Edgar Award-winning crime/thriller novelist and television writer Megan Abbott joins us to talk about our scary story contest, and we will speak to the runner ups and the winner! Read the winning story and the runner ups below! This segment is guest hosted by Jonathan Capehart.  Winner Beauty Is In the Eye By Tammy Green Something struck my eye as I gazed up at the church steeple in St. Stephen’s Square in Vienna. The force of it made me wince. “What is it, Anne,” my boyfriend asked. It was our first trip together. I was eager to please him. I blinked, my eye watered, and the pain was gone. “Nothing,” I said. “Something flew into my eye.”   The rest of the day, I forgot about my eye.  We visited museums in former Habsburg palaces. I moved closer to view a marble statue of Calliope next to a floor-to-ceiling mirror and caught a glimpse of myself. No doubt about it: my left eye was red. I cursed my bad luck. At dinner, Jim said, “You know, you look perfect – for Hallowe’en.”   I grew pale and asked, “Does it really show?”   “Blood red,” he said. I was no longer hungry, and eager to leave. I said, “Let’s get somebody to look at this eye tonight.”   We walked quickly to our hotel. The clerk drew back at the sight of me. He said, “What do you want?”   “We’re guests here,” Jim said, laughing at this strange reaction. “Can you tell us where to find a doctor?”  The clerk handed Jim a card. He said, “Sir, go to this address immediately.” Jim scratched his head.  The card read, “Dr. Zauber. 13, Schuldig Strasse”. “It’s a few blocks away,” the clerk said. “Hurry, or Herr Doctor Zauber will be gone!”            Jim grabbed my hand, and we ran to Schuldig Strasse. The full moon shone on a huge wooden door. Jim knocked. The door slowly creaked open. A figure in the shadows behind it asked, “Who is there?” “We need to see Doctor Zauber,” said Jim. He tried out his German. “Meine Freundin ist sehr krank.”   Suddenly, a bright light shone from within. Whoever it was took a long look at me. “Ahhh!” the figure said. “Komm herein.” The hallway was cold and I was sorry that I had not brought a sweater. Jim put his arm around me. The increasing light revealed an elderly woman in drab clothing. She directed us to a bench outside another wooden door. “Cheery place,” said Jim. “Maybe we should have tried to find the local hospital.” “Nothing is open tonight,” said the woman. “It is All Hallows Eve.” Just then, my eye rolled about in all directions. I screamed in pain. The door opened and a middle-aged man in a medical coat stepped out. “Good evening, I am Herr Doctor Zauber. I am sorry to have kept you waiting. Let me see the patient.”  He gestured for me to enter an examining room. We both got up. “Not you sir, just the patient,” the doctor insisted. “But—” Jim protested. “She will be fine,” the doctor said. I whimpered, “Jim, let me go!” Jim loosened his hold. The doctor led me to the examining table and closed the door. He aimed a slit lamp at my left eye. “Please tell me how this began,” he said. “I was in St. Stephen’s Square today –” I said. “At what time?” He interrupted me. “About one o’clock,” I said. “Is that really important?  I looked up—” “Did the clock strike when you looked up,” he asked. “Come to think of it, yes. Then something hit my eye,” I said. My eye began to tear. The doctor observed this and asked, “Why did you not go to a doctor sooner?” “It didn’t seem serious,” I said. He stepped forward with an anxious look. “I’m sorry to tell you that it is very serious.  I must perform an operation now, or you will lose your eye.” I squinted in disbelief. “I need some eye drops. An infection is –” Doctor Zauber shook his head. “No, my dear, it is not an infection. It is an invasion. In the belfry of St. Stephen’s Cathedral lives a foul creature that emerges at the 13th hour of October 31st. As the bell tolls, it soars above the square and drops its eggs. These eggs feed on the unfortunate eyes of the innocent. You do not believe me, but your eye tells you differently. Look here.” He thrust a mirror into my hand. Shaking, I dared to look at my eye. At first, I saw a bloody orb. But then, deep in the iris, I could make out a creature moving toward me.  I dropped the mirror and shouted, “No!”  The glass broke. Jim banged on the door and shouted, “Anne, let me in!”   “It’s alright,” I said.  I didn’t want him to see this ugly thing inside me. “Please, get it out!” I sobbed. The doctor nodded. He asked me to lie down. He put an ether mask over my face. I was soon sleeping. I awoke in my hotel bed. I heard Jim showering. I brushed away some loose black threads on the pillowcase. Then, I saw that they were moving on their own, inching away from me. I sat bolt upright. Hundreds of small black worms were emerging from my eye, struggling down my lashes to my cheekbone. I screamed. Jim ran out of the shower. He grimaced, then said, “Grab the brown bottle on the sink and wash your eye.”  I raced to open the bottle. The contents smelled horrible. I bathed my eye in the cool brown liquid and gagged as the dying creatures twitched. I rinsed away the worms. Just as I toweled off, there was a knock at the door. The clerk appeared with a man in a suit. “I am the manager,” The man said. “You have brought vermin here. Take your things and leave at once!” “But we paid for two more days,” I protested. “I don’t care,” the manager said. “Get out!  