Richard Schiver

Tag: short story

  • Weekly Writing Challenge 07/08/2026

    Weekly Writing Challenge 07/08/2026

    K is for Knucklebones Pt 3

    Destiny read it twice. Then a third time, because the first two readings refused to change the words into something sensible.

    She should have put the key down. She knew this with a clarity reserved for bad decisions as they are being made. Instead, she slid the key into the lock.

    The click was small, but the house heard it anyway.

    The radiator knocked once in response. The kitchen window gave a soft pop in its frame. The piano in the parlor exhaled one low, silent note. Destiny froze with her fingers on the lid until all sound died into silence.

    Inside the sewing box there were no needles, no thread, or folded scraps of cloth. There was only a black velvet pouch tied with a piece of red string. The same one that had caused her so much trouble as a child. Beneath it a stack of small notebooks bound by the same red string.

    The pouch looked soft, it wasn’t, the fabric stiff with age. When Destiny lifted it, something inside pressed back against her palm with the hard insistence of knuckles beneath the skin.

    A smell rose from inside the box. Dust, candle smoke, and the sour-sweet odor from beneath the floorboards. Her mouth filled with the taste of pennies.

    She untied the string.

    The bones slid out onto the table before she tipped the pouch. There were seven of them, each small enough to close in a fist, polished yellow white with age. They did not tumble randomly. They arranged themselves in a loose curve, like fingers waiting to be counted.

    Destiny pushed back from the table so quickly the chair legs screamed against the floor.

    For a moment she was not thirty-two. She was eight, crouched in the pantry with Jonah beside her, both trying not to giggle while Elsie called from the kitchen, “Ready or not.” Something dry clicked in Jonah’s cupped hands. He whispered, “Your turn to ask.”

    The memory vanished as quickly as it appeared, leaving only questions in its wake.

    She leaned over the table. Tiny marks had been carved into the bones, not letters exactly, nor were they symbols she recognized. They looked like cuts that had healed badly. One bone was darker than the others, almost brown at one end, as if it had been held too close to a flame.

    Another bore two initials.

    J.V.

    The carving was fresh. Not new, exactly, but wet-looking, raw in the grooves, as if the bone had been wounded moments before she opened the box. Destiny touched it before she could decide not to.

    It was warm.

    Not room-warm. Not warmed by her hand. Warm like something that had only moments before lay beneath living flesh.

    The table lamp flickered.

    Destiny snatched her hand back. The seven bones remained in their curved arrangement. A hand? Was that what Elsie had called it? The memory teased with the promise of a revelation before it faded.

    The listening hand?

    She had not remembered that phrase in twenty-four years.

    From upstairs, directly above the dining room, came a child’s voice.

    “Destiny?”

    Her name came down through the ceiling with the softness of someone speaking through blankets.

    Destiny did not move. Her pulse beat in her throat, in her wrists, behind her eyes. She waited for the practical explanation to arrive. The wind. A neighbor. An animal in the attic. Her own mind, exhausted and cruel, refused to provide one.

    The voice spoke again.

    “You left me counting.”

    Destiny did not go upstairs. Her body wanted to. Her legs tightened toward the staircase as if some older part of her had already decided, but she kept both hands flat on the dining room table until the urge passed. The bones lay between her fingers. None of them moved.

    “I’m not doing this,” she said.

    The sentence had barely left her mouth before the radiator knocked once, sharp and disapproving.

    She forced herself to look away from the ceiling and toward the sewing box. The notebooks waited beneath the place where the pouch had been, tied together with the same red string. The top one had no title. Only one date, written in Elsie’s cramped hand. October 12, 1998. The year Jonah vanished.

    Destiny touched the cover. It felt greasy, as if it had been handled by many people. Or by the same person far too often.

    She opened it.

    The first pages were lists of names. Some she recognized from town. Children who had died in creek floods, farm accidents, fevers before vaccines. One boy struck by a train on the bend near St. Bartholomew’s. Others were only initials, ages, and little marks like the carvings on the bones. Next to several names, Elsie had written one word.

