The Playground: A Supernatural Short Story

A woman struggling for survival after the death of her husband leaves her hometown to make a fresh start for her family. She stumbles upon Willows Grove, a town with an evil past and steeped in folklore. Unable to find work, she and her two daughters take shelter in an old church adjacent to a haunted playground and meet inescapable horror.

Excerpt

An evil that exists for centuries resides by my side. Our souls exist between earth and a spiritual plane. Imprisoned inside decaying church walls, I watch my eternally youthful daughters laughing and playing like living, breathing children on the playground. He watches too, but for different reasons, to reap his vengeance on people in town who dare trespass on cursed grounds. It was a year ago my two daughters and I came to this place, looking to start a new life after death befell my husband. His life taken by the sea, one sunny day on an Atlantic beach, his body never recovered. He left us saddled with debt, and no real assets, our home and material things sold to sustain us. We traveled from coastal Florida, searching for a new start, stumbling on the town of Willows Grove.

I thought we’d found a new home, but instead, we found death. With no money or job, we lived precariously from street to car, until townspeople, ignoring our plight with shameless disregard drove us away with scathing remarks. One night we took shelter from a storm in an old Episcopalian church. We knew not what resides inside—a soul of unrest, trapped for centuries. One restless night, I sat in the nave, sensing his presence in the transept’s shadows. A guardian angel in this house of worship, watching over me and the girls, I believed. But I was mistaken.

Again, he arrived one quiet night, whispering sad hymns as I slept.

Harder yet may be the fight. Right may often yield to might. Wickedness awhile may reign. Satan’s cause may seem to gain…