Old Bones
C.J. Winters
THE OLD LADY in the wheelchair peered up at me from filmed blue eyes. "I need to tell somebody something," she said. "You got time?"
I set down the vase of peonies I'd brought Aunt Maureen, asleep in the other bed, and pulled a chair close to her roommate. "I have until my aunt wakes up from her nap. My name is Carolyn. What's yours?"
"Nina. But everybody in the family called me Sissie. Doesn't matter, they've all gone on."
"I'm sorry."
She brushed aside my trite consolation like an annoying fly. "You ever see a ghost?"
Cemetery Competition
C.J. Winters
"NOBODY'LL EVEN COME by to look," moaned Gussie. "It's bad enough being invisible, but Eternal Rest hasn't had a burial in fifteen years. How many visitors came by on Decoration Day—five? And they brought plastic flowers."
Gussie passed over in 1912, so she can hardly be considered an expert in plastics, but I let it go.
"What'd you expect?" grumbled Marvin, twiddling with the image of the deck of cards he'd been carrying along with a pocketful of poker chips when he passed over. "A twenty-one gun salute?"
Blanche, Miss Grimace County of 1937, heaved a theatrical sigh. "It's bad enough to be forgotten, but not to see a single tear shed for anybody is sad."
"Oh, I think decorating the county cemeteries for Halloween is such a clever idea," trilled Polly, who once sold advertising for the Down Yonder Press. "It's sure to bring in new business." She hopped down from the hood of the '58 Edsel ghost-image impaled on a spear-shaped headstone. "You know, we really should compete in the contest. There's going to be a full moon, and refreshments afterward at the community center."
The Housekeeper and Primary Colors
C.J. Winters
CAMILLE PERCHED ON the limestone retaining wall just beyond the reach of Isaac's electric hedge trimmer. No point in letting the blade slash through her legs and shocking the gardener's patched eighty-year-old heart. Beside her, ghost cat Orville pampered his paws.
She peered down the long u-shape gravel drive to the county road. "The new folks ought to be here any minute. The missus told the real estate woman they'd have just enough furniture delivered to eat, sleep and sit on."
Isaac gave the yews a final rounded sweep with the trimmer, then shut it off and picked up his broom rake. "Be interesting, watching the remodeling."
"The missus said her husband will be busy programming his home office, whatever that means, so she's going to do most of the overseeing." Isaac backed up a pace and surveyed the sixteen-room white house that had doubled in size over its 150-year history. "Old place can use some fixing. Last folks were too busy running back and forth to their town jobs to do much."
Camille and Orville floated off the wall, evading the vigorous swipes of the broom rake. "At least I won't have to break in some green-as-grass housekeeper," she said. "It's awful how girls aren't trained to take proper care of a place anymore. Why in my day—"
Cat-ittude
C.J. Winters
SOMETHING SCRATCHED AT my apartment door. I checked the peep-hole, but no one was there. My imagination?
No, there it was again. I opened the door.
In strolled a large yellow tomcat of miscellaneous ancestry.
"Hi, sweetie," it said. "What's for supper?"
Assuming a ventriloquist was in the hall waiting to rush in and rob or rape me, I slammed the door and double locked it before turning to glare at my intruder.
"Okay, mister, let's see you talk your way out of this. Then you can take your fat butt down the fire escape."
The cat planted said butt on my modacrylic Oriental rug and eyed me with hard, pale green eyes.
"Hey, no need to get personal," it said.
The wall caught me or I'd have landed on the floor.
"What did you say?"
"You heard me. I don't chew my cabbage twice."
Cabbage?
"I'm hallucinating!" I slapped my face, which hurt. "Must be the mushrooms in my lunch." The Skinny Cuisine folks were going to hear from me.
"I'm the real thing," said the cat. His tone indicated patience wasn't his number one virtue. "Sit down and I'll explain."
Pyramid Travel
C.J. Winters
"YOU REALLY SHOULD get a color analysis before your annual review," Billie Amaraz said. "It might help..." Her voice faded.
Amy Silvanus sighed. "Help what? Get me a raise, a promotion, or out of deep guano?"
"Any of the above." One desk over, Billie gave her a sly eye. "It might even get Jason off dead center to ask you out."
"Jason doesn't know I'm alive, unless his sales printout is late."
"Not so. I've seen him ogling you, even once when you were wearing that lime green dress." Billie shuddered delicately. "You could ask him out."
"To do what? I live to diet, my athletic skills are nil, I lack esthetic taste, and I've never seen him with a book. As for the lime dress, my neighbor's cat clawed it off the hanger and used it as a maternity blanket." Amy returned her attention to her computer and brought up a new spreadsheet. "By the way, you're getting a kitten for Christmas."
At five o'clock Billie slipped into her coral leather blazer. "Any plans for the weekend?"
Amy flipped the dust cover over her own terminal. "I'm stopping by Aunt Lola's to check on Grandpa. Then I'm going to the Psychic Fair. It's been years since I had my future read. Maybe something has changed. Want to come along?"
