It Matters to Honor the Dead
An early Halloween story
The ruins showed under moonlight, all shadows and corners, the broken windows leaving jagged holes. In the chill of the October night it was a place of desolation, pecked at by time and weather. Guests, as they had been called, never came. Not anymore. The asylum had held its emptiness for years.
“Why’d you bring me out here, Rowan? Everything is going to start soon back in town. I’m in charge of the haunted cemetery, remember?”
“Plenty of time. Anyway, this is loads better. It would have been a great addition to the Tour of Ghouls, don’t you think? Come on, Mark. We can go inside just for a minute — it’ll be worth your while. Trust me.”
“Fine. Let’s hurry this up. You said you had a surprise for me. This sure wasn’t what I was expecting.”
“No, I imagine it wasn’t. Watch out for glass,” Rowan said as they made their way along an overgrown path to the front entrance.
“This is where they sent my grandmother to die.” Rowen said as they crossed the threshold, her words echoing into the cavernous space before her. She shone her flashlight over the walls but it couldn’t penetrate to the high ceiling above. “It’s really old, more than a hundred years. So many people put inside here, left by their families to live blank lives until…
