Summer's Double Edge

By Matt Sinclair

Summer's Edge and Summer's Double Edge examine relationships in transition, perhaps at an end. Indeed, not all relationships are meant to last. The second in the two-book summer anthology from Elephant's Bookshelf Press, Summer's Double Edge contains some of the collection's darker tales. Readers of horror as well as romance will find stories that appeal to them, as will those who enjoy a dash of humor or who keep a box of tissues nearby to wipe away a tear. Authors include Laura Carlson, P.S. Carrillo, MarcyKate Connolly, Jenna Grinstead, Michelle Hauck, Mindy McGinnis, A.T. O'Connor, Jean Oram, Jeff O'Handley, Richard Pieters, Amy Trueblood, and Cat Woods.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Matt Sinclair
• Release date: Jul 14, 2013
• ISBN: 9780985202392

Matt Sinclair

Matt Sinclair is the President and Chief Elephant Officer of Elephant's Bookshelf Press, LLC, which he established in 2012.

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Summer's Double Edge

Copyright 2013 Elephant's Bookshelf Press, LLC

Published by Matt Sinclair at Smashwords

Cover design by Calista Taylor

Book design by R.C. Lewis

All rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Table of Contents

Introduction

Don't Pet the Ghosts by MarcyKate Connolly

Skin Writer by A.T. O'Connor

Anesthetic by Mindy McGinnis

Frost and Fog by Michelle Hauck

Ten to One by Cat Woods

The Lemniscate by Laura Carlson

Unearthed by Amy Trueblood

The Procession by P.S. Carrillo

Gown for Sale by Jean Oram

Last Man Standing by Jeff O'Handley

You Ain't No 5'10" by Jenna Grinstead

Winter's Birds by Richard Pieters

Preview: Whispering Minds by A.T. O'Connor

Acknowledgements

About the Authors

Introduction

Back when I was young and stupid—or at least younger and more impulsive—I wrote a song about a girl I had dated. It was about how our relationship was doomed from the start. The melody was more cheery than the sentiment. When the conceptual framework for this anthology formed in my mind, the song came back, too. I even started playing guitar again.

While the relationship was literally a summer romance, in many ways it lasted forever because of the song I wrote. Writers, like a lot of people, ruminate over memories and dip often into their wells of experience, especially when they're spilling their ink-blood on the page. Love and friendship, agapé and animus all have expiration dates.

Whether we put our love on a pedestal or our friends on a shelf, if we don't tend to a relationship, at some point we'll discover a layer of regret dusting its surface. Then again, there are people who shake off their skins, leaving the tattered carcass of their past aside as they move forward to try something new. Not necessarily better, but new.

This collection explores such relationships: the end of love, people at a turning point, doors opening and closing. Clearly, that covers a lot of territory. In fact, we received so many submissions we loved that we decided to split the collection into a pair of anthologies. In Summer's Edge and Summer's Double Edge, twenty-four writers explore relationships at a turning point. Some tales are dark, some are funny; some characters are ill-fated, some feel all too real.

As in our previous anthologies, we present something for everyone. Ghosts haunt several of these tales, though it might be more accurate to say the ghosts enliven them. There is romance, young love, old love, and even a couple creepy tales that will make your shoulders scrunch close so you can retain your body heat. Mine did, at least.

Each anthology includes a story or two that offers an unintended fun-house mirror reflection of one in the other anthology. For example, in Ken Staley's Mornings on the Beach, two survivors of the earthquake that alters San Francisco forever keep searching for their lost loved ones, while in Amy Trueblood's Unearthed, future anthropologists sift through the wreckage of post-earthquake California and find lost love in spades.

I hope you enjoy both Summer's Edge and Summer's Double Edge. I'm sure you'll meet characters you love. I suspect you'll also find some you're not too crazy about, at least on their surface. But one of the things that makes a relationship interesting—and sometimes dangerous—is what you discover once you get below the surface.

Elephant's Bookshelf Press is looking to build lasting relationships with our readers. Later this year, we will publish our first novel, Whispering Minds by A.T. O'Connor. At the end of the anthologies, you'll have a chance to whet your whistle on its opening chapter. I'm excited to see what you and our growing readership think about it. I invite you to visit our website (www.elephantsbookshelfpress.com) and sign up for our newsletter, where we will share with you information about our writing friends and upcoming releases (and will not share your personal information with anyone else).

Again, I welcome you to send us your thoughts about everything we do and plan to offer. My email is [e-mail] and I look forward to hearing from you.

