Short Stories and Articles

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IN THE ROUGH
by Anne K. Edwards

  Merrilee Denning's hand shook as she set the white porcelain cup on the saucer and tea sloshed down the side.
  "Now look what you've done, sloppy," the old woman who sat in bed across the rollaway table said. "You must be more careful."
  Giving her knit top an impatient yank down over the waistband of her green skirt, Merrilee said, "Gran, they're digging up that old golf course." She wanted to shake her grandmother. "Don't you know what it means? They'll find..."
  She wondered for the millionth time if she was crazy for half-believing the old woman's story. Whether it was true or not, she was worried.
  "Let them find the men. I don't care any more. It was a long time ago, you know." The old woman clutched her mug with both hands. Their palsied movement sent the contents roiling near the rim.
  Merrilee reached to steady the cup for her and helped it to her lips. "Gran, I don't understand. I thought there were only two, the golf course owner and that one golfer who ran over your dog."
  The old woman swallowed the strong tea and smiled a smile that was a grimace. The stroke had paralyzed the left side of her mouth and left a permanent turn down on the corner of her mouth.,br>  "No. There's lots of 'em. I don't remember how many."
  "Gran, the police investigated only two disappearances. How could you have killed more than that and nobody know?"
  The old woman grinned. "That was the easy part. I didn't have to bury all of 'em myself. Your Pa, Lord bless him, helped me with most of 'em."
  Merrilee stared. "Pa?"
  "Sure. He is a good son to me." The old woman lowered the cup to the table.
  She looked out the window of the nursing home, her faded blue eyes sad. "You remember when I come here? It was spring and the grass was just coming out. Such a pretty time of year." She shook her head. "Now they're digging all that grass up. All the prettiness--gone."
  "Gran, what do you want me to do?" Merrilee asked. "Do you want me to ask Pa to come back from Hawaii?"
  The old woman shook her head. "No, darlin'. Don't bother your Pa about this. There ain't much the law can do to me about them dead men. All I did was get rid of a bunch of jerks the world never missed. Never even looked for 'em."
  "What should I do?" The girl looked out the window too, in her mind seeing the heavy machinery sinking its yellow teeth into the rich red earth. It gave her the shudders to think what they might find. On the other hand, it might be one of Gran's fanciful stories like the one she told about being descended from an illegitimate son of Henry the Eighth of England.
  "Why, child, don't worry about it. It'll be all right." The old woman leaned back on her pillows. "I'm going to sleep now."
  She seemed so relaxed that Merrilee shrugged off her fears.
  "I'll go, Gran, but I'll be back as soon as I can. Tomorrow I'll be at the courthouse all day. My boss is representing that awful Mr. Julkes in a lawsuit again. I don't know why that old fool can't get along with his neighbors."
  Her gradmother nodded, closed her eyes, and Merrilee left.
  Sorrow filled her heart. It wouldn't be long before she lost Gran. She hoped the men digging up the golf course never found the place the old woman had buried those men. If they were there, they were somewhere on that low spot that was always wet from an underground spring. Gran said the digging was easiest there in the soft soil.
  The drive back to the large old house where she'd spent her summers as a child wasn't long enough to reach a decision about calling her father. If she called him, he'd be on the first plane back. Had he really helped bury those men? Him? She couldn't accept that such a gentle man would do that. But what would he say if she told him she knew?
  Should she just wait and see if they were found?
  As she was about to put the key in the front door of the old house, a man approached from the golf course. He hailed her.
  She turned to look at him. He was short, squat, with a fringe of white hair peeking from the bill of the cap that shaded his round, merry face. His blue eyes gleamed in the late afternoon sun.
  "Sorry to bother you, Miss, but I wanted to find out about the lady that lived here," he said. "Her last name was Larkin."
  Merrilee nodded. "I'm her granddaughter. She's living at St. Anselmo's now."
  "The nursing home?" His eyebrows went up.
  "Yes. She had a stroke and couldn't stay alone any more."
  "I'm sorry to hear it. I wanted to talk to her about buying the house." He made a sweeping gesture with his left hand. "I talked to Ed Price at Kent Real Estate and he told me it was for sale."
  Merrilee nodded.
  "Who's handling the sale for her?" he asked. "I'd like to buy it."
  "James Carlson is Gran's lawyer," she said. "Would you tear the house down for more condos?" she asked, supposing he was the man putting the condos up on the old golf course.
  "No. I'd live in it. I always liked the old place. I knew Carl Larken pretty well. We golfed together over there." He turned toward the golf course.
  "Oh. Gramps passed on about seven years ago." She didn't want to think about him. He'd been a very unpleasant old man at the end. Always cursing and throwing things. That was why he spent his last years in St. Anselmo's ward for difficult patients. It was the wing where they housed the violent and insane.
  "I know." the old man told her. "I was in Arizona when my son wrote me that he was gone."
  She nodded. No sense pretending any deep sorrow at this late date.
  "My name's John Franklin. Be sure to give your grandmother my best. I'll see Carlson about the agent for the sale." He headed back the way she came.
  The name Franklin was familiar, but she couldn't place where or when she'd heard it. No recollection of her grandfather's friends came to her. She and he had not been friends.
  With a shrug she went inside and shut the world out. The day had been long and she was tired. A quick supper, some T.V., then she'd turn in early. It was a long drive back to her job in Clearton Falls.
  Much later, though it seemed but minutes, the shrilling of the telephone roused her from sleep. She fumbled for the light and then the receiver. A glance at the clock showed the time to be three fifteen.
  A frantic voice chased away the last of the sleep fog in her mind. "Miss Denning? This is Grace Hall at St. Anselmo's." The woman sounded frightened. "Have they gotten there yet?"
