Love from the Other Side Read online

  Plaisted Publishing House Presents

  Love from The Other Side

  A Ghostly Writes Anthology

  By Ghostly Writers Worldwide

  Copyright 2018 Ghostly Writers Group

  All Rights Reserved

  The right of the contributors to this book to be identified as the authors of these original works has been asserted by them in accordance with the terms of copyright. Copyright Permission has been granted by all participants

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form or binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Acknowledgements

  Book Cover Designer

  Ceejay Designs

  www.ceejay-designs.wordpress.com

  Book Teasers and Book Trailer

  Mara Reitsma

  http://itybityqt.wixsite.com/marareitsma/my-favorites

  All art work is copyrighted to the authors

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  Contents

  Sweetheart by Kyrena Lynch

  Scary Love by Michael Lynes

  Forever Touched by Mara Reitsma

  Alexa by Jane Risdon

  Stay by Karen Hansen

  My Mother by Rianne Moss

  The Ghosts of Guernica by Dan McAteer

  Pipers Hollow by Claire Plaisted

  The Pinetree Trail by C A Keith

  The Screamers of Valentine Pond by Donna Walo Clancy

  Monsters Need Love Too by Pamela Silva

  Burying Love by Cathy-Lee Chopping

  Raven's Hill: The Ritual by Lynn Mullican

  Driven by Elizabeth Horton-Newton

  Tell it to The Rose by Mara Reitsma

  Sweetheart

  By Kyrena Lynch

  Whispered words

  Of romantic feelings

  Emphasised by gifts

  Of chocolate and flowers

  Signifying the pursuer’s intentions,

  Soft kisses and feathered touches

  In darkest nights, moon shining

  Bright among twinkling stars

  As echoes of giggles and laughter

  Emerge from under warm

  Quilted covers,

  Wrinkled hands gleaming with

  Golden bands of metal

  Clasping a single flower in

  Remembrance while tears fall

  And sun sets over green

  Green lands bearing a tree

  And single tombstone.

  Scary Love...

  By Michael Lynes

  Comes now the pain...the fear...it is delicious. Throbbing, pulsing...nurturing me in my isolation. It feeds me...

  MY DAY BEGAN BADLY. First the car wouldn’t start. Jim had warned me last spring that the battery might be a problem and he’d promised to fix it. His cancer diagnosis had put all that out of mind. We’d spent the summer fighting and hoping. I’d buried him a week before Christmas.

  Now it was the second week of February, bitter cold, dark and lonely. I’d gotten past the, ‘Let me know if you need anything...’ and the, ‘Call me if you want to talk...’ offers. I’d thanked them, and declined. They were well-intentioned, but I didn’t want to talk, and I’d lost the only thing I’d ever needed. I was the last of my family; my older brothers had passed away years before. Jim’s family was small and spread wide. Our circle of friends was even smaller. It had always just been the two of us, we had no children.

  Sounds romantic doesn’t it? You could imagine we were star-crossed lovers, but in truth, Jim and I had been an odd match from the start. We’d met late in our lives. Jim had been a corporate lawyer for one of the Big Five—a one-hundred-and-ten-percent legal shark. He had no wife, no relationships at all in fact. He’d never made time for anything except the practice. He’d burned out at thirty-seven, quit his job, bought a mobile-home and headed west. He always used to tell people he’d run away to join the circus, but he and I both knew it was more than that.

  We’d met on a pier, one of the big ones near the Pike Place Market. I’d been walking along the harbor-side, contemplating the view, and I was cold from the wind off the Sound. Jim had just hit town that morning, almost three years to the day since he’d resigned from his firm. He’d noticed I was shivering and offered to buy me a coffee. Before I knew it, we’d spent the rest of the afternoon talking. He was so easy to talk to.

  I was running away too. I was a Seattle native, the youngest child in my family, the ‘tail-end-Charlie’ with almost twenty years between me and my sibs. American by birth, I was of Japanese heritage and further, my parents and my brothers had all been born in Japan. My family name was Sarume, one of the most ancient clans, direct descendants of Amaterasu-ōmikami, the sun goddess. My father and his before him for hundreds of generations, had been trained as kannushi, or Shinto priests. Even my name, Himi-ko, means Sun-Daughter in the ancient tongue. To my father, family tradition was everything.

