Hearthville Serial: Book 7
Episode 2
Any Truth, Proper Grammar, or Correct Spelling is totally coincidental if not accidental.
All characters are fiction. This story is fiction. This story makes no claims about any real person.
By Charles Peters
Copyright 2021
All Rights Reserved
Chapters / Episodes
Maureen Bingo stood looking out from the window. She was dressed in a pink flannel night gown as she held the white curtains back. Outside the window was a small, colorful garden lit dimly from the moon and the light from the parking area in front of the Apartment Complex. Beyond the garden, in the parking lot, Maureen noticed an orange mustang that was like one that she knew Victor Duddley drove. She wondered if that was his car.
Then Maureen saw a reflection in the windshield of the orange mustang. “What the hell!” She looked up toward the starry sky and saw a large fireball. It was almost like the fireball transported her back in time to a memory of when she had seen such a fireball before. It was when she was up in the mountains, a long time ago. She had seen the fireball shortly before Billy was born. Standing there, Maureen realized she had forgotten all about that incident. She wondered if her daughter Bess was not the only one who had forgotten some things. Bess had confessed she did not remember Johnny and Barry Whitehead. Maureen felt certain that Bess should have remembered the time she had spent with them.
The bright fireball vanished from view.
Maureen heard a knock on the door. Although she had seen a car that she thought was Victor’s car, she was startled by the loud sound. She jumped and turned toward her bedroom door. The door was the same boring wooden brown door that it had always been. Yet it seemed more. Different. Maureen took a step. Then another. Another. Then she stopped. She felt her heart racing as she stared at the glass doorknob. She reached out toward the doorknob although she was not yet close enough to grasp it. Maureen glanced off to the side and could see her own face in the dresser mirror. She saw her own fear and that made her even more afraid. Then she stared at her hand reaching out toward the door. She saw her hand was shaking. She felt her hand shaking. Then Maureen looked down toward her feet. She stared at her pink, bunny slippers. Then she watched those slippers on her feet do quick, short steps, toward the door.
There were more knocks on the front door to her apartment.
Maureen put her head against the wood of her bedroom door. Her hand moved toward the doorknob. “I am not crazy to be afraid. Barry Whitehead was murdered. His ghost was here. It is a late. It is too late for any visitor but someone is at my front door.” Maureen sighed, “Barry Whitehead was murdered.” She took a nervous breath. “Murdered. And I don’t know by who.”
Maureen turned the doorknob. She opened the door from her bedroom. “If I don’t answer the door Bess or Billy will. I’ve got to answer the door.” She walked from her bedroom.
Suddenly, there was the sound of breaking glass. Maureen stopped in her tracks. She screamed, “What in the hell was that?”
Billy Bingo opened his bedroom door. He staggered out of his bedroom. He hoped his mom would not realized that he was drunk. “Sorry, mom. I broke a bottle.”
“What? A bottle? How?”
“I’d put my, you know, in it. And then I could not get it off. And finally it came off. The bottle. Not my thing. And the bottle crashed into my trunk and it broke.”
Maureen stared at her son. She was not sure what to say.
“I know. Bess is right. I am weird. I am going back to my bedroom now.”
“Okay.”
Billy Bingo staggered back to his bedroom door. He opened his door. He entered his bedroom. He closed the door behind himself. There was another knock at the front door to the Bingo Home.
Maureen Bingo walked to the living room door. “Who is there?”