I Had a Nightmare!

I seldom have nightmares, but I had one last night.

In this nightmare I was shutting off lights and checking doors prior to going to bed. I turned off the living room light, then walked through the dark dining room and then into the kitchen where there was just a nightlight burning across the length of the room beside the refrigerator. This was my totally familiar present day house looking exactly as it looks every day and it all seemed so very real.

I always check to make sure the kitchen door is locked before I go to bed. I looked at the knob and saw that it was locked, but then noticed that the door was not shut tightly, there was a little gap. I murmured, "That's strange," then approached the door and pushed it closed. Almost immediately I got a weird feeling, as if something was on the other side of the door on the deck, and I began to back away from the door.

In horror, I saw smoky dark "arms" come through the closed door, reaching toward me. Shocked and scared, I backed away from them. My mind was struggling to comprehend what was going on. I'd never seen anything like this before. I was backed into the corner, the microwave cart to my left, the farm table to my right, the cat food bowls on the floor behind me. I had nowhere to go! The arms kept getting longer, kept reaching for me. I could feel the tendril like fingers brushing against me.

My mind was reeling. I was telling myself in my head- you have to say something! You have to cry out! You have to try to wake up John (who was already in bed at the far end of the house.) I had to struggle to get my voice out. First I said, "No..." in a very weak, terrified, breathless voice, so unlike me. And then I managed to get the words, "Help me," sort of rasped past the constriction in my throat, but again they weren't very loud as I could barely speak.

However, it was loud enough to wake me up, and I was still saying, "Help me..." and "No," as I laid there in bed trying to figure out what had just happened, the dream still vivid in my mind, but now I was struggling to understand how I could be in bed and not in the kitchen. I reached over and touched John's arm and asked, "Did I wake you up?" but he has a CPAP, and we had a fan on which is on the dresser on his other side and he hadn't woken up.

I just lay there sort of stunned by the fact that I'd just had a nightmare. I hadn't spoken loud enough to alarm the cats who were asleep in the living room.

This morning I was still a little rattled by the nightmare. And tonight, when I found the kitchen door unlocked at 10:13PM I was actually nervous about locking it and made sure I had a clear path away from the door so I didn't get trapped in a corner again!

So- what do I think caused the nightmare? The last nightmare I had was a few years ago when I used a muscle relaxer for low back pain and muscle spasms from sacroiliitis. (I dreamt I was a tiny entity huddled in one corner of my own coffin, and a voice entity was speaking to me from the far opposite corner...and it terrified me because A.) I am severely claustrophobic and I knew my coffin was buried with me alive in it underground, and B.) I knew I was trapped in that coffin with whatever it was for all eternity!)

Anyway, I had a right shoulder issue for a few days with pain and muscle spasms down to my right elbow so when it got really bad I took a different muscle relaxer I'd been prescribed recently, one I've used before without any problem....and I had a nightmare.

Well-the smoky dark arms reaching through the closed door will most likely find a way into a future ghost story, so there's that to say for medication side effects anyway!

This, by the way, I solemnly swear, is an entirely true account. Although I could make up stuff like this easily enough, I certainly didn't make this up! Real and true, this happened last night...and I am avoiding the kitchen for the rest of tonight because of it!

New Ghost Story- Purple Girl

copyright by Susan Buffum, July 21,2020

Purple Girl by Susan Buffum

Cody was lying on the sand on the little stretch of beach near his lakeside cottage watching the night sky for comets. It was August and he’d heard that there would be comets visible during the month. He’d seen only one comet in his relatively short existence which spanned all of twenty-five years. He was renting the cottage from his Uncle Dave who had won it in a nasty divorce from his wife, Cody’s former Aunt Paula. The only reason Paula hadn’t wanted it was because it was small. It only had two bedrooms, a galley kitchen, a small bathroom, and a living room/dining area combo. There was a screened in porch at the front, but the path to the lake was rather overgrown which blocked the view. The house was at the less affluent end of the lake, the camps and cottages more crowded together here. It was also much noisier. There was more traffic on the narrow lanes, but Cody didn’t mind any of that. He’d needed a place to live. The rent Uncle Dave charged him was quite fair. He liked the lake. It wasn’t that far of a drive to the distribution center where he worked as a delivery driver. This summer he was taking another online course as he slowly worked his way toward a business degree with the hopes of one day opening his own small business.

“Aww, screw this,” he muttered as he sat up, giving up on the heavens for the night. There were too many clouds drifting around up there obscuring the stars. “It’s just not a good night for star gazing or trying to spot a comet.” Getting to his feet, he brushed sand off his olive-colored cargo shorts, jammed his feet back into flip-flops, grabbed his t-shirt that he’d bunched up and placed under his head, shaking it out, but not putting it back on. Giving a cursory glance across the water he saw lights in many of the cottage windows. They seemed to twinkle. A string of colored lights marked a private dock. He could make out the dark hulks of canoes and sailboats here and there bobbing gently in the water. There was music coming from further up the opposite shore, the distant sound of voices, the occasional shriek of a female, most likely being threatened with a dunking in the lake, men laughing, the faint clinking of beer bottles. “There’s always a party somewhere on the lake,” he said aloud as he trudged up the path, swatting at random branches. “I really need to cut these back,” he thought.

