The Lurker at the threshold: It's scary. Our mover and shaker of the year is the ghost in the governor's mansion.

• Author: Kinney, David
• Position: Feature - Brief Article

Here, where the power he wielded was concentrated, you can feel his presence, not only in this old house but throughout the capital. Though he had departed, gone on to his reward, what he wrought still reigned. A few blocks from the manse, in the halls and chambers where laws, like foul-flesh sausages, are made, not the Night but the Year of the Living Dead dragged on. Lurching, stumbling, the honorables groaned and grasped for resolution, which, like rational thought to zombies, remained beyond their reach.

These were not his only victims. The man who followed him seemed under a curse. No one had expected him to be as keen, to possess the persuasive power that made his predecessor master of his dark art. To some (most, admittedly, of Republican bent), he had been the very devil. But to give him his due, he had been damned effective. His aura was such that the younger man surely felt some trepidation at donning his mantle. But it was not until he opened the lids of the coffers to find them nearly as bare as a German graveyard on Walpurgis night that terror gripped his soul. Before his eyes; what little that...