A light knock, the nurse’s kind face. “Want some visitors, Reverend?”
McGlazer smiled.
He put the bible back on the nightstand as Stella entered, appearing as exhausted as he felt. “Can’t believe I get to be first.” She eased the door shut. “So many people are here to see you.”
“What about the family?”
“Candace is helping the witches with a cure ritual for Yoshida. Emera is with Wanda, sound asleep.”
“And Bernard?”
“He said…you might have something to tell me?”
McGlazer sat forward and immediately fell back. “Ouch.”
Stella held his hand. “You can say it perfectly fine lying flat on your back, Abe.”
“So I can.” He shot a glance at the bible. “I want you to take over the church.”
“As…minister?”
“If you want the job. You would be great.”
“What about you?”
“Mostly a mystery to be solved later, I think,” he told her. “Maybe I’ll be your assistant for a while, scheduling appointments and making coffee.”
She smiled, but her expression was a little bit sad.
“Maybe I can convince one of our fellow survivors to partner with me on a café and bookstore, or some such quaint idea.”
Stella pulled up a chair and leaned close. “I get the idea you were thinking about this before tonight.”
“This town needs Saint Saturn’s, and Saint Saturn’s needs you.”
She waited, knowing he would elaborate in his own time.
“I’m not…thinking about God right now. I realize that lack of faith doesn’t mean lack of character. I’m going to…keep searching—not necessarily for ‘God.’ Just for whatever might be behind the curtain.” He raised his gaze toward the ceiling. “If anything.”
The hospital’s lobby areas had quickly become crowded, as members of the press and the civil services learned of the latest chapter in the ongoing Ember Hollow horror show.
DeShaun and Stuart stayed in Hudson’s room and watched some of the news coverage with the volume low. When he’d been admitted, Hudson had insisted he didn’t need treatment; he wasn’t that banged up. Staff firmly placed him in a wheelchair and made him take a handful of acetaminophen. “You are suffering from exhaustion,” said the doctor. “You’re not going anywhere but one of our beds. No visitors for ten to twelve hours.”
Epilogue
Pedro hadn’t really known Maisie well enough to reasonably predict if they could form a lasting couple. If so, it would be the first in Pedro’s troubled life.
Certainly, he did not get to know her well enough to weep with such violence, to mourn her like a lifelong lover.
He wiped his tears with the Sex Pistols T-shirt she had somehow cleansed of bloodstains. He had washed it in a way that was ceremonial, in the sink of Hudson’s bathroom, with a white candle burning, hung it to dry and folded it as close to the way she had that he could remember.
He scooped out a small rectangle in the fresh reddish mound over her grave and placed the shirt there, then covered it over. “Hey, I’ll keep an eye out for it—and you—in the…whatever”—Pedro scanned the grave-dotted hills that surrounded Saint Saturn Unitarian Church, soon to be Saint Saturn Interdenominational Temple—“next place.”
He stood and stared at the mound, narrowing his eyes as though he could see the petite smiling beauty’s light beaming through the earth. Perhaps some part of him could. “I guess you ain’t got no choice but to have that picnic with me now, huh?”
He found himself strangely wishing for her delicate hand to burst through the earth and clutch his leg. “Jeez, what’s wrong with me?” he chuckled.
Nothing changed.
“Whatever it is, I get the feeling you’d be okay with it.”
Pedro kept himself from crying and walked back down to the street, where Dennis and Jill waited, both weeping on his behalf.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Michael and Maureen Crosby are inspiring to me for reasons no one, not even I, can fully understand. I can’t help but believe they’ve accrued fantastic karma.
Too many of the people who have, in their own way, inspired or encouraged me are no longer with us.
Joel Mullinax, my first school chum ever, fell to his own demons, leaving me with memories of his fierce sense of loyalty and acceptance.
Johnny Huskey, a superior martial artist and human being, was also a talented imaginer, something he kept mostly a secret. I was among the lucky few who were privy to that side of him.
Finally, my father Lewis W. Green, was a brilliant writer and journalist. In ways plain and strange, he was as fine a teacher as any student could want.
Don’t miss all the fun of the Haunted Hollow Chronicles!
In case you missed the beginning, keep reading to enjoy an excerpt from Book One, Red Harvest.
All the Haunted Hollow Chronicles novels are available from Lyrical Press, an imprint of Kensington Publishing Corp.
www.kensingtonbooks.com.
Chapter 1
Ember Hollow, North Carolina
October 29
“Helen, a few weeks ago, the empty field you see behind me was home to roughly twenty-five thousand Autumn’s Pride pumpkins,” pronounced local reporter Kit Calloway. “They’re all gone now, on their way to markets and homes around the country. But a good many are staying right here in Ember Hollow, where they will be carved and decorated for the town’s annual Pumpkin Parade on Halloween night.”
Viewers were treated to stock footage of parades past, with costumed bystanders hooting and clapping while spooky floats crawled by with more elaborately costumed performers aboard.
“For, you see, come Halloween, Ember Hollow becomes Haunted Hollow, Halloween Capital of the World.” The handsome reporter gave a charming raise of his eyebrow. “And this year promises a little something extra, as the town’s very own homegrown rock band The Chalk Outlines takes the stage above The Grand Illusion cinemas to
