R.P. Kraul

The air in Belcorte, Pennsylvania tasted like death.

It swooped among the gambrel roofs and crouched behind the panes of dormer windows.

Jill sensed it watching her, grinning at her. Death hid behind crumbling chimneys, jumped across rooftops, and prowled among the locust trees along the river. Death climbed a building, rang the town hall bell three times, and stuck out its forked tongue to savor the light-falling snow.

In this town more than twenty years ago, Jill’s grandfather had kidnapped a teenage girl and locked her in the spare bedroom of his Victorian home. He’d murdered her with scissors and a chef’s knife.

Prior to his visceral proclivities and suicide, Grandfather had been a college professor. In his preface to Modern Anthropology, he’d written the following of Belcorte:

Belcorte resides in the Southern Catskills, but Pennsylvanians call these mountains the Poconos. Belcorte is ancient; roofless shards of abandoned mining shelters spring from the hillsides as intrinsically as veins of anthracite jettison through the soil beneath.

Belcorte’s Victorian homes crouch in disrepair. One should expect state-tax dollars, if the fools we elect send them here, return Belcorte to her prestige. This once beautiful maiden is a muddy-faced ghost, a dirty doll, a receptacle for flies.