Just Us: Horror in a Small Maryland Town

It was as if the town's youngest citizens, running across the surface of time, had slipped down a hidden mineshaft. Some, like Laura McTeague, were shoved into the mine by a horrible accident, or in the case of Clark and his little brother, Stanley — pushed into eternity by a drifter like Ernest Tango. Still other kids, like James’ youngsters, were dispatched by a burst of furious, adult-sized pain. The house is gone but for the low, weed-choked foundation, and a water pipe sticking straight out of the cellar like the hand of a drowning man. Even now in the summertime, the sunlight here seems subdued, like the interior of a slightly open coffin. Things still linger in the creeks, swamps and low places of my childhood. I can't name them but I have seen them. They never venture into the road nor rise to stand in open fields. They crawl about in the spider corners in aging barns, moan from mist-choked river banks and stand hunched and patient in the shadows as we age and die. These beings neither Heaven nor Hell can claim.

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