Halloween – Evelyn Klebert

The Armstrong

October 27, 2022

Well, I’m wrapping up Halloween week here at evelynklebert.com with a short story entitled “The Armstrong.” It’s a tale of two people taking an extraordinary leap of faith to find each other. And given the chaotic state of the world right now, I thought it was important to close this Halloween celebration on an upbeat note of possibility. After all, what extraordinary things could flourish if we could embrace change and perhaps take that elusive leap of faith? I wish you all well and hope you enjoy “The Armstrong.”

The Armstrong

It was an old hotel. That was something that could be felt, its history, on her very skin.

She would have preferred something new, walls that hadn’t been around for so many years. Of course, the lobby was impressive with its chandeliers, effigies on the ceiling, vast spaces trimmed with mahogany accents.

But she would have preferred something new, not so vast, not so impressive.

Once she got upstairs, the halls were more narrow, skinny even, filled with rooms facing each other, past the elevator, and at one end, a painting slapped on the wall, an old plantation. Not much thought, someone just thought it looked pretty.

She moved quickly, swiping her room key, then slamming the hotel door behind her. Throwing her shoulder bag down onto the king-sized bed, she checked her watch. It was late, eight-thirty.

She didn’t know why she was here, why she’d come. This was pointless. All of it, but she couldn’t stop. She had no idea how to begin to stop.

After having been dropped off by a handsome cab, the lobby was full when he checked in. It was well into the evening, but there were all manner of individuals milling about The Armstrong — evidently serving as a center of social activity as well as a hotel. A valet had offered to carry his trunk and greatcoat, but he declined. As he took the lift to the third floor, he focused. It was necessary to achieve great concentration.

Fortunately, the narrow hallway to his room was deserted, unlike the downstairs. It could be any place, anywhere, and more than that, any time. He held the key that he’d been given tightly in his hand. And then he closed his eyes just before he put it in the door.

He allowed himself to be pulled, pulled by the life force he sensed. After all, time is an ephemeral construction. What is real power is energy, the magnetism of energy. He allowed himself to be drawn in, and then he opened the door.

“Lydia,” her eyes fluttered open.

Surely, she’d been dreaming. Then the fatigue swept over her, and her eyes drifted closed again. “Lydia, focus.”

Someone was talking to her, but she was asleep. Wasn’t she?

“It’s an in-between state of awareness. Not sleep, not awake. That is how I am able to contact you.”

“I—I don’t understand.”

“Just listen, my name is Charles Del Couer. I’m a doctor of sorts. And I’ve been looking for you for some time.”

That’s how it had begun, slowly, insidiously. These were contacts that she could attribute to imaginations, indulgences, then later even mental illness.

At times, they’d talk at length in that in-between state. “You’re not ill. You’re gifted. There is a vast difference.”

“What is it you want?”

“I want us to meet.”

“Meet? How? When?”

He seemed somewhat befuddled by her questions. He could see her, and she could see him in that in-between state, often just across the room from her, but the trouble was that he seemed so insubstantial, passing in and out of vision as though he was made of mist at times, a fluttering photo on a blanket of vacillating haze.

Befuddled, yes. “How? Might be a bit easier than the When.”

“The When?”

“Yes, Lydia.” He called her Lydia. Her name was Lilly Page, but Charles insisted on calling her Lydia. He claimed to have known her as such.

“I don’t understand.”

“We need to meet in a particular place, a place where there is a link.”

“What sort of link?”

“It has to do with the When of things.”

She was sitting in the corner of the room, of the shadowed room, waiting quietly when the door began to open. She should have been scared, should have been terrified at what was happening. But she had slipped into the mindset, the altered state that he’d taught her. The one he had drilled in fact, nearly over an entire year, a few evenings a week, then in the last few months every day, every day striving to achieve a sort of mesmeric trance that he taught her.

And she sat quietly as the door swung open. He stepped into the room, not a mist, not part of an imagination, not a dream manifestation. But real, in the flesh. Silently, he closed the door behind him, turning a lock she did not recognize. He placed his oversized black suitcase on the ornate rug covering a wooden floor and draped his long coat over a golden crushed velvet wing-backed chair. She breathed in sharply, somewhat shakily shifting her state. Lilly had become cognizant that her surroundings had shifted around her.

He stared at her from across the room. Blond hair, dark eyes, and dressed — her breath caught in her throat — dressed in a suit “from another time,” he finished. She straightened up in a chair she no longer recognized. He had completed her thought. “It’s a side effect,” he murmured. “From all the intensive alignment we’ve been working at.”

“Alignment?” she murmured.

“Yes, to make this possible. As I said, the When of things was always going to be more problematic. But we’ve overcome that.”

She was coming to herself now, out of the trance. The room had grown. In fact, they were in a sort of sitting room, and beyond an archway was another room. It was a suite, whereas she’d been in a single room. And the décor was more elegant, like the hotel — mahogany furniture, velveteen, and tapestry chairs, paintings of soft country-side scenes, placed on the walls as though someone had given it thought, not just haphazardly hung them.

“I don’t understand—”

“The place is a mix of your time in 2019 and mine in 1904.”

He had moved closer to her and was standing in front of her. “It doesn’t seem like a mix. It seems to be wholly in your court.”

“There are subtle differences,” he murmured, though his eyes seemed purely transfixed on her. “Can I take your hand, Lydia?” he said rather abruptly.

“Lilly, my name is Lilly.”

“I’m sorry,” he held out his hand for her as though she’d agreed. But she did allow it, allowed him to take her hand, and he rather firmly pulled her to her feet and then into a warm, intense embrace. “I don’t know if I believed it was possible to really reach you.”

It was the writings that he began to find first, in odd places, tucked away in books, in his desk, and on the pages of his own personal journal.

The penmanship was odd, not flowing, and well composed as most writing he’d encountered. But rough, and not in script at all, but rather some blockish-looking print.

It’s odd. I’ve been having these headaches more often lately. The doctor can’t find anything in particular wrong with me, just stress, she said.

He’d found the writing on an unfamiliar stationery stuffed in a book on Animal Magnetism that he was reading by Franz Mesmer.

She even did a CT scan, but nothing. Stress — the convenient diagnosis when they have no idea what is wrong with you. It’s frustrating, and I didn’t even bother to tell her about the dreams. After all, they are just dreams.

The paper was thin, filled with lines, and the ink was an odd color, a forest green shade. He had no idea where it had come from, perhaps just the shop where he’d purchased the book. But such a strange note.

And then he found another.

I’m starting a dream journal. Not sure why except I’m desperate to get things sorted out somehow.

He found this one on the same sort of paper stuffed in a nightstand by his bed. It was quite impossible unless the housekeeper or a maid had left it there. He would question them thoroughly as the hour was quite late when he’d discovered it.

Last night I dreamed I was walking through an unfamiliar house, a large place old-fashioned with a great staircase just past the entrance. As I ascended to the second floor, I put my hand on the rail, a heavy dark wood. I turned the corner past the stairs, and there was a long hallway filled with doors. Then someone was beside me, but I couldn’t turn to look. It was like a paralysis, but he whispered in my ear, a deep voice. “Which door will you choose, Lydia, or will you go back to whence you came?”

It shook him, the name Lydia. It was an odd sensation, not a word that was precisely in his memory but in his other memory, sense memory he’d read about in a book on magnetism. This was a deeper sort of holistic phenomenon attributed to the spiritual plane.

He sunk down onto the mattress of his queen-sized bed. The scrap of paper he held in his hand was fluttering. And given his usually methodical nature, it was a bit shocking. But his hand was shaking, not just that he was trembling, trembling all over. He schooled himself to breathe deeply, calmly, but it was next to impossible. His eyes again scanned over the curious script. It felt familiar, something he should know or would know.

Of course, he would check with his housekeeper, Mrs. Farrow, and the two maids, Cecily and Lucy. He didn’t really need two. He was a widower, but Lucy was Mrs. Farrow’s daughter, and she had asked for her employment, a sort of favor to help her find her way. There was still that possibility that it was one of them. He folded the paper over, putting it on the nightstand. The name Lydia, he knew it but from where?

Her head spun with dizziness. “Try to anchor yourself,” he whispered in her ear. She did. She focused on the reality she was experiencing now, in her mind accepting that this new place was now her plane of existence.

He continued to hold her, gently rubbing her back in a soothing manner. She didn’t know if it was helping or distracting, but she liked it, allowing herself to relax in his embrace. “I cannot tell you how pleased I am to meet you finally,” he murmured. And she felt it, through his touch, the emotions she felt in his thoughts seeping through the embrace. “You’re so sensitive.”

“I—” she began, having no idea where to begin.

“You must tell your mind that this is real.”

She felt her knees begin to buckle as the reality of her exhaustion swept over her. She felt him sweep his hands under her knees and scoop her up just before she collapsed. “I can’t—” she whispered as she lost consciousness.

When had all this started? She couldn’t remember, probably with the journal. It was supposed to be a dream journal but turned into something else, something she would scribble thoughts and feelings in at odd times during the day. She’d taken a semester off from work. She taught English Literature at a local university, but the inexplicable medical issues had made things too complicated. Kindly, they’d given her time to sort things out, though she was several months in and felt no closer to anything being settled.

One day though, a chilly day late in September, she’d opened her journal to find the curious writing just below her entry.

It was a fine penmanship and strange ink, completely different from her thick green ballpoint pen.

To Whoever May Receive This,

Please take note this is an experiment on my part, an indulgence if you will. The headaches you are experiencing may be connected to a hyperconnectic experience. Do not assume that they are traditionally physiological in the sense that most may experience.

She remembered staring at the page in total confusion. Lilly Page lived alone in a townhouse in New Orleans. No one else had access to this journal. Of course, the panic had surged up inside her. Maybe she was losing her mind. Maybe this was some sort of multiple personality disorder. The possibilities that she concocted were quite horrifying. So, she did the only thing she could think of, she answered.

Please tell me, who is this. You are frightening me.

Two days later, there was an answer in the same formal antiquated script.

Forgive me. My name is Charles Del Couer. I’m a doctor.

How are you doing this?

I found your journal in my bureau some days ago. I believe I am supposed to help you.

It’s difficult to know what to believe and what not to believe once events step out of your ordinary parameter of thinking. Lilly left the journal alone for about a week. She considered all sorts of things, primarily among them all that she was having some sort of a break from reality — schizophrenia, multiple personalities, a brain tumor. But no, they’d done a CT scan. That wasn’t a possibility.

She thought to throw the journal out into the trash. But she couldn’t bring herself to. The headaches continued, and she was becoming desperate.

Look, I can’t deal with much right now. I’m in too much pain. If this is some kind of trick or worse, or if it’s just me having some sort of breakdown, then have a little mercy and —

She stopped writing. What else could she say?

She closed the journal, put it on her little white desk in the corner of her bedroom, and pushed it away for a few moments.

Then tentatively, she slid the old-fashioned looking leather-bound book she’d purchased from Barnes and Noble back towards her. Taking a breath, she flipped it back open to the ribbon-marked page that she’d just written on. Just under her writing was a new entry, scribed in that exquisite penmanship.

Extraordinary,

It began.

So, I believe it falls upon me to convince you that I am not a delusion elicited from the depths of psychosomatic illness. Very well, as I said, my name is Charles Del Couer. I am a practicing physician at the Hotel Dieu, French Hospital, Charity Hospital, and Mercy Hospital. I am a member of The Society of Magnetism in New Orleans. I live in a house along the Esplanade Avenue near The Bayou St. John. I am a widower.

Her eyes blinked. Some of those hospitals he listed she wasn’t even aware had ever existed, and the Society of Magnetism. What exactly was that? So how could she create something that she had no knowledge of?

Her head had begun again to pound unmercifully. So, she wrote with a shaky hand.

I’m not trying to insult you. I just have to be sure. It’s been difficult. She closed her eyes and let the pen drift from her hand, trying to mentally will the pain to subside.

“Breathe deeply.”

She could hear the sound in her ears, a voice murmuring in her mind. She began to take long, measured breaths, in and out.

“Try to focus on allowing the pain to subside. Let it drift away slowly with every breath.”

Again, she focused. With every breath in, she concentrated, and with every breath out she relaxed, allowing the pain to slowly drain away from her temples and forehead. And it was helping, she could feel it. The pain was still dull but a ghost of the intensity that it had been.

“Good, now try to lie down on your bed and rest for a bit. I will continue to focus energy to you.”

She didn’t reply. She simply groggily did as she was directed to do. She didn’t mentally put it together at that moment who was speaking to her and leading her. She was just grateful for the help. She drifted effortlessly into sleep, moving into quiet, until she dreamed of a great house near the water and a man speaking softly to her.

Dreams became a link between them. Perhaps from the first time when she’d read what Charles had written in her journal and then when he’d directed her, helped her, and perhaps mesmerized her into a deep sleep as was his way.

In this dream, she was still in her room, in the bed but now it was layered with a different room — one she didn’t recognize. She sat in the bed and saw the enormous mahogany rolltop desk against the wall and the man sitting in a straight wooden chair next to it.

He was there, but insubstantial as was his room, quite different from the usual space she inhabited.

“What is this?” she meant to speak but felt it as something else emanating from a place that wasn’t exactly sound.

“You should be resting Lydia, not forcing a connection at this juncture.”

“What does that mean? Forcing a connection?”

His clothes, suit rather, was antiquated, but his tie hung loosely untied at the collar of his white shirt. “We, you, and I clearly will be communicating. Somehow we’ve bridged the space that traditionally separates us.”

“Space?” she murmured.

“Yes, space is the only adequate description of what separates us. Time is an artificial construct.” Her eyes were examining him. He wasn’t old, older than her but not by much. His hair was a dark blond shade, and he had a well-kept beard and mustache.”

“You’re Charles,” she murmured.

He eyed her oddly, with curiosity, she felt, because she was feeling so many things. “Yes, yes, I am. You should rest.”

“My name isn’t Lydia,” she said, while she felt the fatigue take her over again.

“I know,” was the last thing she heard him say.

She slowly opened her eyes but wasn’t sure where she’d be when she opened them. She felt the pressure of his hand atop hers. Flesh upon flesh, not that insubstantial contact that she’d come to expect between them.

“Lydia,” he murmured, softly brushing her hair away from her forehead.

“Charles,” she whispered. “Where are we? Still in between?”

He nodded, “Seems so,” squeezing her hand. “How are you feeling?”

She glanced around the room, again seeing the ornate vintage furnishings but noting now tapestry-type wallpaper that she did not remember before. “It’s changing,” she whispered.

Again, he squeezed her hand. His eyes were blue with amber flecks. She’d never been so close to him to see that before. They were actually together. It worked.

“Yes, it has,” he said softly, looking at her with quite a degree of tenderness. He’d read her mind, heard her thoughts as he’d done before. And she remembered now how along the way she’d completely fallen in love with him.

“I don’t understand how this is possible.”

He’d led her through a guided meditation, initially writing her the instructions in her journal. After guiding her with his voice in her mind a few times, he then communicated with thought transference once she was deep in the meditation.

“Is this like hypnosis?”

“Not exactly, it travels well beyond simple mesmerism. We have genuinely connected on an astral plane.”

And it was dazzling, talking to him as though he were right next to her and sometimes seeing impressions of him in his home, but not concrete, more translucent.

She was sleeping soundly, and he knew he dare not disturb her, no matter how tempted he was. He paced the room, noting that it did indeed seem to be slipping away from her timeline and more into his. He wasn’t sure why exactly, only that things seemed unstable.

“The headaches, my love, are they worse after our sessions?”

He didn’t know when it had started, when he’d started referring to her as my love. It just seemed to have popped up organically, and she didn’t stop him. It was easy, easy to slip into. She seemed so vulnerable and accessible in some way though insubstantial, like some sort of a dream.

“No, they’re actually better after I spend time with you. They crop up when I’m doing other things, going to work, doing things in the outside world here.” He was extremely focused on her as she spoke, having glimpses into her life, flashes of her moving through her life. And then deeper, slipping deeper into the physiology of what was happening.

He could see her, see her body in two spaces. There was tremendous stress on her energy systems. In her modern era, Lilly’s aura was becoming chaotic, bleeding energy to stabilize itself.

He questioned if he’d caused this, if their contact resulted in this divided stress.

“Can’t you rest, my love?” he’d asked.

“It’s difficult. I’m always tired, bothered, even when I sleep.”

“Sleeping isn’t always rest, you know,” he murmured. “Some believe it’s traveling to other realities.”

“Realities?”

“Yes, this life, this awareness we experience in waking hours is only a small part of actual living.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Give it time Lydia,” so odd how that name kept slipping out. “Then you will understand.”

Of course, she fell in love with him. Why would she agree to attempt such a thing, such an unthinkable meeting, attempting what rationality told her was impossible? But what was really rational and what was not?

She opened her eyes to look around the room. On the bedside table was a platter of fruit and cheese and a bottle of wine next to it.

She sat up shakily in the unfamiliar bed as it wasn’t the one that had been there once she’d checked into the hotel. “Are we celebrating?” she murmured.

He was across the room, back to her, staring out a window whose heavy brocade drapes he’d pushed back with his hand. He turned around quickly in response to her inquiry. “How are you feeling?”

She smiled, “I’ve no clue yet. Dizzy, I guess.”

“I thought you’d want to eat something.”

He sat beside her on the bed, taking her pulse without asking, then lightly feeling her forehead. “Will I live?” she asked lightly.

He squeezed her hand, and she felt that draw to him. She’d always felt it before, but not concrete, not like this with his skin next to hers. “You better. I’ve put a lot of effort into this.”

She nodded, “What now, though?” She wasn’t sure she wanted an answer. If they succeeded, they hadn’t really discussed it. And now that they had what was on the other side of this moment was the question.

“Why don’t you eat something? Then we can sort things out.”

She reached for a strawberry holding it in her hand for a moment, and a curious thought crossed her mind. She felt a bit like Persephone, eating the pomegranate seeds in the Underworld. Once she took a bit, would she be unable to go back? Would she be forever linked to where he was? She looked at him oddly, wondering, feeling as though he indeed did know the answer. She didn’t really hesitate. She didn’t regret anything. She simply took a bite.

“The Armstrong” first appeared in a collection of short stories entitled Appointment with the Unknown: The Hotel Stories.

In “Too Many Pens,” an artist finds a very routine stay at a hotel slowly transforming into a place of romance and mystery. “Slipping” is the story of a young woman finding herself threatened by unexpected interdimensional attacks. Two unique travelers find love and themselves trapped in a French Quarter hotel during an unexpected tropical tempest in “The Storm.” In, “The Armstrong,” two people from different eras try to bridge the gap of time itself in an old historic hotel. “Variables” tells the story of a dimension traveler battling to rescue a man from a devastating fate. And “Hotels in the Time of Covid,” explores a relationship between a news reporter and her spirit guide.

Follow the unpredictable lure of the supernatural in this collection of Hotel Stories.

Cornerstone

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Excerpt

The Left Palm

October 16, 2022

What if every choice you’ve ever made is much more impactful than you could truly imagine? A young woman confronts this reality and a very terrifying customer in my next Halloween Story, “The Left Palm.”

The Left Palm

Fear, a manifestation of fear, certainly this was it. It was the only explanation, the one that made any sense she could live with.

She looked outside the bedroom window of her apartment onto her small secluded concrete patio. Hopefully, this time it would be gone. Shakily peering through the blinds, her heart clutched in her chest. It was nearly midnight, but the nearby streetlamps still illuminated the enclosed space, reflecting off its thick black coat. It turned its face toward her, unmistakably a pure, black wolf with eerily pale blue eyes.

She stepped back, allowing the blinds to snap back into place.

Again, it feverishly crossed her mind to call the police, or the SPCA, or the fire department — frankly, anyone. But each time she moved to pick up her cell phone, a paralysis crept in. Something inside her refused, absolutely refused to follow through.

Silently, she crept back onto her daybed, pulling the covers tightly around her. In the morning, it would be gone. It always was. After all, this was the third night in a row she’d seen it.

It was summertime, unbearably hot and humid in the city. But she made her way to the college by the lake, where she was taking one graduate course in Victorian Literature. It was a nine o’clock class. After lunch, she would head to the French Quarter for the rest of the day, where she worked oddly enough as a Tarot card reader at a small shop on Chartres Street.

Granted, it was a unique profession, but one that she literally fell into. She’d been working at a gift shop on Decatur Street and, feeling the pinch of inflation, began looking for a second job. A sign was boldly taped on the door of The Left Palm, “Looking for Part-Time Help.” The front of the store itself was filled with books, candles, and even clothing, so naturally, she’d assumed that it must be a sales position. She just sort of drifted in with no idea of what she was getting into.

The lady that greeted her from behind a glass counter was older, at least late fifties. She had substantially long black hair, dramatically streaked with gray, which was piled up in a low bun behind her head. Presenting quite a striking image, she wore a sort of electric blue caftan dress and an ornate oriental scarf draped across her shoulder. But when she’d met her eyes, there was no smile but rather an almost suspicious expression reflected through her intently plucked black eyebrows. “Yes,” she’d asked nearly sternly.

She breathed in deeply, suddenly feeling as though she’d like to slink off somewhere and forget the whole thing. “Well,” she hesitated, quelling a bizarre combination of panic and curiosity, “I saw your sign outside about a job opening.”

The slim dark woman who’d been leaning over the glass counter in front of her now straightened up. It was difficult not to be struck by the regalness of her bearing. “You’re looking for a job?” She asked flatly.

“Yes, I am.”

“It’s part-time.”

She nodded, feeling amazingly uncomfortable, “Yes, that’s fine.”

And then she outstretched one of her hands that were ornamented by very long, bright red nails and placed it flatly on the glass case in front of her. “So, you’re a reader.”

She hesitated, “A reader?” asking with surprise.

“Yes, we need a Tarot reader.” Suddenly Claudia glanced around the store and took it all in — crystal balls, new age paraphernalia. Of course, now she understood. It wasn’t a sales position at all. Again, the woman repeated in low tones, “You are a reader.”

And Claudia, with great confidence, met her dark eyes and answered quite directly, “Yes, I am.”

Prior to working at The Left Palm, it had all been a hobby, an eccentric interest. She’d done Tarot readings since high school for friends, relatives, but never herself. Long ago, she’d recognized that she simply couldn’t read for herself. It was too personal, as though she was always searching for something. And it was frustrating because more than she wanted to know anything, she wanted to understand about herself. She needed to know why all her romantic entanglements ended disastrously if she’d ever finally finish her degree, if she’d stop having to work so much, and if her life would ever settle down. But The Left Palm had proved to be more lucrative than she imagined at first. The pay was primarily commission, and before long she had developed a clientele. At times, the work she’d found less than rewarding and, at its worst, completely draining.

Fortunately, and unfortunately, the money was too good to relinquish. Even with an assistantship at school, there were too many bills to pay. So, Claudia continued to read people’s fortunes, all kinds of people.

And on the early morning drive to school in late July, she wondered if there was some connection in this, in her work and the black wolf that had prowled her patio for the last three nights.

It had rained earlier in the morning, which increased the humidity to an almost oppressive extent. She’d always loved this city but did not love the summers. She yearned for the fall again, when it would be easier to breathe.

The summers were a quiet time around here, but this morning seemed exceptionally quiet. As she entered the English building, hearing her sandals lightly tap on the stone floor, it struck her suddenly how deserted everything seemed. When she’d arrived, she’d noted a few souls wandering about in the parking lot and then sitting on the library steps as she passed by, but the English building was now virtually empty.