  Merrilee couldn't get a grasp on what the woman was saying. "Slow down, please. I don't understand."
  "Your grandmother... I called the police the moment we found out."
  Chills swept over Merrilee. "Are you calling because my grandmother is dead?" She tried to cut through the confusion.
  "No. No. She's gone! I thought the police would have come to see you right away."
  Merrilee was fully alert. "My grandmother is gone?" She couldn't believe her ears. "What do you mean she's gone?" The phone shook in her hand.
  She's not in her bed. Her chair is there." Grace spoke rapidly as if afraid someone would stop her. "Nessa stopped in to make a nightly check on her and she wasn't there. She checked the bathroom, closet, the halls and then alerted security. They found the fire door was open. Mr. Elmont in the room across the hall is always going out that way. He said your grandmother asked him how he did it. He jams the lock with paper." She took a breath and concluded. "It looks like she left that way."
  "But Gran can't walk." Merrilee protested in tears. That damned place...Mrs. Hall had promised they'd be installing alarms on the doors in case of break-ins.
  "She took her walker." Grace said. "We know she couldn't get far, and we're looking for her. Do you know any place she might go?"
  "Not off hand, but she might be headed here." Merrilee tried to hold onto the hope.
  Grace sighed audibly. She'd done her duty, Merrilee thought and was letting others take the responsibility.
  How could Gran get away from St. Anselmo's? She could barely stand up without help.
  Shaking her head, she hung up and turned on the porch light to look outside. Why haven't the police come yet if they were on their way?
  Deciding it would be better to be dressed if they did come, she went upstairs. She grabbed up a pair of green slacks and tan pullover. If she had to go out, she wanted to be dressed for the cool night air.
  A knock came as she returned downstairs.
  She opened the door to find a uniformed officer in dark blue standing beside a man in a dark suit. "I've been expecting you," she said. Holding the door, she stood aside to let them in.
  They showed her their identification. The taller man was Private Duncan and the shorter one with dark eyes was Detective Roman. "Do you have any idea when she left the home or if she had help? Is there any place she liked to visit?" Roman asked.
  Merrilee shook her head, but even as she did so, a nagging thought took hold. She tried to repress the idea. Surely, Gran wouldn't go there. She'd never make it. But it had been on her mind a lot lately.
  "Something's bothering you, Miss Denning. What is it?" Private Duncan asked.
  There was no help for it. Gran was in trouble and maybe they'd think she was just senile. She told them the story of the bodies buried on the golf course.
  The two men were stunned. "Bodies?" Roman regained his composure. "How could a little old lady do something like that and no one know?"
  "Gran told me how she killed the golf course owner and a golfer who ran over her dog. And she said she killed a lot of other golfers too. Always the same type. The ones who tromped through her flowerbeds after their golf balls or would dent her car with their balls. She said she'd had three broken windows too from that place and no one ever offered to pay to fix them."
  "Did she give you any names?" the officer asked.
  "No. She didn't know their names."
  "How did she kill them?"
  "I don't know. She'd never tell me. Just said that was the easy part." She looked at him. "I'm not sure I believe any of it, but she seemed so sure."
  Detective Roman grunted and ran his hand over his eyes. "Is it possible she went there?"
  "It's six blocks from St. Anselmo's to the golf course. I don't see how she could possibly make it unless someone drove her. She'd have to have a flashlight too to find her way around the course. It's all torn up now. You can see it from here." She gestured to the land across the road.
  "Where would she be likely to go?" Private Duncan asked, looking into the dark toward the golf course.
  "Probably where the pond used to be. It's all silted in now, but the underground spring keeps the ground soft. She said that's where she buried them."
  "I'll get a flashlight." Duncan said and headed outside to the car.
  Merrilee was certain this was all a waste of time. But what if Gran did go there? Why would she? Was she that senile?
  "I wonder..." she muttered to herself and started around the side of the house. "Surely, I would have heard..."
  The two policemen followed.
  She stopped at the little garden shed that sat by the entrance to the rear garden. The door was open.
  "Why did you come back here?" Detective Roman asked.
  "I just wondered if she might have come here. She kept a spade in the shed."
  He flashed his light over the contents of the shed. "No spade here now."
  Merrilee felt a sudden cold flow over her. "She couldn't be planning to dig them up." She looked at the policemen. "She said there are so many of them. The strain would kill her. She isn't very strong."
  They stared at her. "Can you show us where?" Roman asked.
  "I never went over there. The people were always yelling and Gran said most of them were drunks like Grandfather. She hated golfers."  They crossed the street and made their way around parked trucks and equipment that littered the land. They followed a dirt road cut into the old sod.
  Merrilee pointed. "I think it's over that way. Toward the club house."
  They left the road and picked their way across the brushy ground. On reaching a rise, they saw the remains of the clubhouse. It's burned timbers lay like the bones of some monstrous being in the light cast by their flashlights. Below it was the low spot that had once been a pond.
  A beam of dim light shown dimly at the bottom of the hollow. The men plunged down the slope toward it.
  Merrilee followed as quickly as she could over the rough ground. Her eyes locked on a pale figure that lay at the edge of the faint light.
  "Gran!" She cried.
  The men reached the figure first. Officer Duncan took her wrist and, after a moment, shook his head. "She's gone, Miss," he said. "I'm sorry."
  Merrilee knelt at her grandmother's side and wept.
  The detective flashed his light around as he radioed in that they'd found the missing woman. Her walker lay partially jammed into a freshly dug hole where the shovel stood at attention. Clutched in the dead woman's hand was a long white bone.

