The Overnight Log

Every rule has a reason you can say out loud. And a reason you cant.

A K-9 deputy on a dead county road. A live-in nanny with a baby monitor that drifts between channels. A ranch hand, a late-night DJ, a storm dispatcher, a grocery stocker, a security guard, a fire lookout, a rural mail carrier, a school janitor and a home health aide.

Eleven people take jobs that run until morning. Each one inherits the same black binder with a small amber clock on the cover. Inside are rules handwritten by whoever had the job before them: If your dog wont get out of the car, you dont either. Never answer a voice you didnt see speak. If you hear your own voice, do not answer it.

Follow the rules and you make it to sunrise. Then write one rule of your own and mail the binder to the address inside the back cover.

Nobody remembers writing the address.

The Overnight Log is a collection of eleven connected "rules horror" stories set in small-town America, tied together by the binder itself and a mystery that only pays off on the last page. Slow-building dread, real working detail, no gore.

Read it before two in the morning if you can.