Then, as she finally reached the door of the classroom, she understood at least one of the reasons why: A note on the door, “Class Cancelled.” She thought longingly of how she could still be in bed catching up from another largely sleepless night.

Her thought was to go home, try to catch just a few more hours, but such fatigue suddenly filled her that she couldn’t even muster the effort. So, instead, she wandered outside and sat down on the first bench that came along. Just a few minutes, she thought, only a few to regroup. She leaned back against its wooden frame and closed her eyes, trying to draw energy from anywhere.

It was some moments before her eyes flickered open again before she noticed that a rather substantial shadow had fallen over her. But when she did, she instinctively straightened up in a jolt. It was quite unexpected. Not a cloud passing over, but a man standing in front of her. a man dressed in a black suit, standing a few feet away, just watching.

The sun shone directly in her eyes. She attempted to block the glare with one hand, trying to get a clearer glimpse of this stranger. Bearded, dark, possibly black hair, but skin fair, she straightened up a bit more, expecting something from him, some sort of conversation, but nothing.

“Umm, can I help you with something?” she asked in puzzlement. And then, an unnerving wide smile spread across his face. Suddenly, a flash of sunlight stung her eyes so painfully that she quickly squinted. But more disturbing than that was that when she reopened them, the stranger was gone. She bolted up, quickly scanning in all directions but seeing no one that even remotely resembled his form. He’d simply vanished. An unexpected chill of fear traveled up her spine and spread out, making her skin feel like ice. She quickly began heading back to her car, moving so fast that it nearly felt like a run.

“You look awful.”

After an hour of sleep and a quick shower, she somehow managed to drag herself into work for noon. Madame Christina stood behind the front counter with a frown on her face. Over the year Claudia worked at The Left Palm, she’d come to a plateau of understanding with the shop owner. Christina Duverje rarely smiled, had a sour disposition, and was profoundly psychic. Once you accepted all these facts about the woman, life working at the French Quarter shop could be bearable. “No sleep,” she murmured as she crossed the threshold. “Any appointments today?” she asked, secretly hoping there were none. Between the wolf literally at her door and the disappearing stranger at the University, her nerves were frayed to the point of unraveling. What would be most medicinal would be a nice quiet, uneventful afternoon.

“No, my sweet,” the older woman commented. “Just a few stray walk-ins this morning. Wednesdays, as you know, are notoriously slow around here. But I have some new stock you could put on the shelves while I go to lunch.”

Claudia nodded. Just for a moment, she thought about confiding the recent bizarre occurrences in her life to her boss. But something kept her silent. Somehow talking about them felt as though it would become more real. Madame Christina had already gathered her things from a locked drawer beneath the counter. “You can ring me on my cell if things get too busy. Marguerite will be in at one. And I probably won’t be back for a while. I’m meeting an old friend.”

Claudia smiled with distraction as her boss noiselessly exited, except, of course, for the delicate chiming of the bells positioned strategically over the entrance. She breathed out a deep sigh of fatigue. It would be an hour until their very high-energy palmist swept through the door, hopefully, a quiet hour to regroup. She sat on a stool behind the glass counter at The Left Palm and attempted to clear her mind. It was stress that she felt all over her, crawling over her skin, sapping her strength. She should have simply called in sick, but the truth of the matter was she didn’t want to go home. The memory of the black wolf last night prowling her patio left a fear wrapped around her heart. It was clear that whatever was happening couldn’t continue. She needed help, but precisely what kind of help was the ultimate question.

Claudia was deeply lost in thought when the bells at the doorway of The Left Palm chimed to signal the entrance of someone. She came to her feet quickly but, in the next moment, stood literally rooted to the spot as a man rounded the corner of a book display. Her breath caught. There was no mistake, the black suit, pale face, and now, as he approached the counter, she could see very clearly the ice-blue eyes.

He stood in front of her, not unlike what he had done earlier at the University. But there was no hint of expression on his face, just a calm appraisal. They stared at each other silently, and then, almost against her will, the words slipped out, “What do you want?”

Now, there was a smile, the kind that didn’t touch the eyes. He spoke in a low voice with a clipped British accent. “Why, I think I’d like a Tarot card reading.”

They were like booths, partitioned with long red curtains at the back of the store. Madame Christina had set up the first one in particular with a slim sightline through the curtain to the front entrance. Business wasn’t booming enough that there would always be more than one person working at a time. So, this was a way to alert a reader if there was another person in the store. Within each booth, there was a card table covered by a soft white, silken scarf and two chairs on either side. They were very nice padded armchairs Christina had obtained from a friend at a nearby antique store. It was all very atmospheric, which was necessary, given that they charged sixty dollars for only a thirty-minute reading.

And today, Claudia was giving that reading to a man who called himself simply “Neil.”

She had no idea why she was doing this. It was crazy. It was crazy. A thousand excuses, a thousand lies had flooded up to her mind the moment he asked for a reading. But she seemed incapable of uttering even one, just stood there staring at him blankly, as though he had just asked to clean out their cash register. And then he’d asked quite calmly, “Is that all right?”

And she answered too quickly on its heels, “Yes,” without paying attention to what her brain was screaming at her. The man himself was calm, collected and showed no indication whatsoever that he’d ever laid eyes on her his whole life. And then, the doubts crept in. Perhaps, it was her. Perhaps, she’d had some premonition of their meeting. That was why she’d seen him before. But why and what did it mean?

And now, here she was only moments earlier feeling content and pleased to have the shop to herself, and now literally counting down the minutes until Marguerite flew in the front door like a tornado. Blessed tornado, for once in your life, please be on time.

“Is everything all right?” he asked.

She glanced up at him, again entertaining the gaze of those strange, blue eyes. She’d tried to avoid looking at them too often. They were pale, disturbingly pale. She had tried to gage the man’s age somewhat, but found it difficult — late thirties, early forties, hard to say. And that suit, that was one of the oddest things of all. It was a nice suit but so unsuitable for this time of year — so heavy, so hot. Then again, maybe he worked in a funeral parlor. She started to shuffle the oversized Tarot deck in her hands and leaned back in her chair. “No, everything’s fine. Have you had your cards read before?” she asked, her eyes still downcast, concentrating on the cards.

“How old are you?” She looked up, a bit surprised at the question.

“I’m twenty-four,” she answered a bit guardedly.

He nodded, “Seems young.”

She stopped shuffling and, perhaps a bit too abruptly, placed the cards on the table. “If you’d prefer a more seasoned reader, Madame Marguerite will be back this afternoon.”

“No,” he murmured. “That’s not what I meant. And yes.”

She looked at him with puzzlement, “Yes?”

“You asked if I have had my cards read before.”

She looked down again, nervously picking up the deck. “Oh yes, well, is there anything, in particular, you’d like to know about?”

Again, he answered “Yes,” rather quietly.

She glanced up. He was watching her again with that odd curious expression as though he were expecting something. “Well, then, as you shuffle the cards, you should concentrate on it.”

She reached over, handing him the deck and feeling the brush of his fingertips as he did. The contact was startling, disturbing. The only way that she could describe it was electric and cold at the same time. She pulled her hand away, feeling an absolute numbness in her fingers now. Instinctively, she glanced through the slim opening in the curtains toward the front door, but nothing, no movement. And then she glanced at her watch, forty minutes until Marguerite. Murmuring to him, she said, “We’ll begin now.”

She glanced up, noting that he’d stopped shuffling the cards. Suddenly, she realized she’d neglected to pull out a significator. “I’m sorry, I forgot—”

But then she stopped mid-sentence as the man who called himself Neil was holding out a card to her. “It’s all right,” he said. “I pulled it myself.”

She hesitantly took the card in her hand and flipped it over. “The Hermit,” she read. “That’s an unusual choice. I mean for someone whose—”

“Not old?” he finished. She looked up again. He was smiling that slight odd smile as though he was somewhat amused. “Well, I might be older than you think.” And then he handed her the deck.

“You really should cut them three times.”

Slowly, he shook his head, “Not necessary. They’re fine.”

She nodded hesitantly, placing the Hermit in the center of the table as she began the spread.

“You have a strange style.”

It was her job interview or, rather, her audition as a Tarot card reader for Madame Christina Duverje. At the time, she’d smiled back at the dour older woman feeling without question that there was no way in hell she was getting this job. She had no professional experience as a Tarot reader, and this woman, well, she oozed experience in so many spheres.

She continued driving home her point, “You’re very weak on specifics.” She glanced at her over the Tarot spread that Claudia had just boldly read for her. Naturally, she had given her all and hadn’t held back. It wouldn’t do, she thought, to appear hesitant. After all, she’d believed these people were seventy-five percent theatrics anyway. Christina Duverje eyed her critically, slowly shredding away any feigned confidence she’d brought with her. “You know,” she went on, “Clients like specifics. The man they’re going to meet, who’s going to have a baby, illnesses, even who’s going to kick the bucket.” All of this she delivered with a straight face, as those these were only the facts of the business. And then she pointed one of her menacingly long fingernails at her, “But you, you’re too vague.”

She nodded, mentally considering what her next plan of action would be. Maybe a job at a mall, although she did hate the late hours. And then Madame Christina had completely surprised her. She had reached out with one of her elaborately manicured hands and placed it atop Claudia’s. She looked up into the older woman’s dark eyes. “But you know, I think there’s something there. With a little coaching, you could do this.” She literally couldn’t believe what she was hearing. And, good to her word, she had coached her, albeit briefly, just enough to get her up and running. But today, this day, in front of this man, she could literally feel all of that confidence that she’d built up over the past year slowly melting away.

She swallowed on a dry throat as she finished laying the Celtic spread, her hands hesitating over the cards. Again, it was crazy. This not only seldom happened. This never happened. It was all major Arcana cards. The first twenty-two cards of the Tarot, the most powerful cards in the deck, and this guy had ten of them, plus the Hermit that they’d started with. “Umm,” she began, just stunned. “Are you sure you shuffled these well?”

“Yes,” he answered pointedly, “as did you.”

She nodded. That was right. She had shuffled them. And she did see him do so, or at least she thought she did. “This is just very strange.”

“Really?” he answered with little emotion.

She glanced up, “Would you like to redo it?”

“No,” he stated flatly.

She distractedly frowned, “Okay,” placing the rest of the deck down on the table.

“Do you read palms?” he asked.

She looked up, “No, our palmist will be arriving very soon if—”

“No, I was just wondering if you did.”

She forced a smile and shook her head, “No, sorry. No, just the cards.”

“I wondered because of the name of your shop — The Left Palm.”

“Madame Christina does read palms as well,” again seized with the hope that their interaction would be cut short.

“Do you know what that means?”

She stared at him blankly. “I’m sorry?” she said with genuine confusion.

“The Left Palm, do you know its significance?”

She shook her head slowly, “No, not really,” feeling that chill sweep over her again, the one she’d felt at his fingertips.

He spoke slowly and deliberately, “The left palm charts the path of the spirit. Did you know that?” he asked with deliberation. Again, she shook her head, feeling greatly unnerved by this turn in the conversation. And then, he placed both of his hands face down on the table in front of her. “I’d like to show you something. So, you can get an idea of who I really am.” She stared at him with confusion but was unable to utter a sound, just like before. And then slowly, he turned over his left hand, and at that moment, time just truly seemed to stop. Her eyes blurred over in disbelief at what she was seeing. His hand, his entire palm, had no creases, no lines in it at all. It was entirely blank.

“Oh God,” she finally managed to mutter brokenly.

“So, now Claudia, I would like to spend these last minutes we have together not reading my cards because, as you might have guessed, I know exactly what they say. But instead, having a little talk that is long overdue.”

It began when her grandmother died. She’d been ill for some time and had stayed with her family at her parent’s home toward the end. She’d even briefly shared a room with Claudia, which had made the little girl, who was only eight, somewhat uneasy. It wasn’t the recognition of her grandmother’s failing health or even that particular sensation of agitation that seemed to surround the older woman at the end. It was as if her soul was fighting the change. It created a discordant feeling between the body and the spirit that felt the pull to escape. Of course, all of this she didn’t recognize at eight. But she did see them — all around, and in the end, all the time. Some were spirits that looked like a bright glow of light, and others came in more tangible forms, people moving around the room, talking to her grandmother — whispers all the time whispers, and then, the last night, right at the end, the angels. Beautiful lights, white, gold, long robes glowing, when they took her with them. When her grandmother did pass on, it hadn’t registered at all to Claudia that there was still a body there. She had already left with the angels, and there remained a disturbing emptiness once they were gone.

She breathed in deeply, deep painful breaths of fear. “Oh God, what do you want?” she asked.

He smiled coldly, so coldly. “Now, we get down to it. There’s no reason to panic.”

“The wolf,” she whispered.

“A messenger to let you know I was coming. But I see you didn’t quite get that did you.”

She glanced around, looking at the door. Still no sign of Marguerite, and it was ten to one.” She’s going to be late,” he stated flatly. “Late enough for us to finish this.”

“Finish what?” she snapped out.

“I need a promise.”

“You’re out of your mind. I’m not signing anything.” She almost yelled emphatically.

He laughed softly, leaning back in Madame Cristina’s antique chair, “You’ve seen too many movies. No, my dear, you’re not important enough for that. I just want a promise.”

“What kind of promise?” she knew that she shouldn’t have asked. She knew she should have run, run like crazy to the nearest holy ground. But instead, she asked what should not have been asked.

“I’m busy.”

She stared at him blankly in bewilderment, “What?”

“What I need is fewer complications.”

“And I need a vacation. What’s your point?”

He smiled, “Actually, you’ve hit the nail on the head. You need a vacation, and I need less complications. All I ask from you is that you live your life, a nice life, a comfortable life perhaps but stay out of my way.”

She stared at this strange aberration of a person in complete confusion. “What?” was the only response she could think of, “What does that mean?”

His pale face seemed to harden a bit. Evidently, she wasn’t giving quite the expected answers. “Let me paint you a picture, my dear. One life, things go smoothly. You finish college. You get a nice job. You get a house, a car. You marry a nice man, have children, live quietly, peacefully, sound nice?”

She shrugged. Did he really want an answer?

“Another picture,” he continued in a silky low voice. “A life of struggle. It takes a while to finish school, not enough money. Not so easy to land a job. Things interfere, unfair things. You continue to work, sometimes several jobs. No house, not enough money. Maybe no husband, maybe no children. Always a battle, always some impediment. Sound nice?” he asked with an edge of sarcasm.

“So, you’re saying if I stay out of your way, I get the first life. And if I don’t?”

“The wolf will always be at the door,” and then he smiled coldly, “So, to speak.”

Her heart thudded loudly in her chest. Her head was spinning. Was this real or some sort of deluded dream? Impossible, how could it be?

And then the answer came to her softly, almost silently, in a whisper — angels. She remembered now from back then. She’d told her mother about them, expecting, completely expecting her to say she was crazy, or that she had imagined them.

“You didn’t,” she’d said. “It’s a gift that you could see them; they’ll always be there for you when you need them.”

And she had. She’d seen them again five years later when her mother died unexpectedly. She knew then that she was right. It had been and was now a gift.

For a moment, the coldness seemed to lift enough for her to think clearly. So, she reached out slowly and gathered the cards together, quietly glancing down at her watch. She met his ice-blue eyes and said calmly with confidence. “Your time is up.”

He frowned explicitly, “Are you sure you’re making the right decision Claudia?”

She nodded with assurance, “Yes.” And she kept him in her sight until he left.

“The Left Palm” first appeared in a collection of short stories entitled The Left Palm and Other Halloween Tales of the Supernatural.

Halloween is the time of year when that veil between worlds is thinned, and you can just catch a quick glimpse into the realm of the unknowable. In this collection of short stories, Evelyn Klebert takes you to a place where ordinary life splinters into the sphere of the paranormal.

The journey begins with one woman’s unstoppable quest for vengeance against a supernatural creature in “Wolves,” and continues in an old historical graveyard where a horrifying discovery is uncovered in “Emma Fallon.” In “The Soul Shredder,” a psychiatrist’s unusual patient opens his eyes to a disturbing new view of reality, while in “Wildflowers,” a woman strikes up a supernatural friendship with impossible implications. And in “The Left Palm,” a fortuneteller in the French Quarter receives a most unexpected and terrifying customer.

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Excerpt

The Storm

October 9, 2022

Check out my second short story for Halloween Week here at evelynklebert.com. This is the story of two strangers trapped in a New Orleans boutique hotel in the middle of a tropical storm and the amazing connection that they discover between them.

The Storm

The rain was pouring down in sheets, bands, they were called. She watched pensively through her balcony door. The breeze felt good, flooding into the dimly lit room. She stared downward toward the inner courtyard of the Hotel St. Mariana from the second floor. The swimming pool below, situated just in the center of the ornate patio, rippled with cascading rain droplets. The news said that the tropical storm should move over quickly, just tying up things for a bit, though the establishment had taken the precaution of placing sandbags at all entrances.

It was unexpected.

The storm was in the Gulf of Mexico but was predicted to move into Texas. Surprisingly, it took a substantial jog to the right at the last minute and landed in Louisiana, crashing her weekend getaway. She knew there might be a bit of rain, and it was the middle of hurricane season, late September, but she had been reluctant to shift course. She needed this. This time signaled a personal emancipation of sorts, beginning her life anew, and now, consequently, she was trapped in this little boutique hotel in the French Quarter for who knew how long.

She thought about going downstairs, not just staying here, trapped in the room. Though admittedly, it was a lovely trap, atmospheric. It reminded her of another time, one well removed from everything that her life represented now.

That voice in the back of her head, the cautious one that usually governed, reminded her that perhaps she should shut the balcony door, but the breeze felt so lovely and lifted her spirits. There was a rebelliousness burgeoning inside of her, one she usually kept in check, that seemed deliberately at odds with all those things she should do.

Undeniably though, the best part of this excursion of hers was that no one knew where she was. For the next two days, she’d escaped the snare of familial interference, people telling her what she should do, how to get on with her life, how she should feel. One way or another, this would be the new beginning for her that she so desperately craved.

It was a time to shed her old life, although, at the moment, all that progressive intent was a bit stymied as she was stuck in the middle of a storm. In some respects, storms made everything stand still. This, she’d always felt. The world and all her desires would simply have to pause until it passed.

Then again, perhaps this was just what she needed, a moment of quiet, suspended expectation and anticipation.

She leaned back on the white bedspread and closed her eyes, fatigue overtaking her. It had been this way for some time, just fatigue. She was so tired of stress and her life as it was. Undoubtedly all of this was purely emotional, then again, perhaps not.

He prowled with a deliberate restlessness. That was really the only way he could describe it. “Shouldn’t this be boarded up?” he fired toward the desk clerk, perhaps a little abrasively. He felt the clerk’s eyes on his back as he watched the torrents of rain pouring onto the street outside the plate glass windows.

“It’s only a tropical storm, sir. It should pass over with no incident.”

He frowned with tangible irritation. He was on a business trip traveling from up North, and this whole thing was woefully unexpected. Only a tropical storm was significant enough to cancel all his meetings and trap him in this little hotel. With frustration, he stalked the length of the antiquated lobby again. “Would you like more coffee, sir?”

He looked down at the Styrofoam cup in his hand that had been already filled twice with coffee several times more potent than he would ever obtain back home. The young clerk, a slender dark-haired lad that couldn’t have been in more than his early twenties, had made a pot of coffee just half an hour ago when he’d showed up. This storm was bothering him, and he undoubtedly was bothering the young desk clerk. “No, that’s all right.” Clearly, he was jumpy enough.

Mathias West didn’t like feeling trapped. He couldn’t book a flight out early, and he couldn’t roam the streets of New Orleans because of the storm. And he didn’t want to stop moving because if he did, it would only remind him of things he didn’t feel like facing, for instance, what a hollow sort of shamble his life was in. Ostensibly, he was a workaholic. He dated casually with no real intent of permanency because frankly it was easier and had become a habit. And usually, he was so busy that none of that was a problem unless, of course, things stopped like now.

He did not want this quiet time to reflect, but it seemed mother nature had other things in mind. So instead, he continued to stare out the window at the sheets of rain cascading off the pavement of Chartres St., trying to will it to move on, knowing full well what a futile waste of energy that was.

“Is there coffee?” He heard a decidedly feminine voice back in the vicinity of the front desk. He turned around, spying a tall slim, brunette woman at the small coffee station on the side of the long cherry wood desk. Amazing, another soul stirring in this bleak situation.

“How is the storm?” he heard her ask the young clerk, but he interrupted, answering rather intrusively.

“Wet and unmoving.”

Slowly, she turned around at the sound of his voice. Yes, tall, slender, pale skin and enormous eyes, lovely, he registered rather quickly. “Oh really, not moving?” she asked with surprise.

“Umm, no, Ma’am, actually,” the young clerk intervened. “The storm is moving. It will just take a day or so to completely clear out.”

He shrugged, turning back to the window, “Best listen to the expert,” he muttered.

And then, surprisingly, in just a few moments, she was standing next to him, coffee cup in hand. “I know it’s an inconvenience, but I do love the rain,” she murmured.

“This much of it?” he asked with sarcasm.

“I suppose that seems odd. But I find it, well, energizing, I suppose.” He couldn’t help but pick up on it. There was something just a bit wistful in her voice and a lovely intonation that seemed only characteristic of New Orleans, or so he’d surmised in the brief time he’d been in the city.

“Well, as it seems, we’ll be stranded here for a bit. I suppose I should introduce myself, Mathias West.” He didn’t bother to outstretch his hand as both of them were still holding coffee cups.

“What an interesting name,” she commented softly. “Olivia Blanchard,” she offered, smiling at him only briefly. And there was no denying it. Just that quickly, he was intrigued.

The small restaurant nestled in one corner of the Hotel St. Mariana opened around 7:00 AM. And as it was, they were the only partakers of breakfast. “I’ve been told to caution you that the hotel could lose electricity at any moment.” The young blond waitress told them rather gravely.

Liv smiled, sipping her orange juice. Across from her, her breakfast companion just gave a sort of grunt in acknowledgment. “Thank you,” Liv murmured just before the younger girl scurried away. Liv was only thirty-five, but she felt like Methuselah next to some of these young kids these days. Across from her, Mathias — still trying to wrap her brain around that name — drank his coffee. She wondered how he could drink so much of it, but then again, he did strike her as someone living a bit on the edge of things. “You know. It may just blow over with no power outages. It’s usually the wind that does damage.”

He nodded, “So I’ve heard. We get our share of storms, so they’re not completely alien to me. I just wasn’t expecting one here. Now, I mean. There wasn’t enough warning. It really threw a kink in things.”

“Yep, they do tend to get in the way,” she responded with the slightest tinge of humor in her voice. She was surprised to be sitting here with this man, this odd, cantankerous sort of individual. He’d caught her by surprise in the lobby, striking up a sort of pessimistic conversation about the weather when she’d joined him. They’d watched the storm roll in through the front window of The Hotel St. Mariana. “I’m sure tomorrow things will right themselves again.”

“Can I quote you on that, Olivia?” he’d said gruffly, though he lingered on her name a bit. He wasn’t really what most people would consider a handsome man — probably at least in his forties, bearded, dark brown hair, more on the husky side than slim, maybe just under six feet, she thought. And exuding, what was it, a sort of direct, disgruntled demeanor. She’d thought to herself like an angry bear, but it didn’t bother her. She was a teacher and used to fielding all types of personalities.