The yard was nothing much, just patchy grass. There was a gravel parking area near the side of the house. The rest of the driveway was rutted, compacted dirt. He could smell smoke. Someone was burning some kind of sweet-scented wood. Through the brush running alongside the lane he could make out the flickering, dancing, orange flames of a fire pit. That would be Nick and Ella. They always had that fire pit going. Shaking his head, he grabbed the handle of the screen door, tugging it open, stepping up onto the porch. A ceiling light illuminated the area in a yellow glow. He swatted a mosquito that had followed him inside. “I don’t need you biting me, you little blood sucking vampire.” He flicked its mangled body onto the wood floor.

As he reached for the door knob to let himself into the house he heard a female voice say, “Help me!” It hadn’t been very loud, but it had been loud enough to stop his hand and make him turn his head. A slight frown creased his brow. Had the voice come from across the lake, maybe from that party? Or had it come from the lane? Or from one of the cottages to either side of him?

Turning, he walked back to the screen door and peered outside. It was rather dark in the yard. The yellow light didn’t do much to illuminate beyond the immediate porch. He could make out the brush blocking his view of the lake, the narrow, lighter strip of sand that marked the path through the brush. “Hello?” he said in his normal voice, not really wanting to get involved in anybody else’s problems, but curious to know if someone needed his help. Maybe a visitor had taken a walk or a swim and gotten lost in the dark? Or perhaps a car had broken down on the main road and the stranded motorist was wandering down the lane searching for someone who might be able to help. “Hello?” he repeated.

“Help me….please.”

His eyes narrowed as he looked again toward the path. As he watched, a form seemed to materialize out of the darkness. Judging from the size and shape of it he realized it was a female. “What’s wrong? Are you lost?” He watched her as she stepped from the path onto the poor excuse for a lawn that he had. She was barefoot, dressed in dark-colored shorts and a light-colored t-shirt. Her clothes seemed wet. They were clinging to her. “Did you fall in the lake?”

She hesitated, looking around for a moment as if trying to get her bearings, and then stumbled a few steps closer. “Off a boat,” she said.

“You’d better come in,” he replied, pushing the screen door open for her. “Come on. It’s all right. I’ll help you.”

“That’s kind of you,” she said, slowly making her way to the two wooden steps and climbing them. “I’m hurt.”

Cody had noticed the cuts on her legs, the bruises and abrasions on her wrists. There were marks on her face as well. Her dark hair was damp and tangled. She stared at him through large brown eyes. “Okay, then, let’s see what I can do for you. Is there someone we can call for you?”

“My father…”she murmured as she slipped past him onto the porch.

“Sure. You can use my phone. Come on in. The lighting’s better inside.” He moved ahead of her to open the door, letting her precede him into the dining area. The living room area was to the left. “Have a seat here.” He pulled out one of the dinette chairs, turning it sideways. Obediently, she sat down, bending forward to look at her legs which she had stretched out before her. “Those cuts look nasty, but they aren’t bleeding too much. Let me go get a few things. You stay put.” He walked to the kitchen counter, grabbed his cellphone off the charger, and brought it to her. “Here, call your father. Let him know you’re all right.”

“Where am I?” she asked as she studied the phone in her hand, a frown on her face.

“Pine Cove Lane, number seventeen.” She glanced up at him, shaking her head. “Where do you live? At the other end of the lake?” The quality of her clothing seemed nicer than what people at this end of the lake wore.

“No, I’m from Windsor,” she replied.

“Really? What are you doing way out here at the lake? Were you partying with friends out on a boat and you fell overboard?  How could they not notice?”

She shook her head. “No, I was at a cottage first.” Her eyes returned to the screen of the phone. It seemed to mesmerize her. Her face was bluish-white in its glow.

“Let me get the first aid kit. You call your old man and tell him where to come get you. I’ll get you patched up while we wait for him to get here. I can give you a dry shirt to put on, or a blanket to wrap up in. You have goosebumps. The lake is always cold. How long were you in the water for?”

She shrugged a shoulder. “I don’t know. A long time, I guess.”

He went to the bathroom where there was a wicker tower with five shelves for towels and toiletries. Crouching down, he dug out the first aid kit from the back of the bottom shelf, giving it a quick dusting off with the hand towel before carrying it back to the dinette table. He set it down and then went into the living room to grab the buffalo plaid throw from the back of the couch. He shook it out as he crossed the room. She looked up again as he wrapped it around her shoulders. “That should help warm you up.”

“Thank you.”

“Did you call your father?” She shook her head. “Why not?”

“I don’t know how.”

