Excerpt:
“Are my dreams and my nightmares that of a living person? Do I still have a life that I might lose? Or are my dreams that of a corpse rotting in the ground? Or rotting in the boot of a car, if I was never saved: brought back to life? Am I dead?”
Hearthville Serial: Book 7
Episode 5
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
Victor looked toward the backseat at Billy. He laughed, “Not my honey. You are a character. Aren’t you?”
“Whatever.”
“I understand your being nervous. I am nervous. This is all so weird. How in the hell did we get here?”
“My current theory is that you kidnapped me and are planning to blood sacrifice me in some damn jewish magical ceremony.”
“I am not jewish. And don’t be saying such shit. The ADL will start stalking you all over the internet until they have you banned all over the damn place.”
“I hate the internet. If I had my way, it would be banned.”
“Yeah. And I think they should dig up all the asphalt roads and we should start back using horses to travel.”
“I know. Right. And stop shooting up rockets, you know, spacecraft, and pretending like they are going to the moon or mars. That is just stupid. Who the fuck knows what they are really doing with all that money.”
“Do we really believe what we are saying?”
“Probably not. But I do wish I could ride a horse to school. That would be cool.”
“Yeah. I should buy some horses. I own Hazel Manor. The estate has a stable but needs a little bit of work done on it. Cows have been being moved on and off the pasture and so the pasture is in pretty good shape. It is green and lush.”
“So you are rich. You own a mansion. But still, you live with your parents. I don’t understand that.”
“It is hard to explain but they are important to me. I want to stay close to them.”
“So okay, still, why don’t you move them into the Hazel Manor place?”
“I’ve thought about it. I don’t know. It is kind of like Hazel Manor is a nice place to visit but I just don’t want to live there. I don’t think it would ever feel like home. Home feels like home.”
“I hate where we live. The apartment is too small. But I do like some of the people around. It does kind of feel like home but I think another place could feel just as much like home.”
Victor and Billy both looked up at the fireball flying above the drive-in. Victor said, “I saw the fireball earlier. It has to somehow be connected to what is going on.”
“I’ve seen Iapetus turn into a fireball. That might be him. He may be behind this, but I don’t know.”
Suddenly, the orange mustang started to shake. Then the back doors to the mustang partially opened. As fast as the doors had opened the doors slammed shut. The car flew up six inches from the ground. The tires slightly turned. Then the car fell back to the ground.
Billy asked, “Is someone trying to cage us? Is that what this is?”
“I don’t know.”
One of the back doors to the car opened. Again. But this time, Billy saw a disembodied hand reaching toward him. Then from the hand a body started to form. Around the body was like hot air hitting cold air in the ether. There were strange ripples in the air around where the body was forming. The materialized body was like a corpse. It was pale. There was a bullet between its cold, vacant, dead eyes. But the corpse moved. There was life in that corpse.
There was terror in Billy Bingo’s eyes as he saw the monstrous image reaching toward him.
Victor stared at the soul, the apparition that appeared as a not so dead cadaver. Billy pulled back away from it as it crawled into the car. It stopped reaching toward Billy and it sat next to him. Its hands settled on the white seat of the orange mustang. Its fingers began to tap. Victor could see that Billy was petrified.
Victor whispered, “It is a lost soul.”
Then the other backdoor opened. Billy, scared, turned away from the corpse and looked toward the other door. The “ghost” at the other door was like a chalk outline. The person looked as though they a been drawn by a policeman at a crime scene. Drawn around the dead body of a murder victim.
The chalk outline crawled into the car and sat next to Billy. It put its hand on Billy’s knee and Billy saw a wild eyed, crazy looking face with a sinister expression staring right at him. A bloody hand appeared on Billy’s knees and Billy felt the hand gripping his knee and in a tight fist.
Billy’s voice was squeaky. “I want to get the hell out of this car and run.”
Suddenly, there was a knock on the car window next to Victor. Victor looked toward the fogged up window. Not knowing what he would see, nervously he partially wiped the sweaty fog from the glass. Then he stopped wiping the window for he feared what he might see. Victor wondered what would be next in this nightmare that he was living. Or was he living? Victor wondered if maybe he was like the two lost souls who sat with Billy.
“Are my dreams and my nightmares that of a living person? Do I still have a life that I might lose? Or are my dreams that of a corpse rotting in the ground? Or rotting in the boot of a car, if I was never saved: brought back to life? Am I dead?”