“No, you better not, just in case I end up being wrong.”

He’d looked at her a little oddly at her comment, assessing, she thought. Most people tended to dig in on their opinions, but she wasn’t nearly that committed to off-handed remarks. “Are you local?” he’d asked.

“Yes,” she smiled, “native to New Orleans.”

“I could almost pick up that peculiar accent. It’s not exactly Southern.”

She smiled, oddly amused at being described as peculiar. “Well, southern covers a lot of territory. Though I admit, we’re different than most anything else around us. And you are from?”

“Up North, Maryland originally, now Boston. I was in for a convention, supposed to be a sort of vacation.”

“Thus, the frustration,” she murmured lightly.

And it continued on, small talk. He worked for the Boston Globe as an editor, and she was a teacher at a community college. She expected him to be dismissive of that, many were, but he wasn’t, just continued to ask more questions. Of course, she didn’t flatter herself that he was really interested. It was clear to her that Mathias West desperately needed a distraction, and she just happened to fit the bill at the moment. After all, in truth, a distraction suited her as well.

She glanced around the small restaurant. Yes, she and Mathias West were indeed the only individuals here. So strange, she hadn’t even intended to leave her room that morning, but then the strongest restlessness had flooded over her, a need to ramble and explore, so much that it felt impossible to resist. She sipped her cool frothy orange juice and thought how lovely and indulgent a Mimosa would be just now. After all, she was now a free agent of the freest kind.

“Well, Olivia Blanchard,” he said casually, stirring his coffee, “you haven’t told me if there is a Mr. Blanchard.”

She glanced up, feeling just a little jolted, but again, she’d forgotten that the angry bear was direct and had no southern sensibilities of tactfulness, which suited her just now. She was tired of careful people. “No, no Mr. West, just me.”

Mathias waited, looking at her for an instant, expecting her to continue, then finally filling in. “Well, Olivia, I should tell you that I wasn’t always an editor. I started as an investigative reporter in my younger days and can’t shake the feeling that your response wasn’t a hard No but rather a soft one.”

“A soft one?” she questioned.

“More story there,” he elaborated.

She glanced around, wishing distractedly the waitress would come with her hash browns and eggs. She didn’t usually eat much breakfast, but for some reason, she felt like indulging, just like the hotel, an indulgence. Oh yes, back to his prying, “I’m not sure what you mean, Mr. West.” She said softly with an elusive smile but then noticed that he was studying her quietly, probably waiting for an answer that sounded reasonable. Well, she shouldn’t be surprised. Again, what else were they going to do today except perhaps dig up a stranger’s skeletons in the closet? “I’m recently divorced,” she offered quickly.

He nodded slightly as though she’d only acknowledged what he’d picked up on. “Yep, divorce is its special kind of hell, never easy.”

“Personal experience?” she asked, not overly concerned if she was now prying. It was only fair, and tactfulness seemed out the window here. It wasn’t as if they ran in the same circles or ever would. So, what if she offended him? Though oddly, her impression was that offending him might be difficult to do.

“About eight years ago, we’d been married just out of college, then, well, it just sort of fell apart.”

“My husband and I had been married just short of ten years. It was final, I guess, about a month ago.”

“Children?” he asked calmly.

“No, I, well, we tried. I lost a baby close to term once. Then there was another miscarriage. Just didn’t seem to be in the cards.”

His eyes seemed to change a bit. They were light-colored, maybe blue, or green, but she wasn’t sure. “That must have been difficult,” he said, maybe in a comforting way. It was challenging to tell with him. She suspected it wasn’t his nature to comfort, but she could be wrong. She didn’t have the best track record in reading people, her ex-husband being a prime example.

“Yes, it was, but the marriage wasn’t good. Children would have — I don’t know.”

“Made it complicated?”

She sighed, smiling a bit, funny feeling confiding in a stranger. It wasn’t her nature to be so unguarded. But now, with the storm, in this lovely little hotel so far apart from the way she’d always lived, it didn’t seem to matter all that much. “I would have loved children, but, yes, it would have made it difficult. Ryan and I were leading separate lives. And he, well, just went off and fell in love with someone else.”

His eyes were so fixed on her as though he was intently listening to what she was saying. It was odd that amount of attention. “I’m sorry, Olivia. That sounds like a very painful time.”

She smiled, “Most people I know call me Liv. Olivia seems very formal.”

He nodded, “Liv,” as though considering if, indeed, he felt comfortable with the sound of it on his lips, and then the food arrived, and the intense conversation stopped for the moment.

The storm continued to rage outside. Once in a while, he could hear it rattling, but it felt different now. All the irritation and frustration he indulged earlier was being stripped away. Liv? Did he dare tell her he preferred Olivia? Did he dare tell her that she was entrancing him with her candidness, with the lovely intoxicating tone of her voice? That a forty-three-year-old man was developing an intense crush on a perfect stranger, with emphasis on the word perfect.

This was ridiculous at his age. But he wanted to excoriate the ex-husband and thank him profusely for letting her go and throwing her in his path. She was quiet now, eating her breakfast, and he knew she was wondering if she’d made a mistake sharing the raw and painful part of her life that she was still dealing with. He was a middle-aged man and felt like he was in entirely new territory. He knew people and how to read people. But this, what was going on here, was new. “So, you’re leaving tomorrow?” she asked, her eyes wide. They were hazel, with flecks of dark green throughout.

“I’m not sure. There was a convention and meetings scheduled through the weekend, but I have a feeling all of it might be cancelled.”

She smiled, “Pity you can’t see more of the city. Have you been here before?”

“No, I haven’t. I wasn’t planning sightseeing, but I could be stranded a little while.”

“There are worse places to be.”

He moved his scrambled eggs around on the plate a bit. He’d ordered as she had, but not really hungry, and right now not at all interested in his food. And then he asked the question he’d wanted to ask for some time. “So, you live here in New Orleans, Liv?”

“Yes, well, in Metairie, I have a townhouse.”

“So, you’re here at this hotel. Why exactly?”

She paused, looking at him strangely. She was used to being judged. He could feel her wariness on his skin. He did have instincts as he called them. “I guess that seems strange to you.”

“No, not necessarily. I’m just curious, trying to put all the pieces together.”

“Pieces?”

“Lovely woman, all alone in this little boutique hotel buried in the French Quarter. I’m just nosy I guess.”

She smiled tentatively again, looking down at her plate, then glancing up at him almost shyly, deciding whether to trust him or whether it mattered if she could. “I just needed something different, a break, away from the old life — from people, from old things. I wanted something for me, completely out of the ordinary. I guess that sounds a bit self-indulgent.”

He shook his head slowly. “No, I booked this hotel away from the convention center, away from people I might know, for something different as well. To breathe different air for a little while.”

She stared at him, considering, he thought, that maybe under all his gruffness, there might be something there, something quizzically kindred. “That’s it exactly, to breathe different air. You do understand.”

“Yes, of course, I do, Olivia.”

He left the doors leading out to the balcony open in his room. The breeze from the rain outside helped to keep the room cooler. Just after his entrancing breakfast with Olivia Blanchard, the building did indeed lose electricity. He and Olivia had taken the stairs to the second floor, where they both had rooms. He’d escorted her to her door at the other end of the hall, wondering distractedly how to prolong their exchange.

“Are you a fan of cards?”

She’d smiled, indulgently he thought. “Only if I’m winning.”

“Seeing as we’re a bit trapped here, maybe I can test your skill later.”

She stood in the narrow hallway, looking at him in a way that made him wish they weren’t parting just now. “That sounds intriguing, Mr. West. You know where I am.” And then she’d left him to his own devices. Oddly, he wasn’t thinking anymore about his frustration, about being trapped here, unable to get on with things. Now, he was thinking about how long to wait before going down the hall to knock on Olivia Blanchard’s door.

She had opened the French balcony doors to allow some manner of light to creep into the hotel room. Outside, the storm raged, but she felt as though that veil of depression that had been hanging on her for months had been lightened. She smiled to herself. Suddenly, she felt young again, engaging, attractive. Angry Bear, she laughed — thinking about the man just down the hall that seemed anything but that now. In the short time they’d spent together downstairs in the lobby, then the dining room, she’d begun to see beneath the layers. He was incredibly sharp, to the point, insightful, compassionate, funny, and incredibly good-looking. And leaving for Massachusetts in probably a day. She was being silly, but it felt so good to be seen for a change, to be listened to, to not be judged by a lifetime of baggage.

She stood by the open doorway, feeling the soft mist of rain caressing her face. She was tired, but she didn’t want to sleep. She wanted to jump in headfirst. Of course, she didn’t know his room number. Maybe she could figure it out. And then, a bit unexpectedly, she heard a soft knock.

She whisked open the hotel door without hesitation. He was standing in the hallway with a deck of cards in his hands and a can of cashews. “I picked these up at the airport. They’re my weakness. But I can come back later if you’d like to rest.”

“No, maybe it’s the storm, but I can’t sleep. Come in. We can pass the time,” she said tentatively.

And then he looked at her warmly, making her melt a bit inside. This probably wasn’t the best idea, wasn’t safe, but she craved, needed to feel alive for a change.

As the day stretched on, the rain continued to pound outside the hotel with shifting levels of intensity. But it went unnoticed as they whiled away the morning playing cards. At first, on the coffee table that stretched in front of the white loveseat in what she would term the sitting room of her tiny suite, then later across the great white puffy comforter of her double bed, as it was more comfortable for leaning and resting with the large down stuffed pillows.

Was it improper?

The idea had not even crossed Olivia’s mind. Maybe she should be more careful. After all, what did she really know about this man, except that on the whole he was good at poker, not at gin, and a bit clueless about stealing casino, though he did seem to be catching on.

She was sitting on the bed, shoes off, leaning back against the headboard, while Mathias sat at the foot of the bed perched on one arm. He’d gotten rid of his sports jacket early on and rolled up the sleeves of a button-down blue shirt as the room was getting stuffy from the lack of air. They’d both gotten bottles of water from the mini-fridge, taking advantage while it was still cool.

Her mother would think her mad, allowing a stranger to spend so much time in her hotel room, but at the moment, she didn’t wish to think about her mother. And her less-than-supportive antics during her separation.

“So, I can pick up the ten and the two cards that add up to it,” he said with such a focused expression that made her want to giggle.

“Yes, all that.”

He glanced up with a furrowed brow. “Now, don’t laugh at me. I’m an amateur here.”

“No, Mathias, I saw you play poker. I definitely wouldn’t call you an amateur. So, no one ever calls you by a nickname, just Mathias.”

He nodded solemnly, still focused on the cards. Evidently, he was taking this very seriously. “Yes, nothing ever seemed to fit me. So, I was stuck with Mathias.”

She took a sip of the water that was now becoming less than cool. “It’s going to get pretty muggy in here with no air.”

He straightened up, having collected his pile of cards and added them to a very meager stack on the side. “Yes, I’ve noticed that about your climate here, very sultry.”

“The word is humid, and yes, it can be daunting even in the Fall.”

“The Fall is lovely up north,” he murmured. “You should come see it.”

She looked at him a bit oddly. The talk had been rather superficial, nothing as deep as what they’d perused over breakfast. But she’d felt a slight shift in his tone. “I’ve been up as far north as North Carolina, but that’s it.”

“Your turn,” he said. Then as she quickly picked up a card, he added, “I’d be happy to show you around Olivia Blanchard if you’d like to see it.”

She glanced up with a bit of surprise. That was direct, but then again, he was quite direct. “But you barely know me, Mathias,” she said lightly, taken aback by the draw she was feeling to this “stranger.” But a “stranger” who undeniably felt like someone remarkably familiar.

And then, quite unexpectedly, he reached out, covering her hand with his, and she felt an overwhelming response to the sudden contact. Was it attraction? She didn’t know. She’d never felt this before, this soothing feeling emanating into her skin through his touch, electric, maybe, but calming, relaxing. “Oddly, it doesn’t feel that way.”

She hesitated, nodding a bit, acknowledging the unchartered nature of their situation. Was she being silly? Probably, but she felt inclined to push away all those fearful voices that difficult life experiences had hammered into her head. They were the ones telling her to second guess everything she felt or thought, the ones telling her that somehow she was unworthy of feeling good or having happiness. All of them felt so easy to drown out at the moment.

“You’re thinking way too much, Olivia,” he murmured. His voice had that rich, deep timbre that seemed to reach inside her.

She smiled shyly, “Picked that up, did you?”

He squeezed her hand a bit. “I can literally feel it on you and, of course, see it in your eyes. They’re so easy to read.”

“Guileless,” she muttered.

“I would have said entrancing.” And then he reached over, lightly touching her face and pulling her in for the softest kiss. She couldn’t remember what she should do, couldn’t remember who she was before this moment, only that she sank into the comfort, sank deeply into the possibility.

Olivia knew things, knew she should stop, knew this would probably end in heartbreak for her if she let herself — what was the word, feel?

“It’s all right,” he whispered, pushing the cards onto the floor of the hotel room, and pulling her closer to him, his hands on her sides.

She breathed in deeply. What could she do? What did she want to do? Again, his mouth was on hers, more insistent, magnetic, pulling her intently toward him. And then there was the swirl, like the storm outside, that just blotted away everything, blotted away memory, concern, and allowed her to respond as if this moment between them was all there was.

She kissed him back, pulling him more securely to her, against her. All was forgotten, and all was remembered as they began to find peace in each other’s arms.

He quietly watched her lying next to him asleep. Mathias could still hear the storm raging outside. The doors on the balcony patio were partially opened. But inside the room, it was calm. He was perfectly content to be still now. He wasn’t thinking to the next moment, rushing onward, plotting, strategizing beyond this place. It was perfectly novel to him. He was content.

She shifted in her sleep, and then her eyes fluttered open. They were so lovely, deep, warm, and vulnerable. He remembered holding her so close just a little while ago, the passion and gentleness in her eyes as he made love to her. He wasn’t the sort of man who liked to deceive himself, and it was clear, even to him, that he’d fallen in love, maybe for the first time in his life. What a predicament, what a glorious predicament.

She moved again beside him, then murmured. “What time is it, Mathias?”

“I have no idea,” he whispered huskily, reaching over to her again and pulling her against him. He was determined to take everything this moment had to offer.

She was hungry. On and off during the evening, they had raided the min-fridge in her room, then he had done the same returning with an assortment of cookies and crackers from his. And they had lived off of these for the rest of the evening.

“Any chance we could find something else to eat downstairs?” she asked.

Mathias was across the room looking out the balcony, wearing his shirt untucked over his pants. For the balance of the day, they’d worn a lot less. It made her cheeks warm. Even when she’d been married, she couldn’t remember having spent such an intensely intimate day. She pulled the sheet up a little higher. “I suppose we could get dressed and go foraging.”

She laughed, “Sounds like a lot of effort. How does it look out there?”

“Still raining, still wet, but the sun is trying to make its way out.”

“Too bad. I’ve decided yesterday was my favorite day ever. Don’t really want it to end.”

He turned back to her coming to sit on the edge of the bed, then taking her hand in his. “My favorite day ever as well Olivia. But it doesn’t have to be the only one.”

“Why don’t you come back to bed Mathias?” she smiled. She didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to think about what this meant, could mean, anything really. She just wanted to continue to be simply happy.

“I thought you were hungry.”

She pulled on his arm. “It will keep.” And he complied, rather easily, she thought.

They slept again. And Olivia dreamed of the storm. She could see it rolling over the landscape, not like a usual hurricane but like a great steamroller of turbulent clouds breaking through the land, through her townhouse where she lived, through the school where she taught, her car, her mother’s house, the quaint little house where she used to live with Ryan uptown. All of it was crushed, demolished, with nothing left. It was devastating, but strangely she didn’t feel devastated. She felt relieved as all those old bondages, things that weighed her down, were purged from the landscape, and she was left ready to start over.

She woke up with a start. Mathias was not next to her, and her heart lurched in panic. Maybe he’d left. Maybe he’d decided their “fun” night was over. Then she heard rattling in the bathroom, and he walked out.

She bunched the bedsheets in her hands. But didn’t feel relief. “I didn’t want to wake you,” he said, smiling. Then his expression changed as he sat down next to her on the bed, “What’s wrong?”

“Honestly?” she asked.

“Of course,” he said, lightly brushing her face with his fingertips.

“For a moment, I thought you’d left.”

“Really? Why would you think that?”

“I don’t know. This, last night, yesterday, it’s all new territory for me. Was it a fling? Two people trapped in a storm whiling away the time. Or, or was it—”

“Something more,” he filled in. “What do you want it to be, Olivia?”

“I think I want you to tell me what you want it to be first,” she stammered. “This is all scary new terrain for me. I’m quite sure I don’t have to say this, but it’s not my normal way of doing things.”

He took her hand in his, murmuring, “No, not you don’t have to say it. I don’t want you to feel afraid. Honestly, it’s new for me as well. I can’t ever remember feeling this way, feeling such a profound draw to someone as I do to you.”

“So, what now?” she whispered.

“We need to talk and make plans. I want you to come back to Boston with me.”

She leaned back against the pillows. “Really, just like that?”

He nodded slowly, “Yes, just like that, I can take some time off, several weeks, spend it helping you to get things in order, then we can go.”

“Just upend my life.”

His expression hardened a bit as though he were considering. “Is it a life worth preserving?”

She frowned at his bluntness. “I don’t know, Mathias. That’s a lot of change.”

“You asked what I want. I think I’m making it clear that I want you.”

“So, I move to Boston. What, then, we live together? I’m not really keen on that.”

“Then let’s get married.”

“I just got unmarried.”

“Then I’ll find you a place there for a while and help you find a job until—” he sighed deeply, running his hand through his thick hair. “Look, I haven’t had the time to figure this out beyond I want to be with you, perhaps need to be with you, Olivia. The question is what do you want.”

She pursed her lips. Old habits die hard. She was afraid, afraid to leap. “Right now, I want to get dressed and get something to eat.” Suddenly, she heard a quick sizzle, almost like a zap, and then the electricity flashed on.

He looked up a little darkly. “Well, I guess we’re back to real life,” he commented dryly.

Mathias plugged in his cell phone, whose battery had depleted some time before, and took a shower. He’d left Olivia in her room to do the same. He sensed that she needed a little time to herself, to consider what they’d discussed.

For him, it seemed obvious, black and white. They should be together, even if that meant uprooting her to do it. Maybe her roots here were deeper than he suspected. Maybe it was an old habit, being comforted by the familiar, even if it was miserable, though he hoped this was not the case.

But the time they’d spent together had been a revelation for him. He was old enough to be able to sense the extraordinary. It wasn’t just the intimacy, though he had to admit that was unparalleled. But it was mostly the extraordinary connection that he felt just being near her, talking to her. He had always heard the word kindred but didn’t truly understand what it meant until now.

But he did know how to fight, how to be tenacious, and how to get what he wanted. And what he wanted was Olivia Blanchard. He just had to figure out how to convince her.

She dressed slowly, deliberately. They were to meet downstairs in half an hour, and she had to say something. “What do you want, Olivia?” he’d asked. Had she answered? What did she want?

She wanted to go back to last night when everything was simple, and they were just together, with no past, no future.

She thought again about her dream. About the great storm rolling through and pummeling her life. Was that what Mathias was — a great storm flattening her old life? But in the dream, she didn’t seem to mind. She felt unfettered, free. All she had to do was leap. But did she even have that in her anymore? To leap?

He waited for her in the lobby, noting a different clerk at the desk this morning, a rather tall blond-haired boy, still young. He passed by the coffee. He didn’t want it. He felt more than awake already. Outside, the sky seemed bright and rosy. One would scarcely know that a storm had blown through.

He wandered up to the desk, the young man seeming enmeshed in the laptop. “Well, I guess the storm has passed.”

The boy glanced up, plastering on a friendly smile. “Sir?”

“The storm from yesterday, the tropical storm, Selene, or whatever they called it. It’s passed.”

Confusion seemed to furrow his young brow. “Storm, sir? I’m sorry I don’t know what—”

“Now come on. It knocked the lights out last night.”

“What’s the matter Mathias?” Suddenly, Olivia was right at his elbow. He hadn’t even heard her approach.

“This young man seems to be playing a prank on me. Not very funny if you ask me.”

“No sir, I’m sorry. I wasn’t here yesterday, but I assure you there was no storm. It was a beautiful sunny day.”

“Now look—”

She grabbed his arm firmly. “Mathias, come here. Let’s get something to eat.”

“Olivia.”

“It’s all right,” she murmured, pulling at him. “It’s all right.”

“I don’t understand,” he grumbled. “How ridiculous.”

It was quite bizarre. Olivia felt dizzy. She remembered the storm yesterday, the time when the lights were out — all the hours they spent together in bed, and the weather was raging outside. But then she remembered dreaming about the storm, and suddenly it all felt confusing.

“You remember it, don’t you? When we met downstairs in the lobby, we watched the rain.”

Vaguely now, she remembered but thinking about it made her head spin. Maybe it was hunger. That was why. They hadn’t eaten, had they? “I—I think so.”

Mathias reached into his pocket for his phone. He could check the news. That would confirm it and settle all this nonsense. But then he remembered that he’d plugged it in upstairs. “I have to get my phone.”

“I’ll wait for you.”

“No, no,” he said, grabbing her arm. It was ludicrous, but in all the confusion, he didn’t want her slipping away as well.

Mathias was a man that hung onto the facts. It made him feel grounded in his work and his life. But now, out of the blue, things felt indefinite, not grounded, as unstable as sand.

He held onto Olivia, though, pulled her to his side, and wrapped his arm around her back in the elevator. She wasn’t saying much.

“You do remember, don’t you?”

And she would whisper, “Yes, of course,” but it sounded hesitant. Was he losing it? Had he had some sort of bizarre stroke that tampered with his well-ordered memory?

By the time they got to his room, his head was spinning with disorientation. He moved quickly across the space to the phone on the end table. There were several voicemails. He looked at Olivia with concern, who had immediately sat down on the edge of the bed.

Quickly, he listened intently to the voicemails. “Mathias, where are you, buddy? You missed the first two meetings at the Conference Center. Are you all right?”

Then, “Mathias, it’s after lunch. Are you going to be a no-show all day?”

And lastly, “Mathias, it’s Todd. Call me back.”

He stared at the phone as if it were a viper, letting it slip out of his fingers onto the bed. He stared wide-eyed at Olivia. “What’s happening?”

She shook her head. “I’m so tired. Can we sleep?” Abruptly, he pulled her into his arms, and they laid down.

Olivia stood on a hill overlooking the city below. It vaguely registered that it wasn’t a landscape that was literal but rather symbolic.

“What are we looking at?”

Mathias was beside her this time. “The path of the storm,” she answered.

“I don’t see it,” he stated flatly.

She smiled, “Don’t you see it’s changed everything, remade what was.”

“Has it?”

She took his hand. She could see it clearly, but it might take Mathias a while. But she’d be with him to help.

Slowly, she opened her eyes. Her head pounded, oh yes, with hunger. They still hadn’t eaten. Mathias was sitting up beside her, looking around. “I guess I better let them know I won’t be making the conference.”

She took his hand. “Let’s go slow. First, let’s get breakfast, and then figure out our next step.”

He nodded, pulling up her hand to kiss it. “I can’t quite remember Olivia. Was there ever a storm?”

“I think there was, but not exactly the way we thought it was.”

“The Storm” first appeared in a collection of short stories entitled Appointment with the Unknown: The Hotel Stories.