He looked at the phone in her hand. The screen was dark. “Here, give it to me.” He took it from her. It felt cold just from being in her hand. “Look, bundle up in that blanket. You’re chilled to the bone,” he instructed as he swiped the screen to wake the phone. “What the hell,” he murmured, swiping it a couple more times. “Did you turn it off by mistake?” He checked to make sure it was on. It did not respond. “How can it be dead?” He’d just taken it off the charger. “That’s weird.” Walking back to the counter, he put it back on the charger. It began charging anew. It was at 3 percent. “The damn thing is as dead as a doornail!” She looked up at him, her eyes wide at his raised voice. She looked frightened. “Hey, sorry. I just charged this damn phone. I don’t understand how it can be so completely dead.”

“Do you have another phone?’ she asked, sounding anxious.

“No. This one will be okay in a little bit. Let me get your legs cleaned up and bandaged. It looks like the boat’s motor blades got you. Is that what happened? Did you fall off the back of the boat and get hit by the blades?” These were clean lacerations, not the sort of injuries she would have gotten banging into underwater rocks.

“I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

“You told me you fell off a boat.”

“I went over the side.”

“Did you hit your head, too?”

“I don’t know.”

“You must have swum here. You came up from the beach.” She shrugged, shaking her head.

“Well, it doesn’t really matter. You’re safe now, so just relax and rest while I clean up the cuts and bandage them for you, and then we’ll worry about how to contact your father.” She remained huddled in the blanket in the chair as he went to wet some paper towels in hot water. Coming back, he knelt on the floor and washed the blood off her legs. He noticed that she had chipped, plum-colored polish on her toenails. “You like the color purple?” Her shorts were the same color as her toenails.

“It’s my favorite color.”

“I like blue.” He looked up, his eyes meeting hers. She really did have big, brown eyes. She was a pretty girl. “How old are you?”

“Fifteen.”

“You parents must be worried sick about you. It’s late.”

She wasn’t very talkative, but he figured that she was cold and tired after her fall into the lake and having to swim to shore. He taped the roller gauze around her slim lower legs and then asked to see her wrists. They’d looked abraded to him, raw, but she shook her head. He asked if she wanted something to eat or drink. Again she shook her head. He stood up, replacing the unused supplies in the kit and snapping the cover closed. “All done. I’ll put this away and then we’ll try the phone again.” He stopped at the counter. “What’s your phone number?” She gave it to him and he wrote it on the notepad near the phone charger. “Look, go lie down on the couch. Try to rest and warm up. I’ll call your father and give him directions so he can come and take you home.”

He went back into the bathroom to replace the first aid kit and wash his hands. When he returned to the kitchenette he glanced toward the living room. A corner of the buffalo plaid throw was lying across the arm of the couch. He couldn’t see her, but figured she was lying down as she’d been told to do.

Grabbing his phone, he glanced at the number on the pad and keyed it in. His eyes fell on the clock. It was quarter of eleven already, late to be calling anyone, but he figured her father would be happy to know she was all right and that she was safe. “Who is this?” asked a gruff, almost angry voice. Cody thought he’d woken the man up. Maybe he wasn’t even aware that his teenaged daughter hadn’t come home. Maybe she was with friends at the lake and he’d gone to bed assuming she was safe enough.

“My name is Cody Taylor. I live on Pine Cove Lane out at the lake. I have your daughter…”

“Is this your idea of a sick joke?” barked the man. “How dare you call me like this, wake me up, and try to play this cruel and thoughtless charade on me!”

“I’m sorry…I don’t know her name, but she’s resting on the couch. You should come and get her. She fell off a boat and she got hurt.”

“Young man, I am writing down your phone number and I am calling the police!”

“But, sir… she’s here. I’m not fooling you.”

“My daughter is dead! She was kidnapped in nineteen eighty-one by disgruntled employees and held at a cottage at that damn lake. They did horrible things to her, and then they rowed her out into the middle of the lake and dumped her in. Her hands were bound behind her back. She was still alive when they pushed her over the side. She died a terrible death. She drowned in that lake! How dare you call this house and pull this sort of terrible thing on me!”

“But…but…”

“Vanessa is dead! I’m calling the police to report you, young man!” The phone went dead.

Shaken, Cody stared at the phone for a few long moments before setting it back on the charger. Had she given him the correct number? Maybe he’d misdialed?

He walked around the counter, stepping into the living room, slowly moving cross the carpet until he could see the entire couch. The buffalo plaid throw was on the couch, one end draped over the arm, but there was no one on the couch. Cody stared at the empty couch and then he spun around, his eyes searching the long room. No one was there. The dinette chair was still pulled out and turned sideways to the table. She had sat there while he’d washed and then bandaged her legs.

Quickly he went to the door, pulling it open and stepping out onto the porch. “Hey! Hello! Where are you?” he called. “Where did you go?”

“What the hell! Are you drunk? Shut up! We’re trying to sleep!” shouted a male voice from the other side of the shrubs bordering the driveway.

Cody stared out into the darkness, the path barely visible. The clouds had thickened. The air felt heavier. He was out in the yard pacing when a vehicle pulled into his driveway, the headlights catching him as he returned toward the house from the head of the path. “Cody Taylor?” a male voice asked as a flashlight was shone in his face.

