Those We Left Behind, and Other Sacrifices

by Brandon Applegate

If you’re reading this, you’re an awful lot like me. When it comes to books, you don’t skip the extra stuff. You linger in the forewords, the introductions, the prologues, the epilogues.

He settles into his bed and pulls the covers up tight across his chest. He gets as close as he can to the bedside lamp and lets the story wash over him. He doesn’t sleep until the sun rises.

When bullies pushed me into the gravel on the playground, I went home and read a horror book.

When I left for college and spent my first nights away from home, I read a horror book.

When my wife and I brought our daughter home from the hospital and we stayed up all night, taking turns walking her back and forth, listening to her frantic screams, and trying to figure out...

Some of this is real. Some of this is make-believe. I’m not going to tell you which is which right now because that breaks the spell. If I’ve done my job here, it’s all real.

I have not left this library for three weeks by my best count as well as that of the grandfather clock in the corner by the infuriatingly unlocked door. Not to piss, not to eat, not to see the sun. The clock chimes as loud as a church bell at noon and at midnight, every single day. So, I can hardly fail to keep track. I have opened the door many times. I would only have to take a single step out of this room and into the next.

I am perfectly capable of leaving. If I do, I will die, because I am supposed to be dead.

These things were interspersed with dated diary entries, from 1920 through October 1923, dealing mostly with failed attempts to escape from the library

That’s when the Goat Man comes out and carries you off.

Do you want me, Goat Man?” That’s it, isn’t it? Nobody wants him. He’s a burden. Daddy tells him that daily—every time he puts a fist in his gut.

If he feeds himself to the Goat Man, gives back what he cheated the creature out of, the old hex might lift.

pause. “Mickey, have you ever seen that man before?” “Yeah.” I feel cold. “Where, baby?” “In my room,” Mickey says. “He likes to watch me sleep.”

Not at all creepy

When Daniel realized what had happened, he said, “I’m sorry.” He left the wood with his head hung low not because he wished he was a tree, but because he feared he had destroyed an irreplaceable friendship.

It is the secret nobody ever tells you about being a tree. First you must be small and weak and frail; if you can survive this, you can survive anything. In that way, I think being a tree is very much like being a man.”

When James was eight years old, a spider crawled out of the drain and up his leg while he was in the shower. It was a big one, black with yellow stripes. Little hairs sunk into his skin with each rapid footstep, stinging as it sprinted up his shin.

Oh hell no

James always showered before Kathryn, so the hair moldered in the grate for twenty-four hours by the time James saw it.

He’d have to pick up the nasty tangles and feel the cold damp of it as he carried it to the toilet and flushed it. It was a pre-shower ritual: scoop up the clump, flush it, gag, get in the shower.

This was not the only thing they fought about. In fact, the thing that finally made him put a bullet in her skull while she slept was the snoring. She sounded like she was tickling a pig in their bed every night. He’d tried earplugs, headphones, even sle...

This is something my husband would do but for me farting 🤣🤣