Midnight / Dry Grass by Jan Darrow

Midnight

From the fog
it rises
at the edge of town.
Autumn’s reappearing act.

Fog horns moan.
Cat tongues wail.
A carnival’s in town.
It’s in the air. The music
drifts,
a merry-go-round
twirls and shifts.

Side shows bloom
like funeral
dust.
Ticket takers
Step right up!





Dry Grass

The skeleton rubbed his bony fingers together
until a spark flashed and dropped onto the dry grass.
It was an old autumn night, and he was cold. And as
the fire spread along a fence into a farmer’s field,
he roasted his bones. The crackling spirited higher
when it hit the dry stalks of corn. Flames shot up under the
clear black sky. The heat felt good and the skeleton
chuckled as the entire field burned before him.
A dead carnival laid rusting along a row of trees just
out of reach. A corn dog trailer slept under the stars.
The carnival began devouring energy from the fire.
Slowly at first, then faster. A decayed carousel creaked
and cracked. It whirled. Music bled from its canopy.
The speared horses swerved up and down. They wore
terrified expressions. Eyes darting. Legs jumping. Around
it went faster and faster. Until one by one the horses jumped,
hooves flying away from the spinning mess and through
the flames across the orange lit field. They raced toward
the skeleton who now had a horrified look on his face.
His singed bones fell back as the horses trampled the earth
and knocked him to the ground, snorting and whinnying as they all
galloped together in unison away and down the gravel road.

Having grown up in the rural Midwest, Jan Darrow connected to the natural world at an early age. Ghost stories are her favorite. You can find more of her work at jandarrow.blogspot.com

A Haunting by Jan Darrow

I know you’re here

sitting bedside while I sleep
you study my face
in the dark
you watch my breath
your expression fades

at 3 a.m.
the room is cold
you’re an empty feeling
I have when I wake
you disappear through doors
roam streets in the dark
you skulk in the rain
but you never go far

weary
time fuels eternity

Having grown up in the rural Midwest, Jan Darrow connected to the natural world at an early age. You can find more of her poetry and flash fiction available on Amazon and at jandarrow.blogspot.com

The Dark by Jan Darrow

1.

In the dark, there is someone at the top of the stairs. But the only thing that can be seen for sure is the glowing tip of a cigarette.

Meg is at a college party passed out in the grass behind the fraternity house. Her eyes open and she wonders how the moon can stay suspended. She smells cigarette smoke and looks up. The figure flicks the cigarette down the stairs. It burns her arm.

She doesn’t scream.

She doesn’t run.

She puts the cigarette out with her shoe. Someday, she tells herself, she is going to learn how to smoke.

2.

It isn’t the darkness that wakes her but moaning from down the hall. Her roommate met someone earlier that afternoon in chemistry class.

Someday Meg is going to be like that. That passionate. That scientific. 

3.

Blue lights illuminate bottles of liquor behind the bar. Outside, the Priscilla’s sign glows red. 

Meg spends two hours drinking Zombies.

She meets a guy under the No Smoking sign and pulls out a cigarette. He pulls out a lighter and lights it with a flick of his thumb. She remembers the sign and puts the cigarette away. Something falls to the floor.

A button? A tooth? She isn’t sure.

The guy picks it up.

She takes him home. Later that night in her room his thumb comes off in her hand, then his ear. A minute later his arm and two of his toes bounce across the wooden floor.

Just Meg’s luck. Body parts are falling off everywhere. 

*Published originally by Five on the Fifth - August 2020

Jan Darrow grew up in the rural Midwest where she connected to the natural world at an early age. Ghost stories are her favorite. Her collections of poetry and flash fiction are available on Amazon. You can also find her at Jan Darrow / Poetry and Fiction.

Three Years by Jan Darrow

Under grey skies it was misting lightly when Cara got to Sheridan. The leaves on the autumn trees looked almost iridescent. Yellows, oranges, and reds tucked into the rising landscape. The town was little more than a gas station/convenience store, church, five houses and a barn. She filled her car with gas but had brought most everything else they would need for the weekend. She had finished paying when her phone rang; it was Garrett. Would he tell her he couldn’t come? That his wife needed him? One day, she thought, it would be something like that. 

But no, he was calling to say he was running late.   

Fog rolled down into the valley below her as she drove on and made her way around the curves. Up ahead a logging truck had rolled over. A police car and EMS were nearby.

The only sound as she drifted by were the wipers across her windshield. 

The light had once again shifted when she got to the cabin. Inside she poured herself a glass of wine and looked out past the trees and into the vast expanse of the higher elevations. For three years they had rented this lonely little cabin. Three long patient years.

