Home Sweet...Death

By Minta Monroe

Three scary stories by Minta Monroe
Autumn Fever:  She always wanted to return to her roots.  Something in the kitchen wasn't thrilled that she did.
Jonathan's:  It was really Jonathan's house and not hers.  When he returned there was only enough room for one of them.
Swamp Castle:  Technically it wasn't really her home.  Why let technicalities get in the way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: D. M. Kreg Publishing
• Release date: Nov 17, 2016
• ISBN: 9781540176905

Book preview

Home, Sweet...Death

––––––––

Three Stories

By

Minta Monroe

Electronic edition published by D. M. Kreg Publishing, August 2012.

Copyright © 2012 by D. M. Kreg Publishing and Minta Monroe.

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction, in whole or in part in any form. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover Art:  Tish Marti and Dreamstime

Table of Contents

Autumn Fever:  She always wanted to return to her roots.  Something in the kitchen wasn't thrilled that she did.

Jonathan's:  It was really Jonathan's house and not hers.  When he returned there was only enough room for one of them.

Swamp Castle:  Technically it wasn't really her home.  Why let technicalities get in the way.

Autumn Fever

Eliza didn’t know the woman who moved into her head around the middle of September.  Whoever she was, she’d made Eliza come back here.  To the house.  The house that waited for her. 

Gravel crunched under the tires as she pulled off the dirt lane into the driveway, already taken over by weeds and not even a year since Aunt Birdie’s death.  The rebuilt Volkswagen bug sputtered and died.  It wasn’t much of a car in Darryl’s opinion, but it was a classic, and it was all Eliza’s.  As was this house. 

She emerged from the car, and tears welled with a life of their own.  She blinked them away.  Leaving Darryl and their loft behind in the city had been a good decision. 

Even if she wasn’t sure she’d been the one to make the decision. 

Cicadas buzzed, then suddenly stilled.  The air hushed, holding its breath.  A chill crept across Eliza’s flesh, even though sweat gummed her tank top.  Aunt Birdie used to say someone was walking across her grave. 

Eliza never understood such words, because clearly, she was alive.  But Auntie didn’t have to make sense.  Auntie was eccentric.  She was Eliza’s father’s elder spinster sister in a time when a woman was supposed to be dependent on a man.  Aunt Birdie wasn’t. 

Neither was Eliza. 

She dragged the wheeled suitcase that Darryl had chosen for her up the walk to the front porch.  From her purse, she dug out the skeleton key, a bit of iron that weighed down her palm.  As she stared at it, childhood scenes flitted through her mind, reminding her of the times she’d come here seeking refuge with Aunt Birdie while her parents battled through their divorce. 

Eliza, alone on the porch, was still running here from divorce.  She stabbed the skeleton key into the keyhole and rattled it around until the lock tumbled.  The door opened with a creak, and she could smell the dark inside. 

No, she told herself, hesitating on the threshold.  Darkness didn’t smell. 

Yet, it reminded her of something...wet rocks she’d pulled from the creek as a child.  Or the damp