Do not leave anything behind.” As he slammed the door, Jim asked, “Where will we go?”  The clerk slipped a card under the door. It read, “Hotel Zauber. 15, Schuldig Strasse.” Runner Ups New City by Jen Banbury “She’s trying to get in again.” My phone’s broken screen felt crusty against my cheek. On the other end, John made a low growling sound. “All right,” he said. “Three minutes.” I perched on the arm of the couch, my feet resting on a half-filled moving box. Across the room, the handle of my apartment door twisted one way, then the other. She weakly but persistently slapped against the door and I put my hands over my ears. When the handle stopped moving, I silently weaved through the boxes and lifted my eye to the peephole. She was slumped against the hallway wall, wearing a white silk blouse, nude old-lady underwear, and nothing else. Even from that distance, I saw the untidy lines of her varicose veins. In each hand, she held a sensible mid-heel shoe. Her grey wig skewed just the tiniest bit to one side. She took in a long, husky breath and then snapped her head up. “I know you’re there, Lacey,” she said. She lunged towards the door, attacking it with the shoes. I jumped back so quickly that I stumbled over a packing tape dispenser and sent a couple of neat piles of magazines scattering onto to the floor and under the arm chair, where I would have to work hard to retrieve them. “You’re there!” she yelled hoarsely. Finally, John’s voice came booming up the stairwell. “Mom!” I could hear him grunting as he hauled his giant beanbag-chair body up the last steps. “She’s got my stockings!” Edna shrieked, slapping the door again with the shoes. “Mom, please!” he said. “You’ve got to stop.” “But she’s in there. She took my stockings.” “Mom, Jesus.” “She doesn’t want me to go to New City.” I heard a shoe hit the door and fall to the ground. “But I am going. I AM, Lacey. I’m going to New City!” It was evening by the time John came back upstairs. He brought a store-bought pound cake, which is a food I hate. “Looks like you’re making progress,” he said, nodding at the moving boxes. “John, what is going on with her?” “I’m sorry,” he said. “I mean, that I would steal her stockings?” “I think the move is really heavy for her. She’s getting mixed up. I found some mail in her fridge.” He shook his head and looked at the pound cake, unopened on the coffee table. But she was the one who had decided to move. She was the one who had sold the building. “All these years I’ve been such a good tenant,” I said. “I carried her Christmas trees. I killed that bird that time⎯” “I know, I know… you were her hero that day.” “⎯and now she’s like... It’s hurtful.” “It’s wrong,” John said. “You used to be like a daughter. I even got a little jealous. I’m as confused as you are.” “She’s messing up my door.” “Well that’s nothing to worry about. This whole place will be a hole in the ground next month.” We both glanced around my apartment. I still had my Nuns Having Fun calendar up. And the picture of my cat, Squeegie, who had died on the couch⎯on the very cushion⎯where John now rested his pudding butt. They didn’t know it, but Squeegie was buried out front beneath the Pachysandra. I had loved the apartment from the first second I saw it. The bedroom window looked over a weeping cherry tree that turned as pink as a birthday party every spring. There was a spice rack built into the wall of the kitchen. The floors never squeaked a single time I walked on them. The walls were also quiet. Back in Virginia, my childhood bedroom sat waiting for me like a rusty canary cage that had been forgotten beneath some dirty magazines in the back of the attic. “Don’t you feel worried about her being on her own?” I asked. “I mean, here, you’re just next door.” “She’s got all her old friends in New City. My brother’s the next town over.” John rubbed both his eyes hard with the palms of his hands. “But, yeah. How she’s been acting lately. She’s dying to move back there. But me and my brother... I even started looking online for places⎯you know, like a home. In case we have to. Honest to god I don’t even know what she does with those stockings.” “Oh, John,” I said. I put a hand lightly on his shoulder and he looked at me with googoo eyes. Downstairs, the six o’clock news came on. She liked to hear about the murders and the weather. The next day, I was in her apartment again. She had already packed up her dishes. Half an apple sat, cut-side down, on a paper plate in the kitchen. I took the apple to the bathroom and plopped it in the toilet. Then I padded, barefoot, into the bedroom. She always slept heavily after lunchtime. On the chair near the closet was a CVS bag with three new pairs of stockings, size E. I opened one of the packages and sat on the edge of the chair so I could get them on. I had to wrestle them up over my pants, but eventually they cooperated. I stuffed the bag with the other pairs under my elastic control top. Then I stood up on the seat of the chair so I could see myself in the mirror over the bureau. “Now who is whose hero?” I said to me. In the living room, the door stood open, ready for a fast exit. “Caw! Caw!” I called out. Edna jolted awake, her hands reflexively flying up to hold her wig in place. I leapt from the chair onto the foot of her bed and stood over her in my regalia. “You’re never going to New City,” I said. “Never.” Then, with a