A Suspenseful Paranormal Event Read online

  A Suspenseful Paranormal Event

  * * *

  To my Mother, Lula M. Carr, whose last words to me were, “You are stronger than you think you are and you will see so too.”

  To O’Brian, Deeann, Candace — My children

  To fellow writers who kept encouraging me

  To readers everywhere who thirst for this type of book

  * * *

  Copyright © 2005 Alma Jones.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

  BookWhirl Publishing

  PO Box 12411, Green Bay

  WI 54307, USA

  www.bookwhirl.com

  Phone: 1 (877) 207 1679

  Fax: 1 (800) 852 4249

  Ordering Information:

  Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address above.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014921308

  ISBN-13: Softcover 978-1-61856-670-6

  Pdf 978-1-61856-671-3

  ePub 978-1-61856-672-0

  Kindle 978-1-61856-673-7

  Rev. date: 01/05/2015

  Contents

  Man in Gray

  Them Shoes, Them Shoes!

  Momma Cat

  Old Man McCreavey’s Ghost

  Prologue

  If you are reading this book, then it means that I have finished what I was hesitant to start. I did not want to do a supernatural piece but was persuaded to try my hand at it. In anticipation of some of your questions, yes there are very real occurrences in this book. Of course, some of it is purely fictional. What you have to do is figure out what is a real incident and what is a made up incident, solely from my imagination. Having said that, I will leave you with a quote from my Mother, bless her soul, “THERE ARE SOME THINGS IN SOME PLACES!”

  Read on if you dare

  Read on if you must

  But when you go to sleep tonight

  Please have a care!

  Man in Gray

  Foreboding! Hostile foreboding!

  Yep, that was definitely the feeling. Lavi (short for Lavinya) had always walked through a new place to get a sense of it before she rented it. This one, though, her husband had rented to surprise her. She had come in from work to find frantic packing going on. Her husband’s brothers and their wives and children were busy carrying out her drawers to the dressers. They were using her clothes’ drawers as moving boxes!

  “The kitchen is yours!” yelled her husband. “We got a good deal on a new place with a big backyard for the kids like you’ve been complaining about.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah and we got it for a song and a dance too!”

  Lavi got in the kitchen and started packing her pots and pans. She saw that somebody had left a stack of newspapers for her to put her dishes in. Her husband, probably. She tried to pack the dishes as fast and as carefully as she could. But she knew that something would get broken or chipped. It inevitably always did.

  When Lavi finally got the car loaded with the last of the kitchen stuff, she followed the U-Haul that her husband was driving to her new place. When she pulled into the driveway, she noticed a huge crack that ran diagonally across the plate glass window. Upon further inspection, the glass turned out to be plexiglas. The brick homes adjacent to her new place were beautiful and immaculately kept. While her new place was not much to look at, she hoped it was welcoming on the inside.

  Well, it was not! It needed cleaning and it seemed to be surrounded with a warning, foreboding and menacing aura. Lavi walked into the kitchen and stood. The foreboding stayed with her. Lavi scrubbed and bleached the sink and counters until her hands felt raw. Whew! she thought. At least my stove and counter are clean. Since she had always believed that the kitchen was the heart of the home, she set about scrubbing the rest of it down and placing her kitchen table and stuff just so.

  Lavi went back to the car thinking, “Maybe the house will seem more welcoming when I come back from the car with my next load of kitchen stuff.” “Now let’s get you in the house and see what spot you can liven up,” she said aloud to herself. Lavi walked into her kitchen and let out a bloodcurdling scream, dropping her box of canisters in the process.

  “Now what?” said her husband as he came in through the back door running. Lavi was saying, shamefacedly, “It’s nothing. I just need you to kill this slug.” Her husband rummaged through the box where the seasoning was packed and came up with the salt. His adrenalin still being pumped from his wife’s scream, he dumped half of the box on the six-inch long spotted slug that, with his head raised, rested partly across the cold water faucet.

  Lavi was in the doorway of the kitchen doing her, “Oo-oo-ooo, you get on my nerves dance.” The spotted slug was slinging its head backward and forward and from side to side, but it still wasn’t melting. Then the slug started inching off of the faucet, still with the salt stuck to its back and leaving a slimy trail.

  Lavi started screaming, “Get him, get him, don’t let him get away!”

  “Woman, be quiet!” said her husband.

  Lavi, sniffling by now said, “Why isn’t he melting? Slugs are supposed to melt when you put salt on them!”

  Her husband grabbed the salt box and emptied the rest of the salt on the slug. The slug started to get shiny, but he didn’t melt and he didn’t stop moving. With his wife having quiet hysterics behind him, Mr. Gristover grabbed the hammer from his tool belt and beat that slug until it stopped moving. Then he grabbed the dustpan off of the floor and raked the slug off into it. He said to his wife, “I have to move some boxes out and be ready to get the beds set up for the night when my brothers get here. You can handle this now, right?”

