Resurrected Past
Has been picked up to be printed in the anthology "Undiscovered Gems, An Anthology of Fiction Talent - Released June 2012
Excerpt:
I woke sometime late in the night. The moon was full and illuminating. I got up and went to the living room window that looked out onto the porch. There stood a towering, gaunt man with his back to me, leaning against a post. I felt drawn to the front door, turned the latch and walked outside. The boards were cold under my bare feet and there was a definite chill in the air. The figure straightened. He leapt from the porch to the ground below and walked slowly, purposely down the walkway. I felt compelled to follow. His right hand hung loosely by his side and held a cigar with its stub glowing in the gloom while his left hand beckoned me to keep up. His clothes were ragged and rotting with age. A miners hat with a light sat crooked on his head attached to an old-fashioned battery pack on a strap. Everything about him was dark as if he were covered with coal dust. He was tall and lanky, covering one stride for my every three.
When he reached the gate, instead of opening it as I was expecting him to, he simply passed through it. When I say through it, I mean that quite literally. His entire form simply passed through the wooden picket slats and continued on toward the garage.
You would think this would have stopped me cold in my tracks, but it didn't. I continued on, opening the gate and closing it behind me. He stopped in front of the garage, as if waiting. I drew close enough to see the sharp features of his face before he turned and passed through the old wooden door. The doorknob was cold as I turned it, pulled the door open and entered.
A Memory of Trees has been picked up for an Anthology coming out in early 2013. More information will follow as soon as it is available.
Excerpt:
The trees are at peace now, growing wild and unchecked on the two hundred acres that I still think of as home. Sometimes I go there to listen to them speak softly into the wind and whisper of peace and harmony and survival. They sing their quiet songs of the harsh land they have tamed to call home, of the challenges of growing up through mere cracks to stand tall and strong. It’s just a whisper of leaves in the breeze, but I can hear their words as clearly as I heard their screams. The horrible history of that time has been erased, the clear-cut areas have re-grown and life goes on. Do they remember those lost? Do they speak in their gentle ways of what is gone? Or do they look to what they have now, keep their friends and family dear and watch their saplings grow with bright hopes for the future? They sway in the wind and reach toward the sun and keep their secrets to themselves. They give me forgiveness and in that I find peace and hope in my own forests.
