It’s lovely to be outdoors this time of year; only, the sun disappears much quicker because it knows that the cold night is better left to morbid things. The leaves are dying, the flowers are long gone, and the barking of crows ring over stiff breezes in the dim light of sunset just after 6pm. It is that time again, dear reader. Time to snuggle up close to someone who makes you feel safe against your greatest fears because they are stumbling awake, pushing up the dirt and clawing out into the night, hungry for only god knows what.
In anticipation of Issue 7 on Saturday, we present this preview of the continuation of the PRL Legacy Series event of the summer that introduced a boy who was difficult to root for. The boy who would change his name many times to reflect his stature has found himself a new home that may be haunted.
Excerpt from The Black Side of Paradise (4. Bradley)
by Roy Cureton and Wesley Livingston
If it’s true that a house can have a soul or a spirit, then the house Bradley inhabited after separation from his biological mother had a malevolent one that caused discomfort to most of the foster children who lived there over the years. Bradley did not experience this discomfort, and in fact, he felt a sort of kinship with the house. It was as though both he and the house possessed the same ill temperment that Bradley had honed over years when he never quite learned to get along with anyone and he seemed to revel in the discomfort or unhappiness that he could inspire in others. The house had a nice and stately outward appearance; it was three stories including the attic and it had a fresh coat of paint that was refreshed every five years or so to keep it brightly white against any weathering that threatened it in the humid, seaside environment of Virginia Beach, VA where it was situated and had housed a noble lineage of the state that was sure to die off after the current generation of one expired. Priscilla Farnsworth was the great great granddaughter of a decorated Navy general who had settled in Virginia Beach many years ago and his home was big enough to house the 15 children he and his wife had over the long years of their marriage. With each subsequent generation, the Farnsworth family numbers dwindled and by the time Priscilla’s father was born, he was the oldest of three sons and the only to survive into midlife. The man had no cousins; many had died in service to their country and others had drifted away from the family’s heritage in VA, opting for new names and fresh starts elsewhere. Priscilla seemed to be the sole surviving Farnsworth still proudly holding the name when Bradley arrived at the home that was packed with a history that buggered its inhabitants who would be happy to ignore it if he didn’t seem to lurk dark rooms and corners, and come to life in the stories the foster children told one another that they had either made up or dug up from the many artifacts that could be found inside; ghost stories gained full weight and realization upon retelling and Priscilla was persistent about shutting them up and letting them die.
Priscilla welcomed Bradley with a stern smile as his social worker led him up the front steps to the huge, plantation style porch. Priscilla had always liked the idea of having children and since her youth, people told her that she would become a great mother, though she never had children of her own for reasons that are many in number; the foremost being her aversion to marriage that she felt would only strip her of the last name that she held in very high regard and wore as a badge of honor. She had suitors over the course of her life, but by the time she welcomed Bradley into her home, Priscilla had given up romantic entanglements and was completing a secret mission of finding an heir to which she could leave her name and all of her family’s fortunes. She opened her home to foster children for this reason and over the decade or so that children came and went, she was mostly unimpressed with the manner of child left in her care. She was not cruel to the children, in many respects she gave them a sense of discipline that every child unknowingly longs for, but the children were generally very happy to find placement elsewhere owing to Priscilla’s demand for discipline and in some cases, the haunting nature of the mansion that either made sounds because of its shifting foundation or because it housed centuries worth of spirits that would torment the children in the dark. Over the time that she had opened her home to foster children, some had disappeared completely and despite rumors of something nefarious on Priscilla’s part — or on the part of the evil mansion — the agency never thought twice about her fitness for foster parenting. The children were usually believed to have run away, as was not uncommon among older foster children who had lived their entire lives moving from home to home with no sense of permanence.
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