EW!
ONLY IN eBOOK Excerpt. I've never told anyone this story, and never
thought I would -- not because I was afraid of being disbelieved,
exactly, but because I was ashamed...and because it was mine. I've
always felt that telling it would cheapen both me and the story itself,
make it smaller and more mundane, no more than a camp counselor's ghost
story told before lights-out. I think I was also afraid that if I told
it, heard it with my own ears, I might start to disbelieve it myself.
But since my mother died I haven't been able to sleep very well. I doze
off and then snap back again, wide awake and shivering. Leaving the
bedside lamp on helps, but not as much as you might think. There are so
many more shadows at night, have you ever noticed that? Even with a
light on there are so many shadows. The long ones could be the shadows
of anything, you think. Anything at all. I was a junior at the
University of Maine when Mrs. McCurdy called about ma. My father died
when I was too young to remember him and I was an only child, so it was
just Alan and Jean Parker against the world. Mrs. McCurdy, who lived
just up the road, called at the apartment I shared with three other
guys. She had gotten the number off the magnetic minder-board ma kept on
her fridge. "'Twas a stroke," she said in that long and
drawling Yankee accent of hers. "Happened at the restaurant. But
don't you go flyin off all half-cocked. Doctor says it wa'ant too bad.
She's awake and she's talkin."
EW!
ONLY IN eBOOK Excerpt. I've never told anyone this story, and never
thought I would -- not because I was afraid of being disbelieved,
exactly, but because I was ashamed...and because it was mine. I've
always felt that telling it would cheapen both me and the story itself,
make it smaller and more mundane, no more than a camp counselor's ghost
story told before lights-out. I think I was also afraid that if I told
it, heard it with my own ears, I might start to disbelieve it myself.
But since my mother died I haven't been able to sleep very well. I doze
off and then snap back again, wide awake and shivering. Leaving the
bedside lamp on helps, but not as much as you might think. There are so
many more shadows at night, have you ever noticed that? Even with a
light on there are so many shadows. The long ones could be the shadows
of anything, you think. Anything at all. I was a junior at the
University of Maine when Mrs. McCurdy called about ma. My father died
when I was too young to remember him and I was an only child, so it was
just Alan and Jean Parker against the world. Mrs. McCurdy, who lived
just up the road, called at the apartment I shared with three other
guys. She had gotten the number off the magnetic minder-board ma kept on
her fridge. "'Twas a stroke," she said in that long and
drawling Yankee accent of hers. "Happened at the restaurant. But
don't you go flyin off all half-cocked. Doctor says it wa'ant too bad.
She's awake and she's talkin."
