The Lottery Ticket

By Chris Morrow

Jared Wilson gets the break he's been waiting for but in order for him to cash in, he's going to have to stay ahead of his pursuers. When he runs his car off the road in the middle of a blizzard, he takes refuge in an old general store with a bizarre old man who has problems of his own.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bard and Book
• Release date: Jun 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301118717

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THE LOTTERY TICKET

by Chris Morrow

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Copyright © Chris Morrow 2013.

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Published by Bard and Book Publishing

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Cover by Julius Broqueza.

Table of Contents

Introduction

The Lottery Ticket

Fear and the Storm

Dinner for the Dead

INTRODUCTION

The Lottery Ticket

Jared Wilson gets the break he's been waiting for but in order for him to cash in, he's going to have to stay ahead of his pursuers. When he runs his car off the road in the middle of a blizzard, he takes refuge in an old general store with a bizarre old man who has problems of his own.

Fear and the Storm

Jill Peters is a troubled woman. She and her husband Jim are on a cross country trip from California to Florida in order to move in with her ailing father to take care of him. In eastern Kansas they end up in the path of a violent tornado and are forced to take refuge in an abandoned farmhouse. It is here that Jill must face her fears if she is to save her husband and herself. And when all looks lost, she gets a little help from an unlikely source.

Dinner for the Dead

Michael died a coward's death and guilt keeps him tethered to the land of the living. Even in death some wrongs can be righted, but not without some risk. When his friend Maggie finds herself in the sights of a terrifying evil, Michael must decide if he's going to run or if he's going to stay this time and fight. With plenty of chills and a charming sense of humor, Chris Morrow will make you wonder if the ghost stories you heard as a child were in fact, true.

THE LOTTERY TICKET

It was a perfect night for that sonofabitch across the way to try something. I hunkered down between the neon Lite Beer sign and the Live Bait sign and looked through the old plate glass window at his house. The snow was falling wet and heavy, several inches already piled up on all the crap he’d left strewn across his yard, old rusted barbecue grills, a couple push mowers, four or five barrels that contained god knows what. And he was in there and even though he was crazier than a shithouse rat, he had to know this was the perfect night to bring it to a head.

Etowah was a nice little farming community back when my uncle built the general store sixty-five years ago. Snuggled down in a valley of the Ozarks where two highways converged, the store made a pretty penny for him. He loved the place, spent all of his time here. He liked meeting the travelers passing through. He liked sitting on the front porch in a rocking chair telling lies to any and all who was fool enough to stop and listen. And he liked looking at the boys who would come in from the hayfields for cokes from the icebox, all tanned, sweaty and shirtless. Uncle Dale liked them best. I learned at an early age to keep my distance. Needless to say, Uncle Dale never married and when he died, the place came to me. That was the late 1970s. After twenty years of marriage, my wife had taken off with a slimy salesman. I was needing out of the city so I took early retirement from the railroad and came home to Etowah. I stepped in and picked up where the old man left off – well not in every sense, no more discounted cokes for the boys hauling hay. I’d hoped to make enough to retire to somewhere proper, somewhere warm, but then the freeway came and the traffic went north with it. Etowah dried up like an old dog turd and blew away. In the years since, I’ve managed to get by, mostly selling cheap beer and tackle to fishermen on their way to the lake. I’ve grown a healthy suspicion of strangers. I’ve been robbed at gun point twice, was shot once (a .22 caliber round that passed through the fat of my hip) by a guy who got away with a bottle of cheap whiskey, thirty dollars cash and a couple packs of C batteries. By my count there are eleven people left in Etowah now, twelve if you count my beagle, Rasputin, who