Red Rain: Over 40 Bestselling Stories

by J. R. Rain

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, I found it.

  It was a heart chiseled into some brick work near the base of the first store. Yes, the store itself might change, but the classic brick work would have stayed the same...and the inconspicuous heart carved into it would have gone unnoticed by most people.

  Grinning, I knelt down before the inscribed brick and ran my finger over the chiseled faint.

  Inside the heart were chiseled the letters: “Mr. R.”

  I looked over at the spirit drifting a few stores down. I waggled my finger at him. “Graffiti, Mr. Rose. Tsk, tsk.”

  The partially-manifested spirit continued rising and falling, giving no indication that he’d heard me. But he was listening and watching.

  I stood and pulled out the map, making sure I was remembering the final riddle correctly:

  Twenty to one, run run run.

  Twenty to one sounded like horse racing odds to me. Or the time. Twenty to one would be 12:40.

  Or another number...221.

  I took in a lot of air. And I meant a lot.

  Because I was suddenly certain I had solved the final riddle.

  At least, I hoped I had.

  * * *

  Although details of the actual map were vague, if I faced the ocean proper, as the map seemed to indicate, I saw something interesting: joggers running along Casino Avenue.

  And so I jogged, too.

  Or, rather, ran, as the riddle suggested I should. Counting off 221 steps as I did so. Except the closer I got to 221, the more I began to doubt myself.

  Keep going, Sam.

  And so I did, jogging in my Asics, jogging easily, ticking off the steps as I went, feeling the ocean breeze on my face, and knowing that a spirit was trailing behind me in the far distance. Apparently, ghosts weren’t much for running.

  210 steps...

  I scanned the area, suddenly certain I had made a grave error in my calculations.

  216...

  I was on a lonely stretch of beach.

  218, 219, 220...

  I slowed down, taking it all in.

  221...

  I stopped, hands on hips and scanned my surroundings. I was, of course, standing at Avalon Pier.

  “Son of a bitch.”

  * * *

  I looked again at the laminated map.

  Eighteen dashes, followed by two dashes to the left. Eighteen steps, plus two steps to the left?

  At the head of the pier, I considered counting off 18 steps, but that didn’t seem right. What sort of treasure would be on a pier?

  Certainly not a pirate treasure. And where were pirate treasures? Buried in the sand, of course.

  I leaped off the pier and, starting at the retaining wall, counted off eighteen big steps. I was alone on the beach, so I didn’t care how crazy I looked. No, scratch that. Two people were doing something under a towel about two hundred yards away. My super-sensitive ears picked up on some low moaning and groaning.

  Great.

  I did my best to ignore the lovemaking and focused instead on my steps. The beach sloped down. The pier rose above me. At 18 steps I paused and examined the closest wooden pylon. It was covered in barnacles and seaweed. Most important, carved deeply in it, were the letters: “Mr. R.”

  I turned left and walked two more steps and found myself under the pier. I also found myself filled with excitement, because I could veritably sense the treasure underneath me. A small fortune in gold. Mama could use some gold.

  I felt him before I saw him.

  First, the hair at the back of my neck stood on end, followed by a tingly sensation that coursed through me.

  I turned slowly and was not very surprised to see Cleo Rose behind me. Or Mr. R. Except now, of course, Cleo wasn’t a vaguely-shaped human. No. Cleo had made a glorious, full appearance, complete with exact detail. He was also drawing energy from me, which was fine. As a spirit, he needed to get his energy from somewhere.

  Mr. Rose didn’t look crazy. He was stooped and thin. His face was narrow and pleasant. He wore a thick beard, which, upon second thought, looked sort of pirate-like.

  Mostly, though, he looked mournful.

  No, heartbroken.

  He reached out with a surprisingly real-looking arm. That is, if an arm glowing with super-bright filaments of light could look real. Either way, he placed his glowing hand on my upper arm and I could actually feel him...feel his warmth. A single word appeared in my thoughts.

  Please.

  I felt his anguish, his sadness. I was confused at first, until his pain was obvious.

  Although we were alone under the pier, I suspected that Cleo Rose had made such a complete appearance that anyone would have been able to see him. A true ghost. Except we were alone.

  “You want your kids to find it.”

  The spirit before me, who looked so very much like a man, a real man, nodded slowly. He even blinked. Perhaps it was just a memory of blinking. Surely he didn’t need to blink, right? But I had an image of not just the one son. He had three sons and a daughter. And many grandkids.

  “Or perhaps one of your kids or grandkids?”

  He nodded again, and we stood together, vampire and spirit, under the pier with the ocean crashing nearby. Not too far away, two lovers were in the throes of passion. Now that I was so close, so frustratingly close, I reached out with my inner sight, reached out...and down...down through the sand where I saw a wooden chest buried perhaps five feet below. A big chest...and it was filled with actual gold coins and jewels. Mr. Rose had buried quite a fortune down there. A pirate treasure to be sure. How and where he’d come across the money to do so, I didn’t know or care. Wasn’t my business. But it was more than a small fortune beneath my feet. It was a very big fortune.

  And I had been promised a percentage of it.

