He made a sound, barely audible, something between a shuddering breath and a sob, and took the loaf from me. He took it not by the end but by the middle, his tiny fingers squeezing the bread so hard that the loaf bulged on both ends. He turned to the breadbox, openly crying, big rolling tears streaking his cheeks, and I would have looked away out of embarrassment if not for how mesmerized I was by the bread itself. Would it work or not?
I didn't know if Harvinston would be able to do it, he seemed so paralyzed with indecision. But then, with a great cry, he threw open the breadbox and shoved the bread inside.
When he did, the head popped out, rolled off the counter and thudded with a loud smack on the floor.
"Merde!" Bernard cried, glaring up at me. "That hurt, you oaf!"
"Sorry," I said.
"Don't be sorry," Harvinston said, thinking I was talking to him. He took a deep breath, then closed the breadbox. His shoulders slumped, and, turning to me, there was both tremendous sadness and relief on his face. Both were good signs. "As you said, it had to be done. What—what happens now?"
He'd no more spoken these words when I heard the creak of footsteps from the front room, along with the clinking of chains. The air cooled, goose bumps cascading up my arms. This thing about the cooling of the air, something that happens all the time in horror movies, was actually in my experience quite rare when it came to ghosts. But when it did happen, it was never good. In fact, it was the worst feeling in the world, both for what it was and for what it portended.
"Do you—do you feel that?" Harvinston asked, voice trembling.
"Shh!" I said. "Look over here. At the breadbox!"
"What?"
"Don't turn around! No matter what!"
When he still seemed perplexed, I grabbed him by the arm and spun him around so we both faced the breadbox — or more importantly, so we both had our backs to the other side of the kitchen. The footsteps grew louder, the chains rattling first across carpet and then clanking against the wood floor.
He was right there. He was mere steps away.
My heart pounded, blood roaring in my ears. The temperature dropped, a chill that squeezed us to our bones, but our breath did not fog in front of us. That was a myth. It was not a coldness of the body but of the soul, the kind of cold that emanated from someone or something so deeply craven, so without love or hope of any kind, that even being in its presence took some of your own love and hope away. Sometimes it took it all away, if it so chose.
The chains were silent. There were no more footsteps, though I thought I heard the faintest of whistling breaths, as if through gapped teeth. I smelled leather and damp earth and something else, something ashen and burnt. I knew it was watching us, debating what to do.
I should have been more careful, but this kind of evil was incredibly rare. I'd assumed that Bernard's partner would be arrogant, haughty, and repulsive in a more straightforward way — in other words, something like Bernard, who probably felt remorse for his own mistakes or he would not have allowed himself to be carried around by his tormenter in this way. Now I wondered if Bernard sought out his partner the same way a moth is drawn to a bright flame. A shadow of evil often seeks the thing itself.
The chains rattled and I tensed. The floor creaked. No horses or pioneers made a sound now — I doubted they were even out there. The professor started to turn and I held him fast, squeezing his arm so tightly he yelped. I heard the rustle of clothing, a groan that made me shiver, and then something heavy scoot along the floor.
"Now look at what you've done!" Bernard cried. "He's taking me away! Cretins! Thanks for — mmph!"
Something muffled Bernard's mouth. The footsteps came again, the clinking of chains, retreating. I waited until the sounds were completely gone, then waited some more, waited until the coldness clutching my heart faded, until I felt some hope and goodness seep into my bones again.
I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding, then turned, cautiously, to see that both Bernard and whatever had taken Bernard was gone. Swallowing, I glanced out the window, knowing I wouldn't see them but wanting to look just the same. As I'd figured, the little camp of pioneers were gone. Dusk was slipping into darkness, a few stars piercing the lavender sky.
"Is the head gone?" Harvinston asked.
"Yes," I said.
"I thought so. I . . . don't feel that queerness any more."
"You did good," I said.
"What—what was that cold feeling?"
"Well . . . It just meant the head was going away. That's all."
He knew I was lying, but he didn't press. There was no reason to tell him how close we'd come to death. We stood silently a moment, then he asked me if I'd like some tea. I hated to beg off, since he already sounded like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders, but I knew from experience not to overstay my welcome. Before long, cousins and friends and various neighbors would show up asking me to commune with the deceased, and that wasn't my style. I was a detective. Maybe not quite like I used to be, but still a detective in every way that mattered. I wanted to keep it that way.
He asked me how much I owned him. I told him, and he wrote me a check. At the door, he took my hand and gave it a shake that was firmer than I expected, firmer than I thought he was even capable of. But then, he wasn't the same man who'd opened the door for me an hour earlier.
"Be good to your wife," he said urgently. "Be good to her now so you don't regret it later. It's never too late to change things."
I smiled politely, but I left without replying. What could I say? His advice may have been true for most people, but there's only so much you can change when your wife is already dead.
