However, the beautiful cottage seems to be haunted.

10 Must-Read Suspense Stories

After hearing strange noises and creepy rumors from her neighbors, Penny begins to wonder about the death that occurred in the home a decade earlier. Every entry is fantastic in this short mystery stories anthology, but I chose this one because the twist ending left a pit in my stomach. Elizabeth and her husband Winston have just divorced.

One night, our narrator gets a call from Elizabeth. Read it on your commute and prepare to think about it all day. Famed fictional detective Miss Marple recounts a locked room case she once solved. She requests all of the details of the ghastly crime before solving it on the spot, without ever leaving her chair. This satisfying story is short enough to read over your lunch break. This one is from another great anthology of short mystery stories. At the beginning, a young woman decides to tell her date a chilling true story.

Last, you could see her face, with the eyes widened and shining with tears, her brown hair hanging loosely around her face. Funny , she thought now, listening to the woman on the TV yammer on and on. It had taken her about thirty minutes to fully appear on the photo, but it had taken her much longer to disappear from the self she had always known down in that basement. She had lost track of the days after two years.

Where has she been all this time, and who is that boy? Have any little boys his age been reported missing? Emmy heard the flush of the toilet in the small bathroom in the corner and then his voice, which had changed in recent months along with the angles of his face and limbs and the inches on his frame.

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He stomped over to the cot set up in one corner of the basement and flung himself across it. She could hear his stomach growling from across the room and it broke her heart. Soon, hers joined in. She waited until his breathing was even and he began snoring lightly before she tiptoed back over to the TV and turned it back on. She turned the volume down low and manually turned the knob, trying to find more mentions of the Polaroid on other news stations.

She hit pay dirt on Channel 5. A man who identified himself as an FBI agent was holding up a copy of the picture and pointing to the boy. We are trying to determine how old this Polaroid is, as it appears to be a few years old, and working to see what else we can find out from it. The investigators knew who they were.

They knew they might still be alive.

But how much could they possibly figure out from a picture? Emmy tried to squelch the hope rising in the back of her throat. She jumped when his cold fingers clamped down on her shoulder. Then she realized the TV was still on. He stared down at the floor, tears shimmering in his eyes. Before she could say anything else, they heard the key rattling in the lock at the top of the basement the stairs.

They heard his footsteps on the stairs first and then saw his hands appear, which were carrying a cardboard drink holder.

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He plopped two milkshakes down on the kitchen table—strawberry for Emmy, chocolate for Devan—all while watching the breaking news report that will still playing on Channel 5. Emmy froze as her mother, standing on the porch of their house, flashed across the screen, a group of microphones visible in front of her face. As she let out a whimper and clasped one hand over her mouth, Harrison glanced over his shoulder, and with an eerie calm, he walked over to the TV and unplugged it.

Devan and Emmy stood frozen on the concrete floor, waiting to gauge his mood. How angry she would get when Emmy was mean to her younger brother, Theo. Emmy picked up her shake with a trembling hand while Harrison laughed. Devan had already slurped most of his down. Harrison readjusted his dirty baseball cap and crossed his arms in front of him. Devan stared down at the floor.

He rushed forward and threw his arms her, squeezing her tight. Her forehead furrowed—he was usually so relieved when she volunteered that he tried to make himself invisible as they left. He clenched her forearm so tight she gasped in pain as they made their way up the stairs, to the bedroom in the main part of the house where she only got to go when the mood struck Harrison. He shut the bedroom door behind him and went into the adjacent bathroom, leaving the door open. She sat on the edge of the bed, a thin veil of sweat forming on her skin, and felt a lump in the back pocket of her worn and faded jeans.

She was puzzled, then realized that Devan must have slipped it into her pocket.

The Polaroid by Renee Roberson

And where had he gotten it in the first place … unless he swiped it one night when Harrison was in the basement, going off on one of his drunken rants that usually included the lit cigarette that was sometimes pressed against various parts of their skin? Devan, who had always played the subservient role, who had tried to not to make waves with Harrison, was begging her to take action, to finally set them free. But could she do it?


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