by E A Comiskey
Maddie sighed again. “Well, we’re not dating. Children date.”
“What are you doing then?” Burke asked.
Maddie still refused to make eye contact. “We’re just...developing a friendship.”
“Right,” Burke dragged the word out, drenching it in a thick syrup of skepticism. “And?”
“And he asked if I’d like to go on a cruise with him in January.”
“A cruise?”
“In the Mediterranean Sea.”
Three different ways of covering up a murder passed through Richard’s mind before he remembered he’d decided to like Luke Castleberry and encourage him to romance his daughter.
She looked up at him and, for a moment, she was a child again, too precious for the world. “Are you mad?”
He shook his head. “Nah, kid. I ain’t mad. Luke’s a good man.”
Maddie smiled Barbara’s extraordinary sunshine smile. “I think so, too.”
At dinner that night, Maddie didn’t say one word about Burke being an old maid or Richard needing a nursing home. She did, however, ask them to come back for her birthday in February. “I’ll show you all the photos from our trip,” she promised.
Richard nodded. “That would be real good, kid,” he said, and he meant it from the bottom of his heart. Then he dished up a big bowl of cabbage with sausage in it and the image of the fanged creature in front of the window burst into his mind. “The compost monster!”
The others all jumped a little. “Excuse me?” Maddie asked, pressing a hand over her heart.
“The thing in Mrs. Dister’s garden. It was in your compost bin, too, and Stanley and I saw it outside your window. Darned el chupacabra, or something. What ever happened to it?”
To his surprise, Luke burst out laughing. They had to wait for him to collect himself before he could speak. Finally, he announced, “They came and got it.”
“What? Who?” Richard’s mind burned with images of leprechauns running through the neighborhood with oversized butterfly nets.
“Well, a few months back, a circus came through. Big red and white striped tent. The whole deal.” He wiped at the tears streaming from his eyes. “Well, the animal rights people showed up and just about had a canary because, apparently, there’s all kinds of new laws about what kinds of animals the circus people can tote from town to town and the provisions they have to provide. All that stuff.”
“As it should be. I always felt bad for those poor elephants. They looked so sad,” Maddie said.
Luke couldn’t entirely contain his laughter. Little fits of giggles and glee kept bursting out of him at random moments. “Oh, yes. I agree,” he told her, trying hard to look sincere. “But there they were. All those animals and the conditions just terrible and half the world coming at them with cell phone cameras. They must have been in a panic about how to keep themselves out of trouble, you know?”
Richard stuffed a spoonful of potatoes into his mouth. He knew all too well. The image of Maddie’s whole neighborhood standing in the street with their danged smart phones made his heart beat hard with anxiety. The world had been a simpler place when appliances were still stupid.
“Well, I guess they set the very worst cases free down by the river, figuring they’d round them up later when no one was looking.”
“Those circus people belong in jail,” Maddie said.
“You wouldn’t believe what I could tell you about circus people,” Stanley said.
Burke threw a roll that bounced off Stanley’s bald head.
“Burke Dakota!” Maddie exclaimed.
Richard found himself laughing just as hard as Luke. “That was the best thing I ever saw!” he exclaimed, barely holding on to his false teeth as he said it.
All that set Luke off again. The poor man’s face resembled a plum about to burst. If he didn’t manage a proper breath soon, he was likely to faint into his potatoes.
Finally, he managed a single word, “Chimpanzee!”
Richard gasped for air, even as he rejected the idea. “Ain’t never seen a chimp like that. Somebody shave it?”
Luke slapped the table and covered his face.
Even Maddie was laughing now.
It took nearly a quarter hour for everyone to collect themselves and for Luke to manage to explain that a chimpanzee, plagued by a terrible case of the mange, had been part of the menagerie. For weeks, he’d been living on stolen garden veggies and compost scraps. His handler had dumped him and headed off for places unknown, but eventually the guilt of abandoning the sick animal overwhelmed him and he turned himself in. Animal control was called, and they caught the beast a few hundred feet away from Maddie’s backyard.
