Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories by Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman, Ramsey Campbell, Paul Tremblay, Mercedes M. Yardley, Richard Thomas, Damien Angelica Walters, Kevin Lucia

the house. It was there, a comfort, a threat, a reminder, a Stonehenge, a totem to things that actually happened to her. The house was old when she was a child. That her body has aged faster than the house (there are so many kinds of years; there are dog-years and people-years and house-years and geological-years and cosmic-years) is a joke and she laughs at it, with it, even though all jokes are cruel. The house is a New England colonial, blue with red and white shutters and trim, recently painted, the first floor windows festooned with carved flower boxes. She stands in the house’s considerable shadow. She was once very small, and then she became big, and now she is becoming smaller again, and that process is painful but not without joy and an animal-sense of satisfaction that the coming end is earned. She thinks of endings and beginnings as she climbs the five steps onto the front porch. Adjacent to the front door and to her left is a white historical placard with the year 1819 and the house’s name. Her older brother, Sam, said that you could never say the house’s name out loud or you would wake up the ghosts, and she never did say the name, not even once. The ghosts were there anyway. Fiona never liked the house’s name and thought it was silly, and worse, because of the name preexisting and now post-existing it means that the house was never hers. Despite everything, she wanted it to always be hers.
    Fiona hesitates to open the front door. Go to THE FRONT DOOR .
    Fiona decides to not go inside the house after all and walks back to her car. Go to LEAVING THE HOUSE .

THE END

ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DOOR, EVERYTHING CHANGES
    Damien Angelica Walters
    Hannah opens her bedroom window, wincing at the low creak it makes, and pauses with one leg over the sill. A pile of dirty laundry sits at the foot of her bed, One Direction posters hang on the walls, and her laptop is open, but turned off, on her desk. She hasn’t dared turn it on for days; the messages coming in on her phone are more than enough.
    Dark smudges, the shadows of her mom’s feet, creep along the floor beneath the door. They linger, and Hannah pulls her leg back inside, worrying an already ragged cuticle between her teeth. Part of her wants to open the door and let her mom in, wants to let the truth spill from her lips like vomit, wants to tell her everything, no matter what she says, no matter what happens after, but she can’t make her legs or mouth move because the other part of her knows it’s too late.
    Her phone vibrates and tears burn in her eyes. The monsters are relentless. No need to look at the message; she knows what it says. She deleted a lot of them when it started, but now she doesn’t even bother. Her phone vibrates again and she pinches the inside of her cheek between her teeth. It’s Friday night, almost ten o’clock, and weekends are the worst.
    The shadow feet beneath her door move, pause, and move again, moving away. Hannah takes a deep breath, shoves her phone in the pocket of her hoodie, and gives her room one last look.
    ***
    Leanne paces in the living room, fingertips to temple, as though she can hold back the ache nestling there. Hannah’s upstairs in her bedroom, and while Leanne wants to go and apologize, she knows her daughter well enough to know it would go over as well as a fart in church. They both need time to cool down. To breathe.
    This isn’t the first time they’ve argued—life with a thirteen-year-old is anything but bucolic—but it’s the worst thus far. And prompted by such a silly thing, too. Leanne squeezes her hands into fists, releases, squeezes again.
    Would you please empty the dishwasher? A simple request that tornadoed into tears and stomping feet, and then the slinging of silverware into the drawer so fast and hard the clatter rattled Leanne’s teeth.
    “What is wrong with you?” Leanne asked, knowing her tone of voice was too sharp, but knowing too late.
    Hannah turned with a fistful of