“Yeah?”

“Did you call a Mr. Thomas Banks in Windsor about a half hour ago?”

“I called a number a girl had given me.”

“Is that girl still here?”

“No, she disappeared. I don’t know where she went to. She came up the path earlier. She was wet and she had cuts on her legs.”

“Can you describe her?” He removed the light from Cody’s face as he approached.

“I guess. A little below average height, slim, brown hair just past her shoulders. Big brown eyes. She was pretty.”

“How old would you say she was?”

“I’m not good at guessing girls’ ages. In her teens, I’d say. High school age.”

Did she say what her name was?”

“No.”

“How was she dressed?”

“Um…a light colored t-shirt. I really don’t remember, maybe a sort of pinky-purple pastel color. And purplish shorts. Darker purple. Like plum colored. She was barefoot. She had the same color polish on her toenails, but it was chipped up.”

“What were you working from? A newspaper article? A rehash story in a local magazine? There were some color pictures of the Banks girl published at the time of her disappearance. So do you want to tell me what kind of a prank you were trying to pull tonight? You’ve upset Mr. Banks and he’s quite angry.”

“I thought he’d be happy to know that his daughter is all right.”

“Son, this is not funny. Vanessa Banks was kidnapped when she was fifteen years old. This was back in nineteen eighty-one. The kidnappers demanded a half a million dollars ransom. Mr. Banks is the owner of a large business in Windsor. He’s quite wealthy. He tried putting together the ransom back then but it took longer than the kidnappers were willing to wait. They abused Miss Banks whom they were holding hostage at a cottage here on the lake. They tied her up, put her in a boat, and then dropped her overboard in the middle of the lake where she drowned. Her body has never been recovered due to the depth of the lake at that point. Her friends reported that she was wearing clothes exactly as you described on the day that she disappeared. Therefore, if Mr. Banks chooses to file charges against you for harassment I will be coming back here to place you under arrest.”

“But…Officer, she was here. She came up the path just after ten o’clock asking for help. I took her inside. I washed her legs and bandaged them for her. She had cuts on them.”

“Yes, she had knife wounds on her legs apparently. One of the kidnappers stated that as they were tying her hands behind her she began kicking at them. They had knives and they slashed at her to get her to stop.”

“The men were caught?”

“They’re serving time in prison. You see, Mr. Banks did manage to get the money together a day later. The greedy kidnappers were arrested when they went to pick it up at the drop location. They confessed to their crime, but for nearly a year they refused to tell where Vanessa was, what they had done with her.”

“She’s really dead then?” He felt sick. Who had that girl been then? How had she known the Bank’s home phone number if he had woken the man up like he had?

“Yes, she is. Residents in this area began reporting seeing a teenaged girl in purple wandering around asking for help about a year after she disappeared. Her description matched that of Vanessa Banks. Photos were shown around and people stated that the girl was her. They reported she appeared to have injuries to her wrists and lower extremities. She was also wet, as if she had been in the water.” Cody was nodding. “Is that what you saw tonight, son?”

“Yes,” he replied, barely able to speak.

“And you say she spoke to you?” He nodded. “What did she say?”

“She said she was at a cottage here at the lake, and then she went over the side of a boat. She said she was in the water for a long time.” He was shaking his head, goosebumps having crept up his spine and down his arms.

“Did she say anything else?”

Cody began to shake his head, but then he remembered something. “Yeah, she said purple was her favorite color.”

The officer stared at him for a long time before he nodded. “Yes, her father reported that. Vanessa liked purple.” He slid his flashlight into the holder on his belt. “Son, I believe you had a visit tonight from whom the folk out here call the Purple Girl. You had a spectral visitation.” He turned, heading back to his SUV cruiser. “I’ll call the Windsor police and report this was a ghost sighting, a rather unusual one at that.”

“She gave me that phone number. I wrote it down on a notepad.” He remembered that his cellphone, fully charged, had been dead in her hand. A shiver ran down his spine. He’d heard that apparitions could draw energy from batteries and other power sources. Had his cellphone provided her the energy for an extended manifestation? “She gave me her father’s number.”

“I’ll note that in the report. You’d best go inside and try to get some sleep now. It’s late. I don’t think Mr. Banks will want to press charges as long as you don’t contact him again.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I’ve only lived here a few months.”

“Goodnight, son.”

Cody went back inside as the officer backed out of the driveway. He locked the door but left the porch light on. After turning the chair and pushing it in he walked to the couch, grabbed the throw and shook it out before folding it. Something fell on the floor at his feet. He looked down and saw the gauze pads and roller bandage that he had wrapped her legs in. “She was here,” he said, his voice sounding too loud in the room.

He tossed the folded throw onto the back of the couch, bent and scooped up the bandages, carrying them to the trash. The paper towels he’d used to clean her wounds were in the wastebasket. He pulled them out. They were damp, but there was no blood on them as there had been earlier. He couldn’t get his mind to accept that he had touched a ghost girl, that she had felt real to him. How could that be? If she had been a ghost wouldn’t his hands have passed right through her?

