Nature's Fifth Season

By Michelle Muto

Four short stories and one novella from author Michelle Muto.

Eleanor
Two teens meet their match during a home invasion when they encounter the elderly homeowner.

The Goblin
An eight-year-old boy ponders the rules of monsters and the creature that lives under his bed.

Crossroads
A midnight trip across a desolate highway takes a husband and wife farther than they expected.

Dear Maddy
During a winter-long stay at a remote mountain cabin, a man writes letters to a ghost and soon begins to question his sanity.

Touch
Everyone needs a second chance. The heartfelt story of a young girl, an abandoned dog, and the unbreakable bond between them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Autumn Hill Press
• Release date: Jan 13, 2015
• ISBN: 9781507020784

Michelle Muto

Michelle Muto lives in northeast Georgia with her husband and two dogs. She is the author of The Book of Lost Souls, an eFestival of Words winner for Best Young Adult 2012, and Don’t Fear the Reaper, an LDS Women’s Book Review Top Ten Pick 2011. Michelle loves changes of season, dogs, and all things geeky. Currently, she’s hard at work on her next book. Learn more about Michelle: Web: www.michellemuto.wordpress.com Twitter: MichWritesBooks Facebook: Michelle Muto Author Page

Book preview

Nature's Fifth Season

Nature's Fifth Season

Michelle Muto

Autumn Hill Press

Contents

Title Page

Also By Michelle Muto

Foreword

Eleanor

The Goblin

Crossroads

Dear Maddy

Touch

Author’s Note

About the Author

NATURE'S FIFTH SEASON

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Michelle Muto

Copyright © 2015 Michelle Muto

All Rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever without prior written permission by the author.

No part of this book may be reproduced, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented without express written permission of the author.

Please respect the hard work of this author. A lot of hours went into the creation of this book and sales of this and other books is how the author makes a living.

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

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Cover art: Steven Novak Illustration

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ALSO BY MICHELLE MUTO

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The Book of Lost Souls

Don't Fear the Reaper

The Haunting Season

Of Shadow & Stone

Diary of the Damned

In loving memory of Tasha:

Wait for me, baby girl.

Wait for me.

Foreword

I’ve always loved short stories, and while I realize they’re not exactly popular, I couldn’t resist writing a collection anyway. While authors do write with the reader in mind, this collection was more something I wanted to do for me. Still, I’m more than grateful and humbled you’ve come along for the ride.

Let’s talk about short stories for a moment. I grew up on them. They graced magazines and, often, entire books (I’m looking at you, Stephen King). I loved short stories. Only have a few minutes during lunch break? You can read an entire story from beginning to satisfying end. To me, novels are like huge candy bars: delicious, but sometimes, the bite-sized bars really are more fun. Short stories are like those bite-sized bars. And where a novel is one flavor, a collection of short stories is several.

Here, you’ll find four short stories and one novella. Each tale takes place in a season. You’re probably saying, Hey, there are only four seasons! And you’d be right. Technically. Unless there really is a fifth season. I’ll leave that up to you after you’ve read this book.

Each story also has some degree of paranormal element, or at least the suggestion of one.

Eleanor: spring. With the first story, some of my fans will recognize the name Eleanor and the town of Northwick from The Book of Lost Souls. Eleanor was quite the character there, and here, on a spring afternoon, we get to see more of her.

The Goblin: summer. Everyone is afraid of something. Maybe you’re afraid of heights or clowns. Maybe spiders. Or perhaps you still hold on to the childhood fear of monsters and what lies in wait under the bed at night, like Jeremy does in The Goblin. Maybe when you turn out the light tonight, you’ll hear something moving around under the box springs.

You never know.

Crossroads: autumn. Back in college, my English professor had the entire class write a 2,000-word piece on a trip he and his wife took across a stretch of Florida road called Alligator Alley. They were heading across the state to visit their daughter for Thanksgiving. He told us the first part of the story but said we had to come up with the ending. We groaned, of course. Not because he seemed to have an affinity for making us write short stories but because he gave us this assignment two days before our semester finals. He asked if there were any questions. I raised my hand and asked, Do you want to live or die in the story? To which he slyly replied, What sort of grade do you want?

I rewrote Crossroads from that original piece. I got an A on that assignment, by the way. When he handed me back my paper, he told me I should consider writing fiction. Clearly, I eventually decided he was right. Although the characters in Crossroads are no longer my professor or his wife and have a vastly different backstory, the ending is nearly identical. Okay, so maybe I embellished just a little. Join Dennis and Nora as they take the same path my professor and wife did all those years ago.

Dear Maddy: winter. The idea for this story came to me late one cold afternoon, and I wrote the entire story the next day. I know this is a foreword, but I’d like to thank my agent, Scott Miller, for planting the seed and asking if I could write such a story. I hope that Dear Maddy answers his question.

Last, but so very far from least, is the novella, "Touch," which in part takes place in what I call nature’s fifth season. In September of 2014, I had to say good-bye to my beloved dog, Tasha. Needless to say there’s a hole in my life now—one as big as her heart—which was immeasurable. Tasha was a rescue dog. She came to us sometime before her second year, sick, thin, and flea ridden. I wondered far too many times what horrors she had endured before I brought her home with me. I don’t think there was ever a day in her life when she didn’t show how happy she was to have been rescued, even though she was the one who rescued us. Writing Touch after Tasha’s death was both tremendously difficult and yet cathartic. Therefore, Touch is for Tasha, who found her forever home, and for all the shelter dogs out there still waiting to be someone’s great dog.

There’s a saying that sits on my desk:

It came to me that every time I lose a dog they take a piece of my heart with them,

And every new dog who comes into my life gifts me with a piece of their heart.

If I live long enough, all the components of my heart will be dog and I will become as loving and generous as they are.

~Anonymous.

Thank you, dear reader, for immersing yourself in the journeys you’ll find here. May your own imagination lead you to great discoveries and joyous places.

Now, come. Sit for a while. I have stories to tell…

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Michelle Muto

December 19th, 2014

Eleanor

Oh dear, Eleanor Wilkes said. A girl of about seventeen stood on her front porch, pointing a gun at her. Eleanor had been busy in the kitchen when someone knocked on the door. At first, she wasn’t going to answer, but that would have been impolite.

The girl was tall, wiry, with frizzy blond hair and a pale complexion. She wore a white T-shirt and faded jeans with holes in them. A boy, also about seventeen and with a shaven head, stood behind her. Like the girl, he wore faded, tattered jeans and a T-shirt. In contrast to her white T-shirt, his was black. The Band was scrawled across the front in faded red letters.

The girl motioned with