whoosh, I was gone. The Man With Empty Eyes By April Snellings I watch as the man I’m going to kill finishes his second cup of coffee and signals to the waitress that he wants another. He doesn’t see me—or, more accurately, he doesn’t notice me. He’s too busy cataloging the younger women scattered around the diner to take interest in a housewife with silver at her temples, and for a strange, fleeting moment, I’m not sure how I feel about this. He would have noticed me twenty years ago; of that I have no doubt. Perhaps he would’ve taken me instead of my daughter, and then I wouldn’t be sitting here with a gun in my purse, waiting for a chance to put a bullet in his brain. But for now, his empty eyes keep going back to the teenage girl playing Bobby Vinton songs on the jukebox. When his partner comes out of the restroom and rejoins him in their booth by the window, he’ll point her out. If his partner agrees with his evaluation, the girl who loves Bobby Vinton won’t make it home to her parents tonight, or ever again. We’re in Allentown now and I’ve been following him since Greensboro, waiting to catch him alone. I’ve had plenty of time to watch him, and I see why my daughter might have responded to his attention. He’s handsome enough, and quick with a smile. He wears his hair like Elvis and lets his jeans ride his hips when he walks. I talked to him once, when his partner had gone out for cigarettes and he was sitting by the pool at the motel I’d followed them to. He’s good at pretending. You can almost imagine that he’s not wondering what it would be like to cut you open and slide his hand inside. I don’t know exactly where he found Judith or when he decided to take her. Judith. The thought of her wraps a fist around my heart. My daughter, nineteen years old, with her lovely smile and her eyes the color of sea glass. I’ve imagined their meeting a thousand different ways: how her shoulders would have tilted when she noticed him watching her, that flattered smile she would never be able to take back. I wonder if he opened his car door for her, or if she opened it herself. I wasn’t there to stop her, but I tell myself that you can’t watch them every minute of every day, no matter how badly you want to. So now I’ll follow a trail of corpses until I bring home whatever is left of my daughter. I’ll catch him alone and I’ll empty his brains onto the pavement, because there’s nothing we won’t do for our children. I’ve told the police what he is, but they don’t believe me. They don’t see the red promise of these new roads. Slash a woman’s throat in Atlanta as the sun comes up; stab a family to death in Chicago before the first stars shine that night. They’ve built fourteen thousand miles of interstate in six years, with thousands more on the way. Kennedy is a dreamer; whatever shining future he sees for America, he’s convinced the interstate will help take us there. But the man I’m watching is not like Kennedy. I wonder what would have become of my daughter if she hadn’t met him. All mothers think their daughters are special, but Judith is different. I’ve known it since that morning when she was nine years old, when I stood at the kitchen window and watched her run from the woods behind our house, her corn-silk hair streaming behind her, her mouth twisted in a sob for the tiny, bloody bundle she clutched to her chest. She had found her father and dragged him outside by his hand, led him to the edge of the woods. To the rabbit’s nest that waited there, full of little broken bodies. Dog got to them, my husband had said as our daughter wailed. She felt things so differently than most. No wonder this man wanted her. From my seat at the counter I see the restroom door open, and the man’s partner walks out. I think I’m prepared for the sight, but I never am, not really. The fist that grips my heart squeezes it so tightly I fear it might turn to dust. I almost forget to hide my face in time. Somehow, my daughter is even more radiant than she was before she slid into the passenger seat of this man’s car and whispered dreams of murder in his ear. All mothers think their daughters are special, but Judith is different. I’ve known it since that morning when she was nine years old, when I stood at the kitchen window and watched her walk into the woods with my husband’s claw hammer hanging from her little hands. Dog got to them, my husband would say later, as our daughter wailed her theater of grief for his benefit. Or, when Judith was thirteen and the little Harrison boy vanished from his home down the street, He’s just wandered off somewhere. We are all good at pretending. But I know the truth about our daughter. I wasn’t there to stop her—I tell myself that you can’t watch them every minute of every day, no matter how badly you want to—so the little Harrison boy is mine to care for now. I’ll keep the weeds from his grave in the woods and mourn him while his parents wait for him to come home. There’s nothing we won’t do for our children. Judith takes her seat in the booth by the window, and she leans across the table to hear what the man with empty eyes is whispering to her. But when she turns to follow his gaze to the girl at the jukebox, Judith’s eyes light on me instead. My beautiful daughter smiles at me, and suddenly I wonder if I’ve brought enough bullets.   