  Lavi got her last pair of cleaning gloves and put them on. Then she proceeded to clean her counter and stove again. She hunted through the other kitchen box until she found her pack of spare toothbrushes. She then cleaned, bleached, and scrubbed the slug slime off of everything. She used extra comet and bleach and baking soda under the edge of the faucet handle and the water spout as well. She was so glad that the spout had a screened filter on it. It just would not do for her family to be drinking slug water! It just would not do! “And why didn’t that thing melt?” she said to herself as she scrubbed. “Why?”

   

  Her husband’s brothers arrived with their load of stuff and her husband began calling her to come show him where she wanted the beds put. She took off her gloves, laid them on her clean counter and went to show him where she wanted the beds. After she had finished telling him where she wanted her beds put and after holding the hammer for her husband’s brother, she got a chance to get back to her work in the kitchen.

  She went to get her gloves off of the counter and spotted a seven-inch long striped slug that was as fat as her thumb lying across them. She went out of the kitchen, out of the front door, and sat on the step. She had been sitting there crying for about ten minutes when her husband’s brothers’ wives arrived in the van with its final load of the house stuff and with her kids.

  She dabbed the tears from her eyes and went to hug her kids. She gave her kids a pre-dinner snack and then told them to go play on the new swing
set that Daddy had put up in the backyard. They went out of the backdoor screaming and laughing with glee and abandon.

  Her husband’s brother’s wife, the one that she was closest to, said, “You’ve been crying, what’s wrong?”

  “I hate this house!” Lavi wailed.

  “Why?” said Val. “You just got here. Nothing could be wrong this soon.”

  Lavi told Val about the six-inch long spotted slug and then about the seven-inch striped one she found lying across her gloves on the counter. Val clearly didn’t believe her. So Lavi went to see if the slug was still there. It was not, of course. Then Val picked up the gloves to put them on to go and clean the bathroom.

  Val, the cool one, dropped that glove and started jumping up and down and flinging her left hand. Her husband came into the kitchen just then and asked her what in the world was she doing? She said, “Got slug gook on my thumb. Oo-oo-oo! Get it off, get it off!” Her husband shoved her hand under the hot water with it turned on full force.

  “Ow, ow!” yelled Val.

  “Okay, no more slug goop. Case closed!”

  Then he grabbed the slug, glove and all and tossed it into the trash. He walked out of the kitchen, tossing a roll of paper towels to his wife as he passed her.

  “Smart aleck!” she muttered.

   

  Lavi managed to get her kitchen cleaned to her satisfaction. Thank goodness, she had no more episodes with slugs! After Lavi fed her family with every moving mom’s delight, KFC and the trimmings, she finished unpacking the kitchen and started on the den boxes.

   

  Lavi lay in bed in her new place with her husband snoring beside her. She listened to the occasional car on the street as she noted the soft sounds of sleep coming from her children down the hall. She reflected over her day, the surprise move, the final cleaning of the kitchen, and seeing her children slide with abandon down the slide that some benefactor had given their dad. As she lay there in the dark, waiting for sleep to carry her off, she got a distinct feeling of unease. Sort of like she was being watched. She shrugged off the feeling, turned her back to the edge of the bed and went to sleep.

  The next day, after she had finished her morning devotion and ablutions, Lavi determined to make an actual list of the things that she hoped to get done that day. She went to locate her purse in the den, extracted a pen, and then plopped down in one of the winged-back chairs to do just that.

  Lavi jumped up almost as soon as she had sat down. The chair was distinctly damp! She made a mental note to berate her kids about drinking and eating in undesignated areas of the house. Though they understood that hard and fast rule, she still found it necessary to remind them from time to time. Just like now, because apparently, somebody had made a spill on the arm of the wing-back that she had just sat in. Kids! What she wouldn’t give for a two-week getaway! Pooh! Who was she kidding? She would be miserable without those two little crumb snatchers and she knew it!

  Lavi sat down in the other wing-back to get her list done and after writing four things on her list, the fact that her back felt damp seeped through to her awareness. She stood up and touched the back of the chair and noticed a mild dampness. Maybe her husband cleaned these chairs last night right after she had gone to sleep. She knew that he often awoke in the middle of the night and succumbed to a 1:00 or 2:00 a.m. fixing/cleaning spree.

  Lavi got a wooden chair from the dining room and did her list. Then she went to get breakfast going before her household stirred. “Eeeek!” shrieked Lavi. There was a striped polka dotted slug draped over the window ledge. This one was only four inches long though! Not like the giant from yesterday! Lavi found two more slugs in her kitchen, one draped over the door knob and another attached to the back of her new kitchen curtains.

  She went in to awaken her husband and told him, teary-eyed, to come kill the varmints and to clean the door knob and to take down the kitchen curtains, while he was at it. She told him in no uncertain terms, “We need this house sprayed for slugs today!”

  Mr. Gristover reminded her of the strike and told her that they just could not afford it. Lavi started wringing her hands and whimpering while tears coursed down her cheeks. Her husband told her that there was, perhaps some slug spray the he could get from the Co-op. Mr. Gristover said, “Just don’t cry, Lavi, just don’t cry.”

