The Card Everyone Fears

Welcome to the Spot Writers. Today’s tale comes to us from Val Muller, author of the kidlit Corgi Capers mystery series. She’ll have some illustrated children’s books out soon!

The prompt is: your character looks outside the window and sees something strange.

The Card Everyone Fears

by Val Muller

Mrs. June flipped through the last folder in her file cabinet. She sorted most of the papers into the recycling bin but kept two worksheets for her successor. Then she took the last item out of the drawer—a cardstock image of Hamlet created as a tarot card years ago by a student.

Mrs. June remembered the student’s face—but never her name. She’d not signed her artwork, and if Mrs. June remembered correctly, she had not been one to remember her name on any assignment. Or to show up for her yearbook photo.

The girl had been a terrible student, but she really stepped it up for this project. She had never picked up the project after it was graded—she had turned it in late and then disappeared after graduation. But the 8x10 was so beautifully created that Mrs. June had kept it all these years. She looked at it at the start of each school year but never had the courage to display it. It was, after all, the tarot card for Death. Not sure her school admin would appreciate that lingering over students every day.

And it was funny, too. Mrs. June always joked she would never retire—she said she would always keep working and would die there at her job. And yet, here she was. She made it through the tears of her final graduation and had only this last teacher workday until she walked out of this building for the last time as an employee.

There was a strange sound outside—it reminded her of the sound of a forest moving. She thought instantly of MacBeth—of Birnam Wood coming to life and approaching the castle. Stranger things had happened in all her decades of teaching. She went to the window to look.

There was indeed a snapped branch—the tree right outside her window. A group of students were hustling to untangle something from the fallen limb.

“She’s there!” they screamed, all eyes snapping to her window.

The crowd re-formed, and the tangled object—a white banner—unfurled, revealing a message:

Mrs. June, we love you!

She looked out over the crowd. There were some of yesterday’s graduates and then—no, it wasn’t their parents, not exactly. It was—students from last year. And the year before. And from a decade ago. Some she’d kept up with on social media. Others, no, but she recognized their faces at once.

They beckoned her.

When she emerged from the building and entered the crowd, she was all tears as they shared stories of the ways she inspired them. At the end, they handed her a book, a written account of what they just shared, from them and many others who had reached over the ether of the internet to share their memories, their stories, their thanks. It was a book she could revisit countless times.

As she clutched the book, she looked out at the crowd. There she was. The girl’s name came back to her in an instant. Girl? No, woman now. Dare she say, middle aged.

Carissa Schaefer, the student artist who had created the Hamlet tarot. They spent time catching up, and she learned that Carissa had gone on to become a therapist, crediting Mrs. June as one of her inspirations.

“I have something for you,” Mrs. June told Carissa and led her up to the classroom where she showed her the carefully-kept tarot card.

“My goodness,” Carissa said. “I barely remember creating that, but it’s all coming back to me now. The final scene in Hamlet and how it’s all just death, death, death.” She smiled. “Back then, I was a morbid teenager.”

“I’ll admit I was afraid to hang this on the wall. I didn’t want students to have the wrong idea about me, or the class.”

Carissa laughed. “I didn’t know much about tarot cards back then. The Death card always scares everyone, but it’s actually an optimistic one.”

“Optimistic.” Mrs. June pondered this as she studied the artwork.

“It’s like a rebirth. Something dies, metaphorically—unless you’re Hamlet, I guess—but then something else begins. Like winter melting to spring. Or the other guy becoming king after Hamlet.”

“Fortinbras,” Mrs. June said.

“Or someone retiring from teaching and going on to open the next chapter.”

Mrs. June smiled.

“You’ve held onto that card so long, I’d like you to keep it,” Carissa said.

Mrs. June smiled. “Only if you sign it.”

As Carissa put her name on her assignment decades after the due date, Mrs. June made plans to stop at the craft store on the way home. She wanted to frame the card, and she had the perfect place to display it at home, right in the kitchen where she could always think about all she’d accomplished in the career she was leaving behind, and about new beginnings.

