The Devil's Towers

Long ago, it was known as The Mission in the Forest, and people were welcomed with open arms. This was before God’s War when the world was a different place, and the truth about God and Satan was still a mystery over which the war had begun.Now, decades later, it is known as The Devil's Towers, and few survivors of God’s War can recall when it was a place of peace and worship. To the masses, The Devil's Towers is a symbol of the lies once told by books such as The Holy Bible and people claiming to serve a just God.Most survivors of God’s War are afraid to go inside the building fearing the Devil, who is said to capture as his playthings the humans who enter his sanctuary. You see, some of what The Bible taught was true: there is a Devil, and there is a Hell, but the Devil never fell from Heaven. He left willingly after destroying everything it had once been, including God and all the hope that remained for living things.Today, the Devil sits in his towers ruling over a world under his control while planning new ways to trouble the remaining living things on Earth.Those who seek out and enter The Devil's Towers do so out of greed, for along with the revelations about God’s weaknesses there are the legends of the Devil's gold.

It is said that those who posses even the smallest quantity of the Devil's gold will become immortal and be immune from his manipulations. The exact location of The Devil's Towers is not known, and though many have set off to find the old mission, none have returned.

Some believe no one returns because those who go find their gold. They might be right, but if they are not (and most believe they are not) then the Devil's playground is growing.

When God’s War ended, eleven clues to the whereabouts of The Devil's Towers were scattered by the winds. The Devil did this to ensure that though the people uncovered the truth about their existence and the lie that was God, their greed would bring them to his playground.

What you hold in your hand is the last clue to the whereabouts of this monument, and as its owner, immortality and untold riches can be yours.

Sharon Ellis turned the note card over in her hand. She was taken by the picture and amused by the words. There was no return address information on the card, but she had a pretty good idea who’d sent it to her. It had Charlie written all over it: it was clever in a dorkish sort of way, and it was just another in a string of useless attempts on his part to get Sharon's attention.

She glanced once more at the note card before tossing it on the counter and heading out the door for what was sure to be a long day at work.

The fifteen minute commute to the office was an exercise in rote activity, and on this morning, as was the case on almost every morning, Sharon wasted no time in multitasking while she drove. This was perhaps the reason she ran the red light and drove her BMW into the path of a fully-loaded semi whose driver had no chance to stop.

Sharon awoke flat on her back looking up at a sky that was hazy with smoke. She felt dazed, but as the events of the morning began to work their way together like parts of a jumbled puzzle, she laughed—she was alive!

Sharon slowly sat up, and as she did, she was surprised to find that while a bit stiff, she seemed totally unharmed. She was even more surprised to find herself staring straight ahead at a building which appeared to be a replica of the image she'd seen on the postcard from Charlie. Sharon stood up, shook the dirt from her clothing, and began walking toward the clearing and the mission. She was certain what she was experiencing was a result of her accident or the after-effects of anesthesia; after all, she could not possibly be in the middle of a forest staring at an old-world mission having only moments before been driving to work. She walked on anyway.

For the second time that day, a giggle escaped Sharon's lips. She wondered to herself when she might find the Devil’s gold. Near the clearing’s edge, a cool breeze washed over her, and as it did, it carried her scent to the Devil.

Sharon Ellis reached the entrance to the mission and walked inside. The moment she crossed the threshold of the building, she realized something was very wrong. Instinctively, she turned to flee, but it was too late: she was surrounded by darkness and enveloped by the sensation of falling.

* * *

The driver of the tanker truck watched in confusion as a melon-shaped object spun up into the air, reached the top of its flight, and fell back toward the ground. As the object tumbled down toward the pavement, the trucker saw with grotesque clarity that it was the head of the woman who’d been driving the car that was now a twisted pile of metal lodged beneath the frame of his rig.

Frozen on the tumbling head was last look the woman’s face would ever wear: it was the look the truck driver would wake to in horror for the rest of his life.

The head struck the ground, rolled a few feet, and came to rest on what was left of its neck. As the trucker realized the head appeared to be looking up at the side of his trailer, he half-fell, half-staggered out of his cab while vomiting onto the roadway.

* * *
The first officer to arrive on the scene did his best to help the trucker cope with what had happened, but there was little he could do. Even he was a bit shaken by the head sitting upright staring at the truck’s trailer, and though leaving it that way was gruesome, he knew better than to disturb the accident scene—especially one involving a fatality.

Several hours later, as the investigation was wrapping up, the coroner’s assistant called the officer over to where he was working. As the assistant placed the woman’s head into a truncated body bag, he peeled a note card from the congealed blood at the base of what remained of the woman’s neck and handed it to the officer.

“Weird, huh?”

The coroner’s assistant nodded from the card to the trailer as he spoke to the officer.

The photograph on the card matched the image on the side of the semi-truck’s trailer: it was a large scale ad for a resort hotel called The Towers, and below the image was a caption that read,

Be as devilish as you want—your secret is safe at The Towers.

The officer placed the sticky card into an evidence bag and turned away for the coroner’s assistant while feeling the burn of bile rise in the back of his throat.

Original Artwork [Peace Mission Pieces] by Woody Hansen.

I Am a Hero

Albert Beiman had dreamed of being a super hero all of his life. Like many young boys, he collected comic books containing tales of superpower-wielding men performing amazing acts of courage. He hid the comic from his father who was a practical man upon whom fictional feats of strength and courage were wasted.

Albie’s dad was a firm believer in hard work, and when Albie had expressed early interest in comic books and super heroes, his father had lifted the small boy up, set him on his workbench, and explained that real heroes were the men and women who got up each morning, worked hard at their jobs, and looked after their family members. Flying, ex-ray vision, and super-strength were merely whims of fancy and not worthy of one’s time.

When Albie’s father finished, he noticed his son was on the verge of tears. The man hadn’t intended to upset his son. He’d simply wanted to instill a work ethic in the boy, and he feared an over-active imagination would lead to a path of laziness. He, like any father, wanted the best for his boy. He wanted Albie to surpass him in whatever he undertook in his life.

“I’ll make you a deal, Albie.”

The young boy looked up while continuing to fight off tears.

“I’ll share a little secret with you if you promise not to tell anyone.”

The boy’s eyes narrowed as he considered what his father had said. His young brain was processing whether or not his dad was teasing him or was about to reveal something worthwhile. The boy settled on the thing being worthwhile and nodded his head vigorously.

Albie’s father looked carefully to his left and then to his right. He made a show of peering over his shoulder, putting a finger over his lips to instruct the child to remain silent, and then he leaned in close to Albie.

“The truth is, I have a secret power of my own, and if you want, I’ll pass it along to you.”

Albie’s eyes narrowed again, and he crossed his arms over his chest. He knew a gyp when he heard one.

“You’re lying, and lying isn’t right.” The indignance in the boy’s voice was punctuated by the firm nod he tacked on to the end of his sentence.

Albie’s father shrugged his shoulders, grabbed the boy under the arms, and hoisted him up slightly so that he might place him back on solid ground. “Well, then. Off you go, I suppose.”

The boy watched as his father turned away from him and began tinkering with something on his bench. It shocked Albie that this father wasn’t even going to try to convince him of his supposed power. It shocked the boy even more that his father had simply dismissed the entire thing so abruptly and returned to whatever it was he he’d been working on.

Albie didn’t want to bite—he was sure his father was only ignoring him to get the boy to pursue whatever it was he was going to say he could do—but the silent treatment his father had dished out was making it very hard for Albie to resist pursuing the issue.

The boy stood behind his father while mentally ordering himself to turn and leave, but his orders were those of a child, and even in his child’s mind, they held little weight.

“Okay, tell me, then,” Albie blurted out.

His father stopped what he was doing and made a show of turning around and looking down at him.

“You’re still here? I thought you’d gone off somewhere. Now, what was it you wanted?”

Albie took in a dramatic breath, rolled his eyes at his father, and replied, “tell me your secret power.”

It was the father’s turn to narrow his eyes.

“Can I trust you to keep my secret?”

The boy was getting frustrated, but he obediently nodded his head. As an afterthought, he made an “X” over his heart with the index finger of his right hand.

Albie’s father reached down for the boy and placed him back up on the workbench. He didn’t look around or remind the boy to be quiet this time, but he did lean in close to him before saying in a whispered voice,

“We Beiman’s keep the world on course. We’re not ordinary electricians.”

Albie’s disappointment covered his face.

“C’mon, Dad. Being an electrician’s not a superpower.”

The father raised an eyebrow, “Oh, no?” he asked his boy. “If I don’t have a superpower, how can I do this?”

As he spoke the word “this,” Albie’s father made a gesture with his right arm and hand in the direction of the garage door opener, and as if on cue, the door slowly ground to life and began to open.

“Wow! How’d you do that?” Albie exclaimed.

His father began to answer when Mrs. Beiman pulled into the driveway.

Albie was too disappointed to notice the surprise on his father’s face. The boy waved at his mother and grumbled out a request for his father to put him down. Mr. Beiman did as the boy asked and didn’t pursue the super-power issue with the boy who stalked off toward the station wagon in search of whatever treasures his mother had brought home from the grocery store.

* * *

“Why so glum, Albie?”

