The Cemetery Next Door

By Dale Chase

When Ray and Marty, partners for twelve years, decide to get away from San Francisco for a week, they choose a small town across the bay. Only upon arriving at their hotel do they discover a cemetery next door. Ray is concerned at the proximity but Marty, who has experience with ghosts, assures him the residents are the quietest neighbors.

But when the two men get drunk and have sex in the cemetery one night, things change. Mishaps occur at the hotel: an elevator gets stuck, a fire alarm sounds in the middle of the night, a door refuses to open. Marty soon realizes someone in the cemetery was disturbed by their sexual antics and is punishing them.

How can they escape the ghost’s wrath? More importantly, how can Marty get the skeptical Ray to even admit it’s a ghost after them?

• Language: English
• Publisher: JMS Books LLC
• Release date: Nov 2, 2018
• ISBN: 9781634867214

Dale Chase

Dale Chase started out writing fiction for motorcycle magazines, then wandered into gay erotica over a decade ago and found a home. Since then she has had nearly 150 stories published in numerous magazines and anthologies, including translation into Italian and German. Her sole literary effort was published in the Harrington Gay Men’s Fiction Quarterly and her only non-fiction, Straight Pen For Gay Men, appeared in the Gay & Lesbian Review. Her next story collection, The Company He Keeps: Victorian Gentlemen’s Erotica, is due from Bold Strokes Books in 2011. Dale is also a lifelong artist.

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The Cemetery Next Door

By Dale Chase

Published by JMS Books LLC at Smashwords

Visit jms-books.com for more information.

Copyright 2018 Dale Chase

ISBN 9781634867214

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Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com

Image(s) used under a Standard Royalty-Free License.

All rights reserved.

WARNING: This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If it is sold, shared, or given away, it is an infringement of the copyright of this work and violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review.

This book is for ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It may contain sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which might be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Published in the United States of America.

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The Cemetery Next Door

By Dale Chase

Maybe it’s one of your ghosts, Ray said. He’d come up behind me as I stared at the large puddle in front of the dishwasher. The appliance had issued a loud groan before stopping and dumping its water. This was doubly annoying because the garbage disposal had ground to a halt just an hour before. When I offered no comment on Ray’s statement, he prodded further.

I kinda like the idea, he said, chin on my shoulder. Appliance ghost.

Stop it, I snapped.

I already had a call in to the super and wondered if another breakdown required another request. Ray, still caught up in teasing me, waved his arms and swooped about the room as if in flight. Spirits of the kitchen, he sang, release us from your torment. Set our appliances free.

He grinned, but I didn’t appreciate his needling. I blew out a sigh and went into the living room.

I’ll mop it up, he called.

Do that.

Ray and I had been together twelve years, and now, well into our forties, enjoyed a good relationship, despite our differences. He’s a classic Capricorn—disciplined, efficient, responsible—while I, an earnest Pisces, am much the opposite—compassionate, gentle, and trusting. When I’d first learned of his January birthday and noted him a Capricorn, he’d dismissed the idea of astrological signs. Fortunately, I liked him enough to let this pass. I liked his strength, formidable at times, and I believe he liked my softer side because Caps need that, though they’ll never admit it. In our years together, we’d found balance. I don’t get too mushy and he lays off his authoritarian streak.

The one mistake I made early on was telling him about my grandfather’s ghost. Gramps had lived with us when I was growing up, and after he died when I was nine, he still lived with us. He appeared in my bedroom in the same chair where he’d sat to read me stories, only now he had no book. He didn’t speak, he didn’t do anything but sit, which I took to mean him keeping watch, which I appreciated since I was small for my age and tormented by my older brothers. Sometimes Gramps would appear in a doorway while we ate dinner, as if to remind me he was always around. Other times, when my brothers piled on me, pinning me unmercifully, he’d appear but not help, and I grew to realize he had limits. All he could give was his presence.

I once asked my mother if she believed in ghosts, and she grew thoughtful, then said she wasn’t sure. There are things nobody can explain, she said, which is good, because some people think they know it all. I didn’t press for more, fearing a reveal of Gramps might get me a pat on the head.

I never asked my father because he was the know-it-all type, much like Ray. So Gramps remained mine alone, with me until I left for college. I looked for him in my dorm room, then reminded myself he had limits. Or maybe he just wanted to stay on with Mom, his daughter.

Until Ray, I’d never told anyone about Gramps and got along fine without discussing supernatural