The End.

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The Cursed Vampire
by Anne K. Edwards

  "Prince LeRoix is dying," the old manservant said. He raised his tragic eyes to the gathering of vampires around the large canopied bed. The heavy hangings of the room muffled their groans of empathic pity for one of their own.
  "He wasn't out in the sun or anything?" asked a white-skinned female vampire.
  The servant shook his head. "No. He has kept to the same routine for the eight hundred years that he's been a vampire. He reached over to tug on a bell rope.
  The vampire in the bed moaned and opened his eyes. His blood-red eyes moved from one face to the next. "Ah, you've come," he said. "Good. Good."
  "What is the matter, your highness?" asked a tall vampire who stood at the foot of the bed.
  "I don't know, Ladislaw. I don't know." He shivered and the manservant tucked the covers tighter around him.
  "When was your last meal?" asked the female vampire.
  "Ah. Three nights ago. A young female. Quite lovely. A pity I took her life in the process. I don't like the killing, but she tried to scream. I couldn't hypnotize her as I usually do."
  A vampire with wisdom in his eyes looked at the ailing vampire and then swept the group with a slow gaze. "They found her in an alley," he said. "Her name was Myrna LeRoy." He paused as the door to the darkened room opened and a slim figure stepped inside.
  "You rang for me, father?"
  The manservant looked up. "Yes, daughter. I wish you to fetch some of the containers from the cold room." He glanced around. "We'll need eight."
  When the girl was gone, the prince spoke, "You are quite right, Fredrich. My friends must not go out tonight. It may be something we are all susceptible to."
  The vampires huddled closer together, spooked for a moment by some unknown threat to their immortality. The wise-looking vampire shook his head.
  "You have no need to fear, fellow night travelers. I know what is wrong with Prince LeRoix." He held up a large black, leather bound book. I looked up his symptoms. There have been two other cases recorded in our past.
  The prince raised a feeble hand, that resembled that of a skeleton, so white and thin the fingers were. "What have you learned, good doctor?" His hand fell onto his chest. "What is wrong with me?"
  "The news isn't good, my prince." The other vampire told him. "You have broken the pledge we vampires take to never drink our own blood. We must take that oath because to do so is fatal."
  "I have not bitten myself," the prince protested with a involuntary shudder as pain swept over him.
  "You drank the blood of Myrna LeRoy three nights ago."
  Comprehension and astonishment passed over the dying vampire's face. "No!" he protested. "It can't be! It can't be."
  "I'm sorry, my friend. It is the truth. Before you became a vampire, you were married to Princess Margareta Prosperet. She left you once you became one of us as you had no interest in things mortal any longer. She felt herself to be in danger in spite of all the crosses she kept around herself. Did you know she was with child?"
  Prince LeRoix was failing fast as the hour of dawn fast approached. He shook his head. "I did not know. I never tried to find her."
  The doctor gazed down st him sadly. "The baby lived and since that day, your bloodline has continued. Until," he said in a low voice, "you killed the girl. She was the last of the line."
  He straightened and looked around. "If there's any possibility that any of you have children or descendants, I suggest you find them. We must be sure this does not happen to us what had happened to the prince. In drinking the blood of a descendant, we drink our own blood."
  As the first light probed with gentle fingers into the empty gloom around the heavy drapes, the vampire in the bed shuddered and cried out. Then he was still.
  The vampires fled in a panic.
  "They didn't wait for my daughter to bring their blood draughts," the manservant muttered and shook his head. He sighed. It was going to be hard getting used to a new master. He decided he'd find a genealogist to track that faithless wife of his, just in case...

Fini???

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Mugging Death by Anne K. Edwards

