Three Sheets to the Wind: Stories from Pulphouse Fiction Magazine: Pulphouse Books

By Dean Wesley Smith, Annie Reed, Brigid Collins and 7 more

We love ghost stories. Flat love them.

But finding ghost stories that meet the unique qualities of a Pulphouse Fiction Magazine story proves a daunting task indeed.

Even with that, editor Dean Wesley Smith found a bunch of stories that fit perfectly into this fun reprint anthology, including stories from the fantastic Annie Reed and a story each from New York Times bestselling writers Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Kevin J. Anderson.

Ten fantastic, fun and perfect Pulphouse ghost stories.

Includes:

"The Four Thirty-Five" by Annie Reed

"Far From Home," R.W. Wallace

"Machine in the Ghost" by Rob Vagle

"Say Hello to My Little Friend" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

"To the Grave" by Brigid Collins

"Death by Cookie" by Robert J. McCarter

"The Bridge" by Robin Brande

"A Missing Sister Dream" by Dean Wesley Smith

"Roadkill" by Brenda Carre

"Heartbreaker: A Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I. Adventure" by Kevin J. Anderson

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Aug 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223557111

Dean Wesley Smith

Considered one of the most prolific writers working in modern fiction, USA TODAY bestselling writer, Dean Wesley Smith published far over a hundred novels in forty years, and hundreds of short stories across many genres. He currently produces novels in four major series, including the time travel Thunder Mountain novels set in the old west, the galaxy-spanning Seeders Universe series, the urban fantasy Ghost of a Chance series, and the superhero series staring Poker Boy. During his career he also wrote a couple dozen Star Trek novels, the only two original Men in Black novels, Spider-Man and X-Men novels, plus novels set in gaming and television worlds.

Book preview

Three Sheets to the Wind

Three Sheets to the Wind

STORIES FROM PULPHOUSE FICTION MAGAZINE

Edited by

DEAN WESLEY SMITH

WMG Publishing, Inc.

Contents

Introduction

The Four Thirty-Five

Annie Reed

Far From Home

R.W. Wallace

Machine in the Ghost

Rob Vagle

Say Hello to my Little Friend

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

To the Grave

Brigid Collins

Death by Cookie

Robert J. McCarter

The Bridge

Robin Brande

A Missing Sister Dream

A Marble Grant Story

Dean Wesley Smith

Roadkill

Brenda Carre

Heartbreaker

A Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I. Adventure

Kevin J. Anderson

About the Editor

Subscriptions

Introduction

I have said many times (more than likely to the point of being tedious) that I love ghost stories. Flat love them.

And so, as I find them, I put them in issues of Pulphouse Fiction Magazine, if they fit, are high quality, and feel like a Pulphouse story to me. Tough hoops to jump through for any author or story.

To make matters worse, I write ghost stories.

I write a lot of ghost stories, actually, from an entire novel series in my Ghost of a Chance series to strange ghost stories inside my Bryant Street series. I also have an entire series starring the ghost Marble Grant and her lover Sims. As two ghosts, they solve crimes and I even included one of their stories in this volume because I am the editor and I can (only story not in Pulphouse Fiction Magazine).

So I am picky about ghost stories in the pages of Pulphouse Fiction Magazine. But even with that, I managed to find a bunch of stories that fit perfectly into this fun reprint anthology, including stories from the fantastic Annie Reed and a story each from the New York Times bestselling writers Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Kevin J. Anderson.

Kris’s story (I must point out) is not a real ghost story. But the character acts like a ghost and I really like the story.

Sure hope you enjoy these stories as much as I have. They are all fantastic fun and perfect Pulphouse stories.

Dean Wesley Smith

Las Vegas

The Four Thirty-Five

ANNIE REED

My wife, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, calls Annie Reed one of the best writers I’ve come across in years. I agree completely.

Annie’s stories appear regularly in many varied professional markets and I am proud to say she is a regular in Fiction River.

Her story The Color of Guilt was selected for The Year’s Best Crime and Mystery Stories 2016. She is also one of the founding members of the innovative Uncollected Anthology.

