Sometimes you have a prompt for a story and it goes in a wholly different direction than where you expected. This quiet story snuck up on me with Lizzie’s bitter loneliness.
On a trip out to stay with her great aunt May, Lizzie finds herself in a rundown neighborhood with her mother’s judgement pressing down on her. But as she arrives something about the house seems off. The tender way someone has cared for it. Except it can’t be the feeble old woman in front of her. But then who?
When aunt May talk to people who aren’t there, and Lizzie keeps looking over her shoulder, a night of dark storms reveals a haunting family legacy that Lizzie won’t be able to escape. But she might not want to…
The Promise is one of the stories in Grendel Press’ anthology The Devil Who Loves Me and you can find it on their website or on Amazon!
E. J. Dawson 