County Communications Hub, a squat, windowless building on the edge of the industrial park. It was her job...

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The Hollow Man

The summer I turned thirteen, my parents shipped my sister and me off to our great-uncle’s ranch in the high desert of New Mexico. My cousin, Miguel, and I had...

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The Unraveling of the Cord

Elena’s grandmother had always spoken of the twin bond as a living thing—a silver thread that stretched across miles and years, humming with the unspoken. Elena had felt it herself,...

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The Unnumbered Ward

It was a Tuesday in late October when the humidity in the maternity ward finally broke, and with it, the last of our patience. My wife, Clara, and I had...

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The Green Ledger

I work in a converted textile mill on the outskirts of Blackwood, where the machines still hum with ghosts of the old looms. My desk sits in a mezzanine above...

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The Blueprint of Stillness

Marta had always been the sort of person who found comfort in the mundane. Her apartment, a top-floor unit in an old converted warehouse, was filled with the usual clutter...

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The Last Formation

When I was thirteen, we drove eight hours to my grandmother’s farm in the dusty heart of the Free State. The town was a grid of gravel streets lined with...

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The Portrait of Eleanor Vance

On the first Tuesday of October, I drove to my great-aunt’s cottage in the hills to collect a daguerreotype of my great-grandmother, Eleanor Vance. It was the only known image...

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The Hollow Oak Ledger

The rusted gate of Willow Creek Farm groaned like a dying animal as we pulled up, the gravel crunching under the tires of our old station wagon. I was twelve...

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The Reservoir’s Last Tenant

It was the tail end of October, and I’d invited my old college friend, Mira, and her husband, Leo, to spend the weekend at the cottage I’d rented on the...

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The Pain That Knocks

The pain started as a dull throb in my lower back, a familiar ache from years of hunching over a drafting table. But by the third week of October, it...

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The Unlit Corner

In the autumn of 2004, I started dating a guy named Evan. He lived with his mother, Carol, in a cramped two-bedroom flat on the third floor of a pre-war...

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The Hollow Cellar

The old farmhouse on Marrow Lane was supposed to be our fresh start. Lena and I had been married for three years, and after the city’s relentless noise, we craved...

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The Clockwork Stillness

We moved into the old farmhouse on the edge of the marsh in the autumn of 1997. The house had been vacant for years, and the realtor said it was...

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The Clockwork Mannequin

Mara had always been a creature of habit, and her Sunday routine was sacred. She would walk the three blocks to the St. Agatha flea market, a sprawling maze of...

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The Fifth of November

The first time I saw him, I was seven, sitting on the cracked linoleum of our kitchen, tracing patterns in the flour that had spilled from the bag I was...

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The Halo of Cold

The night air clung to the living room like a wet shroud, the kind of humid stillness that made the ceiling fan feel pointless. My father, Ray, had fallen asleep...

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The Orchard’s Hollow Man

I never thought much about the old apple tree in our backyard. It had been there since before we moved in, gnarled and ancient, its branches clawing at the sky...

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