Helena Boyd, newly-divorced mother of a precocious eight-year-old named Benjamin, is excited at the prospect of fresh beginnings: new town, new house, new job. Freed from the tethers of her failed marriage, her choices are now completely her own to make, her future full of enticing possibilities. Until one ordinary autumn day when a mysterious little book is deposited through the drop slot at the library where Helena is newly employed, and she reads:

“There is a boy named Emil Bones

Who would like to be your friend,

But once you let him in your home,

He may never leave again...”

Unnerved by these words, Helena quickly rids herself of the book. But, much like a bad penny, it quickly proves to have the unsettling tendency to turn up again. And then one dark evening in bed, her curiosity having gotten the better of her, Helena reads further:

“He will make you suffer far beyond

What any person ever should

And while he may not take your life,

He will make you wish he would...”

It begins with strange noises in the night. Disappearing objects. Mysterious voices. Inexplicable events. And when Benjamin begins exhibiting odd behavior and the life that Helena has just started to build threatens to fall down around her, she desperately searches for answers, including the author of that horrifying little book.

“He’s a shadow, he’s a whisper,

He’s a hornet, he’s a pox.

For heaven’s sake, now heed these words:

Do not answer when he knocks.”

First published as part of Sammy Scott's debut collection At Home With the Horrors in 2022, Emil Bones is presented here in a revised and expanded version certain to please those who enjoy a chilling little bedtime story.