Richard had borne first-hand witness to some mighty strange things, but just when he thought life couldn’t get any weirder, a mangy chimpanzee run amok in rural Michigan.
Snow was falling again as the Cadillac pulled away from the curb in Maddie’s tidy little neighborhood. They’d rescued the car from the auto body shop the day before, so it felt like the family was all together again, at long last.
At the first corner, Michael waited for them, leaning against a stop sign. He approached the car and Stanley cranked down the window. “Didn’t think we’d see you again.”
“Really?” The little man appeared surprised. “I would have thought you’d be wondering when I’d come to call.” He took a noisy bite of an apple and stood there munching, one elbow on the roof of the Caddy, like that was perfectly normal behavior in a snowstorm.
“Something we can do for you, then?” Stanley asked.
“Where you heading?” Michael asked.
“Utah.”
Another noisy bite. They waited while he chewed and swallowed. “What’s in Utah?”
“Pukwudgies,” Stanley said.
Michael met Richard’s eye. “You tell your girl where you’re going?”
“Told her we were headed to a convention in Texas.”
The little leprechaun nodded. “That was wise. Let her wounded mind rest a while before you present her with anything too challenging.” Another bite. More waiting. This time, he didn’t speak again.
“So, I guess we’ll be on our way then,” Burke prompted from the back seat.
“Sure, sure,” Michael said. “Safe travels to you. I just wanted to say goodbye and remind you of where things stand.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.
“We owe The Children of Cain a debt,” Stanley said in his newly developed old-man voice.
“Right-o. That you do. Not sure when we’ll collect, but we usually know where to find people when we need them. Also, I’ll remind you that The Daughters of Kali are still in the wind. We blew up their toys and slowed them down, but they’ll spring back as surely as we would, had the roles been reversed. No one saw Umbra and Jones die, which means they’re still alive.”
“And there’s The Children of Cain, too,” Stanley said. His voice held a tremor, but Richard heard something else there, too. Something hard as diamonds; a darkness that demanded satisfaction. “Our alliance served its purpose. We upheld our end. From here on out—”
Michael’s dimples deepened. “I do like you, hunter. It will be interesting to see where our future leads us, won’t it?”
“That’s one word for it,” Stanley said.
“Well…” Michael thumped the roof of the car twice in quick succession. “Until then, istabrawbrichtminlightnichtthe. May the wind be at your back.”
As he said the words, a wind stirred, growing so fierce the car rocked on its axles. A flash of color like a shooting star headed the wrong direction arced across the still-dark morning sky, then all fell still and quiet again.
Stanley shifted his foot to the gas, passed through the intersection and pointed the car westward. They rode in silence for a few miles.
“Do we need to be afraid of him?” Burke asked.
“Not today, my dear.”
“What about tomorrow?” she asked.
>
“Tomorrow will bring a whole new adventure entirely.”
Sneak Peek at the next Monsters and Mayhem
Old Sailors Never Die
E A Comiskey
Blurb
Take cruise
See weirdos
Fight evil
* * *
Almost a year ago, Richard and Stanley escaped a nest of supernatural creatures posing as nurses at their retirement home. Together with Richard’s granddaughter Burke, they’ve crisscrossed the country on a mission to protect humanity from the things that go bump in the night, but Stanley’s had some mishaps along the way that have left him weak and weary. Burke suggests that a cruise might be just what the doctor ordered, and the two men go along with her plan.
* * *
But evil never takes a vacation.
* * *
From the moment they board, Richard suspects something is amiss, but Stanley is too tired to care, and Burke doesn’t believe him. When passengers start dying mysteriously, he’s forced to take matters into his own hands, but can he escape the eyes of an over-attentive activities director, a waiter who takes his job far too seriously, and a wealthy widow who’s determined to win him over long enough to find the monster and destroy it before it kills again?