After discarding the bandages, he turned to the counter, looking at the number written on the notepad. “She gave me her home phone number. How would I have ever known a thing like that?” Pushing the pad away, he looked again around the room. She had been here in the cottage. He had spoken with her and she had replied to him. It had all seemed a little strange, but nothing had alerted him to the fact that he was in the presence of a ghost.

Leaving the lights on, he made his way to the bedroom. He was twenty-five years old. He’d been living on his own for several months now, having moved out of his parent’s basement to this cottage. He’d never seen a ghost before in his life, hadn’t even believed in them. But tonight he was afraid to turn out the lights. He was afraid to close his eyes.

He lay in bed staring toward the doorway, half expecting a shadowy figure to materialize there. “Think about stars. Think about comets, and planets, and the moon,” he tried to tell himself, but he couldn’t stop thinking about Vanessa, the girl in purple. Her body had never been recovered from the depths of the lake. She was still down there.

And she would continue to haunt the residents around the lake for a long time to come.

Taking a Break from Art and Back to Writing

I was banging around my house the other day, feeling bored and restless, and realized that there are quite a few binders with partially written stories lying around in the office and the dining room. That made me remember that I had started a companion novel to the Black King/White Queen series awhile ago. It took me a little while to unearth it. I was pleasantly surprised to find I'd written over 62,000 words of the novel.

I took a weekend to read through and refamiliarize myself with what I had written so far of this novel. And yes, I actually took some notes which is highly unusual for me. Over the past week I have been adding to the story nd it's about 2/3 written now with the rest of it mapped out in sketchy one line notes to myself where I want to go and what loose ends I need to tie up before the conclusion.

Although I love drawing, my right hand has developed some neuropathy and joint pain which is new. So, I am setting the ink pens aside for the moment and concentrating on writing (as if typing and scrolling with the mouse will do my hand a world of good, but it has been good for relieving the boredom of a COVID environment. I've always been good at entertaining myself in my head by telling myself stories. I remember putting myself to sleep telling myself stories while lying in the dark. Nowadays I need to remind myself to stop and go to bed because I have work in the morning! Sometimes it's not easy to get the freight train of creativity to pull into a station called REST!

Yes, sometimes I probably do walk around during the day looking like the living dead!!! Haha!

I expect The Bowmen to be finished by the end of summer. Some characters from the Black King/White Queen series appear in this novel but they are not the primary characters, just supporting cast.

Post Pandemic: A ghost story

As a cast member of Ghost Stories Live! I've been asked to write a ghost story for a video GSL! that will be recorded next Saturday and most likely put on YouTube. I was told to make it a post pandemic ghost story, so here it is for the first time. I wrote it Friday night, May 22nd and just finished editing it this morning:

POST PANDEMIC by Susan Buffum

Somewhere inside me I still possess a shred of decency. I know this only after the fact, as I’m crouched down beside the greenish water of the river trying to wash the blood and gore off my grimy hands. I beat a lame, feral dog to death with a brick. I just kept bashing its head with the brick. It yelped and tried to wriggle away but some other animal had ruined three of its legs. It had one white paw. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” I'd said each time I’d struck it. “I’m sorry.” I avoided looking into its eyes. But I can’t avoid looking into my own eyes as the bloody, agitated water flows away and I catch my reflection on the surface of it. I reach up and shove my hair back, barely recognizing the shadowed eyes, the hollow cheeks of the face staring back at me. I can’t remember when I had a haircut last. My clothes are torn and filthy. I wear them now until I can’t stand the stench of myself any longer. I’ve been reluctant to jump into the river ever since that day I was bathing and saw what I thought were tree branches, birches, drifting toward me. It turned out to be a tangled mass of rotting corpses, their skin the white of a fish’s belly, bloodless wounds gaping. Just a tangle of arms and legs riding along the surface, the bodies a jumble beneath the water. I’d screamed like a girl, paddling and splashing my way back to the river bank, shivering as I’d hauled myself out of the water, terrified that I’d become infected by the virus that had killed those people.

“Jesus,” I said, shaking my head as I stood up, eyes scanning the hulking mills across the river. I’d lived in one of those mills last year for about three weeks. When Lou died, I got out of there. I found another place to camp, alone. It was still a little difficult back then to find someplace safe. Now, you can pretty much walk the streets and not see another living soul. It’s a ghost town.

I don’t know if there are others still alive. I sometimes glimpse figures through grimy panes of glass, shop front windows that survived when looting became the means for survival. The only reason to break into a travel agency, a nail salon, or a massage parlor was to find a clean place to sleep. You busted the window out of the back door and got in that way, not by breaking the glass in the front windows. That glass was a barrier between you and them. You hid in the basement and prayed all night that no one else would break in. People carried a hammer and lots of nails in their backpacks back then so they could grab whatever scrap boards they could find to cover over the broken door windows, to keep others out.

