My story “Ghostwitch” is one of the 45 short jolts of horror that will appear weekly on the Rooster Republic website.
It’s scheduled to go live July 3rd, but until then, to whet your appetite…
Ghostwitch
“Mad with grief, it’s said. But I’m not.” She looks up from the cast-iron stove, strangely modern in this tiny valley hamlet. Perhaps her trader husband brought it home from one of his trips to the factory towns. “Tea?”
“Yes, please.”
“Do you believe the stories you write down?”
I watch her pour the tea into a thick earthenware mug. It smells of herbs, not imported leaves. As a witch’s brew should.
But I’m skeptical whether she is truly a witch. A healer, maybe. But a ghostwitch?
She sits across from me and inhales the steam. Behind its rising veil, her eyes are bright. “I never speak to him,” she says. “Never see him. I don’t think I can. We only meet them once, I believe, alive or dead … So no, I didn’t become a ghostwitch so I could speak with my husband again.”
“I’ll be sure not to write that.”
She nods. “Still, I know why it’s said. Things like these, people like to have a tidy explanation.”
“Yes,” I say, thinking of the sea.
About Therese
Therese Arkenberg's first short story was accepted for publication on January 2, 2008, and her second acceptance came a few hours later. Since then they haven't always been in such a rush, yet her work appears in places like Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Analog, Daily Science Fiction, and the anthology Sword & Sorceress XXIV. Aqua Vitae, her science fiction novella, was released by WolfSinger Publications in December 2011.
She works as a freelance editor and writer in Wisconsin, where she returned after a brief but unforgettable time in Washington, D.C. When she isn't reading, writing, or editing (it's true!) she serves on the board of the Plowshare Center of Waukesha, which works for social, economic, and environmental justice.