Albie’s response to his mother was a half-hearted shrug of his shoulders. He wasn’t in the mood to admit to his mom that his father had suckered him into a fleeting belief in a familial superpower. His mother was about to pursue her son’s mood when the phone rang.

“Hello? Yes, he is. Just a moment.”

Albie’s mother cupped one hand over the bottom of the telephone receiver, looked down at her son, and asked him to go out to the garage and tell his father the phone was for him. Before Albie could move, his father walked in and stepped toward the receiver his wife was holding.

“I’m on my way Mick. Be there in ten minutes.”

Albie’s father hung up the receiver, looked at his wife who nodded as if she knew exactly what was going on, and then he spoke to his son.

“Want to come along and see what your ol’ dad can do?”

Albie couldn’t think of a single time his father had asked him to tag along on a job, and this fact put the boy’s mind on edge. On the one hand, he wanted desperately to refuse simply because his father had asked him, but on the other, the opportunity to tag along with his father was too cool to pass up.

“Okay, I guess.” Albie tried his best to sound bored when he answered.

“Peter, it’s not safe.”

Albie’s father looked at Albie’s mother, and the boy saw a moment of doubt cross his father’s face, but before Albie could issue a plea in his defense, his father replied.

“It’s time he learns, Vi.”

Albie’s mother gave her husband the slightest of nods and moved toward her son who she grabbed and pulled into her and from whom she collected both a kiss and a hug before releasing him.

“You two be careful,” she said as she blew an air kiss to each of them.

* * *

To Albie, the drive seemed to take forever, but in truth, it took the pair just under ten minutes to arrive at their destination—a destination that was hundreds of miles from their home. It would be weeks before Albie put all of the pieces together: the fact that his father had known there was a call for him; the way his dad answered the caller without so much as hearing the voice on the other end of the telephone line; how his father had simply climbed into the van and driven to a location without being told where to go. All Albie knew at the moment they arrived at their destination was wherever they were, it wasn’t anywhere near his house. In fact, they seemed to be in the middle of nowhere.

“C’mon, son.” Albie’s father had climbed out of the van and was motioning for the boy to follow him. As Albie got out, he noticed there was nothing in any direction as far as he could see, save for an old, beat up truck next to which stood a man.

“Where’s she at, Mick?”

Mick’s head ticked slightly, indicating the thing was behind him and to his right. Mick also managed to shoot a long, hard stare at Albie.

“What’s with the kid, Peter?” The man’s head ticked again, only this time his motion was directed at Albie.

“There’s nothing to worry about. This here’s my son, Albie.” As his father spoke, the boy saw him look in his direction, and there was something in the look his father gave him that made Albie understand he needed to be on his best behavior.

“Pleasure to meet you, sir.” Albie took a step towards Mick and extended a hand as he spoke. Mick didn’t return the gesture. Instead, he spat a used up wad of chewing tobacco into the dirt at the boy’s feet, climbed into the bed of his truck, started up the engine, and drove away.

Albie watched the truck’s disappearing dusty path, and looked back at his father who motioned for him to follow. A few hundred feet from where they had met up with Mick was what they were after.

“There she is.” Albie’s father pointed to a tangle of wires sticking up out of the ground.

“What is it?” Albie asked his father.

“That, son, is a reset device.”

“What’s a ‘reset device’?”

Albie’s father took a step toward the wires and produced a pair of cutters from one of his back pockets.

“A reset device is just what it sounds like: if it’s activated, everything gets reset. That means the world goes back to the way it was at the beginning.”

Albie looked at his father, and his earlier anger began to resurface. He didn’t like his dad teasing him.

Albie’s father saw the look on his son’s face, and while it disappointed him his son didn’t believe him, he recalled having had a similar reaction when his own father had passed along the gift.

“I’ll tell you what, Albie. How about I let you cut the wire, okay?”

Albie didn’t mean to do it, but a snicker escaped him. It wasn’t that he believed his father, but he hadn’t meant to be disrespectful, either.

His father’s face wrinkled in what was clearly angry disappointment, and Albie found himself divided: part of him was glad he’d hurt his father, but the other part of him felt a bit of shame. He steeled himself with a reminder that this had all started because his dad couldn’t accept his reading comic books and admiring superpowers. Albie assured himself his father deserved a certain amount of disrespect for pretending he could control energy, and for mocking a young boy’s imagination.

“Hey, are you listening to me?”

Albie looked down at his father who was bent over the tangle of wires. The boy hadn’t heard a thing his father said.

“I said I could prove our powers to you, boy. Pay attention!”

Albie was shocked at the tone and level of his father’s voice, and he focused on what his dad was doing.

“You’ve got to look at the wires closely. The green wire disables the device. The yellow one pauses things. The red wires activate it, and that means resetting the world, and that’s not a good thing.”

Albie looked at the bunch of wires, but they were all red. Even when he crinkled up his nose while squinting the sun away, all he saw was a gob of red.

“Are the green and yellow wires buried?”

The man looked up at his son, and then back down at the wires.

“You don’t see them?”

Albie shook his head, and for a moment, the look on his father’s face went completely blank. During that moment, a sense of dread spread over Albie, and he grew very afraid.

His father’s eyes met his own, and he opened his mouth as if to ask the boy another question, but instead of releasing words, his lips spread into a smile, and with his father’s smile, the boy’s sense of dread disappeared.

“Try now.”

Albie’s father handed the boy the wire cutters he’d been holding, and as soon as the boy had them in his fist, the green and yellow wires appeared in the tangle of red ones.

“Cool! How’d you do that?”

Albie still didn’t believe his father had superpowers, but whatever he’d done with the wires and the cutters was a great trick, and Albie had already begun to count the ways he could use the trick to his advantage with the guys back home.

“There’s no trick, kiddo. It’s just what we Bieman’s do. We make sure the world doesn’t get reset.”

Albie’s father could tell his son was impressed, but he also saw clearly the boy’s excitement was not because he was taking his father seriously.

“I’ll show you. Take the snippers and clip the yellow wire.”

Albie did as his father told him, but nothing happened. At least that’s what Albie believed until he looked back at his father and noticed the five o’clock shadow on his father’s face and the receding sunlight.

Before the boy could pepper his father with more questions, the man looked at his watch and then back at his son.

“Cut the green one, Albie. The time’s almost up.”

“Time?”

“Once the unit’s located and dug up, it’s got to be deactivated within ten hours, or it goes off, and. . .”

“And the world gets reset, right, Dad?”

Albie’s father grinned at the boy who looked back at the tangle of wires, reached out, and clipped the green one.

Nothing discernible happened, but Albie understood this meant things had gone well. He smiled up at his father, handed over the wire cutters, and proudly followed his dad back to the van.

It's All in the Details

Never make a sucker bet with a woman on the verge of an abyss. And when I say sucker bet, I don’t mean you think she’s such a sucker that betting her will line your sorry-ass pockets with whatever your personal poison happens to be. I mean don’t find yourself looking back on the moment you made the mistake of thinking her a sucker.

If you find yourself there, you’ll be the sucker, and you’ll realize you’ve landed yourself in a very dark, very lonely place.

I know. The reason I know should be obvious, but I’ll spell it out for you—in case you’re one of those guys who thinks his woman is one of those suckers.

(If that’s you, you need the picture on the box to put together the puzzle, so here goes.)

The reason I know is my old man pitched me the grand-slam-home-run of sucker bets last Saturday night, and right about now, he’s doing that look-back thing. He’s realizing the error of his ways. He’s found his quiet place, but it is much darker and lonelier than he ever imagined. He is going to have a few more hours to consider who the sucker is before it’s all over.

***

Mr. do-it-yourself-and-save decided we needed an underground safe a few weeks back. He made this genius decision after watching an infomercial while allowing the alcohol from most of a six pack to travel from his lips to his brain cells. (We have no need for a safe—underground or otherwise—but that didn’t matter.)

He did not consult me about his decision. When I asked Mr. DIYAS—which conveniently sounds like dumb ass when you run the letters together—whether or not he thought it was appropriate to tear up our back porch to build a safe we didn’t need, to spend money we didn’t have, and to get everything grimy with dirt and concrete dust, he belched “Betcha Bitch” like he was a high school kid burping the alphabet.

With the echo from his burp still fresh in the air, he demanded dinner. I cooked because I was hungry. Luckily for him, two TV dinners are about as easy to cook as one, so I fed the bastard. He’d barely finished complaining about the food he’d devoured when he bolted up from his easy chair, grabbed the keys to his work shed, and headed out back to play DIYAS.

That was the routine for the rest of the week: Mr. DIYAS would drink, complain, eat, and build a bit more of his concrete-lined-guaranteed-to keep-everyone-out-no-one-will-know-it’s-there safe. By the end of the day, he’d pass out from effort and beer.

Last Saturday night, I got tired of all the digging and pounding and cursing, so I asked him when he thought he might be done with the safe so he could rebuild the porch.

“Well, now. I’ll tell ya what. I’ll bet I get done with this here project before you can make-up that face of yours so it ain’t so hard for me to look at.”

There it was: a high, slow, lob of a sucker’s bet tossed right at me by that good-for-nothing-boozing-bastard. My daddy may have run out on us, but he taught all the kids—even us girls—how to hit a baseball before he took off. It was the bottom of the ninth, the score was tied, the bases were loaded, and I was winding up for the cut of a lifetime.