I don’t go into town much anymore. I wander around the fringes. I sometimes see dark figures just standing in the shadows of buildings, trees, on porches of houses where there are no signs of life. If I blink, they vanish; just melt away into the shadows. I don’t know if these figures I see are real people or phantoms. I don’t really want to know, but they’re always watching me. Maybe they’re just biding their time waiting for me to join them. But I’m still breathing, still surviving.

I do what I have to do to survive. Like killing the feral dog. I’m hungry. But right now I feel sick after beating the dog to death. I don’t want to deal with skinning it, gutting it, hacking it up, building a fire, roasting chunks of it over the flames, eating it. The thought of that makes bile rise up the back of my throat.

Right now, I need to walk among the ghosts. Some of them, I’m pretty sure, are people I knew back before this all started. My geometry teacher seems to haunt the open garage of his house on Washington Street. I heard something metallic, like a wrench fall on the concrete floor once. It made me jump and then run. It’s better not to know, believe me about that.

I pause to sit on the steps of the church across from the bank. I’m tired. I really need to eat something and then get back to my current burrow. That’s what I’m calling it, a burrow. I don’t like being inside places anymore. They’re all haunted by something or someone. I’ve heard footsteps, whispering voices, sudden groans and cries, things being dropped or dragged. Every shop, every building, office, church, house…every place ever constructed for human occupation is now haunted by the dead. Tens of thousands of dead people.

Sometimes I think I’m losing my mind. Maybe I am. Stress. Watching your loved ones die. It’s probably post-traumatic stress. Making street friends and watching them die. Dodging something you can’t even see, something microscopic and deadly, never knowing if it got on your clothes, your skin, in your nose, or mouth, or eyes. It can drive you crazy with worry.

I saw street brawls over hand sanitizer, people half crazed, armed with knives, boards with nails driven through them, baseball bats, whatever they could get their hands on, beating on one another over something they considered a prize, an item of salvation. I saw the bloodied, battered winner holding their prize close as they staggered away from the groaning, moaning tangle of bodies they had emerged victorious from. Less than two weeks later I was steering clear of the winner’s body lying in the hallway of a long abandoned doctor’s office. I’d gone in there to see if there was anything left to treat an infected blister on my toe. I needed new sneakers. These were too small now. I’d found the body by stench alone. I got out of there fast, afraid that the virus was hanging in the air. I worried myself sick thinking I was going to die. But I didn’t get sick. I’m still here.

I blink sweat from my eyes, brush hair away from my face, and lock eyes with a woman standing across the street. I don’t know where she came from. It’s like she just materialized out of thin air. There’s a breeze. It doesn’t touch her clothes. It doesn’t run its fingers through her long hair. She’s static. Just staring at me. I flip her the finger. No reaction. A cold shiver runs down my spine. I turn my head because she seems to be staring not at me, but at something behind me. From the corner of my eye I see a dark form. With a yelp of terror, I leap up and try to jump off the steps to the sidewalk, but something grabs me by the shoulder and I can’t move.

“Let go!” I cry, my heart beating so hard I’m afraid it’ll bust. “Let go of me!” I’ve already lost it and am screaming, writhing, twisting, trying to wrench myself free of the hand gripping me, holding me in place. How can something so thin, so bony and so much like a talon with long, yellowed nails possess so much force?

I twist my head around, look up, and yell in terror. It’s a man with thinning gray and white hair that falls nearly a foot past his narrow shoulders. He’s like a skeleton dressed in a black robe. “Be still. I am merely offering you sanctuary,” he says in a deep but soft, raspy voice as if he’s just walked across the desert. “Come inside. She can’t touch you inside.”

“I need to go. Please! Just let me go!” I cry, slanting my eyes sideways only to find that the woman has moved. She’s now on the island between the east and westbound lanes of the avenue. Closer, I can see the ravages of the virus carved into her gaunt face. Her mouth gapes open. She’s missing teeth. “Are you real?” I ask. “Are you a real person?”

“I shelter the children, I keep them safe. Come with me.”

She’s drifting into the travel lane now, edging closer. Her eyes look as if they’re filled with fog. As she steps up onto the sidewalk I nod. “Don’t let her touch me! Don’t let her take me!”

I’m hustled up the granite steps and although I am resisting, distrustful, balking, I find myself being pushed ahead of the man into the foyer of the church. He lets go of me and I stumble a few feet further inside, then spin around to be sure she hasn’t followed me in. He’s slammed the heavy, red door shut, turned a huge, brass key in the lock that he removes and slides into a deep pocket in his black robe. Then he lifts a long piece of timber that looks hand hewn and jams it behind heavy metal brackets to barricade the door. There are just tiny windows in the doors with glass panes laced with diamonds formed by lead that give them a medieval appearance.

He turns to me. “Go into the sanctuary and sit down.” I shake my head, apprehensive now. I don’t like being locked inside a building. “You’ll be safe enough there.” He is staring at me. I can’t tell if he’s angry or if it’s just the lines suffering has carved into his face that give him that look. “There’ll be bread and soup shortly.”

