The Haunted Breadbox: A Myron Vale Investigation

By Scott William Carter

Myron Vale sees ghosts. One hundred billion of them, to be precise.

In a world where everybody dies but nobody leaves, Myron Vale is the rare individual who completely straddles both sides of the great divide. In fact, he may just be the only one. His strange ability the result of a gunshot to the head while serving as a Portland police officer, a few years later he recovers to forge a new life as private investigator catering to both the living and the dead.

His biggest problem? He can't tell them apart.

In this short story prequel to Ghost Detective, the first novel featuring Myron Vale, a house call to an old farmhouse finds Vale investigating the most unlikely of haunted places -- a breadbox. What lies inside? It's not at all what Vale expects.

"Scott is one of those rare writers who can and does cross genres, and do it well. You never know what kind of story you'll get from him, but you do know that it'll be good."
- Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Hugo award-winning author of The Disappeared

"Carter's writing is on target." - Publishers Weekly

"Scott William Carter makes it look easy." - Chizine.com

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Publisher's Note: The ebook includes an author's afterword explaining the origin of the story (which lead to the novel), as well as the opening chapter of Ghost Detective.

SCOTT WILLIAM CARTER’s first novel, The Last Great Getaway of the Water Balloon Boys, was hailed by Publishers Weekly as a “touching and impressive debut” and won the prestigious Oregon Book Award. Since then, he has published nine novels and over fifty short stories, his fiction spanning a wide variety of genres and styles. His most recent book, Wooden Bones, chronicles the untold story of Pinocchio and was singled out for praise by the Junior Library Guild. He lives in Oregon with his wife and children.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Flying Raven Press
• Release date: May 9, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301016044

Scott William Carter

Scott William Carter is the author of Wooden Bones and The Last Great Getaway of the Water Balloon Boys, which was hailed by Publishers Weekly as a “touching and impressive debut.” His short stories have appeared in dozens of popular magazines and anthologies, including Analog, Ellery Queen, Realms of Fantasy, and Weird Tales. He lives in Oregon with his wife and two children. Visit him at ScottWilliamCarter.com.

Book preview

The Haunted Breadbox

A Myron Vale Investigation

Scott William Carter

Contents

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Author's Note

About the Author

Preview of Ghost Detective

Smashwords Edition. Electronic edition published by Flying Raven Press, May 2013. Copyright © 2013 by Scott William Carter.

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction, in whole or in part in any form. This short story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

For more about Flying Raven Press, please visit our web site at http://www.flyingravenpress.com.

The Haunted Breadbox

The most surprising thing about ghosts isn't how many of them walk among us. It's how few of them could give a rat's ass about the living.

That's what I was thinking when I turned my Toyota Prius onto the dirt road and saw the covered wagons parked in the grassy field between the white cottage and the dilapidated barn—six wagons in a ring, as battered and beaten as you'd expect them to be after an arduous continental journey. The sun sinking behind the coastal range painted the tattered canvas domes in shades of orange and crimson. The wooden wheels were caked in mud. Dozens of pioneers, women in frilly white bonnets and long dresses, men with heavy beards and ruddy cheeks, huddled around a flickering campfire. Gaunt horses grazed nearby.

Either there was a random colonial reenactment going on twenty miles from the Oregon coast, or these people weren't, in the technical sense, alive. Because it was me who was seeing them, there was a much greater chance of the second being true.

None of the people looked my way when I passed. None of them looked my way when I parked my car next to the house or stepped into the cool breeze and chirping crickets. As far as they were concerned, I didn't exist. And that's exactly how I wanted the situation to remain unless there was a very good reason to change it.

They were ghosts among the living. I was a ghost among the dead.

You drive a hybrid?

Walking to the house in the chilly evening air, I'd been focused on the pioneer camp, and now I turned to see a short, stubby little man in a brown tweed jacket and matching pants. The thinning hair on top of his head was as white as the handkerchief jutting from his front pocket, though his enormous sideburns still bore traces of black. Gold, wire-rimmed glasses drooped low on a slender nose. A gold chain, the kind