You've read a couple of horror articles by Gordon BWhite's work, I feel quite liked.
The two of you followed each other on social platforms. Seeing the subscription campaign he initiated, you thought to yourself: It doesn't cost a few dollars a month to receive a **plus a mini**, which is quite interesting.
So, you choose a $7 per month membership tier — a little-known haunted house postcard.
You've missed the first month's email, but it's not worth a few dollars, and you've long since forgotten about it.
Until the 13th of the following month, you receive a small goodie bag containing a postcard about 13 centimeters long and 9 centimeters wide - the postmark indicates that the letter is from Seattle, and the postcard shows a group of ghosts appearing in the windows of the big house, wearing masks of happiness or sadness.
You think to yourself: cliché.
There is also a ** attached to the postcard, which is an ordinary house. The exterior walls of the house are blue, the doors are red, and the curtains are white. Taken at dusk, the lights on the walkway make the house look vibrant.
On the back of the postcard, ** home in crooked blue handwriting reads:
1247, Sotak Road. The ghost in this house is a young boy with two stunted cat faces. He has a pair of scissors under each of his eyelids, which rattle when he cries. He was rarely seen, but his crying could be heard. In dusty corners or in the cracks of unattended combs, you can always find sheared beards.
Nope. It's not that the story isn't scary enough, but that's it?The subscription fee is $7!
Back at home, you throw it in a stack of bank statement letters, and you tell yourself you'll read it, but you'll throw it all away the next month.
You forgot about it there—the postcard, the boy with the two kitten faces—but that night, you woke up from a dream with a gentle clicking sound and the feeling of thick hair sliding down your cheeks.
On the 13th of the next month, another postcard came.
On the ** that came with the letter, there was a two-story house, the lawn in front of the door was unkept, and a pink bicycle with training wheels was stuck in the hedge.
You wonder: people have come to take pictures, why do you let it get stuck there?
329, Dr. Mantus. There is a ghost of a bird in the attic and a ghost of a mouse in the pantry. A little girl's mouth is like a withered carnation, entwining them from 3 a.m. until dawn. She doesn't like people looking at her.
Outrageous. What is this, a push article on waste utilization?
However, when you take it into the house and throw it away, you can't find the last postcard. You put down Dr. Mantus's one and look through the pile of letters, but when you look back, the new postcard is gone.
You're sure you've been hearing scrapes in the cupboard all night.
When you wake up in the morning, you smell a hint of aroma, maybe flowers, or meat, or just your hallucinations.
You request a refund of the subscription money. Not out of fear, of course, but that this garbage is not worth $7.
You go online and want to cancel on Gordon BWhite's attention, only to find that he "blocked" you. Okay, that's just proof you're right – there's nothing worse than an "artist" who doesn't have the slightest interest in fans.
But on the 13th of the next month, the full moon will be accompanied by a postcard with an old Victorian house, taken through a rusty gate.
14, Continental. The last owner of the house put the heads of 3 bearded men on the closet shelf, each with a radio speaker in its mouth. They never make any sound, but sometimes they appear in inappropriate places, and the eyes roll from left to right like a **dial. When it's hot, the fridge is a good place to hide, and in the winter it's replaced with an oven.
You throw this postcard in the trash can outside the house. But even so, you hesitate for a moment before opening the fridge for dinner. You decide to order takeout to eat. When it's time to get the delivery, you contact customer service and confirm with your credit card company that you've stopped charging for your subscription.
But after 30 days:
1415, the house is not bad, except that people can hear footsteps on a certain step at 1 a.m. every day. The children say that when the clock strikes, if you stand there, you can see the old lady winter, but the adults know that you will die.
Postcard after postcard:
765, Warwick and the coalition generals could not find boots, nor could they find their feet. They cursed the medic who cut off their feet.
In 198, Chesham didn't want to marry the young maid who hid in a cupboard and sewed a wedding veil with spider silk.
250, the Hamptons. The whole family twisted together in knots and rolled around behind the wall.
Postcards poured in.
You've done your best to keep yourself from thinking too much, but those stupid imaginary imps will still sneak into your dreams, scratching, crying, and haunting at night, until eventually, their threat spreads into the day.
When the oven is preheated, you smell the smell of burnt beards;On the bathroom mirror filled with water vapor, you see a faint lip print;Your quilt has faint cat paw prints, but the toes are more, thinner, and longer;A red hat box with an unclasped lid and a whisper as the big truck passes by, but you suddenly realize that you don't have one, and you haven't opened your bedroom closet in two weeks.
Then, a postcard with no stamp arrived. Of course, it's not postmarked, so you can't tell if it's from Seattle.
Only the exterior of your home is on the postcard**. There you are, dressed in yesterday's clothes, frowning, standing in front of a window that is somehow filled with schadenfreude malice. What's that thing?In the bushes under the window, what is it?
You got it. 478, 10 stout blue fingers pry open the window and climb in. Is he hiding under the bed, or in the closet where the hat box is kept, or in the ventilation duct?He waited in the dark, yes, but not alone. For months, he had been sending his friends there to meet him, until the beams were littered with ghosts and nightmares growing like black mold on the walls. They will live here and stay here forever.
Trembling, you go back inside and turn on all the lights. The laptop sits right on the coffee table in the living room – you're sure you didn't put it here.
The computer screen is pitch black and it waits.
You plunge headlong into the couch, the floor curving beneath you, and the wood-grain knots on the floor moan like an open mouth. The air inside the house is cloudy, your cheeks are slightly red, and you start to feel difficult to breathe. You reach for your computer, and the trackpad is cold and sticky, leaving your fingertips with black stains. You look around for tissues and rags to wipe your hands. A heavy truck rumbled outside, and snickering came from the bedroom at the end of the hallway.
You go back to your laptop, and the browser automatically opens Gordon BWhite's page, and scroll down to highlight a new message: two new membership tiers are now available, and if you pay $8 on a regular basis, Gordon will send a ghost away every month, and they will find a new home far away from you. But if you pay a much larger fee at once, he'll send all the ghosts away at once—putting them in a story and sending them anywhere in the world to haunt other readers.
As soon as you log in to your account, the clatter of scissors, the creaking stairs, and the dragging sound under the floor stop in an instant.
They're waiting with bated breath for you to enter your credit card information.
Author: Mei Gordon BWhite. From Reader Magazine, Issue 1, 2024.
Those shining days, there are "Readers" to witness with you.