She unpacked her weekend gear and would have dinner ready in no time. She was sure Garrett would arrive soon.

With dinner in the oven, she looked across the road.  There was only one other cabin nearby that was usually occupied. There were no lights on this time. 

Cara tried calling Garrett, but there was no answer, and it didn’t go to voicemail. She wasn’t perplexed as there were a few non-service areas on the way up.

As she waited, something she hadn’t seen before in the cabin caught her eye. It was a DVD player and a small television on a shelf behind the chair. There had never been a television in the room before that she could remember. It must have belonged to some other renter who left it behind. 

The machine was plugged in and with nothing else to do, Cara powered it on. The plastic DVD case held no clue as to what it was. She ejected the disc, and it was blank as well. Curious, she put it back into the machine and pressed play.

Whatever it was, it was homemade. Someone filmed a road - actually, the very road she had just travelled on – autumn trees, dark gloomy skies, everything. They too had stopped at the gas station. How odd she thought. The frames were dreamlike slow-motion, and mesmerizing.

Then she saw it. 

The logging truck, her windshield smashing, her car flipping over and over until it finally came to a stop.

Steam from the engine pooled the autumn colors from the trees into one. She saw the police and EMS. She saw the horrified look on Garrett’s face as he arrived on scene.  

Jan Darrow grew up in the rural Midwest where she connected to the natural world at an early age. Ghost stories are her favorite. Her collections of poetry and flash fiction are available on Amazon. You can also find her at Jan Darrow / Poetry and Fiction

The Stones by Jan Darrow

Olivia had found the summer cottage while walking in the woods one day. A day full of blue sky and sun. It needed repairs, yes, but it wasn’t mournful. The moss on the roof was a brilliant green, but the doors were solid. The overgrown drive came up from the narrow road that ran past and curved down through a marsh full of cattails. But the road was rarely used anymore since the new highway had gone through. Tall grass waved in the wind before the sudden storm came that day. And it was while she stood in the pouring rain that she decided she would find the owners and convince them to sell her the property. 

Behind the exterior weathered wood walls and cedar roof was a forest of oak trees and pine. During the restoration she cleared ground around the cottage and planted roses, lavender, tall spires of lupins, foxgloves, and hollyhocks. Flowers she imagined the original owners grew. She bought furniture from a secondhand store to make the house complete.

It didn’t take long before she was astounded by the night sky, the moon, and the constellations. Having lived in the city she couldn’t believe all that she had been missing. 

Three miles to her east was a speck of a town not even big enough to be named anything except Grovers Corners. Just gas and a quaint grocery that Olivia loved. One day when she returned from shopping and pulled into her drive, she noticed the stones. Maybe 30 or so looking like they had erupted from the dirt like teeth. She got out of her car and moved them. There were no footprints. 

She felt uneasy and looked around before taking her groceries inside. She knew very well that she was in the forest alone.

Olivia sat on her porch that afternoon and couldn’t help but wonder. 

By early evening she thought briefly about going back to the city, but the night arrived, and the sky was clear and full of stars.

When she got into bed, she had made up her mind that in the morning she would leave…or no, she thought of something better. She pulled out her phone and called Cyril. When he answered she was relieved. She told him about the stones, and he laughed, but agreed to come the next day.

And with that she went to sleep.

At 3 am she woke to a crackling sound. An orange light danced on the wall opposite the window. She got out of bed and walked to the living room. From the window there she saw that the stones had moved into a circle around her car. Her car was on fire in a blaze of brilliant orange, red, and blue.

She screamed, but not before seeing the silhouette of a face more hideous and shocking than the beast itself and its glowing red eyes. 

Jan Darrow grew up in the rural Midwest where she connected with the natural world at an early age. Ghost stories are her favorite. Her collections of poetry and flash fiction are available on Amazon. You can also find her at Jan Darrow / Poetry and Fiction.

Perdition by Jan Darrow

“Wait a minute…am I … where I think I am?”

”You ain’t in line at Starbucks buddy.”

“What happened??”

“You stepped off the curb into traffic trying to avoid some Girl Scouts selling cookies in front of a Piggly Wiggly…we suspect.”

Horrified look.  “Girl Scouts?”

“Don’t worry…you were the only statistic.”

“That figures.”  He looks around. “Wait a minute.  I’m here for that reason?”

“That…and the old lady you ran over just for fun in your get away truck after you robbed the bank and shot those cops.”

He looks around again.  There’s a line to the left and one to the right with spotlights overhead.