  There are some days it don’t pay to get out of bed. Wednesday was one of them. I should have gone to the ball game with my buddy, Hal Reaster, but no, not me. I have a work ethic. And I like to eat regularly.
  So there I was, at my desk, finishing up a report on Tacky Mundt’s wife and her newest lover when the door opened. The hair on the back of my neck rose and gooseflesh crawled up my arms. My stomach turned over and my heart began to thunder like a runaway horse.>br?  Not again.
  I didn’t want to look up. I recognized that awful feeling. I knew who it was. Maybe, I thought, I could pretend he wasn’t there and he’d go away. I kept my eyes glued on the form on my desk and hoped.
  After a couple of minutes, I realized it wasn’t working. He was still there, floating a few inches above the floor, just like the last time. For some reason, that bothered me. Why couldn’t he wear a pair of brogans? I took a deep breath and gave up.
  I looked at him. And wished I’d stayed in bed.
  Death still gave me the creeps.
  His black hood covered his skull. At least I didn’t have to see his bony head.
  “Come in and close the door.” I croaked. I didn’t want no one to see him. I mean, how would it look? Me--doing business with the likes of him?
  He floated toward my beat-up old desk as the door closed.
  “Just passing through, I hope,” I said.
  “No,” he said. He still sounded like a bunch of rocks rolling around in a rusty tin can. It bothered me how I heard him in my head. I wondered if other people did too.
  He came straight to the point. “I need your help once more,” he said.
  “Why don’t you give your business to someone else?” I asked without any real hope he would.
  “You do satisfactory work. I see no reason to change,” he pointed at a stain on his sleeve with his bony finger. “This is why I need your services. Give me the contract to sign.”
  I wished his voice wasn’t so hard on the brain. Mine felt like it had rocks of its own.
  “I think you ought to see Sammy Clarren, down the street. Clarren’s Cleaners. They take out stains.” I didn’t think Sammy would thank me for sending him to their establishment. “I don’t take stains out of robes.”
  Death made some sort of low noise that sounded like a groan of frustration.
  “The stain isn’t important,” he told me. “I need you to find the mortal responsible. Give me the contract.”
  “I told you the last time, I won’t be responsible for you taking someone’s life.” He didn’t get it. On a previous occasion when I’d helped him, he took some old geezer who’d thought he’d figured out a way to live forever.
  “I don’t want to take him. He took something from me.” Death aimed his head at the computer that slept in its shadowy corner. “I want you to find him on that.” He pointed at the machine.
  I blinked.
  “What? You want me to find a crook? You think I can just type in ‘crooks’ and his name will pop up on a list?”Death raised his head so that he faced me. Guy had absolutely no sense of humor. But what did he expect coming in here with such a stupid request?
  “My implement must be returned to me,” he sounded more gravelly than ever.
  My turn to not understand. “What implement?”
  He gave a loud moan. Just like you’d expect to hear on Halloween at midnight in a haunted house.
  I stared at him. My brain had turned to mush. I had no idea what he meant. The only implement Death carried was a scythe...
  I roared. I couldn’t help it. I got it. He must’ve been mugged.
  I swiped at the tears that flowed down my cheeks. “You were robbed?” I wondered how he’d explain that to his bookkeeping bosses. The thought was enough to nearly send me into another laughing fit, but I managed to control myself.
  “I was sent to take someone who sleeps in that alley.”
  I hopped in. “You got mugged in an alley? On the job?” I roared again. This was rich. Some idiot dared jump Death. Hadda be drunk or high. Or just plain stupid.
  “Don’t you know better than to go in alleys after dark?” I asked without thinking.
  He made that rattling moan again.
  I’d swear he was embarrassed if he could’ve displayed any emotion. Tsk-tsking him, I asked, “Why do you need the scythe anyhow? It’s just a symbol, isn’t it?”
  He shook his head, his whole robe swinging back and forth. “My implement helps me separate the soul from the body. It must be returned!” The rock-and-rusty-can sound was louder than ever.
  I shook my head to clear it of what felt like an echo and changed the subject. “That’s why they call you The Grim Reaper?” I didn’t add that ‘grim’ came from being so humorless. “Yes.” He turned toward me so I could see under his hood.I still didn’t like the view.
  “This is how I appear to some of those I visit. You see me as your media has presented me over the years--like this. This image is fixed in your mind. I may appear as an angel to others or as a relative. I am a guide, a messenger or a conductor.”
  He took his job seriously. I half expected him to launch into a speech about the film and books written about him, but he didn’t. Lucky me.
  He pointed at the computer again. “If that won’t help, how will you find the thief?”
  I pushed a contract form across the desk to him and rolled my chair back from the desk.
  “Yes, I see. You must have a contract and your fee.” He grew still as he stared at the form.
  His name appeared on the contract. Death. My fee appeared beside it.
  I shuddered.
  Pretending to relax, I crossed my legs, then picked up a pen and the steno pad I used to take notes. “Okay. Tell me what happened--from the beginning.”
  He gave a sort of shudder like I do at the sight of him and said, “I was sent to take one Daniel Klavier Setter. He’s spent his life in that alley. Drinking has destroyed his liver and now he is in terrible pain. I was entering the alley to take him when a mortal jumped on my back. I was caught by surprise and thrown against a building.”
  Gad! His voice could scrape the paint off a wall.
  I let the pen fall in my lap and scratched my chin. It was a good pose. “Couldn’t you have simply thrown him aside?” Death could overcome all obstacles I’d been told.
