The Light Side of Dark
by Voni Ryan

Print ISBN-13: 978-1-926912-63-9
Editor: Tracy DeVore
Publisher: Belfire Press
Pages: 176
Dimensions: 6″x9″
Cover Price: $10.99
Order Direct: CreateSpace

 
E-book ISBN-13: 978-1-926912-65-3
Formats: html, js, mobi, epub, pdf, rtf, lrf, pdb, txt
Price: $2.99

Kindle ISBN-13: 978-1-926912-64-6
Price: $2.99

Now available at CreateSpace, Amazon, Smashwords, and Kindle.

Coming soon to Barnes & Noble, Nook, Diesel and Kobo.

Many of their personal favorites are included in this scary, funny, sometimes macabre short story collection that has everything from ghouls and ghosts to laughter and love.

Meet a genie who needs shoes, a clueless possessor of a magic wand, a guy who shoots time, a prisoner of paranoia and an unforgiving ghost who tortures her murderer with target practice. If time travel is your predilection, take a short trip to the moon and Venus, visit the West during an 1880s cattle drive and an outlaw reunion, and see Sherwood Forest with an archer’s bride.

Journey with us now to uncharted worlds and different dimensions….

“But, Mama, the roses spoke to me.”

Her small face turned so trustingly to mine looked quite serious. Otherwise mentally occupied, I murmured, “And what did they say, darling?”

“They said there was a bad man coming. He’s going to hurt them.”

I knew that anguished tone. It had first appeared when her father left us for another dead fireman’s wife. Jean and Johnny Milletti had been our best friends from the time the guys joined Ladder 49, working out of Manhattan south. Johnny had been killed in the World Trade Center attack on 9/11. Of course, the survivors had to look out for their widows and orphans. Got so my Gerry spent more time with Jeannie and her kids than he did at home. He’d been gone almost a year. What irony. What stupid, nasty, miserable irony. The Milletti kids had a dad, Jeannie had a new husband. What did the McKinnons have? Jennifer and Callie, all we had was each other…sometimes I had trouble wrapping my mind around the whole horrific mess.

Lucky for us, my family, the Hunt-Cabots of Boston, were comfortably well off. Callie and I wouldn’t starve, or be turned into the street. Grandfather had gifted us with a three-bedroom condo in a renovated section of downtown Boston, within walking distance of both him and Grandmother and Mother and her current husband. We had a small patio and space for a few flowers in back.

My sister Janine and her family lived about ten minutes away, in a spiffy new 5000 square foot pseudo Colonial saltbox in a neighborhood of similarly la-di-dah homes. Even all the mailboxes matched. I shudder to think what she and hubby Harlan Ball paid for the thing. I hadn’t asked Grandfather how much our condo set him back, either. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

There were days I seemed to float through in a semi-transparent fog of numbness. Afraid to feel or think, remembering the miserable reality of sleeping alone too many nights, waiting for Gerry to come home. I knew where he spent his time, what he did, wished he’d come back, terrified he wouldn’t. Thank God for Calypso. She was my bright and shining star, the beacon of hope beckoned me toward the future. At least we still had each other.

This had been one of those days.

“Mama!” Her insistent yank on my sweater sleeve brought me back to the present with a rush. “You’re not listening to me!” Tears threatened, soft voice gained volume.

“I’m sorry, Callie. What did the roses say?” If I’d really listened to my words, I never would have said that. Roses talking? What flights of fancy was I encouraging her to develop?

“I told you. They said a bad man was coming to cut them up.” Her blue eyes, so like Gerry’s, filled, spilled and rolled. “We can’t let him kill the flowers, Mama. We just can’t.”

“But sweetie, he’s the gardener. He comes every year at this time to prune the roses, get them ready for winter. They don’t feel anything. They’re only plants. Plants can’t feel pain the way you and I can.” I scooped her into my lap, hugged her close. “Trust me darling.”

Pushing herself away with unexpected strength, she scowled, black brows lowered fiercely. “They do so. They told me.”

Was this about to go too far? “Really, Callie, flowers can’t talk.”

She grabbed my hand, tugged me to my feet and pulled me toward the patio door. “Come outside and listen, Mama. You’ll see I’m right. They do talk. I heard them.”

All right, I know I indulge her too much, but wouldn’t you? I went out onto the patio with her, stepped off onto the winding flagstone path between the flowerbeds and followed her. Seven rose bushes, spindly and sad now with their yellowed leaves and drooping blooms were planted against the four-foot fence around our small back yard.

She knelt before the tallest specimen, a queenly American Beauty, still lush with flowers. “Miss Ruby, Mama says you can’t talk. Will you say something to her? I told her what you said about the bad man coming to kill you.”

The sound I heard then made the hair on the back of my neck crawl, gooseflesh bump out all over both arms. A faint, whispery voice said, “Jennifer, you should pay more attention to your daughter. She doesn’t lie.”

I whipped my head around to stare at Callie. She smiled at me, an expression I’d seen on Gerry’s face a thousand times when proven right about something.

I sat down abruptly, tailbone smacked against unyielding flagstone with considerable force. Ouch.

‘Miss Ruby’ seemed to bend toward me as that little voice came again. “Please tell the gardener not to prune us so enthusiastically. My friends and I will do just fine if he just snips off our dead blooms and gives us an extra layer of mulch for the winter.”

The other six bushes immediately voiced agreement, I heard, faint but clear, a ‘Thank you, Miss Ruby.” from each. Miss Ruby graciously offered to introduce me to her friends. There was Rosemary Harkness, Sally Holmes, Pretty Polly, Baby Love, Birdie Blye and Pearl Sevillana. They each thanked me personally, their remaining blooms seemed to gain new life and color in the waning September afternoon. In fact, the whole small garden now glowed with promise.

Stunned, I could only sit and stare from one to the other.

That explains why the McKinnon garden is the only one in our block whose un-pruned roses still bloom in the snow of Christmas. And why Calypso has a potted miniature rose happily sitting on her bedside table. They tell each other stories and Miss Ivory sings her to sleep every night.

As for me, Jennifer Hunt-Cabot McKinnon, my bedside table also has a potted rose bush. He has luscious peachy pink blooms, glossy green leaves, very few thorns and his name is Just Joey. I just love him.