Busybodies and Dead Diamonds
C.J. Winters
Chapter One
I DON'T LIKE being dead. It's boring. I don't care how many church services, weddings, funerals, baptisms and socials you attend, you mostly get the same folks saying the same things to the same people about their crops, relatives, the economy, and whatever fool thing the president's doing these days. Even Ethel Springer agrees not much newsworthy ever happens around here at the Sainted Souls Cemetery behind the country church where the five of us mostly hang out. Still, I suppose it's better than wherever the other deceased go, especially those haughty ones who drop by, take one look at us and then just vaporize. We wonder about them—do their brains just disappear into thin air, like their bodies into earth?
The name on my headstone is Margaret Rose (yes, after the princess) Gayforth, although I was born a Wilkins back in 1930. Those days my father owned near four hundred acres of some of the best black soil in this county, and Wilkins was one of the families in the Marple City area. Since then the farm has been sold a couple of times and our family scattered. My husband, Ronald, wasn't much, and once the kids left home, he moved away—people didn't do much divorcing back in those days.
I was only forty-two when I tried to get a bird nest out of a tree to take to hobby class and fell off the ladder into the pond. I didn't know how to swim and I wasn't a quick learner, so I've spent a good many years here in SSC, though not nearly as many as Ethel, who says she passed over in 1879. Everybody she used to know is gone, so I suppose she looks on the rest of us as family. I'm lucky that way. My kids and grandkids live in Marple City, and I drop in on them every day or so to help out, although I must say they don't always show proper gratitude.
We stay up on current events by spending part of every night watching Mrs. Peat's big screen television—closed caption so it won't wake her, though every once in a while we let Calvin Petty listen to the heavy breathing in some sexy movie. Being In Spirit we don't have to worry about activating her alarm system. We don't have much reason to materialize.
Some nights we visit Pastor Frederick's home, and Calvin uses the computer, while the rest of us watch over his shoulder. For a cantankerous old coot, I have to admit Calvin's pretty smart, learning to use a computer like he has. He claims if they'd been around in his lifetime, he'd have died a millionaire. As it is, the pastor can't figure out why he gets so much email from investment sites and the Betty Grable fan club. He also gets lots of pornographic solicitations. We're sorry about that, but Calvin assumed the Belly-up Business newsletter he signed up for was a list of companies sold as penny stocks. He figures the BuB sold the pastor's addy.
The spirit I like best is Twinkie Feathertouch. I don't suppose that's her real name, since she said she used to give massages on the side, but I'd never say so. I'm not judgmental like Ethel, who's a prig. I don't care if Twinkie was a stripper before she got run over by a reindeer in the 1978 Thanksgiving Parade. Her red satin dress and high heels are a darn sight prettier than Calvin's overalls and Ethel's black dress and bonnet.
Twinkie is full of surprises too. Like just now she said, "Will you look at that full moon! I'll bet we see some action tonight." Then she threw back her head and howled like a coyote. I swear, if I'd been alive, it would've sent shivers down my back.
As for action, the kids from town like to race their cars up and down the road in front of the church, making a lot of dust, and on warm nights we sometimes get a blanket party or a beer bust in the cemetery. Usually, though, somebody comes along with a spotlight and flushes them out before things get interesting.
"Full moon," offered Calvin, who isn't known for sparkling conversation. "Huh."
"Mr. Springer," Ethel reminisced, "used to hunt by the full moon. We never knew what he'd bring home, but we ate it."
Mona Tremont, a hippie who passed over during the sixties, cooed, "I think full moons are sooo romantic. I should know. I got pregnant twice under a full moon. Once in a haystack and once in a duck pond."
"Really." That, of course, was Ethel, who'd produced eleven children in thirteen years. After she passed, her husband promptly married a young spinster and moved the family somewhere out west. At the time Ethel was too timid to follow along, and always regretted losing contact with her children.
Before I could comment, Twinkie spotted the Mercedes, and the rest of us drifted over in a hurry. It's not every night you get a pair of adults using the drive behind the church as a lover's lane. It means at least one of them is married, so they can't meet in town.
Who Died In Here?
Jennifer DiCamillo
"DON'T TELL ME a thing!" the psychic commanded adamantly.
"But—" The forensic expert, who had called her in on the homicide case, wanted to tell it all.
He unlocked the door of the older, two-story Victorian home. Although the grounds and exterior were well-kept, the place had an air of abandonment. "You really should let me explain—"
The psychic pushed past him. "Let me tell you, and that will validate your findings and my abilities."
Crestfallen, the pouting examiner mumbled, "Okay. Fine. Let's see if you can even find the right room." He pulled the front door shut and dropped the keys into his pocket.
With the furniture gone, and darkness setting in, the house felt creepy. A slight wind picked up outside and its low keening rose and fell, and smacked branches against the outside of the house. There was no rhythm to it. And the first hard thump of wind and branch made the man jump and gulp. He was glad when the psychic spoke.
Her voice, calm and soothing, asked, "It's been cleaned, hasn't it?"