Follow the unpredictable lure of the supernatural in this collection of Hotel Stories.

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Halloween Month – The Broken Window

October 1, 2022

It’s that spooky season again and Halloween Month here at evelynklebert.com. Every week I’ll be posting a creepy/paranormal short story. My first story features my favorite werewolf Ethan Garraint as well as some of his more unusual friends. I hope you enjoy, “The Broken Window.”

The Broken Window

“I’m not sure, not at all sure what the problem is.”

“Is it the glass?”

“Doesn’t seem to be. It’s made of the same glass as all the other windows along the wall.”

“Perhaps the sizing of the glass is off.”

“I don’t know. That seems to be a bit unlikely. After all, this is the third time.”

“Are you serious? The third time?”

“Yes Ma’am, last Thursday, Tuesday, and then today.”

Moira frowned. It was Saturday evening at the East Bank Regional Public Library, and she was staring at a two-story tall wall of plate glass windows — in particular, one pane whose glass was not shattered but oddly cracked from the center out.

“You want me to put up the yellow tape?”

She shrugged with distraction. “I suppose. I’ll call someone to fix it, but it’s the weekend. They probably won’t do anything until Monday.” She continued to stare for a moment, oddly transfixed for some inexplicable reason. After all, it was just a window. It didn’t mean anything.

Moira was a part-time librarian at the library, at least for the present. Her plans were uncertain, her life in flux. She didn’t intend to make a career here, just fill a gap or a chasm as she often looked at it. She’d actually only been working here a month, and the window problem. Well, the night watchman had indicated it had started about two weeks ago. She tapped her pen on the wooden counter in front of her, just two weeks.

“Working late tonight Moira?”

She glanced up from the computer terminal where she’d been constructing an inventory form. “Yes, until nine. How about you?”

Sally Clark stared at her with that wild animated look that she always seemed to possess. “No, no, I’m out of here at six. Wish you were coming. My boyfriend has a friend—”

Her voice droned on in Moira’s ears, but she had tuned her out. Sally was, well, predictable. She was closing in on forty, and although Moira was only several years her junior, she looked on in trepidation with anyone Sally could set her up with. Sally was a lovely woman, but Moira was sure their taste in men might not even rub elbows in this universe.

She snapped a book closed, looking up at Sally, whose hair had been dyed an odd reddish-blonde color when Moira wasn’t paying attention. But it seemed as if she’d concluded her ramble. “You have a great evening.”

“Maybe some other time,” Sally tacked on enthusiastically. She was actually a nice lady, and Moira should be nicer. But, well, she wasn’t. So instead of responding, she just smiled, waiting patiently for her co-worker to exit.

It was Saturday evening, but the staff tonight in the whole two-story structure of the East Bank library would be there tonight; however, only four, as opposed to the usual six, were closing.

The desk in reference where she stood had a clear view of that problematic cracked window. It was odd, disturbing, and alerted her to something deep within her skin that perhaps told her it was time to move on, although she’d only been here a mere month.

She sighed deeply from somewhere at her core, glancing down at her hands that were spread out on the wooden counter. And there, right on the ring finger was a tell-tale white mark indicating where a band had once been, a band that was now missing.

Instinctively she balled her left hand up in a fist almost protectively.

She ran her hand through her short brown hair. It was a sensible haircut that she’d gotten just before she came to work here. After all, if Moira Archer wanted to be a librarian, she needed to look the part. But she missed her hair, her long auburn-colored hair that she’d dyed a shade of dark brown. It was best not to stand out. Nervously, she strummed her fingers again on the counter, staring at the broken window, broken strangely, almost as if it imploded internally from pressure but pressure from an odd point.

She breathed in deeply. It was unfortunate because she’d hoped to stay longer. It was unfortunate but unavoidable. Tonight, after work, she would go home to her small apartment on West Napoleon Avenue, pack up her car and leave. She would leave behind the furniture that she’d just bought and decorated with, leave behind the friends, although just a handful that she’d just begun to make, leave behind everything, and start over somewhere else. She thought perhaps of the mountains, maybe driving up into the Ozarks. There it would be more difficult. There were so many varying energies that would block things. But then again, that was why she’d come to New Orleans with the same thought, perhaps if she’d settled deeper in the city.

But she shook these second guesses out of her mind. The broken window could be a coincidence, but she was not in a position to gamble.

She tried to focus on the screen in front of her. It was just after six. She just needed to get through the next three hours, although she was not beyond walking out. That indeed was a possibility.

Again she stared at the computer screen in front of her, mind cluttered, unable to concentrate. It wasn’t as if it mattered if she worked much tonight. She’d already decided she was leaving. And the fatality of that understanding left her with a heavy heart. She liked her little apartment with its light wicker furniture and the pretty floral pictures she’d hung on its walls. It felt like life.

She shook her head and headed to a shelving cart by the side of the desk. This she could do right now. It required little brain power.

The long aisles of the library were narrow and smelled musty to him — but then again, his sense of smell was of the acutest kind, a blessing and a curse. Of course, he thought with little humor; this seemed to be the theme of his life.

Ethan wore a long trench coat of which he was of half a mind to divest himself. After all, he had spent enough time over the centuries in Southern Louisiana to be aware of its humid climate. It was only two days until Halloween, late October, and still summer as far as this area of North America was concerned. But he was on a delicate mission, and so as his indulgent nature demanded, he had wanted to dress the part.

Then on the other hand, he was also suffocating, so in expediency, Ethan pulled off the trench coat and flipped it over his arm shaking out his longish blonde hair. He checked his watch — eight o clock. Well, that gave him about an hour to exercise his diplomatic powers. Lucky for him, there would be no full moon this Hallow’s Eve. A full moon on that particular night or in the days leading up to it could be particularly, well in his case, unraveling.

He took in a deep whiff of the musty air around him, trying to focus beyond the well-worn stench of book covers that had been untouched for far too long.

No, it was beyond the human occupants of this building where he focused, well beyond.

A slight smile crossed his lips. Yes, he had marked her.

Moira was trying to relax, but her skin prickled. For some time, the mindless shelving of books had placed her into a sort of thoughtless reverie. But that had seemed to pass now. Something had changed. Only four were on duty tonight, but they could close up without her if she feigned illness. She moved the cart of books she’d been pushing around all evening around the corner of a bookshelf, then stopped.

Several sections of books away down at the other end of the long stretch was a man, a tall blondish man dressed in black with a coat draped over his arm.

She didn’t know who he was, but she could clearly see what he was — a werewolf standing right in the middle of the East Bank Regional Library.

Moira took a deep breath and braced herself. After all, they were in a public place, and the last she’d checked, the moon was at a very slim crescent. So all she had to do was play dumb — be the reclusive little librarian that she had chosen to be.

She glanced at the stranger, a brief acknowledging smile, then turned to her task of shelving books, focusing intently. Perhaps his presence here had nothing to do with her; maybe it was one of those odd random coincidences that the universe seemed intent on perpetrating on ordinary folk.

Another deep breath to stabilize her, yes indeed, that was what she had chosen to be, ordinary folk — just like Sally, or dour Tom at the front desk, or combative Jessica Renard up in Special Collections. Yes, indeed extraordinary in their unique ordinariness.

She grasped the three hardback Nora Robert’s novels from the cart and placed them on the shelf. Then she froze, on the spot still facing forward. But she could feel it all over her back, as tangible as if he’d directly placed his hands there. Of course, he hadn’t. He was just standing there quietly, now behind her.

With little choice, she slowly turned to face him. He looked to be in his thirties, bearded with a mustache, longish blonde hair grazing the top of the black turtleneck he wore. And his eyes, which she was close enough to see, were an eerie blue-gray color staring at her as though he hadn’t a care in the world.

And everything, still everything about him screamed wolf to her.

“Can I help you with something?” she asked softly.

It was odd what hit her most acutely in the next moment. A touch of compassion seemed to reach his eyes — something she found most unexpected. “I think perhaps maybe I can help you, Moira Archer, is it?”

It was a strange moment filled with some duality. Indeed there was the disappointment that her hopes had been crushed. Oddly enough, and there was no denying her existence had always been filled to the brim with oddities, she also felt a measure of relief.

Although she’d pegged him as a werewolf, she was also sensing no malice, no threat — quite unexpected.

Ethan felt oddly frustrated as a lingering thought floated through his mind. “Why were all the good ones taken?”

There was a coffee shop or a small coffee bar with accompanying tables situated in the library’s foyer. He and the woman who was calling herself Moira Archer sat there. She sipped a hot mug of peppermint tea and he, a hot coffee mocha, something that called itself coffee but tasted a bit more like hot chocolate. But given that he’d nurtured his sweet tooth through the many centuries of his existence, it suited him well.

A brief interlude having a sweet and spending time with an intriguing woman didn’t seem like a bad deal for an old lycanthrope like himself.

“So,” he smiled engagingly, “how do you like the city?”

She slowly placed her hot, in fact still steaming cup of tea on the table and stared at him with eyes that were large and dark, but for some odd reason, reminded him of some strange violet tone. Of course, that couldn’t be so — what human had violet-colored eyes? And then he stopped himself. Yes, what human indeed?

“My break isn’t that long, Mr.— I’m sorry, what did you say your name was again?”

“Ethan Garraint.”

She nodded slowly. “And may I assume that you were sent here by—” she paused, so he obligingly filled in. After all, there wasn’t time to be coy. In fact, there didn’t seem to be time for much of anything.

“Well, actually, an old friend — your husband.”

Her face showed no surprise, in fact, not much emotion of any kind. But then again, for a woman like this, it was most predictable that her husband would attempt to get her back.

“I am not wholly unacquainted with my husband’s acquaintances, but I don’t recall—.”

“We go way back,” he replied, taking a quick sip of the cocoa/coffee concoction. “Actually, early Renaissance, in Italy, we first crossed paths.”

“I see,” she pronounced a bit definitively. “I’ll get to the point, Mr.—”

“Ethan,” he interrupted. He had to get this on a friendlier plateau, or it would be a wasted effort before he even began.

“Ethan, you can tell my husband that I am not —”

“Yes, yes, that you are not coming back.”

Now she looked at him a bit oddly. Finally, he’d said something that had elicited a reaction. “Yes, isn’t that why you are here?”

“Well, Moira, not exactly, he is concerned about you. You see, it seems your absence has created a bit of, well, imbalance.” He sighed deeply, trying to find the appropriate avenue to navigate around the truth.

Her brow wrinkled slightly, but it did nothing to mar her delicate loveliness. He was not at all at a loss to explain his friend’s fascination, dare he say, obsession with the woman before him.

“What do you mean imbalance?”

He leaned in a bit closer to her. “Moira, haven’t you felt ever since you’d left that you were being followed?”

A slight downturn of her finely shaped lips, “Well, yes but I thought that was just him, well, trying to get me to come home. After all, he sent you.”

“Yes, but he sent me to warn you. He hasn’t been trying to get you back, just protect you.”

There was a hesitation, clearly a moment to soak in unconsidered information. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Ethan,” she almost rasped out in what he unmistakably pegged as mild panic.

“Think Moira, the window. They’re coming for you — the minions breaking in from their dimension to disrupt the order of things.”

Again she stared at him with violet-colored eyes. Perhaps they were violet, and with indulgence, he thought perhaps he was the only one who could see that.

She leaned back a bit in her chair, contemplating, he thought, sipping her tea. “What are you trying to say that to restore the natural order of things I have to return?”

He shrugged a bit. Who was he to get in the middle of another’s marital discord? He’d tried it himself once so long ago and found not only was it impractical for a werewolf, but he wasn’t exactly the best marital material. “I don’t know if it’s that simple, Moira. It has more to do with discord, ill-feelings. If you both could come to an understanding, it might stabilize things.”

And then the unexpected happened. Her wide violet-colored eyes seemed to tear up as she shook her head. “You don’t understand, Ethan. I am a free spirit — a creature of the light.”

He smiled a bit sadly. She tugged at his heart, and he truly wished he could tell her what she wanted to hear. But as it was, “I do understand Moira. But I also understand that each of our lives comes with burdens. Burdens we must learn to carry.”

She stared at him a moment, so long that he wondered if she’d understood what he’d said. And then she stood up, “It was good of you to come, Mr. Garraint. I will certainly consider what you have told me.” And then she walked away, and he took one more sip of his coffee before he gathered his things and left.

As Ethan exited the library doors, a chill hit him that he had not expected. It seemed that when he arrived, it would be a balmy autumn night which was not so unusual for this part of the country. But something in the air had changed; something that he had an instinctual feeling had nothing whatsoever to do with the weather.

Slowly he descended the granite steps, never letting his eyes leave the shadows which seemed to be unnaturally gathering in the parking lot. Once he reached level ground, he waited patiently for what exactly he had no idea. But something, every inch of his skin, told him something was on its way.

Then finally, as if in direct answer to his anticipation, a figure stepped out of the darkness — a tall, lean man dressed rather immaculately in a grey suit with shoulder-length black hair.

He breathed a sigh of relief that would be tangible to no one but himself. It wasn’t exactly that the new arrival was devoid of danger — just not particularly dangerous to him. After all, he was simply a bit player in this particular drama.

Being in no particular hurry, Ethan Garraint waited patiently for the man to approach, who, when doing so, paused just in front of him with a very slight smile crossing a particularly distinguished face.

“You might have given it a bit more time,” Ethan directed toward this very old acquaintance, although in reality, the man physically didn’t look a day over forty.

“There isn’t time,” he responded with a sereneness that Ethan always recalled seemed to be present in his manner.

Even in the very pale lamplight of the library steps, he could see the very dark blue eyes that he remembered his old friend possessing. It was the most animated aspect of his persona, those eyes that seemed to stretch deeply into infinity if you were foolish enough to gaze too deeply within.

“Well, that’s a pity Nathaniel. She is confused and could use more time.”

He nodded slowly, staring beyond him towards the library’s front doors. “There is no choice. Even now, the others are planning their strike. If they succeed —” then he stopped.

Ethan instinctively reached out and patted his friend’s shoulder, instantly recognizing the chill he’d sensed in the air earlier. Of course, it had emanated from this ancient and powerful being. “Then let’s make sure they don’t.”

The deep blue eyes focused on him again. He felt compelled, even drawn to a place where his particular immortality had prevented him from ever finding — that place beyond in another sort of eternity that undeniably a part of him craved.

“Did you pave the way?”

He hesitated. Had he indeed done all he could have? Hard to say, not knowing what the outcome might be. “I did my best Nathaniel. The rest is up to you.” Then he stepped away from him, donning the trench coat he’d been carrying across his arm, and headed toward the shadows before him. However, he paused for just an instant and called over his shoulder.

“Nathaniel, I have no evidence of this, but I feel it. I believe she still loves you.”

And then he continued to walk away, not particularly interested in waiting for a response because the dominant emotion he felt at the moment was envy.

Moira Archer’s head began to swim. It was just thirty minutes until closing and then — and then. There was the rub. What would she do? Where would she go?

So much she had deliberately blocked from her mind so she could do what she wanted. Her legs felt like lead as she walked, was compelled to go there — just take one more look to see if what Ethan Garraint had told her could possibly be true.

She moved beyond the information desk to right in front of the tall wall of glass where the fracture had occurred.

Her eyes slowly drifted into another state of seeing. Now it became more apparent. It was a glowing light, gathering, not outside, not inside but within the cracks of the panes — glowing like some strange insects, fireflies perhaps, but those which gave off a ruddy, irritated-looking, reddish-pink glow.

“You have the gift of sight, Mneme,” her mother had told her. “And the gift of healing, and merging the light with the darkness. So many gifts my child. Your life is one filled with destiny. You are the bridge.” So young she’d been told this, so young she’d been given away in an arranged marriage so long ago. It had been frightening and then uncanny. It wasn’t as if she were unhappy, just puzzled, curious as to what she did not have.

Her eyes were drawn back to the window. She could feel them near her skin, buzzing angrily, hungry, ravenous, in fact. She could feel them gathering strength, pushing against the cracks in the glass, determined to spread the opening further and further.

“Until they gain entrance to this world.” The voice came from behind her and sent an instinctive shiver up her spine.

“To what end?” she murmured without looking back, although she felt him move beside her.

And then she began to feel that instinctual draw toward him — the one she had felt on her wedding day. She’d been so filled with terror learning she would be the bride of the master of death, but then she’d seen him, and all the fear had melted away. And there had been the magnetic pull that had been so nearly impossible to overcome.

“They feel the balance has been disrupted. It is their chance to enter and feed on humanity.”

“Feed?” she whispered.

“In all kinds of ways. Energy to begin, then life itself, so there is no peace, no transition.”

“I thought that was your domain.”

She felt him sigh. He was weary. She could feel it within her as it had always been with the two of them. “That’s not really fair, is it my dear? I do not take life. I am simply there to ensure transition once it is time.”

She turned slowly to Nathaniel, feeling tears slipping down her cheeks. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to hurt you.”

“This goes beyond you and me,” he stated softly. “But you could have come to me if you were so unhappy.”

Her heart hurt like a tangible stab. How she’d missed him; how she had fought so hard not to acknowledge it. “I needed to be here, to remember living. To remember who I was. If I’d come to you.”

“If,” he repeated.

“I would not have had the strength to leave.”

Slowly he nodded in understanding, she thought; his dark eyes filled with so many layers of emotions that she could easily allow herself to drown in them. “And did you? Did you find what you sought, my beloved?”

“Maybe, I think I’m still looking. I don’t know, but it seems it’s over.”

And then he smiled softly. “All that is needed is the balance between us, death and memory. The balance must be restored. The discord must end.”

“I don’t understand,” she said in confusion.

“If you wish to stay for a while, you can. If you only return sometimes and, of course, allow me to visit you.”

She looked at him with surprise, a compromise quite unexpected. “You mean something like six months of the year?”

His dark eyes sparkled. “Something like that if you agree to take me back as your husband.”

She smiled, noting that the ugly fireflies at the broken window had begun to thin bit.”

“I’ve missed you, my love,” she whispered.

She felt Nathaniel softly take her hand in his. “We have much to talk of,” he said as she gazed at her husband, feeling her heart begin to lighten.

“Yes, that is true.”

If you’d like to spend more time with Ethan Garraint, check out his stand alone novel.

The Broken Vow: Vol. I The Clandestine Exploits of a Werewolf

In the heart of every man there is a history. In the heart of every monster there is a story. In this first installment of “The Clandestine Exploits of a Werewolf,” Ethan Garraint is on a vendetta that begins in the heart of the Pyrenees with the fall of Montségur and leads him to the streets of New Orleans nearly five hundred years later. But the person he chases isn’t really a man anymore and Ethan has been a werewolf for almost a millennium. With the aid of a gifted seer, he is on a blood hunt that will culminate in a journey that crosses the line between heaven and earth and ends somewhere in between.

Cornerstone

Kindle

Excerpt

Also check out the sequel to The Broken Vow, The Story of Enid at Kindle Vella.

When one realizes that a long-lost soulmate has been reincarnated, it poses some complications. When you have been a werewolf for nearly a millennium, the complications explode exponentially. Ethan Garraint understands that he should stay far away from Erin Holt, but she is in his city, New Orleans, and possibly in danger. And the truth is, he doesn’t want to stay away. He only wants to remind her of the lifetime they lived long ago, when they were more than lovers, when they became legend.

Kindle Vella

The Soul Shredder – Halloween Month

October 29, 2021

For the final story of Halloween Month, I’d like to take you to a darker realm where monsters run rampant and the unthinkable finds a way to permeate our reality. “The Soul Shredder” is a short story that first made its appearance in The Left Palm and Other Halloween Tales of the Supernatural. At its heart, it explores the idea of consequences. There is an old adage: You Are Free to Choose but You Are Not Free From the Consequences of Your Choice. At this very unique time, with the world poised in so many instances precariously on the precipice of personal choice, we might want to take a moment to consider the consequences we are choosing. Seen or unseen, eventually, and without fail, they always come around. Food for thought. I hope you enjoy “The Soul Shredder,” and do have a Happy Halloween.

The Soul Shredder

“Is the light bothering you?”

He had dimmed the lights in anticipation of her visit, but she silently shook her head in negation staring out of his office window into the waning light of the November evening. He settled behind his desk, waiting for his last patient of the evening to speak to him. It was a new patient, oddly enough referred by an optometrist — some sort of odd reaction to cornea surgery. Evidently, he wanted to rule out psychological ramifications.

“Quite frankly, Randall, this is a shot in the dark. I’ve no idea what’s going on here. I’ve done all the tests I can, and the eyes themselves seem healthy, unusually resilient after the surgery. So, all this junk she’s seeing, I can’t account for it. It goes way beyond floaters or adjustment or anything I’ve seen or read about before.”

“So, you think it’s in her mind.”

There was a silence on the other end of the phone. But Randall waited, if he was anything he was patient. It was a tool of the trade. He heard an exasperated sigh, strange reaction from a physician. Then again, he’d met more than a few who were enamored of their own ability and couldn’t fathom a problem eclipsing their talents. He himself did not suffer from such grand illusions. Time and life had showed him quite a different world. And then, after a protracted silence, his friend had relented, “I don’t know. I can’t call this one. She has a peculiar history. Bad eyesight all her life, until now. Maybe it was too much for her. I don’t know. Just see what you think.”

And so, the appointment was made and cancelled twice. That conversation had been nearly a month ago. But this evening, last appointment of the day, she’d finally shown up.

Randall Callahan leaned back in his large, dark brown, leather chair and tried to stretch out his neck a bit. It ached from the tension that he carried there. He glanced at the clock, six o’ five. His receptionist had already left for the evening, pleading personal obligations. She rarely as a matter of course stuck around past five thirty. It had been only for the last three months that he’d begun scheduling later appointments. His divorce was final, his house empty. There was nothing to go home to. So, he might as well allow the night to stretch on. He cleared his throat to gain her attention. She still stood by the window overlooking Poydras Street below. His office was on the twelfth floor of one of the taller office buildings in the area. But she didn’t move an inch in response, just remained standing with her back to him. “Do your eyes still bother you from the surgery Ms. Wilshire?”

“No,” her voice was soft, nearly imperceptible.

“Well, is it the light here? Is it too strong for you?” She turned around to face him slowly, her face still masked by the pair of large oval sunglasses that she wore. She was a slight woman, perhaps 5’4″, 5’5″ at most, small build, definitely on the thin side with shoulder-length blonde hair. Her face was hard to determine, given the glasses, seemed attractive he thought, but difficult to tell without seeing the eyes. He’d always thought the eyes the most telling part of a person’s appearance and personality. “Dr. Lariviera said that you complained of some light sensitivity. That is why you continue to wear the sunglasses. I did dim the lights in here in anticipation of your coming.”

“Does he think I’m having a breakdown?” she asked somewhat sedately.

Randall straightened up a bit, struck by the directness of the question. “Did he say that to you?”

“No, he did not. I suspect that would have been a tad bit blunt for him. He’s not a very honest man.”

“Why would you say that Ms. Wilshire, or can I call you Lila?”

She shrugged a bit, “It’s my impression. He tells you what you want to hear and then,” she paused, as if trying to collect her thoughts, “and then makes arrangements behind your back.”

“You mean consulting me.”

She nodded, “I wonder how many patients of optometrists end up in a psychiatrist’s office.”

“Well,” he laughed a bit, “perhaps those who have adjusting to do.”

“He thinks I have adjusting to do?”

“Well, what do you think Lila? Has your life changed since the operation on your corneas?”

