A Halloween Treat
For all of you who love this spooky time of year, I present my short story “My Death in Baltimore.”
This story was inspired by my rereading of some early American gothic horror classics. Writers like Edgar Allen Poe, Washington Irving, and Nathaniel Hawthorne were masters at crafting eerie stories that, even today, tantalize and haunt readers. Their writing style may seem archaic and some of the vocabulary may be old-fashioned (these stories were written in the early 19th Century, after all), but the creepy stuff is there. And it is good.
In this story, I try to capture some of the same feelings of dread and hopelessness by fashioning the language after their style. The story’s opening sentences came to me in a dream and remain almost exactly as I first wrote them down. It begins with:
I, Mortimer Edgars, transcribe here, for your benefit, the events of the past three evenings, during which I unwittingly sealed the inevitability of my own death on this very night. I must write swiftly as the stroke of midnight is but thirty minutes hence. It is at the witching hour I expect the murderous specters, who were set upon me by another, to come calling and claim their prize.
With that, I commend to you my story about the demise of the rogue and confidence man Mortimer Edgars, “My Death in Baltimore.”
| Story Word Count: 4,100 | Reading Time: <20 minutes |