5:50 A.M., 21 August 2017, New Town Cemetery, Charleston, WA
“Have you met yourself in a Legend yet, darling?” Emma says. Her Spirit and that of her love, Lewis Coughland, have just gathered-to, as always, in the oak, prior to daybreak.
Continue reading “A New Book of Numbers (Part I) by Leila Allison”
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My God, it’s a library, Thommy thought on her way out of an anthology of dreams and into the early morning light. She lay in bed looking up at the ceiling, contemplating dreams that really weren’t dreams as much as they had been the opening of files, which had been uploaded into her mind by Keeper yesterday at New Town Cemetery. Emma’s right, I do remember everything.
Renfield and Ethan Stoker-Belle are the proud owners of a “Spirit-enhanced house.” This used to mean “haunted house,” and the bump-in-the-night types within were known as “ghosts.” Whether you think it political correctness run amok, or simply a verbal showing of respect for the departed, a plurality of the individuals on the Otherside have a strong antipathy for the word “ghost.” You must call them Spirits. Nearly all Spirits find the G-word offensive, for it implies a state of existence inferior to that of the original item. This hoary old stereotype is going to be hard to dislodge from the human psyche; and not helping matters that much is the haughty attitude of some Spirits, who seem to deny that the only thing they had to do to become what they are is die. Still, the dead outnumber the quick by a ratio of nearly thirty to one. Nowadays this vast once silent majority refuses to rest in peace.
Continue reading “In Through the Wow-Signal Emoji By Leila Allison”
At sixteen, Thommy Lemolo broke her leg while playing high school softball. She’d been tracking a pop-up in the outfield and had stepped in a small hole, which did big damage to both her right tibia and fibula. “Never break a bone before, kid? By the look of that leg I’d say you got two for the price of one,” said the vaguely cute X-ray tech as he prepared to take images of her injury at the hospital. A good thick shot of morphine had knocked back her pain, and it also made people funnier and vaguely cuter than they were prior to the drug’s administration.
Continue reading “It Varies From Fool to Fool by JC Freeman”
At the age of five, highly gullible Lewis Coughland had fallen prey to his older cousin, Vicki. She had convinced him that since he hadn’t been baptized that he and all he loved would go straight to hell upon the Second Coming unless he took “counselling” from a good Christian (i.e. Vicki) who had a direct line of communication with the All-mighty. Since it was “too late” to do anything about the baptizing (which “forbade” Lewis from shaping prayers of his own), nine-year-old Vicki had graciously volunteered herself to serve as Lewis’s go-between in all matters Heaven and Earth; all Lewis had to do in return for this service was become Vicki’s personal slave. The counselling had been big on tough love and discipline. A typical session went as follows: Continue reading “You Will Remember Everything by JC Freeman”
”I used to live up there, in the red house. My window was just behind the oak tree and I stared out during the night, over this graveyard. I guess you can imagine how I’d fantasized. Wandering ghouls and vampires. Back then only this lamppost existed. Not that one or the one after. This lamppost was like a lantern, a lonely lantern in the dark, and during damp autumn nights when it was dead silent I snuck down here and stood next to it. Heard only the flickering sound of the lightbulb. The hedges were walls all around me. And when a wind flew through the branches and when someone visited the graveyard, I hid in the bushes.”
Erica pressed out a mint from the candy tube and ate it. “Time to go?”
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