-The snowbanks are melting, revealing what has been sleeping beneath them all winter. They are hungry. 

-Western Mass is a myth, they laugh. Their eyes are wide. Western Mass is a myth, they repeat. You cannot go there. No one can. 

-Why is that field red? The children ask. It’s a cranberry bog, the adults repeat. Just a cranberry bog. The eyes in the bog do not blink. 

-The screaming at night is the fisher cats, we promise. 

-The beaches are rocky. They are pointed, and jagged. They have teeth. Do not go swimming alone. 

-”They’re not safe to eat unless you boil them alive.” The old fisherman tells you. You think, you hope, he means the lobster. But he never specifies, and you never ask. 

-There is a reason everyone says “wicked.”