The Spot Writers—Our Members:
Val Muller: http://www.valmuller.com/blog/
Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com/wicker-chitter/
Phil Yeats: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com
Chiara De Giorgi: https://chiaradegiorgi.blogspot.com/

The Tartan Sofa

Welcome to The Spot Writers. The prompt for this month is an unexpected visitor.

This week’s contribution comes from Chiara De Giorgi. Chiara is an Italian author and currently lives in Berlin, Germany. She writes fiction, with a focus on children’s literature and science fiction.

 

The Tartan Sofa

by Chiara De Giorgi

Created with Mistral

 

Elsa popped open a small bottle of soda and took a sip, closing her eyes. Cool and fizzy: just what she needed after a long, hot day. It was summer, and with more free time than usual, she had decided to freshen up the house a bit. By day, she scrubbed, scraped, painted walls, and rearranged furniture; by evening, she worked on her novel. She was halfway through Two Hearts and a Scarecrow, which she thought was shaping up rather well. Even the Squatters (the community of spirits residing in the abandoned house on the southern edge of town, who had become something of a second family to her) approved.

She turned toward the half-empty living room (clearing out the old furniture had been that day’s task) when she heard a moan coming from outside the open window. Who was out there in the garden?

Cautiously, she went to look. She was puzzled when she saw an elderly man staring into the room where, just a few hours earlier, the old tartan-patterned sofa she had taken to the dump that very afternoon had stood. The old man gave no sign of having noticed her; he just stood there, motionless, with a sad, fixed gaze and a downturned mouth. He was clearly sad. And he had a… familiar look?

“Uh,” she cleared her throat. “Can I help you?”

The old man barely moved his eyes toward Elsa’s face, then went back to sighing as he stared at the half-empty living room.

Elsa hesitated. She wanted to do something for him, but what? He was a stranger, after all. She couldn’t just invite him inside. She noticed she was still holding the soda bottle.

“Can I offer you something to drink?” she finally asked the old man.

This time, he looked her straight in the face, intentionally.

“You… you can see me?”

“Well, of course I can,” Elsa replied, caught off guard.

“Hmm,” the old man said, suspicious. “Who are you? What are you doing in this house?”

“My name is Elsa Mon,” she answered instinctively. Then, a little annoyed, she added, “I live here. This is my house.”

“Your house!” the man exclaimed, raising his eyebrows in surprise. “And what happened to Lily Mon?”

“She was my grandmother,” Elsa said softly, a note of nostalgia in her voice. “Did you know her?”

The old man didn’t answer right away. Instead, he studied Elsa in silence for a few heartbeats.

“My Lily… She was my wife. So you… you must be my granddaughter!”

Now it was Elsa’s turn to gape, her eyebrows shooting up in shock.

“Grandpa?”

That explained why his face had seemed familiar: even though she had never met him, as he had died before she was even born, she had seen plenty of photos of her grandfather. Of course, she wasn’t exactly known for being good at recognizing faces. And he did have a slightly translucent appearance… he was a ghost, after all!

“Come in, then!” she invited, excited.

“Gladly,” the man replied, vaulting over the windowsill with unexpected agility.

“Since when can you see and talk to spirits?” Grandfather asked once inside. “Do you know where Lily is?”

Elsa’s eyes turned sad. “I don’t know where Grandma is. I’ve never seen her since I gained the Sight,” she answered. “It happened a few months ago, sort of by accident… but it’s not an interesting story. Anyway, from what I understand, not all spirits stick around. Those who find their way move on to the Other Side right away. I think Grandma is Over There. She was a clever woman,” she concluded with a wink at her grandfather.

The man smiled tenderly at the memory of his wife. “Yes, she was,” he commented. Then, after a deep sigh, he changed the subject. “I’ve lived in this house since the day I was born,” he mused, looking around. Then he stared at Elsa. “What have you done to the living room? Where did you put my sofa?”

Elsa immediately felt guilty. She had taken her grandfather’s sofa to the dump! How could she have done that? And how was she going to tell him?

“Well, you see,” she began, stammering a little. “I’m redecorating the house, and I thought I’d, uh… modernize it a bit. Your sofa is… well, the thing is…”

“We took it to the dump this afternoon!" declared a woman who had suddenly appeared in the room, seemingly stepping out of a flower vase.