  Except it was never intended for me. It had been intended for his kids. Yes, I could take it. I could ignore the wishes of the spirit standing behind me as I uncovered his life’s work. After all, he was a dead man. Who cared what he thought, right?

  Except I cared. His life’s work had been intended for his family. A legacy of love and fun and, yes, insanity.

  The good kind of insanity.

  I had, of course, already been paid for my work. That was how retainers worked in my business. A client paid you in advance for your work.

  I took in a lot of useless air and realized that I had been paid to treasure hunt. Life could be worse. I smiled at the spirit who, even now, was fading from view.

  “You do know that we’re both crazy, right?”

  He smiled again...and disappeared.

  The End

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  Grampire

  You think I like being called gramps for all eternity?

  Hell, no. In fact, I was quite looking forward to death. I lived a damn full life. I married my high school sweetheart, stormed the beach at Normandy, had five kids, and worked in real estate until I had enough to retire. Which I did, and spent the next twenty or so years with my fourteen grandkids and three great grandkids.

  A good life. A perfect life.

  I deserved a good death, too.

  Sadly, my dear wife was the first to go. That hurt. A lot. I knew I wouldn’t last much longer. After all, how does one live with a shattered heart? How can one live with such unbearable, heartbreaking loneliness?

  I knew I couldn’t.

  Hell, I didn’t want to.

  With her passing, I welcomed death. Ached for death. And had I been a lesser man, I just might have done it myself. Put a bullet in the old noggin’. Except you don’t storm Normandy, dodging bullets and bodies, only to take your own life later.

  No, I was going to let nature do that for me.

  And it was doing it. I had felt my body shutting down. My strength leaving me. Within months, my good health disappeared. My body was literally preparing itself for death.

  I welcomed it. Hungered for it. I had lived a long lif
e. A full life. A rich life. I loved my kids and grandkids, but I missed my wife most of all.

  I was ready, ready...

  That is, until that sick son-of-a-bitch broke into the hospital. At the time, I had been given weeks to live. Hell, I even heard a nurse whisper that I had only days. Days! Yippee!

  That is, until that sick prick broke in and...

  I still can’t believe it. I especially couldn’t believe it when I had looked up from my deathbed and saw the pale-faced bastard standing over me, lowering his face onto my neck.

  Yes, my neck.

  I was too weak to scream, but not so weak to feel the agony of his teeth sink into my neck. Not so weak that I couldn’t hear him actually drinking from me, drinking my blood, swallowing hungrily.

  Yes, I had been waiting for death in that hospital room, except death never came.

  That had been twenty-eight years ago.

  * * *

  I’m not exactly what people imagine when they think of vampires. I couldn’t look less like Edward or Jacob, or whichever one was the damn vampire. I certainly don’t sparkle. Mostly, I scowl because I’m pissed off.

  I wanted to die, and now I can’t die.

  Son-of-a-bitch.

  Unlike popular perception, I didn’t revert back to the glory of my youth. Nope. Now I’m permanently broken, permanently wrinkled, permanently hunched and feeble.

  Well, not entirely feeble. I do have more strength than many men combined. But that didn’t do much for my hunched back, or ruined knees.

  My doctors think I’m a marvel of science. My kids think it’s a miracle, too. Only I know the truth. Only I remember the pale-faced bastard hunched over me, drinking from my neck.

  I’m neither a marvel nor a miracle.

  I’m a cursed wretch.

  * * *

  These days I live on a farm, where I feed from my poor chickens and goats and cows. Luckily, I didn’t have to kill too many of them. I just tranquilize the buggers and drain them of some of the red stuff.

  Then I would sit on my porch and drink from a foul-smelling mug, usually drinking with the sun having already long set.

  Yes, I’m a creature of the night.

  A very old creature of the night.

  And if I ever find that son-of-a-bitch who turned me, well, I had a mind to strangle his neck. Or not. The truth was, he’d given me a great gift, too.

  You see, sometimes when I sit on the porch, creaking away in my rocking chair, drinking my latest batch of chicken blood, wondering when I would see my grandkids again, wondering what the weather would be like the next day, wondering if the cold would affect my ruined knees, my poor sweet dear wife would make an appearance right there on the porch.

  Turns out being a vampire has a few side effects—and not all were bad.

  Some, in fact, were very, very good.

  Now I can see into the spirit world. Most importantly, I could see my wife.

  She often comes over and lays a gentle hand on my shoulder and stands next to me quietly. All while I rocked and drank and smiled and ached—and wondered what the weather would be like tomorrow.

  Someone had to be the world’s oldest vampire.

  I guess it might as well be me.

  The End

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  The Bleeder

  Leo Dershowitz stood in front of his painting and frowned. It wasn’t quite right. He had a firm image in his head of what he wanted and this wasn’t it. The color was wrong. And the shading was off. Yeah, that was it. The shading.

  The problem was that the clear image in his head was fading, becoming hazy around its edges, amorphous.

  Which meant only one thing.

  He must be scabbing over again. He hated when that happened.

  Leo looked down at his right arm, which hung over a white plastic bucket, inside of which was splattered with blood. His blood. Sure enough, the gash in his forearm was threatening to close. The steady flow of blood was nearly being cut off by a thick, congealing scab.