Chapter One
Richard
The kitchen door swung open and one of the waiters emerged carrying a silver tray. The young man’s height and breadth gave the impression he’d recently been run through a taffy puller. Richard leaned forward. Bingo! The kid came straight toward them and eased his burden down onto the rack in the center of the table. The greasy aroma of melted cheese, pepperoni, sweet peppers, and onions tickled Richard’s enormous nose. He inhaled deeply, savoring the joy of food that was neither the lunch meat sandwiches he had lived on for decades nor the bland, flavorless “health food” served to him at Everest Senior Living Facility. When the kid scooped a slice onto the plate, strings of cheese stretched across open space. Richard forced himself to stifle a whimper.
The first bite burned his mouth. Zesty tomato sauce tingled on his tongue. The crisp golden crust tasted of garlic butter on the bottom and bordered on doughy in the middle. He knew he’d suffer pain for hours after this, but it was a fair price to pay.
“Oh my gosh.” His granddaughter, Burke, mumbled around a mouthful of food. “You weren’t kidding. This really is the best pizza in the world.”
Richard moaned in reply. He had discovered Huntington, Indiana, by accident decades earlier when passing through. So far as he could tell, that’s all people did in Indiana—pass through. He supposed that made the state motto, “The crossroads of America,” technically true, if a tad grander than the reality. The town itself could have been any other in a two-hundred-mile radius if not for the Pizza Junction Cafe.
Stanley used the edge of his fork to cut the tip off his slice. He chewed, swallowed, sipped his water. “Mmm. Very nice.”
Very nice? Nice? Richard would have screamed the words, but he’d lost control and shoved half a slice in his mouth at once, and he had to focus on not choking to death. By the time he could speak again, Stanley had excused himself and shuffled off to the men’s room, leaning heavily on his cane.
For the duration of their acquaintance, Stanley had charged through life, spry as a kid and as annoying as a mosquito in your underpants. A thousand times over, Richard mumbled that the man ought to look and act his age. Now, the sight of the hunched old man shuffling away from them sent a chill down Richard’s spine.
Burke chewed her bottom lip and watched him go. Her nails tapped a frantic cadence on the wooden tabletop.
All Richard wanted at that moment was to enjoy his sacred pizza in peace, but Mick Jagger spoke the truth. We don’t always get what we want. In fact, in Richard’s experience, getting what you wanted was just about a miracle and then, half the time, you ended up sorry you ever asked for it. He drank to clear his throat. “We going to talk about this or what?”
Burke focused on her plate. “I don’t even know what to say. It was bad.”
Bad didn’t begin to cover it. The ghost hunt should have been a milk run. Easy as pie. Simple as sliding off a greasy log backward.
It didn’t go that way, though.
It was a complete and utter soup sandwich.
Burke had been the one to stumble across the story in the newspaper. Three teenagers died inside an abandoned home in the suburbs of Chicago. Local legend claimed that a member of the house’s building crew died during the building’s construction. It had been haunted ever since. A long string of owners experienced strange and frightening sights and sounds. A child died in the night. The coroner said crib death, but the neighbors talked about flickering lights and mysterious shadows darting across the windows. Over time, it became impossible to sell the place. For the past several years, the house sat vacant, a haven for homeless people and youngsters up to no good.
The kids who died went there on a dare. Who was brave enough to spend the night in the haunted house?
They’d been brave.
Now they were dead.
Richard, Stanley, and Burke agreed to the same simple plan they’d used on a dozen other ghost hunts. Go in. Wait for the thing to show itself. Stanley would bind the wayward spirit in iron while Richard and Burke performed a banishment spell. A flash of light and a gust of hot, sulfur-scented wind, and the ghost would move on to wherever such things went.