“Stranger!” Elsa exclaimed. “You nearly gave me a heart attack!”

Her grandfather was speechless, unsure whether to be more annoyed about his sofa being taken to the dump or about the supernatural creature who had just materialized in his living room. Okay, his granddaughter’s living room. And by the way: his granddaughter, apparently, knew said creature, besides being able to see and interact with spirits. He was one of the Departed, he was familiar with the supernatural realm, but Elsa? Oh, why had he passed on so soon? Look at the exciting life his descendant was living!

Elsa, caught between the Stranger’s lively and oblivious honesty and her grandfather’s irritation at losing his beloved sofa, immediately said, “Yes, but we can go get it back!” She rushed to the entrance and grabbed a set of keys. “In fact, let’s go right now. I want to bring that sofa home as soon as possible!”

After some commotion (the Stranger giggled, and every time she did, flower petals spouted from her ears; Grandfather was bewildered but thrilled by how the evening had turned out; Elsa tried to start the car using the pantry key), they finally reached the dump.

It was almost midnight, the sky was dark, and everything around them was silent. They got out of the car and found themselves in front of a tall, locked gate.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to come back tomorrow…” Grandfather said sadly. But Elsa wasn’t ready to give up and shot the Stranger a pleading look.

The Stranger had been waiting for this. In an instant, she turned into a key: the perfect one to open the gate, of course. Once inside, she spotted the sofa (luckily, it was easily recognizable and one of the last items to have been dropped off). She then took the form of a burly mover and hoisted the sofa onto her shoulders to carry it down from the pile of old furniture.

“Hey, look at that nice nightstand,” Elsa said, stopping to admire an old piece of furniture. “With a coat of white paint and a bit of sandpaper, it’d make a perfect shabby chic piece…”

The mover scoffed. “I’m only here for the sofa. No extras.”

In a few strides, the Stranger was outside and secured the sofa on the roof of Elsa’s car.

 

Once home and after brushing the sofa clean, Grandfather sat down on it and sighed.

“Lily and I shared our first kiss on this very sofa,” he said. “It’s where we sat together so many times to watch TV. Where I’d read to her while she knitted. When I had a fever, I’d lie here, and she’d bring me a blanket and some hot broth.”

Elsa’s heart melted as she listened to her grandfather recall those moments with her grandmother. Moments she had never witnessed. She was glad she had saved the sofa from the dump. Why had she wanted to get rid of it in the first place? It was a beautiful sofa!

With one last, deep sigh, Grandfather stood up and approached Elsa. He took her face in his hands and planted a kiss on her forehead.

“Goodbye, little granddaughter of mine. I’m glad I got to meet you. Now I’m going to find my Lily. I think it’s my time to go Over There too.”

With a big smile, he walked toward the open window. Before he could even think of climbing over the windowsill, a bright white light enveloped him, and he disappeared.

“Wow,” Elsa said, moved.

She looked around for the Stranger but didn’t see her. Who knew what object she had turned into. Maybe it was better this way: to be alone in this moment, to feel it deep in her heart, and to store it in her memory forever. Maybe… while sitting on that beautiful tartan sofa.

 

The Spot Writers:

Val Muller: http://www.valmuller.com/blog/

Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com

Phil Yeats: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com/

Chiara De Giorgi: https://chiaradegiorgi.blogspot.com/

La vampira curiosa e il lupo mannaro sognatore

Un paio di settimane fa è uscito per Chiaredizioni il mio ultimo libro: "La vampira curiosa e il lupo mannaro sognatore".   

È la storia di Sabine, una giovane vampira appassionata di chimica, e di Ronald, un lupo mannaro suo coetaneo che adora leggere le antiche leggende. 

Vivono in un mondo diviso in due: da una parte i vampiri, dall'altra i lupi mannari. Le due specie non sono in guerra, tuttavia non desiderano convivere. In questo mondo, in cui si trovano anche banshee e yeti, manca qualcuno: gli esseri umani! Nessuno li ha mai visti e sono considerati creature leggendarie: le preferite di Ronald, che non perde occasione di leggere le loro avventure di nascosto dal papà, che non apprezza questa sua passione.

