by Glenn Rolfe
Of all the disasters to hit OOB over the years from the storms of 1898 and 1978 that demolished the original piers to the fire of 1907 that burned nearly every hotel and business to the ground, it was the storm of death in the summer of ’86 that sticks with me and plenty of my neighbours here in this great town.
Yet, I still can’t let her go completely.
Even now, on an early evening like this with the sun going down, the night coming to life, I know part of me is waiting for her to keep that promise.
It’s almost ten years to the day she first walked into my life. I wonder sometimes if she met someone else or maybe she succumbed to what she was. But I don’t think so.
Somewhere behind me, I hear a familiar song coming from one of the bars.
Sammy Hagar is singing about love walking in.
A cooling breeze drifts in off the sea, an old lost feeling comes over me, and I smile.
“Hello, November.”
Acknowledgements
Thanks first and foremost to my wife and kids for putting up with me on a daily basis, and for letting me do what I do. It takes a lot of patience to deal with me when I’m trying to finish a project like this. So thank you! And I love you.
Thanks to Tim Waggoner for making time for me when I had questions about outlining. Tim, you were a HUGE help. Thank you so very much, sir.
In this story, I took some liberties with details regarding Old Orchard Beach. While some streets and places are there and known by many that frequent my favourite beach town, I was not there in 1986. I’ve fictionalised my fair share of the town for the sake of this story.
To the wonderful people of OOB, I LOVE your town on and off season. It’s my happy place.
I also mention someone reading Stephen King’s IT in July of ’86 even though the book wasn’t released until September 15th of that year. I was well aware of the fact, but I couldn’t resist putting it in here anyway. I hope my fellow Constant Readers out there will forgive me.
While I love vampire books and movies, I offer my own take on the creatures here. Much love to the classics.
Special thanks to Don D’Auria and Flame Tree Press for taking a chance on me and my little summer love story.
About this book
This is a FLAME TREE PRESS BOOK
Text copyright © 2020 Glenn Rolfe
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
FLAME TREE PRESS, 6 Melbray Mews, London, SW6 3NS, UK, flametreepress.com
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
Thanks to the Flame Tree Press team, including: Taylor Bentley, Frances Bodiam, Federica Ciaravella, Don D’Auria, Chris Herbert, Josie Karani, Molly Rosevear, Mike Spender, Cat Taylor, Maria Tissot, Nick Wells, Gillian Whitaker. The cover is created by Flame Tree Studio with thanks to Shutterstock.com.
FLAME TREE PRESS is an imprint of Flame Tree Publishing Ltd. flametreepublishing.com. A copy of the CIP data for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.
HB 9781787583948 | PB ISBN: 9781787583924
UK-PB ISBN: 9781787583931 | ebook ISBN: 9781787583955
Created in London and New York
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