“See that line over there?”

“You mean the one where it looks like they’re giving the guy on the table mouth to mouth resuscitation?”

“Yeah.  Those people are here to earn Junior First Aid Badges.  And see the people over there in the other line?  They’re earning Good Citizenship Badges.”

Eyes roll.

Up ahead orange and blue flames lick the night air.

“Well.  What happens now?”

Big smile.

“See that fat bag of marshmallows?”

“Yes.”

“Hell is about helping.  Grab a stick and get roasting.  You’re gonna learn how to make S’mores to pass around.”

Jan Darrow is a Michigan native and has most recently been published online by New Feathers and A Thin Slice of Anxiety. Her work My House was selected for Sundress Publications Best of the Net 2023 by Black Poppy Review.  She has three collections of poetry and a collection of flash fiction available on Amazon. 

A Lost Connection by Jan Darrow

One night while on his way to see his daughter in Nebraska Alfred Meager got lost. He had booked a room near Chicago for the night. 

Turn right Siri had said, one hundred feet and make a left onto Center. But that street came and went, and Alfred kept on going until the sky and street went dark. And then all at once, in front of him was a hole the size of Pigeon Forge and it split his tire wide open. He came to a stop in the middle of the road. 

It was late and Alfred was tired.

He opened the door and noticed a large floodlight overhead on a tall pole. A metal fence of some kind ran underneath into a distance he couldn’t see. He reached up and pressed his emergency button and called for a tow truck.

Then stepping out of the car he lit a cigarette and took in his surroundings. He walked to the fence and looked beyond to see a scrap yard overgrown with weeds and filled with empty phone booths. Hundreds of them huddled together. Forgotten. All squinting under the white light. Bleeding out technology and names scratched into the rusting metal.

Alfred was feeling his age as he looked at the booths and remembered the quiet privacy he had when making a call with the door closed. He also remembered how when least expected there would be one in front of a closed store or gas station along a lonely stretch of road - lit up in the dark. 

The image lingered.

Those were the days, he thought, and for a moment he longed to be that young again.     

He checked the time. Tow truck should be coming. 

Silence.

And that’s when he heard a telephone ring from somewhere in the middle of the huddled past.  The phone booths.

He thought there was some mistake. But the phone rang again – an essence of history. A bell so loud and clear it might wake the dead. 

Alfred ran back to his car - and waited.

Jan Darrow is a Michigan author and poet and has recently been published by Poppy Road Review and Black Poppy Review. She has forthcoming work appearing in New Feathers and A Thin Slice of Anxiety.  Her two collections of poetry and collection of flash fiction are available on Amazon.  You can find her at https://jandarrow.blogspot.com.

Gratitude / Winter by Jan Darrow

Gratitude

in winter
darkness
falls upon the trees
in afternoon
then wraps itself
around the room
in shadows colored by
the greys and blues

and in the darkness
falls another light
the moon has traveled
to the room

I stop and see myself
reflection in itself
a distance traveled yes
not measured
by a room




Winter

there is nothing left
of the hour -
we drown
in this dull day

frozen layers of darkness
grow to the edge

winter seeps
into the corners of our eyes
and mouths
spreading across our skin
like silence

Jan Darrow is a poet from Michigan who finds abandoned places utterly beautiful.  You can find more of her work on Amazon or at: https://jandarrow.blogspot.com/.

My House / In the Woods by Jan Darrow

My House

Beyond the grown hedge is a house in a meadow. A barn full of cows. A horse in the stable. This is my house. I am there with the stove and the dishes. My garden, my hen, the voices at the candlelit table.

See the moon’s reflection in the room in the night? We wrap arms and we sing. We praise the harvest king.

But then a passage of time. Not lost. Not really. Sometimes replays in the darkness.

Behind the closed curtains they whisper.

Never mind… time.

 

I dream of a house in a meadow. No one’s lived there for years. Empty barns, empty stable. Nobody sits at the dining room table.

Inside in silence is the dust and the gloom, metal doorknobs rust. Evening shadows repeat.

The house is nothing more than dry bones under sky. Look how the grass waves in the wind.

I stand at the end of the drive and look down from the rise. The two-lane track is overgrown. Then I sink like the sun into the grass. I become the lush meadow, the barns, and the sky.

I am the lone house at the end of the drive.

In the Woods

As we crossed the field and entered the woods the sky was silent. The day had been full of rain and the trees pulled the dampness close.

There wasn’t much to say. I mean, no one wanted to talk about Frances Howard’s murder, so we walked in silence. Up ahead just past the curve someone smashed a pumpkin against a tree.