“Changed?” she emphasized the word in an odd way. “Well, I suppose that’s one way of putting it.”

He lightly strummed his fingers on his desk. “How would you put it?”

He thought she’d smiled but couldn’t be sure. The damn glasses, she would be so much easier to read if he could only see her eyes. “Dr. Callahan, is it? Or can I call you Randall?”

He shrugged noncommittally, caught a bit by her repetition of his earlier statement. “If you’re more comfortable doing so.”

Unexpectedly, she drifted closer to his desk. And he felt an impulsive chill transverse his spine. But she stopped, oddly right on the heels of that sensation. “What exactly did Dr. Lariviera say to you Randall?”

“Well, he said you’ve experienced some odd vision anomalies since the procedure. He told me you’d lived a long time with extremely bad sight, but the advances in laser surgeries allowed him to correct most of your problems. But there have been—”‘

And she interrupted, “Adjustment problems?” cutting him off directly.

“Is that the case?”

“If they were ordinary, I don’t imagine I’d be here.”

He shifted in his seat a bit and rubbed his bearded chin for a moment, as in some sort of contemplation. It would buy him time and hopefully put her off a bit. Her directness he found disconcerting. “He did say they were outside his area of expertise. He wanted to eliminate any other possibilities.”

“Psychological ones?”

He paused, deciding to refocus things, “Does the light bother your eyes, Lila?”

“Why?”

He swallowed, “I’d like to see your eyes. I connect more easily with a patient if—” and then his voice faltered, as he understood how odd his request must sound.

“I’m tired.”

“Would you like to sit down?”

“You don’t understand. I’m tired of covering up, of lying. It’s using me up Randall.” Her statement he found a bit surprising. Her voice was so flat, devoid of emotion. It didn’t match this eloquent plea for help.

“You don’t have to lie here Lila.”

She shook her head in negation, “I only told him a little bit, Dr. Lariviera, just a little bit. And he smiled, told me it was all right, and then I ended up here. If I tell you, where will I end up?”

“I can’t help you Lila, if you don’t tell me what’s going on.”

She stared down for a moment at the floor. And he waited, wondering if this was leading anywhere, feeling inexplicably unsettled by the whole business. But then, she raised her head again to face him. “It’s not the light that bothers my eyes.”

“It’s not?” he asked.

“No, it’s just that the glasses keep me from seeing them.”

He drew a breath, trying to process what she’d said, “Seeing what exactly?”

Her hands both lifted simultaneously. And as she placed her hands on either side of the sunglass frames, he could see that they were trembling, shaking nearly uncontrollably. Slowly, she pulled the sunglasses off her face and pulled them down so that he could finally see her. And in this most peculiar moment that he could only describe as odd, almost shocking, he wasn’t at all sure if he was looking at something exquisite or something bordering on hideous. They were blue, the eyes, but pale blue like a faded sky, or like something that had been shielded from the sun all its life. He stifled a gasp. But then the eyes widened and looked beyond him, suddenly examining every space in the room. “I suppose they come from all the different people who come through here,” she whispered huskily. “They carry them and leave them about.”

He followed her gaze and glanced about, seeing nothing but his office as he had always seen it. “What are you talking about, them?”

She wrapped her arms tightly around her, looking a bit stricken, but still not focusing on him, just somewhere else beyond. “It’s my eyes you see. He corrected everything too much. I see too much now.”

“So, Randall, you met with our strange case last night, Lila Wilshire.”

He checked his watch. It wasn’t even nine o’clock yet. He was just walking into the building, cup of coffee that he’d picked up on the way still clutched in his hands. He’d have to speak to Carla, his receptionist, about giving out his personal, cell phone number. “I’m actually just getting to my office George. How about I give you a call later?”

“Look, I’m not looking for anything in-depth, just an impression. Is she off the deep end?”

He paused in the lobby, scooping up a morning paper from the security desk. “It’s a little early for all that.”

The voice at the other end sounded oddly rattled, something he found perplexing. But then again, yesterday’s appointment had definitely left him in a similar frame. “Is that it?”

“I just don’t want to make a premature diagnosis. I’m sure you can understand that.”

“So, you’ll be seeing her again.”

“Yes, today, in about an hour.”

He was nervous. Last night’s appointment with Lila Wilshire had fallen somewhere in that gray area between unnerving and downright bizarre. His formal training as a psychologist should have immediately categorized her as a disturbed personality, fraught with extreme bouts of depression and hallucinogenic episodes. That is if it had been anyone else that would be his prognosis. But somehow, somewhere, she’d struck a deep chord within him that quite clearly told him she was credible. His intercom beeped, with Carla announcing, “Ms. Wilshire is here.”

Uncharacteristically, his heart picked up its beat. He was a bit surprised. Given her reticence in seeing him initially, he had half expected her not to come at all today, even though he’d strongly urged her to do so.

“It’s essential we explore these visions of yours Lila.”

“Why,” she’d asked quite flatly. “Do you think you can make them stop Randall? Do you really think that’s in your power?”

He answered the intercom, “Tell her to come in please.” Quite quickly, the door to his office opened as he stood up from his desk.

Again, she noiselessly entered, wearing the same nearly oversized pair of sunglasses. She was dressed in a fitted suit of light blue, an outfit that would be striking if not for the odd eyewear. He smiled, determined in the bright light of day to get on a proper footing, a place devoid of so many shadows as was the evening before. “How did you sleep?” was his greeting.

She shrugged, “My sleep hasn’t been good since the operation. I consider myself lucky if I get a few hours.”

“Really?” he sat down, as she seated herself in a chair on the other side of his desk. “That’s not good. I could prescribe you something for sleep.”

“I don’t know,” she murmured. “I like to be aware.” But she didn’t elaborate.

He picked up a ballpoint pen from his desk. He realized dimly that it had been a present from his wife — an impulse gift last year, or had it been the year before? “Aware of what Lila?” he asked simply.

She leaned back in the leather chair that faced him and smiled he thought. “You remember Randall. We talked about it last night.”

He absently spun the pen around on his mahogany desk, “You talked about them, things you see.”

“And you didn’t believe me.” He glanced up. She was still, eyes focused on him, or as much as he could tell behind the sunglasses.

“That’s not true.”

“It’s not?”

“I didn’t disbelieve you.”

She laughed unexpectedly. It was a harsher laugh than he expected — not soft like the exterior but brittle like twisted metal. “Now that’s not the same as believing. I bet your wife had fits with you committing to anything.”

His eyes widened, trying to digest what he’d heard. “What did you say?”

“I said I bet your wife has fits with you committing. You equivocate.”

“That’s not what you said. You said had fits — past tense.”

She tilted her head a bit in surprise, “Did I? Well, you aren’t wearing a wedding ring. That would make it past tense, would it not?”

“What makes you think I was married at all?”

Then her head straightened, “Last night, when I looked at you. It was obvious. I could see it.”

“See it?” he echoed.

“When I took off the glasses, I could simply see it. I can’t really tell you what, but I could see.”

“Take them off now and tell me what you see.”

She shook her head. “It exhausts me. I don’t want to.”

“Are you afraid of seeing them, whatever it was you saw last night?”

“I’m tired Randall, not afraid but tired. Do you see the difference? Whatever is there is simply there.”

“Take them off. I want to know what you see,” he compelled.

She hesitated, “You want to know. I thought all of this was for me.”

He cleared his throat, “I can’t help you, if I don’t know what you’re seeing.”

And then he detected another smile, “You do equivocate Randall.”

Quite calmly, sharply in contrast to the drama of the night before, she reached up and took off the glasses as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Again, he was struck by the unearthly shade of her eyes, but in the morning clarity they seemed more normal, not quite so startling. She stared at him directly, quite calmly, not looking about her frantically as she had before.

“What’s changed Lila? Last night, all of this seemed quite disturbing to you.”

She shrugged, looking at him serenely and yet coldly. “I don’t know. I think I’ve given up.”

He leaned in a bit, struck by her words. “Given up? What does that mean?”

“I’ve decided not to fight what is, not to try to change it, not to try to make the world what I want it to be. I’ve stopped fighting it all.”

“So, then you aren’t seeing them today?”

Her cold eyes warmed, ever so slightly. “I am.”

“Now?”

“Now.” She repeated.

He glanced around. “Can you describe it to me?”

She nodded, rather blankly. “Your room here is infested with different things, some fly, some crawl. Most are smallish, no bigger than the size of my extended hand.”

He smiled, and then a chill flew over him that seemed to support her assertion. “And what do you think these things are?”

Her pale blue eyes widened. “I think they’re parasites.”

“Parasites of what?”

“Of living Randall, that’s all I’ve been able to put together. They come. They live off of us.”

“All of us?”

She frowned, with a look of fatigue marking her features. “I don’t know exactly. I’ve noticed people with problems, who are weak in some way seem to have more. I suppose they’re more vulnerable.”

He shook his head, “Problems? What do you mean sick?”

“Not always, emotional problems, I think it has something to do with energy fields. But then sometimes they just come in great hordes and attack no matter what.”

He was listening but glanced down at the hand that was gripping his pen more tightly hand than he realized. It was disturbing to him, this conversation, more than he cared to admit. “When you say attack Lila, what does that mean?”

She glanced away, toward the window that she’d spent so much time staring out last night. “I’m not really sure Randall. Just that they feed somehow from us, take something, because they get stronger.” He sat back, thinking for a moment, not at all sure where to take this. “You’re trying to decide whether to believe me. You know it doesn’t matter if you do or not.”

“Where do you think these things come from Lila?” was his next question, not willing yet to deal with what she’d just said.

“I don’t think they come from anywhere really. I think they’re just here, and now I can see them,” and then she swallowed hesitantly, “them and—”

He followed the direction of her eyes that seemed to be on the wall directly behind him. He looked, but again there was only an emptiness. Then, he turned back to her, “And what?”

“I’m not sure,” she whispered. “But I was worried about it. I came in your reception area last week and saw it. That’s why I cancelled. But then I was worried—” she was almost stammering, nearly unable to put into words what she was trying to express.

“Worried about?” he asked, feeling an odd panic surfacing in his stomach.

And then the eyes, unearthly pure blue eyes looked at him, and seemed to pierce him on some level. “There’s a real problem Randall, a real problem here. It’s following you I think, shadowing you — a thing, a dark thing hunting something.”

Her words struck him as fantasy suddenly, nonsensical. “What are you talking about Lila?”

“I’m not sure. I’m not sure, but I think it’s a soul shredder.”

There momentarily was a stillness that seemed to engulf them. “What did you say?” he asked, quite assured that he couldn’t have heard correctly.

And then her voice came to him in a whisper and yet felt like an odd discordant shout inside his head. “I said it’s a soul shredder.”

His eyes widened as her initial response was reaffirmed. As the cold hand of detached reason finally reached inside him and shook him soundly, he concluded the only reasonable assumption that was now available from his vast pool of professional experience. The woman was clearly, completely out of her mind.

The wind chapped her face as she walked away from the tall skyscraper that housed the office of Dr. Randall Callahan. It was a bright November day, so she was not at all out of place wearing her overly large sunglasses. But eventually, night would come and then so would the odd stares, but that was something she could bear more easily than the alternative. She took one last glance back at the building that she had exited merely moments before.

A sinking feeling of disappointment tangled around her insides. She’d misread him completely, the doctor. Initially, he’d seemed to have a greater capacity of awareness than nearly anyone she’d come into contact with in a very long time. It was less that she knew this, than she felt it — felt it as strongly as she had felt the shroud of disenchantment that he wore like a regal cloak. She’d always been able to read people, long before she could see through them, as she did now.

She headed into the parking garage where she’d parked her car. Her head throbbed from that morning’s session. She imagined that fear had gotten a hold of him. That was why he’d stopped listening to her, started greeting her with the psychological doubletalk of a well-seasoned professional, the demeanor of one who had already dismissed their patient. It was remarkably disheartening to her. In an odd way, in a very short time, she’d come to like the doctor. He wasn’t at all what one would call conventionally handsome, but instead someone who was well-worn, already a face showing signs of age, wrinkles around his dark brown eyes, but a warmth there, of course a shrewdness as well. The profession, she imagined, left one jaded.

And it was all a shame, because she hadn’t intended to see him at all, not until she’d seen it near him.

She reached the darkened second level and walked to her small beige sedan. Her hand hesitated near the handle. Guilt swept through her. She shouldn’t have done that, left him alone with it. It didn’t make sense, no sense at all — why him? Why him?

His 10:30 had cancelled. So, he had the option of waiting until after lunch for his next appointment or going out. But he couldn’t seem to drag himself out of his chair. It bothered him immensely, more than he could say —— her story, her long winding story, and then his reaction to it.

“So, this — what did you call it?”

She smiled, in that odd, removed way of hers, “Soul shredder.”

“Why do you call it that?”

Then a shadow had passed over her translucent blue eyes. “It’s very complicated.”

“How so? Isn’t this something you’ve only seen since the procedure with Dr. Lariviera?”

There was a definitive, prolonged hesitation, and he had concluded in this self-created fantasy that she was weaving, it took time to extrapolate out the details. So, he was placating and gave her the space that she needed to weave. “Actually, I remember it from before, maybe not this one but one like it.”

“Before?” he questioned.

“Yes,” she nodded. “You see, my eyes weren’t always bad. When I was little, they were quite clear.”

“Little, how little?”

“I don’t know, seven, maybe eight. Sometime after that I got sick, very sick with a high fever. That was when my eyes were damaged.”

He nodded, beginning loosely to get a picture of where this was leading. “So, this thing, soul shredder, you believe you saw it before, back then.”

Steadily, her gaze took his, and he felt keenly as though she was seeing right past him, past all those hidden places that even esteemed doctors of psychiatry kept locked away. “I did see it, Randall. The others, all the other things I didn’t, but this one I remember clearly.”

He swallowed on a bone-dry throat. It was beginning to annoy him how much all of this affected him. “Under what circumstances?”

The pale blue eyes were steady on him, but she was considering he thought — considering whether to continue at all. Perhaps, he had reached the secret core finally of all of this nonsense. And he would find something he could make sense of. “I would see one, like this one, but not completely the same, around my uncle.”

“Your Uncle?”

She nodded, “Yes, he stayed with us one summer. We lived in the country. I remember clearly that summer. And it would be around him, at first once and awhile then more, then always.”

He waited for her to elaborate, but she didn’t. She just sat in stillness before him, waiting for more questions, more prodding from him. Returning from that distant place of memory, she focused completely on him. “Are you all right Dr. Callahan?”

He had to smile. It wasn’t Randall as before. Now it was Dr. Callahan. And he wondered quite distortedly why he deserved that title. He pulled himself tightly back into his role. “Why? Lila, why do you think it—” And then his voice faded off, not at all sure what he wanted to know. “Why was it around him?”

Her voice was soft but deliberate. “I can’t be sure. I think I know, to feed. It fed off him. I would see it sometimes, doing that.”

“See it how?”

Her face seemed strained at the question, as though it were painful to recollect. And then he mentally corrected himself. It wasn’t a recollection. After all, he had decided she was weaving. “I saw it, a lot before he left,” her voice was nearly trembling as she spoke. “With its hand, it would reach right into his chest and pull something out and eat it. I know how bizarre it sounds, but it would.”

“What did it pull out? Was it blood, tissue? What did you see Lila?” he asked, with an uncanny need to know.

“It pulled out light. It pulled the light out of him and then ate it.” His head pounded at the vision that she had evoked in his mind. “I don’t know how I knew, but I did even then. I knew it was his soul. It was slowly eating his soul.”

He nodded, feeling an odd nausea boiling up inside him, “Soul shredder.”

She shrugged, “Just a designation, but it stuck with me all these years.”

“Was there anyone else?”

Her face seemed to blanche a bit. “What?”

“Was there anyone else that this thing attacked other than your uncle?”

“No, I—I never saw it. But there were other people around.”

“Well, what made him unique?” Question marked her face. “Why him Lila and no one else?” She glanced away, not answering, and he was sure that she knew. And just as sure that she must tell him before she left his office. “It’s important, especially if you’re seeing one around here.”

“But you don’t believe me.” Her voice was distant.

“You must have some idea why.”

She sighed wearily, a sound that seemed to come from deep inside, “Yes, I suppose. I think it hunts certain kinds of people.”

He nodded encouragingly, “What kind?” His voice sounded a bit hard to him given the circumstances, but there was the gnawing need inside him now to understand, to understand everything.

“People, I think, who’ve made themselves vulnerable.”

“Vulnerable?”

“Yes,” her eyes had wandered to that window again, where she had spent so much time the night before. He could see now that it was a kind of refuge for her.

“How did your uncle make himself vulnerable Lila?”

“I think he damaged himself, his soul maybe. He did things that, well, must have marked him some way.”

He breathed in deeply, as the picture began to solidify in his mind. Her voice, so vulnerable now, so young. He’d heard that tone before, so familiar, in victims, very young ones. And then he asked the question that made the picture complete. “Did your uncle, did he do things to you Lila?”

Her eyes turned on him, the blue translucent eyes, on him now, hard and biting. “Did he molest me, are you asking that?”

“Yes,” he asked coolly, “is that how he marked himself for this thing to feed on?”

Their eyes clashed in the moment. And he knew, he had his answer, and now a very easy solution to this self-concocted delusion that she had presented him with. “Yes, I think so Randall. But that doesn’t make it any less the truth, the fact that he hurt me. It doesn’t make it any the less true that one of those things is standing behind you right at this moment.”

He waited, feeling a distinctive chill pass over him. But he brushed it aside deliberately. “It is helpful for a child’s mind to concoct ways to lessen their pain, even creatures that might take on the role of the avenger, punisher, for them.”

She smiled grimly, “You really believe I’ve made this up.”

“No,” he said quite coldly. “I believe your uncle molested you. The rest I’m quite sure is a fantasy.”

She stood up, a marked expression of disappointment now marring her exquisite face. “What about the one I see near you? Aren’t you at all concerned that I might be right?”

“Have you seen it reach into my chest and pull out pieces of my soul?” he asked flatly.

She stared at him for a moment, then beyond him, finally shaking her head. “No, no I haven’t.”

He stood up, feeling quite justified in the growing disdain that he felt for the woman before him. “Well fantasy or not, Lila, I can assure you I’ve never molested anyone nor plan to.”

She looked at him a little sadly, a little beaten as though some battle somewhere had been lost. “There are other ways to mark yourself Randall. Please be careful. It wouldn’t be here for no reason at all.” And then picking up her purse from where she left it on the floor, she turned toward the door. Not looking back, but instead putting on her sunglasses, she opened the door and left.

The encounter had been incredibly draining for him. He considered having Carla call Lila Wilshire to schedule another appointment but then thought the better of it.

As he sat in his chair behind his mahogany desk, Randall Callahan considered things carefully. Considered his life, his anger, and mostly carefully rethought his plans to murder his ex-wife. Regardless of what he would do, he believed Lila Wilshire and knew that the soul shredder was only waiting for his next move.

*The Left Palm and Other Halloween Tales of the Supernatural*

Cornerstone

Amazon

Book Excerpt

Wolves (Halloween Month)

October 23, 2021

My fourth story for Halloween Month is a tale of a werewolf and a woman seeking vengeance at any cost. Ethan Garraint made his first appearance in this short story in a collection entitled The Left Palm and Other Halloween Tales of the Supernatural and then later surfaced in another story called “The Broken Window.” At that point, I felt as though he’d truly earned his own novel, so I penned The Broken Vow: Vol. I. of the Clandestine Exploits of a Werewolf whose newly revised edition has just been released. Currently, I am finishing up its sequel, so only time will tell what further adventures this particular lycanthrope will have. Enjoy!

Wolves

“Wolves.”

His eyes widened from behind the rather well-worn spectacles that he wore precariously perched on the edge of his nose. He wasn’t a young man, but in contrast a wiry, elderly fellow, who didn’t much like change and even less surprises. So, in a procrastinating fashion, he removed the glasses, pulling an old handkerchief from his back pocket and leisurely wiping the lenses while his still razor sharp mind contemplated a backdoor out of this dilemma. He sighed, again positioning the glasses on the end of his nose and giving just the hint of a smile that said he was just an old fool, running a curio shop in the French Quarter. Taking a deep breath that felt clearly as though it rattled deeply somewhere in the recesses of his brittle ribs, he played his best cards. “Is there something in particular I could help you with today?”

There was the finest flicker of a smile across a pair of young and dark red lips. The eyes in a fine-boned oval face stared back at him as though they were neatly and concisely ripping away the layers of his well-contrived façade. The eyes were green. His wife Roberta of nearly sixty years had green eyes as well, but not at all like these. His wife’s were filled with light and color. But not these, these were dark like a forest on the verge of night. Any light that tried to reflect was muffled out by something unseen within.

The mouth was moving, and he was watching it in a curious way, compelled perhaps, he thought, somewhat distantly. Was she trying to entrance him or suffocate him? At this moment, both felt like a tangible probability.

“Wolves,” she murmured again. Of course, he knew of what she was speaking. He might play the fool from time to time, but he certainly wasn’t one. Long ago he was told when it was first placed in his keeping that someone would come for it one day with only that single word as their calling card. And he out of more than obligation — out of a binding indisputable agreement — must surrender it. Of course, at the time he was well-paid, in fact had never been better paid for any single acquisition in all his years. But it was so long ago, thirty, perhaps closer to forty years back. And that payment was just a distant, fleeting memory now. While the object itself, well, it was worth an untold fortune.

Abruptly interrupting the meandering of his mind, he felt a slim hand come to rest on his. His eyes looked down. They were long slender fingers, flesh that was paler than warmed by the sun. But then the delicate hand began to squeeze with a strength he did not understand. “I don’t have time for this old man. Give it to me,” she rasped. Those lightless eyes were wide now and so very frightening to him.

“Give you what?” He choked out. But it was his final lie. For in his mind as clear as though he were seeing it before him, his building, his store of so many years, and him within were being engulfed in flames. It must be happening now, in the moment, for the flames were wildly everywhere, burning him, scorching his flesh on his arms, until he could see the white of his very own skeleton. “Uoohh!” he gasped, the unintelligible and desperate words of a dying man.

And then clearly, sharply penetrating into the horror of his own hell, he heard a voice; a voice speaking to him within his own mind. “Now let’s try this again,” she whispered, because there was no need to shout. She had won. “Wolves,” this time it rolled off her tongue like the sweetest poetry.

“This is foolishness, pure foolishness my dear.”

She grimaced, “So you’ve said.” She perched the cell phone a bit unstably on her shoulder and checked the rear-view mirror. What was foolish was taking a call on an unfamiliar highway while she was driving an unfamiliar rental car.

“Where are you now?”

“I’m driving.” Luckily, it was a clear stretch — this last piece of the journey between New Orleans and the small south-central city that was her destination.

“You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

“It’s best not. I’ll fill you in when everything is done.”

“And you my little sister, will you be done too?”

She sighed deeply. How she loved her older brother, his protectiveness. Ostensibly, he was the only family she had now, except for certain unknown factions. But just now, his protectiveness felt more than a bit smothering. “Well, let’s hope not.”

“Are you sure you’re reading that thing right? What if you end up with the wrong one?”

“Charles, you have to have a little faith. I am not without my own gifts.”

“Cecile, I don’t want to lose you.”

“I know. Just have a little trust in me.”

