Category: Fantasy Type: Fiction
Pages: 124
Copyright: Oct 1 2001
A collection of short stories plus a novella in the ghostly genre
Phantoms
They were everywhere, the phantoms that haunted this house. Try as she may, she could not rid herself of their presence. They were not scary phantoms, but the sad phantoms of a lost love and they permeated the very air she breathed.
It had not been long enough, they said, but she had to go on living and this was her house too. As long as her mind was occupied with other things, she was all right. But as soon as her mind began to wander back to the things they had done together, the tears began to flow and the phantoms came. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it were only in one room, but they shared everywhere together. Bedroom, kitchen, and livingroom – they were all there waiting to catch her unexpectedly in a weak moment.
Someday she would have a photo mounted on the mantle to properly remember him by, but not now, not yet. It was too soon and too hurtful to look into the baleful eyes staring out at her from her favourite and last photo of him – they almost seemed to accuse her for what had happened to him, even though it wasn’t true. He had died after a short, but painful ailment and it had been a blessing really because of his other longstanding problems. She tried to rationalize that when the phantoms came, but it didn’t really help. He was still gone.
Gingerly, she got into bed after turning out the overhead light, heaved a sigh and pulled up the covers. Maybe in sleep she would find release. She tried to forget that he had come to her even in her dreams, though only once or twice, and then just before waking. Mercifully, he would not come tonight.
As she settled down beneath the covers, she could hear the sound of phantom feet padding across the floor, then gently pat the side of the bed in that old familiar way. The bed creaked as of something adding its weight to the end of the bed. She listened, the hairs rising on the back of her neck, as the old familiar sounds and feelings flooded her being.
She felt the pressure of his feet slowly walking up the bed towards her and held her breath as he neared her. Silently, he lay down beside her and nestled in the crook of her back. Sighing, she pressed her head further into the pillow, not daring to reach down and find he was not really there. Either way, she would know she was going crazy.
He had come back – her beloved dog had come back – if only in a twilight way.
But he had come back.
Excerpt
Most, but not all, of the short stories in this collection were written since my arrival in Belmont, Ontario, in 1991. In the course of their creation, I’ve often been asked how and where I got my ideas. The answer is, I find them all around me, whenever I least expect them. Finding them is the easy part, writing them down before they’re gone is harder, and sticking with them to their completion is the hardest part of all – next to having them accepted for publication. Over the years a great many of these have been either entered in writing contests or sent to publishers, with predictable results. The novella, Richard Randamere, was written in 1965, but found no book publisher, probably due to its short length (by their standards anyway). Here now is their chance to shine.
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