    Answered.

    What did it mean?

  • Weekly Writing Challenge 07/01/2026

    Weekly Writing Challenge 07/01/2026

    K is for Knucklebones

    The inspiration for this story is Christopher Golden’s short story titled: The God Bag. It appeared in the 2021 anthology, Beyond the Veil from Flame Tree Press. Here’s a link of you’d like to check it out. Beyond the Veil

    Without further adieu, let’s get into it.

    Continued from 06/24/2026

    Filled with disgust she looked at the door, at that narrow slit of emptiness, her gaze returning to the porch to find the footsteps had faded with the memory of that day. Taking a deep breath, refusing to reconsider her decision, she pushed into the house against the warnings filing her mind.

    The house received her without welcome. This had never really been a home. It was more a way station on the trip to adulthood and the freedom to escape into a wider world where the shadows were simply that. She tried the light switch inside the door without success. The bulb had probably burned out. Using her phone’s flashlight the wide beam slid over framed photographs hanging from the wall, the umbrella stand, and the old radiator beneath the window.

    Nothing moved. Nothing had to. The house had always known how to sit still in a way that made it feel deliberate.

    Placing her suitcase at the foot of the stairs she tried the light switch at the end of the hall. A faint yellow glow answered from the parlor on the left, offering some comfort from the shadows. She closed the front door; the soft click of the latch answered by another from the depths of the house.

    It’s just the pipes. Old houses clicked, they sighed, and they settled. They did not listen. They did not repeat things back.

    Destiny crossed into the small parlor. She had expected dust sheets to be covering everything, white and ghostly, but it all remained uncovered. Stiff back chairs gathered around a long table. She remembered silent meals around that polished surface. The three of them eating without a word being exchanged between them. The silence preferable to the alternative.

    In the corner stood a glass fronted China cabinet filled with assorted salt and pepper shakers. Elise has collected them with her most cherished filling the top shelf. Several sets had come from other countries, silent testimony to her grandfather’s travels across the globe while he served his country. She never knew her grandfather he had died shortly after Destiny’s mom fled the house.

    Maybe that’s why Elise was always so bitter?

    In the opposite corner stood a piano that had not been tuned since Jonah disappeared. Between them a fireplace interrupted the flow of the wall, the mantle above full of framed photographs. One was of her grandfather in his uniform, next to it was a photo of Elise, much younger, yet still severe. Destiny’s mother in a graduation gown next to a baby photo of Destiny. The last photo caught her eye and stopped her. She and Jonah as children, squinting into the sun, Jonah’s hand wrapped tightly around her wrist.

    She did not remember that. She remembered him as always running ahead, always vanishing around corners, daring her to catch up. She remembered him as motion and seeing him holding onto her caused her stomach to tighten.

    “Fine,” she said to the room because the quiet had become too heavy. “We’ll do the easy things first.

    The easy things were not easy. Elise kept receipts from grocery stores that no longer existed, church bulletins folded in half, glass jars filled buttons, boxes of rubber bands that had gone brittle with age. Destiny worked at the dining room table, sorting everything into three piles, keep, trash, uncertain. The uncertain pile grew faster than the others.

    Every so often a soft sound came from upstairs. A board flexing. A dull thump. Once she thought she heard a child clearing its throat. She did not go looking. It never helped in this house.

    Near midnight, with the rain thinning to a whisper, she found Elise’s sewing box in the bottom drawer of the sideboard. She recognized it immediately. The dark walnut polished to a high sheen, brass corners that glowed in the soft light, a lid inlaid with a mother of pearl moon. As a child she had always wanted to touch that moon more than anything else. Elis had slapped her hand once, hard enough to leave an angry red mark and said. “Some things open only because they want out.”

    The box was locked, which made things simple, it would go to the uncertain pile. As she moved to place it on the pile something rattled inside. Not shifted. Rattled like a pair of dice in an impatient hand.

    She held her breath, the box resting on the table between the piles of Elise’s life. The mother of pearl moon caught the light, glowing faintly blue. From upstairs came an answer. Tap, tap, tap, from the ceiling directly above her head.

