Hags Episode 4

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Micah wound his way stoop-shouldered around the boxes back to the unkempt mattress. A loud thump caught his attention so he meandered around the boxes again to the window. Red liquid smeared a six-inch-square chunk of the wet pane. “That wasn’t there before.”

Micah attempted to raise the window so he could check out the stain on the outside of the glass, but it wouldn’t budge. “Painted shut, cat. Or else the wood is swollen from the rain.”

He flapped his bare feet downstairs to the kitchen where he poured milk into a small white porcelain bowl and filled the other bowl, a little red plastic one, with fresh water.

“Now where did I pack the coffee?” Neither the Delonghi coffeemaker nor the Jamaican Blue Mountain turned up in any of the boxes marked “kitchen.”

He rubbed the cat on the head. “One of us needs to check the coffee shop down the street. I know, you’re wondering how I knew about it, what with me new in town and all, but cat, you have to know coffee lovers notice coffee shops, especially the indies.”

A wispy woman dressed in a pioneer costume strolled into the room. She stared at Micah as though she was about to speak. She turned up her nose and retreated down the hall and around the corner. Micah chased her, but by the time he arrived at the stairs, she had vanished.

“What do you think, cat? Haunted house?”

“Meowr.”

“Yes, sir. I agree. She gives me the heebie-jeebies. She could at least take her bonnet off inside. So cat, did you see where I left my wallet?”

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Hags Episode 3

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In the half awake time before rising when images, dreams and half dreams ascend from the darkness of the soul and imprint themselves on the memory for the rest of the day, Micah Probert observed the faerie in a mountain meadow. The creature wore blue jeans and a red shirt tucked into his waistband as he flitted about from golden daffodils to blue forget-me-nots like a bee shopping for nectar. Gossamer wings buzzed like a dragonfly until, as sometimes happens in half dreams, the creature turned to face the camera of Micah’s mind. It flew in for a close-up and grinned with a Mediterranean face outlined with short black hair.

Micah jumped which caused him to smack his hand hard against the side of a stack of book boxes by his mattress.

He pushed the boxes aside and blinked against the sunlight as it glared through the soiled glass of the back bedroom window. Micah found his knees staring him in the face when he plopped his feet on the floor. He reached over to pet the black cat asleep among his blankets and sheets. “How’d you get in here?”

A humming noise came from outside. Micah weaved a path through the jungle of boxes to the window. He leaned his hands on the wide wooden sill coated with faded, peeling white paint and considered how potted plants would go nicely on the windowsill.

The droning came from above and to the right, so Micah turned in that direction in time to see a man in blue jeans. He was bare from the waist up, but had a red shirt tucked into his waistband. He wore a pair of brown work boots like a construction worker prepared for a job in the mud. The man hovered about fifty feet above the parking lot behind Micah’s tiny backyard near the row of green dumpsters. Yellow police tape surrounded one of the dumpsters. The police had completed their work and hauled the body away.

The winged man landed by a large puddle in the parking lot. He folded a set of four long, narrow gossamer wings against his back. The wings faded into a filigree pattern of blood vessels woven over the man’s skin like a tattoo. He undid his shirt from his waist and ambled around the corner of the house out of sight. Micah craned his neck sideways to track the winged man’s movement. Above, a strong breeze moved the cloud cover off to the east.

Micah shook his head to clear it. “Hallucination? What do you think, cat?”

The feline sprawled with its paws stretched out and its mouth open in a yawn. “Meowr.”

“Yes, sir. You make a good point. And I agree. Caffeine is the best way to figure out how you got in here. By the way, have you always had that lisp?”

The cat stretched, yawned and smiled.

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Hags Episode 2

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Cold, wet grass tickled his bare feet as he ran to the end of the yard. In the darkness he couldn’t find a gate. Feeling with his hands, he realized he had purchased a home with a fenced in yard and no gate.

Can’t jump over in my bare feet and underwear. Break an ankle. Scratch my legs. Slip and do much worse. Not using the family jewels for anything anyway. Still the pain would be insufferable.

Micah turned the lights on in the kitchen where the apparition continued chewing her raw meat. He screamed. After a frozen moment, he ran to the downstairs hallway where he threw the light switches on for the downstairs entrance area and the upstairs hall. He also turned on the light in his back bedroom.

He slipped on a pair of faded blue jeans and sneakers without the socks. He checked the time on his cell phone. Two-thirty-eight. He ran back downstairs, out the front door, around to the alley and the parking lot.

At the dumpster with the damaged lid, he touched the wrist of the arm hanging out. It was cold, feminine, and petite. He hesitated before taking the cell phone out of his pocket. Not certain his Arizona phone number would connect to a local nine-one-one line, he punched four-one-one and asked the operator for the police.