“You’ve got one week to finish. If you don’t finish this up in the next week, I’m calling my brother out here to fix things.”

Mr. DIYAS snorted, grabbed another can of beer, and turned back to his mess.

My brother is a passive man, and he doesn’t think much of his brother-in-law. My brother is also a kind man, so he’s never expressed to me his disappointment in who I married, but I can sometimes feel it—even when he does his best to hide it. I think, like me, my brother sometimes wonders where I might be now if things were different. That isn’t judgment: it’s love.

Today marked a week from the point at which I’d given Mr. DIYAS the ultimatum. Initially, he’d made progress, but after a flurry during the first two days, he was back to getting nowhere quickly: we had porch to the left and porch to the right, but below the back door was nothing but a three-foot drop to the twice-as-big-as-it-needed-to-be-concrete-lined- everything-proof safe.

When Mr. DIYAS finished dinner, he slammed another beer and stumbled his way to the back of the house. The thought of my brother showing up to save the day grated on him, and I knew it.

“I got ‘till midnight, and I’ll finish. You’ll see. But your face, well, we both know nothing’s gonna fix. . .”

His voice trailed off in a repercussion of noise that sounded as if he was back to pounding boards. Then, there was an oddly deafening silence even though he was at least three beers and two hours shy of his usual pass-out time.

I finished the dishes and got a hot bath ready. For a moment, it crossed my mind to lock him out for the evening, but I knew that would only lead to his yelling and screaming and waking me up when his buzz wore off. (We were five miles from the closest neighbor, so I’d be the only one he’d disturb, and that was enough for me.)

I went out to the back to wake him before his stupor got too thick, but when I got there, all I saw were his legs poking out from the hole in the porch.

In my defense, before I stuffed him all the way down, I did try to pull him up and out of the hole. I just couldn’t do it—I wasn’t strong enough. It didn’t take too much straining to begin to hear his nasty voice complaining about my face, and when that happened, my pulling turned to pushing, and before too long, his whole body was stuffed into that concrete safe: it turns out it was just the right size after all.

I organized the things he’d bought for his project, and after I spread them out on the table, I read the plans, took a few measurements, and I sealed that safe up for good. Nothing gets in—nothing gets out. I replaced the rest of the boards for the porch, and as soon as Mr. DIYAS runs out of air, I know the muffled screams will stop, and I’ll be able to settle into a nice, hot bath.

Family Business

“Tell me—tell me again, Grandpa!”

The old man looked lovingly at the young boy and smiled.

“Okay. But remember, you can’t tell Grandma you know the true story of Lescott Brown.”

The boy nodded his head, crossed his heart with a somewhat grimy index finger, then sat down on the bench beside his grandfather waiting eagerly for the story to commence.

With a slow, deep breath, the boy’s grandfather settled himself next to his grandson, looked deeply into the boy’s eyes, and began.

***

Lescott Brown was born with an odd talent: he could blend into the environment around him—it was as if he became invisible. His ability to go unnoticed was the reason he knew about Maggie Klein’s illegitimate son, and about Dr. Gregdale’s flask, and about what his father really did for a living. Lescott didn’t mean to find these things out—it just happened—people seemed to carry on in his presence as if they didn’t know he was there.

At first, Lescott warned people he was nearby: he’d shout out a “hello” or cough strategically, but after awhile, he got tired of getting yelled at for snooping. Lescott understood what snooping was, and he knew better than to do such a disrespectful thing—his father had taught him that—it was the reason he tried to warn people he was nearby. But how was he to help it if people just acted like he wasn’t there and went about their secret business all within the young boy’s view?

Lescott was a good kid, and he grew into a fine young man—which was fortunate for many of the people in town. Lescott understood that what he saw was often not meant for his eyes, and because he knew secrets were not for telling, he never revealed what he learned about the others around him.

Lescott’s father was aware of his son’s gift; in fact, he considered his son’s ability to go unnoticed a talent of sorts—though it took most of Lescott’s childhood for his father to really consider how his son’s skill could be put to use.

When Lescott turned sixteen, his father decided it was time to discuss the family business with him, so he did what every father who wants to have a serious talk with his son does: he took him fishing.

When they were well away from the shore, and no one could disturb them, Lescott’s father approached the subject of what he really did with his son. Lescott listened politely, even though he’d discovered years before that his father wasn’t really a farm-equipment salesman, and when his father was done, Lescott simply nodded his head. (The young man knew there was no reason to reveal to his father that the secret he’d worked to keep from his boy had been revealed before its time.)

It didn’t bother Lescott that his father was a hit man; in fact, it made his father bigger in his eyes. At least it had at first. As Lescott grew older, he began to see his father’s job might have been the cause of his mother’s sudden death, and he also grew to understand his own safety might be jeopardized by what his father did. (His father’s was a dangerous profession that naturally resulted in the acquisition of enemies.)

It took less effort than Lescott thought to drown his father: perhaps it was because he’d been practicing for this day for the past two weeks—like other things about Lescott—his frequent trips to the lake had gone unnoticed. Like many of the things he’d learned, his father’s arrangements to rent the boat had been another of those secrets revealed to the unnoticed young man.

Taking over his father’s business was a natural extension of Lescott’s talent, but the young man knew his father would stand in his way. His father was sometimes noticed, and when that happened, the witness generally ended up out in the barn. It was one of those oversights that had led to Lescott’s learning about his father’s true profession, and an oversight sure to end in his father’s being caught.

With his father out of the way, Lescott was free to run things, and he’d have no trouble stepping into his father’s shoes: he knew enough about his father’s clients to ensure the continued success of the family business, and his risk of being caught was virtually non-existent.

Lescott made the sculpture of the last moment of his father’s life to remind himself of who he was, and just like Lescott, that sculpture went unnoticed, and his father’s accidental death was never questioned.

But the story of how I came to own it is for another day.

***
The young boy’s eyes were glazed with excitement as his grandfather’s tale came to an end.

“C’mon, Grandpa, tell the rest this time—tell the rest.”

Turning a rough eye to the boy, the grandfather replied,

“You know better than to ask me that—I’ll tell you the rest of the story when I’m good and ready. Now go on, I’ve got things to do.”

The boy knew not to pursue the matter further, so he slid off the bench, excited by the tale but disappointed that this time wasn’t the time—the time he’d get to hear it all.

Walking out into the sunshine, he passed his grandmother as she went into the barn after her husband.

“Go on into the house and get washed up. Lunch is ready.”

“Okay, Grandma.”

The young boy headed for the house, his head filled with the tale of Lescott Brown and the details only a young mind can add to a story.

Once inside the barn, the boy’s grandmother walked up to her husband and whispered, “You’ve been telling that boy the story again, haven’t you?”

The man weighed her words carefully, and then he nodded his head in confession.

“Oh, Lescott, why? You know that boy is going to figure it out one day. He’s going to know it’s not just a story—he’ll know it’s true. What if he hates you—us? What if he blames us for his parents’ deaths?”

“You’re right, he will figure it out one day, and I don’t know what he’ll think. What I do know is that boy goes unnoticed just like I used to do, and sometimes, that frightens me.”

Excerpt - Unearthed

PROLOGUE

During her last moments, she did not watch as the memories of her life slid past her mind’s eye, nor did she take the time to say goodbye to those she loved. During her last moments, nothing passed through her mind or body but the terror of dying, and that dying terror took hold of her as forcefully as she had unknowingly taken hold of the crucifix around her neck.

It would have comforted her to know that her death would eventually be the key, but it was a comfort she was not granted.

She was not his first victim, but in killing her, he had made his first mistake, and because of his error, the hole he dug became a dual grave.

CHAPTER ONE

Audrey Jones wondered for the millionth time why people couldn’t do her the favor of killing one another during the day. The misguided notion shared by criminals that the cover of darkness provided some respite from capture was just silly, and if she had her way, she’d hold a press conference to let the bad guys in on that little secret.

She took a final look in the bathroom mirror, and in an effort to mask the appearance of having just rolled out of bed, she tied her dark hair into a ponytail, grabbed her baseball cap from the doorknob, pushed the cap onto her head, and let the tail of her hair hang out of the hole in the back. She had long ago altered the saying look good—feel good to hide the hair—hide the harried. The ball cap also helped her cope with a team of male coworkers, most of whom shaved their heads because it was in and they could. Those bastards could roll out of anything, throw on a fresh pair of pants, grab a shirt from the closet, and appear to have been expecting a 2 a.m. call to a crime scene.

Audrey Jones was many things, but she was not a middle-of-the-night person. The first thirty minutes after getting a call to respond to an A.M. crime scene, she was as bitter as the coffee in the thermos she took along with her. As she headed for the north end of town, she took a cautious sip of her freshly made brew, turned up the volume on her car stereo, and hoped the caffeine and music could work their necessary magic in the fifteen minutes she had between where she was and where she needed to be.

* * *

Nearing the crime scene, Audrey noted that the sidewalks on either side of the street were lined with pajama-clad people, some of whom were wandering to and fro in the street with little regard for the police and emergency vehicles that were heading to the location of the crime or back to the station. Audrey snapped off her stereo, secured her cup of coffee in the cup holder of her vehicle’s center console, and transitioned smoothly from recently awakened off-duty cop to totally focused investigator. She drove cautiously through the crowd, taking mental note of the gawkers while keeping her eyes peeled for the personnel who should be taking photographs and video of the lookie loos for later examination.

