Ghost Stories

 By: Kellen McAllister

In the dawn of twilight there is a mound of candy stick bones. 

Inside they ache with stories. 

Made-up, turning, Real, Real, Real.

Fireflies and fire sparks float through the air, mingling.

You can’t tell which is which. 

In the summer evenings, everything falls quiet. 

Not winter’s silence, but soft cackling.

Dark steeps in and light by light flickers on,

Luring in phantom pale moths. 

Our tongues are covered in splinters of words. 

Sunburnt and strong we become our summers. 

In the night I read stories of magic so eerie 

That I can see the strawberry ghosts at the edge of the woods. 

Still, I eat the Persephone fruit. 

Some say the witching hour is midnight, 

but I know it is just after sunset

when the sky goes from blue to black 

like a bruise being pressed. 

The bones rustle against each other,

Clacking music with spring peepers and cricket chants,

Trembling for their stories to be told,

Trembling to hear ours. 

Fresh breath is so rare for the dirt-deep.

The night pours over us, prompting stories. 

We’re too tired to lie. 

Summer’s heat burns away our shells

Until all that’s left is tender truth.

My great-great-grandpa saw the devil. 

He prayed three times in Polish.

Then the Man in Black at the bridge was gone.

He carried a rosary with him for the rest of his life

and did not tell this story often.

Kellen McAllister is currently studying at the University of Mount Union to become an author and illustrator. Her work has been published in the Inkwell, her high school literary magazine, Mount Union’s Calliope magazine, and Scholastic Art and Writing. She has long held an interest in exploring the magical and mystic hidden in the everyday world.