Loam

by Scott Heim

Over the years, our aversion to the place had crowded out any remaining nostalgia we’d once carried for our bedrooms,

each picture on the wall, gradually disappearing, the way our once-clear memories had vanished to leave only the stains we couldn’t quite scrub away.

A town as small as Collingwood perceives little distinction between mysterious and menacing,

None of us had been sleeping well, and with our mother’s encouragement, we chose the basement as our nighttime salvation.

Was his ghost an embodiment of our lies, a

real demon to replace the imagined monster those adults helped us conjure within those stale courthouse walls?