Ears

by Stephen Graham Jones

A new haunted house novella by the new master of horror, Stephen Graham Jones, in which a mysterious girl in lavender footie pajamas will do anything to keep her house from being sold.

Mr. Morning Gun, the hapless narrator of this first-person novella, is a disgraced history teacher who is now an unhoused person who is largely living within his electric car and the empty homes he looks after for local real estate agencies in a specific he flushes the empty houses’ toilets to keep, primarily, the wax seals on the toilets fresh, and the plumbing flowing. For this, he gets a bit of money under the table.

One day, at “The Messner House,” he gets caught by an aggressive realtor having a tryst. When the ghost of the previous owners’ missing child intervenes, killing the couple and saving the former teacher, Mr. Morning Gun finds himself embroiled into an ever-increasing layer of cover-ups as the girl in the lavender footie pajamas keeps killing folks to keep the house empty, except for him.

Genres: Horror, Adult, Fiction, Novella, Haunted House

128 pages, Paperback

Expected publication March 9, 2027

About the author

Stephen Graham Jones is the NYT bestselling author thirty-five or so books. He really likes werewolves and slashers. Favorite novels change daily, but Valis and Love Medicine and Lonesome Dove and It and The Things They Carried are all usually up there somewhere. Stephen lives in Boulder, Colorado. It's a big change from the West Texas he grew up in.

Reviews

[Lorin (paperbackbish) · Rating 5 out of 5]

So I’m now afraid of air conditioning, chargers, and musical instruments cool cool cool cool cool cool cool

[Rachael | ☾ whimsicalfiction ☾ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh but I love an unreliable narrator! This is one of those short stories 10th grade English teachers will assign to their class to help them learn about the human condition (aka traumatize them) à la The Yellow Wallpaper, some day in the future and I’m already excited for them.
This was a bit of a mindfuck in the best SGJ way possible and I love that he’s created yet another horror character in a messed up bunny suit meant to terrify the masses to the horror-characters-in-various-bunny-outfits compendium