Richard Schiver

Tag: works in progress

Weekly Writing Challenge 03/18/2026

J is for Jogah, the little people continues.

Several more blue spots opened into eyes that watched him as his father knelt beside him, his hand on Jeffery’s shoulder. He heard his father’s voice as if it were coming to him from a million miles away, repeating his name as those multiple eyes blinked in unison and an emptiness swelled up from the center of his mind to drag him into unconsciousness.

He awoke to the soothing voice of his mother as she sang softly, a lullaby he remembered from his own earlier childhood. The sound of her voice made him feel safe and secure, the cool compress against his forehead helped ease the tension that had washed through him when those tiny eyes appeared in his muffin.

He opened his eyes to find his mother sitting beside him. His father stood at the foot of his bed, watching with a concern expression.

“Are you all right, buddy?” His father asked and Jeffery nodded.

“Where are the movers?” Jeffery asked.

“They had to go buddy, they had other jobs they needed to get done, why?’

“I was just wondering,” he replied, he wanted to talk to that old man, ask him about the eyes in his muffin. Jeffery understood what was happening with the ghosts he’d seen, but the eyes had been something he’d never experienced before, and he didn’t understand what was happening. He hoped the old guy would understand, he would know the answer, but he was gone now, and he was alone with this problem. One he could not bring up to his parent’s no matter how comforting they seemed. They had sent him to see the counselor after his first encounter. They wouldn’t understand, they’d think he was still broken.

In time Jeffery managed to get out of bed and joined his dad in the garage where he was getting the junk that had followed them from the city sorted out. It was becoming a typical day when from the house his mother called for his dad in a strained voice.

“Wait right here, buddy. I’ll be back.”

Jeffery stopped what he was doing and sat down to wait for his father. He could hear their conversation inside, coming to him through the open door. There was something unsettling in the tone of their voices. This was not a normal conversation. Something was wrong and Jeffery was about to go in to see what was happening when his father rushed back into the garage. His face carried an alarmed, yet hopeful expression that immediately set Jefferey on edge.

“We’ve got to go to the hospital, grab a book or something, I don’t know how long we’ll be there,” he said as he went around to the driver’s side of the car, hitting the button for the garage door as he rounded the back end. Jeffery ran into the house, to his mother who sat in a kitchen chair, her hands cradling her belly.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“It’s okay, baby, we have to go to the hospital, I think you’re sister is ready.”

Jeffery raced to his room and retrieved one of his books, rejoining his parents out front as his dad helped his mom into the car.

At the hospital Jeffery was taken to the waiting area by a young aid.

“What are you reading?” she asked after getting him situated, her gaze dropping to the book in his hand. He glanced down and noted that he had brought one of his dad’s old Goosebumps books. The Ghost Next Door was the title and he felt a quick shiver when he realized what book he had grabbed.

“I never read that one,” she said before she turned to the duty nurse to speak with her. Jeffery watched as she left the waiting area, his gaze tracking around the room until he saw an old lady wandering in from the hallway. She seemed so out of place, and he watched her for a moment before he realized what she was. The old lady seemed to glide right by the desk where the duty nurse sat, his gaze following her as she walked right into, and through the wall of the waiting room.

To be continued!

March 18, 2026
The Fear of Unfinished Business in Horror Stories

If there’s one topic horror writers never seem to get tired of, it’s what happens after we die. Honestly, that makes perfect sense. Death is the biggest mystery we face, and horror has always been the genre most willing to poke it with a stick and ask, “What if?”

For horror writers, the idea of life after death isn’t always about faith or religion. More often, it’s about possibility. What if death isn’t the end? What if something lingers? What if the story keeps going, even when the heart stops beating? Those questions are irresistible when you’re trying to scare or unsettle someone.

Ghost stories are the most obvious example. Spirits hang around because something went wrong. A wrong wasn’t righted. A secret remained buried. A promise was broken. That idea taps into a very human fear. That we don’t get closure, even in death. Horror takes that fear and gives it teeth.

What’s interesting is that horror writers don’t usually paint the afterlife as comforting. You won’t find many cozy clouds and harps. Instead, you get unfinished business, strange, in between places, or worlds with rules no one fully understands. That uncertainty is the point. Not knowing is far scarier than any clear answer.

A writer’s personal beliefs often sneak into these stories, whether they mean them to or not. Writers who believe in an afterlife might treat death as a doorway. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes terrifying. Writers who don’t might frame a haunting as emotional echoes. Grief that won’t let go, guilt that refuses to stay buried. Either way, horror becomes a way to process big, uncomfortable thoughts without needing to solve them.

That’s the real appeal. Horror doesn’t demand answers. It lets us sit with the questions. It gives us permission to wonder what happens next and to admit that the idea scares us.

In the end, horror writers return to life after death for the same reason readers do. Because we’re curious, and because we’re afraid. The tension between endings and aftermaths is where horror lives. Maybe death is silence. Maybe it’s an echo. And maybe the scariest possibility of all is that something is still listening when we think the story is over.

