Yes. And others.
I don’t understand.
You will.
Then all at once, those pinpoints of light stretch toward them, as if they’ve been summoned.
The children hesitate, the stars streaming past like whitewater.
It is their father who pulls them forward.
Come on, they’re waiting for us.
There’s nothing to be afraid of anymore.
The End
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
BLAKE CROUCH is the author of ten novels and numerous short stories, including Run, Desert Places, Stirred, and the Serial series. His website is www.blakecrouch.com.
JORDAN CROUCH was born in the piedmont of North Carolina in 1984. He attended the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and graduated in 2007 with a degree in Creative Writing. Jordan lives in Seattle, Washington. EERIE is his first novel. His website is www.authorjordancrouch.com.
Blake Crouch’s Full Catalog
Andrew Z. Thomas thrillers
Desert Places
Locked Doors
Break You
Stirred
Thicker Than Blood (compilation)
Other works
Run
Pines
Eerie with Jordan Crouch
Draculas with J.A. Konrath, Jeff Strand, and F. Paul Wilson
Abandon
Snowbound
Famous
Perfect Little Town (horror novella)
Bad Girl (short story)
Serial with Jack Kilborn
Serial Uncut with J.A. Konrath and Jack Kilborn
Killers with Jack Kilborn
Killers Uncut with Jack Kilborn and J.A. Konrath
Serial Killers Uncut with Jack Kilborn and J.A. Konrath
Birds of Prey with Jack Kilborn and J.A. Konrath
Hunting Season with Selena Kitt (short story)
Shining Rock (short story)
*69 (short story)
On the Good, Red Road (short story)
Remaking (short story)
The Meteorologist (short story)
The Pain of Others (novella)
Unconditional (short story)
Four Live Rounds (collected stories)
Six in the Cylinder (collected stories)
Fully Loaded (complete collected stories)
COMING SOON
Pines by Blake Crouch
Sunset Key by Blake Crouch
Wolfmen by Crouch, Kitt, Konrath & Leather
A man channels his dead wife during a paranormal conference, disturbing demons at a haunted hotel where even angels can’t be trusted.
SPEED DATING
WITH THE DEAD
By Scott Nicholson
Copyright 2010 Scott Nicholson
Published by Haunted Computer Books
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Speed Dating with the Dead
Chapter 1
“And here’s our most haunted room, Mr. Wilson.”
The brass name plate over the hostess’s breast read “Violet,” an old-fashioned name that didn’t match her JC Penney pants suit. Early twenties and attractive, the make-up failed to hide the hard years around her eyes. But Wayne Wilson had logged his own hard years, and he hid them in the coffin of his heart.
“Call me ‘Digger,’” he said.
“‘Digger’?” Violet said.
“I have this little undertaker thing going on,” he admitted, feeling a bit sheepish under her blue-eyed stare. “The top hat and Victorian coattails. Part of the gig.”
Wow. Beth, if you really are here, you’ll see what a cartoon I’ve become.
But the dead stayed dead, and the best thing about them was they weren’t in a position to second guess. But the worst thing about them was they weren’t around when you needed them.
“So, have you ever had any experiences here?” Wayne asked, eyeing the décor and fighting the rush of memories.
“I’ve never had a honeymoon, and I would choose somewhere a little more exotic than the North Carolina mountains. Like maybe Dollywood or Paris.”
“I meant ‘supernatural experiences.’”
“Just those brain-dead zombies who hit on me at the bar.”
Wayne was only half listening. The master bedroom of Room 318 had changed little since his stay 17 years earlier. The roses on the wallpaper had yellowed, and each wall held an autumnal mountain landscape. Imitation Queen Anne furniture, chipped and scarred by cigarette burns, a plush purple carpet in which rodents could reproduce, and the king-size, four-poster bed were the same as his honeymoon night.
Even the throw pillows appeared unchanged, skinned in greasy satin and leaning against the headboard the same way his and Beth’s heads had leaned on a cold autumn night. Before they opened the door.
“The manager’s pleased you chose the White Horse for your conference,” Violet said.
I didn’t choose. I was chosen.
“You have quite a reputation,” Wayne said. “Nobody keeps their ghosts secret for long.”
“Ghosts are good for business. Especially in the off-season.”
“It should be good for both of us.”
“We booked about 50 for the weekend.”
“Too bad you can’t charge your invisible guests. You’ve got at least three here in 318.”
“Ah, you’ve been browsing the Ghost Register,” she said, referring to the journal at the front desk where guests and staff had faithfully recorded their encounters.
One of the victims had been a stock broker who had suffered a heart attack during his honeymoon, and though the urban legend maintained he’d died on top of his new wife, the Rescue Squad report said he’d been discovered on the floor with half a corn dog in his mouth and an empty bottle of champagne sitting in a tin bucket of water.
The second was a jumper, a documented death in which a distraught tool fabricator had launched into a frothing rant about a two-timing, backstabbing bitch before launching himself off the balcony in a fall that would likely have resulted in nothing more than a few fractures if he’d have missed the lamp post. You could call it coincidence, you could call it bad luck, but it made for a better campfire tale if you called it “the Wicked Hand of Evil.”
The third victim was the most interesting to Wayne, because it didn’t have the glib familiarity of the other deaths, which were not much different than those suffered at any of America’s century-old hotels. As the manager, a powder-dry walking mummy named Janey Mays, had put it, any building with a few generations behind it would end up with a slate of strange happenings.
Janey hadn’t recognized him from his long-ago visit. But why should she? He was young and happy then, a clean-shaven newlywed and 100-percent demon free.
“What do you know about Margaret Percival?” Wayne asked Violet.
“Just the stuff in the register.” Violet opened the television cabinet as if to make sure the maids hadn’t stolen the TV.
“West Virginia woman, checked into this room in February, 1948.”
“I don’t think the color scheme has changed since then.” She whacked the dark floral pattern on the velour curtain, and a lazy haze of dust spun in the sunlit window.
Margaret was a war widow, in town for a reunion of the Camp Creek Sisterhood, a collective of well-to-do white teenagers who spent the summers of the Great Depression in their one-piece, baggy swimsuits, canoeing, singing “Tomorrow” around the fire, and talking about boys, when they weren’t sneaking off in the dead of night to meet them at movie theaters and fumble in the dark.
Perhaps the reunion was an opportunity to recapture the lost innocence of youth, or perhaps Margaret was seeking a veneer of respectability after a notorious past. But she never made it to the reunion luncheon, because between the hours of 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. early one Sunday, she vanished from the face of the Earth. Police reports hinted that she might have been in the “family way,” and a single mother and alleged prostitute might sneak across the border to get rid of the problem.