Bride Rock
Jennifer DiCamillo
Cape Wrath
North of the Isle of Doon
'TWAS AN OVERCAST morning blighted with cool, drifting wisps of fog when the Doony tour guide steered his vessel through choppy seas toward the first destination of the chartered trip. Using the microphone hooked to speakers around the well-worn and rusty, paint-peeled deck, he announced in his thick Scottish brogue, "We'll start our day at Bride Rock. As you can see, it's a broad stone that crops up all on its own, far enough out in the bay to be looking a might lonely, wouldn't you say?" Not waiting for an answer, he went on, "Aye. It's a lonely place, I'm telling you that. No happiness ever came there."
With a rather melancholy expression, he added in a bit of a singsong, "Now Bride Rock can only be seen at this time a day, when the tide is low. It gets its name from a long-standing tradition whereby an uncomely or unruly wife was dumped onto 'er surface and left to sit until the high tide came, thus freeing the laird to wed again."
Cracking a grin, he said, "Shame we don't still use 'er for that purpose, eh, blokes?"
The men on board laughed. The other women aboard rolled their eyes, pursed their lips. But all of them leaned over to get a better look at the rock as they pulled near. I simply studied them, wondering at their morbid curiosity. Drawing my coat and scarf about myself, I shivered against the brisk breeze that ever blows around Cape Wrath. Its bite added a personal bitterness to the experience of my short water trip, reminding me of the last time I'd been to the Isle of Doon. I watched Bride Rock grow larger, feeling dead in my heart, reliving the emotions I'd had the last time I'd been there.
The Banshees Of Baxter County
Jennifer DiCamillo
Chapter One
THE EASY LISTENING music broke for a radio announcement. "Baxter County's ongoing gopher problem, a school science study program gone awry, looks like it is almost under control now. Local feed stores report a record high in this year's sales on gopher poisons and traps."
Liza groaned, and reached over, clicking off the radio. "No more gopher talk. I can't take it!" She wondered, how long it had been going on. A year? Two? Too long.
The bell on the door jingled.
"Here you go!" The frizzy-headed, too freckled delivery boy carried the weekend newspaper into Brockman's Investigations instead of sliding it into the slot. The first thing he asked once he got inside was, "Brockman around?"
"Nope." Liza smiled, looking the kid over. He wore holey jeans, a rad rock t-shirt, and Birkenstocks. Casual but clean. She liked him. She joked with a mysterious air, "He's disappeared!" Then she laughed it off with, "Sorry. You just missed him."
Jimmy said, "You're a comedienne. I like that."
"I think you're funny, too," Liza zipped back.
"What're you doing?"
"Wondering if you're picking up extra cash from him, on another lead or something?" One of her eyebrows went up. "Or just nosing around for handouts?" Dead-panning at her for a second before blinking profusely, Jimmy said, "Moi? Lady...what you suggest is illegal! Do I look like someone who'd cheat the government out of a tax dime? Wait. A tax dollar?"
"Or more, given half the chance. I think you're the shadiest character in town, Jimmy. Heck, in the whole county probably." Liza smirked. "He didn't leave anything for you today. Sorry. No tips. No clues. No cash. Nada. Were you expecting something?"
"Nope. Not really."
She never knew when Jimmy was scamming for a new deal, or looking to get paid for something he'd already done. Or working for somebody else, or just hanging around. He picked up odd jobs for them, the paper, and pretty much anybody else who paid cash under the table. You never knew what angle he was working.
"I got my hands full anyway." Jimmy moved in, closer to her desk. "Way too much going on these days."
"You gonna give on who the culprits are behind the gopher release scandal?"
He grinned lopsidedly. "Still protecting my source on that one... sorry."
"I'm getting tired of asking, you know." Liza rolled her shoulders. "I am so weary of hearing about the little buggers. I just want to know who did it and be done with it."
"Let's just say...you'd be shocked."
"What does it matter?" She feigned disinterest. "I mean, really... it's over. It happened last year, for heaven's sake."
"Nice try. There's a statute of limitations on crimes like breaking and entering the school, you know, and it's not up yet."
"Oh." Liza perked up. "So, whoever did it was not a school employee? A student, perhaps? Could it have been...you...maybe? You're a humanitarian, aren't you? Free the rodents, and all that?"
"Got nothing to do with humanity." Jimmy changed the subject. "Whatcha really doing?"
"Running up the overtime...you know how it is. Boss is away, hired help will stay." She winked. "I'm really out the door. Just killing time until the water delivery guy shows up." She had the checkbook out, and peeled a completed check free. "Gotta pay him."
"Brock's brother?" Jimmy said, "I saw him up the street. He's making you wait on purpose...'cause it costs the man money." He sighed dramatically. "Now, there's a shady character. Somebody ought to keep an eye on him."
"If he's up to something, I'm sure you're on it." She shrugged. Everybody in town knew the brothers had problems between them. She said, "Makes no difference to me—what he's up to. He can take all night for all I care. It's not like I have a hot date or anything." She put the ledger in a drawer and locked it up.
"You should," he complimented her.
"Care what Bob Brockman's up to? Why?" she joked. "He's already married. I have no interest in the guy. Strictly into single men, you know."
"I meant...have a date, but that, too, I guess. Word is...he may be single soon." |
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