Dal canto suo, Sabine si è costruita un piccolo laboratorio in cantina e, per cercare di capire come mai l'aglio sia letale per i vampiri, compie esperimenti sui campioni che le procura la bidella della sua scuola, la signora O'Connor, che coltiva aglio sul suo balcone. La mamma di Sabine, però, non approva che la figlia trascorra così tante ore rintanata in cantina, e preferirebbe che frequentasse di più i suoi compagni di scuola. 

In una notte buia e tempestosa, i destini di Ronald e Sabine si intrecciano per caso, ma da quel momento la loro vita non sarà più la stessa. Insieme, sono determinati a seguire i propri sogni e a cercare un mondo diverso, dove ci sia spazio per tutti.

È stato molto divertente scrivere questa storia l'estate scorsa e dare vita a Sabine e Ronald dopo che avevano vissuto a lungo solo nella mia testa. È stato molto divertente anche creare un mondo al contrario, in cui le creature leggendarie (vampiri, lupi mannari, yeti e banshee) sono reali e gli esseri umani sono solo leggende. Ma si sa: ogni leggenda nasconde un fondo di verità...

Questo libro è stato scritto per ragazzi dai 10 anni, ma so di adulti che lo hanno letto e gradito moltissimo, quindi non lasciatevelo scappare!

Monday, June 12, 2034

 

Welcome to The Spot Writers. The prompt for this month is an unexpected visitor. This week’s story comes from the pen of Phil Yeats. It’s a scene from Cyberocracy, his current work in progress.

In April 2024, Phil published The Body on Karli’s Beach, the third book in his Barrettsport Mysteries, a series of soft-boiled mysteries set in a fictional South Shore, Nova Scotia town. For information about these books, The Road to Environmental Armageddon, his trilogy about the hazards of ignoring human-induced climate change, and his latest, a novella titled Starting Over Again: A Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy visit his website: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com/.

Monday, June 12, 2034

by Phil Yeats

At 11 a.m., Ellie O’Brien loitered outside the local office of the Ministry of Personal Welfare, waiting for them to release Len Smith from their clutches. The annoying annual assessments were part of efforts to develop a complacent public dedicated to national goals. They occurred on the day before everyone’s birthday. Tuesday would be his twenty-sixth birthday, so his appointment would be today. A simple call told her he had a morning appointment.

Len was a nice, self-effacing guy. Lean, average height, blond hair, and blue eyes with nothing extreme or weird about his appearance, except for the glasses that were at least five fashion cycles out of date. He wasn’t very sociable, but quick to help strangers. And when called upon by his colleagues, he was ready and willing to lend a helping hand. Afterwards, though, he shunned the celebratory parties.

Several minutes after eleven, he hesitated outside the building, sneezing as he always did when he first encountered bright sunlight. She stepped in front of someone rushing inside and stumbled after the stranger brushed past. The minor collision she’d orchestrated propelled her into Len’s path.

“Ellie,” he said as she steadied herself by grabbing his outstretched arm. “I didn’t know you were in town.”

She stuttered, pretending to be flustered. “B-b-ack for fifteen months, working as a journalist. I’m here getting background for a story. But tomorrow’s the Ides of June, your birthday, isn’t it? That means you were here for your annual grilling…” She let her thought trail off, hoping her machinations hadn’t been too obvious. “Was it too awful?”

He shrugged his shoulders and sighed, his standard reaction to interaction with others. He didn’t avoid others, but he never showed enthusiasm. “Puzzling more than anything. I don’t understand what they’re after.”

“Yeah, can be difficult, but mostly it’s a continuation of the mantra we lived with as undergrads. You know, the benefits of collaboration with your colleagues and the synergies from working together.” She paused. When he said nothing, she turned up the heat. “This is like serendipity. I’ve often thought about you, and here we are, almost crashing into each other. Can we, like, go somewhere for coffee and, you know, catch up on old times?”