    

  Things went on this way, with slug episodes at least once a day, sometimes two and with Lavi feeling watched every night. She no longer slept with the bedroom in total darkness, but left a light on in the hall. She told her husband it was so the kids could find their way in the dark when they had one of their infrequent nightmares. Lavi, now always slept with her face toward the edge of the bed. She felt like she could prevent something from sneaking up on her since she felt so watched at night.

  Well, wouldn’t you know it? Lavi awakened one night to what sounded like shod hooves coming down the hall toward their bedroom! Lavi was too petrified to move! The hooves came into the bedroom, walked around the foot of the bed, and stopped on her side of the bed, close to the foot.

  That cold feeling of dread kept her immobile as the bed shook, like it used to when her cat, Spookums, would jump up in the bed.

  Later, as Lavi recalled the incident to herself, she remembered distinctly being held still by unseen hands as something sat on her side and seemed to “roll her liver.” Lavi did not know where she got the phrase “roll your liver,” but it seemed an apt description of what had happened to her. Lavi further recalled that she never saw anything, just heard the hooves and then the immobile feeling of dread would steal over her.

    

  Lavi went through the daily routine of de-slugging the kitchen and of keeping dishcloths, silverware and plates in a plastic container. She kept her pots and pans in a face down position stacked on a rolling cart with alcohol and vinegar solution in the cans that each leg of the cart was in. Though Lavi found many slugs on her countertops, windowsills, and doorknobs, she never found one on that rolling cart.

  Lavi became a two-person wife and mother. The one that cooked played, laughed, and provided for her family in the daytime and the one who lived in terror by night. Things might have gone on like this indeterminately, but then things escalated.

  The escalation started, it seems, when Lavi developed an abscess in her tooth and had to have the offending tooth extracted. The extraction was painful because the oral surgeon had to cut Lavi’s gums to get the roots of the tooth out. As a result of the incisions, he sent Lavi home with some powerful pain meds that he told her in no uncertain terms not to use while driving. She wondered why he had bothered to say anything at all about driving as her husband had driven her to the office for the surgery. The doctor also told her not to exceed the recommended dosage because some people who did, experienced hallucinations, fainting, etc. Lavi assured him that she would only take the amount prescribed and only when and if her pain became intolerable.

  When they arrived back at the house, Lavi felt the same foreboding feeling of dread that she usually felt only at night. She was puzzled because it was daytime and she was wide awake. Well, almost wide awake. She was still groggy from the anesthesia.

  When Lavi went to open the door to go into the house, she saw a hissing angry cat balled up and batting the air with its clawed extended paw, as if to say, “Get away, get away! Don’t touch me! You are not wanted here! Go!”

  Lavi was astounded and even more so, when it vanished instantaneously from her sight. She stopped so suddenly that her husband bumped into her and spilled some of the groceries he was carrying.

  “What’d you stop for?” he said.

  “I thought I saw a cat . ” replied Lavi.

  “A cat? You don’t need to take any more of that medicine! You hear me?”

  “Yeah, I hear you, but I could have sworn that I saw . ”—

  she paused and fussing aloud to herself—“I have not taken any of those pills yet, Mr. Know It All.”<
br />
  “Oh, I thought that you had,” her husband snickered.

  Her husband started laughing. “I can’t wait to tell the doctor that you had your first hallucination—and you had not taken your first pill yet. All you had was what was left from your anesthesia! Ha-ha!”

  Lavi made her way groggily into the house to the new leather recliner that her husband had absconded from some people who were making a long distance move to Montana and needed to lighten their load. Lavi liked sitting in the recliner because it did not feel damp like all of the cloth chairs in the den did.

  The recliner was positioned so that if you turned your head sideways, you could look straight into the kitchen. Lavi turned her head sideways and looked across the kitchen into a pair of feral glowing eyes that belonged to the big panther-like cat that crouched over the sink. Lavi blinked her eyes and knew that the cat would be gone when she opened them.

  She gasped. He was not! He moved his head from side to side and said, “Go! You are not welcome here!” Then he growled and disappeared.

  Lavi tore out of that den into the front yard and knocked her husband so hard that he sat down with a grunt on the sidewalk with groceries that he had just picked up. Lavi, who was blabbering, landed on top of him.

  “Lavinya, what in the blue blazes is the matter with you?”

  “I saw a cat! Big, big cat! He said, he said, ‘Go!’ I don’t like this house, I never did. Anyway, why do we have to stay here?” she sobbed.

  Her husband looked at her with his mouth agape. When he found his voice, he said, “Aw, Lavi, Lavi Luv, don’t cry and carry on so. There’s no cat, there’re no hooves—it’s all you, being fanciful. And the meds don’t help! Come on back in and I will call the doctor and get you something that will counter the anesthesia and will not cause you to have further hallucinations. You need to sleep too because I have noticed for the past week, you have tossed and turned so much that you woke me up.”