Read Online Old Bones: A Collection of Short Stories by Steven L. Campbell - Free Book Online

was ghostly white, and the figure was a
young woman wearing a black sweatshirt with Ridgewood Police
lettered across the front. Sadness edged the woman’s pale blue eyes
framed by ragged and dirty hair that had once been short and
strawberry blonde.
    “I’m Rita Malloy,” the ghost’s papery voice
hissed, although her pallid face remained calm while she addressed
the man. “You kidnapped me one night in my driveway five years ago
when I was leaving to go to work. I never made it to the station
because you raped me at knifepoint and then stabbed me in the
stomach when you were through. But I was slow to die, so you shot
me with my weapon and left my corpse for the wild dogs and coyotes.
My remains have never been found.”
    The man looked at Rita’s pistol pointed at
him. He pulled at his door handle and pushed his left shoulder
against the door. It didn’t open. He closed his eyes.
    “You took my money,” Rita said, “went to
Atlantic City and won nine hundred and seventy-five dollars with
it. Then you bought some hookers and killed them too.”
    The man covered his ears. “No, no, no,” he
said.
    “You’ll never hurt anyone again.” Rita shoved
her pistol’s barrel against his temple. The gun did not jam.
     
    A HALF-HOUR later, Pennsylvania State Police officers
found the man’s body in the driver’s seat of Karrie Erickson’s SUV.
Rita Malloy’s government-issued pistol was in his right hand, his
index finger on the trigger. On the dashboard, they found a crudely
sketched map in glitter crayon on a McDonalds’ greasy paper napkin
spattered with blood and showing them the locations of Rita’s body
and the other women he had killed.
    At the bottom of the map, they read these
words: For my crimes, I don’t deserve to live .
    A police officer drove Karrie home while a
crime scene unit came to investigate the SUV. No one saw Vree
hiding and watching from the woods. Moments later, she vanished,
carried through space by the green light.
    At the banks of Myers Creek, the green light
around Vree faded. She stumbled away from where the crystal lay and
stared at it for several minutes. She almost reasoned that she had
imagined saving her mother from the hands of a rapist and killer.
But that would be denying the truth … albeit, the weird truth.
Weird things had happened to her before, and she was certain they
would continue.
    #

Oddities
     

Dead
Rabbits Don’t Run
    I SMELL IT again. Past hemlock and below hill the
aroma is coming from man’s wooden lodge, drifting to me on smoke
from most powerful and burning my nose with the fragrance of the
blood of my sins. Although my eyes are closed, I know that if they
were open I would still see the tormenting image of man eating his
bloodless rabbit meal: chewing, always chewing; licking fingers
clean; sucking bare every tawny bone; he will leave no bloodless
meat behind. Before he sleeps tonight, he will bury bones into
ground behind his lodge near where I committed my first crime. If I
could move, I would run to there now and commit one last sin by
digging up bones and feasting on marrow for the remainder of my
short, pathetic life.
    It was there that I lost my dignity by giving
in to temptation. After seeing man bury rabbit bones in ground
behind his lodge, I waited until just before the new day to dig
them up. I wisely returned all ground before feasting under
hemlock. I have returned often since then, alone, always alone, and
becoming less and less of a hunter.
    When man left his lodge for two summers, his
woman replaced him. She did not bury rabbit bones. Instead, she
threw bones with bloodless meat into high grass where it was
quickly consumed by my large and stealthy body. Although the
bloodless meat was dry and chewy, it had a rich flavor that was
addictive. I became a scavenger and stopped hunting my meals.
    If my sons should find me here, dead and
broken, will they uncover the follies of a foolish old laggard who
spent his final days chasing dead