by Meredith Jones
This story was selected by our editorial staff as winner of the inaugural Spooky Stories Contest. Meredith Jones was the featured reader at the second annual Terrifying Tales Night on October 30th, 2012.
Nina has these great black eyes, heavy-lidded and strange. When she turns them on you, there’s nothing for it but to do as she asks. I would rather be in Milwaukee, but I touch her arm instead and go to ring the doorbell.
Her uncle is a small man, a shriveled man, creased with infirmity and terribly bad luck. The last time he was in the hospital, Nina said, they cut out his blackened liver and replaced it with a pig’s. That was eight months ago, but he still moves with the ginger step of a pregnant woman, as though the foreign organ balances precariously on his delicate bones.