  Using a very clean surgical knife, Leo deftly flicked away the scab, which broke off and fell with a splash into the bucket, itself partly filled with a finger or two of his own hemoglobin. Now, once again, sweet blood pumped freely from the gash just below his elbow, flowing rapidly over the many horizontal scars that lined the inside of his arm. Leo always thought the scars looked like piano keys.

  Even though he had performed many such blood-letting rituals before, the site of so much blood at once gripped him briefly with nausea and an old fear. The fear of dying.

  What if I bleed too much this time? What if I pass out and never awaken?

  Leo knew the answer: If he passed out while bleeding, there was a very good chance he would never awaken. That he would bleed to death.

  Then don’t pass out.

  Good idea.

  But Leo had learned long ago to ignore such inhibiting fears. He had to ignore them. Because the moment he began to bleed, the moment the life-force flowed from his wounds, a magnificent vision would appear. A vision that hovered tantalizingly in his mind’s eye. Clear as day. A vision that only lasted for as long as Leo would bleed.

  And now, as the blood dripped steadily from his dangling fingertips, the vision, which had been losing it sharpness with the congealing of his blood, came starkly back into focus.

  Leo had a painting to do.

  He touched the tip of his paintbrush to his palette, rolled it gently, applying the perfect measure of light burnt sienna mixed with pure white, and turned to the half-finished painting before him. And for the next hour or so he transferred the burning image of his mind to the canvas, twice more knocking away the damnable coagulating scabs.

  And when the painting was done, when the bucket was splattered with his blood, Leo nearly wept at the painting’s beauty.

  * * *

  Seven years ago, Leo Dershowitz discovered his artistic muse. It came, quite literally, with a bang.

  Seven years ago, the now very famous artist Leo Dershowitz would be the first to admit that he had been just a very average artist. None of his work stood out. He had been twenty-eight years old and he was miserable. By this age he was supposed to have been a famous artist, right? In the least, he was supposed to have his own art gallery, or a line of greeting cards.

  Due to his predisposition for laziness, Leo had decided early on in life that he would become a professional artist. This was back in junior high, back when he was already sick to death of hearing his damn alarm clock going off each morning. It was on such a morning, after having pressed the snooze button for the umpteenth time, that he decided that he was going to find an occupation in which he never had to wake up early again, an occupation in which he could sleep in as long as he wanted, an occupation in which he made his own hours.

  Having just made the bus and looking down at the fairly simplistic-looking Latin-American painting on his Spanish textbook, Leo was struck with an idea.

  He, too, would become a painter!

  After all, he enjoyed creating and didn’t his second grade teacher, Mrs. Garth, once say that a finger painting of his had been fairly good? She had indeed. Most importantly, though, Leo was fairly certain painters could sleep in as late as they wanted.

  He never looked back.

  Leo threw himself into art, taking class after class, in high school and college, leaving behind an insubstantial trail of uninspired paintings. You see, Leo wasn’t very good at painting.

  Leo eventually flunked out of college. His major, of course, had been art. Many of his classes were before noon, and that just wouldn’t do.

  In the real world, he refused traditional jobs, especially jobs that called upon him getting up too early. Leo valued sleep above anything else, even above eating and having a roof over his head. At one point he lived under a freeway overpass, where he sometimes slept all day, lulled comatose by the steady drone of car engines.

  Interestingly, Leo really did love painting. And the more he
doggedly pursued it, the better he got at it. But getting better at painting, didn’t necessarily mean he was still any good at it. At least, not good enough to earn him any sort of steady income.

  Which is why he often lived with older women who supported him. He called them sugar mommas, but not to their faces. To their faces, he called them whatever they wanted to hear. When the sugar mommas got sick of him freeloading off them, Leo would move back in with his parents. Leo didn’t care where he lived. As long as he had his precious, uninterrupted mornings—and a place to paint.

  Through thick and thin, Leo Dershowitz never gave up. Give him that. He was going to make it as an artist, even if it killed him.

  And, in the end, it did.

  * * *

  Seven years ago, Leo Dershowitz’s mundane, uninspired life would forever change with a shard of glass.

  After a night of partying—and living alone for the first time in a long, long time (his last girlfriend had tossed him out after discovering him riffling through her purse)—he had been taking out the trash the next day.

  The Hefty bag was full of glass bottles, some broken, from the small party he had thrown the night before. Leo often threw such parties with his local artist friends in Los Angeles, many of whom were not very good either. Leo hated good artists. He was deathly envious of them, mostly because he could not understand them.

  So Leo’s parties were generally small affairs, filled with other artists like himself; that is, the uninspired, the hacks, and the unimpressive. Leo liked it that way. He was fairly certain that he was at least as good or better than most of his unimaginative friends, and that always made Leo feel good. Of course, if any of his artist friends did become too good, or too successful, Leo would drop him or her immediately—and have nothing more to do with them.

  Now, heading to the dumpster that late afternoon, the half-asleep Leo swung the plastic trash bag about rather recklessly, a bag full of bottles and, most importantly, broken bottles.