The crime scene tape came into view, and Audrey slowed her car, pulled to the side of the road as best she could, and exited her vehicle carrying a small black bag that held the things she typically needed at a crime scene. The crowd of people had been moved back a good fifty feet, but she still heard the murmur that passed through them as neighbors speculated about who she was and what had happened. She also heard a dog barking incessantly.

Flashing her badge at the officer protecting the area, Audrey passed under the yellow tape and walked up the driveway to the front door of the home. Walking inside, she was directed by another officer out into the home's backyard.

The first thing she noticed was the number of people who were peering over the fence lines right into the crime scene. She looked at the personnel gathered in the yard, spotted a set of sergeant’s stripes, and headed in their direction.

As she began to introduce herself, the sergeant turned, and she realized it was Hal Baker.

“Goddamn, Hal, how much weight have you lost?”

“Nearly 50 pounds since you saw me last.”

“You look fantastic. How do you feel?”

“Great—better than I did when I was twenty.”

“You were never twenty, my friend, but you do look good.”

“Thanks. You look like shit. That cap isn’t hiding the circles under your eyes, you know.”

“I love you too, Hal. Always have. So, why am I here?”

“Unofficially, I’d say it’s because I miss seeing you hard at work in the middle of the night with the real cops. Officially, it’s because that dog over there decided to do some night-shift work on that hole over there, and when the dog’s owner came outside to kick its madly barking ass, he realized there was a decomposing body in the hole.”

“Man’s best friend strikes again.”

“So it seems.”

“Who took the initial call?”

“Actually, I was close, so I got here just before Officer Hall.”

“Officer Hall, as in Jess Hall?”

“You betcha.”

“Shit, Hal, are you trying to rebuild the old team?”

“I am—at least the good parts. Want in?”

“I’d say yes, but no team is big enough for two sergeants. Besides, the last time we worked together, you got shot, remember?”

“I have a vague recollection of that, yes. I also seem to remember you coming to my rescue and saving my life.”

“You took a bullet in the ass, Hal. The only danger you were in had to do with the shit you took from the rest of us.”

“So kissing your ass isn’t going to get you to give up the suits and the day shift and drag you back to a uniform and a patrol car, eh?”

“Sorry, Hal. Not a chance.”

“Okay, then. I guess all I have for you is the routine stuff. The dog’s been caged by animal control, and we’ve got a vet standing by to collect any evidence the dog might have acquired. She says she’ll need to knock him out and pump his stomach, too—Fido had a taste or two before his owner dragged him away from the hole. The vet needs you to try to get the owners’ consent. If you can’t, one of your guys will need to get a warrant—and, yes, the vet assured me no harm would come to the dog. I’ve got a tent en route to cover up the yard, and six officers standing by to question the people who’ve been watching all of this over the fences. I’ve also got three teams of two uniforms working door-to-door, but they aren’t having a lot of luck: most of the folks are outside milling around.”

“You see, Hal, we are working together—besides, who else would know to do everything I’d ask for before I got to ask to have it done?”

“Not a soul, AJ, not a single soul.”

“How long ago did you order the tent?”

“Nearly an hour ago, I’d guess. It should be here anytime.”

“Okay, until it gets here, let’s work on getting the people out front and along the street back into their homes so the canvassing officers actually have something productive to do. And send your guys in to get these folks along the fence lines downtown for interviews. Keep them separate as best you can.”

“Sure thing, boss.”

“Shut up, Hal.”

The two shared a smile before heading off in their respective directions, and Audrey realized just how much she missed having Hal as a partner.

Shaking her head to clear the memories, she took another look around the backyard and decided to head back into the house to talk to the owner about collecting evidence from his dog.

Mistakes

Mistakes are a hell of a thing, aren’t they? Without an ample serving of mistakes, there’s no real learning that takes place in life. Of course, some mistakes are so costly, they take life and turn it on its side.

I don’t remember the moment I began to understand the true nature of mistakes, but I do remember the moment I began wishing I’d handled a few of mine differently.

My history with mistakes began the day I sold bought Tom Rucker’s farm. I was a real estate man back then: I sold the land and homes of people in the county whose lives had fallen on misfortune. In essence, I was a huckster.

Tom Rucker had fallen on the best kind of hard times for a guy like me: he’d up and died and left no one but the U-S-of-A to claim his things. That gave me the green light to step in and sell his place on behalf of the government—a service for which I would receive a reasonable fee, of course.

The morning after I put Tom’s place on the market, I got a call from a nice young couple looking to move away from the city and into the country. We set up a meeting for later that afternoon, and I gave them directions to the Rucker place: one of the nicest spreads of land in Draden County.

* * *

It didn’t take long before I could smell a sale coming. I’d already started counting my commission as we headed for the barn. I was running through my there’s ample space for a number of horses and other animals if you choose speech when I opened the barn door.

I had an odd flash—a premonition maybe—but in the moment I opened that door, I knew I had to do whatever was necessary to dissuade those youngsters from buying. I got a feeling so strong it about knocked me to my knees, and the feeling was crystal clear: I had to buy the Rucker place myself.

Without missing a beat, I began pointing out the little things about the barn that might turn the sale on its side, and when I got to the part about rats in the rafters, I lost that sale smell.

The once-eager young couple no longer had any interest in the purchase: after my spiel about the rats, the “quaintness” of the house faded, and their “we-don’t-mind-a-fixer-upper” attitude vanished.

The couple left after a series of polite but hasty thank-you’s, and I found myself staring at an empty barn that I knew had changed my life.

* * *

Soon after I bought the Rucker place, I got a notion I needed to live there, and once I’d moved in, my life began to turn good in ways too large to count. Little things happened at first, but when sales began falling into my lap, I knew my good luck had something to do with my new home.

I even became a better man. I was no longer as eager to make sales that weren’t beneficial for the involved parties, and I found myself more inclined to tell the truth when dealing with clients. Oddly enough, my new approach didn’t seem to hurt business; in fact, for the first time in my career, I began to get referrals and return customers.

One thing that didn’t change was my ex-wife. She was as nasty a bitch as ever, and when she got wind of my increased income, her greedy mitts were all in a twist to get some more of a share that was never fair to begin with.

You should probably know, my wife left me, and not because I wasn’t good to her. She left me for a dentist, and she didn’t leave out of love or a lack of it. She left for greener pastures: the money-green kind. (Of course, as long as my wallet was in play, there was no reason for her to consider marrying the dentist, and when she heard about my sudden successes, there was even less reason for her to marry Mr. Dental Man.)

She came to me one morning demanding more money. Even though my ex-wife didn’t deserve the grand I gave her on the first of every month, the better man in me offered her an extra $500 per.

I told you she was a greedy bitch. She wouldn’t settle for a fixed amount: she wanted a percentage of my earnings each month.

Even a changed man can’t abide a cheating, good-for-nothing, money-hungry, ex-wife’s unreasonable demands, and I told her it was the extra $500 or nothing. She gave me her usual dose of mouth, and then she left.

This morning, I woke up to the sound of a delivery truck pulling into my front yard. When I looked out of my bedroom window, I saw a guy unloading a truck filled with cement blocks. He dumped ten palettes of these things even though I tried to explain to him they weren’t mine.

His order had my address as the delivery point. The new man in me couldn’t argue with the guy, so I signed the order and let him get on with the rest of his day.

I called the only person I could thing of who'd do such a thing: my ex-wife. After a minute or so of laughter, she got on me again about the extra money. I told her to blow off, and she said,

"If I were you honey, I’d start getting rid of those blocks before the cops get to your place. If you won’t give me my share of your money, I’ll make sure I get it all."

Then she hung up.

I took a good look at the blocks, and some of them seemed to have been cracked open and then repaired. I took a hammer and chisel to one of them, and when it split apart, there was a small bag filled with what I am pretty certain is cocaine.

I broke open a few more, and so far, along with the drugs, I’ve found a considerable amount of cash and what appears to be a severed finger.

I have no idea what to do, but the sirens are getting closer, and if I know my mistake of an ex-wife (and I do), that bitch has gone and done me good.

Kitty Haiku

12 am
They settle at last
My fitful sleep returns then
The short lived calm expires

3 am
Slicing through the night
A mixture of soft and sharp
Kitty claws my nose

6 am
Tiny bodies hide
Tightly wedged beneath box springs
Laughter in their eyes

The Creator

He was an old man and feeble. Then one day, he awoke in a strange place feeling less old and more like the self he’d known years before. He stood in a brightly lit room with vaguely familiar objects all around him. Outside, there was more light and the distant sound of laughter.

It occurred to him, as he stood looking about, that he didn't feel the aching in his knees nor was it there in his back or his feet. He smiled to himself—something he hadn’t done in years. He noticed, too, that his eyesight was sharp. Then he fancied he could smell the freshness in the air. Another smile.

He decided quickly it was a dream. He tried to focus on the sagging mattress he knew himself to be sleeping on, but try as he might, he could not feel the springs rubbing annoyingly on his right hip—for he always slept on his right side, and the springs always stung him.