Author's Note
I love writing short stories. I love writing novels, too, of course, but there's something exhilarating about being able to go from idea to finished piece of fiction in a matter of days or even hours that a novel can never match. You can get an idea for a story over breakfast, and if it's a good day, and the words flow freely, you can have a finished draft at the end of the day — a done thing, an artifact of your imagination that didn't exist in the world a few hours earlier.
That's pretty darn cool. And if you've ever read "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes, "Jeffty is Five" by Harlan Ellison, or "The River Styx Runs Upstream" by Dan Simmons, then you know how much even a short tale can sock you in the gut emotionally. And that's just to name three such stories off the top of my head.
I started as a short story writer. I think I wrote a hundred of them before I even attempted a novel. Many of those early efforts were just practice, and, God willing, will never see the light of day. But others have gone on to be published in a wide variety of places — Analog, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Weird Tales, The Los Angeles Review. I never know where those stories might end up, because honestly, I never know what kind of story I'm writing until its written.
That's how it was with "The Haunted Breadbox."
One of the other great benefits of writing short stories is that they are great for coming up with novel ideas. I don't mean I write short stories with the explicit purpose of giving a novel idea a sort of trial run. That's never case, and I doubt that's the case for many short story writers. What I mean is that sometimes you write a story, and whether it's good or not, you know as a writer that you've suddenly unlocked the door to a much larger world. Whether you want to enter that world again is a matter of choice, but the door has been opened. You've glimpsed the other side. You can't undo what you've seen.
After I wrote "The Haunted Breadbox," I knew I was eventually going to write a novel featuring Myron Vale. In fact I was pretty sure I was going to write many of them. Time will tell.
And how did it start? I was in the mood to write a short story. I'd been wanting to write about some kind of ghost detective, though I wasn't sure about the angle. I was walking to my office one evening and I happened to pass the old copper breadbox in our kitchen (which is exactly like the one described in the story), and I wonde
red if instead of writing a story about a haunted house, maybe I could write a story about a haunted breadbox. What would be in an old breadbox like that? The ideas were already flowing. I thought, what the heck, I'll take a flier on it and see where it leads. That's the great thing about short stories, after all. They're short. If it doesn't work, it's just more practice.
Somewhere along the way, I realized that Myron Vale can't tell the living from the dead — and that everybody dies and nobody leaves. That was my angle, and all the complications that come with it. When I hit the last line of the story, I knew he was also the kind of character I'd love to spend a lot more pages with. In fact, I hope you do, too, dear reader, which is why I've included the opening chapter of Ghost Detective, the first novel featuring Myron Vale, at the end of this story. I promise you his world gets even more interesting.
Funny thing about that breadbox. A couple Christmases ago, I wanted to get my wife a nice white one that matched our kitchen, either an antique or something new, but I couldn't find one I liked. I stumbled across this old copper thing at a second hand store, and even though it wasn't a permanent solution, I figured it could act as a sort of placeholder until we found the one we liked. Which is what I told my wife, after she unwrapped it.
I'm not sure it was the best idea, honestly. Judging by her muted reaction, it probably wasn't, though she was too polite to say so. But there it is in our kitchen, still sitting there a couple years later.
And yet if not for that old breadbox, Myron Vale might never have come to be.
About the Author
SCOTT WILLIAM CARTER's first novel, The Last Great Getaway of the Water Balloon Boys, was hailed by Publishers Weekly as a "touching and impressive debut" and won the prestigious Oregon Book Award. Since then, he has published ten novels and over fifty short stories, his fiction spanning a wide variety of genres and styles. His most recent book for younger readers, Wooden Bones, chronicles the untold story of Pinocchio and was singled out for praise by the Junior Library Guild. He lives in Oregon with his wife and children. Visit him online at www.scottwilliamcarter.com.
Please read further
for a sneak preview of
Scott William Carter's novel
GHOST DETECTIVE,
the start of an exciting
new series.
About the Book
After narrowly surviving a near-fatal shooting, Portland detective Myron Vale wakes with a bullet still lodged in his brain, a headache to end all headaches, and a terrible side effect that radically transforms his world for the worse: He sees ghosts. Lots of them.
By some estimates, a hundred billion people have lived and died before anyone alive today was even born. For Myron, they're all still here. That's not even his biggest problem. No matter how hard he tries, he can't tell the living from the dead.
Despite this, Myron manages to piece together something of a life as a private investigator specializing in helping people on both sides of the great divide — until a stunning blonde beauty walks into his office needing help finding her husband. Myron wants no part of the case until he sees the man's picture . . . and instantly his carefully reconstructed life begins to unravel.
Ghost Detective
A Myron Vale Investigation
Scott William Carter
GHOST DETECTIVE. Electronic edition published by Flying Raven Press, July 2013.
Copyright © 2013 by Scott William Carter.
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction, in whole or in part in any form. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
For more about Flying Raven Press, please visit our web site at http://www.flyingravenpress.com.
Chapter 1
The first time I met Karen Thorne, I'd just clicked yes on two tickets to Honolulu for the holidays. Non-refundable, of course.
