M.J. Orz

“Abby is in a better place now.”

I was wrong.

She would tell me these horror stories about bad little boys and girls who decide to wander off at night and they never come home. I would ask her why they were called the Liars and she would shrug her shoulders.

“Just a precaution. We do it for everyone.” I pulled the leather padded straps tighter and tighter. “Just relax for me.” I could hear his breathing get heavier as I finished his legs.

Sammy was always there.

I am a coward and I may have begun the end of everyone I ever knew.

Run, damn it. Run. I couldn’t. She smiled, still. “It’s not so bad.”

I couldn’t take it anymore. Last night my brother said so many terrible things when I went down onto the carpet in our room to look – so many awful, cruel, and hateful things – that I just gave up and crawled back in bed without even a glance or glare beneath the furniture.

My head had bumped into a grate – more so like a cage rather than just a grate. And inside the cage, in a small dirt and concrete cell, sat a woman.

Out of anywhere on the acres and acres of property, the only place I wasn’t allowed to be was that basement.

“I did what Mommy told me to do.”

Every American with an interest in horror has a version of the Jersey Devil that they have heard, witnessed, or believed. It is as timeless as American horror itself.

We all know the tale, we all know the movie, we’ve all read the book, and we’ve all lost A TON of sleep because of it.