    “No,” Destiny whispered.

    The box rattled again, softer, as if searching for a response.

    Destiny busied herself with the piles of papers, sorting, and resorting. From within one of the manila envelopes a small yellow envelope, like the one used to hold a safe deposit box key, hit the table with a distinct click.

    From above her head the house answered with a tap of its own.

    She looked inside the tiny envelope to find a small key wrapped in a piece of yellow legal pad paper. Shaking it out she unfolded the paper to reveal Elise’ cramped handwriting.

    Do not ask what already knows your name.

    To be continued!

  • Weekly Writing Challenge 06/24/2026

    Weekly Writing Challenge 06/24/2026

    Let’s try this again. Starting from the top with a new story for the letter K

    K is for Knucklebones

    The rain followed Destiny from the highway to the county road, and finally to a narrow muddy lane where the trees crowded so close they brushed both sides of the car. Low gray clouds rode along the treetops, deepening the claustrophobic feel that threatened to overwhelm her when she entered that narrow lane. A small part of her wanted to turn back. Take the hotel room she reserved and settle these matters on a day when the sun shined bright enough to dispel the shadows filling the forest.

    As she came around the final bend the farmhouse emerged from deep shadows, carrying some of the gloom with it. Crouched at the end of the drive, dark windows like eyes watching the relentless passage of time, filled with secrets she’d rather not explore. As she stared at the house she realized the sound of the rain had changed. No longer soft, it tapped on the roof like impatient fingers warning her away.  

    The house had not changed as much as she hoped. A part of her wished it would burn to the ground and take all its secrets with it. Instead, it remained standing, though it seemed to have grown more tired since the last time she saw it. The shape was the same. The steep roof, the attic window like a third eye, and the kitchen addition her grandmother Elise called temporary, though it had been there since she was nine.

    She and her brother Jonah moved in with their grandmother after their parents were killed in a car accident. She was the only surviving relative they had, and she welcomed their intrusion with a touch of suspicion. Before then they had only ever visited with their parents and never stayed overnight.

    The thought awakened an old memory of Destiny in Elise’s parlor when she was seven, searching through the cabinet that had always been kept locked. Small jars lined the shelves, filled with what looked like herbs and spices, though nothing was labeled. On the second shelf from the top was a small black bag next to a stack of notebooks. She clearly remembered reaching for the bag, filled with a sudden need to know what it contained, the clear sound of movement coming from within as her fingers closed around it. The memory faded without resolution and Destiny struggled to remember ever seeing Elise with that bag out.

    “It’s only a house,” Destiny said, her voice small inside the empty car.

    Elsie had been dead for eleven days. The lawyer said there was nothing urgent, just papers, keys, and ordinary debris left by a life that refused to end neatly. Destiny waited until her delays became unreasonable. She made lists. She booked a hotel in town, then canceled it. She told herself it would be safe enough to sleep one night in a dead woman’s house. But as she gazed at the tired house that had once been as familiar as an old coat, she realized it would have been better to keep the room.

    It would have given her the distance she needed to keep the old memories at bay.

    Under the porch roof with her suitcase next to her and her phone in one hand, she stared at the narrow gap where the door had opened with a single touch. Who left the door unlocked?

    The hinges squealed as the door moved in response to a soft breeze, or an old ghost escaping its prison. Stop it! She demanded of herself.

    A damp smell rolled out. Wallpaper paste, cold ash, and wax. Beneath all of it was a sweet, animal scent that made her think of butcher paper folded around bones. A thought so out of place with what memories remained. Only a couple were happy. Her time spent with her grandmother who insisted she call her Elise, had not been bad. But neither were they any good. Her last glimpse of this house had been through the rearview mirror as she drove away into her own life.

    Small muddy footprints crossed the porch from the steps to the threshold.

    Where did they come from?

    The prints were narrow, bare, the toes spread as if the child spent most of their life barefoot. She reached toward one and stopped. The length was familiar in a way that made no sense until a memory escaped the walls she had placed around it. Her own foot at eight years old, in the mud beside the bone mill while Jonah shrieked with laughter because she stepped on a frog.