In the throes of one of her periodic funks, Billie had stepped out for a walk—the rain always made her extra restless—and I was alone in the musty closet my landlord had advertised as office space so he could charge me office rates. As the dreary Portland afternoon slipped into a dreary Portland night, I'd forgotten to turn on the desk lamp, so the pale glow of my monitor was the only thing warding off the growing darkness.
When she opened the door, the glare of the exposed bulb in the hall made me squint. She was visible only as a silhouette—and a hell of a silhouette it was. I caught a hint of blond in the shadowy curls of her hair.
"Are you Myron Vale?" she said. A husky voice. Right. Why wouldn't it be? The voice had to go with the bombshell figure.
Faintly, from down the hall, came the off-key singing of people without any musical ability whatsoever attempting to belt out hymns. Their door was probably open again, but it wouldn't have mattered even if shut; our worthless doors were no better than cardboard. I just kept hoping the Higher Plane Church of Spiritual Transcendence would finally gather up enough gullible sheep that they'd be able to upgrade to a different location.
Either that or they'd give up all their nonsense and accept the truth that I knew better than anyone: Dead or alive, none of us were going anywhere.
"Whatever you want, I can't help you," I said.
"You're Myron Vale?"
"I'm leaving on vacation."
"Myron Vale, the ghost detective?"
"Please don't call me that."
"I want to hire you," she said. "My name is Karen Thorne. It's very important."
"It's Hawaii," I added.
"I can pay you."
"Did I mention it's Hawaii?"
"I can pay you a lot. I'm—I'm very rich, Mister Vale. I wouldn't even be here, but they tell me—they tell me you're the person to come to for . . . for my situation."
So much for the husky confidence. She'd started to come off like a little girl who'd lost her lollipop.
The rain, picking up its pace, pinged like marbles on the metal roof. The red neon glow from the bar across the street pulsed on my cracked window, rivulets of water dribbling down the glass like red wine. Inside my office it was quite dark, but outside the sky contained the last gasps of dusk, lavender clouds over a gray horizon. I took one last longing look at my monitor—a happy couple holding hands on the beach, bodies tan and glistening, two margaritas on the bamboo table—then rose with a sigh from my swivel chair.
A little too fast, like usual. There was the familiar wooziness as the blood rushed to my head—and then, faintly, that dull throbbing at the front of my skull, white and bleak, a discomfort on the edge of nausea, in that sacred place where the .38 was lodged in my brain. I'd never had dizzy spells until the shooting. Of course, lots of things changed after the shooting. Everything, really.
"Are you all right?" the woman asked.
"I'm fine," I lied, steadying myself with a hand on my desk. The world was still tilting, but I wobbled through the darkness toward her anyway. Male pride could motivate a man to do many things.
On my way, I flicked on my desk lamp.
The woman in my doorway more than fulfilled the details my imagination had furnished to her silhouette. She was tall, taller than Billie, at least in her white heels, and she had the kind of curvy, womanly figure that was once the ideal before the runway popsicle sticks got plastered all over the fashion magazines. Her skin was slightly on the pale side, which made her sultry red lips look all the brighter. There was a pair of oversized white sunglasses in her hair, a lacey white shawl over her shoulders, and white pearls around her neck. Her dress was a sleeveless lavender number that matched the handbag she was clutching against her ample bosom. Her very ample bosom.
Sexuality oozed out of her every pore. When she blinked at me, her eyes a liquid green, I could almost feel her long eyelashes brushing against my face. Easy, Myron. You're a married man.
"You're—you're not what I im
agined," she said.
"You were expecting someone taller?" I replied.
She flicked her hair over her shoulders, so much hair, so golden and curly, a single subconscious act probably capable of bringing armies of single men to their knees. "No . . . Just, I don't know, more Yoda-like, I guess. Wizard of Oz. Something like that. You've got quite a reputation." She smiled weakly and fidgeted with her handbag. "Mister Vale, I've—I've come a long way. I need you to find someone. I'll pay whatever you want. Double your rates. Triple even. This man, he's—"
Before she could finish, I put my hand on her chest.
Her face reacted in the predictable way—a flinch, eyes flaring wide, those big red lips forming an even bigger O. Her chest, however, didn't react to my touch at all. In fact, my hand passed right through her, feeling only the slightest tingling chill as it disappeared into her body and came back out again.
"Now we can talk," I said.
A blush spread up her chest and neck to her cheeks, a bright pink wildfire raging across all that pale skin. She touched her chest, her own hand solid to herself, of course, and took a few quick breaths. I thought she might pass out, but she only wobbled a little, swallowing hard, glaring at me. Outside, an eighteen wheeler rumbled by on Burnside, splashing through the puddles.
"Are you always this forward when you meet a woman for the first time?" she asked.
"Only the dead ones," I said. When her face crinkled—most ghosts hated to be reminded that they were no longer among the living, especially the recently deceased—I quickly added: "Sorry. I just had to be sure. You did open the door, you know, rather than walk through it. Not many ghosts can do that."
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