The Summer We Lost Alice (40 page)

Miss
Lilian chanted feverishly, the words tumbling over one another as they passed the old woman's tongue. As she reached the end of her liturgy and slammed the book shut, the evil struck. It threw out a black tendril that seared past Heather and Brittany and wrapped itself around Sam Morse Sr.

Sammy cried out to his father. He received only an anguished scream in reply. The evil released its grip on the ceiling, circled Sam Sr., enveloped him and
roared around him. As they watched, transfixed and helpless, Ethan and Sammy and Heather could see that slowly, circle by circle, the evil was beginning to diminish.

"Good God," Ethan said.

The evil poured into Sam Sr.'s body through every orifice—his mouth, his ears, his eyes—while Sam shrieked like a man consumed by fire. His body swelled and blistered. His eyes, when he opened them, were black as oil.

"It was never the box," Ethan said to Miss
Lilian. "You were putting the evil back into Sam."

"Where it belonged," Miss
Lilian said. "Where it had to be."

"Did he know?"

"He knew."

Sammy fell back against the wall, exhausted by all he'd seen. Slowly he righted himself and took a few hesitant steps toward his
father. The black fire was gone, entirely contained within Sam Sr.'s contorting body.

Sam Sr.'s hands went to the box that he'd managed to cling to throughout the ordeal. He opened the lid and reached in. He withdrew a 9mm pistol that he quickly snapped into position beneath his chin. Sammy rushed forward, but the old man's move was quick and decisive.

"Bury me deep," he said. He pulled the trigger.

THE FOLLOWING WEEK alternated between flashing by in a maelstrom and dragging along as if every hour were laden with a ball and chain.

For Ethan, the time he spent behind bars awaiting arraignment was a time of self-recrimination, soul-searching, and trying to decide how he was going to spend his life in prison now that his worldview had been yanked out from under him like a throw rug. His universe had opened, providing him a glimpse of worlds beyond, worlds of darkness and light, of death and rebirth. He had witnessed firsthand the undeniable evil that lurked within the human soul, an evil that could never be expunged, only beaten down on a daily, hourly, moment-by-moment basis.

He reasoned, ultimately, that salvation could be attained by one means only, the old standby of loving deeply and eternally and unconditionally.

This epiphany came to him, coincidentally, on the day he learned that all charges against him had been dropped. Myer refused to press charges, insisting that, if the State intervened, he would refuse to testify for the prosecution, that he would lie on the stand if necessary to undermine any case they might bring against Ethan.

The Ungers agreed to do likewise in return for a large screen television—sixty-inch minimum diagonal width—for the lobby, and new flat screens for every room in the motel. Ethan personally apologized to Ward Unger for his behavior in the presence of Ward's mother, his father, their attorney, and Ward's girlfriend.

As he stood facing the young man, Ethan wondered about the coincidence of Ward's escape from a serious automobile accident that
had left him strangely on the mental level of the late Martin Dale. He wondered about Ward's girlfriend, whom Ward had met in the hospital, bonded with instantly, and who now stood at his side, her arm wrapped around his waist. If the circumstances of Alice's death had indeed led to her reincarnation within Heather, had the same gift been visited on Martin Dale and Perla Ingram?

Ethan doubted it, but chose to believe it had.

The attendant from the nursing home whom Ethan had dragged around at gunpoint made her own accommodation with him, the details of which, due to her age (three days short of her eighteenth birthday) were not made a matter of public record.

Cat and Flo made a grudging peace with Miss
Lilian. Although her crime was a grave one, Miss Lilian had put herself out on a limb to do what was right and essential and which, ultimately (they had to admit) saved the lives of countless children. A restraining order was issued barring Miss Lilian from all unsupervised contact with minors. She retired to the nursing home and the company of her "fogies."

On the day of his release, Ethan was surprised to see Aunt Flo cleaning out Alice's bedroom.

"Matt's getting older," she said. "It's time he had a room of his own. This one's just going to waste." She packed Alice's belongings carefully. She set out the photograph of Alice and Boo. Once she had it in the right frame, she would place it on the mantel in the living room.

He found Matt and Brittany in their room. They sat facing one another. Barbie, her eyes still marked with indelible X's, lay between them. Matt scrunched up his face and held his temples. Ethan eased himself out of sight and eavesdropped.

"I feel a powerful force from the other side," Matt said. "It ... it's Barbie."

"My Barbie?"
Brittany's voice was soft, tremulous.

"Yes,
your Barbie."

"Is she in Hell?"

"No. She's living in ... in a dream house in heaven. She says—I can't quite make it out, but it seems very important."

"Is it about her funeral?" Brittany asked.

"Yes!" Matt said as if he'd just had a revelation. "She says ... she says ... it was a lovely service. She says 'thank you for such a beautiful ceremony.'"

"You're welcome, Barbie," Brittany whispered.

* * *

They were loading suitcases into the car when Cat brought up the subject of Thanksgiving.

"We usually have a little something," she said, "but this year I was thinking about doing it up right. Invite Sammy, overcook a turkey. I thought maybe, if you guys aren't fed up to here with small Kansas towns, you might want to join us."

