Now Do You Believe in Ghost

By V. E. Bowers

These are seven short stories that will leave you as the reader believing too. From a sprit, making sure that its family is going to be alright before it journeys into the light where loved ones are waiting, to the ghost of a small child that needed the love from the living until the living needs the childs ghost so much that she would dare to join it on the other side.
When two young girls become friends, as the one tells its secrets to the other. The only catch is that the youngest one was murdered before the older one was even born.
Best friends meet their very first day of school, this becomes a friendship that last beyond the grave.
Can a grandfathers love help a lost soul come home and find peace within herself once he has already passed.
A woman finds out she is dying of cancer and still has the courage to face death head on and be thankful that she knew her time here would be short. Find out how her values and love still lives on today.
When a man comes home to late to say goodbye to his father he realizes that when time is lost it is the one thing you can never get back.
Were they ghost, or maybe even angels in disguise... you decide.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 16, 2009
• ISBN: 9781465326041

Book preview

Copyright © 2009 by V.E. Bowers.

ISBN:     Hardcover     978-1-4415-1557-5

Softcover     978-1-4415-1556-8

ISBN:     ebk     978-1-4653-2604-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

56712

Contents

DEDICATION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

SHADOW’S IN THE MIST

THEN NEED TO BE A MOTHER

JESSICA’S GHOST

PAP AND BO

AMANDA

LIVING ON AFTER DEATH A MOTHER’S LOVE

TAKE TIME TO CATCH

THE TROUT

DEDICATION

And to the pieces of my heart that are no longer here.

It is in their Loving memory I dedicate this book

Lesa, Hazel and Samantha Bowers and Betty (Bowers) Richter

And my dear friend Missy (Barnett-Reel) Benford

Thanks to my editor, friend and brother-n-law, Dave Richter

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to thank those that read and believed in my work. Barbara Purbaugh, Sharon Pruchnik, Janet&Justin Good and Kirk Baker from my writers group at Laurel Arts. Who themselves are great writers

Also, to the cooks and waitresses I have worked with. I am proud to call you my friends.

To all my friends that read and spelled their hearts out, Angel, Anent, Candy, Diane, Don, Franny, Gina, Heather, Louie, Janice, James, Joni, Joyce, Joy, Jessie, Nancy, Niki, Norma, Phill, Sheila, Sherry, Timmie and anyone I may have forgotten to mention, thank you all.

My Children, Cricket, Lesa, Jessica and Erica Bowers. My wonderful Grandchildren Carter, Elizabeth, Elijah and Collin. Most of all to my mom and dad for always being there for us.

I love you all.

missing image file

SHADOW’S IN THE MIST

Did you ever feel like you were just floating along on your own little silver cloud? Everything is too good to be true. Then, all of a sudden, you hit a brick wall. Well, that’s what happened to me.

In fact, I hit three walls, and they were harder than hell.

Tom and I had been married in a small church out in the country, your normal fairytale wedding I guess with little pink roses and babies’ breath everywhere from the flowers in our hands to the sides of our hair. Afterward, we held the reception at Barb, my maid of honor’s, parents’ house.

It was a beautiful place just down a little dirt road right by the church. It was a perfect day of sunshine and love. I thought things couldn’t get better.

Then, just two months later, I found out that I was going to have a baby. Tom was on cloud nine. I had an easy pregnancy, or so my mother kept telling me.

On one bright spring morning, my daughter, Rebecca Elizabeth, came into this great big world.

I never knew that such a tiny thing could bring so much joy. Tom was scared to death to even hold her. I think he thought she might break or something. But, one night, I caught him leaning over her crib singing, Daddy’s goanna buy you a mocking bird.

They say we make the best of what God gives us, but at that moment, I felt that I had the best.

Standing there, I thought about how afraid of the year 2000 I was with all the talk of the world ending and the computers crashing. Now, instead of anything bad happening, it was the best year of my life.

We watched Becky grow a little more every day. Sometimes it seemed that if I just blinked she would grow an inch.

In the summer of 2001, we found out that we were going to have another baby. Tom wanted a boy. One of each, he said. A perfect family.

Everything was going so well until that awful day in September when our nation fell under attack. I can remember standing there in my mother’s kitchen watching those planes hit into our buildings.

I grabbed my stomach and closed my eyes and started to pray. I prayed for our lives and for peace. Tom was in the National Guards, and I knew what war would mean to my family.

By the time our son, Luke James, was born, Tom had already been deployed to Afghanistan. I couldn’t help but feel a huge sense of loss. Tom was missing out on the birth of his first son. To help me deal with it, my mother taped Luke coming into this world.

She said, When Tom gets home, we’ll watch it with him. I found myself spending a lot of time at my mother’s.

It’s funny when you’re growing up you want to get as far away from your parents as possible; however, after you accomplish it, you run back at the first sign of trouble.

I only had a mother growing up. My father wasn’t in the picture.

But, I still had a good childhood, and I knew that hearing someone say, you’re just like your mother, was a good thing.

When Luke was four months, I hit that first brick wall. The news came that Tom had been killed near where he was stationed. Tom was gone, and at only twenty-six, I was a widow. Luke would never know his father, and Becky would never understand why daddy wasn’t coming home again.

When Luke turned nine months old, I hit that second wall.

Tom had only been gone five months, and I was still having trouble dealing with the loss. Now, a doctor was telling me that my son was autistic.

Not retarded, part of Luke’s brain worked while the other part was more like scrambled eggs and just all mixed up.

I remember going to my mother’s house after we left the doctor’s office. My mom picked Luke up and held him tight against her.

She had a clock that hung in her living room with birds on it. Every hour, a different bird would sing. She would walk over to it with Luke in her arms and sway back and fourth to the sound of the birds.

That day as she stood there swaying with Luke in her arms, she looked right at me and said,

The boy will be fine. She kissed his cheek.

Maybe she was trying to protect me from the inevitable. But, I should have known something was wrong.

When Becky was nine months old, she could sit up by herself, hold her own bottle, and crawl everywhere.

Luke, however, could only lie there like a shell. My mother helped me a lot with Luke.

In fact, his first word was menaul. That’s what he called my mom. She would tell him it’s time for the bird, and Luke would try to say bird then sway back in forth in her arms.

When Luke turned two, he finally took his first steps. My mother grabbed the camera saying how she prayed for this day. As I looked over at her, she had tears running down her face.

Just when I thought that things might be going good, I hit that third wall or maybe I should say it hit me like a ton of bricks. My mother was diagnosed with inoperable cancer.

Even with treatments, she only lived six months. I couldn’t help but wonder what I had done to deserve all this pain in my life.

Was I the one that was handing out the nails when they were putting Jesus on the cross?

What did I do in my past lives that could have pissed someone off so bad that I should have to pay so dear in this one?

I felt so alone as if I had nothing else to lose.

Then, a little hand tugged on my black dress as I stood there looking down at my mother with her now icy cold, stiff hand in mine. It was Luke.

Menaul, he said.

Menaul is sleeping, I told him. But Menaul loves her Luke.

I started to cry. I knew that Luke needed her even more than I did. After the funeral, I went back to my mother’s house and took the bird clock off the wall. I felt that my mother had given it to Luke long before this day.

I would notice that every time the clock would sing Luke would stand there swaying his little body back and forth like my mother would do with him.

I wondered if he even realized that she was gone. I never knew how much Luke could really understand. I was never quite sure of what was