They said there was nothing Frances could do when the murderer came to her house. I mean, she was old and could hardly get out of bed. But no one thought she would die like that. Her eyes carved into a permanent expression of fear. And we didn’t know why.

But we had the fear. Everyone did.

We were to the other side of the woods now and could see the road ahead when a slender man with a razor smile stepped out onto our path.

We trembled.

“Even the young can never escape,” he said, his black eyes biting our cheeks. Then he handed us a picture.

It was of Frances Howard. Dead.

We shoved our way past him and ran out to the road. We didn’t stop until we got to town. It was hard for us to catch our breath. 

Then we looked at the picture again.

And it was a picture of us. In the woods.

Jan Darrow is a product of the rural Midwest and loves the natural world. Her ghostly collection of flash fiction, The Blue Hour, as well as her haunting collection of poetry for Autumn, Autumn Poetry: A Collection for the Season, are both available on Amazon.

The Blue Hour by Jan Darrow

Frequent contributor, Jan Darrow, is offering a free Kindle download of her flash fiction book, The Blue Hour, from May 29 - May 31. Please consider taking a look at this fantastic collection, especially if you enjoy haunted house tales and anything dark and creepy. And if you enjoy it, please leave a short review or comment plus rating on Amazon. Let's support each other!

Get The Blue Hour

Harold and the House by Jan Darrow

Harold had inherited the old house. He inherited the storm clouds and the overgrown hedge. He inherited the dry dust in the rooms, and… he inherited the ghosts. 

Family ghosts. 

Sometimes the ghosts were ordinary. Like, sometimes they sat next to his bed and watched him sleep. Or sometimes they flew around the open rooms. Sometimes they turned off the lights only to turn them right back on again. But sometimes…they whispered things into his ear, like stories he had forgotten. 

Family stories.

As time went on Harold didn’t always want to remember the stories they told, he cleaned and polished the old house instead. He let the ghosts go about their business and they let him go about his. And when he was finished, he put the hedge into well-kept order and cleared away the storm clouds. 

But he had forgotten about the attic. 

The attic was a miserable mess. Harold found boxes and trunks full of miserable things. Things that could be forgotten…. things that should be forgotten. One box after another. More ghosts seeping into the floors and stairwells and halls… until he heard voices rising. Ghostly voices mixing. Hurricanes of screaming, faces blending. Strange items falling from mid-air. 

Wind like tornados spun through the house. Snarling teeth gnashed. Glasses smashed. 

Harold somehow made it down to his bedroom. He closed his eyes and felt his body sink deep into the bed. If there was a hell, this was surely it. Stories poured from his ears. Arguments distorted and muffled became clear. His bed began to spin faster and faster until… he must have fainted. 

Or died.

But the next day he awoke and found that he was still on the bed. The house was silent. He got up and looked in the usual places but couldn’t find a ghost anywhere. 

Outside, sunlight sparkled in the trees.

And there in the living room on the couch sat an angel.

A puppy angel.

When the angel saw Harold, she jumped down from the couch and squeaked as she ran toward him. Harold bent down to pick her up, but not before she peed on the hardwood floor.

Jan Darrow lives in Michigan with her husband and daughter where she connected with the natural world at an early age.  She was recently published by " The Purpled Nail" and has two collections of poetry and a collection of flash fiction available on Amazon.  You can find her at https://www.jandarrow.blogspot.com.

You by Jan Darrow

no one believes
there is a ghost in the woods

I think now
about the drive out of town
the autumn leaves drifting into shadows
the trees
you brought me here
into the long dark grass
you promised
a memory
when we were young
and you were everything
now here you are under the moon
and that day
lives on
the two lane road along the forest
car wheels spinning
rushing air
laughter

the sudden shattered glass

Jan Darrow lives in Michigan with her husband and daughter where she connected with the natural world at an early age.  She has most recently been published by “The Purpled Nail” and currently has two collections of poetry and a collection of flash fiction available on Amazon.

Something in the Woods by Jan Darrow

Long ago on blue autumn nights a fire would appear at the edge of Tucker’s field. A field that met a forest along an unpaved road. Where in that field, shocks of drying corn silhouetted against the darkening sky.

No one knew how they started, but it was useless to put them out because another would start again later. Some were small – others had flames that climbed fifteen feet high.

A legend grew, and for many years people told stories about witches living in the forest nearby, and how they wanted to reclaim the farmer’s land. 