He took to counting: it was a trick he used whenever a bad dream took him over. He first pictured the number drawn in large, bold strokes on a blackboard. Once the number was fully formed, he thought it out in his head as loudly as he could. Then he went to work on the next number. In this manner, he was able to awaken himself before reaching ten. Only this time, he was nearing twenty, and he was still standing in his dream surrounded by brightness and things somewhat familiar.

“I’ll try another tactic,” he said aloud, and the words seemed to echo and vibrate and send ripples though the air and the room. The leaves of the plants rustled every-so-slightly, and for a moment, he felt fear.

In the middle of the room was a large easel with paper, and all around him were brushes and paints and sticks of charcoal and pastel. He would make the numbers himself he thought, and so he did. But as he reached five, it occurred to him he might make other things, and so he began by imagining the smile of his long-dead wife, and as he imagined, his hand moved the brush on the paper and before he knew it, he heard her voice.

He opened his eyes expecting to find her, but he remained alone in the room, and he felt a deep sadness. Then he noticed the paper in front of him was blank, and his sadness turned to fear.

Surely, I’ve gone mad, the man thought to himself. He looked for a door to exit the room, but saw he was closed in. I'm mad and I’m locked up. That's the answer.

But in his heart, he knew this wasn't true, and as frightened as he was, he returned to the easel and took up another brush.

I shall paint myself a door, he thought, and then I shall walk though it and awaken. And so he painted a door. And as he painted, he heard the creaking of the hinges, for it was the door from his father’s workshop he had imagined, and the basement door—his father’s workshop was in the basement—had always squeaked eerily.

The man opened his eyes, and there was, now, a door in his room, and it looked just like the door he remembered leading down, down, down to his father’s workshop. He stepped to it, and reached out, but the door had no knob, and as he examined it, he saw it had no dimension: it was but a false door painted on a real wall.

“What am I to do?” He shouted out in anger, and the sound of his own voice rang so loudly in his ears it took him to his knees.

“You must decide” came the answer—and the answer was in his own head, and it helped soothe the pain there.

Decide what? He thought. What must I decide? He waited for an answer, but none came, and so he listened more intently. He concentrated and slowed his breathing and willed the voice to answer him. But there was nothing. The voice was gone.

The man walked around and around the room, and time passed. He began to cry—something he hadn't done since he was a small boy—and his tears soothed him like the voice in his head had done.

Finally, the man sat cross-legged on the floor. He looked directly at the easel, and as he watched, one image after another appeared and then vanished from the paper. The images had a familiar quality to them, but the man could not put his finger on the reason.

Occasionally, he would recognize an image outright: his son; the tree he had climbed as a child; the first home he and his wife had bought. But mixed with these images were the faces of strangers and places and things he did not remember.

The images stopped, and the man wondered if it were a sort of intermission. He looked around and listened—for what, he wasn't certain, but it seemed the thing to do.

Presently, he arose from where he sat, took up a brush, and painted a brilliant and beautiful sunset. This time, he did not close his eyes as he painted, and as each stroke hit the paper, the image came more and more alive until the walls of the room dropped away and the heat from the setting sun washed over him.

The man finished his painting and carefully washed the pigment from the brush. He took a step back to admire what he'd done, and felt satisfaction. He watched the paint dry, and when it had, he reached for the paper, tore it from the pad, and rolled it into a tube which he tucked under his arm.

Then he was back in the room, but this time, his wife was there and the door to his father’s workshop had depth and a knob, and as he reached for his wife’s hand, he felt a deep sense of joy as together, they stepped though the door.

Outside, in a world that no longer mattered, the man lay in a hospital bed and took one final breath. Situated on his face was a smile, and all around him were the many paintings he had created while awaiting this day.

The Lady

Jonathon Meyers liked to tease Nancy King, and though she pretended to be bothered by his taunts, Nancy really wasn’t bothered at all. They were at the age when boys and girls begin to notice one another in different ways—the age at which teasing was really the only acceptable behavior between them.

Nancy knew Jonathon didn’t mean anything by most of the silly things he said, and she wasn’t especially frightened by the various crawling things he’d stuff under her nose, either. She hadn’t thought too much about it, but had she, she would have believed Jonathon was as unaffected by the occasional taunts she threw his way, and she would have been correct.

The pair had been friends since the day Jonathon’s family moved in across the street from Nancy’s, and that had been almost three whole years ago. In all that time, they’d never had a real fight, and in many ways, the two were as close as brother and sister—except they weren’t related, and Nancy had developed a crush on Jonathon. Of course, she had no idea it was a crush—she was too young to identify what she felt, but it was a crush, nonetheless. Jonathon was just discovering his feelings for Nancy, and this may well explain what happened the day Jonathon showed Nancy The Lady.

Jonathon had stumbled upon The Lady some weeks before while on his way home from Lake Thomas School where he and Nancy were both third graders. Although his mother and father made him promise not to take the shortcut through Harper’s Pond, Jonathon often broke this particular promise.

The pond was creepy, but as any kid knows, one of the ways to prove how cool you are is to pretend creepy things don’t bother you—and there was nothing creepier than the trail that wound around Harper’s Pond. (Being seen taking the trail was only bested by being seen leaving it on the pond’s other side. Daring to do such a thing—especially absent friends—was a sure way to raise your status in the eyes of your peers, and because Jonathon was the smallest boy in his class, any boost to his status was welcomed.)

Not surprisingly, it was a dare that initially sent Jonathon on the shortcut that circled the pond, but curiosity had dragged him back after the first adventure. He’d never told anyone what he’d seen that first time, and in truth, he came to believe he’d imagined it. Not knowing whether or not he had seen The Lady was the thing that led to his returning to the pond.

Like his first trip, his second took place on a sunny afternoon right after school, and like the time before, as soon as he was far enough along the trial not to be able to see the start of the path, everything seemed to close in around him. (There was one thing he’d confirmed.)

Jonathon kept to the trail and listened closely for the voice, but he heard nothing. By the time he’d reached the midpoint of the path, he’d begun to believe The Lady was just something he’d imagined—even if he had been right about the way everything had closed in around him.

Suddenly, he heard The Lady as clearly as if she were standing beside him. The sound of her melodious voice reached out to him, and he moved off the path and toward her. Oddly, though the path felt congested by the foliage around it, once Jonathon left it, the trees and brush seemed to open as if to let him though.

In a matter of moments, Jonathon was standing in a small clearing and looking directly at The Lady.

She was singing as had been the case the last time Jonathon encountered her, and while he would never have thought it possible, the tune she carried on this afternoon was even more beautiful than the one she’d been singing before.

Jonathon’s head would fill with questions later, but for the moment, he stood transfixed by the music emanating from her. As before, The Lady seemed unaware of Jonathon’s presence, and as before, Jonathon noticed she was not real.

The Lady seemed to be made of a thin sheet of concrete, so thin, in fact, that as she swayed with the highs and lows of her song, Jonathon could see she was less than an inch thick.

It couldn’t be.

It wasn’t possible.

But there she was.

Transfixed for a length of time he could not determine, Jonathon became aware of a desire to leave. As quickly as he had found the clearing, he was again on the trial on his way to his home, and he no longer heard The Lady’s song.

Jonathon ran into Nancy as he left the trail, and the two matched strides while heading home. Rounding the last turn, Jonathon touched Nancy’s shoulder bringing them both to a stop.

“Are all you girls afraid of Harper’s Pond?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“There’s something there I have to show you.”

“I guess I’m not afraid. What’s there?”

“I can’t tell you. You have to see it for yourself.”

Nancy suspected it might be a trick, but she wanted to show Jonathon she wasn’t afraid of the pond.

“Okay, I’ll go there with you. When?”

“Tomorrow. After school. But don’t tell anyone, okay?”

Nancy agreed while wondering to herself who Jonathon thought she might tell she was going to Harper’s Pond with a boy.

* * *

While walking home the following afternoon, Jonathon and Nancy meandered behind the other kids from their neighborhood in order to break off and take the Harper’s Pond trail unnoticed.

Nancy felt the trees and brush close in around her, but she said nothing to Jonathon for fear he’d think she was a sissy, and then she thought she heard singing. Jonathon stopped, and turned to Nancy.

“Do you hear it?”

She nodded her head.

“C’mon. It’s this way.”

The two left the trail, and each felt the foliage open up around them. They quickly reached the clearing and stood looking at The Lady.

“Do you see her, Nancy?”

Nancy gave a nod, and as she did, The Lady turned toward them. She looked at Nancy for a very long time, and as Jonathon watched, he thought he saw a tear begin to run down The Lady’s cheek. She had stopped singing, and with her silence, the clearing seemed to have gotten smaller and darker.

She turned to face Jonathon, and he was again aware of her impossible thinness and the certainty that she was made not of flesh but of concrete.

“Why?” was all she said to the small boy, and before he could answer, she had broken into more than a dozen pieces of stone and lay lifeless on the ground.

As Yet Untitled (WIP)

The first time I saw Sunny Glade, she was arguing with the postmaster in my father’s store. I was seven, and what my uncle, the postmaster, always called precocious. When he said that word, there was just a hint of a snarl in his voice, the outside corner of his left eye pinched up in his face, and he pronounced it with three distinct syllables: pre-CO-shuss.