He looked at his outdated wristwatch, not a multi-function communicator like others carried. “Yeah, I guess. My shift starts at 12:45. I can manage half an hour for a chat. I’ll get a muffin or something and call it lunch.”

She pointed down the street at a Tim Hortons sign. Minutes later, they queued in the nearby donut shop. She turned to him. “Got your card?”

“Card?” he asked.

“You know, your Togetherness card.”

“What? They only work at the Twenty-Something Clubs.”

“Jesus, Leonard, you really are out of touch with reality. They gave you that card and replenish it every month to encourage you to get together with other young adults. It’s good in many places where people meet. If you present your card, and I show them mine, they deduct the cost of whatever we buy from your credit. I mean, we could use mine, but it’s kind of depleted.”

“I’m aware of all that. It’s part of the government-sponsored mating game, but it doesn’t connect with my life.”

She hesitated, wondering how to shift away from that topic. “Part of their effort to generate collaboration with colleagues.”

He snorted. “You mean part of their fight to reverse the county’s decreasing fertility rate? That’s what this is about, isn’t it? It’s so damned annoying I was about ready to lash out at the sanctimonious assessment officer. I have a job, an important one, in the university hospital’s neonatal unit. We’re making our systems more reliable and improving the survival of premature infants. Outstanding success with preemies as young as twenty-two weeks, and our research suggests we may soon push it lower. We’re world leaders in this work.” He paused, inhaling and exhaling his breath in an obvious effort to control his emotions. “Sorry for venting because I know it’s not your fault, but that’s my contribution to the fertility problem obsessing the government. They shouldn’t hound me with all this juvenile crap about working together. No way, we’re a bunch of happy bees working together for the good of the hive. Everything’s too messed up for their cheerful talk.”

“I didn’t know you were working in the medical field,” she said in another attempt to shift the conversation away from fertility. It was on her mind, but she remembered his aversion to intimate relationships during his university years. She didn’t want to push too hard, at least not yet.

“Quality control officer for the neonatal unit’s equipment, so an engineering job, not a medical one. I investigate malfunctioning equipment and improve its reliability.”

“But that didn’t fit into the Ministry’s image of the ideal young adult, did it?”

“I don’t know what they’re thinking. My first visit a year ago was noncommittal. They outlined some programs and their benefits. And since then, the local office’s propaganda has included my experience working in the hospital. But today they were down on me, accusing me of shirking my social responsibilities and threatening me with various repercussions.” He glanced at his watch and swallowed the rest of his coffee in one gulp before she could respond. “I should go. I promised to get into work early if possible, and the stupid meeting with the psychobabble gestapo took longer than I expected.”

She reached out and grabbed his hand. “Could we, you know, have dinner together some evening and gobble up more of your wasted credits?”

“I’m working every evening this week, but I could do Saturday. You can tell me what you’ve been doing for the past three years.”

They exchanged contact information, and he strode away with more spring in his step than he’d shown going to Tim’s. Ellie sat back with a second coffee and his untouched muffin, happy with her progress.

 

***

The Spot Writers:

Val Muller: http://www.valmuller.com/blog/

Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com

Phil Yeats: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com/

Chiara De Giorgi: https://chiaradegiorgi.blogspot.com/

 

Unexpected

Welcome to The Spot Writers. The prompt for this month is an unexpected visitor.

This time, it’s Cathy MacKenzie’s turn. Her writings have been published in approximately four hundred print and online publications. Check out her website (www.writingwicket.wordpress.com) for more information on her works. Cathy can’t quite seem to write anything but poetry these days, so here’s another…

 

Unexpected

by Cathy MacKenzie

Nobody expected you,

Least of all me,

Yet there you stood,

Bag at your knee.

I counted the bedrooms,

I counted the days.

Unexpected, you said.

Your favourite phrase.

I’d never have called,

Too proud, too scared,

But how I’ve missed you,

More than I’d shared.

***

 

The Spot Writers:

Val Muller: http://www.valmuller.com/blog/

Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com

Phil Yeats: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com

Chiara De Giorgi: https://chiaradegiorgi.blogspot.ca/

 

Back

Welcome to the Spot Writers. This month's prompt is to write about an unexpected visitor. Today's tale comes from Val Muller, who in her day job is a high school teacher in America. This fictionalized account is based on at least two real incidents that reminded her that soke students are challenging in the moment but ultimately make the job a rewarding one. It is an appropriate way to end teacher appreciation week.