On the way into town, she picked up a street map so she wouldn’t be entirely clueless as to where she was going. And then just off the highway she checked into a motel. It was one of a moderately priced chain. She’d stayed in better. She could most certainly afford better. She and her brother had money. Her parents had left them well off, well, when they died. But just now, the surroundings didn’t matter much. She only needed a place to regroup.

Cecile placed her small suitcase on the bed and sat down quietly beside it, contemplative. What she’d done to the old man in the antique shop had been cruel and unfair. And certainly, on some level, she was ashamed. But she’d sensed his greed, his reluctance to relinquish it, the thing she needed.

Steadying her nerves, she reached into her black leather purse and drew out the bundle of material that she’d wrapped it in. It was a fine white, raw silk piece of fabric. Rather gingerly, she laid it on the bed and began to unwrap its folds. Already her fingertips quivered from the emanations of power, although she had not even touched it. It sat there in its own mahogany box latched with a clasp of pure silver. It was quite valuable, perhaps priceless in its construction, certainly in its origin. It was understandable that the old man did not want to part with it.

She rubbed the palms of her hand together briskly trying to drive away the chill that had settled in her fingers. She had spent enough years studying the magical arts to know that handling such powerfully enchanted tools did come with a price. Taking a nearly painful breath, she quickly flipped the latch, opening the box of the Houdin Trouveur.

That it was stunning was undeniable — beautiful, quite ornate, constructed purely of platinum and black onyx. The platinum arms of the antiquated compass fluttered for a moment and then swirled in a deliberate direction, markedly toward the southeast. She sighed. He would be there. The murderer of her parents was somewhere in this city.

Something was off. He’d felt it all day, deep down in his skin, actually the night before as well. And irritatingly, the dreams had come, a sweep of redness and then fire, fire exploding pure and white. What it all meant, he wasn’t so sure. He’d given up this divination business, this reading of dreams some time ago — in fact two hundred years ago to be exact. For some time, with the exception of a few minor lapses, life had become quite placid for Ethan Garraint. That was the name he’d adopted several decades earlier. And he had to admit he’d grown fond of it. This part of the country was quite welcoming to those of a French descent.

Ethan continued to polish a heavy, black oak wardrobe mirror that he’d just put the finishing touches on for the festival today. He enjoyed working with black oak. There was something depthless about its sheen. But then again, black oak, pine, maple, cherry wood, they all had their respective charms. For a moment, he glanced at the reflection serenely staring back at him from the long oval mirror. From his appearance, he could not be mistaken for a man of more than thirty. His light blue-grey eyes and thick blonde hair suggested an almost innocent quality that his soul did not agree with. He’d been alive too long and seen too much to be naïve about much of anything.

He finished polishing the wood of the mirror, more interested in his creation than anything else. He’d found some solace through the long years and endless solitude in developing this craft. There was a strange contentment he’d found in working with the wood that eased the burdens that his unusual life had deemed he should carry. In some ways, he felt as though he imbued his creations with small pieces of his soul. After all, even he couldn’t live forever, not with so many people trying to kill him.

“How will you be able to find him with it? Doesn’t it just seek out any werewolf?” Charles had asked her this among other questions before she’d set out from Boston nearly five days ago.

“Well, I haven’t spent all these years studying and developing my own gifts without the intent of making use of them. As an insurance policy, I will work an incantation that will affix the Houdin Trouveur solely toward him, toward our parent’s killer.”

He’d stared at her with a great deal of anxiety within his acute, dark eyes. “I don’t like it. And regardless of your intentions, I don’t think our parents would like it either.”

She frowned explicitly, “Well, they’re not here to give us an opinion, are they?”

He looked away, clearly disturbed by her words. “I know they would want you to get on with your life Cecile, not become obsessed with vengeance.”

She sighed. They had this discussion before, countless times. But evidently, Charles felt it worthwhile to try one last attempt to dissuade her. “They weren’t the type to look the other way. They wouldn’t have allowed an injustice to stand. You knew them. You were older when they died.”

His eyes flickered gently across her face. He was a strong man, a stern man, except when it came to his younger sister. He had always reserved his kinder nature for his dealings with her. “They had limits Cecile. They were human. I know they wouldn’t have approved of how deeply you’ve gone into these dark arts.”

She hardened herself. Now was not the time to be thrown off course. Not when she was so close. “I’ve only done what was necessary. I can’t go after Le Guerrier unprotected.”

He smiled grimly, “Don’t call him that. It makes him sound too much like a mythology. No, I know that you feel you’ve done what you’ve had to. But at what cost Cecile?”

She blocked his words from her mind. She couldn’t afford to question herself now, not now. “It’s time Charles. Did you get me what I need?”

“Yes,” he said quietly, seemingly resigned for the moment. “The location of the seeker.”

She’d smiled broadly. If he was nothing else, Charles Bissett was thorough. “And the password to get it?”

“Yes, my dear one, all of that. But finding the monster won’t kill him for you.”

She so wished he was not so anxious. If anyone should be, it should be her. But an odd sort of serenity had settled within her. Perhaps, it was the acknowledgement of what she must do — her acceptance of what her long years of aimlessness and restlessness had brought her to. “I know that. I’ve spent years tracking Le Guerrier. I’ve researched, learned every scrap, every nuance that is knowable about him.”

“But these last fifteen years he’s completely fallen off the radar. Even with my extensive connections, no one knows anything. How do you even know he’s alive?”

“I know it.” She stated flatly with complete conviction. “I would know if he were dead.”

He straightened up in the brown leather chair situated by the fireplace in their study. In that moment, it struck her quite poignantly. She remembered all of the nights that she’d curled up in it as a little girl when her nightmares kept her from sleep and wondered in a fleeting twist of yearning if she would ever see it or her brother again. “How would you know it, Cecile?” he asked.

A simple question with such a complicated answer, “Because I would feel peace if he were dead.” There was a look in his eyes at this — perhaps sadness, perhaps disbelief. “Don’t worry Charles,” she murmured.

“I can’t help it. I don’t want to lose you too.”

“I can beat him. I know him completely.”

And then he smiled grimly, “But what if he’s changed?”

She’d packed the tiny pistol deep within her purse. It was loaded with three silver bullets that Charles had managed to get blessed by a Bishop in Northern Massachusetts. Anyone else making such a request would probably been tossed out unceremoniously on their backside but not Charles. Charles was a rich man, and money and donations often made the ridiculous become acceptable.

Late the previous night, Cecile had performed an intricate locator spell on the Houdin Trouveur. It had enabled her to gain a more precise fix on his location. But as a consequence, it had drained her terribly. It seemed the magical compass had to pull in a great deal of energy from its user to fulfill its purpose. She hadn’t anticipated the severity of this complication. It was clear she should use the Trouveur as seldom as possible lest she lose too much of her own power. She slept deeply that night and dreamed of crowds of people laughing, and dancing, and colorful booths and exhibits all about her. Then she saw fire, white blinding fire, somewhere else.

When she ventured into the lobby that morning for coffee, she noticed the signs hanging up promoting the festival. It was then she made the connection. Clearly these were the images from the night before. Donning blue jeans, a white cotton shirt, and a pair of lace up, black leather boots that she’d bought on a trip to France the year before, Cecile then obtained directions to the festivities which oddly enough turned out to be exactly southeast of her location. Everything was falling into place, and that more than anything made her extremely uneasy.

Amelia Gerard had just turned twenty and was majoring in communications at the local university. As the crowds milled around her on this bright Saturday in October, she felt annoyed and a bit preoccupied. She’d left behind a group of friends near the stage, listening to one of the musical acts booked for the festival. She’d told them she was going for another beer, but instead, she bypassed the refreshment stands and wandered most deliberately into the artisan section.

Although there was quite a mixing of people and more than a little stirring of dust from the ground, she was able to locate the man she sought quite readily. She stood to the side of the booth where he’d set up his collection of furniture pieces for the occasion. She waited quietly but not entirely patiently as he finished talking to what she surmised was a potential customer. It was some minutes before he noticed her, but he did greet her with a welcoming smile that at that moment felt well worth the wait. “Ms. Gerard.”

“Mr. Garraint,” she responded lightly.

He wore a dark T-shirt with khaki pants that she thought made him look particularly handsome, but then again, she was completely smitten with the man. “So, are you enjoying the festival on this fine day?” He asked with his fluid drawl that she had never quite been able to identify. It wasn’t exactly local, but in some ways, it did seem a bit French.

She tipped her head a bit, warming under his gaze, “Well, it’s a bit crowded and a bit loud. But other than that, I’d have to say yes.”

He moved a rocking chair that he’d been showing to someone further back into the open booth as he spoke to her. It felt odd to think that she’d actually met him only a few months earlier. Then she’d been involved in a project for a journalism class, interviewing local artists.

Initially, perhaps to her ignorance, she hadn’t considered furniture making an art. But once she met Ethan Garraint, she was enlightened, and that opinion was radically revised. Intriguing truly seemed too ineffectual a word to describe him. There was an aura about him, a subtle but powerfully enigmatic aura that captivated her. She was quite sure he was a good ten years her senior, but that hadn’t stopped her from forming a romantic interest. After all, she always considered herself quite mature for her age.

He nodded, “It is busy today. But that’s good for everyone’s business.”

His eyes had flickered over her only briefly, and then continued to glance around the crowds as though he was watching for something.

“Is everything all right Ethan?” She asked, wondering why she was not holding his attention today.

He glanced up at her, looking a bit pensive then smiling. “You should go find your friends Amelia and enjoy yourself. I’m afraid I’ll be quite busy with things here today.”

Her eyes widened, and then he nodded, reaffirming his previous declaration. She was being dismissed, and it chaffed, particularly his abruptness. But she did have to admit, there was something else in his voice that was quite grave, that told her that this was for her own good. Although why, she couldn’t quite put her finger on. “All right then, have a good day.” She murmured reluctantly.

“Yes, yes and you as well.”

From some yards away, Cecile watched. It must be him, but she couldn’t be positive, and she certainly couldn’t confront him in the middle of such a crowd. Werewolf or not she would be arrested for shooting an unarmed man. The only way to be positive was to use the Trouveur. But that too was risky. It was too powerful to go unnoticed by such an ancient magical being. In addition, it would tip her hand and, in all probability, leave her to the same fate as her parents.

Her eyes locked on and carefully followed the young blond he’d been speaking to.

With great focus, she sent out an impulse that encouraged her to pass near Cecile. As she did, Cecile propelled a discreet energy marker toward her that landed on the woman’s arm. With this in place, she could be easily traced when Cecile had need of her.

Amelia left the fairgrounds around five. Her friends intended to stay much later and move on to some downtown clubs as the evening progressed, but she had been seized by a strange fatigue and melancholy. She knew she was being silly. There was nothing between her and Ethan Garraint, nothing but her own fantasies. The man had always been kind, cordial, and charming in a way that some might construe as flirtatious, but then again, it could just be his manner.

She flung open the door to her dorm room, shutting it loudly behind her and flopping vigorously onto the bed. If she was anything, she was practical and knew when to cut her losses. Tomorrow she would remove Mr. Garraint from her consciousness and her radar. Then she would take a look around to find some other, more attainable fish in the sea. She closed her eyes, allowing the excessive tiredness she was feeling to take hold. It could have been moments, or even hours later when she awoke to the sound of a very quiet knock on her door. Amelia glanced at the clock by her bed. It was six-thirty. Sara, her roommate, wasn’t due back for some time yet.

Slowly sitting up, she was feeling a bit disoriented. But again, merely seconds later, there was another light tap on the door. “Just a minute,” she called out, her voice still croaky from sleep.

She rose on shaky feet, trying to smooth out her long blonde hair as she approached the door. She wondered distractedly if she was getting sick, because the room actually felt as though it was swirling around her. Her trembling hand touched the knob of the door. It felt cold and moist beneath her fingertips. But then maybe it was her. Her hands did feel strangely clammy right now.

Just before she turned the knob, it occurred to her, like a flash through her mind that she shouldn’t. But her pragmatic sense pushed that impulse aside as she opened the door. In that instant, time seemed to rush around her in a blur as an impossibly strong hand reached out and grabbed her by the throat.

Ethan began to close up his booth somewhere around seven in the evening. Others set up near him had left earlier, but he waited as long as he could. He was expecting something. He was no clairvoyant, but he did have very acute feelings and a sense of things. Today, he sensed a menace about. And more to the point, he smelled it. There was dark magic in the air.

So, he waited and watched all day. But this menace was a clever one and remained hidden. This, however, did not overly concern him. One thing he did have that all these extraordinarily young souls milling about him seemed to lack was patience, infinite, inexhaustible patience. He could wait it out.

As he loaded his small van up with the pieces of furniture that did not sell at the fair, he heard from quite a distance the footsteps approaching the truck. His powerful sense of smell identified their author rather quickly. He smiled to himself, even before she reached him.

Persistent was a word that seemed appropriate.

He allowed her to approach without turning around as he finished packing up the van. This type of complication he felt quite sure he could manage with very little peril to himself.

“Ethan,” she whispered.

And then he turned around with a smile. “Amelia, this is a very isolated place now for you to be all alone.”

She did not smile back at him in her usual, coquettish manner. “I’m not alone. You’re here. Aren’t you concerned about it being so isolated?”

He sighed. She was in a very serious mood tonight. Not her ordinarily light-hearted self. “I am not a young beautiful woman, and I can handle myself.” He frowned, “What’s the matter little one? You seem very grim tonight.”

She tilted her head, and those lovely blue eyes looked at him oddly in the semi-darkness. “I need to talk to you Ethan about something very serious. Can we go somewhere private?”

He grinned a bit, trying to put her more at ease. “Now that might ruin your reputation.”

But he was a bit surprised. It did nothing to thaw the gravity of her demeanor. “It’s important, please.”

“I was headed back to the store to bring the furniture.”

“Could we go there and talk?” Her voice sounded nearly pleading, but it didn’t reach the eyes. They remained distant. Something was definitely amiss. It seemed clear to him now that it was best to discover what all this was about.

“Where is your car?”

She shook her head, soft blond hair whipping about her shoulders. “A friend dropped me.”

He nodded, “Fine, then let’s go.”

She said nothing but quietly climbed in the front seat of the van beside him.

It becomes quite odd when a scenario you’ve built up in your mind since literally you were a child finally comes to fruition. Every nuance is painstakingly planned, pulled somewhere from an endless well of grief, then later disappointment, and nursed to an excruciatingly fine point of razor-sharp detail.

She had rehearsed the scene all her life; put endless preparations into the part; and lived and breathed for just these few paltry moments. And nothing, absolutely nothing was as she expected.

Cecile retreated into some quiet place, where the observer watches and marvels at the contradictions that reality unravels. The man next to her was charming and warm — not cold and brittle like the killer of her dreams but something else entirely. As they walked into the dimly lit front room of his St. Julien Street establishment, his calm, soothing demeanor sickened her and twisted at her like a poorly placed knife, lodged somewhere precariously between her ribs, making breathing a bit difficult.

As she crossed the threshold, a sudden blurriness swept up in front of her eyes. She forced her mind to concentrate and funnel even more energy into her façade, although she knew that it was ill-advised. Taking on the form of another visage was a gamble, risky, stretching well beyond her own limitations. It couldn’t go on for long. Besides it was best to finish him off before he was onto her, best to be done with it. But the idea of just killing him now and leaving, that felt oddly empty. She needed more to put this all at rest. She needed —

He grabbed her arm to steady her. “Are you all right, Amelia?”

She nodded and murmured. “Yes, just feeling a little weak. I haven’t eaten.” She tried to avoid his eyes. She had read an account once, from a seventeenth century monk chronicling the history of Northern Gaul. It was a local uprising, in some obscure way involving Le Guerrir. The monk referred quite pointedly to the hypnotic quality of the foreigner’s eyes. She remembered it now, thinking it strange at the time. After all, wasn’t it vampires not werewolves who held the hypnotic gaze? Then again, he had lived an abnormally long time and had no doubt picked up a few interesting tricks along the way.

She felt his hand gently grasp her chin, deliberately tilting her head up to face him. She had no choice. Her pistol was in her purse, not exactly accessible right at this moment. She allowed her gaze to meet his, concentrating heavily on the incantation that separated her from disaster.

The light was dim, but in this moment, his eyes appeared markedly darker than she remembered them at the festival grounds. They were blue but also a grey, not a light grey but a dark turbulent one. He was looking for something. He felt the difference. She was sure of it, but hopefully hadn’t fleshed it out yet. “Tell me what’s really wrong,” he murmured.

Her heart was beating wildly with fear. She dug, dug deep into the flashes she’d picked up out of Amelia Gerard’s mind even as she ravaged and drained her life’s energy earlier this evening. Then she hadn’t thought about how ruthless she’d been, and now there was no time to reflect on such collateral damages. In desperation, she hooked onto something — her affection for this man, unrequited affection. It was just enough to throw him temporarily off-balance. With deliberation, she put her arms around his neck, reaching up and giving him the most passionate kiss she could muster.

At first, she felt him freeze in total surprise. Good, that’s exactly what she wanted. Keep him surprised, off-balance. And then in a startling movement, he pulled her more closely against him and returned the kiss with a fervor that she found completely unexpected. She expected a rejection, not capitulation.

In reflex, forgetting where she was and what the goal was, Cecile abruptly tore herself out of the embrace. “What are you doing?” she spat out without thinking.

He stood there staring at her, and then his face broke out in a smile she could only describe as quite engaging. “I was kissing you back my dear. You know, you really should decide what you want.”

She quickly regrouped, coming back with the most insipidly, vulnerable expression she could concoct. “I want you stop toying with me Ethan. I want to mean something to you, not be a passing fancy.”

The smile drifted away from his mouth, and a grimmer expression replaced it. “Perhaps, we should sit down and talk this out Amelia. He motioned to a small cherry wood dinette at the back of the shop. “Why don’t you sit down, and I’ll make us a cup of tea.” She nodded, still trying to look the part of a confused, lovesick female. She kept her purse clutched close to her side and slowly sat down at the table.

Softly, he patted her back and whispered in her ear, “Be back in just a minute.” And then he disappeared into a back room. She looked down. Her eyes were blurring again, twenty minutes to half an hour. That was the very longest she could retain the appearance of Amelia Gerard. Her hand reached down into her purse and fingered the pistol, but the back of it brushed against the cloth that held the Trouveur. Even through the material, it burned against her hand.

She was sure it was him. It must be. But she would like to confirm it before she took his life. This much she owed to her parents, to be absolutely sure. She grasped the Trouveur and placed it on the table.

He had a small kitchen in one of the back rooms of his shop. It was a galley across from which was the larger studio where he did much of his woodwork. There was an old-fashioned kettle that he was using to heat up the water for their tea. Of course, the microwave would be much faster, but he wanted to take the extra minutes to contemplate. It seemed as though all the hairs on the back of his neck were standing on end, alerted in nearly a violent fashion to a danger in his proximity.

But all that was present was Amelia — beautiful, unpredictable and dare he say unstable Amelia. He placed the teabags into the two mugs as the copper kettle began to rattle on the stove. He enjoyed the simplicity of his life these days, minus all the trappings that people become so intertwined with that they can no longer see the truth.

He took the kettle off the stove, poured the steaming water into the cups, and watched quietly as they steeped. In a life stripped of those things that separate one from clear vision, it is easier to discriminate truth from illusions.

The things he’d felt essentially about Amelia were oddly distorted tonight. She was not a person to behave erratically. She was conservative, practical, would not gamble unless it was warranted. But tonight, he swirled one of the tea bags in the hot water until it bled its color throughout, did not add up. He didn’t smell alcohol. He didn’t detect drug use, and for her, that too would have been completely out of character.

He turned toward the front room reacting to something, something subtle — a sort of crackle in the air. And then suddenly directly in his heart area he felt a pressure so acute that he flinched at its impact.

What he did next was foolish, but he had come to live a simple uncomplicated life as much out of the shadows as was possible for a creature like him. So, he walked, without caution, quickly into the front room.

The table where he’d left her was unoccupied, but even from across the room, he could see a nearly luminescent object sitting on top of it. The gentle pressure in his heart only became stronger as he approached, but nothing could quell his curiosity. It was perhaps a yard away from it that he stopped, his curiosity quite satisfied as he clearly identified what he was looking at. One piece to an irritating puzzle had fallen into place. “That bastard Houdin,” he muttered with part contempt and part amusement. “He swore he’d destroyed the damn thing.”

And then from behind a large, cypress armoire a rather shadowy figure emerged. Her voice was not mellow and fluid like Amelia but instead deep and raspy “Too bad for you that he didn’t.”

His eyes first took in the tiny pistol that was pointed at him and second the features of the woman that held it. The hair was long, thick, and auburn, and the eyes, as far as he could perceive, a dark mossy green shade. At this, the rest of the puzzle fell into place, for the resemblance was unmistakable. He smiled broadly, never one to face his own demise without a light heart. “Well, if I’m not mistaken you must be Cecile. I’ve made it my business to keep track of the Bissett children.” She frowned. Evidently that wasn’t the reaction she’d been expecting. “I knew your mother. She was a resourceful woman, but evidently not as resourceful as you are.”

Her voice was quiet and steely, “I’m here to kill you.”

He nodded, “So I see, but not before we have a nice visit, I hope. After all, I’m the only one who can tell you the truth about your parents’ death.”

The noise in her head roared around her in the room, but it was clear he didn’t hear it. She steadied herself, although her knees shook with weakness. With extreme concentration, she gripped the pistol, although her hands were so chilled that she could scarcely feel herself holding it.

She could see Charles in her mind as clearly as if he stood before her. “At what cost Cecile, revenge at what cost?”

Her vision was blotchy, parts of the room completely blotted out. When she’d used the Trouveur, it had been different. It glowed and shook, and then the pointer had spun to the direction of the back room. But before it was finished, she’d felt it emanate something, a force that had been subtle before. It pulled energy from her as if it were tearing it directly out of her heart. But she couldn’t let him see. She only had to finish it. That was all that mattered.

“I’m not a fool Le Guerrier. Do you really think I’ve come here for a chat?”

He moved slightly, but she wasn’t sure. Her vision was so bad now. Everything was indistinct light and shadows. “Your mother was a very determined woman. I think finishing me off might have been a feather in her cap. But your father, I don’t think he cared much, except for her. She was everything to him.”

He’d moved now. She was sure. “Stay still, or I’ll end all of this now.”

The movement stopped. The only way she could see him was reflected in light. Was this what it was like going blind? She followed the impressions that were left in her vision. “It was in Italy, you know. I don’t like to travel much now, but I did that year. They didn’t know it, but I came there to learn from a master furniture maker. Isn’t that amusing? The werewolf hunted down because he wanted to make furniture better?”

She breathed deeply, raggedly. She could see her parents in her mind, and then Charles and then Amelia. She’d left her on the floor of her dorm room, not dead, but close to it. “Stop talking,” she rasped.

“You know, they thought it would be safe that night. It wasn’t a full moon. It would be an easy kill for them, they thought. But the wolf came out that night.”

There was deep ravaging, painful breaths now. “What do you mean?”

She looked around the room, but she’d lost sight of him. He wasn’t moving, just hidden in the shadows. “I learned how to control the wolf, summon it at will without the necessity of a full moon. An old magician helped me perfect the technique.” She focused on the direction of his voice, but it seemed to be coming from everywhere. “His name was Houdin.”

It seemed moments before the reality rolled over her. “What, what did you say?”

“A 19th century magician, cantankerous fellow, but loyal and brilliant. Haven’t you figured it out yet Cecile?”

