I had stopped shaking by the time I reached home. In the comfort of my living room, normalcy began to return. Ulysses licked my hand, grinning a hound dog welcome, and Penny looked up from her cushion. I breathed a sigh of relief. I was safe. I was home, and now I could try to think sanely about what I’d seen.
“Maybe it was only my overactive imagination,” I said to Ulysses as I put the kettle on for a cup of chamomile tea.
He wagged his tail in sympathy.
“After all, there was plenty of lightning and that could have cast a shadow. Plus, I’d already been thinking about the spooky stories I’d heard and I was jumpy from the storm, you know. And, honestly, Ulysses, that old house would make anybody jittery.”
This explanation made a lot more sense than believing I’d seen an apparition on the stairs.
Only thing was, I didn’t believe a word of it. A big, person-shaped shadow had come down that staircase toward me and the old man outside the house surely hadn’t been my imagination. Who was he and what did he mean by telling me not to trouble the Saunders house? The whole episode was almost too eerie to be believed.
This is an excerpt from the latest Ned McNeil cozy, Murder By Moonlight. available at Amazon.com.
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