Reading The Dead: Anna's Adventures

By Cameron Jon Bernhard

Companion novella to Fidelis In Aeternum, the second volume of the Reading The Dead - The Sarah Milton Chronicles series, containing two standalone Anna Nigma adventures that's sure to please!

ANNA'S BRUSH WITH LIFE
As LAPD Officer Sarah Milton and her partners close in on the Fancy Dress Killer, none of them realize that a certain invisible hitchhiker is along for the ride. It's a good thing she is, because when the unpredictable Harry Sands gets the upper hand, the surprising intervention of Sarah's ghostly companion turns out to be her only chance for survival.

HAPPILY EVER AFTERLIFE
Sarah's back in Tilford to attend her father's wedding, and guess who's along for the fun? Unknown to the guests, a pair of would-be robbers have picked this moment to rob the house. The hapless bandits planned on everything, except facing off against the poltergeist queen of pranks.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cameron Jon Bernhard
• Release date: Feb 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310646379

Cameron Jon Bernhard

Published since 2013, J.B. Cameron was forced to rebrand under the name "Cameron Jon Bernhard" to avoid conflicting with an identically named self-published writer. Though born in New Brunswick, Canada, his work shows more influence from an upbringing of American TV than his maritime roots. A writer who generally plays loose with the constraints of genre, Bernhard's dark style and black humor typically places fun, exciting characters in situations of suspense or urban horror, making an exciting roller coaster ride to both chill and amuse readers. Author of numerous novels, novellas and screenplays, his first published novel, "Reading The Dead - The Sarah Milton Chronicles," introduces a supernatural detective series unlike anything you'll find elsewhere.

Book preview

ANNA'S ADVENTURES

Cameron Jon Bernhard

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, events, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living, dead, or otherwise), events, locales, etc. are entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2014 by Cameron Jon Bernhard. All rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition

ISBN: 9781310646379

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ANNA'S BRUSH WITH LIFE

HAPPILY EVER AFTERLIFE

Anna's Brush With Life

C.J. Bernhard

INTRODUCTION

Once upon a time, a bookish, six year-old Sarah Milton met her best friend, a thirteen year-old spitfire with no memory of her past. This unlikely pair hit it off right away. The girl Sarah nicknamed Anna Nigma neither aged nor was visible to anyone else, but this did nothing to dissuade them from maintaining their close bonds as the years went by. Sarah and her imaginary friend turned heads in their hometown of Tilford, Maryland, until the horrible murder of her mother left her so traumatized that it also severed her ties to her invisible pal completely.

Eventually, Sarah recovered from her double loss, finding both solace and strength in her love of books. She studied hard, focused on understanding the mind of her mother's unknown killer, until one day earning herself a place within the ranks of the LAPD.

In time, her fate would take another dramatic turn. After a robber's bullet delivers her to the brink of death, she would recover to find her former childhood friend a renewed presence in her life. The truth of Anna Nigma's paranormal identity eventually would become known to them both, along with the realization that Sarah's powers to see the dead, rekindled after the shooting, isn't limited to just her.

What Sarah couldn't have known was that between the fifteen-year span that the girl mysteriously disappeared from her sight, to the moment Sarah awoke in the hospital to lay eyes upon her again, Anna Nigma never left her side. Her imaginary friend maintained a constant vigil, watching over her like a silent, invisible protector as Sarah blossomed into a strong, determined officer of the law.

This first tale, Anna's Brush With Life, looks at a pivotal moment in the development of Sarah Milton's career with the LAPD, her involvement in the arrest of Harold Edgar Sands, known to the media as The Fancy Dress Killer. The full tale of the investigation into the necrophilic serial killer is part of the storyline found in the pages of Fidelis In Aeternum, book two of the Reading The Dead series. However, at the time it happened to her, not even Sarah Milton knew the whole story. She had no way of realizing the true events that took place that strange evening, when she and two other police officers hunted down LA's most wanted criminal in an abandoned mausoleum.

If she had, she would have understood sooner that her guardian angel, a child she once called friend, was always by her side, even in her darkest hour.

C.J. Bernhard

January, 2014

My name is Anna. Anna Nigma. That's not my real name, of course. It's the one Sarah gave me when she was six. I suppose figments of people's imaginations aren't entitled to real names like everyone else – abandoned imaginary friends, even less so. I always thought of myself as a Daisy, personally... or maybe a Mary Sue. Given my circumstances, however, I guess it would just make more sense to call me Sarah's forgotten passenger.

Sarah was fifteen when she stopped seeing me. Her mother died, and I think something in my old friend died with her. She woke up one morning, calling my name, and despite me doing everything short of handstands, she couldn't see me any longer. I still followed her, vainly hoping for the day that she would turn around and find me standing there again. Fourteen years later, I'm still waiting.

We're just cruising tonight, a dark, LAPD shark in a rain-soaked bowl of guppies. Sodden faces glare at us from shadows. Illicit transactions freeze in place to confirm the uneventful passage of our sudden presence in these waters.

I know we're hunting other prey tonight, but the wait is all so boring! I like it better when we're chasing bad guys, sirens screaming and the car bouncing me all over the back seat as we weave in and out of freeway traffic in hot pursuit. It's the closest I can come to feeling truly alive.

Sarah appears pensive through the iron mesh divider. When she's alone, sometimes I can still see in her eyes the girl I once knew. Not now, though. She's the badge now, lost in the machinations of her prey and the cold analysis of the criminal mind.

I wonder how different her life would be, had her mother's murder not shattered the last of her childhood innocence. Would she still see me as always, a blonde-haired girl of thirteen in a velvet red dress and bobby socks, or would I come to her clad in a more mature skin? As thrilling as playing voyeur to Officer Sarah Milton could be, I'd trade every moment of her last fourteen years to have my friend back, even if only to speak to her for one final time.

It's right up here, she declares from the front seat.

She isn't speaking to me. It's a painful reminder of my lonely reality.

She points out a