Old Bones: A Collection of Short Stories (14 page)

“Your price?” the woman asked.

Mort noticed her raised eyebrows and said,
“My flat rate is fifty bucks up front for the tow, plus five for
each mile. That’s fifty-five, minus the time spent working on your
engine. For that, I charge twenty bucks an hour, which I know
sounds expensive, but a guy’s gotta make a living, you know.”

The woman nodded. “I’ll pay you for the
entire hour, although a cup of hot coffee would have been nice.”
She handed him a crisp one-hundred-dollar bill. “You’ve been very
professional. Keep the change.”

Mort grinned. “Thank you kindly, Miss…”

“Umberto.”

“That’s an unusual name for Ridgewood
folk.”

“I moved here in July. I teach at the high
school.”

Mort nodded as if he approved of her reply.
Out of habit, he held the bill up to the light and found the
watermark. “Well, I’m glad I saw you drive by so I could be of
service.”

He left her while he wrote up a greasy
receipt at his workbench and she got into the car and waited. When
he handed the receipt to her through the open window of her car, he
hoped she hadn’t noticed the box missing from her purse.

She took the receipt, put it in her wallet,
and addressed him once more.

“Have a very merry Christmas. And make sure
you spend some of that money on your mother.”

“My mother? I … I don’t—”

Mort was going to lie, tell her he didn’t
have a mother. But the sudden stern look she gave him caused him to
close his mouth.

She narrowed her eyes at him.

Before she did, Mort thought he saw a flash
of green light pass across them.

“You have a pleasant night, Mr. Twitchel,”
she said before she backed out and drove away from the garage and
the road to Myers Ridge.

When her taillights were out of sight, Mort
opened the box. He whistled when he saw the yellow gold necklace
trimmed with diamonds. He stepped outside and grinned wide. It was
going to be a very merry Christmas indeed. Ron Koehler at the
pawnshop in New Cambridge always paid top dollar for jewelry with
no engravings. And the diamonds were not too big that ole Ron would
have any trouble selling it, either.

Mort grinned so wide that the sharp, frigid
air hurt his teeth.

He held the necklace to the clear, night sky.
The diamonds glistened like the stars there—all those billion
sparkling lights ablaze against the night’s velvet canvas above
him.

It made him feel small and insignificant …
and dizzy.

He squeezed shut his eyes, then looked again
at the starry sky.

The wide expanse made him dizzier. He
stumbled and sat hard on the snow; his gaze, however, remained
riveted on the sky. There, the stars grew suddenly larger, their
light brightening as a billion planets and suns came at him at a
terrible speed.

They filled his vision and he felt the weight
of their magnitude descending on him.

His throat tightened. He knew what he saw
wasn’t real.

Still, they fell, seen only by him.

He tried to open his mouth and call out to
his mother—to scream for her to rescue him as the entire night sky
seemed to drop on him, crushing the air from his lungs.

Minutes later, a film of clouds entered the
vast, starry sky from the north. New snowflakes fell where Mort’s
body lay on the driveway’s old snow, his wide eyes staring
lifelessly at the cover of snow clouds drifting across the sky.

A green shimmer of light appeared next to
him. The pretty woman stepped from the shimmer and pried the
bracelet and box from Mort’s icy hands. She put on the adornment
and felt her magic return. A ruddy color filled her cheeks; her
eyes filled with bright emerald. She bent and placed a two-liter
bottle of Pepsi and a bag of potato chips in the snow, next to
Mort’s darkening head. Then she took the hundred dollars from his
pocket and placed it under the bottle of Pepsi.

“For your mother,” she said, “so she won’t
think too unkindly of you.”

She stood, twirled a hand, and her body
vanished in a flare of green light eaten by the night’s rapacious
darkness.

###

Afterword

Three stories in this collection feature Emily
Umberto, a witch I created in 1998 for “Dragon Slayer” who was
supposed to become a major character for future stories. As you
see, she made appearances in two more stories before I moved on to
other characters and projects. Over time, I tweaked “Dragon Slayer”
and “Behavior Unkind” to fit a teenage character named Vree
Erickson; they became a part of a dead-end project called The Green
Crystal, which saw some print time at Amazon before I scrapped the
project. It lies in wait for a major overhaul.

*

I love to write … and there are times when I hate to
write. But mostly I can’t help myself from scribbling something
onto paper and wondering, “Where the heck did this come from?”
Unlike painting (which I also love doing), where an image comes to
mind and takes on a full life of its own before I draw it out and
paint it, writing explodes in my head in some sort of manic rush of
ideas that I have to hurry to record before they dwindle away like
sparks from fireworks. And that’s the sum of writing for me: a mad
dash to record some poem or story inside my head before it fades
away.

People have asked, “Why do you write instead
of making more paintings?” and I’ve told them, “Because I must.” It
feels as necessary to my life as eating and breathing for me to
excavate the words from inside my head and record them.

A bible passage about creation, where it is
written in Genesis (I think) about the beginning of all things when
“…the word was with God and the word was God” makes me wonder if
it’s a godlike desire for all of us to create. After all, as a
writer and painter, I create many worlds.

When I’m not creating stories and art, I
read. Books are my virtual reality, just as movies are for many of
my friends. I’ll read anything (though paranormal fantasy is my
favorite) … sometimes fast with a devouring appetite of a madman,
or sometimes slow, taking my time to pluck each sentence from the
page and savor its taste before swallowing. Reading is, after all,
a meal for the mind.

I also delight in listening to other writers
and painters and engaging in soulful conversation with them.
Unfortunately, that kind of conversation is a dying art form. (I
envy the old-time artists that were able to sit around all night
talking and debating the sciences.) I’m sure my delight in
listening and conversing came from my childhood. I grew up at a
time when families gathered in the kitchen and dining room and
talked. My parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins always
gathered around tables and shared anecdotes of all kinds. Table
talk was something I looked forward to and cherished after every
visit. And at summertime, table talk often ended at a campfire
outdoors at night where ghost stories and other folklore took up
the conversations.

My grandparents were good storytellers. They
used their voices and body language to “act out” whatever they
talked about. I think this came from the vaudeville era, since they
lived during that time. And they knew how to hold one’s attention
with words. Certain ones still send shivers up and down my back
when I hear them.

Now, when I write my stories, I always
imagine myself at either a kitchen table or a campfire, telling
eager listeners my tales. For there, an artist and storyteller was
born. And for that, I am forever grateful.

About the Author

Steven L. Campbell pens contemporary, paranormal
fantasy in his undisclosed lair in northwest Pennsylvania. He has a
bachelor's degree in studio art and graphic design, and graduated
magna cum laude from college. He has been a wildlife artist for 30+
years and an avid reader of all genres of fiction since the age of
5. His passion for writing developed during high school, but it
took a backseat after college while he painted art for a living.
Now, passionate again about writing, his books feature characters
living in Ridgewood, a fictional Pennsylvania town based on his own
hometown where his relatives fueled his imagination with their
ghost stories and urban lore, prompting him to write his own
fantasy tales for everyone in love with the genre and young at
heart to enjoy.

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