 

Back

by Val Muller

 

Just 26 hours from now, they would all be on holiday break. It was the typical student apathy and excitement, as before any break--the same behaviors that made her question teaching. If she could just make it through the rest of the day without incident, she could coast into the last day before break.

The intercom beeped, and she flinched. All day, students had been dismissed by parents pulling them early.

"Ms. Smithson?" the office called.

"Yes?" She looked around the room, wondering which of the few remaining students was being called.

"Are you busy? You have a visitor." A few moments later, a building substitute was there to watch the class. Ms. Smithson cringed. They never sent someone to cover a class.

Unless you were in trouble.

Which, maybe she was.

Did the district do things like that? Did they fire teachers two days before Christmas? She took the fastest route to the office, but she walked slowly. These could be her last few moments of normalcy.

When she entered the main office, she looked around. She had expected to see an administrator standing there with a scowl and crossed arms. But instead, it was just the two ladies from the front desk smiling each other and laughing as they watched her face. And they pointed in the direction of the seats next to the front door. There, a young man was seated. Ms. Smithson did not recognize him at first. He seemed like he might be a student waiting to see the principal, or maybe an older brother waiting to pick up a sibling for an early dismissal. No one on her current roster, anyway.

Then her heart skipped a beat. It was Jason, the Jason she spoke or thought about daily for four years, the Jason so notorious that even her husband still remembered hearing about the boy's antics and attitude. The number of times he'd gone to the main office, the number of times he'd mouthed off, rebelled,  not listened. The time he sent that email.

"Oh," she managed.

Jason stood, smiling, handing her a gift bag. "It's chocolate cookies," he said. "My parents insisted."

"Thank you. It's good to see you." Okay, so chocolate cookies. But why? Did Jason really just come back randomly with cookies for his former teachers?

He seemed to read the question in her eyes. "There were only two people I came to see. You're one of them."

He held up an ID tag. "See what I do now?" It was an employee ID tag for the local, national basketball team. "I'm on the press team. I'm not in charge or anything, but this is how everyone starts. For now I just help with scheduling and set up and basically just doing whatever I'm told, but I can work my way up. They said probably when I graduate next year they'll have something for me."

Had it really been three years? He was about to graduate college. In the back of her mind, she had given him a fifty-fifty chance of that. It's not that she didn't believe in him, but as with so many students, it was just there was so much evidence pushing her to fear the worst.

"Graduating, huh?"

He nodded. Then he pointed to the gift bag. "You think that's your Christmas gift, but it's not. That's just what my family gave you. Are you ready for your gift?"

Ms. Smithson tensed. What could he mean? But already she was nodding.

Jason paused for dramatic effect, then stood up straight, looking her right in the eye. "You were right," he said. "I mean every damn time, you were right. Use good grammar. Proofread my work myself. Take pride in my work. Be polite. Walk away when my anger is going to make decisions for me. Respect those above me. All thise things I gave you a hard time about, all those things I said I would refuse to do, all that headache I probably put you through, in college I learned that you were right real quick."

Ms. Smithson paused, taking it all in. Everyone always said teachers really appreciated things like handwritten notes as opposed to anything else. She never understood that, students thanking teachers for merely doing their jobs. But now, she soared in the clouds. All those years of wondering if maybe just for one day he could be absent, wondering if maybe just for today he would cooperate, all those years of not giving up, of fighting the good fight with that small flame of hope that might kindle into something.

She looked up to see the fire in his eyes.

"Thank you."

 

The Spot Writers—Our Members:

Val Muller: http://www.valmuller.com/blog/

Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com/wicker-chitter/

Phil Yeats: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com

Chiara De Giorgi: https://chiaradegiorgi.blogspot.ca/

 

The Most Haunted Summer Ever

Welcome to The Spot Writers. The prompt for this month is to continue with last month’s prompt (a story told through a camera, any type of camera in any circumstance). This next story will be what happens AFTER what is told through the camera. 