    The memory flashed briefly before slamming shut.

    To be continued!

  • Weekly Writing Challenge 05/06/2026 K is for Karst

    Weekly Writing Challenge 05/06/2026 K is for Karst

    I’m trying something different with this story, something I’ve not done before. I wanted something that touches the reader on an emotional level while at the same time presenting an anomaly that could potentially occur. The ground beneath our feet presents such a challenge. Dark places hidden from view, abandoned mines filled with the voices of the ghosts that haunt it. But what if the ground itself refused to comply to the absolutes we are all familiar with.

    Hence the creation of K is for Karst. Karst is a distinct landscape formed by the dissolution of soluble bedrock, typically limestone, dolomite, or gypsum, characterized by features like sinkholes, caves, sinking streams, and springs.

    Been doing a good deal of research in an attempt to play the scientific against the unnatural. Hopefully it has the desired effect, but we’ll see, Also if you notice something amiss in the scientific descriptions please don’t hesitate to point it out.

    So let’s get back to the story.

    Continued from 04/26/2026

    While the coffee brewed Madison wandered into the living room and sat in her father’s chair. Flipping through the stack of magazines on the table beside it she uncovered a spiral-bound notebook with a pen stuck in the wire loop. Nothing was written on the green cover to indicate what might be inside, so she flipped to the first page. A date was written across the top of the first page, mirroring the pages that followed, each with a different date. Below the date, lines of her father’s cramped writing filled the first part of the page followed by separate entries as if he were recording his thoughts while documenting what he was doing.

    The first page was dated September 17TH 1992

    Initial survey results continue to contradict established subsurface models. Void spaces register at depths exceeding known excavation limits by a statistically significant margin. Plus or minus 0.2 m accuracy across three independent instruments. Re-calibration yields identical readings. Instrument drift has been ruled out. Historical bore data, when overlaid, aligns internally but diverges from current measurements as if the volume beneath the site has increased without displacement of surrounding strata.

    Voids deeper than permitted by original cut.

    Not erosion. not collapse.

    Checked again. Same numbers.

    Different depth?

     Not possible!

    Impossible unless volume is

     Never mind!

    I’ll re-calibrate tomorrow.

    Madison stopped reading as a chill slowly unwound at the base of her spine. Her father, the most rational, levelheaded man she had ever known appeared to be unraveling on the page before her.

    She flipped to the next page as the coffee pot gurgled in the kitchen signaling that it was done brewing her coffee.

    This entry was dated September 17th of the same year.

    Acoustic testing presents further inconsistencies. Impulse responses demonstrate delayed returns not attributable to chamber geometry. Echo intervals lengthen without corresponding increases in measured distance. In several instances, reflected signals arrive after the source signal has fully decayed beyond detectable amplitude, suggesting propagation through a medium that does not preserve temporal continuity. I note this without proposing a mechanism, as none exists within current geological frameworks.

    Acoustic test: impulse return late.

    Not damped. LATE! He wrote the last in capital letters that took up several lines.

    Echo arrives after source decay.

    Time stamp says it shouldn’t exist.

    Tried again.

    And again.

    No void geometry accounts for this. No chamber shape. Sound behaves like it’s walking a longer way than space allows.

    Granite is normal. That’s the worst part.

    Same grain, same fractures, same ratios—nothing exotic, nothing altered.

    This should not be happening to this rock.

    The next entry was dated a week later.

    During descent, spatial orientation becomes unreliable. Inclination readings remain stable, yet perceived slope varies. Footfall cadence does not match time stamps. Sounds—breathing, equipment contact—return fractionally out of sequence, as though the environment is re‑ordering events rather than dampening them. No seismic activity has been detected.

    Descent notes:

    Inclination stable. Instruments agree.

    Feet do not.

    Slope feels steeper, then shallower, then level while readings remain constant.
    Footsteps echo after I stop walking.

    Radio distortion is not noise.

    It’s timing.

    Jimmy is gone! What have I done?