“What?” she murmured. She couldn’t feel her hands at all. They were like ice, as was her skin, as was her mind.

“That thing, the Trouveur that you’ve been using, has been killing you, feeding a poisonous fire into your veins.”

“That’s impossible,” she barely was able to get the words out. He was standing next to her, but she couldn’t stop him. She couldn’t feel the gun. It might have dropped. She didn’t know.

“The Trouveur kills the person who uses it. Slowly, I grant you, but my friend was a merciless bastard.”

She slipped down to her knees, seeing Charles taking her out of the chair in the study when she was a little girl, whispering away the nightmares. She barely heard his voice. “He was merciless. But I am not.” She heard the low growl beside her but did not see the wolf. She’d already walked into the white fire.

Two days later Amelia Gerard woke up in the hospital. Her mother was sitting beside her, holding her hand. Tears were running down her face as Amelia first opened her eyes. Two days after that an arrangement of yellow roses arrived with a card that read, Best Wishes on a Speedy Recovery, All My Regards, Ethan. That was the last time she ever heard from him.

*The Broken Vow: Vol. I. of the Clandestine Exploits of a Werewolf*

In the heart of every man, there is a history. In the heart of every monster, there is a story. In The Broken Vow, (the first installment of The Clandestine Exploits of a Werewolf), Ethan Garraint is on a vendetta that begins in the heart of the Pyrenees with the fall of Montségur and leads him to the streets of New Orleans nearly five hundred years later. But the person he chases isn’t really a man anymore, and Ethan has been a werewolf for almost a millennium. With the aid of a gifted seer, he is on a blood hunt that will culminate in a journey that crosses the line between heaven and earth and ends somewhere in between.

Cornerstone

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Book Excerpt

Halloween Month Reel

October 19, 2021

Check out my new Halloween Month Reel from Instagram! Kind of cool if you can get the audio. 🙂

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Obsession – Halloween Month

October 9, 2021

For the second spooky story for Halloween Month, I thought I’d change pace just a bit. “Obsession” is a story out of a collection of the adventures of Malachi McKellan and his companion, Simon Tull. In Travels into the Breach: Accounts of a Reclusive Mystic, Malachi is a 65 five year old widower, author of esoteric books, as well as a bit of a psychic detective and Simon is his spirit guide, a nineteenth century, twenty something English fellow. The two join forces in “Obsession” against a curious and somewhat determined foe.

Obsession

“If I were man, this wouldn’t be such an issue.”

Adele Blanchard struggled to hold onto her pleasant demeanor in the presence of the young woman in front of her. She was reading her tarot cards. She didn’t do palms. That was Annette’s job, but occasionally Adele did still read Tarot cards in addition to attending to the day-to-day operations of her esoteric bookstore, The Blue Pelican. It was as much for herself as anything. She enjoyed reading the Tarot for customers, playing off the vibes she received from them, digging deep into her intuitive gifts while using the symbolism of the cards as a bouncing off point. Usually, she gained as much from the endeavor as those she read for, usually. But this one, Suzanne Evans, she couldn’t seem to get her to focus on what Adele was saying. Rather, she was purely focused on the one that got away.

“Oh, I don’t know about that Suzanne,” she murmured as jovially as she could manage. “Unrequited love unfortunately, when taken to extremes can turn into harassment — male or female in question.”

She bristled noticeably. In fact, she found that young Suzanne Evans tended to bristle whenever she didn’t readily agree with her. “Are you implying that I’m harassing Joe?” She delivered in a stringent tone bordering on indignant.

Adele steeled herself inwardly, continuing to shuffle the oversized deck of Rider Waite cards. It was difficult keeping calm. Something about this woman had raised her hackles from the very moment they’d met. This would be the second elaborating spread she was doing for Suzanne as the original and the one following didn’t seem to penetrate her rather tunnel vision perception.

“No, I didn’t say that. Joe, of course, would have to be the one to determine if he was feeling harassed or not.” And then she smiled to temper the sharp edges of her observation.

Suzanne’s face seemed to only harden at Adele’s remark. Her sharp cheekbones seemed to set as though carved in stone, and her well sculpted eyebrows froze over her long almond-shaped eyes in an expression of determination. She was an attractive young woman, an ER nurse, no doubt a catch. So why was she so resolutely focused on a man who clearly wasn’t interested anymore?

“I’m sure you’re wrong Ms. Blanchard. Once Joe remembers how good we were together, he’ll wake up. I’m sure he’ll value and appreciate the fact that I didn’t give up on us,” she stated rather flatly.

And invoking what Adele considered her minuscule repertoire of psychic gifts, she definitely sensed a wall here. There was a block in Suzanne’s thinking where reason, reality, and good common sense just did not seem to penetrate.

I honestly can’t account for it Malachi. Love, lust, obsession — whatever you might want to label it, that sort of nonsensical determination is going to lead to trouble, maybe even of the criminal sort.

She was sitting out on Malachi McKellan’s screen porch with his lovely view of the Bayou St. John and sipping tea — something fruity, blueberry or raspberry, or something of the sort. He had said distinctly that she needed calming before they sat down to talk. He was very sensitive to those sorts of things. And it was true. She was extremely agitated. The problem was that this whole matter incensed her to no end. The why exactly she couldn’t say, except that she felt an instinctive dislike of Suzanne Evans.

“And how did the appointment end?”

“Well, I spread the cards again, which advised for the third time the same thing. Move on, let the fellow do the same. But to no avail. It was absolutely as if I was talking to a brick wall, then she left.”

He shrugged, “Young love.”

“More like obsession.” He leaned back on the rattan sofa, smiling a bit, she thought. She amused him, though exactly why her frustration amused him was a bit beyond her. “Are you taking this seriously Malachi?”

“I always take you seriously Adele. You have a powerful, though admittedly raw, psychic radar. I find you quite infallible.”

“So, what do we do?”

“Do? Well, nothing at the moment I’m afraid. Ms. Evans’ obsession I’m afraid is just that, her obsession.”

“But she could very well ruin her life over it.”

“Yes, she might. But it is her life to ruin.”

“Energy vampire?”

“Yes, no question, a young one, unconscious of it, but undeniably caught up in the thrall.”

Nuance sat perched on one end of the tan suede sofa in Malachi’s mountainside cabin. It was where he and Simon Tull, his spirit guide, met to hash things out, so to speak.”

“You don’t seem inclined to do much here Malachi.”

He scratched Nuance’s head. She was nuzzled up against his leg. “Do you know how high a percentage of the population are energy vampires Simon?”

“Of course, it’s a significant rung in the ladder of spiritual evolution.”

“Yes, something no doubt both you and I experienced in some former life,” he said a bit distastefully.

“No doubt more than once my friend, it’s a hard lesson to fully absorb. That you have power and yet you must learn not to use it.”

“That’s one way to look at it,” Malachi scoffed.

With a big smile Simon tapped him on the shoulder. “And what’s another way my old friend?”

“Learning not to be a parasite, sucking the energy out of your fellow human beings, and in effect compromising them and yourself.”

“Not everyone is vulnerable.”

“Yes, I know. Just the ones a little lost, searching for their next path.” Softly, he commented, “Yes, those in between, but they manage to sniff them out readily enough, exploit them, steal their energy.”

Simon frowned, “They’re not evil you know. Mostly it’s unconscious.”

Malachi shrugged, “One can feel what’s positive or negative even if they choose to ignore it.”

“It’s all learning my friend, no judgment, just learning.”

“Yes, as you say,” Malachi said a bit dubiously.

“So, are you going to help?”

“Help who, poor hapless Joe?”

“No, help Suzanne Evans.”

“Suzanne — the vampire?” Malachi said with a bit of surprise.

“Yes, before she destroys herself.”

In the evening, Malachi took a long walk down to the metal footbridge that connected Moss Street to its other half, crossing the placid waters of Bayou St. John. It bothered him, the feeling that whatever he did, however he chose to help, was seemingly inconsequential in the vast scheme of things.

His hands rested on the metal railing of the footbridge as he stared out onto the darkening waters before him.

“It sounds like a dark night of the soul Malachi.”

He didn’t look up. He knew the voice. He would have known her voice anywhere. She didn’t come around often, not often in his dreams, or even in his imagination. He believed that if she did that he might just cease living altogether and drown himself in those few precious moments when he was in her presence again.

“It must be pretty bad, if you’re making an appearance.”

“Maybe you just need a jolt or a kick.” Her graceful hand softly took hold of the metal rail just next to his.

“I’ve missed you, Josie.”

She laughed softly, “You keep busy enough trying to save the world, except when you won’t.”

He glanced up. She looked young, maybe into her thirties, not as she looked when he’d lost her nearly fifteen years before. Then she’d been ill, it had been a long-protracted illness, before she finally let go, leaving him to find his way alone in the world.

He breathed in her presence. It was intoxicating. Yes, he remembered love, and he remembered loss as well. “Whatever I do doesn’t seem to make a difference.”

She smiled. “It makes a difference to those you help, even if you can’t help them all. It makes a difference to them.”

“I’m tired Josie.”

Again, that incandescent smile, “I know my love. But there are still miles to go, so many miles.”

He decided to focus on Adele. He sat in his den; candles lit and put himself into a meditative state. He could see Adele clearly in his mind’s eye. Using her as a starting point, he allowed himself to be drawn with her into her meeting Wednesday at The Blue Pelican with Suzanne Evans. It took place in a room at the back of the store, a small room that Adele had furnished almost as an old-fashioned Victorian sitting room with a splash of New Age. Intricate esoteric tapestries hung on the wall, and several vintage looking lamps that reminded him a bit of steam punk with ornate shades sat on small antique-looking tables. There was a short pink velvet, serpentine loveseat, and two rosewood parlor chairs covered in a deep burgundy striped satin facing the intricately carved, mahogany card table. Adele had undeniably spent some time thoughtfully decorating the room, reaching for just the right atmosphere to conjure up the image of a Victorian séance.

But as he looked closely at Adele’s companion, he could see that all the ambience seemed lost on her. She was, and he was trying to summon the proper word —

“Pragmatic,” Simon completed for him.

His spirit-guide companion was now standing just to the side of Adele’s chair. The women were silent, motionless, almost as though frozen in a tableau as he analyzed the situation. “I was wondering if you would make an appearance.”

“As did I, I thought to leave you to your own devices, but my curiosity won out.”

“She seems a bit cold.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” he said eyeing the tall brunette with expertly styled bangs fluttering across her forehead. “Certainly not terribly romantic, but undeniably a girl who knows what she wants.”

“And that’s Joe.”

He shrugged, “She thinks so in any case.”

“But not romantic?”

“I believe the word of the day is pragmatic. She feels she needs Joe for her life to progress on as she envisions.”

“And that’s not cold.”

“Perhaps, but I don’t know. Some of us like our romance wrapped up in flowers, music, and pretty poems. And others in necessity, as things you must have like food, medicine, a car.”

Malachi sighed, “And that’s love?”

“Oh, I didn’t say anything about love.”

“You lost me.”

“All right, think about your wife Josie.”

He frowned, “I’m not interested in discussing my wife, Simon.”

He held up his hands as if felling off an attack. “Yes, yes, old boy, nothing personal, but if you knew you were causing her upset, distress, would you continue?”

“Of course not, if she wanted me to or had wanted me to, I would have left her alone instead of trying to force what I wanted on her.”

“Yes, exactly, the difference, but Lady Suzanne here feels justified in pressing her expectations, her needs, her desires with no contemplation on how it might cause distress to poor Joe. In a nutshell, she wants what she wants and everyone else be damned.”

“Not love.”

“No, not love, need perhaps, inexplicable determined need.”

Malachi murmured in fatigue. “Of course, but she calls it love.”

“Indeed, justification is a handy tool.”

“So how to reach her?”

“Yes, that is the question. Perhaps make the cost too high.”

“Too high?”

“Yes, let’s start with Joe.”

Joseph Orusco worked for an insurance company — car insurance, health insurance, life insurance, whatever your pleasure might be. He was a young businessman just into his thirties who liked to spend his weekends playing tennis or racquetball.

“Doesn’t seem like a complicated fellow,” Simon commented dryly.

Malachi and Simon had traveled deep into the next evening and now stood in Joe Orusco’s bedroom, quietly pondering their next move.

“I see your thread. Why such a commotion from Suzanne? Yes, okay of course the draining. Addiction to the energy she’s gaining from him.” Malachi glanced across the bedroom to the set of sliding glass doors leading out onto the patio. Quite clearly through the open blinds, they could see a familiar figure in a long black nightgown pacing the pavement. She just kept walking back and forth in front of the window, not looking up at them once.

“Relentless might be the word,” Simon muttered.

“I imagine if we weren’t here, her astral self would be inside draining Joe relentlessly as you say.”

“Yes,” Simon murmured. “She is still draining through their bonds, but not as much as if she were closer and not nearly as much as if they were in actual contact.”

“Even more, of course, if it were intimate contact.”

“Quite so.”

Malachi stared at the sleeping figure of Joe Orusco tossing around fitfully in the bed. With a bit more concentration, Malachi could actually see a faint flow of energy, looking a bit like a translucent beam of light colored blue green, moving from Joe’s heart area toward the outside wall where Suzanne’s astral self was holding its vigil. “The addiction goes both ways,” Simon murmured.

“Yes, I suppose he has a taste for it, addiction to the draining, even if he is trying to break away.”

“I wonder just how hard he is trying.”

Malachi stepped back from the king-sized bed. “Let’s find out, shall we.”

He put his hands together and sank himself into a focused concentration reaching out to the deeper, spiritual self of the man in the bed. Within moments, the astral self of Joe, still wearing the same sweat-soaked New Orleans Saints t-shirt, sat up in the bed, and stood, entirely separating from his physical self that remained in the bed.

His short cropped, brown hair seemed damp and his eyes somewhat unfocused when he finally acknowledged Malachi. “What are you doing here?”

Malachi tried to appear pleasing. “Mr. Orusco, my colleague and I have come to talk to you and hopefully be of aid.”

He looked around with confusion, then to Simon, who he eyed up and down a little warily in his vintage tweed suit. “Am I dreaming?”

Malachi responded a bit energetically as he suddenly felt anxious to be done with this business. “In a manner of speaking Mr. Orusco, this conversation you will remember as a dream, but that does not make it in the least bit not real. In fact, perhaps very essential to your well-being, do you see right now who is pacing across your patio Mr. Orusco?”

In the instant of a thought, the three of them were back in his den, standing in front of the sliding glass doors. Joe frowned looking over Malachi’s shoulder at the woman now staring longingly through the glass. “Son of a bitch, that’s Suzy out there. I told her this was over.”

“Apparently, she didn’t get the memo,” Simon muttered under his breath.

“Why don’t we sit down Mr. Orusco and have a chat.”

“Yeah, well okay, is she just going to stay out there all night?”

“Hard to say,” Malachi responded.

Joe Orusco had a small kitchen table in his condo, espresso colored, lighted by a low hanging brass chandelier situated over the table. The three of them settled in for a discussion as Malachi debated the correct approach to the problem at hand.

“Mr. Orusco,” he began.

“Everyone calls me Joe,” he commented a bit obtusely, still appearing more than a bit disoriented.

“Joseph,” he began again. The old adage that everyone understands from their own level of perception kept ringing in Malachi’s ears. Joe even for a white-collar working fellow, he could feel, was rough around the edges. He operated from a place of pragmatism, possibly more concerned with the comforts of the material world. This, more than anything, could have been his initial attraction to Suzanne Evans. “Tell me, are you in love with Suzanne?”

The tall well-muscled fellow focused on him a little blankly. Perhaps it was the effects of being in an astral state or perhaps it was his fallback demeanor, at the moment, hard to say. He shrugged. “Honestly, Suzanne is a great girl. We had a great run, but I’m looking to see what else is out there.”

He heard Simon beside him sigh deeply. And he wondered for not the first time this evening, why he was even trying. “So, I take it you have fully severed the relationship.”

Joe leaned back in the chair, absently strumming his fingers on the espresso-colored tabletop. “For the most part.”

Malachi caught the explicit frown that placed itself on Simon’s face. “What the devil does that mean for the most part?” His speech had slurred a bit back into his cockney English accent, which tended to happen when Simon got irate.

“I mean, well, we’ve been together a few times since we broke up.”

Malachi pressed for clarification. “By together, you mean intimate?”

“Well, you know, yeah, sure I guess so.”

Simon shook his said saying nothing. So, it was clear Joe’s firm feet were undeniably feet of clay, which would mean mixed messages.

“Yes, well Joseph, I’m going to tell you some things that you may or may not remember tomorrow morning. But you should remember your emotional reaction if nothing else. Suzanne is what we call an energy vampire. She has been draining your spiritual energy. That is why you have been feeling tired, unfocused, excessively emotional, having problems concentrating, problems with sleep, perhaps inexplicable pains in your body, in your chest, and in generally poor health.”

Joe was looking a bit befuddled, but again perhaps a fallback expression. “I thought I’d just been pushing too hard at work.”

“The low energy is going to make it difficult to function in all areas of your life.”

“Why would she do that to me?”

“It’s not conscious on her part, just something that she does. But it’s up to you to cut her off.”

Joe seemed confused again, but Malachi could understand that this was a lot to take in. “Suzy, well, is persistent. She was very unhappy when I asked her to move out, angry and really upset. And I didn’t want to seem like a total jerk.”

“You were living together? That makes the draining much worse, much more chronic.” Then Simon directly lit into Joe with evident distaste. “You’ll have to be a jerk. It’s best for you and actually a kindness to her. So, she’ll hopefully fill her life with other pursuits.”

“Yes, in a nutshell Joseph, no contact, particularly intimate contact,” Malachi continued to pound the point. “The closer you are to her, the stronger the energy bonds she has with you. It is best to sever all contact, even if that means a restraining order.”

“How could I do that?”

“You must. You must not equivocate. You must make it clear she is out of your life for good. No backtracking Joseph, no communication, no phone calls, no emails, no texts, no contact at all. Do you understand?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Joseph, look at me,” Malachi said strongly.

It startled him. That was good. He wanted to scare him, so the impression was deeply embedded. “This is a dangerous matter. It will end badly if you do not heed me. Follow my instructions to the letter. No contact Joseph, even if you have to move, even if you change your phone number. No contact Joseph.”

Joe Orusco nodded slowly, but Malachi wasn’t satisfied. He needed to drill it in so that the impression wasn’t pushed aside in the morning light. “Repeat what I said.”

“No contact.”

“With whom?”

“No contact with Suzanne.”

“Again.”

“No contact with Suzanne.” That night Joseph Orusco repeated the mantra one hundred times. Malachi suspected that Simon thought he was being excessive, but he said nothing.

As far as Malachi was concerned, Suzanne wouldn’t see reason, so Joe was the only hope. When Malachi finally returned to his body, he felt as though he’d expended all of his energy trying to leave Joe with enough concern in his heart that he might actually stay away from Suzanne. There was no guarantee, but he’d tried and tried his best. So, he slept, a heavy sleep, devoid of any travels.

“I haven’t seen Suzanne Evans again. I thought about calling her to see how she is.”

“Best to let it go Adele.” They were taking a late afternoon walk along the perimeter of Bayou St. John. She’d shown up at the house earlier, and he’d felt a remarkable draw to be outside, no doubt in need of the healing energy that nature could afford him.

“Do you think it will work out for her Malachi?”

“Hard to say my friend, we all have free will and ultimately are responsible for our own destiny.”

“Yes, but we can’t anticipate everything that happens to us.”

“No of course not, but how we navigate the waves that crash on our shore. Well, that is always our choice.”

*Travels into the Breach: Accounts of a Reclusive Mystic*

At first glance, his life seems quiet, serene, and even uneventful. Malachi McKellan, a 65 five year old widower and author of esoteric books, lives largely as a recluse in a house situated just off the banks of Bayou St. John in New Orleans. But unbeknownst to most, he is also a bit of a detective, a specific kind of detective whose specialty is psychic attacks. Alongside his lifelong companion and spirit guide Simon Tull, a nineteenth century, twenty something English gent, Malachi battles the unseen, and is an unacknowledged hero to the most vulnerable – most of the population who have no idea what is really happening beneath the surface of the world in which they live.

In this collection of adventures, Malachi McKellan and Simon Tull wage war against the most insidious elements of the paranormal. In “The Three,” Malachi and Simon come to the aid of a young woman being victimized by a group of dark witches. An old apartment building is the scene of an unimaginable battle against monstrous forces in “The Lost Soul.” Malachi and Simon find themselves strategizing against a psychic vampire in “Obsession,” and “The Hotel” turns back time to the 1980’s where Malachi confronts a demonic spirit. In “Between,” a past life is revisited as Malachi attempts to rescue a beloved sister from committing her existence to vengeance, and “The Wedding” takes a personal turn when Malachi must confront painful truths while endeavoring to protect his niece from a potentially devastating union.

Travel into the Breach with a pair of paranormal warriors who choose to confront overwhelming forces on a battlefield unsuspected by most.

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Short Stories

October 6, 2021

“Slipping” is the story of a young woman finding herself threatened by unexpected interdimensional attacks. It comes from a collections of short stories entitled Appointment with the Unknown: The Hotel Stories.

Story Link

“Obsession” is a story out of a collection of the adventures of Malachi McKellan and his companion, Simon Tull. In Travels into the Breach: Accounts of a Reclusive Mystic, Malachi is a 65 five year old widower, author of esoteric books, as well as a bit of a psychic detective and Simon is his spirit guide, a nineteenth century, twenty something English fellow. In “Obsession” the two join forces against a curious and somewhat determined foe.

Story Link

“White Harbor Road” first appeared in a collection of stories entitled White Harbor Road and Other Tales of the Paranormal. It is the story of a woman essentially trying to escape her life, if only for the holidays. Quite unexpectedly, she meets a stranger on a beach along the Mississippi Gulf Coast who changes everything.

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“Wolves” is a tale of a werewolf and a woman seeking vengeance at any cost. Ethan Garraint made his first appearance in this short story in a collection entitled The Left Palm and Other Halloween Tales of the Supernatural and then later surfaced in another story called “The Broken Window.” At that point, I felt as though he’d truly earned his own novel, so I penned The Broken Vow: Vol. I. of the Clandestine Exploits of a Werewolf whose newly revised edition has just been released.

Story Link

In “The Soul Shredder,” a psychiatrist’s unusual patient opens his eyes to a disturbing new view of reality.

Story Link

Slipping – Halloween Month

October 2, 2021

Well, it’s that time of year again, the spooky time, and it’s also Halloween Month at evelynklebert.com. To kick off the month in hopefully a great way, I’m posting a story from my recent collection The Hotel Stories: Appointment with The Unknown. I started to pen this collection while my husband was on a very busy lecture circuit, and I found myself spending more and more time in very interesting hotels. My mind began to wander, and the result was this curious collection of short stories. So I hope you’ll enjoy this slightly unnerving offering that I call “Slipping.” And whatever you are up to, please take a little time to enjoy the season. 🙂

Slipping

She’d checked into a hotel off of US Highway 65. It was on the outskirts of somewhere, some town or city, heading into the Ozarks. She hadn’t really paid much attention, just stopped when things started getting wholly unbearable.

“Just one?” The girl at the receptionist desk had asked. Just one, as though it were an oddity. The world was filled with people who were Just One, traveling this great canvas all by themselves. But she didn’t belabor the point. She was deeply in need of a shower and a soft pillow to rest her weary mind upon.

