Please see our Publisher’s Note following this month’s Editorial that has important information about a new threat to the survival of all SF/F/H magazines.
Author’s Note: I first wrote this poem back in 2020. I’ve been a lifelong fan of horror and was helping a friend start to get to know the genre. One of our conversations centered on just how many different ways a horror character can be haunted, and thus this poem was born. —JT
Choose all options that apply.
1. This haunting is hereditary. You remember hearing your grandmother crying inside the walls at night. Sometimes if you closed your eyes and held your breath, you’d feel her hand searching for yours under the covers. When you told your mom, she said it was only bad dreams.
• Do you know where the bad dreams come from? [Y/N]
2. This haunting is architectural. It is not about you. It is about where you are. There are bones in the foundation. This house is a graveyard. This house is a corpse. You are inside the corpse. That makes you the maggot.
• Do you know which room you’re in? [Y/N]
3. This haunting was a gift. You did not ask for it, but here it is, and wrapped so nicely. It would be rude to take it back. Maybe you can find a use for it.
• Do you store it in the attic? [Y/N]
• Do you regift it to someone else? [Y/N]
4. This haunting is anatomical. It is not about you: it is inside you. Everything’s made up of other organisms that you can’t see, living and dying hand in hand, blood in mouth, flesh in stomach. Somewhere within you, something has built a home. When was the last time you fed someone else at your table? Be glad that you still have something to offer. Don’t think about it so hard.
• Do you sleep with two pillows, hoping the second will one day be used? [Y/N]
5. This haunting is a memory. It’s about what happened that night, at the sandlot you weren’t allowed to play ball at because a pack of wild dogs lived there. Wild dogs are always hungry—you knew that—but it was summer, and you felt invincible. You felt like you could swallow the whole world. You swallowed something else, and now you drag it around everywhere you go, roadkill on a leash. You tried to bury it, but it always gets dug up.
• Do you bury it in the yard again? [Y/N]
• Do you go out and dig it up? [Y/N]
6. This haunting is a hungry dog. If you don’t feed it, it will keep looking for something to eat. If you do feed it, it will never leave.
• Do you feed the dog? [Y/N]
7. This haunting is a bad dream. It is real only like your reflection on the water’s surface is real. It is real only when you can see your shadow. It is real in that, when it comes for you, you don’t feel alone. It is a bad dream, which means you can escape it. All you have to do is wake up. But if you wake up, you’re on your own again.
• Do you wake up? [Y/N]
