Wayland Square Bakery

Likely apocryphal:

Mary-Louise Bauman opened Wayland Square Bakery in 1962. She and her bakery are generally credited with beginning the trendy "lemon bar revival" of the 1980s. Her daughter, Heidi Larson, and son-in-law, Trevor Larson, have since become head chefs, and Mary-Louise herself performs a mostly administrative role in its operation. When Mary-Louise was the head baker, nearly half of the shop's inventory was given over to non-dessert breads. Today, the shop sells 100% dessert items. This, they say, is why:

One morning in December of 1994, Heidi and Trevor had, as was their custom, arrived at the shop at 3:30am to begin the daily bread. Heidi was in the pantry, collecting ingredients, when she heard a low voice moan: "There's blood in the bread."

The voice gave her an instant chill, but, realizing that the voice was not that of her husband, and further realizing that there was no other explanation since there was no one else in the shop (not to mention that the bread had not even been baked yet), the headstrong Heidi decided to ignore the voice and continue her work.

She heard it again, low, but insistent: "There's blood in the bread."

Unwilling to be mocked or frightened, the increasingly rattled Heidi clenched her jaw and exited the pantry with as much poise as she could muster. She placed her recently-gathered ingredients down on the steel countertop. Trevor was not in the room. She called his name, to no answer.

Once again, she heard the voice, this time, louder: "There's blood in the bread."

Heidi screamed Trevor's name this time, no longer able to uphold any pretense at bravery. There was no answer except:

"There's blood in the bread!"

The voice was unearthly: literally inhuman, deep, rattly, like huge rocks being slowly ground together, and it came again, louder:

"There's blood in the bread!"

She ran from the room, abandoning her post, fled into the main shop and display area: but the shop was, of course, empty. She screamed for her husband once more - but he was not there. Perhaps she had left the voice in the back of the store? And just as she thought it, it came again, louder than ever, seeming to emanate from the very walls themselves:

"There's blood in the bread!"

Wild-eyed, frantic, sweating, she turned and lurched back through the entryway to the kitchen. She bypassed her spilled flour and ran through to the equipment room: there was Trevor, standing in front of the industrial mixer. He turned innocently toward her as she entered the room, and there it was again, so loud this time that it made the stacks of bowls on the shelves rattle:

"THERE'S BLOOD IN THE BREAD!"

Trevor's thumb was planted firmly in his own mouth. As Heidi skidded to a halt in front of him, he held it out toward her, a child showing a hard-won prize to his mother.

"Didn't you hear that??" she asked him.

"Hear what?" he asked. "I-"

"Put a fucking band-aid on it," she told him.



The bread did not get made that December day, and bread was never made at the Wayland Square bakery again.