“Enjoy your stay Ms. Ascher.”

She was not married, thirty-four and more single, she thought, than most people.

She took the elevator up to the third floor. Her surroundings were not penetrating her psyche just now. It took every effort to reach her destination down a long insufficiently lit hallway. But perhaps it wasn’t the lighting, perhaps just her eyes not functioning properly.

She slid in the card, opening the doorway to room 302. She let the heavy door close behind her, plopping her large shoulder carrying bag onto one of the two double beds. The room was large, beige, decorated sparsely with a few oversized floral photographs. The beds were unremarkable, white bedspreads, dark burgundy, cotton bed skirts. The headboards were a dark wood of a cheap variety, as was the rest of the furniture. As hotels went, it was serviceable, and her skin wasn’t crawling.

She pulled her long black hair out of its ponytail and shook it out. Even in her thoughts that sounded, well, snobby. But it wasn’t actually. It was literal.

Many places felt simply, physically intolerable to her. She laid back on one of the beds and closed her eyes. She was so tired. With distraction, she wondered why they gave her two beds if she was Just One?

She heard the fly buzzing around her, and her eyes flickered open. A chill of recognition traveled up her spine. Evidently, she was not Just One. There was something else here with her.

He must have been only a half an hour behind her. It was eight in the evening when he pulled into the Ozark Mountain Motel. It had been late afternoon when he first became aware that a traveler was passing through the area. He was just leaving his office as the first wave hit him. It felt a bit like a strong current of erratic weather rushing through the landscape, a sudden storm but not a focused one, though evidently only apparent to those that were tuned in. Immediately, he’d cleared his mind, sending out feelers to his network.

“What is it?”

More like someone.

“Are you sure? It doesn’t feel like anything I’ve ever sensed before.”

Yes, the consensus is it’s a traveler.

“A traveler, you mean a time traveler?”

No, no different, maybe dimensional.

Now that had given him pause. He’d been studying esotericism and parapsychology for nearly twenty plus years, and he’d never encountered a dimensional traveler.

Do you want me to follow it up? There seems to be something wrong there.

“No,” he’d sent out almost involuntarily. “Let me. I’ve never encountered anyone capable of dimensional travel before.”

At this point, it really isn’t clear what she’s capable of.

“She?” He’d asked, surprised, but why exactly he wasn’t clear. He’d just assumed it was a man. Perhaps that was a tinge chauvinistic of him.

Yes, late twenties, early thirties it seems. But the energy is erratic. Be careful.

“Yes,” he’d answered, getting in his car. There was an overnight bag in the trunk already packed in case, well, just in case the unexpected might happen. And this as much as anything qualified as unexpected.

It seemed like a dream at first. No, that wasn’t true. It seemed like a nightmare, a waking nightmare. Nina woke up in her bed, and she had slipped, though at the time she didn’t know it. Where she found herself was dark, shadowy, but undeniably her bedroom. She remembered the horrible panicked feeling, her heart pounding wildly. She was only twelve. That’s when it had really started. Her menstrual cycle had just begun the week before, and it brought with it changes, clearly unforeseen changes to her psyche. Her mother had told her to be aware, cognizant of unexpected feelings, but she hadn’t warned her about this.

She’d sat up in the bed, calling out, “Hello,” but no answer, in fact just an eerie muffled sort of silence. Silence, until of course it wasn’t. The movement began quickly, first in the shadowy corners of her room. There were things unseen there, things rustling, scurrying.

Cold fear energized her as she jumped out of her bed and began in fact running through the house. But it wasn’t the house she knew. Everything was different, even the air, cumbersome, as though she were pushing through sand, heavy wet, mushy sand that clung to her skin, weighing her down and impeding movement. “Momma,” she screamed in terror, but the sound of her voice was constricted, stifled in the thick darkness.

With Herculean effort, she moved from room to room, only to find each empty, filled with dense shadows. No one was there, and yet it seemed as though they almost were. She could feel heat in places, the heat of living bodies, the heaviness of form that was simply not quite where it should be. Again, she opened her mouth to scream, but it was as though she was swallowing the murky atmosphere around her, thick in her lungs. There was no doubt in her mind that this would kill her if she remained. She was literally drowning in this place.

And then joltingly she was back, as though she’d just awoken from a bad dream. But it didn’t feel like a dream because that place was still inside her making her sick. She thrashed in her mother’s arms. “Nina,” she whispered in her hair. “It’s all right. You’re back home now,” and it chilled her, because it was clear that her mother knew exactly what had happened.

They called it slipping, her mother, her grandmother. But it was a secret, something not spoken of — a curse of sorts, they believed, passed from daughter to daughter. It bypassed the men, her uncles, her brother, being immune and completely ignorant of it.

“Shouldn’t we tell them?” she’d asked.

“They wouldn’t understand,” was their answer. “They will believe something is wrong with your mind.”

“But I don’t understand. What is that place?”

Her mother had remained silent, and then her grandmother had spoken. “It’s another realm, a dark place, just next to us. A terrible place, I think. That was how my mother described it. There are things there that shouldn’t be seen, shouldn’t be known about. The best thing to do is to try to learn to keep yourself here and ignore it.”

That was all that was said, their best advice she surmised. And when she tried to speak of it again, she was stonewalled.

Usually, she was pretty successful in anchoring herself. Unless, well, unless she was too tired or run-down. Over the years, Nina became an expert in monitoring her physical and emotional state. And, of course, relationships were a problem. She started dating in college, Jerry. And then it became a battle, a constant struggle.

A year or so into their relationship, she’d spent the weekend with him and found herself trapped in the middle of the night in the cabin with things, horrible distorted things in those shadows. She’d concluded that there was an emotional component to all of this. The next day she had him take her home, and she broke up with him soon after. She would be Just One. Decidedly, it seemed the only solution.

She opened her eyes and watched the fly bounce off the ceiling of the hotel room. It wasn’t very big. But her instincts told her that it was much more than just a fly. Her eyes opened wider as it circled overhead. Louder, louder, the buzzing grew until she felt it in her fingertips, her hands, beneath her skin, then her blood synchronizing with the irritating pitch.

“Anchor yourself.” She could hear her grandmother’s voice from the past. But it was all too late, she noted as she slipped into the darkness.

He’d just begun to settle in his room on the third floor when he felt it. Something powerful seared through the energy around him. There was a distinct pull and loss of energy in his chest as he abruptly sat down on the hotel bed trying to collect himself. Peter Lochlan breathed in deeply, while focusing on centering himself again.

“She’s traveling,” he sent outward.

Yes, an answer. He was never really alone, just a directed thought away from obtaining much-needed guidance. Are you sure you want to handle this?

“Yes,” though he didn’t know why exactly, just something he felt strongly about. “She’s pulling energy.”

It’s not deliberate. It’s done in a sort of panic.

“Do you think she’s dangerous?”

It depends on what you mean by dangerous.

The room pulsated around her. It wasn’t always the same. Where she ended up wasn’t always the same. The hotel room wasn’t couched in shadows but rather distorted, flickering frequencies of light. And she could still hear that buzzing sound that the fly was making, but it was in everything, the walls, the furniture. The carpeted floor all pulsated at that strange reverberating pitch.

She moved rather fluidly back against the bed. This was the manner of movement here, a sort of liquid-like slithering, not unakin to swimming through jelly. She continued to stare at it. It was affixed to the pulsating ceiling. She should have screamed, but it was pointless. And she’d seen worse, much worse in her time. The fly had ballooned in size, its eyes glowing orange, all its eyes on its enormous head, now around the size of a small bear. Its legs fidgeted and pranced, moving around the ceiling as though trying hard to get a grip on its fluctuating surface. No, she was wrong. Perhaps, she should scream. It was zeroing in her, undeniably positioning itself, wanting something.

She deliberately focused on the door, concentrating. Each place, each space, had its own rules. This place felt connected to it, to that thing. She didn’t want to call it a fly, because it wasn’t really. That was only what it looked like in her world.

With will and concentration, she pushed off from the headboard, springing across the room to the door. When her hands made contact, she found the fluctuating wood thick and slimy. Wielding a fist through its unstable surface, then punching through, she pushed herself through the newly created opening, tumbling with significant force.

Again, she focused, being direct and mindful she’d learned were the tools of the trade in survival. The hallway was different, completely different, as though she’d passed into a different level. Its ceiling was low, and it seemed to stretch endlessly, bending, and curving out of her sight. Here, all the walls were a flickering, blinding white. She heard it behind her, scrambling, that horrible buzzing sound. The other place had been its domain, but it clearly was coming after her, hunting, predatory in nature.

She took off down the curving hall. But the more she traveled, the more it curved and bent like a confusing sort of maze. She was stupid to have stopped here at this place, at the hotel, but she’d been so tired. This place was complicated, so many pockets, unseen pockets. It would be easy to get lost.

Directly behind her, she heard it scuttling, that horrible, incessant buzzing noise. She could feel how it wanted to rip her to pieces in that pincer-like mouth. And if it did, would she be dead, or just trapped somewhere unspeakable? Her calmness was deteriorating into panic. That could be deadly to her. She pushed forward, stumbling along the tight and uneven little walls of the hallway. They went on and on relentlessly, no place to break out of. And then she turned a sharp sudden bend, and there was something or rather someone standing there in front of her. Her vision was blurred here, but she clearly made out a form.

Her heart clutched in fear. In all the years she’d been doing this, experiencing these bizarre phenomena, she’d been alone, solitary, except for the ambient creatures. There was no one else. But this form, person she suspected, reached out toward her, jarringly grabbing her arm in a painful grip.

“Come on,” she heard a voice inside her head and then felt an abrupt yank outward.

Nina sat up in the bed in her hotel room. She touched her face with the palms of her trembling hands ― icy, sweaty, her heart cramping painfully in her chest. She physically jumped when the first knock came at her door and then the second, sharp, unrelenting. She looked around, still in that state of panic. She didn’t see the fly. Perhaps, it had moved on. Then the third knock, just as fierce, reminding her sharply of the present. After that it stopped, for quite a space nothing, just silence. If she waited, whoever it was might just leave. But there was something that began to pull at her, something powerful, insistent, drawing her to her feet.

Without thinking, without being able to stop herself, she reached out, opening the door.

A man was standing there, out in the hallway, looking at her intently. “Are you all right?” he asked directly. And he reached out, catching her, as she began to collapse in exhaustion.

He had gotten her a glass of water and waited patiently as she took a sip. He watched her intensely as though every movement she made was of some peculiar fascination. “You need to leave this room. There’s something in here that’s not good.”

She looked down into her clear glass of water, feeling intensely embarrassed. “It’s a fly.” She spoke softly. It was so awkward, so alien, speaking to anyone about this.

“A fly?”

“I mean, it looks like a fly, but I’m sure it’s something else.”

“Some sort of drainer?”

She frowned, looking up at him with some confusion. How could he know? Who was he? He wasn’t an old man, maybe a bit older than her, but not terribly. He was dressed in a long-sleeved white shirt, sleeves rolled up, and tan slacks. She wondered with distraction how it was possible that he was jumping into the middle of her secret world, and more than that why. “Maybe,” she murmured hesitantly.

“You’re not the only one who knows things, sees the unseen, you know. They’re many of us out there,” he said quite solemnly.

“I—” she tried to speak, but it felt as though her breath had been cut by something.

“You’re very tired. Get your things and come with me.”

“Where?”

“My room, there aren’t any flies there,” he said flatly, though with just the hint of a smile.

Nina Ascher appeared oddly delicate to him ― that long black hair that she pulled up into a bun at the nape of her neck before they left and that pale porcelain-like complexion. Her skin felt cool, in fact too cool, and clammy as though she’d run a great distance. And as far as he could tell, she had indeed.

Peter was surprised that she seemed so willing to go with him. He hadn’t expected, well, the truth was that he hadn’t known what to expect. But he knew, as soon as he walked into her room, that there was something very problematic and even threatening there. He accepted her word that it was a fly. He’d seen odder things, and he was greatly concerned about her. Dimension traveler or not, she needed help.

As he opened the door to his hotel room, she slowly walked inside, a bit dazed. “What was your name again?” she nearly whispered.

“Peter, Peter Lochlan.”

“Oh,” the overnight bag that he’d taken from her room, he placed on the far bed. She glanced around tentatively with obvious distraction. “It looks like mine.”

“No flies,” he murmured, closing the door behind her. “Would you like a soda or something?”

“Maybe, but don’t leave right now,” she said with hesitation. “I’m so tired, worried I’ll slip again.”

“Slip?”

She laughed awkwardly. “That’s what my grandmother used to call it, slipping.”

“You mean dimension travelling?”

She looked at him with a bit of confusion. “Is that what I’m doing?”

“I think so.”

She sat down gingerly on one of the beds. “Just don’t leave. I feel so weak. If it happens again, I’m worried I won’t come back.”

It was calming, being around him. She’d expected questions, but he was quiet. They’d walked down the hall, largely in silence. He’d gotten her a Sprite from the vending machine and a Coke for himself, then they’d returned to his room, a stranger’s room that she curiously felt safer in than her own.

“You must think I’m very peculiar,” she commented, as they made their way down the actually very unremarkable hallway.

“I think you’re extraordinary,” he answered softly.

That was shocking, comforting, having someone be so kind to her. The world she was used to was hard, people generally rough with her. He opened the door to his room, and she walked in, but then stopping, just inside as the door closed behind them. She looked around, actually actively considering things for perhaps the first time since she’d met him. “Why are you here?” she murmured. “I mean at the hotel.”

“You,” he answered, sitting on the edge of the bed closest to them, then sipping his Coke.

“Me?”

He looked at her directly. She noticed him doing that since they’d met, just looking at her directly, unflinchingly as though it were no problem. It made her uneasy. She was used to other sorts of people who didn’t look so closely, who were perhaps more comfortable only seeing what they thought should be there. “I felt you, sensed you, driving near where I worked. So, I followed you. It felt as though something was terribly wrong.”

She looked down at her Sprite, breathing deeply. It was easy to talk to him, and for her that was more than unusual. “Where do you work?” That wasn’t the question she wanted to ask. But it was the one she could manage.

“Branson, I’m a psychologist.”

She glanced up. He had brown eyes, not hard, but still focused on her. “Then you must think I’m crazy.”

“No,” he said with a bit of surprise. “But I think you’re having a difficult time. You should sleep here tonight, in the other bed.”

She’d expected it but still ― “Peter, I don’t know how I can do that.”

“I don’t know how you can’t,” he stated flatly.

Do you need help?

“I don’t know.”

Have things stabilized?

“I’m not sure about that either.”

She slept restlessly, tossing, murmuring in her sleep. He concentrated on her, trying to place a protective shield or rather bubble of energy around her, but he wasn’t sure if he was trying to keep something out or trying to keep her within. And on top of everything, just attempting to maintain it was incredibly draining to him. It was a battle. Clearly, there was an unconscious component of her that wanted to travel, wanted to slip into these other lower, problematic dimensions so close to their own. Yet, her conscious self resisted and was being dragged unwillingly along.

What was happening was terribly disturbing, but beyond that the why of it bothered him even more. There was a persistence, perhaps a self-destructive thread here that he did not understand. Peter sat cross-legged on his bed, focusing on her, dropping down to a level where he could reach her subconscious mind.

“Nina,” he summoned. He felt a stillness overtake her, and the restless thrashing of her sleep ceased. Again, he directed the thought to her mind. “Nina, do you hear me?”

The whisper came floating tentatively back to him. “Yes.”

“What are you fighting?”

There was silence, then a stirring. “I am drawn.”

“Drawn to what?” he prodded.

“There is something here, something dark.”

“Why are you drawn to it?” he asked, pushing her for concreteness.

“I need to stop it.”

He hesitated. He hadn’t expected this, that there might actually be a purpose to any of her traveling. “You’re very weak.”

“You’re stopping me.”

“Yes, I don’t want anything to happen to you.” This was the concern, and he’d openly admitted it, perhaps for the first time to himself. There was something about her, about Nina Ascher that he was finding it difficult to keep professionally detached from.

“I have to go. Let me.”

He stopped, considering. Whether he wanted it or not, it was clear that she would be traveling. “Let me go with you.”

It seemed like endless moments before there was an answer. Then finally, “Yes.”

He sent out a call for aid to help bolster him before he released the shield around her. It was clear. If this was really going to happen, then he needed all the help he could get.

Was it shame? She wondered why it was never spoken of. The women of her family seemed to bury their ability as if it were an aberration. They operated under a definitive pressure to blend in, be unseen, appear normal.

But she wasn’t. And at times in wandering the darkness and in exploring these unknown spaces between, she admittedly felt more herself than when she was in the “normal” world.

She landed on a swampy surface, her feet sinking and then rebounding. It was different here, in Peter’s hotel room, than it had been in hers. The shadowy, turbulent surfaces were slashed with waves of calming blue-green light, flickering, and tempering the darkness.

She recognized from some inner compass that it was temporary. Peter had brought the serene light with him — his influence, his power perhaps. Straightening up from a crouching position, she canvassed the room. As her vision cleared, surprisingly, she saw him right beside her, though he appeared insubstantial, as though he hadn’t fully made the leap.

“Are you all right?” She sent the thought toward him. She could almost see its physical movement appearing as a kind of wave in the thick, gelatinous atmosphere.

His image beside her seemed to solidify a bit as her thought merged into him. He began to move, and she saw fluctuations in the light bands. It was clear that all that energy was connected to him.

“Adjusting,” he sent to her. And again, she could see the thought traveling in a ripple through the jelly-like atmosphere, until it hit her. Although it wasn’t exactly a hit, it felt more like a benevolent warmth spreading over her before the meaning crystallized in her mind.

She silenced her thoughts and listened. The buzzing that she remembered from her room was in the distance but near. With instinct, she began to move toward the door, but his arm shot out in front of her, barring her way. “Wait. Where are you going?”

She stopped. She hadn’t thought, just responded to the pull. “I need to find it.”

Again, his thought collided with her. “Why?”

Why? That repeated in her mind. There wasn’t a coherent answer. She didn’t know Why. She only felt an urgency. She pulled away, forcing her way through the pulsating barrier that was his door. Peter was following her. That much she knew. His thoughts and emotions were tangible things wrapping around her like a cocoon.

Complete disorientation was what Peter was experiencing. The first time that he’d sent himself to this level to reach her, it hadn’t been wholly him, just a projected piece of his consciousness. But now, he was all in and woefully out of his element.

He followed her through the sticky mess that was his doorway and into the hall. His vision here was severely compromised. He had experienced moments of complete blindness, then after periods of settling some splotchy forms had begun to creep in.

The usual guidance he received from others on his team had become completely muffled out. This place that Nina Ascher had slipped into was clearly a corrosive, toxic space. Just being here had already caused him a severe drain of energy. He had no idea how she continued to function on this level of reality, except that perhaps by virtue of who she was, she possessed a natural immunity to it. Trying to keep up, he followed her down the dark aberration that was the hallway, amazed at how quickly and fluidly she moved in this space, nearly as though she were swimming through the dense atmosphere.

“Where are you going?” he sent out to her.

But she didn’t respond, just continued to move, wrapping around unexpected corners and turns. And then suddenly, abruptly, she stopped in front of a doorway. This gave him the chance to finally catch up, reaching her side. She remained motionless, staring forward. From his sketchily representational vision, she now seemed to be floating, feet not even touching what could loosely be called the carpet of the hallway.

“What is it?” he sent out. Though at first, she didn’t seem to respond to him.

“My room,” she sent back jarringly. So odd, how he could feel actual impact from her words. “It’s inside.”

He looked at the fluctuating doorway, now semi-recognizing it in its mutated form. “What does it want?” He sent toward her.

Then she turned to him, no expression. So strange how different she seemed here, more confident, oddly in her element. “It wants me.”

Peter wasn’t doing well. She could feel it. She knew she should attempt to send him back, but for some reason his presence was helping her, helping her feel more focused than she usually did, more empowered in some way.

As he stood next to her, she felt an inexplicable impulse that she seemed helpless to resist. Reaching her hand out, she grasped his tightly. Initially, the effect was as expected, skin touching skin, as it would be in their “normal” world, but then, just like the doorways and everything else here, she felt the surface give way. Her flesh began to actually part and melt into his, and she moved beneath the surface of his palm. Her hand began to physically merge with him, sinking past skin, past bone, beyond.

She could feel, feel all that energy that she had seen in the room, touching her. And then she sunk deeper, her form, the body that she remembered, completely merging into his, until vision was not hers, nor his, but theirs.

“What is this? What are we becoming?”

“We’re one.” Each thought was not hers, nor his, but now undeniably theirs.

They moved, though in what form was now unknown. They moved through the doorway, then beyond.

It was there, as expected, waiting in the middle of the room for them. It had drained all the energy that she had left behind and grown to enormous proportion, now almost reaching the ceiling in stature.

They knew that they could not leave it like this. It would be too damaging in this world and theirs. They centered thought, drawing from both consciousnesses.

The creature almost immediately began to react, nervously twittered, clearly intimidated by what they’d become. It felt them, and its great misshapen head twitched in agitation.

With all the force that they could muster, they directed energy, his energy, her focus, with the solitary thought of evolution. The thing that had been a fly in her room was hit, at the center of its being, scrambling, maddeningly for a moment in response to the flood of positive energy, then stopping and finally allowing the evolution to take place. It shrunk and transformed before them, mutating into a small form, a bird, perhaps a sparrow that fluttered uncontrollably for a moment then flew out of the room from a sudden gap that appeared in the wall.

They stood there, transfixed by what they’d done. Then Nina began to feel the tearing of their separation before everything swirled into blackness.

She was unconscious when he found her on the floor of his hotel room, breathing steadily though her pulse was racing. Peter shakily placed her in one of the beds pulling the blanket over her. He was trembling himself from the profound loss of energy. What had occurred, he couldn’t even begin to wrap his mind around. Profound didn’t even begin to scratch the surface. He’d always been drawn, drawn to the paranormal, drawn to the other worldly elements of his studies. And undeniably, he’d been drawn to Nina Ascher even before he set eyes on her. But now, well, they were connected in a way that he couldn’t begin to fathom. At the moment though, all he wanted to do was rest. He hesitated, then climbed into the bed himself, pulling her into his arms before he collapsed into sleep.

What happened?

“It’s hard to say. We were able to intercept a drainer on another dimensional level and, well, stop it.”

Stop it, how?

He paused. How could he explain? How could he explain something that he didn’t understand?

Nina had woken up during the night a few times. She seemed a bit disoriented but other than that in reasonable health. He had a made a motion to leave the bed, but she’d held onto his arm, pulling him back. There weren’t words. What had happened between them was beyond words. They had become one being, one being that had the power to evolve another creature out of its own darkness into a new form of existence. He couldn’t imagine what that meant going forward — only that there was a formidable link that had been forged between them.

She’d slept the rest of the night in his arms. Tomorrow they’d talk, talk about how to move forward; how they would move forward together.

“It’s hard to explain. I think we’ll need a bit of time to sort things out, sort out the ramifications. But I’ll be in touch.”

A hotel for most represents a normal place, a predictable realm of commonality. One might even go as far to say a safe space, the reliable where nothing particularly unusual is expected to happen. Or is it?

Dimensional traveling, spirit guides, mystical storms, and soul mates separated by time are only a few of the elements dotting this supernatural landscape. Drop into a collection of romantic paranormal stories where that place of commonality is only the threshold, the jumping off point, for extraordinary adventures into the unknown.

Cornerstone

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