Spirited

Spirited

Copyright © 2011 by Kat O’Shea

“Strangeways vs. the Wraith” © 2011 by Judith Graves

“The Senet Box” © 2011 by Jill Williamson

“Stained” © 2011 by Mark Finnemore

“Thread of the Past” © 2011 by Dawn Dalton

“The Cold One” © 2011 by Candace Havens

“Death Becomes Her” © 2011 by Kitty Keswick

“The Oast House” © 2011 by Carmen Tudor

“New Girl” © 2011 by Maria V. Snyder

“Aftermath” © 2011 by Halli Dee Lilburn

“Phantom of the Prom” © 2011 by Linda Joy Singleton

“Night Queen” © 2011 by John W. Otte

“To Hel and Back” © 2011 by Shannon Delany

“The Story of Late” © 2011 by Heather Kenealy

Augmented reality © 2011 by Karl Gee

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or Leap Books except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Contact Information:
[email protected]

Cover Art by
Leap Books

Leap Books

Powell, WY

www.leapbks.com

Publishing History

First Leap Edition 2011

ISBN: 978-1-61603-021-6

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011941415

Published in the United States of America

eBook designed by:
eBook-Pub.com

Introduction

At midnight, curtains flutter in the breeze creating ghostly shadows in the corners of your room. Do you clutch the covers to your chin and peer over them in terror? Or do you hop out of bed to investigate?

Me? I’m a cover-clutcher, so I haven’t slept with the lights off since I started editing this collection. Not so much because the tales themselves are overtly frightening, but because they stimulate my imagination and make me wonder: What if I were trapped forever in small claustrophobic dark space? What if an angry spirit were pursuing me? What if the line between reality and fantasy blurred, and I remained trapped between the two?

Even more terrifying, what if seeing specters is a sign of insanity? If it is, I’m in trouble, because most of the characters are so well fleshed out that they’ve stepped off the pages and into my world. Some have taken on a life of their own and are certain to appear in future novels.

If you’re brave enough to open the covers, rather than hiding under them, inside you’ll confront both friendly and malevolent spirits. You’ll also encounter jealousy, rivalry, and touches of romance along with a variety of genres. The tales range from steampunk to cyberpunk, historical to dystopian, contemporary to sci-fi. And if you prefer your apparitions 3-D rather than 2-D, slide the icons in “To Hel and Back” under your webcam to see the augmented reality leap off the page.

Many of our
Spirited
authors will be hauntingly familiar to fans of the paranormal. Others are talented newcomers. But all of them were willing to donate their time to benefit charity, because they believe there’s nothing scarier than illiteracy. So when you read these spooktacular tales, you, too, will be erasing the specter of illiteracy, because all proceeds from
Spirited
will be donated to
826 National
, a nonprofit organization dedicated to assisting students, ages 6-18, to improve their writing skills. The 826 mission is based on the understanding that great leaps in learning can happen with one-on-one attention and that strong writing skills are fundamental to future success.

If you’ve visited the
Leap Books
website, you know we lean toward the eccentric and snarky. So when we found an organization that’s a little off-the-wall and dovetails with our goals—reading and writing—we couldn’t resist.

Kids ages 6 to 18 are enticed in by
storefronts
, which caught our eye (our third eye, too). Here are a few of the offbeat stores:

• Museum of Unnatural History (Washington, DC) specializing in saber tooth dental floss and unicorn burps;

• pirate store (San Francisco) selling glass eyes and peg legs (be sure to check the sizing chart to properly fit yours);

• space travel supply company (Seattle) sporting rocket fuel to ray guns;

• superhero outlet (Brooklyn) furnishing capes and grappling hooks;

• spy store (Chicago) dealing in periscopes and night-vision goggles;

• time travel mart (Echo Park, CA) stocking dino eggs and dodo chow;

• robot repair shop (Ann Arbor, MI) marketing robot emotion upgrades and positronic brains;

• Bigfoot Research Institute (Boston) offering Yeti hairballs and sea serpent secretions.

What kid wouldn’t be lured in?

If that weren’t enough to intrigue, once the kids walk through the doors, the center provides free tutoring by professional volunteers and a variety of writing programs to increase literacy skills, so it seemed like a natural—or should I say, supernatural—match for us.

Past

Strangeways vs. the Wraith

This would not do.

I crouched over the slim form of Nora Rumsay and administered smelling salts to my unconscious companion, who, but seconds before, had fainted in a dead heap at the top of The Narrows grand staircase.

Another eerie wail, an exact replica of the one that had sent Nora off, rumbled from the lower level, reverberating underfoot as the very floorboards absorbed the sound. The howl of a crazed beast. A demon seeking a soul.

And annoying as hell.

Seeing Nora begin to stir, I tucked the vial of salts into a hidden pocket sewn within the folds of my skirt. It clanked against the Hylo derringer also encased within. These days it sticketh closer than a sister.