Off the Beaten Path: Eight Tales of the Paranormal Read online

  Off the Beaten Path

  Eight Tales of the Paranormal

  An Anthology

  Edited by Jason T. Graves

  Contributors

  Sharon Sant

  Angela Roquet

  Chip Putnam

  Kath Langdon

  Monica La Porta

  D.R. Johnson

  Jason T. Graves

  This book is a work of fiction. The people, names, characters, locations, activities, and events portrayed or implied by this book are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, locations, and events is strictly a coincidence.

  Anthology book and cover designed by Jason T. Graves and is copyright © 2013 Jason T. Graves, all rights reserved.

  Soul Trading copyright © 2013 Sharon Sant

  Home Wet Home copyright © 2013 Monica La Porta

  Dearly Departed copyright © 2013 Angela Roquet

  Why Grandmas Shouldn’t be Allowed to Read Vampire Stories copyright © 2013 Chip Putnam

  Prairie Zombies copyright © 2013 Chip Putnam

  Threads copyright © 2013 Kath Langdon

  Home Wet Home copyright © 2013 Monica La Porta

  Great Plains copyright © 2013 Jason T. Graves

  Author photos are copyright © the respective author.

  Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1492750987

  Paperback ISBN-10: 1492750980

  Kindle edition ASIN B00FC28O5E

  Kindle edition first release September, 2013

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any mechanical or electronic method, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission of the publisher. The sole exception is for reviewers, who may use brief passages in a review.

  Table of Contents

  Home Wet Home

  Dearly Departed

  Threads

  Soul Trading

  Great Plains

  Why Grandmothers Shouldn’t Be Allowed To Read Vampire Stories

  To Darkness I Fall

  Prairie Zombies

  To open our anthology, a short tale about a wrong turn in a young “person’s” life. Or is this story really what it seems to be?

  Home Wet Home

  Monica La Porta

  I walk away from them.

  I should run, but I’ve never run before. Not sure I can make it. The sun is too bright, my skin is dry, and my legs are tired. I’ve been tired for so long. Days? Months? Years? I don’t know anymore. I’m always tired here.

  A screech from the right, around the corner I just passed. I shouldn’t have left home. “Rules are rules for a reason,” my dad always says. Said. Another screech. Closer. Father was right when he yelled at me I didn’t know what I was talking about. All that nonsense about freedom and the need to experiment and see what was outside.

  All crap.

  I can see the black water of the polluted river a few meters ahead. The uninviting, stagnant surface reflects the sunrays and blinds me. My jailers will catch up with me soon.

  “Hey! Stop crawling. It’s too hot to chase after you,” one of my tormenters says.

  They are playing hide and seek with me. They know I can’t outrun them. My legs are too weak and it shows in my hesitant gait.

  “We’re not like them. You won’t be welcome out there.” Oh, Dad, you were so right. I wish I could tell him now.

  A step.

  Another.

  The fetid water calls to me.

  Too much darkness… my eyes must be playing tricks on me. One moment the surface is as black as the recesses of a cave, the next moment pure white, as if the river is mocking my attempts at escaping from this situation alive. Fingers brush my left sleeve and I find the strength to double my pace. Not that it matters.

  Laughter.

  A few comments about my frailty.

  The irony is such that I can’t help but laugh myself.

  Memories assail me.

  “I can do whatever I want, Father. You can’t stop me.” My last words before storming out of the abode I had called home all my life.

  A lifetime ago.

  Storming out, I had destroyed the door and the wall to which it had been attached. Five weeks later, I was here.

  Out.

  Terra Firma.

  The place I have been dreaming about since I was no more than a tadpole.

  A hand tries to get hold of my left arm. I scream. What comes out of my mouth is pathetic; a kitten’s soft meow. I reach for my throat. I had forgotten that my body went through the Change.

  “We won’t harm you.”

  Assurances like that got me where I am now. “Promise me you won’t listen to them. They’ll lure you with their voices.”

  I laughed at my father for suggesting I be cautious. Back home, there was nobody strong enough to best me.

  “We only want to help you. Nothing more.”

  The needle firmly stabbing the back of my right hand reminds me of how helpful those people chasing after me can be. I don’t turn to face my tormentors. I know that if I do, I’ll believe everything they say.

  That I imagine things.

  That the story I told the beautiful girl wearing the white gown is just a tale.

  That I need help.

  That I need those medicines that make me feel nauseated and dizzy.

  I can feel their presence behind me, drawing closer. I smell their sweat in the hot air and I recoil at the stench of human. I remember the syringe I’m carrying and I press the needle against my throat.

  “Put it down!”

  I recognize the voice… the beautiful girl has come to witness my defeat. Disappointment fills my heart. The shame of being seen at my lowest gives me unexpected strength. I turn and I look at her. The white of her gown is as white as the reflection from the water a few steps from where I stand. She in the front, and the safe black water is opposite her.

  She raises one hand.

  Her smile is sweet.

  I step back.

  “Don’t do it! We can help you. We’re looking for your family. Please!”