  Death lowered his head and moved to the window. “No. I dare not touch those who are not ready.”
  Umff. I got it. “Mess up the bookkeeping, would it?” I said.
  His hood moved in what I thought was a ‘yes’. If the writers and movie makers only knew about that. It would kill the interest in all those books and films.
  “The mortal said he wanted my money. I told him I didn’t have any. So he grabbed my implement from where I’d dropped it and ran away.”
  “Didn’t you try to catch him?” I picked up the pen again and started a tic-tac-toe game on the pad and wound up drawing a hanged stick man holding a scythe.
  He gave out another of those horrible groans. His robe moved like he was crying. Nah, couldn’t be.
  “I didn’t dare.” He raised his head so that his empty sockets looked down at me.
  I could see he had a problem. “So that’s why you need me?”
  His hood bobbled again.
  I quit messing and got ready to take some real notes. “Where were you?”
  “I told you.”
  “I mean the street address.”
  He was quiet for several seconds as if rummaging around in his memory. “Daniel Klavier Setter is in the alley between Fifth and Sixth Streets.”
  “He lives behind Pootle’s Bar and Grill?” I knew the place well. My sometime gal friend, Kitty, worked there. Not much to look at on the outside, but real homey inside.
  “What did the guy look like that jumped you?” I’d have to start leggin’ it door-to-door to find this one.
  “He is shorter than you with a thick body. His hair is red and long.”
  “How come he didn’t die when he jumped you if you can’t touch him?” I had to ask that one. My curiosity about these things gets to itchin’.
  “I didn’t touch him with my hands or implement,” he sounded like an exasperated truck with a bad muffler. “Touching my robe won’t take him.”
  The fool had a brush with Death and might never know. “Could he kill with it?”
  Death nodded. “If he used it like a weapon, but just touching them with it--no.”
  I wasn’t sure I understood.
  He seemed to know. “I need my implement to complete the picture of myself. It makes the person to be taken understand who I am and why I have come. I touch them with the scythe to release their soul. This is what they expect. I do not cause pain.”
  “You mean, the picture has to be complete before we’ll go with you? No matter how we think you should look?”
  He nodded. “You mortals seem to require it.”
  I wasn’t sure of what he’d just told me. Did he just tell me he was a figment of our imagination? I shook my head. Nah, couldn’t be. I did not spend my time thinking about him. I got back to the problem. “Did you at least follow him?”
  He nodded.
  “Where did he go?”
  “A mortal in a blue suit caught him as he was running down the street. He put him in a white car with a light on top. My implement was sticking out the window when they left.”
  I couldn’t help it. I began to chuckle and it became a belly laugh. That was a picture I could see.
  “Must of been Murphy that grabbed your boy,” I said after I quit gasping.
  I reached for the phone. It was the old-fashioned kind with a cord. I dialed the station house over on Maple Street.
  Nate Thomas answered. My lucky day.
  “Yeh? Whatcha want?” He was pleasant as always. I could hear a radio in the background playing hard rock.
  “Hey, Nate. Murph around?”
  “He’s finishing up paperwork on some idiot he picked up,” he laughed. “High as a kite and carrying a big sickle.”
  Then I heard him holler at Murphy. “Hey, Murph. Yer big-deal detective friend is on the line.”
  No, we don’t have nine-one-one yet. Town’s too small and the old system works just fine.
  Murph came on the line. “Hey, Joe. What’s up?”
  “Hi, Murph.” I paused while I fought down a case of idiot giggles. Detectives don’t giggle. We guffaw or we laugh. We never giggle.
  “Gotta make it fast, Joe. I gotta get back on patrol.”
  “That’s sorta why I’m calling. You picked up a guy carrying a scythe.”
  Murph laughed. “Damnedest thing I ever saw. High as a kite an’ draggin’ this huge scythe down the street behind him.”
  “That scythe belongs to a friend of mine and he’ll be needing it soon. You know how it is with some guys and their tools.”.
  “Ah! Okay. It takes up too much room in the evidence locker anyhow. Don’t need it for my case. I arrested Tall Paul Smith because he was so doped up and causin’ a ruckus. He said the scythe wasn’t his.”
  “Did he tell you how he got it?”
  Murph laughed again. “Yeh. He says he took it from some dude wearin’ a black dress with a black hat. Jumped him in an alley. Think he’d be interested in pressin’ charges?”
  “Nah. He just wants his scythe back.”
  “Tell him, he can pick it up...” Murph started to say.
  I cut him off. It wasn’t likely he’d want my friend to pick it up. “I’ll stop by to get it in a few minutes. He lives out of town.”
  Murph agreed and hung up.
  I turned to Death. “Where is my scythe?” he demanded rolling those rocks in that tin can.
  “At the station house. The thief was picked up for causin’ trouble. It’s located on the corner of Elm at Main Streets. I’ll go get it.” I got to my feet and looked up.
  Death had vanished.
  It took a minute to sink in.
  The phone rang. I grabbed it.
  Murph spluttered, “Hey, Joe. You know that scythe you wanted to pick up?”
  “Yeh.” I had a hunch of what was comin’.
  “It’s gone! Can’t find it nowhere. I was gonna get it ready for you to pick up, but it ain’t in the locker.”
  I closed my eyes against a sudden headache. No way was I tellin’ the truth.
  “Well, I guess I’ll have to tell my friend his scythe is gone. He’ll have to get a new one.”
  Murph grunted. I could feel his relief over the phone. The police would never live down having evidence taken from under their noses. Not something that big.
  He hung up.
  I tried to figure it out. Death must have retrieved the scythe the same way he left my office.
  I pocketed the five-hundred-dollar fee. I wasn’t reporting that as income. My ex-wife didn’t need to know about it. Then I tore up the contract Death had signed. I wasn’t going to try explaining that to anyone either.
  Who’d believe me?