Food. My stomach is gnawing itself with hunger at the moment. I haven’t eaten in over two days. Desperation made me kill the dog. That and the fear of starvation drove me to kill it. “I killed a dog,” I say. He blinks. Ghosts don’t blink. They just stare at you through dead eyes. “It was crippled.” He continues to stare at me. I squirm, aware that it’s a sin to kill. “It was suffering. It wouldn’t have been able to survive. It couldn’t hunt.”

“Go and find a seat. I’ll be with you shortly.” He turns, goes through an arched doorway, closes the door and I’m suddenly alone in the foyer. I hear a scrabbling, scratching sound on the other side of the front doors. That makes me back up into the next room. It’s like a hall of sorts with a fireplace. I'm still facing the secured front doors. To my left, through paned glass doors I see another fireplace, couches. It’s like a granny’s living room in a big old house. I turn my head to the right and see open, arched, double doors with windows similar to those in the front door. There is an aisle, pews down either side, an altar, a stained glass window straight ahead, a cross. I hear whispers, scuffling. There’s a quick giggle, a shushing hiss. “Hello?” I say as I slowly approach the open doors. “Who’s there?”

“The children,” says a woman’s voice from behind me. I spin around. At first I think it’s the ghost that’s gotten inside somehow, but her eyes, although circled in purple and gray, are not clouded over. “Go wash your hands. Bathroom’s in that hall back there. Water runs. Doesn’t get hot though. Come back here after and take a seat. Food’s coming.” She turns. I have to follow her a ways to where she’s told me the bathroom is. She goes down a staircase. I catch a whiff of something that smells like food before turning the corner into another hallway. There’s a row of doors on the left, two open doorways on the right. I open the first door on the left and find it’s a rest room. Slipping inside, I walk to the sink and twist the cold tap. Water gushes out. It’s mesmerizing. I suddenly remember brushing my teeth, washing my face and hands before going to sit down for dinner with my family. My family. I bend over the sink gasping, feeling as if I’ve just been punched in the gut. Whatever happened to my family? I can’t remember!

I hold my hands under the tap. Water flows over them. There’s no soap, so I just rub them together as hard as I can while wishing the ingrained grime to go away. I'm always filthy.

I twist the tap off, shake droplets of water from my hands. They look a little cleaner. There's nothing to dry them on, so I just keep shaking them, droplets of water falling onto the tile floor as I walk to the door. As I reach for the handle to tug it open I hear voices approaching in the hallway, a woman and a man; the man in the black robe whose voice I recognize, but it’s not the woman who told me to wash my hands.

“He’s scrawny, but he should feed them when he’s boiled down into a nice soup. Let him have a bowl of broth and a slice of bread with the others, then I’ll bring him downstairs, tell him he’ll be bunking in one of the classrooms. He’ll be more agreeable with food in his belly. He’s an antsy one.”

Their voices fade as they turn the corner. I stand behind the door, my heart lurching around. My mind is reeling, but I do know one thing and that one thing is that I’m not going to stick around and let them boil me down into a broth to feed whatever is in that sanctuary that they’re keeping alive.

A minute passes. I can't wait forever. I saw an exit door at the end of this shorter hallway. I slip out of the bathroom as quietly as I can, walking as silently as possible on the tile floor toward the door. There's a window in this door with wire embedded in the glass. “Boy? Where are you? Come along now! Come eat your supper and then we’ll find you a nice bed for the night. Boy! Let’s go!”

The voice is drawing nearer. He’ll be coming around the corner into this hallway in a few moments. I bolt to the door, bang against the bar but it doesn’t budge, however it’s made a loud noise. The man in the black robe appears at the end of the corridor near the bathroom door. “Stay away from me!” I cry, pushing again on the bar, slamming my body into it.

“You don’t want to go out there, boy,” he says, slowly approaching me. “They’re out there waiting for you.”

“I have to go.” He’s shaking his head, coming nearer. Behind him I see something short, closer to the floor moving and I think it’s some sort of gremlin creeping on all fours behind him. I’m close to freaking out, close to full blown panic. I’m going to die. I know I’m going to die right here in this building, that I’m going to be boiled down to soup and fed to…to…I don’t know what!

And then the gremlin leaps. The man staggers and stumbles. I yelp, slam harder against the door because I’m trapped and have nowhere else to go. The bar clicks and the door suddenly opens behind me. I hear snarling and growling as I’m turning, ready to bolt outside. But what I see freezes me in place for a long moment. I look into the large, brown eyes of a mangy mongrel, a snarling, feral dog. It’s not a large dog, but it’s pinned the man down, one paw on the back of his neck. The paw is white. I blink. The dog stares at me. Its eyes are clear. It just stares.

I could not look into its eyes when I was killing it, when my heart was breaking because I didn’t want to kill it. “Good dog,” I think before turning and running out the door, down the long ramp and into the parking lot. I see shadowy forms coming from around both sides of the church, a swarm of them. I don’t stop, I just keep running.