  She sounds worried for me; genuinely worried. For a moment, I hesitate.

  They’ll lure you with their voices.

  “Tomorrow, you’ll feel much better. I promise—”

  Then she screams, her face distorted by a sentiment I can’t recognize. It doesn’t matter. The cold river has embraced me, and I sink down beneath the surface where I can’t see or hear anymore.

  Home.

  At last.

  Our second story is from the popular Lana Harvey, Reapers Inc. universe – a tale of redemption… but who is redeeming whom?

  Dearly Departed

  Angela Roquet

  “Death leaves a heartache no one can heal,

  love leaves a memory no one can steal.”

  -From a headstone in Ireland

  “Would you look at that?” There were three men wrestling with the dead girl’s body. One steadied her in a chair, while another lifted her hair so that the last man could clamp a wooden work table under her delicate chin. Her head poked through a hole made into the two hinged table pieces. The men nodded in approval to each other and set to work, sloppily layering wet clay over her face and neck.

  The girl’s soul cringed next to me. “My mother’s a loon,” she offered in explanation.

  I shrugged. “I’ve never actually seen a death mask being made before. It’s not as glamorous as I thought it would be.”

  “Really? This is your first time? But you’re Death.” She seemed more surprised by my confession than her own demise.
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br />   “I’m not the original Death, you know. I just work for him.” I shrugged again, and she mirrored me with a shrug of her own.

  “So where to from here?” she asked, trying to sound more hard-boiled than nervous. It was the brave new attitude girls were flashing about lately. Kansas City was no different than any other speakeasy city of the twenties.

  “You want to know if you’re going to Heaven or Hell, is that it?” I laughed.

  She folded her arms. “Just between us girls, tell me, does Hell have the better hooch?”

  “Just between us girls, I don’t go out drinking in Hell.” I took her arm and flipped my coin, whispering the coordinates for the harbor in Limbo City, and we disappeared from the mortal world.

  The girl, Ruth Summerdale, as my soul docket stated, had been bumped by a jealous dame for nothing more dire than sitting on the wrong fella’s lap. Alcohol has a way of giving courage where it’s not needed. It was little wonder that the human realm was so up in arms trying to do away with it. Her mother had been a dabbler in the occult, but her father’s family was strictly Catholic, so she had been baptized. She was getting into Heaven by the skin of her teeth, which was probably why she was my cheapest fare of the day. She was also my most favorite fare of the day.

  Ruth could have been my twin sister – my slightly tanner, more stylish twin sister, with her wave of short black locks and firm but curvy contours. She even had a matching pair of sapphire peepers that widened and dilated as they took in Limbo City’s harbor with its numerous rows of steamships and ferryboats.

  My fellow reapers bumped past us, leading hoards of obedient souls onboard their vessels, ready to depart for the afterlives. Heaven and Hell were such vague terms anymore. Sure, there’s THE Heaven and THE Hell, but there are so many subdivisions, and each faith has their own version of the afterlife. Some of those afterlives belonged to faiths that were but a glimmer of what they had once been, resulting in a gross deduction of their territory. Many of the pagan faiths’ territories had dwindled down to the size of a small town and had to merge into the collective Summerland territory. A few of the gods were sour about the democratic transition, but most of them treated it like a long awaited retirement. I didn’t care much either way. A reaper is little more than a glorified slave in the afterlife.

  I gave Ruth a moment to gather her bearings. It was an overwhelming scene, even still for me sometimes. The coordinates I’d used skipped us past the busy market just beyond the harbor, but the noise still echoed out over the sea and around us, a haphazard collage of exotic sounds. An engine whined, muffling the soft mummer of pixies that fluttered above the market just past the dock entrance. A powdery mist of soul matter fogged around us, sprayed up from the Sea of Eternity, where unwanted, afterlifeless souls were dumped after harvesting.

  Everything from ferryboats to pirate ships was used to transport souls of faith across the Sea of Eternity and to their designated afterlives. My own craft was a little, beat-up fireboat. As a low-risk harvester, I really didn’t need anything fancier than that. I had considered upgrading to a ferryboat about a decade back, before my mentor had died and I’d still been striving for approval and a promotion. A part of me had died with Saul, and my ambition was slowly following suit.

  “Lana Harvey?” a familiar, stern voice shouted down the dock. Coreen Bendura, Grim’s top reaper, met me on the ramp of my boat. She was six feet of Death wears Prada, minus the Prada. Her shapeless black robe was standard issue, same as mine, but her status could be seen in the skyward tilt of her nose and her daring sneer. Cold eyes observed me with equal measures of disgust and pity.

  She had been Saul’s very first apprentice, and I his very last. The grieving process had sent us in entirely opposite directions, if sucking us to the boss could be considered grieving. Coreen outranked everyone except Grim himself.

  “Lana Harvey?” she asked again, knowing full well who I was.

  “Yes?” I raised an eyebrow as I ushered Ruth past her and onto my boat.