When you’re seven, the world passes you over with little more than a glance. Counters are too tall, conversations are too adult, and your opinions are of no consequence. So when I heard Sunny growl,

“Ah shit Roy, even Janey could do better than that,”

I waited for the trouble that was sure to come my way—somehow, I’d been unwillingly placed right in the middle of Grown-Up-Things. The store got very quiet as Sunny looked at me, nodded her head, and winked.

For some reason that I can’t really explain, Sunny’s voice was the sweetest thing I had ever heard, even if the words that came out of her that day (and most others) were the same ones I got a mouth full of soap for saying. Uncle Roy shot a glance in my direction, his left eye beginning to pinch, and then he muttered something under his breath to my father. Both men disappeared into the back of the store, and I tried desperately to make myself as small as possible while they were gone. After several minutes, I was beginning to think I had believed myself into to being the size of an ant, and that when my pa and uncle returned, they wouldn’t even notice me. The voice in my head was chanting “go on now—get smaller, go on, go on now—get smaller,” and as I began to shrink, you can understand why I jumped a full foot in the air when Sunny’s big hand landed on my (dwindling) shoulder.

“My goodness Janey Bell, you really have grown up.”

All I could manage was a squeaky “Yes, ma’am.”

“Do you remember me?”

The voice in my head was part way through a sentence about everyone knowing who Sunny Glade was when I realized that using her first name wasn’t polite, and admitting that I listened to gossip would be even worse.

“No, ma’am, I’m sorry, I don’t.”

As the words rolled out of my mouth, I silently hoped that it was better to forget meeting a person than to admit to only knowing her by what I overheard in the store.

“It’s okay, Janey. When we met, you were much younger.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Well, then. Let me reintroduce myself. I’m Sunny Glade.”

The large hand that had been on my shoulder moved and floated in the air before me, but I stood motionless and in silent wonder of the woman who was before me.

“Young lady, how about a proper handshake?”

She was not at all what people said. She was tall and pretty, and though I couldn’t have named it then, there was a toughness about her that was powerful and compelling. My mother would have called her an example of nature’s elegance. It was a term she only used in reference to women, and only to those who clearly held their own in the company of men.

As I began to reach out to put my small hand into hers, my father and uncle came back to the front of the store. Before I had time to shake hands, Sunny’s arm was back at her side. She had moved to the front of the store, and I thought I saw her face change. As she stood at the counter, it seemed to me that she became a bit more like the woman I had heard described, and a bit less like the woman I had just met.

The Package

It lay on the doorstep of 54 Hulstone Place. Non-descript and brown, the package looked as if it might have been dropped accidentally or tossed aside by a passerby too lazy to find a trash can.

There was no return address, and the edges of the package were worn as if it had had a long and arduous journey. Whatever its history, the package had indeed found its home, for the top of the box contained carefully penned letters identifying its destination:

Podderson Family
54 Hulstone Place
Pittsburgh PA
15219

When Amanda Podderson returned from her shift at the diner, she kicked the package before she noticed it. It slid noisily across the concrete stoop and came to rest with a clunk at the edge of the threshold to the front door. Adjusting her armload of groceries, Amanda peered down at the box, rolled her eyes, and thought, “Not again, George.”

After unloading the groceries and changing, Amanda returned to the front stoop, picked up the package, and put it in the laundry room. George would never find it there, and it’d serve him right, too.

By the time her husband got home, Amanda had forgotten about the package: George was drunk and late. In unplanned unison, George slammed the front door closed, and Amanda slammed their bedroom door shut. Amanda’s slamming was followed by the click of the lock being thrown. She’d be damned if that drunken no-good got into bed with her that night.

George didn’t notice the slamming of either door, nor was he aware of his wife’s banning him from their bedroom. He was ripped and only cared about hitting the sofa squarely before he passed out.

The next morning, George was up and gone before Amanda finished her shower. Had Amanda known this, she’d have skipped practicing the speech she planned to yell at him about his continuing to order things they couldn’t afford.

Thankful in part that he was gone, Amanda went to work and forgot all about the package.

When she got home that evening, she was surprised to find George sitting at the kitchen table. Even more surprising was his fist not being wrapped around a can of beer.

“Why ya home so early George?”

“I went in early, put in my eight, now I’m here.”

Amanda heard the smugness in George’s voice before she saw it hanging on his face.

“Since you’re here. . .”

“Since I am here, I wanna know why you ride me all the time about buying things when you bought that light and had it put in without saying nothing.”

Amanda followed George’s outstretched arm which ended with his pointing finger that was aimed at a light installed in the ceiling over the kitchen table.

“I had nothing to do with that. What’s this about, George?”

George grunted before answering, “That ain’t your light?”

“No, George, that ain’t my light.”

“So, what? We both go off to work, and some fairy comes to our house—puts in a light? What do you take me for?”

“I take you for a no-good drunk, that’s what I take you for.”

“What’d you say?”

“I said, you’re a no-good drunk, George. You forget coming home last night all tied up in a knot?”

George sat up in the chair, drew in a breath, and in a tone as condescending as they come replied, “I had a beer with the boys after a long day. A man deserves a beer with the boys now and again.”

As he spoke, the light the two were fighting about flickered and buzzed.

“There you go George. There’s proof I had nothing to do with that light getting put in. If I’d have had it done, it’d work right. Just admit you bought the damn thing and installed it wrong. And fix it before it burns down this house.”

“I had nothing to do with that light, Amanda, and you know it.”

“Well I’ve never seen it before.”

As Amanda spoke, the light flickered and buzzed again.

“We can fight all night about the light, George, but for now, you need to fix the damn thing.”

“Can’t. I got a meeting with the union boys, and I gotta leave right now.”

More flickering and buzzing.

Amanda gave up on the light and George and headed for the bedroom to change. Over her shoulder, she called out,

“Just make sure you’re quiet when you drag yourself home.”

Her words were punctuated by George’s slamming the front door as he left.

***

“Ma’am, can you tell me what happened?”

“Yes, detective. My husband came home from a meeting. I guess he’d been drinking a bit. I was already in bed, and the next thing I knew, I heard a crash. I called out to him, but he didn’t answer. When I got up to see what was wrong, I found him lying there. That’s when I called.”

Detective Westgrove looked up from his notepad as Amanda Podderson spoke. The out-of-place light that hung above the kitchen table was flickering and buzzing, and it was annoying.

“Ma’am, is there anyone we can call for you?”

“No. No Detective. I have no family other than George.”

“A friend perhaps or a neighbor?”

“You’re very kind, but no. I think I need to be alone right now.”

“Well, if you change your mind, just let one of the officers here know. It’ll take them another thirty minutes or so to wrap things up, and then you’ll have your house to yourself.”

Amanda nodded her head at the detective.

“And Mrs. Podderson, I’m very sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you detective, you’re very kind. I really don’t know what I’ll do without my George.”

As Amanda Podderson spoke, the light that had arrived in a travel-worn package flickered and buzzed its response.

It Fell from the Sky As If from Heaven

“Wow—is that?”

“I think so.”

“Is it real?”

“Well, it looks real, I guess. Doncha think it looks real?”

“I dunno. I’ve never seen a real one—only pictures. Have you ever seen a real one?”

“I’d say we both have, now.”

“What’ll we do?”

“Maybe we should hide it.”

“Hide it? Hide it where—and how?”

“I don’t know. But I think we should.”

“What if it’s the last one?”

The boys looked at one another, thinking for a moment about the possibility that what they had seen fall from the sky might be the last of its kind, and then they looked down again at the multi-colored disk with a kind of reverent fear.

“If it’s the last one, we have to tell. If it’s the last one, things will begin to change.”

“But how do we know if it is or not?”

Looking at one another again, each boy privately judged the gravity of the situation. Less than a minute passed, but in that minute, the youth the boys had known when they awoke that morning evaporated into an unseen mist. In its place, the boys assumed the weight of the world, and in the part of a person that matters, the boys become young men.

“You know—there’s no way to know if it’s the last one or not. We need to tell someone.”

“Who should we tell?”

“Mike.”

“Crazy Mike—are you kidding?”

“He’s not crazy. People just say that because he knows so much stuff and because he lives in the woods.”

“If you say so. How we gonna get it there? I mean, we can’t touch it, can we?”

“I don’t think we should. Let’s look for something to carry it with.”

The two boys rummaged around the area and finally found an old rug in one of the nearby piles of debris. Not far away, they found a rusty golf club. The head of the club was missing, and the shaft was slightly bent, but it seemed like the kind of tool the boys could use to nudge the colored wheel onto the carpet for safe transportation.

Carefully, the two boys worked together to ease the colored wheel gently onto the carpet. Once it was safely on top of the rug, they headed back the way they had come, but at the fork in the trail, instead of heading back into town, they headed out father—to Crazy Mike’s camp.

Normally, Crazy Mike’s was a five-minute detour, but the weight of the colored wheel slowed the boys considerably, and their trek took almost half an hour. Tired and a bit apprehensive, the two boys rounded a corner and found themselves face-to-face with Mike.

“Did you boys see it?”

Startled, the boys almost dropped the wheel to the ground.

Mike looked at the burden the boys carried and cried out, “You’ve found it!”

The boys eased the rug that supported the colored wheel down to the ground. Out of breath from their trek and a bit frightened, they just looked at Mike.

