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Excerpt from *Haunted*/*Out of the Shadows* by Laura Hamby... Rated *G* |
| Name: |
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Laura Hamby |
| Date Posted: |
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Aug 10, 06 - 8:09 AM |
| Website: |
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http://laurahamby.bravehost.com |
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Haunted
by Laura Hamby
(c) 2005
Prologue
Eighteen years ago...
“That’s the haunted place.” The girl spoke in a hushed, we’re in church voice. She wrapped her arms around herself and enveloped her thin upper arms with tiny hands.
“There ain’t no such things as haunted houses.”
“Sure there are. Ain’t you never seen the Misty Lady?”
The boy snorted and dug his dirty bare toe into the soft dirt. “That ain’t nothin’ but weather, Alisanne.”
She persisted. “Ain’t ya heard the sad music playin’ when she’s out and about?”
“No. An’ neither have you. You’re just repeatin’ things that don’t bear repeatin’.”
“Ain’t so, Remy Beauvais. You take that back.”
Alisanne gave him a hard shove.
He only laughed, amused by her puny efforts to knock him over. Small-but-mighty Alisanne Sommers. Remy didn’t really know why he tolerated her tagging along after him, other than his mama had admonished him to be nice to Alisanne. After all, Alisanne’s own
mama died not six months ago, and Remy seemed to be the only person she’d actually speak to ever since the funeral.
She annoyed him.
At ten years old, she looked eight. Her delicate features made her look more elfin than human, or so he fancied. Ever since his grandparents had given him the Tolkien books for Christmas three years ago, elves, dwarves and magic dominated his thoughts.
But believing in ghosts? Nope. Lunacy. One of Grandmama Beauvais’ favorite words. He kinda liked it himself. Rolled off the tongue with ease. Lunacy.
The wind pushed at the gate which hung at a drunken angle off its post. The squeak made Alisanne jump.
Remy laughed until his sides hurt.
Alisanne kicked him hard on the shins. That stopped his hilarity right quick. “Ain’t no call for you to do that, Alisanne.”
“There are ghosts. There have to be ghosts.”
Remy shook his head, feeling as superior as a twelve year old boy could in the face of nonsense streaming out of the mouth of a baby. Alisanne’s chin jutted out and she pursed her lips together so hard they disappeared.
“What you want there to be ghosts for? Everybody knows when you die, if you’ve been a good Christian, you get to go to heaven.”
“Not if you have unfinished business you don’t,” Alisanne explained. Her thin face lit up as she stared up at him.
Remy shifted from one foot to the other. No one had seen Alisanne smile ever since her mama took sick last year. With insight rare for an almost teenaged boy, Remy knew somewhere deep inside himself that this was very important to Alisanne.
“Unfinished business? Like what? You forgot to pay your phone bill?”
“No.” Alisanne paused. She peered through the rusted iron bars at the forlorn Rousseau mansion on the rise towards the back end of the property.
“Then what?” Impatient now that dark thunder head clouds rolled across the sky, Remy didn’t want to get drenched while waiting for Alisanne to explain.
“Like somebody forgot to say goodbye,” she whispered this. The breeze whisked the murmur away, echoing back at them. The hair on the back of Remy’s neck stood on end when Alisanne added, “Mama forgot to say goodbye to me before she died. That’s what unfinished business means, Remy.”
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Haunted/Out of the Shadows ... Available from
By Grace Publishing in the By Grace Publishing Bookstore. |
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