—Matt Sinclair

Don't Pet the Ghosts by MarcyKate Connolly

Her smile was a sheltered, precious thing. That is what I shall miss the most.

The wind whispers through the cemetery trees in much the same way a smile would slip across her face. One minute there, the next gone, like a game of hide and seek.

But this wind and the way it shivers through the crowd of black-clad folk makes me stop to listen. Has she returned after all? Is the wind just her spirit on the wing?

If I had a breath to hold, I would. Instead, I wait and face only my own disappointment.

I cannot understand why she left. But the name on the headstone is unmistakable in the crisp daylight. Those strangers and their tears are here for her.

The words in her last note haunt me as I haunt these hills and stones.

You were right.

I have to wonder if perhaps this unwinding coil of shadow in my soul is of my own making.

* * *

It was a summer day when she sat on my grave.

I could not recall the last time I felt sunlight warm my skin. The sun could not touch my ephemeral form. My memories of life were faded and porous, with only faint traces of pain. And sunlight. I might not remember much, but I was certain summer was my favorite season.

But the seasons troubled me no more. Usually nothing troubled me—until the girl.

She could not have known the grave was mine. The marker had long sunk under the moss, erasing all evidence that I ever was. The shade of the apple tree no doubt was what she sought.

Her tapping feet resonated through the earth, stirring me, enticing me upward.

No one had ventured this way in a long time. The western part of the cemetery attracted more of the living nowadays, and most left my eastern side alone. The arrival of this girl intrigued me.

She sat under the tree, with thin white cords trailing from her ears, engrossed in a wide sheet of paper balanced on one knee. The other leg tapped a rhythm over my home.

She could not see me, but I perched on her shoulder and watched her for half the afternoon.

She was an odd little thing, all dark hair, big eyes, and knobby knees. Every few minutes, she cast a furtive glance around the apple tree at a group of children gathered on the other side of the cemetery. Was she expecting someone? Or afraid they would find her out?

She drew one grave after another, with shaded trees and tall grass. And then she wept on every page. Tears were her personal signature.

Pity, too, for it smudged the pictures, and I confess I liked them very much.

When the sun drooped below the tree line, she neatly packed her things away and stood to leave. But something stayed behind, forgotten in the dirt.

A nub of charcoal that had broken off when she shaded one particularly dark area.

I wanted it. I wanted to keep a piece of this strange girl for no other reason than that she perplexed and fascinated me. Perhaps I had slumbered too long. Or maybe I missed the life I could not recall.

Whatever the cause, I hovered above the damp ground, concentrating to make my wispy fingers appear. To make them solid enough to haul the charcoal back to my resting place.

* * *

It did not occur to me that she might return until the day she did. The tapping—almost familiar—drew me to the surface like a beckoning hand.

She was seated just like the day before, except this time she did not cry. My mind flitted back to the charcoal she left. The tiny, dark light in my earthy home.

An irrepressible urge moved me. I wanted to thank her. For her pictures, for her tears, and for pulling me up from the ground.

I drifted near, searching for a means to make my gratitude known. She continued drawing, oblivious, and I hyper-aware. But when she dropped a pencil and it bounced on a patch of dirt, a rash idea lodged in me, one I could not shake. It would be exhausting, and take all my strength, but I could do it.

She reached for her pencil as I glided to the dirt patch, her hand whispering through the air above me. I focused all my will on a single point, no larger than her pencil tip, and it began to coalesce in the air. Nothing she could see, but cohesive enough for my purpose. I placed this point on the ground, and retraced the letters I must have known well when I was alive. They came to me as though they never left.

Thank you.

The girl spied my work while it was only half complete and skittered back. I was saddened to see fear flash across her face. Why was she afraid of simple good manners?

But no, I only startled her. She returned to her seat and her pulse to its usual butterfly pace.

Who are you?

Those three simple words haunted me. Who was I? A murderer buried in an unmarked grave? A young girl who drowned herself to escape a doomed love? Or an infant who died too young and whose parents were too poor to afford a real plot and marker? Perhaps I died alone beneath this tree and that was what tethered me to my home.

It had been so long since I thought on this that I did not remember. I simply was. I slumbered through the years, occasionally rising to the surface just to feel the world looking through me.

Time had long forgotten me.

I mustered my strength and scratched out two more words on the patch of dirt: No one.

She shivered. Are you lonely?

Lonely. A human emotion I tried to recall but it eluded me. I decided that if I could not feel it, I was not lonely. Besides, so much filled the space around me—trees and stones,