ShriekWeek

By Anne Knol

Events organizer Maggie Ballater has a new career, a new Island home, and a new life, and intends to make the most of it. But two things stand in her way. One is the dangerously attractive guitarist who brings back memories she’d rather forget. The other is the inexplicable murder of the lead actor in her ShriekWeek pageant. Bram Jenkins wants to clear his name after being imprisoned for a crime he swears he did not commit. He has no time to be distracted by an opinionated woman he suspects of working for his enemy. Solving the ShriekWeek murder means they must both face up to the past before they can lay their ghosts to rest, and find out where their future lies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
• Release date: Oct 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9781628305630

Book preview

Inc.

ShriekWeek

by

Anne Knol

Halloween Anthology 2014

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

ShriekWeek

COPYRIGHT © 2014 by Anne Knol

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Contact Information: [e-mail]

Cover Art by Diana Carlile

The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

PO Box 708

Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

Publishing History

First Crimson Rose Edition, 2014

Digital ISBN 978-1-62830-563-0

Halloween Anthology 2014

Published in the United States of America

Dedication

For Ma Knol,

who kept her family safe throughout World War 2

in the Netherlands,

and who loved reading romance novels.

Chapter One

Wednesday

The last gaggle of ghoulies and ghosties shrieked off with parents and minders into the night. In the cloakroom of the Victorian school, now the local community centre, Maggie Ballater whistled out a sigh of relief. Alone at last. Tired and fractious after the long dress rehearsal for Creektown’s first Halloween pageant, the pre-tweens had worn her out with their wriggling while she took off their ghostly robes and cleaned the face paint from their contorted features.

The longed-for silence settled over her like a shroud. Too fanciful, girl. The creepy Halloween atmosphere was infectious. Muffled footsteps and subdued chatter of night class students in the corridor behind recalled her to the job in hand. With a tsk of annoyance, she swooped to the far side of the room to pluck a crumpled bed sheet from the floor. Easy to guess who’d dropped his ghost costume instead of hanging it up. She latched it onto an iron hook on the wooden partition dividing the space into improvised dressing rooms.

Jimmy Tolliver, she said aloud, half-amused, half annoyed. Small and sparky, he was the archetypal scruff kid, endearing on a good day. This had not been it.

According to Kyle, dress rehearsals were always grim. Even with her limited experience Maggie knew this had been worse than most.

No one had said at her interview that the events organizer would stage-manage an open air pageant on a dark night in freezing October gales. The ghost walk, planned on a summer day, now felt unbelievably long in the bitter autumn chill.

And for the vicar, of all people, to be the one to wreck the rehearsal with his erratic behaviour…

Poised with her hand on the light switch, she took one last look round. Something wasn’t right. But what? Just as she snapped off the lights, the Gothic door to the street creaked open and amber light spilled down the corridor.

A cold draught curled round the back of her neck, and she shuddered. The ghostly robes on the cloakroom pegs fluttered into life, then subsided again into limp sheets with black holes for eyes.

The oak door crashed shut, and her boss, Kyle Lachlan, creator, producer, and director of ShriekWeek, strode down the corridor toward her. No dithering, Maybe. He did not wait for an answer, never did. We’re late.

You’re late. But she did not say it. And she hated being called Maybe, but she did not say that either. The nickname created by her initials M.A.B. had followed her since primary school, and wherever she travelled there was always some smartass who thought he’d invented it for the first time.

His Cuban heels clacked like a tap dancer’s over the stone flags. His black cloak swirled around him, and the night lights flickered in the pumpkin lanterns on the tables lining the walls.

Spooky. She shivered. Someone walking over her grave, her granny would have said. But it was just exhaustion, and the chill of a Victorian building after hours.

Irritation swept away her nagging uneasiness. She turned the old-fashioned key until the lock thudded into place and scurried after her boss toward the lights ahead.

A wisp of music curled out from the classroom on her left, followed by a cacophony of heavy chords. The night class for guitar beginners. She’d seen it advertised. A quick glance told her the tutor was new. He looked up, winter-sky eyes and ruffled blond hair enhanced by the all-black polo and jeans which silhouetted his lean line. A little hoop of excitement ricocheted