And another new release!
Autumn is my favorite season, and I know it's silly and no I'm not into the occult but I absolutely love Halloween. Kids in costumes, jack-o-lanterns, cool evenings and crisp leaves and a moonlit night... and chocolate! What's not to love?
Which is why, when I was supposed to be writing book 2 in my Matinee Classics Cozy Mystery Series, I held the presses and slipped in a Halloween story.
In The Body and Mr. Chicken, Stevie and best friend Melanie are assigned to do a community service project cleaning off and documenting graves at the aging Sweet Penny Cemetery. It's an enormous cemetery, with iron gates and odd little hills and tree roots knocking crumbling tombstones wonky. And crows, and creepy crawlies. Not their activity of choice, especially when their work is interrupted by Stevie stumbling on another body.
To buy now or read for free in Kindle Unlimited, click here.
And just to wet your whistle, here's an excerpt from The Body and Mr. Chicken:
We had passedthrough enough fog to see that we had reached the cemetery gates.
As if thingsweren’t eerie enough, we discovered that we were not the only ones there. Agroup of people stood near the cemetery gate, watching as we approached. Goose bumpsrose under my sweater sleeves.
Not the friendliest-lookingfolks. We stopped a few yards away from them—a distance that I judged we could stillmake a quick getaway from, especially if we dropped our tools in their path to slowthem down. They didn’t look like great jumpers, at least not the ones in front.
“Good morning,” Isaid, smiling. Smiling was my favorite disarming tool. It usually broke throughuncomfortable barriers. It didn’t this time.
“Gate’s locked,” amiddle-aged man spoke up. He held a large potted plant. A couple of others inthe group had plants as well, and a few shovel handles poked up in their midst.
A faded cemetery signhanging on the gate posted visiting hours.
“Locked?” Irepeated. “It should have been open by now.”
“No kidding,” awoman next to the man said. She didn’t look like smiling was herfavorite.
Mel nudged me andleaned close as she spoke. “If it’s not open, maybe we can leave.”
“Judith definitelysaid we were to be here today,” I whispered to Mel, though I looked around.Without someone to let us in, maybe we could get out of this assignment,at least temporarily. “Let’s give it ten minutes—”
“Five,” Mel saidwith feeling.
“—five minutes, andif no one comes—”
Before I couldfinish the thought, a grating noise scraped through the air, loud enough towake the dead. And don’t think I didn’t look through the bars to check if it hadwoken any dead, as adrenaline shot to each and every one of my nerve endings. Weall stepped back, Melanie and I and the plant-bearing mourners. Somehow, as ifby invisible hands, the massive iron gate creaked open a foot.
Melanie saidsomething that would have made my mother scowl—may she rest in peace—andinternally I gave an amen.
I hadn’t realizedI’d lifted my shovel in self-defense until I noticed Melanie had her pickaxe uptoo.
“Do we run?” Iasked, not sure what spooky cemetery protocol called for. The other folks seemedunsure as well.
Just as I wasready to turn tail, a sparsely haired head appeared in the gate opening. Mystomach sank. The head was grey, skeletal, and probably freshly risen from thetomb, if my overactive imagination was right.
But the head,which I could now see was attached to a sinewy neck and work shirt matching thegrey color of the man’s skin, and hair, and eyes—so unnerving—spoke to us. Inthe menacing kind of voice you’d reserve for Scooby-Doo monsters, the grey man demanded,“What do you want?”
As the mournershad arrived first, we waited for them to state their case. Plus, I couldn’tspeak for Melanie, but I was wishing hard that I’d used the bathroom one moretime before coming.
“We’re just hereto tend our family graves,” the same woman said.
“Like I told you lasttime, you have to wait for visiting hours!” The grey man’s voice rose with eachword. The group grumbled, but the head at the gate swiveled our way. I hadn’trealized how menacing a monochrome face could be. “What do you want?”
I found my voice,though my bravado seemed to have run off somewhere. I could only speak inquestions. “Judith Christiansen sent us? We were assigned to come as part of thetown historical documentation project? But if it isn’t a good time—”
I let my words diewhen a bony hand loomed into sight, motioning us to come forward. I swallowed awhimper.
“I don’t want to,”Melanie whispered. She’d moved close enough to me that our arms pressedtogether. Or maybe it was me that had moved.
“Let’s just getthis over with,” I told her, though my jelly legs wanted to go the other way.“Otherwise Judith will just send us back again.”
“Or shame us infront of the chamber of commerce,” Melanie said, which I knew was scarier toher than a foggy cemetery and its creepy caretaker. “Again.”
Taking baby stepsand carrying all the equipment on the very precise list Judith had given us, wemade our way to the gate. I took one last look at the mourners, who seemed asjealous of us as we probably looked of them.
Every ounce ofself-preservation in my body told me not to go through the gate, and it wasn’thard to picture myself clinging to the black bars like a child to a parent. Butwe were grown-ups. We had a job to do, an assignment to fulfill, and I wasn’tone to cop out on a responsibility.
Even one in anancient, spooky graveyard in October.
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