Sure, they all knew that something could go sideways, but Richard never thought that the something would be Stanley. He believed in Stanley. He counted on him. Stanley had saved Richard’s life over and again. He taught Richard how to be a hunter. Even The Devil Herself held a healthy respect for Stanley. And, yeah, maybe he’d been a little off his game lately, but whoever would have guessed that Stan freakin’ Kapcheck would lose his guts over a ghost?
Maybe Burke guessed. At the last minute, she’d offered to trade jobs with Stanley. The binding required lifting and throwing the heavy chains. The person doing that faced a significantly higher chance of being knocked across the room by the ghost. Go figure, but being banished for eternity tended to raise the ire of restless spirits.
“Your bad leg’s been bothering you. You should read the spell this time,” she’d said.
Stanley refused. “No one reads the Latin more precisely than you. I’ll do the grunt work. You work your magic.”
In an empty room coated in dust and cobwebs, they’d sat on old milk crates and waited. The brass bowl and the ingredients for the spell lay spread out on the floor in front of Richard. Burke held the spell book on her lap. The chains coiled at Stanley’s feet glimmered like serpents in the dim light of the battery-operated lantern.
Shortly after midnight, the room grew cold enough for them to see their breath and the lantern began to flicker. Richard reached for the bundle of white sage and a book of matches. Stanley stood and lifted a portion of the chain.
Oily gray smoke hissed through the vent and formed into a shape vaguely reminiscent of a young man. He regarded the three hunters with eyes of flickering red and then shrieked. Monsters always shrieked. Richard found it annoying. He lit the sage on fire and dropped it in the bowl. An earthy aroma drifted upward with the curling white smoke.
Burke began reciting the Latin text, but Stanley stood frozen and wide eyed. His hands trembled, raising a metallic jingling from the chains. The ghost shot toward Stanley and he jerked back, stumbled over a milk crate, hit the floor, curled into a ball, and started crying like a baby.
Richard stopped mixing the ingredients in the bowl and stared with his mouth hanging open. He’d once watched Stanley hold his ground against a dozen monsters. The cocky SOB had actually laughed while fighting them. Now he fell to pieces like a little girl at the sight of a single ghost?
Burke’s voice took on a sharp note of intensity and the spirit’s attention shifted to the two of them.
Richard reached for a bag of goofer dust, but an invisible force sl
ammed into his chest and knocked him off his stool.
Burke lunged for the iron chains. From the corner of his eye, Richard saw a fireball fly toward her and catch the back of her shirt. She rolled across the floor to squelch the flames and the ghost shot toward her.
Richard scrambled on hands and knees toward the chains, but she shouted at him, “You’re almost done! Forget the chain, finish the spell!”
The brass bowl had tipped onto its side. He hoped the meager contents that remained unspilled would be enough to accomplish their goal. He added a splash of holy water and cut his finger to squeeze out three drops of blood.
Icy cold hands wrapped around his throat. Tears sprang to his eyes, blurring the world around him. His existence dwindled down to Burke’s frantic voice.
“Per istam sanctam unctionem et suam piissimam misericordiam adiuvet te deminus gratia spiritus sancti, ut a peccatis liberatum te salvet atque propitious alleviet!”
The spirit shrieked and burst into a cloud of dust that reeked of rotten eggs.
Richard choked and coughed like a John Deere tractor running on moonshine. Ragged breath whistled through his bruised windpipe.
Stanley sobbed.
The three of them staggered outside. They sought the familiar comfort of their 1959 Cadillac convertible. None of them spoke about Stanley’s failure. What was there to say? The most feared hunter of supernatural creatures in the world had lost his nerve.
They found a rest stop and cleaned themselves up. Burke took a pair of scissors to her scraggly mess of singed curls and cut her hair so short you’d have thought she was a new recruit on her first day of basic training. Together, they retreated from the big city and headed east. Stanley slept in the backseat while Burke followed Richard’s directions to the little green and gray restaurant next to the railroad tracks.