“Let me see it,” he said as he stepped closer. Mike peered down at the wheel, and then looked back up at the boys.

“You know what this is, right?”

The boys’ heads nodded vaguely.

“Anyone see you take it?”

The boys’ heads shook in a unified and firm no.

“We’re you followed? And one of you better actually speak up with an answer.”

“I—I don’t think we were. No one was around when we found it.”

“Is it the last one, Mike?”

The man eyed the smaller of the two boys before answering him.

“Well, there’s only one way to know now, isn’t there?”

The boys glanced at one another—then they shrugged their shoulders in response.

“So boys, you really don’t know what this is, then?”

Not knowing how to answer, the boys simply stood looking at Mike.

“I’ll tell you what this is, and what it might be. What you boys have here is a portal: you can tell because it has the colors of water, fire, and sun. Of course, it’s also got the color of new life, and that means it could be the last one. We won’t know until I test it, but I do know that the remaining portals have the four colors. Since some portals aren’t found when they fall, we won’t know which is the last until things begin to change.”

The boys had stopped looking at Mike: their focus was on the colored wheel. Each had listened with great care to what the man said, and while neither boy would have wanted to admit it, each knew that the wheel they’d found might mean survival for one of them—and each wanted to take the chance before what might be the very last opportunity was gone.

Mike sensed what was happening, but before he could warn the two boys, the smaller one lunged at the wheel. As he sailed through the air, the other boy took his shot. Mike watched helplessly as the two boys traveled at an impossibly slow speed toward the disk. They seemed to hit the object at the same moment: the smaller boy hitting fire’s red, and the larger boy hitting water’s blue. The reaction was instant: both boys evaporated into steam leaving only the echoes of their screams behind.

As soon as it ended, Mike felt the air beginning to thicken.

“My God, it is the last one.”

Hesitating for only a moment, Mike looked at the center of the colored wheel and with an agility that didn’t match his size and shape, he deftly danced the required dance putting in and taking out body parts until the colored wheel began to spin.

When Mike got to putting his whole self in, the center of the colored wheel had opened up, and with a rush of air, Crazy Mike was free.

Missing Pieces

I was looking at myself in the mirror and assessing the damage when the doorbell rang. Startled, I dropped the bloody towel I’d been holding to my lip into the sink and stood for a moment frozen and unsure what to do. Picking up the towel, I started for the front door when I heard a steady and persistent knocking. I wasn’t expecting anyone, and my neighborhood wasn’t the I-was-in-the-area-so-I-thought-I’d-stop-by type. Part of me grew tense while the rest of me badgered that part for being paranoid.

As I rounded the hallway and entered the foyer, I could see the outline of a large figure through the frosted glass of my front door. There was something unsettlingly familiar about the silhouette’s stance, and the paranoid side of me registered a victory as I stopped in my tracks.

The sound of radio chatter and the visitor’s voice hit me in unison, and I fought the urge to run out my backdoor and into the woods that were only a few hundred yards away.

“Sheriff’s department.”

You live in the middle of nowhere. It can’t be anyone who knows you. My mind struggled to accept this and regain control over my body.

“Look, I can see you standing there, please open up.”

Well, that sounded polite enough. It’s not as if guns are being drawn, and he is alone.

Convinced that I had no rational alternative, I stepped forward and opened the door. Standing on my front porch was a tall, solidly-built deputy sheriff who looked barely old enough to drive let alone carry a gun. With his thumbs tucked into the front of his gun belt and his flat-footed stance, he seemed more a danger to himself than a threat to me, so I began to relax.

“Ma’am?”

“Deputy?”

“Are you alright?”

As he spoke, the deputy took a defensive stance and moved his right hand from its tucked-into-his-gun-belt position to hovering just above his holster, and my desire to flee reintroduced itself with an even greater degree of urgency.

As my panic mounted, I realized that the deputy’s gaze wasn’t trained on me but darting around over my shoulder at the interior of my house. It came to rest on the bloody towel that was in my hand, and once again, I relaxed.

A nervous laugh escaped me as I answered him. “I’m fine. This is nothing” I said, as I held the towel up and used it to point to my swollen lip.

The deputy relaxed a bit, but I could see he wasn’t convinced.

“I fell, but really, I’m okay.”

“Would you mind if I came in and checked the house?”

“I don’t mind if you come in, but I can assure you there’s no one else here.”

The deputy stepped around me and entered the house. I watched him perform a visual check of the areas he could see from the cover of the foyer.

“I was running on my treadmill, and the power cut out on me. I took a pretty good dive.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I knew from experience that his answer translated to look lady, I don’t much care what happened because right now I have to make sure that there ain’t a guy somewhere in here who was beating the crap out of you before I knocked on your door, and if that guy is here, then I’m gonna to have to worry about whether or not you’ll fight me when I arrest his sorry ass.

Indelible

It wasn’t a best thing—it was far from it, but it certainly had come in a small package.

That afternoon, Hate came wrapped in a spring dress topped with bouncing blond curls and a pugish little nose that on an adult wouldn’t have been nearly as cute as it was on the little girl.

The bouncing bundle of Hate had pulled away from her mother and clop-clop-clopped her way across the nondescript tile floor over to my left leg. She came up about mid-waist on me, and I’m not a very tall woman. Craning her neck up to where my eyes were, she cocked her head sideways, a movement that set her curls into a part rippling, part bouncing frenzy. Seeing that she had my attention, her little-girl lips gave way to her little girl voice which rang out in a clear, confident, and matter-of-fact tone,

“My mommy told me you’re gonna burn in Hell. Aren’t you afraid it’s gonna hurt when you’re in all that fire?”

The words settled on me, leaving me dirty and exposed. If it weren’t such a cliché, I’d call it The Day of the Dragon. The searing brand of that little girl’s words reverberated through the room and entered me as nothing had before. The mark would come later, but the scar that moment caused had already begun to form.

Sold!

I received some exciting news yesterday: on the heels of my recent rejection, the second piece I submitted to the same publication was purchased and will be appearing in the next few weeks.

When it’s released, I’ll post details here. For now, keep your fingers crossed for me to get the opportunity to read the story as well: the publisher combines written work with podcasts, and it would be a real bonus to be the voice behind my own story.

The Frog Prince

I can tell just by looking at you that you think the whole kiss-a-frog and it-becomes-a-prince thing is right up there with the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny. I’ll bet you’ve never even heard of the Order of the Royal Guardians. That's just great—you’re all I’ve got to count on for help.

Well, I suppose we need to get you squared away on the basics: a few centuries back, when countries were a thing to be boasted of, and rulers were determined by royal blood, there were plenty of kings and queens making lots of little princes and princesses. I can only hope you have enough sense to understand that primogeniture created a good deal of strife among royal boys, and though you have no modern equivalent to the (literal) back-stabbing this caused, bitter sibling disputes over the wares of dead parents comes closest.

The fate of a nation often rested on the shoulders of princes, and because of this, the Order of the Royal Guardians was born. (I see that look, but be clear, we are nothing like those drunken, bloody, whore-chasing Knights of the Round Table.)

At the moment a new prince was born, he was assigned a team of Royal Guardians whose task it was to protect the prince throughout the rest of his life at all cost. Through disputes within the family and threats from the outside world, the Royal Guardians served their charges with absolute loyalty. (Like the royal family, the members of the Order of the Royal Guardians are born into their positions. Thus, the team of Guardians assigned to a prince would be direct descendants of those who had been tasked to protect the king when he was but a prince himself.)

The ways of the world began to change, and as that happened, fewer and fewer monarchies survived. Once proud countries—countries steeped in familial history—were toppled and replaced by a variety of alternate governments. By the time your father’s grandfather was born, real royal blood had been so thinned that protecting the lives of the remaining princes became a task of even greater necessity.

I have said that the task of each prince’s team of Royal Guardians is to protect their charge at all cost, but you will not be aware that Royal Guardians must take two oaths upon their being assigned to their prince. The first oath is an oath of loyalty, but the second oath is one prohibiting any Royal Guardian from causing harm to another living being—even to save the life of his prince.

I see you doubt my story now more than ever, but I pray I can convince you of its truth.

Royal Guardians are inherently smart, and they have an uncanny ability to convince others to do as they wish. These two traits, along with their quick-thinking skills provide ample means for the Guardian to solve all but the most dreadful of situations without resorting to violence or to bloodshed.

On those rare occasions when it appears there is no hope, there is the fail-safe. If a Guardian fears his prince’s life is going to be lost, the fail-safe allows the Guardian to change places with his prince. With little more than a thought, the Guardian assumes the appearance of the prince and is transported from his location to that of his charge—this works as long as the prince and his Guardian are within eyesight of one another.

Obviously, the fail-safe would be of little use if the prince were merely to assume the appearance of the Guardian and be transported to the Guardian’s position: the prince could still be in grave danger if an enemy knew what he was doing.

The prince is indeed transported, but he is transported back to the grounds of his home, and for his safety, he is disguised. To ensure as few princes as possible are lost in the process, it was decided by the Order of the Royal Guardians that transported princes reappear as frogs. (In this way, even if the Guardian who activated the fail-safe perishes, the rest of his team has a general idea of what they are looking for, and as a species, frogs are reasonably safe and go reasonably unnoticed.) Because the grounds of a kingdom vary, so do the types of prince-to-frog transformations: princes may be morphed into real or decorative frogs upon the Guardian’s triggering the fail-safe. (What form of frog the prince takes is determined by the Guardian and is based on his knowledge of his prince’s home.)

