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My excerpt today comes from Dreamscape. Written in homage to Agatha Christie, Dreamscape is a haunting, a murder, a thriller, a mystery, and a love story that transcends time. Above all, this sensual tale is a reader's Easter egg hunt in the truest sense. Not everything is as it appears. Peppered throughout are little clues suggesting a story running behind the scenes. Finding them isn't necessary to the telling of the tale, just one of the fun twists I like to insert into my writing. Can you find them all before the story ends? But more importantly, can a ghost find love among the living?
Here's the story ~
5-Stars at Manic Readers ~
"I wondered as I read this how the lovers were ever going to solve that problem, but was totally surprised at how Anderson arrived at the HEA [happy ever after] ending I was hoping for as I read far into the night. Great read with a surprising twist ending."
"I wondered as I read this how the lovers were ever going to solve that problem, but was totally surprised at how Anderson arrived at the HEA [happy ever after] ending I was hoping for as I read far into the night. Great read with a surprising twist ending."
Setting the Stage:
Lainie and her best friend Lexie are cleaning out the junk-stacked cellar. At this point in the story the pair have been going over the details as they have them. All fingers point to Dr. Jason Bowen being murdered 120 years before.
And here's the Hump Day offering ~
Frustrated by a skeletal armchair with its rotted horsehair cushions and sharp uncoiled springs jutting out in every conceivable direction, Lexie asked, “How did Ben’s brother figure this cellar would be ready to go on Monday?”
Lanie answered from somewhere on the other side of the stack, “We’re almost done. Monday will be tight time-wise, but if I can get most of it out they can rake the floor before the cement comes. Remember, Ben said to leave the heaviest stuff for them.” Loaded up with two broken apple crates, a base to a kerosene lamp and the other leg of the footstool she found in the past hour, she set them on the top stair and said on her way down, “Why do you suppose it’s stacked with garbage like this?”
“I’m wondering that myself. This is nuts!” Lexie pulled hard on the last word, and the spring that was entwined around the handle of an old milk can tore from its mooring and freed the chair. “Take that, you sorry son of a gun!”
Gun. Lanie started. The word sparking a memory, she turned to her friend in the process of dragging the heavy, rusted milk can toward the stairs. “Lex?”
“Yeah?”
“I want to tell you something before Pete comes back.” She looked up the stairway to be sure they were alone. Pete was busy hauling the junk from the stairs and sorting it into whatever pile category was best. So far, most of it was slated for the scrap man’s pile. “I’ve been dreaming of Jason Bowen and the house for the past two nights.”
Lexie sniffed. “Yeah? That’s not unusual for you. It’s only been what…twenty years?” She sneezed loudly from behind the pile, once, twice...
Lanie waited. She never heard her friend sneeze less than three times in a row. Predictably the third followed. “Bless you!”
The traditional sneeze wish was met with a gurgling honk somewhere behind a broken window shutter speared by an old corn broom. “Ugh. Thanks. I’m gonna give myself whiplash sneezing like that.”
Lanie laughed.
“So you’ve been dreaming like always.” By Lexie’s calculation, Lanie had been dreaming this stuff for twenty years. “And?”
“Yes, well in this one dream he opened a desk drawer and showed me a gun.”
“That’s odd. You haven’t dreamed of guns before have you? For what purpose?”
“No I haven’t, and I don’t really know why. He also told me that his wife was cheating on him with Richard Mason.”
Lexie shook her head. Armed with details from the Historical Society, Lanie’s imaginative dreams had taken a definite direction. While she did think her friend’s peculiar dreaming bordered on bizarre, she only ever believed they were just dreams, a subconscious relating of facts and fancy gleaned from life. Still, Lanie believed her dreams were portents of something greater, and since they were friends these dreams deserved her respect as did Lanie’s desire to talk about them. Trying not to sound like she was indulging a fantasy, she said, “Well, we guessed that might be the case, didn’t we?”
“The desk has this trick drawer that a hidden drawer opens into. That same desk is upstairs and it does have a secret drawer. I opened it like he showed me.”
Lexie froze. These dreams got more and more peculiar as time went on. “Did you find the gun?”
“No.”
Removing the broom and shutter, she finally accessed the milk can and dragged the heavy thing across the hard-packed dirt floor. “Holy shit!”
“What? Lex, what’s wrong? Are you okay? Do I need to get my kit? Lexie answer me!”
“I found your gun, and the person it might have been used on.”
oOoOo
oOoOo
Rose Anderson ~ Love Waits in Unexpected Places
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Great hook, well done.
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