I’m shivering, my teeth chattering as I stare into the embers of the fire outside my burrow. I’ve buried the carcass of the dog, unable to bring myself to cut it up and roast pieces of it. My supper was a gasping fish I’d found on the river bank. I don’t know if it was diseased or not, a carrier of the virus that’s about wiped out this town. I haven’t seen another living soul in over a week. I’m not sure if the man in the church was alive or not. He seemed to be. The women also seemed to be. But I don’t really know what they were.

The word ghouls runs through my brain and I shudder. The town is haunted by shades, shadows, ghosts, phantoms, and now ghouls. And I’m scared. I’m more scared than I’ve ever been before.

I poke at the embers with a stick. Beyond their red glow I see something dark moving slowly. I warily watch it, thinking it’s a wild animal come to scavenge the fish skin and bones, the head and tail I’d hacked off and thrown aside. But it’s now slinking around the stones I've stacked in a circle to contain the fire. “Go away,” I say, my voice low. A soft whine comes in response. “I’ve got nothing for you,” I say.

And then it comes further around and I see a flash of white. A white paw. “Oh,” I say. The feral dog I killed has come to tear my throat out. That’s the thought that goes through my head. It’s followed me and now it’s going to kill me. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry.” I am sorry. Even though it had been suffering and would have died of starvation, I’d had no right to take its life. I’d become no better than a wild animal preying on weaker animals. “I’m sorry.”

The dog crawls on its belly to me, its eyes on mine. It whines softly in its throat. In its eyes I see a need as huge as my own, a longing to belong again to something, to someone. This dog saved my life. Ghost or not, it had appeared in that church and taken down the man who’d intended to have me made into soup to feed his…his what? His flock?

“It’s all right,” I murmur. The dog presses itself close. I can feel it. It feels real enough, solid, but maybe it’s just because I’m so tired. I’m so damn tired that I’m imagining it. Maybe I’m dreaming this. I throw my arm around the dog and snug it closer to my chest. There seems to be some warmth to it. “Are you tired, Ghost?” I ask. “I’m ready to sleep.” I run my fingers through its matted fur. It’s as bony as I am. Flesh drawn taut over bones. Fur. Hair. Real? Phantom? Imagination? Or the manifestation of guilt, fatigue, and hunger?

I ate a fish. I’m ready to sleep. I would have been dead by now if Ghost hadn’t found me and bought me the time I’d needed to get that door open, to escape. I want to sleep, but I need to say this. I need to say it aloud. “Good dog.” The rasp of a rough tongue across the back of my hand makes me smile as I close my eyes. “Good dog,” I murmur.

This story is copyrighted and cannot be used without the author's permission. Contact me through the blog or via email at sebuffum415@gmail.com

RE:The Clockmaker's Son

It was time to revisit The Clockmaker's Son, my werewolf/lycanthrope novel set in a small New England town which was published by Inklings in May of 2018, two years ago already!! Time flies!

I still love this novel.

So, yes, authors do read their own books and while we read with a critical eye toward errors, or weak spots, we also enjoy our own books even though we know what's going to happen!

The Clockmaker's Son is half horror novel, half love story, and about friendships and relationships in a small town that has seen many animal mutilations. Rumor is that there is a wolf or a pack of feral dogs prowling the woods and swampy areas of the town, preying on farm animals and wildlife. And then a few human victims begin to turn up. Charlotte Rumford walks into her mother's antiques shop and has a too close for comfort encounter with a wolf that walks upright like a man, and then discovers her mother's friend and employee torn to pieces. Charlotte knows what she saw but everyone is writing it off as shock and improbable. Only, it's not.

The Clockmaker's Son is available on Amazon.com and as a Kindle ebook. It's a page turner!

Bolt's Landing Released!

Bolt's Landing my new contemporary romance novel as released on May 12th. It's available at Amazon.com and on other book seller sites, and is also available in the Kindle ebook store.

Bolt's Landing in Proof Stage

A new novel will be coming out later this month. Bolt's Landing is in the proof stage where I've done the editing and review for grammar, typos, punctuation errors, spacing, and such. At this point I indulge in a printed proof copy and read it through for continuity issues I may have missed and story flow. If I need to make any fixes from the proof it usually goes quickly. Here is the back cover copy:


Artist Jesse Oakes returns to the Adirondacks where he grew up after the death of his actress wife in California. Disillusioned by the lifestyle he’d led in LA, he opens a gallery on Bolt Lake, joins the local hockey team, and lives a quiet life until wealthy society scion Sebastian Archer commissions him to paint a portrait of his youngest daughter upon her engagement to rich playboy Jared Rhys-Bowen. Archer’s arranged the marriages of all his children to the rich sons and daughters of his business associates, thereby increasing his own fortunes. The Archers do not marry for love they marry for money, Jesse soon finds out as he gets to know the unhappy subject of the portrait he’s painting. He falls in love with Ellisan Archer, but soon the horror of her life, shielded by her family and generous payouts of cash to buy silence, is unveiled. Jesse’s love offers her a lifeline out of the nightmare she’s ensnared in, but will she find the strength to grasp it? Can he save her before it’s too late?