As is normal with Annie stories, this story starts in one direction and then yanks you and your heart in another. A really powerful story.

At first Chet thought the kid belonged to one of the tourist families down by the lake.

The mountain lake stretched clean and cold and crystal blue for miles beneath a cloudless Idaho sky. Chet couldn’t remember the name of the lake, if he’d ever known it in the first place. Hell, some days he couldn’t even remember what state he was in. His memory had been going for years, like little pieces of himself blowing away on the chill north wind that set the pines and cedars to whispering among themselves come nightfall.

Something about the lake had called to him the first time he’d seen it from the open doorway of the boxcar that brought him here. Rough mountains all around, and train tracks that circled the edge of all that clear blue water. After the wind died down at night and the mountains got quiet, he would swear he could hear the sweet mournful sound of a train whistle from the other side of the lake, but no night trains ever came his way.

The only train he saw anymore was the Four Thirty-Five, six days out of seven, regular as clockwork.

Chet had found a nice place to call his own near the base of the old stone bridge where the tracks crossed over a feeder stream. The trees grew tall near his place, and the undergrowth was thick enough to hide a man if he was the hiding kind.

The lake was less than a half-mile away from the stone bridge as the crow flies, he reckoned, but he never went down the steep hill to the lakeshore. He didn’t even go down to the water’s edge late at night after the tourists took their cars and motorcycles and went home.

He could have gone if he wanted to, he told himself. Gone right on down to the shallows where the tourists let their kids swim and plunged his hand in deep just to feel the bone-cold chill of the water; but the idea of doing that just didn’t feel right. His place up by the tracks—now, that was home, and he liked it just fine. He could watch the Four Thirty-Five go by and make up stories about where the train had been and where it were going, and imagine catching a ride in one of the empty boxcars like the ones he’d traveled the country in before he’d settled down.

Every once in a while one of the tourist kids would take to wandering and head up the narrow trail that ran by his place.

Chet always stayed in the deep shadows whenever the kids came around, keeping quiet behind the undergrowth or beneath the bridge. He watched them—he always watched them, couldn’t help himself—but they never knew he was there.

He thought sometimes how nice it would be if he could swap stories with some of the older ones. The tourist kids who’d been places, like he’d been places when he used to ride the rails, but even the older kids wouldn’t want to talk to someone like him. The few times he’d gathered up his nerve—it had been a long time since he’d had a conversation with anybody—the kids had gotten bored and wandered away before Chet could take a single step out in the open.

This kid, now he was different.

Chet couldn’t peg his age—six or seven, or maybe a small-boned eight. Tow-headed, far too thin for his shirt and jeans, his shoes scuffed and dusty, the kid stood at the far end of the trail at the spot where the narrow footpath branched off from the access road to the lake.

The kid stood there, arms hanging straight at his sides, not fidgeting, just staring straight up the trail like he could see Chet even though Chet knew that was damn near impossible.

He faded farther back into the shadows, but still the kid kept staring at him.

Time passed, and the kid didn’t wander away. Cars drove by slowly behind him, but the kid stuck to his spot. No one came to get him. No one seemed to miss him.

This was damn peculiar.

Chet rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth and tried to think what he should do. He’d heard stories when he’d been riding the rails about how city folk treated people like him when they got scared, and people always got scared when they thought someone might hurt their kids.

He didn’t want to be rousted from his place. He didn’t know where he’d end up if he left.

Overhead, the rails began to sing their sweet song.

The Four Thirty-Five, right on time.

At the base of the trail, the kid finally looked away from Chet. He raised one thin arm and pointed at the oncoming train.

He opened his mouth and screamed.

The kid’s scream was sharp and piercing and seemed to explode inside Chet’s head. He clapped his hands over his ears, but the sound didn’t stop.

A tourist family—a sunburned mom and dad and their three sunburned teenagers—walked down the center of the access road, trekking out coolers and folding chairs and beach towels to wherever they’d parked their car. They passed behind the screaming boy without taking a single look at him or even breaking stride.

The Four Thirty-Five reached the old stone bridge and passed overhead, and even with the boy screaming in his head, Chet turned to watch the train just like he always did.