March 16, 2026
Weekly Writing Challenge 03/11/2026

We continue the story of J is for Jogah. You may have noticed I’m borrowing a bit from one of the masters when the story delves into an exploration of seeing someone’s ability, Like the shine Stephen King made famous in The Shinning. Of course aren’t we all standing upon the shoulders of giants when we write. I also feel I’ll be expanding the idea of the little people into a novella length work sometime in the future. Without further adieu let’s get into it.

Continued from 03/04/2026

As he lay in bed the aroma of fresh baked blueberry muffins reached him. Getting up he passed down that shadowy hallway to the stairs and started down the steps in his spiderman pajamas. When he spotted the movers bringing in boxes and the last of their furniture he retreated to his room to change into a pair of jeans and a tee shirt.

In the kitchen he found his mom working on the small island while his dad was on the porch talking with the movers who were nearly finished.

“They’re not done yet,” she said as he entered the kitchen and he turned to join his dad on the porch. As he crossed through the living room he came upon the older man who had just placed a large cardboard box on a pile of similar boxes along one wall. As Jeffery passed through the room his attention was again drawn to that little door as an unsettled sensation filled him. Something could get in that way. Something that might be able to hurt them.

“If you don’t look at them directly they won’t hurt you,” the older man said,

“Who?’ Jeffery asked.

“The little people.”

“What little people?”

The older man smiled as he knelt beside him. “When I was a kid growing up, a little older than you, my grandmother told me about the little people. Only she called them Jogah. She was pure blooded Oneida, the native American Indians who once ruled this land.”

“She was a real Indian?” Jeffery asked.

“As real as they come, the Jogah lived in the forest and sometimes played tricks on the braves who would go into the forest for food. But they were never mean, not unless you stared at them. I guess they were a little peeved about being so small.”

“Tell your dad the muffins are ready,” his mother said as she stuck her head through the door into the living room.

“Just remember that you’ll be able to see them. They don’t mean any harm, but when you do see them, don’t stare.” With that the older man pushed himself to his feet and joined his dad on the porch. He wasn’t sure if he should believe that the older man said. After all his dad told him the door was for milk deliveries back in the old days. One or the other was lying and he was confident his dad wouldn’t lie to him. Maybe the older man liked telling stories to scare little kids. But he’d told him about his talent.

His mom joined them on the porch with a basket of blueberry muffins while his dad had set up the coffee pot, a thank you to the men who moved them for a job well done.

Jeffery helped himself to one of the muffins, the aroma making his mouth water in anticipation as he took a big bite. A blueberry popped into his mouth as he chewed, but it was missing the sweetness that would have normally flooded his senses. Instead, a saltiness cramped his mouth and his stomach as he looked down at what remained of the blueberry muffin. Spots of deep blue marked where the blueberries resided in the cake texture. One of the blueberries opened like a tiny eye, watching him with an unnatural stillness as his heart climbed into his throat and he threw the muffin to the floor of the porch with a startled cry. The muffin bounced once before coming to rest with the eaten part exposed while the eye lay there watching him as his mother and father raced to his side to see what was wrong.

To be continued!

March 11, 2026
Writing in Old Age: A Journey of Reflection and Expression

As a writer ages time becomes more malleable, seeming to have changed shape while we are distracted. The hours may feel longer in some cases while for others, me included, the hours fly by. The years pile up behind us like heavily edited manuscripts, full of red, and sometimes regret at missed opportunities. Writing stops feeling like a ladder we climb towards some lofty goal, and more like a comfortable chair we sink into with an honest familiarity.

When I started in 1991 I belonged to a small group of writers who met monthly via snail-mail. We called ourselves the Night Writers and worked to hone our craft while encouraging and celebrating the achievements of the other members. I recall one discussion in which we talked about aging, and the strong possibility of not hitting the goals we sought until we were well into our sixties.

This past December I celebrated 67 trips around the sun, and I’m still plugging away, searching for that one elusive story that will put me over the top. The one I’ve been chasing since the day I started pouring out my soul on the typewriter.

When we’re young, we write to prove we’re here. Later, we may write to understand what being here means. Age doesn’t only bring loss. It brings angles. The same childhood kitchen, the same first job, the same arguments you swore you’d never repeat. Looking back, they reveal the patterns you couldn’t see while you were living them. Mostly because you were too busy being dramatic.

That widened perspective is not nostalgia, but material.

Memory frays. Names go missing. Dates slide by the wayside. You can walk into a room with purpose then stand there like an actor who’s forgotten their line. Writing in old age doesn’t have to pretend to be a ledger. In fact, the gaps can become part of the form. You can write around what you can’t recall, noting the blank spaces the way you’d notice a torn page, with curiosity rather than shame. Sometimes the truth lives in the feeling you can still summon, or in the questions that remain after the facts have softened.

