The Impostor Wearing My Husband's Body

Ever since her husband Ted Towery returns from a trip, he is gentle, attentive and affectionate — nothing like the man who used to beat her and control every dollar. One night Piper wakes from a dream of his severed head and tongue on the cutting board to find his side of the bed empty and a knife chopping in the dark kitchen. He says he is mincing pork for the tortellini she wanted, but blood stains her slipper, and he never eats.

Remembering her mother's tale of Shane Thorsen, a lazy, wife-beating man who fell into a rotted grave and woke up obedient — and whose wife Stacey Wilson soon sickened and died — Piper wonders if a ghost now wears Ted's body. She hides rice wrapped in red paper along his path and sprinkles incense ash and salt on the floor, watching through the door for toe prints.