This week’s contribution comes from Chiara De Giorgi. Chiara is an Italian author and currently lives in Berlin, Germany. She writes fiction, with a focus on children’s literature and science fiction.

  

Created with LeChat

The Most Haunted Summer Ever

by Chiara De Giorgi

 

After acquiring the Gift of Sight, Elsa befriends the Squatters, a community of ghosts living in the abandoned house in her village, Willow. One day, they ask for her help in investigating the murder of Alistair, the ghostly brother of one of their own, Wilhelmina. She promises to help them but isn’t sure how to proceed, so she enlists the Stranger, a shapeshifter, and Lydia, a teenage girl who attends Elsa’s after-school creative writing class and shows her some strange photos taken at night that, apparently, depict vampires. That’s how Elsa discovers that Lydia can see ghosts and supernatural creatures.

 

~Entry 2~

Introducing Lydia to the Stranger was an experience in itself.

Lydia and I arrived at the library and a gargoyle enthusiastically greeted us from his perch. I froze. I had never realized the gargoyles were “creatures” too. Turns out they are, and they can be called Bert. Before I could process this new information, a cascade of water spilled from the gargoyle’s perch, pooling on the pavement before rising into the shape of a girl Lydia’s age. The Stranger.

Lydia gasped. Then smiled. Then giggled. Just what I needed: an unpredictable shapeshifter and a teenager with a crush.

I looked around frantically. No one on the (thankfully!) almost deserted street seemed to have noticed anything. Just another normal evening in Willow.

“Uh,” I said. “Hi.”

We sat down at the library café, where I struggled to make them listen to me: the Stranger was too busy doing funny stuff to make Lydia laugh, and Lydia… well, she laughed. After I scolded the Stranger for stirring her tea with a finger morphed into a silver spoon, snake-like strands of her hair slithered onto her shoulders, sticking out their tongues at me and winking at Lydia.

“Girls, please!” I said. “We have a murder to discuss.”

Lydia blinked, still staring at the Stranger’s hair. “Go ahead.”

“A ghost murder,” I reminded them. Yes: Alistair, explorer and would-be writer, as well as Wilhelmina’s brother, has been found catatonic in the Interplace, the spirit world’s version of a neutral meeting ground. Not dead dead (too late for that), just stuck. Enough to send the whole Squatters gang into a panic.

After some frantic research, I’d learned the only way to reduce a ghost to that state was to trap their essence in an object. Now we had to figure out who had done it, and why. That would hopefully lead us to the cursed object, so we could free him.

“Suspects,” the Stranger said. “We need suspects.”

“Anonymous,” I said after a while. “For all his act of being the Squatters’ leader, he’s been avoiding me since it happened, being all secretive and uninterested, while everyone else is panicking.”

“Madame LeClaire,” the Stranger suggested.

“Who?” Lydia and I asked in unison.

“The new lady in town. She owns the antique shop next to the ice parlor. I’ve seen the artifacts she sells: some are clearly linked to magic stuff.”

Being a journalist, I would have dismissed the magic stuff in a heartbeat until not too long ago, but the past twelve months or so have taught me differently.

Lydia nodded at the Stranger’s suggestion, then cleared her voice and added her own suspect to the list.

“Bartholomew,” she said. “The librarian’s assistant. He hates explorers, I heard him say that one bit him and turned him into a werewolf just because he wanted to know how humans tasted in this area of the world.”

I stared. My ability to take in new, weird stuff was being seriously tested, and not for the first time. At least, I don’t pass out anymore.

The Stranger’s hair turned into a detective’s hat and she tipped it at me. “This is going to be the best. Summer. Ever.” She winked at Lydia, who blushed and giggled again.

Before leaving the library, we agreed on our next step: we’re going to investigate all our suspects, who are a ghost, a werewolf, and a possible evil witch. 

The best summer ever? The most haunted, for sure.

Elsa

 

 

The Spot Writers:

Val Muller: http://www.valmuller.com/blog/
Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com
Phil Yeats: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com/
Chiara De Giorgi: https://chiaradegiorgi.blogspot.com/