The work may need to adapt. A daily ritual can be smaller now, two pages instead of ten, fifteen minutes instead of an afternoon. Of course, afternoons may now include an appointment for your knees. You discover large-print settings, a better lamp, a softer chair, or dictation when fingers ache. These aren’t compromises so much as craft decisions that keep the door open. The goal is continuity, not heroics. Keep a notebook within reach. Draft letters you may never send. Start with a single sensory detail. The sound of a screen door. The smell of rubbing alcohol. The color of late winter light, or the mysterious creak you swear the house is making just to get your attention.

Old age also changes the question of audience. You may still publish, still chase polish and acclaim, still argue with a paragraph the way you once argued with a teenager (and yes, the paragraph is winning). But you might also write for a grandchild who hasn’t been born yet, or for the friend you miss, or for yourself on a day when the world feels narrow. Writing becomes a way to keep company. An intimate conversation with your own mind, conducted in sentences that can be revisited when words are hard to find out loud.

In the end, writing and old age share a quiet discipline. Paying attention. To what endures, to what changes, to what you can still choose. A paragraph is small, but it is a decision, an act of shaping experience rather than letting it simply pass. If the body insists on limits, the page can offer range. And if you keep writing, even in brief bursts, you’re not only recording a life; you’re continuing it. One sentence at a time. Preferably before you put down your pen and wonder where it disappeared to.

March 9, 2026
Weekly Writing Challenge 03/03/2026

My apologies for not getting anything posted last Friday and Monday. Real life intruded. Without further adieu let us return to J is for Jogah.

Later that night after supper, and an evening spent watching game shows on TV, Jeffery struggled to claim the sleep he needed. As he lay in bed staring at the ceiling he went over the conversation he’d had with Bill, each time circling back to his statement they could not hurt him. He would have liked to believe it, but he knew Bill had been lying to him about that point. It wasn’t physical pain these errant spirits could bring. What they brought was something far more terrifying. A perpetual gloom that would shroud your soul in endless despair. He had experienced that firsthand in the apartment.

Boys being boys, it wasn’t long before he tried an experiment. He had grown so accustomed to the old lady’s presence that she didn’t even bother him anymore. He understood that they were merely ghosts, and ghosts couldn’t hit you the way another person could. One night in the old apartment he stood in the way of the old lady’s ghost as she glided through the deep shadows of the kitchen on her nightly visit to the sink.

Why she was visiting the sink was beyond him, he didn’t believe a ghost could drink or get thirsty, but what did he know, he was only seven at the time.

He almost stepped aside as she got closer but closed his eyes and held his ground as she came to him. There was no hesitation on her part, and he suspected her spirit could not see him, yet. In hindsight he wished he hadn’t done what he did. As he lay in bed he relived every emotion, ever feeling every sound and sensation that washed through him as she closed with him.

The first thing he noticed was a slight tickling at the base of his skull as the short hair on the nape of his neck slowly stood at attention. This was followed by a deepening chill as she reached him, a chill that grew as her essence began to mingle with his own. As it did goosebumps spread across the length of his arms him, his shoulders and down the center of his back following the line of his spine.

His mind filled with memories that were not his own. Brief flashes from her past slid across the screen of his mind. Her saw her as a young child in school, struggling to pay attention to the nuns in class, her knuckle sore from the beatings they took every time her attention wandered. Spring had arrived with the joyous singing of the birds, and she wanted to go outside and experience everything the season had to offer. Yet she was trapped in a dreary classroom, crammed into a small room with twenty other children whose only desire was to escape the hard lessons few believed would serve them in their life after graduation. He saw her meet a young man and fall in love with him. Their hasty marriage as her young man was called off to war and their joyous reunion when he returned safe and sound while so many other wives and parents only ever saw a flag draped coffin.

They built a life together, raising a family of three boys and two girls. Two of the boys were called up by the government to do their part and she learned the sorrow of a parent outliving their child when the oldest returned in a flag draped casket.

Weddings followed, along with the births of grandchildren who brought a measure of joy to her and her husband as old age crept up on them. The loss of her husband, and the home they raised their family in when the money started to run out. Moving to the apartment in the city had been the last straw for her and the carefree young woman who had become old and slow, deliberately stepped away from this life. In the wee hours of the morning she took a handful of sleeping pills, washing them down with a glass of water from the kitchen sink. Hence the reason for her nightly visits. It was like she had been cursed to relive her final moments for eternity.

As the 0ld woman’s ghost emerged from the other side of him, a small part of their mingled essences became trapped with the other. Afterwards Jeffery was filled with a craving for blueberry muffins, something he had never eaten before. Aside from that it appeared his encounter had left him no worse for wear until the following night when she returned. As the moon slowly rose above the city skyline she came gliding into his bedroom, passing through the door as if it didn’t exist and stood beside his bed looking down at him with sorrowful eyes.

He had taken something from her and she wanted it back.

Now, in the present, he lay in bed staring at the door, waiting for her return. Sometime after midnight he drifted off to sleep and awoke to a new day to what sounded like a million birds singing beyond his bedroom window. It was the first good night’s sleep he’d had since his little experiment, and while he was hesitant to celebrate, he felt it best to wait and see what happened.

To be continued!

March 4, 2026