Fini??

**************

Death and the Detective
by Anne K. Edwards

  My name's Joe Davis. I run a small detective agency that handles the usual type of case found in a small town like Meadeville. Runaway mates and divorce cases our specialty. Occasionally, we get a case with more hair on it, but never anything like the one that just wandered in off the street one day.
  It was a typical July afternoon when even the sidewalks were sweating. I sat in front of an open window with a small fan blowing on my face as I leaned my back against the desk with my feet on the sill. The copy of Playboy I'd been lusting at slid off my lap when the door to my inner office opened.I jumped up and got into my desk chair and tried to look busy. The hair on my neck and arms rose as if an electrostatic charge had passed over me as I sat. I glanced up. I never should've done that.
  A character dressed in a black robe was blocking the doorway. His face was lost in the folds of an overlapping hood."Come in," I said. Never should've done that either.
 7nbsp;The guy--well, he wasn't a guy... Couldn't tell what it was. He just stood there.
  "You are Joseph Daniel Davis?" His voice was deep with gravel in it.
  "Yeh. What do you want?" I didn't like the get up. "It ain't Halloween," I said. Made me hotter just looking at him and besides, he give me the creeps.
  "You find people?"
  I didn't like twenty questions with the door open. "Close the door and we'll discuss it," I said.
  You can imagine my shock when he turned to close the door. A huge, long-handled scythe with the blade pointing back rested on his shoulder.
  Death!
  I blinked and shook my head. Couldn't be. Some stupid prank.
  I pulled my pistol from the side desk drawer where I keep it and pointed it at him just in case.
  He set the scythe against the wall with a large crack in the plaster and approached my desk. Then he pushed his hood back so I could see his face. I wished he hadn't done that. He didn't have a face!
  I froze in my chair. My pistol fell onto the desk. I had trouble breathing. Death heads do that to me.
  He loomed over my old wooden desk so I had to look up at him. A skull doesn't have any expression but I swear those empty eye sockets could see me.
  I couldn't even shudder.
  "What do you want?" I did manage to croak.
  He pointed across the desk at me with a fingerbone that poked out of his sleeve.
  "You can stop being afraid," he said. His jaw moved, but I didn't see how he could form any words. His voice sounded like rocks rolling around in a tin can.
  How was it I could understand him?
  I tried to breathe again. I stammered, repeating, "What--what do you want?" I still couldn't move.
  "I'm not here for you," he rattled. "I want to hire you."
  "Is this some kind of joke?" I forced the question out. "Did my ex-wife send you?" I didn't really believe this was happening. He wasn't real. Somehow I was being had. And I thought my vicious ex was the most likely to set me up.
  "I'm not a joke," he rattled again. "I want you to find someone."
  "How do I know you're real?" I asked. "I don't think death has a physical form."
  "You require proof. Very well." He touched the pot of the only other live thing in the office, an african violet my last secretary gave me. Its meaty leaves shriveled as the lavender blossoms turned brown.
  Then he turned back to me. "Do you believe now?"
  I was forced to, wasn't I? "Yes."
  "Fine. Shall we continue?" he asked.
  I closed my eyes. Ah...I could move my eyelids.
  As if he knew what I was thinking, my visitor said, "You can move if you want. Fear paralyzed you. Not me."
  I tried to move. I could. A little. My brain began to function, too. Well, sort of. I realized if he was Death and had come for me, I'd be gone. So maybe he was telling the truth about not coming for me. And maybe I was going to buy the Brooklyn Bridge. A guy in his line of work probably said anything he had to, to get the job done. I mean, he was one of those Four Horsemen.
  "Okay, who is it you want found? And I gotta know why. For the records." I tried not to let him see I thought I found a way to get rid of him. "And I don't do nothing illegal." Meanwhile, I'd try to think of how to send him on his way--without me.
  He straightened and moved back from the desk a few inches. "I want you to find Calvin Desmond James. It's his time."
  That threw me for a loop. His time? "You want me to find some guy so you can take him?"
  The skull nodded.
  I started to shake my head when the weirdness of the situation hit me. I laughed.
  He never moved.
  I started to feel uneasy. "I can't do that. I can't be no party to no killing."
  "You wouldn't kill him." Death said. "I will. He's going to be thrown from his motorcycle and I have to be there."
  "Why do you need me?" I tried to figure this out.
  "We don't know where he is."
 7nbspWell, there went any theory I might have had. Death couldn't find somebody? I didn't believe that.
  He read my thoughts again. "We need him."
  "Who is he that he's so important? Why don't you just go on to your next vic--er the next person on your list?" My body suddenly went limp. I was free. I could move so I did. I slid my chair back against the wall as far from him as I could get.
  "Several years ago they hired him to program our computers--we didn't know how--and when he was done, he said his work was guaranteed and if we had any problems to come get him. We found a problem and now we need him."
  "What's the problem? I know several geeks who could probably fix it."
  Death shook his head. "Mr. James left his name off our list."
  "Just one guy. Why not forget him and go on to the next one?"
  "He's not allowed to live forever. He's eighty-three now and it's his time."
  This was really getting strange. "So because he's old now, you gotta take him? How did you know about him at all if he's not on your list?"
  "We share data. The birth records have to match the death records. If we let him go, it becomes a bookkeeping nightmare. Always short one in the accounts closed column." He leaned over the desk again. "That would never do."
  Death works for a bunch of bookkeepers?
  "How do you know when he's supposed to go, if he's not in your records?" I asked. I couldn't figure out how they could know the time a guy was supposed to go and not know where he was. Didn't make any sense.
  "The time of passing is included at birth. Each person has an allotted time. No more. Each one is different."
  "Don't you keep track of him while he's here?"
  Death shook his head. "That's the Life Department and they have trouble keeping their data up to date since the invention of the automobile."
  I kept quiet for a minute. Let him think I was considering taking the job. Okay. One thing sure to drive him away.
 &nbps;"You'll have to sign a contract," I told him. "It's a standard form. I don't take any job without a contract. I have to protect my license and, in case you don't pay," I figured I had him here. Death wouldn't be carrying cash or have a credit card, "I have proof you hired me if we gotta go to court."
  No response. Nothing. Several seconds passed and then he nodded. The hood fell over his skull again.
  "I'll sign the contract," Death said in that rolling-rock voice of his.
  How could he? For a few moments I didn't know what to do. He'd called my bluff. So I took it one step farther. "I require five hundred bucks up front for two days and expenses. I refund anything not spent and you get a copy of the expense sheet. A bill, if it takes longer than two days."
  He nodded again. The skeleton of a complete hand came out of the sleeve this time with five one-hundreds in it. He lay them on the desk.
  I opened the center desk drawer and took out a contract and pen. While I had it open, I put the pistol back, then pushed the form over to him. He appeared to stare at the form for a bit and then one word appeared on the line where the client signs.
  Death.
  I sagged in my chair. I had Death as a client. I was stuck. I figured if I tried to weasel out now, he'd take me for spite. Besides, I needed the money.
  So, okay. I had a new client. He wanted a man found. I took a deep breath and found my backbone. Yeh, I know. Bad pun. "Do you want to know what Mr. James looks like?" Death asked.I shook my head. "Nope. Just tell me how you got in touch with him the first time."
  He appeared to ruminate over the facts. "We ran an advertisement in the help-wanted section of the local newspaper."
  Huh?
  "And he answered it?" I asked.
  Death nodded, his hood fluttering in a breeze the came in my window.
  I looked at the sky. A storm was coming in. There'd be lots of noise in those clouds. They were black as sin, black as Death's robe. I'd have to close the window and then I'd roast. The landlord hadn 't installed the new air conditioner yet.
  "How long will it take you to find him?" Death asked, interrupting my train of self-pity.
  I looked at him. Well, best get it over with. "Not long," I told him.
  I pulled the cover off the computer and turned it on. I seldom used it, not being a techno-geek. It sat on a little stand in a shadowy corner out of the way. It always took a while to warm up. After a prolonged period of coffee-grinder sounds and grunts like a contented pig, the screen lit up. I clicked on the logo for my server and waited for the connection.
  No, I didn't have the speedy service. Cost too much. I only used the machine to play games and visit a few adult sites. Yeh, I know. I had too much free time. My ex-wife says the same thing. I need to get a better job...
  Finally, the server answered and I was on. I brought up the search engine I favored and clicked on the name find logo. When the screen came up, I typed in Calvin Desmond James, clicked and waited.
  Death seemed taller now. His hood faced the monitor. I swear his bones rattled with excitement.
  A screen came up, notifying me of sixty-six Calvin Desmond James in the country.
  "I'll need Mr. James' last known address," I told Death as I started looking for an eighty-three year old man. The name find service I subscribed to included age, occupation, address, criminal record, date of birth, phone number, and other information.
  "He never gave it to us."
  I raised my head to look at him. "How did you pay him? Didn't he send you a bill?"
  The hood moved in a negative fashion. "He was paid just as you have been."
  Great. So now I had to check all the names.
  I scrolled down slowly, discounting the first fifteen. On the sixteenth, I sensed that static electrical charge again.
  Death pointed at the screen. "That's him. He's eighty-three."
  "There might be more than one. Let me finish checking before you go rushing off and maybe get the wrong guy," I objected. Much as I wanted him gone, I had to be sure.
  He seemed to be fidgeting with his robe, but he waited. I noticed though that he moved closer to the door and his scythe.
  I rolled through the rest of the list and found no more of a matching age. I scrolled back up to the sixteenth name. "That's him," I said. And felt sad for the guy who thought he'd fixed it so he'd live forever. But bookkeepers are a persistent bunch. They'll spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars to find a missing penny so I guess Death is one of them.
  Death opened the door and turned to me. "If we ever need to find anyone else, I'll be back." He vanished.
  Wonderful. Just wonderful.
Fini??