They said they'd love to, but that they would plan to stay at the motel.

"I want to get some use out of those televisions," Ethan said.

Ethan checked the time on his cell phone. They would have to leave soon to get to the airport on time. He was in no mood to barrel down the highway like a madman.
Again.

"If she doesn't get here soon, we'll have to book a different flight," he said.

"Who?" Flo asked.

In answer, a pickup truck pulled up bearing the attendant from the nursing home. She gave a passionate kiss to the scraggly young man behind the wheel. She promised to write to him from Hollywood.
She unloaded three large suitcases from the truck bed. Ethan helped load them into the Mustang. The trunk proved woefully inadequate for the girl's gear. They ended up stowing her bags in the backseat.

"Aunt Flo, Cat, allow me to introduce Danielle
Bumgarner," Ethan said.

"Danielle
Duske," she said. "That'll look so much better on a marquee, don't you think?"

"Danielle is flying with us back to Burb—" He caught himself. "Back to Hollywood," he said. "Turns out she got some pretty good reviews on her theater work with the junior college."

"Mr. Opos is giving me a job while I audition," Danielle said. She turned to Ethan. "Do you have my ticket?"

Ethan handed her the boarding pass he'd printed out from Matt's computer.

"First class," Heather observed. "I didn't realize we were flying back in such style."

"We aren't. She is. We'll be
in back with the people holding goats."

They all hugged and said their final goodbyes
. Everyone said how much they were looking forward to Thanksgiving. They had special hugs for Matt and Brittany and scratches on the rump for Boo.

Ethan started the car and backed out of the driveway. He squeezed Heather's hand
and eased the Mustang into forward gear. They drove down the street under a sprinkle of red, brown, and golden leaves. Boo chased after, haunches pumping, his big feet kicking up dust, barking his fool head off.

Now that you’ve finished
The Summer We Lost Alice
, if you enjoyed it, there are a few things you can do to expand on the experience:

You can go to your online retailer and leave a review.

You can visit
www.janstrnad.com
and see what else I’ve written that you might enjoy, and maybe even join the mailing list that I use to inform readers of new material. I never sell names.

You can loan the book to a friend through your retailer’s lending program, or sideload it to your computer and send it to someone. Go ahead, I don’t mind. Okay, I’d rather you didn’t publish the book on your website and give it away for free to millions of people, but printed books have always been passed around and I don’t see why ebooks should be any different.

You can devote one day to buttonholing strangers on the sidewalk like the Ancient Mariner and telling them, “You must read
The Summer We Lost Alice!
” I understand that this is unlikely, but I wanted to put it out there.

The serious truth is, books live and die by word of mouth. It’s the only advertising that really works. If you like this or any other
book, talk it up! Your authors will be ever so grateful.

Thank you for sharing your time with me.

The Murmuring Field and Other Stories.
Six short stories with a twist.

"This collection is a real find. Jan Strnad gives us quirky characters, sly humor, and devious plot twists. His wry endings always manage to surprise us in a satisfying way. Well done!"

— Harry Shannon, author of
The Pressure of Darkness
and the Mick Callahan novels.

From the Author’s Introduction: “Loan me the keys to your time machine and you’ll know where (when) to find me—back in 1959, banging out spec scripts and knocking on Rod Serling’s office door, pitching stories for
The Twilight Zone
. If he won’t let me in, I might leave a copy of
The Murmuring Field and Other Stories
with the secretary.”

“The Best Fishing
Ever
” is a fish story with no fish, a horror story with no horror.

"
Hafford House" started out as a straightforward haunted house story about a child molester wrestling with his demons. It took a devious turn along the way and became something more.

"Polly
Wolly Doodle" is a semi-serious, semi-horrific story about a symphony conductor who runs afoul of the local witch. I apologize if the story puts the song "Polly Wolly Doodle" in your head. That shouldn't happen to anyone.

"Cassie" is my Cassandra story. Some people imagine how wonderful it would be to know the future. I believe one of our greatest blessings is that we don't.

"Photobombing the Apocalypse" is an apocalyptic story with no apocalypse, a love story with no...oh, wait. I've already used that sort of description. I wouldn't want to repeat myself. Repeat myself. Repeat myself....

"The Murmuring Field" is a story about plants and loss and love and singing.

NOTE: All stories contain some supernatural or science fiction element. No profanity beyond "damn," no explicit sex.

Risen: A Supernatural Thriller
.
Previously published as a Pinnacle Book under the pseudonym J. Knight.

Welcome to Anderson. It's quiet here and that's how we like it. Except:

Madge Duffy sliced her husband's throat last week. Thought she killed him, but then John walked out of the morgue none the worse for wear.

The new preacher's calling it a "miracle," but I don't know. It isn't right.

I think there might be other people coming back, too.

Like Deputy Haws, for one. He's got a bullet hole in his one good shirt and he won't breathe a word about it.

You know Peg Culler down at the diner ... the one with the little girl on life support? Well, she's talking about pulling the plug, and nobody ever thought she'd do that, not in a million years. She thinks it might be the only way to get her back.