    The last shocked her on an emotional level she had not been expecting. The sheer power of that simple statement said far more that the words themselves could convey.

    Jimmy was gone.

    How?

    And he blamed himself for what happened.

    To be continued!

  • Weekly Writing Challenge 04/15/2026

    Weekly Writing Challenge 04/15/2026

    K is for Karst

    Today we start on a new adventure. I’m trying to capture something different this time, the notion that the world is a living thing, and that what we see with our own eyes is not always the truth as we descend once more into those shadowy depths beneath the ground. Keep in mind this is raw with very minimal editing. So come along, I hope you enjoy the ride, and don’t mind that whisper you might hear. It’s just your imagination, I think.

    The call had come as these things typically do, in the middle of the night, dragging Madison from a deep sleep. The male voice on the other end had been straight forward and abrupt. Once she identified herself, still suspicious yet willing to listen to what they had to say, the voice had softened as it delivered the blow.

    Her father had passed.

    She thanked him, trying to chase the sleep away that left her thoughts muddled. Theirs had not been a loving relationship so there was no immediate sense of loss. No sorrow, no crying, only a numbness trapping her as she sat in bed staring at the phone.

    Her dad was the last link to a childhood that had once been full of joy and hope. But after her mother’s death during her last year at college, she and her father had grown apart. Her mother had been the glue that held their small family together, and with her passing the weekly phone calls to catch up had stopped. She had tried several times to reconnect with her dad, but he had always been too busy, too distracted, speaking briefly about his work before dismissing her. In time she quit calling and their relationship that had been tenuous at best, devolved into indifference.

    She tried to go back to sleep, the burden she now carried heavy on her mind. As her father’s only heir, there was so much she would have to do in the morning. Plan, schedule a flight to Vermont, convince her assistant to make the presentation she had been scheduled to give to the board of the National Petroleum Institute. She had been looking forward to that presentation; it would have been a true feather in her cap and secured her place with her employer. Geostar, a national conglomerate that provided geophysical surveys for oil and gas companies.

    She had been with them for three years and had become one of their rising stars. To which she owed her dad a debt of gratitude. He owned and operated a small granite quarry, and it was here she developed her passion for all the mysteries that existed beneath their feet. The thought of the quarry known locally as The Karst, and the happiness she had known there, brought a tear to her eye. She wiped at it absently as she struggled to find any degree of sorrow at her father’s passing.

    The next two days were a blur as she took care of the things she would need to settle so she could disappear for a week. She felt she owed him that much, a week of her time to say a proper goodbye and start the process of selling his assets. She had no desire to run a quarry, and with no other siblings, she felt it best to simply liquidate. She would keep enough to secure her own retirement then donate the rest to those who had been closest to her dad.

    From Burlington International airport she took Interstate 89 to state route 63 to state route 14 south towards Williamstown. She passed her dad’s quarry on the left as she got closer to the two-story house she had grown up in. A small part of her wanted to stop and check out the quarry, but she pushed on, fighting the memories that flooded her thoughts as she followed that familiar route. Passing through forested land where small niches had been carved out along the road to offer refuge against the vast wilderness waiting beyond manicured lawns and neat little homes.

    These places offered lighted refuge against an impenetrable night when the sun went down. She recalled several times as a child venturing out after dark in search of old secrets held within the shadowed depths. She never saw anything. But her best friend Jessica claimed to have heard voices in the forest bordering her backyard late at night. The story had given her chills at the time, and they returned as her gaze was drawn to the gloomy depths of the forest bordering the road.

    Reaching the turn off for her childhood home she pulled into the driveway and sat in the car staring at the empty house. The police had over-nighted her the keys, but she remained in the car as the day slowly drained into evening. She was trying to put her finger on what had gone wrong between them. On what event had transpired to separate them the way they had become.

    She as also delaying the inevitable sadness she knew she’d feel once she stepped inside. She should have gotten a hotel at the airport. But as her father would say, what’s done is done. Thinking of him in the past tense brought a tear to her eye and she brushed it away.

    To be continued!

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