Some people said they heard incantations coming from those deep woods, others told stories of broomsticks flying in the dark above the autumn trees. Some said they saw strangers in town with snake rings and tattoos and eyes the color of fog selling potions.

But there was never any evidence of witches. No relics left behind.

And Jack Tucker grew up with his father planting corn and wheat in that field. A field that lived and breathed under the summer sun.

One Halloween night when Jack was sixteen, his car skidded off the road. He got out and saw that his tire was flat. The moon was so bright it bled into the field and trees beyond. He shivered a little as he walked toward home. If there were witches, he told himself, he’d meet them head on.

The road was silent. Just owls and ravens shifting in the tree branches above.

Jack whistled a song.

Up ahead he saw where his father’s field met the forest. And then he saw orange flames licking the sky. He wasn’t afraid of the fires and crossed the field to warm himself. He stood listening to the crackling wood.

It was only moments later when something jumped upright out of the fire and shook itself to life. Jack’s mouth opened wide. A figure made from bark growled in the orange light. White sparks flew from a snarling head of leaves and caught fire to the grass and bundles of dry corn beyond.

Horrified, Jack Tucker outran the shooting flames only to see the fire swallow his father’s field behind him when he reached home. The fire department came, but it was too late.

In the morning there was nothing but burnt ground for two square miles.

In the years to come, Jack Tucker left the field alone. Thirty years later, you couldn’t tell the difference between the forest and what was once the field.

And by then, the fires were gone.

Jan Darrow has most recently been published by True Chili and Five on the Fifth.  Her book Autumn Poetry: A Collection for the Season was one of 8 Poetry Collections for Sweater Weather featured by the online community - Read Poetry.  (Andrews McMeel Publishing.)

Live Chat by Jan Darrow

It was during a snowstorm that she realized she had ghosts.  Like mice or spiders, they just arrived.

It was a little unsettling. And there were no introductions.

Just the slamming doors.

Don’t get her wrong.  She liked old things.

But the laughter was monotonous.

She looked for some sort of trap online.  Home Depot’s Live Chat said – Get a priest – Call in a Nun.

But she wasn’t religious.

So, she kept to herself.

239 Facebook friends offered advice including burning sage or incense and chanting incantations.  Some suggested garlic.

If that didn’t work, said others – just tell them to get out.  It’s your house. 

It turns out there were three.  And one went to public school.

This morning she woke up to the smell of coffee and cinnamon rolls and she wondered.

How bad can these ghosts really be?

Jan Darrow has two poetry books available on Amazon.  You can read more of her work at:  https://jandarrow.blogspot.com/

Radio Tavern by Jan Darrow

No one knew how the tavern got its name.  Perhaps during the war people went there to listen to swing music – Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, and Cab Calloway.  Maybe some went to forget, but it now stood crumbling, decrepit, and utterly desolate on an abandoned road high above Lake Michigan.  The only new thing there was a tower - and people said the cell phone service was great.

  

Someone said they saw John Makati’s cows near the abandoned road.

Maude, who always had a sweeping hairdo, asked Howard not to go up there, but he didn’t listen.  He never listened, and John Makati’s cows were always missing.

“John Makati needs to learn how to fix his fences,” she said to Howard a little while later.

 

Howard was up on that steep hill watching the lake.

 

“There’s a big freighter on the water Maudie. Probably going to Mackinaw!”

 

“What about the cows?”

Howard didn’t really care about the cows.

  

“No cows.  I’m coming home,” he said disgusted and hung up. Maude never could recognize a magical moment unless it was in a beauty shop.

At home Maude waited and waited, but Howard never arrived.

She tried calling him back and when there was no answer, she took their Labrador in her SUV and headed up the steep dead road. 

When she got to the top, she saw Howard’s empty truck. Great, she thought, now we’re going to miss the fish fry.

By the time the sun was getting low in the sky she was sufficiently irritated and called the police.

The sheriff and his men searched the hillside that night and into the next day.  They searched the surrounding area for the next couple of weeks, but Howard was never found.

Maude was grief stricken.  She couldn’t believe that her Howard was dead.

 

A few months later she took her dog and drove up the overgrown road and sat by the old lodge which for some reason gave her comfort.  She counted herself lucky to have had twenty-five happy years with Howard. 

 

Then, to her surprise, her phone rang.  It was Howard.

 

Maude could hardly contain herself. The cell phone service on the hill really was great. 

Jan Darrow is a poet from Michigan who connected with the natural world at an early age.  She has been published online and in print and finds abandoned places utterly beautiful.  You can see more of her work at jandarrow.blogspot.com.