The ground trembled beneath Chet’s feet and dirt sifted down through the cracks between the stones in the bridge. A desperate yearning pulled at him—Come with me, come with me, come with me sung in time to the rhythm of the wheels on the rails—but Chet stood his ground.

Only after the caboose had passed over the old stone bridge did the boy stop screaming.

When Chet turned back toward the access road, the boy was gone.

Chet had started riding the rails when he was just a boy himself.

He’d been picking tomatoes that summer down in the Sacramento valley where the air hung hot and humid and so thick with the smell of dirt and tomato plants and the smoke from controlled burns he could almost taste it. Hard, tedious work with nothing to keep a young boy’s mind occupied for long.

Easy for someone with an imaginative bent to dream of better things.

Pickers like Chet migrated from farm to farm, this week picking tomatoes, the next squash or artichokes or sugar beets for the Spreckels plant. One of the men told Chet about catching rides to the next job in an empty boxcar. About riding the rails down to the plant to help unload the beets.

Next best thing to a ride at the county fair, the man had said, and the other pickers had laughed. But there’d been something in their expressions, a wistful look in their eyes, that told Chet maybe there was some truth to the story.

He’d watched the trains go by on the far side of the fields as he bent over, snatching ripe tomatoes from their vines. He’d never been on a ride at the county fair, but he’d seen the big Ferris wheel and the looping roller coaster, and he told himself he was gonna find out if what the man said about trains was true.

He managed to hitch a ride to the sugar plant one evening in the back of a rattletrap truck. While the men around the train were busy unloading beets, Chet scurried along the far side of the boxcars until he came to one that was open, and he hoisted himself inside.

He stayed in that boxcar until the train hit the rail yards in downtown Sacramento, and damn if that man weren’t right. No county fair ride could be better than this.

Chet sat near the open door of the boxcar, the wind hitting him in the face, and he didn’t care that the air still smelled like smoke and the boxcar smelled like old manure and older sweat. He felt like he was flying past fields still green with beans and corn, and fields burned black and ready for the next planting. He had a bird’s eye view of little motor boats puttering on the American River as the train rumbled by overhead, and he could see the shadows of the boxcars chasing each other on the water.

When he got to the rail yards, he hooked up with some men going south on another train toward the fields in the San Joaquin. Chet worked the rest of the summer in the almond groves and vineyards, and always, always dreamed about the next place the trains would take him.

He never did make it back to that Spreckels sugar plant. It didn’t matter. He’d been on his own almost all his young life. He could take care of himself, and he knew nobody would miss him.

Nobody would go looking for one missing itinerant farmhand boy.

The screaming boy came back every afternoon. Each day he took a few more steps further up the path to Chet’s place. Each day he looked right at the spot where Chet hid behind the bushes and vines and trees.

And each day, when the Four Thirty-Five came through, the boy pointed at the train and screamed.

A world of hurt lived in those screams.

Terror. Fear. Loss. And worst of all—anger.

The screaming boy was furious. Not at the train, but at Chet.

Chet had done nothing to anger this boy. He’d done nothing at all to draw the boy to his place. The stone bridge was Chet’s spot, and the boy needed to leave him alone.

On the fourth day, when the boy appeared a good third of the way up the path to Chet’s place, Chet came out from the shadows and stood in the open sunlight next to the feeder stream. The sunlight should have felt warm, but Chet shivered in the afternoon light.

What do you want from me? he asked, his voice whispery and rough from long disuse.

The boy stared at him, his expression unchanging. Chet knew he must look frightening, but the boy didn’t run away.

What do you want? Chet asked again.

Why won’t you leave me alone?

In the distance, Chet heard the sweet song of the approaching train singing down the rails. He felt the beginnings of the desperate yearning start building inside him, a need made all the more intense because he knew he could never quench it.

Make it stop, the boy said. His gaze turned toward the tracks, sorrow turning his dark eyes into deep pools shimmering with unshed tears. Make it stop. He lifted his thin arm toward the approaching train. "Makeitstop, makeitstop, MAKEITSTOP!"

The boy’s screams were all the worse this time because he’d given voice to his terror, and that terror