Whispers After Midnight The Return Luke Morris noway believed in ghosts — not until the night Clara failed. For weeks after the burial, he could n't bring himself to step back inside the grange. The police had declared her death an accident — a fall from the old ground near the forestland but Luke could n't accept that. He'd seen the dispatches. He'd seen the time prints. She'd texted him after she failed. Every night since, her voice visited his sleep. occasionally faint, occasionally close — bruiting his name. Tonight, at 1157 p.m., he stood before the house again. The windows were boarded, the yard grown. The air was damp and heavy, smelling noiselessly of spoilage. His flashlight ray wavered across the weathered frontal door. The boards nailed across it were loose. He dithered only

The first tale came just after night. Clara Morris stirred in her sleep, allowing it was the wind percolating through the cracks of the century-old grange. But when she opened her eyes, the room was still, the curtains unmoving, and the air so heavy she could nearly taste it. The tale came again — faint, breathy, like someone speaking from a mouth pressed against wood. She sat up. Her hubby Luke was gone, working his late shift at the sanitarium, leaving her alone except for the old walls and the steady ticking of the forefather timepiece in the hallway.