  “I have a transfer slip for you.” Coreen followed us, pulling her clipboard out from under her arm. “It seems that a medium risk soul found its way onto your docket. Assuming you’ve collected the soul already, the commission is still yours. You’ll just have to drop it off at a different gate.”

  I took the slip she offered and glanced over it. The soul in question was Ruth. Duat, the dwindling Egyptian afterlife, was offering twice the original price given by Heaven.

  “This doesn’t make any sense. Her file shows that she was baptized Catholic.” I blinked at Coreen, waiting for an explanation.

  She blew out a sigh that managed to encompass the entire spectrum of her disdain for me. “Her mother was a follower of Isis, so she was also sloppily initiated into an Egyptian coven in her youth as well.”

  “She won’t fare well in Duat,” I said, feeling a twinge of remorse for the girl’s sudden turn of fate.

  Coreen openly glared at me. “Good thing that’s not our problem.” She turned and made her way down the ramp and disappeared through the fog on the dock, zapping the potential argument.

  I groaned, trying to decide if I should bother filling Ruth in or not. Most reapers wouldn’t have even considered it. Souls were cattle to be sold off to the highest bidder. The afterlives paid according to the quality and quantity. There were certain souls that fit into one category or another. The saints would obviously not be sold to Hell, but the believers who fell somewhere in the middle had some wiggle room. If Ruth had gone to Mass more often, Duat wouldn’t have been able to lay claim to her. But since she was just as initiated into both faiths, and just as inactive in both, they could each bid on her. Duat didn’t get the chance to bid on many souls these days, so they dropped a load of coin whenever they could.

  I still hadn’t made up my mind whether or not to tell Ruth as I fired up my little boat and untied from the dock. The sea was turbulent today, and I was ready to finish up. Gabriel was supposed to be meeting me at Purgatory Lounge later. The misbehaving archangel had been a good friend of my late mentor’s, and we were doing a swell job accompanying each other on our downward spirals.

  Peter met me at the gates of Heaven when my boat gurgled up to the dock. I unloaded a dozen souls and avoided making eye contact with him as I led them up to his check-in station. I could feel his eyes burning through me like hot coals. Peter didn’t like me. He thought I was a bad influence on Gabriel. It made me feel special. I was barely over two hundred years old, a newbie by reaper standards, but apparently I was good at something.

  “You’re missing one,” Peter said, looking at me over the top of his horn-rimmed reading glasses.

  I handed him the transfer slip. He frowned and looked down at the slip and then back at me. “Very well.” He stamped my soul docket, and I turned to leave.

  “He’s been demoted, by the way,” Peter added.

  My shoulders tensed as I recoiled from his silent accusation. I didn’t turn around. I didn’t say anything.

  Peter cleared his throat. “It’s been nearly ten years. Time to move on,” he said, just a hair more gently.

  I hung my head and hurried back to my boat, biting down the insubordinate slurs I often had to swallow when dealing with the big cheeses.

  Ruth found me as we drifted back to sea and on towards the next stop, her stop. “That was Heaven, wasn’t it?” She pulled the slinky blue shawl that matched her sequined cocktail dress more tightly around her shoulders and trembled in the breeze.

  I nodded softly. “Do you recall participating in an Egyptian ritual with your mother?”

  Ruth’s jaw dropped. “I was twelve. You can’t be serious.”

  “Yeah, looks like you should have gone to church a little more often, eh?”

  “Great.” She rolled her eyes.

  “Don’t throw in the towel just yet. Duat does things a little differently. If you make it through their Weighing of the Hearts ceremony, you could still end up in one of the heaven realms.”
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  Ruth considered my words and nodded to herself with a pinched brow.

  When we docked at the gates of Duat, I was surprised to find Lucifer bickering with Anubis, one of the Egyptian death gods. They were close to the same height, but since Anubis was wearing his full ceremonial garb, complete with his jackal headdress, he towered over Mr. Morningstar by nearly a foot.

  “The Abrahamic doctrines are very clear on the demonic significance of pagan influence. Because the soul was baptized and then participated in pagan activities, said activities would be classified as devil worship by her paternal side of the family,” Lucifer insisted.

  “You sound worried, Luce. Aren’t the humans misbehaving enough to satisfy you? Or are you growing concerned at the recent surge in our numbers?” Anubis chided him.

  “That’s not the issue here, and you know it.” Lucifer’s jaw tightened. “Souls belong where they belong. You’re throwing coin around where you haven’t any right to.”

  “Tell that to the Afterlife Council,” Anubis said, growling.

  It didn’t take an oracle to know who they were talking about. I’d just promised Ruth that she had a chance at a pleasant afterlife. Lucifer was about to muck it all up. I didn’t like traveling by coin if I could help it, since it was expensive and came out of my commission, but I didn’t have many options.

  I found Ruth on the opposite side of the boat. The few hell-bound souls onboard were locked up in the deck cabin, so I didn’t have much to worry over. I grabbed Ruth’s arm. “Time for us to go on the lam, sister.” I flipped my coin and said the coordinates for Limbo City again, grimacing at the sudden fading of value marks along the coin’s edge. My paycheck was going to take a beating for this.