THE END   RIP By Lucia Davies 8 November 1888, Whitechapel At five bob the pair, the silk stockings risked her a beating, if Joe was ever to find out. But Mary Jane Kelly was nothing if not a practiced liar. She pictured the confrontation, and couldn’t suppress a chuckle imagining his face after being told they was her Christmas present to him this year, instead of what they really was: a smart business purchase. But her smile melted away to a grim little line as she pursued that thought. Joe was possessed of a jealous nature; he’d come to see through her ruse in time, and then, like as not, she’d be dealt a good clout for her trouble. Early days, it had been a novelty, having a man who loved her enough to belt her occasionally. But it had grown tiresome. Like today: shouts and accusations flew, and then he’d cuffed her hard, cleared out, and taken his jealousy—and his share of the rent—with him. She opened and closed her mouth to feel the tender spot on her jaw where his fist had connected. He’d be back; she didn’t doubt it. But in the meantime, what did he expect her to do, then, to live? She had to go back to business on the regular if she wanted to eat. (Worse still, what about the drink?) Slinky as f***, the hose was. Pale blue, with a cunning sprinkle of beading across the ankle; they’d show off her shapely calves and slither way up to there, topped off with a neat little grosgrain, sure to accentuate her soft white thighs and put a come-and-get-me swing in her hips. She could practically smell the foul breath of a punter as he happily gave up his push for another go. With this investment, by dawn she’d be feeling no pain. Ah, the warmth and noise of Ten Bells; ‘twas more to her than her own mother’s arms. The laughter and shouts and a greasy glass holding two fingers of heaven, more if she was flush. Was she eager? For the stockings, not particularly. But for the gin her bedecked legs would buy? For all that lovely, slipping warmth that started in her chest and spread outwards to her arms, her legs, her c****?  Her eyes closed as she conjured the reliable results: once knocked back, the drink forced a rising pink flush up her neck, coloring her cheeks and glazing her pretty eyes. If history calls the dance, a gulp or two would guarantee her next bit of business, quick as you please. Then she’d lift her skirts, tease a bit of twinkling ankle. How many more throws a night could she cop because of those stockings? She got thirsty just thinking of the possibilities. What was that thing—she’d seen it in the museum, back when she worked the fancy house in the West End. One of her gentlemen took her to see it. A perpetual motion machine, that’s what they called it. He’d said it was impossible, weren’t no such thing, not really. Still that didn’t stop people trying to make one. Or be one. But it didn’t matter how many tosses she chased in a night, week, month, year: the time would come when her face and body would give out. She’d be old, battered, worth not even two pence, and her perpetual motion would finally—blessedly—cease. Whitechapel might as well be darkest Africa in comparison to the glittering West End. In her meager room on Dorset Street she’d stare for hours, remembering how she’d brought ruin on herself. One moment joyful in the sky, the next, crashing to earth, bruised and broken. Life was like that; how you saw things. A medicine show’s human heart in a jar could easily be mistaken for a fist. She shook herself, hard. No black thoughts tonight. The cure for misery was always just what the doctor ordered: several fingers of a certain clear liquid, taken by mouth and repeated as necessary. Sláinte. After all, she was still pretty, still young. And she didn’t need much more from this life than a few small comforts: a blanket on a bed, a bottle, enough candle to see by till she slept, a few laughs. And a certain pair of posh hose. “Right, then, I’ll take them blue ones, Lorna. No—not that filthy pair on you! I want new. Pristine. Not paying for damaged wares.” When the transaction was complete, she crouched in the lane to roll down her well-worn woolens and slide up the new blue silkies. Despite the cold, she held her skirts aloft and outstretched one leg, then the other. Quite fetching if she did say so. It was a real London particular: black, bitter; wet without actually raining. A grim, oily air pressed down on her, like the joyless burden of a man’s body, and a tremor went through her small frame. Pulling her shawl tighter as she negotiated the slippery cobbles, she squinted to keep a lookout for horse apples. She sensed a customer following and glanced back. Her eyes were failing; all she saw was a black smudge outlined by the dim light of Lorna’s corner, but he was definitely gaining on her; his footfalls echoed mournfully. This part of the job she didn’t care for, what with that Ripper fellow about. Between the widely spaced streetlamps and their anaemic output, dense shadows spread inky fingers that had, since summer, closed around one doxy after another. A girl had to keep her wits about her if she wanted to wake on the right side of the dirt.  But that was the thing she adored about her gin. Some girls, it made them sloppy. Mary Jane Kelly? It sharpened her, kept her pretty little smile and fair luck in place. Ah, there it was. The doors of Ten Bells, flung wide: gaiety in full swing. She cocked a beckoning finger at her customer. Time to let the stockings do their work.