Yesterday's Ghosts by Sam Cheever

Author:Sam Cheever
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Electric Prose Publications
Published: 2015-10-27T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

JOSS STOOD IN THE CENTER of the store, his gaze sliding toward the glooms at the back of the room. Headlights skimmed past the front windows, sending shadows skittering across the store like sprites dancing over water.

He didn’t let the dancing light distract him. He’d been captured by a sense that something very wrong had infected his home. And it was his job to figure whatever it was out. On the fringes of his awareness, Joss felt the fear emanating from Bessy. At the first slide of grave-scented air through the store, he’d banished her to the attic and told her not to come down no matter what kind of devil stepped from the ether. But skeery though Bessy was, she’d taken a likin’ to Joss that brought out her protectin’ spirit whenever danger walked within their world.

And walkin’ it was.

A low moaning sound throbbed from the dark corner Joss watched. Without warning a shoe flew from the shelf at the back of the store and sliced right through Joss. If he’d been made of blood and bone the thing would have left a serious dent in his gut.

“Come on out and face me like a man.”

The smell of decay and moldy earth filled the air and the moaning stopped as chill air swept past. He readied himself to deal with whatever came out of the shadows as the gloom twisted and lengthened in his direction.

A long form stretched toward him, its bottom half seeming to be fixed to the glooms at the edge of the room. He watched for a face but there was only a swirly kind of smoke where a face should be, with the occasional flash of glowing amber eyes.

Josh considered himself a worldly man, whose time on the earth and beyond it had been filled with enough devils that he’d gotten good at vanquishing ’em. But he’d be dishonest with himself if he didn’t admit to bein’ all overish ’bout the thing writhing like a poisoned cat in the glooms at the back of the store.

“If you’re fixin’ to cause trouble, it’s only fair that I give ya warnin’. This here’s my place and my people. I’ll send ya howlin’ back ta Hell if’n ya try anything ugly here.”

Lissie...

The sound of her name on the air was like wind singing through a tunnel, with an edge of threat that made Joss’s unearthly form tighten with trepidation. Jossy fisted his hands and stepped forward. “What you be needin’ with that girl? She ain’t done nothin’ ta you.”

Lissie Nelson...

Without warning, the thing surged toward Joss, hitting him between the eyes with air that came straight from Hell. He stumbled back as the specter beat against his awareness like smoke in a blazing room. Then, with an inhuman howl of rage, the thing spun past Joss and disappeared in a wash of putrid wind.

Joss heard a series of thumps that had the unexpected feel of the heartbeats he no longer had. With a start, he realized he wasn’t hearin’ heartbeats.

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