Over the course of time, a number of princes have been temporarily misplaced after a fail-safe activation. (To date, no missing prince has been officially deemed lost, but some fail-safe activations have led to a prince being missing for several decades.)

It is the task of the misplaced prince’s remaining Royal Guardians to seek out their prince wherever he might be, and so, you have found me here, looking in yet another corner of another garden in hopes I might find my charge.

All that I have left to tell you is this: as the last line of a prince’s defense, the fail-safe has a built-in fail-safe. To ensure no Guardian ever be forced to reveal his prince, the frog must be released by someone outside of the royal family and the Order.

And so, I beg you for your assistance, for I am convinced the frog that you see is in fact my prince, and only you can help free him with a kiss.

Over the Fence

The fat one held one of the two babies close to her as she looked through the fence at me. The other baby lay on the blanket beside the fat one. It was crying and twisting back and forth while reaching upward with its two chubby little hands. The fat one kept clutching at the baby in her arms and staring at me. She paid no attention to the other child. I couldn’t really make out the fat one’s face, but I could tell she was afraid of me. It might have been the way she sat: one shoulder rolled toward me and over her baby as if to protect it from the monster on the other side of the fence. It might have been the way the fat one just stared: I had smiled as soon as I saw her sitting on the blanket with the children, but she had only clutched at the child in her arms and stared. A small boy ran between us cutting an angled path in the tall grass on the other side of the fence. Startled by the running boy, the fat one’s eyes suddenly darted away from mine. After the running boy had passed, I noticed the fat one looking down at the second child: she looked up at me and back at the child—up and down, up and down. Several minutes passed, and I stared at the fat one as she looked up at me and down at the second child. She seemed surprised that it was there. The running boy returned retracing the angled path he had cut in the grass; this time he was screaming.

The skinny one appeared from behind the small barn. The screams of the running boy had roused her from her work. While the boy screamed and the skinny one ran to him, the fat one began to rock back and forth with the baby that was in her arms. The second child was no longer reaching toward the sky with its chubby little hands. As soon as the running boy started screaming, the second child had begun crying. It might have been the crying that started the fat one rocking. It might have been the screaming. Or it might have been me—the monster on the other side of the fence.

The skinny one caught up to the running boy whose screams had begun to subside. She whispered something into his ear and he disappeared into the house. The skinny one went over to the blanket where the fat one sat rocking and clutching the baby. The skinny one whispered something onto the ear of the fat one. The fat one looked back at me with fear and panic in her eyes as she struggled to get to her feet. The second child had stopped crying and was making a gurgling sound and wiggling its legs. I could smell it from my side of the fence. The fat one had gotten to her feet. She looked at me and then at the skinny one. She clutched the baby in her arms and turned toward the house. For a second, I thought she might look down at the second child, but she didn’t. I heard the door slam and rattle shut as the fat one went inside. Then I heard her scream.

The skinny one looked at me, and I smiled. She was not afraid. She scooped the baby up off of the blanket, held it close to her, and walked toward me. The child had stopped gurgling, but its legs were still wiggling. The skinny one stopped a few feet from the fence. She looked down at the baby, and then up at me.

The baby sailed upward for a few moments, and then it began to fall through the air. It hit the ground just in front of me, and it began to cry. They always cried when they hit the ground. The skinny one looked at me for a moment before turning away. I had finished my meal before she got inside.

Scary Sarah Simpleton

Sarah Simpleton was not the least bit pleased by her name, and who could blame her? No matter how often her well-meaning parents (Sally and Sam Simpleton) tried to convince her of the things that could and could not break bones, Sarah was not appeased.

The schoolmate insults leveled at Sarah began as basic chants of her name, but as she grew, the range of her peers’ creative name-calling grew as well. Eventually, the fact that her parents’ names and hers all began with the letter “S” led to refrains of “suh-suh-suh-sarah suh-suh-suh-simpleton.” (Timothy Renfield believed Sarah deserved one “suh” for each “S” in the family, and the rest of the kids went along with Timothy because he was the kid all the other kids wanted to be.)

As Sarah grew, the teasing became worse, and she folded more and more into herself. Sarah had no friends, and though several teachers were as vigilant as possible about stopping the teasing leveled at her, the truth was Sarah Simpleton was her name, and nothing and no one could change that—or the psychological issues having such a name caused.

Sarah developed an imagination well beyond that of the average young boy or girl who creates friends with whom to spend summer afternoons and rainy evenings. Sarah created an entire world of people for herself, and where most children imagined a world unlike the one in which they lived, Sarah’s fantasy world was identical to the real thing, except that in Sarah’s world, no one made fun of her name.

After awhile, it became apparent to those around Sarah that she spent a good deal of her time enmeshed in her own thoughts, and soon Sarah Simpleton became Scary Sarah Simpleton. By the time Sarah was dubbed scary by her classmates, she’d learned to block out the noise of the world around her, and more often than not, the insults hurled her way (along with the protective measures taken by the adults around her) went unnoticed.

Sarah’s parents were helpless during most of their daughter’s struggles, and while they did their best to assist Sarah through the taunts and teases, they had little luck reaching their child.

When Sarah had insulated herself from the outside world by means of her imagined one, Sally and Sam Simpleton agreed the best course of action would be to take no action. After all, once Sarah got a bit older, the teasing and ridicule would end, and Sarah would be able to get on with her life.

Which is why it was both a shock and a pleasant surprise to Sally Simpleton when her daughter came to her one afternoon and asked her mother whether or not they might take a trip to the pet store. Along with her request, Sarah presented to her mother a short list of supplies:

• Cat bowls


• Cat food


• Cat collar


• Litter box


• Litter


• Toys

Sarah’s mother was taken aback by her daughter’s sudden want of a pet. For years, Sarah’s mother and father had tried to foster a desire for a companion in their daughter, but Sarah never showed any interest.

“Honey, isn’t there something missing from this list?”

Sarah’s mother spoke to her in a teasing manner, but Sarah didn’t seem amused. The girl walked up to her mother’s outstretched hand, viewed the list with a careful eye, stepped back, and replied,

“No. Everything I need is there.”

“The cat, Sarah—you didn’t put ‘cat’ on your list.”

Again, Sarah’s mother delivered her words in a tongue-in-cheek manner, and again, Sarah seemed unmoved by the humor.

“No. I didn’t forget. I have the cat. He showed up just this morning. I tired to shoo him away, but it seems he’s decided to stay. Obviously, he’ll need the items on the list if he’s going to be here for awhile. If you’d prefer, we can skip the toys and the collar as neither is absolutely necessary.”

Sarah’s mother could do nothing more than stand flat-footed and stare at her daughter. The joy she’d felt over what she presumed to be Sarah’s coming out of her shell evaporated into confusion over how to respond. She chose the direct approach.

“Sarah, show me the cat you want to buy these things for.”

“Mother, you know perfectly well you won’t be able to see it.”

“Well, if you can’t show me the cat, I can’t take you to the pet store.”

“Very well, but the cat will grow hungry and thirsty before too long.”

“Well then, you’d better think your cat the supplies he needs!”

Sally Simpleton had not meant to reply so crossly to her daughter, but she’d grown exasperated over Sarah’s fantasy world, and having glimpsed what she thought was a moment of lucidity in the girl, watching it disappear was more than she could bear.

Before Sarah’s mother had a chance to apologize, Sarah had turned and left, heading to the safety of her room and her made-up world.

***

Over the course of the next few days, Sarah repeatedly asked her mother to take her to the pet store, and her mother continued to refuse. When Sally caught Sarah sneaking food up to her room for the cat, she’d had enough.

It’s pointless to ground a child whose days are spent holed up in her room or alone in the backyard, so the only punishment Sarah’s mother could think of was to force her daughter to go with her on each and every one of her errands and club meetings when the child wasn’t in school. This kept Sarah away from her room, her people, and her cat.

Two days later, Sally Simpleton received a call from the principal of Sarah’s school. A camera had gone missing from the art department, and several students claimed to have seen Sarah take it and leave the school grounds. The principal was wondering whether or not Sarah had gone home.

Sally Simpleton assured the principal her daughter had not come home, and she was about to hang up and call her husband and the police when in through the kitchen door walked Sarah. In Sarah’s hands was a camera. Mrs. Simpleton hung up on the principal without realizing it, and as she was about to address her daughter, Sarah walked though the kitchen and headed upstairs to her room.

When Sally Simpleton’s “Young lady, you come back here this instant!” got no response, she went upstairs to confront her child.

She found Sarah sitting in front of her computer with the camera plugged in, and as she began to chastise the girl, Sarah turned the computer screen, so her mother could view it.

“There, you see? There’s the cat. I took his picture just now as he was disappearing. He’s been doing it more and more lately. I think he’s starving. Now, can we please go to the pet store?”

Sarah’s mother said nothing. She looked from her daughter to the picture, and back to her daughter, then she turned around, walked downstairs, and as she grabbed her car keys, she yelled out,

“I’m ready when you are, honey.”