*************

Killer Diller

  Hobart Helmsley finished the last beer and tossed the bottle out the window where it disappeared into the dark as the car wobbled to the left. He slipped the wheel to the right and crossed the line into the southbound lane. Luckily no cars were coming. This time.
  Vaguely, he recalled another time, a few months ago. red car that swerved out of his way and vanished down the slope of Trencher Mountain. Three days later a fisherman found them, two men and a boy.
  He'd read about the crash, feeling nothing. He wasn't responsible because they'd been speeding with their brights on. He hadn't seen them until too late and then there was nothing he could do. He certainly hadn't been in any shape to climb down that stupid mountain to see if they were dead.
A man had a right to stop for a drink before heading home. A man had rights, even when the law tried to take them away. The judge said he was a menace and permanently suspended his license. It was almost expired anyhow. He'd just drive without one. He knew how to drive a car under any condition. Been doing it for many years. Car could probably get him home, even if he went to sleep in the back seat.
  He laughed at the idea.
  "Think you're smart, don't you?" a man spoke from the back seat.
  Startled, Hobart automatically looked over his shoulder.
  The car skewed into the other lane and onto the berm.
  Hobart overcorrected and the vehicle traveled onto the berm on the other side. He hit the brakes and the car slid along on the loose gravel and dirt, coming to rest beside a stand of large trees that overhung the road.
  Gasping, he looked into the back seat.
  Nothing.
  He shook his head, suddenly sober. The pleasant buzz was gone. He cursed and pulled back on the road.
  Just my imagination, he thought. Shouldn't be thinking about dead people while he was driving. 10/12/06

