To whom it may concern

The Heartless Boy drifted through the weather-worn grave markers of the Eerie Cemetery, a trail of freezing ghost fog drifting in his wake. The huge ravens who stood sentinel at every funeral watched him with wary eyes, their wings half-open, poised for flight.

He could feel his other selves out there in the sleeping town beyond the wrought-iron barricades of the graveyard, the golden twist of hope and adolescent love lying in the dark, cedar-smelling interior of a locked bureau within a dusty attic, the slow, steady beat of his only living self burrowed inside a warm nest of duvets, powering two sets of dreams with every deep red contraction in the dead of the night.

A whisper of motion beside him and Melanie was there, not in flesh and blood and the slippery squirming treachery of free will, but a phantasm conjured by a ghost split three ways from itself. Her hair was a black oil slick that rippled out around her, tendrils of darkness reaching out before shrinking back in on themselves, and her face was a blur of half-remembered features.

Her ankles disappeared into the spring-green grass over the Heartless Boy’s burial mound and though he could wander the full length of the cemetery, he had never seen her move from that spot. If the Heartless Boy had cared, he might have wondered what kept her tethered to the broken mess that the milk truck and the smiling, moustachioed organ harvesters had left for the coffin maker, but a Heartless Boy cares for nothing, not even itself, and so he never questioned it.

Beyond the rise of the hill, the great curlicued gates were opening. The warm spring breeze carried the creak and groan of hinges rusting in the constant damp of spectre-haunted grounds, and the cough and rumble of the groundsman’s faded red pickup as he began his daily rounds. The Heartless Boy drifted towards the sounds of the living and the cracked and empty hollows in his chest seethed with jealousy and rage.

The shadow that wasn’t Melanie watched him go with hollow eyes that had never seen the mortal world. Her feet ached in the chill of the grave dirt around them and she wrapped the tarry mass of her hair about her like a mantle. Far away, across the endless sea of buried dead, somebody sobbed as though their heart was breaking.





The Children

Eventide by froodle, in which the sun goes down, and Eerie's lost children gather

Milk by froodle, in which Marshall develops a completely cromulent fear of milk trucks

Whistle by froodle, in which Steve Konkalewski is unhappy about the way things turned out...

Three by froodle, in which Marshall and Devon discuss video games in a cemetary

Marys by froodle, in which Mary C. Carter takes on her new role

A Story About Devon Wilde by froodle. Devon Wilde walked through the Eerie Cemetery, and his feet made no sound on the gravel pathways.

Disguises by froodle, in which Marshall goes to visit Devon Wilde

Lillian by froodle, in which Marilyn's mother has concerns