In my copious amounts of spare time, I managed to take three of my favorite paranormal short stories and put them in one place.
This new collection contains “Salting Dogwood,” “Tasty Morsels,” and “The St. Elmo Dämonjünger.” The first two have been published twice each, but the last is an unpublished story featuring a character from a future novel.
Salting Dogwood is a tale of heartache and retribution, set at the turn of the 20th century, where the ghost of a young girl must seek out her father’s killer across decades.
EXCERPT
…. The vision faded and she found herself standing before the ladies’ room door. She shook her head, trying to clear the frightful vision, and walked in. She stepped up to the sink, turned on the water and started at her reflection in the mirror. The face seemed almost foreign to her, and a chill coursed its way through her body. She leaned down, splashed her face with water and lifted her head.
It was not her own face looking back at her, but the face of a teenage colored girl in a plain, thread-bare dress of gray covered with a dingy apron. It should have surprised Madge, but it didn’t. She merely stared at the face and knew the girl’s name was Harriet . ….
Tasty Morsels is what you get when you cross the X-Files, Iron Chef, and Big Trouble in Little China. In it, a down-on-his-luck FBI agent nearing the end of his career has one last chance to be a hero. Unfortunately, his one shot at redemption may end with him as a tasty morsel.
…. I suddenly understood exactly what my boss Dickerson had felt. Some things the mind just didn’t want to latch on to. And without a firm grasp, the mind tended to cast the impossible aside with a big fat BULLSHIT label stamped on it. But I’d seen what was left of the bodies, and I couldn’t argue with Francois. Everything fit.
“To it,” Francois said quietly, “we are nothing more than tasty morsels.” His eyes burned with fierce determination. “But tonight, the tables will be turned, non? We shall track the beast to its lair and end this reign of terror.” ….
The St. Elmo Dämonjünger pits a veteran demon hunter from a distant land against evil threatening the residents of small Colorado town in the old west.
…. “You are very observant,” the padre clarified. “I’m actually both an ordained Jesuit priest and a practicing witch of some ability.”
Earl, Tate, and Bob—who had remained silent the whole time—stared at the padre in disbelief. “How the hell can you be both,” Bob asked incredulously. “Don’t you believe in God?”
“Believe in God? Of course I believe in God.” There was a terseness in the padre’s voice that had its roots in Germany when he was a young Jesuit. “I know it personally. I don’t particularly like the son-of-a-bitch, but it does seem to have its uses for me. I am a dämonjünger because it wants me to be one.” ….
Paranormal Short Stories is now available in digital format only, and you can get it HERE.