**********

The Romance of Mystique Jones
by Anne K. Edwards

  Yesterday, my brother, Tom, sent me an obit notice from our hometown newspaper, The Newbury Voice. And I felt like crying as I read it. But grown men don't cry. A sweet memory of a long ago summer of my youth is gone.
  Mystique Jones. I never did know where her Mom got that name. Mistique hated it and, of course, we all called her by it instead of the Missy she preferred. If you can't tease a girl you have a crush on, what is life all about?
  We were all twelve and thirteen that year. Mystique, or Missy, was taller than most of us boys. She was skinny as a post and had the most brilliant red hair I ever saw. It glowed like an orange fire on top of her head whenever she took off her baseball cap. Her eyes were green and they could look right through you if you got smartalecky with her. Her freckles--she had a gazillion.
  I fell in love with her the summer of nineteen-fifty-four, the year we met. She could hit a ball like nobody else. Even Jake Dawson couldn't smack 'em that hard and he was big. Cal Thompson said he got tired of chasing her balls when they went over the fence. But he did. We only had one ball.
  I never told Missy how I felt and my pals never knew either. They'd have been merciless in their teasing, something I never could have stood. I was painfully shy then, a short kid with braces and no particular talent in the field. They let me play because I was a catcher.
  But Missy could play any position. She could out run most of us and made some of the most beautiful long slides home I ever saw. Her arms always had new scratches and her mom would yell about them and the dirt in her clothes. She always wondered why Missy couldn't be a lady like her older sister.
  Missy told us once, in a rare burst of sharing a confidence, that her sister Peggine was a prissy pill and boy crazy. She liked some singer named Elvis. I didn't know who she meant until Buddy and Jake told us he wiggled his hips when he sang and their folks wouldn't let them see him on tv or go to his movies.
  Not that they cared much then. Elvis kissed girls in movies. Icky, they said. Buddy grabbed his stomach and rolled on the ground like he was sick. I have to laugh when I think about that. The next year he was in love with a new girl every week. Even I had to admit girls looked better a year later.
  But not when I was thirteen. I thought their giggling and simpering in front of boys was goofy. Mystique Jones didn't simper. Or giggle. She ran the bases with long, sure strides and slid home. And she'd always laughed, no squealing or sounding like my ma's sewing machine when it got stuck.
  We played ball every day that summer that it didn't rain. The summer seemed like it would go on forever.
  Until that late August afternoon I turned up at the field and nobody was there. I waited for a while and then wandered over to Jake's house which was across the street. He was sitting on his porch swing, looking real serious.
  I asked where everybody was and he shook his head like I'd just dropped off the moon onto his porch. I told him, my folks had taken us to visit relatives for two days. He bit his lips, then told me.
  Mystique Jones had been hit by a car and was in the hospital. They didn't know if she'd live or not.
  I sat down hard on Jake's steps. My stomach felt like somebody had kicked me there. It was a long time before either of us said anything else.
  I didn't play any more ball that year. I didn't go to see Missy either. I couldn't. I wanted to remember her like she always was, a tall girl whose voice could crack glass when she yelled, a girl who could run like the wind, a girl who seemed to reflect light when she moved, a girl who made my heart beat a little faster when I saw her hit a ball.
  She never left her wheelchair. She never went back to school. Her folks sent her to a state facility where she could be cared for like the baby she'd become. She spent the rest of her life there.
  I don't know if she remembered that golden summer, but I did. I still do, especially when I pass a grassy plot with a basefall field worn into the grass. I hear her laugh, see her hit those long ones, then take off like a horse out of the gate. They'll never tag her out.

************

THE BENCH
by Anne K. Edwards

  “It’s happening again,” the old man spoke thoughtfully. “Look at them graves. They look sorta rumpled, like the dead have been tossin’ an’ turnin’.”
  “Shut up, Irwin,” the old woman seated beside him said. “You’re scarin’ Charlie, here.” She patted the little boy’s head as he turned anxious brown eyes on her.
  The old man nodded at a passing woman pushing a carriage, then continued, “Shaddup yerself, Louise Carter. You know as well as I do they walk on Halloween.”
  She shook her head and shrugged. “I don’t know why all you can ever talk about is that. The day is lovely. Look at the trees. The leaves have turned and everything is so pretty.” She patted Charlie’s head again.
  “When will Mama come for me?” he asked.
  “Bet she’ll be late,” Irwin grumbled. “Never was on time for nothin’.” He got to his feet. “I’m gonna take a walk around an’ look at some more of them graves. They look disturbed to me.”
  Louise shook her head in pity. “You’re disturbed. Always were with your stupid stories. Never hear such nonsense from anybody else.”
  Irwin grunted and turned his back on them.
  “Why don’t he like me?” Charlie asked sadly.
  “Oh, child! It’s nothing to do with you,” Louise patted his hand. “Long as I’ve known Irwin Grady, he’s been an unpleasant old grump.”
   The little boy nodded and looked longingly toward the entrance gates. “Where’s Mama?”
  Louise wished she could answer him. It was the same every time they met on this bench. Mrs. Benson never came on time. She’d show up a few minutes before sunset to talk to her son. You’d think she’d have a little more consideration for the boy. He misses her so.
  As the thought left her, a small blonde woman appeared at the gate. Charlie got up and ran toward her. He was always so happy to see her. And she was always so sad.
  Irwin returned and seated himself beside her. “Sun’s gonna go down soon. I don’t think I wanna be here then.”
  Louise laughed at him. “What do you think will happen?”
  He frowned. “I don’t wanna find out. I don’t wanna see the dead walk.” He got to his feet. “I’m goin’.”
  She watched him hurry away, then slowly got to her feet, reluctant to leave the most comfortable seat in the park. That’s how she thought of it. In spite of the headstones and old crypts, it was a park, a place to sit in the sun and relax.Louise watched sadly as Charlie’s mother said goodbye and departed out the gate. Charlie had gone too. Too bad Mrs. Benson couldn’t take him with her.
  The gravel underfoot crunched a little as Louise made her way down the narrow path. She stopped beside a double headstone to read the inscription. “Irwin, you old fool,” she muttered and went a little farther.
  Turning she looked up at the darkening sky. It was a lovely evening, but she wished it wouldn’t come so soon. It would be another full year before she could return to that bench. Another year to see the sun. She looked at the stone in front of her. “Louise Carter, born January 10, 1880, died September 19, 1958.”

************