If I phone, they’ll respect that I called. Like that means anything in DuPage County. At least, I’m not hallucinating.

In less than a minute, a police car pulled up close to the dumpster with its lights flashing. A uniformed officer stepped out of the car and shined a flashlight into Micah’s face. The sudden brightness flooded Micah with a litany of bad memories.

“You the one who called?” The officer kept the light in Micah’s face.

Micah raised his hand to shade his eyes. “Yeah. See?” He pointed to the dumpster with his finger about two inches from the girl’s dead hand.

The officer touched the girl’s wrist.

“I… I… couldn’t find a pulse.” Micah backed away to make more room for the officer.

“You touched her?”

“To check for a pulse.”

The officer opened the lid. Micah hit the ground butt first and hard. The intense pain shooting through his posterior kept him from passing out.

The officer shined his light down on Micah. “You okay?”

“Didn’t expect that.” Micah swiped at the puddle soaking his bottom. He stood up.

“Sorry. I wasn’t either. Guess you didn’t find a pulse.” The officer punched a button on his communicator and spoke to his dispatch in the language of authority.

Micah leaned down to pet a black cat snuggled against him. The cat smelled of damp fur and blood.

Micah waited. He backed away a distance to avoid the police chatter, but he couldn’t escape the hideous noise. Nor could he explain the huge puddle of blood flowing like a river from under the dumpster with red cat paw prints leading away from it.

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Hags Begins Today

 
Welcome to the first installment of this extended preview of my novel Hags. I won't post the entire novel here, but you'll read enough to see if you want to read more. At the end of the episodes appearing  here, I'll make the Kindle version available free for five days on Amazon so you can finish it at your leisure. And if you simply must have the entire book right away, you may purchase the paperback or Kindle version by clicking here.

Today's blog post starts Chapter 1. But first, here's a quick summary: After 15 years in prison for a rape he insists he didn’t commit, Micah Probert returns to his hometown of Naperville, Illinois, where he starts his first day by discovering a human-sized faerie flitting about in his backyard, a dead body in the parking lot behind his house, a pioneer ghost in his kitchen, and a local coffee shop that serves the darkest roast this side of Hades. Mix in a few dark secrets, a couple of serial killers, a hot romance or two, and this novel takes you deep into the heart of horror in the suburbs.

As one of my Amazon critics wrote:
“For a story dealing with such dark topics, Hags surprised me with its genuine humor. Once all the pieces are on the table, the story has a very distinctive and clever personality that flows quickly…. you'll find Hags a delightful read that may have something to say about fear, lust, greed, brokenness and most importantly, redemption.”

Hags Chapter One

From the mattress on the floor of the back bedroom of his antique Victorian fixer-upper, Micah Probert heard a far off scream. An equally distant clang of heavy metal followed. Then two muffled voices, a male and a female. The sound of feet scampering followed by a loud buzz made Micah picture a prehistoric dragonfly. Then came the silence.

Micah dragged his six-foot bulk to an upright position and maneuvered stoop-shouldered around the stacks of book boxes cluttered about the bedroom. The ancient pine floor boards creaked under his weight as he made his way to the window. He absorbed the aroma of damp, clean night air after a storm.

Darkness prevented Micah from seeing into the small backyard of his downtown Naperville, Illinois, property. A series of streetlights illuminated the parking lot behind his yard. The light changed colors as it filtered through the raindrops on the window panes.

At the far end of the lot, he made out the dumpsters, five in a row, bathed in the harsh glow of a streetlight. One had its lid ajar. All were wet with rain.

Micah wasn’t sure if he imagined the hand, wrist and arm sticking out from under the metal top of one dumpster.

The police will accuse me. No, they won’t have any evidence. Still, if I report it, they’ll accuse me. No, they’ll suspect me if I don’t report it. Dead either way. So’s the person in the dumpster. It could be a dummy, part of a college prank. The person may still be alive. And maybe I’ll drive myself crazy with hallucinations.

A black cat stepped out from under the dumpster and called out in a loud, lispy meowr with a big, toothy grin.

Cats can’t smile, can they? And why does that one meow with a lisp?

Micah ran down the steps, tripped over a stack of three large clothing boxes in the entranceway, and made his way into the kitchen where he knocked over a chair. He noticed a wispy mist with a barely-there woman in the center dressed like a pioneer. She sat across the table from Micah, devouring an equally wispy bloody chunk of raw leg of lamb. After a quick little half scream, he stared for few seconds more before opening the back door.

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