The Seven Caves
& Other Spine-Tingling
Short Stories
By Laura A. H. Elliott
The Seven Caves & Other Spooky Spine-Tingling Short Stories © 2012 by Laura A. H. Elliott
Cover Illustration by Laura A. H. Elliott
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means – electronic, mechanical, photographic (photocopying), recording, or otherwise – without prior permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes. This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any person, living or dead, any place, events or occurrences, is purely coincidental. The characters and story lines are created from the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
To read more about Laura’s books visit: www.Laurasmagicday.worpress.com
Twitter: @Laurawriting
And on FACEBOOK
Other Books by Laura A. H. Elliott:
The Shadow Series
13 on Halloween, Book 1
Shadow Slayer, Book 2, Sept. 2012 release
Moon Killers, coming soon
The Starjump Series
Transfer Student, Book 1 in the Starjump series, an intergalactic tale of beauty and the geek.
Book 2, Dec 2012
Winnemucca, a small-town fairy tale where fear’s as blind as love
Table of Contents
The Kindergarten Ghost
The Seven Caves
Knock Three Times
Not Tonight
One Great Love
Drive-Thu Death & Coffee
13 on Halloween [Shadow Series #1 excerpt]
Shadow Slayer [Shadow Series #2 excerpt]
The Kindergarten Ghost
Mary was a quiet gal. She loved reading and sewing and teaching Kindergarten at Cypress Elementary School. An avid gardener, she was happy that the district in which she taught named all their elementary schools after trees. No one she met seemed surprised to hear that Mary was a kindergarten teacher. Her constant smiles, endless energy and devotion to children made that an obvious career choice.
But lately, Mary felt restless.
She had only moved to town six months ago and already she’d made many friends. Last week she’d been set up on a blind date that went so well her and Gus had plans to meet that night for dinner and a movie. They’d go to Lenny’s, a popular burger place. A place frozen in time, much like Mary herself with her signature sweater sets and Capri pants. At Lenny’s, girls rollerskated to the car, took the order and rolled back with food. Buddy Holly would blare through the speakers. Gus even drove a 1955 Ford Fairlane Sunliner, light blue. In fact the only difference between the Lenny’s of the 1950s and now were the tattoos and piercings the waitresses sported, and, of course, their roller blades.
As Mary got ready for Gus to pick her up the night of their second date, she felt like someone was watching her. So much so she kept turning around, checking behind her as she grabbed a quick drink at the sink. Shaking the feeling off as before-the-next-date nerves, she returned to her bedroom, sat at her vanity and brushed her hair. As the bristles grazed her scalp, she saw herself from behind. Brushing her hair. As if she was someone else, walking up behind her. Mary’s skin crawled. She called out.
“Gus? Is that you?”
No one answered. But she didn’t expect him to. Gus hardly seemed the type to let himself into her home on a second date. She always locked her doors anyway. But still, she didn’t feel like she was alone.
Mary turned on the radio and started singing. She was in the church choir and singing always put a smile on her face on the rare times she wasn’t smiling.
The date went well. And at evenings end, after the burgers and the movie and after Gus had cracked so many jokes that Mary’s side ached, they stood at the front door and kissed for the first time. When Mary closed her eyes as they kissed again she herself and Guss standing at the front door. As if she was sitting in the oak tree in her front yard. Mary jumped in Gus’s arms.
“I have that effect on women.” Gus said laughing.
“No, oh, no. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened.” Mary said feeling like that was a lie. But it wasn’t. She couldn’t really tell him what made her jump. And if she could explain the visions that would be way too much info to share with someone on the second date, someone she thought she might be falling for.
“Hey, what about tomorrow? How about we grab a coffee after work?” Gus taught seventh grade science at the junior high. Mary liked his easy-going nature. In spite of her sunny ways, Mary wasn’t very spontaneous.
“Sure, that sounds great.”
But Mary wouldn’t make that date.
She placed her hand on the door knob as Gus hopped off the porch. She watched him walk to his car and jump over the driver-side door and into the front seat.
Mary felt like calling out to Gus. Asking him to come in. Check things out. But that wasn’t Mary. The words wouldn’t come even as she trembled walking into her own home, what she had told her friends was her little slice of heaven on earth.
Mary shut the door and flipped every switch on her way to the kitchen. She took a sip of water and looked into the garden. She’d planted sod only last week and liked to watch the pieces of grass grow into each other, like it had been there for ages. She walked out back. This was the first time she saw the grass so green and seamless. In the moonlight, the blades sparkled. But as she looked closer, little depressions formed in the grass. Footprints. They walked their way behind a blooming forsythia bush at the back of her property.
She followed the trail with her eyes to see where they began. She jumped. The first footprint was under her foot.
Mary climbed the stairs of the deck, ran inside her house and locked the backdoor. She caught her breath and sat at her kitchen table looking at the empty seat in front of her. Wishing she’d been a different person. Somebody who would have invited a man in on a second date. But Mary would never be herself again.
Mary was becoming someone else. Someone who wanted her life back. A ghost who had followed her home from Room 8 at Cypress Elementary.
It would be too late for Mary to put the pieces together when the ghost of Amy Westerfield decided it was time to take her life back. You see, it all started in 1955, when Amy and her fiancée were about to marry. But Amy never made it to their wedding. She had been walking to her car early in the evening when a drunk driver hit her while crossing the street from the school where she worked as a kindergarten teacher at Cypress Elementary.
You see some ghosts are only allowed to haunt the last place they were happiest. They get tied to places. Stuck. Amy was stuck in room 8. Of course all through the years the kids in the kindergarten saw Amy. They tried to explain how this nice lady would help them paint their paintings or find their lost jackets or sing them to sleep at naptime. But, well, adults don’t listen. And so Amy haunted Room 8 for fifty three years until Mary taught there.
Mary was about to marry Gus but she didn’t know it. Amy did. And since Amy never got to be with the man she loved the way a woman can be with a man only on Earth, her longing and her haunting was powerful. Little by little that next day Amy slipped slowly into Mary.
Gus and Amy were married later that year.
Mary never left Room 8.
The Seven Caves
Lucia is a small seaside town perched on the cliffs of central California. Discovered by Don Gaspar de Portola and his soldiers late in the 18th century, the town is named after the day of its discovery
––December 14, Santa Lucia Day.
On a day not too long ago, a local caretaker of an estate just to the south of Lucia, known only as Point 16, received a visitor. The stranger said he was from The Vatican and inquired as to seven caves that The Vatican had listed in its archives from the manifest of the town’s discovery centuries ago. As he further stated that the caves were sure to be located off the coast of Point 16, the caretaker dismissed the man’s strange way of talking but became obsessed by his manner of dress which included a spectacular sword with rubies inlaid in its handle.
The caretaker scratched his head. He’d kayaked up to the caves a time or two and had paddled inside a little ways. The only person the caretaker knew that ever sailed inside the caves any distance at all, and at that only a quarter of a mile, was long dead. Rumor was that the seven caves all met up in the very center of The Santa Lucia Mountains. The mysterious visitor surprised the caretaker when he knew that the caves were the color of blood and shocked him when he spoke of a great temple with treasure inside.
The caretaker told the stranger that the caves were real enough, but that no one he knew had ever been able to sail deep into the caves to discover any temples or treasure.
The stranger thanked the caretaker and went on his way. The caretaker, uneasy about the stranger, decided to follow. The stranger rode his horse to the beach beside the caves and climbed into a simple dugout canoe. Primitive by any standards. Its oars like branches.
The stranger paddled and paddled. The caretaker could only watch from
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