  As youngest, (and only), daughter, my role in life was either to be married off or to stay home and ‘take care of my elders’. I’d spent my youth caring for my aging parents, waiting in vain to be rescued by ‘Mr. Right’. I had fulfilled my duty, despite the rebellion that had burned in my heart. Their passing had opened my prison door.

  That morning I had signed the last of the probate documents, as well as finalized the sale of my parent’s home—as they had wished. I was free, yet I felt a curious sense of disconnection, emptiness...almost abandonment. I had taken the bayside walk to think about all of the upheaval in my life.

  I confided all this and more to a perfect stranger. This tall handsome man with his sea-grey eyes and his easy smile. I remember thinking to myself ‘What are you doing?’ But it was as though the words of my life-story were being pulled from me. That afternoon conversation on the pier had turned into almost twenty-three wonderful years together. It was all over now.

  I shook my head and looked up at my hands, clenched around the lifeless steering wheel. The bitter air making my teeth chatter. I’d managed to scrape together a few dollars, enough to get to town for food and return home with something more than fumes in the tank. Through the frosted windshield I could see our place. The windows were dark in the pre-dawn, only a wisp of smoke belied its deserted appearance.

  Once, our home had been beautiful. After we married, a simple ceremony before a JOP, we needed a place to live. Both of us were tired of city life. Jim had sold his RV and he still had some money saved. I’d never made a dime during my life as a full-time nursemaid, but I had a small inheritance. We pooled our resources and together we sought a refuge away from the hustle and bustle, working our way up into the foothills of the Cascades.

  We searched high and low. At last we’d settled on a secluded cabin about an hour or so outside of Redmond, near the tiny town of Gold Bar. The property was a former hunting lodge/camp which had fallen into disrepair. It had no running water and a big woodstove for heat, but we were looking for the simple life and we loved it.

  To meet our living expenses Jim took up his boyhood love of woodworking. He became a deft joiner, turning out crafty pieces we’d sell in town. I pursued my love of writing, mostly
poetry that earned me not much more than personal satisfaction, but I would write the occasional article as a freelancer for the Times, and this brought in a dollar or two. You could say we were working-poor. I would say we were two of the happiest people on Earth.

  Whatever extra we had, we put into the cabin. We renovated it with love over the years, adding amenities like a decent kitchen and a bath with hot water, but we kept the stove. This part of the state was well above sea-level and winters could be cold. Jim had always kept our place warm, cutting wood off of our outsize lot all summer and feeding it into the outsize woodstove all winter. When he’d got sick there’d been no time to restock the woodhouse. The few sticks left in the back bin were my last.

  I sighed, reciting an ancient prayer to my kami, my protective spirit, willing the battery into one last start. It was no use. The key turned with a dry click and then even the cabin light died.

  “I guess I’m stuck for now.” I muttered.

  Not that it matters, my heart whispered, it was going to be soon anyway. It might as well be today. I press a half-frozen hand to my side, feeling for the tantō I’d kept there since Jim’s death. It was an ancient blade, handed down through the generations in my family. Its presence was comforting.

  I abandoned the dead sedan and went inside. I kept my winter gear on. It was a few degrees warmer within, but not enough to matter.

  “Well Jim,” I said aloud, “you were right about the battery.”

  Silence was my only answer. I glanced up at our kamidana—our household shrine. My family had been practitioners of Shinto since time immemorial. When my father died, I had embraced my rebellion and rejected the traditions. The kamidana had been Jim’s idea. At first, I’d resisted, but when he’d surprised me on our third anniversary with a beautiful hand-carved replica of our home fashioned into a shrine, I could not say no.

  “Just for luck.” He’d said, but he knew it was for more than that.

  I’d always wondered if he understood what the kami meant. What they could really do.

  I turn towards the shrine, drawn to its simplicity. I haven’t sought magokoro, or purification, in many years. Today, I feel it’s appropriate, a fitting act. I make the simple preparations. I draw warm water and then mix it with salt. I remove some of my outer clothing, baring my head and hands. I say the opening prayers and wash, and then rinse my mouth and spit. I haven’t asked for the attention of my kami in so long a time, yet I do not feel any rejection. I bow and clap and bow once more. My words are for my ancestral kami, and I even include my parents in my supplication. As I do so, a feeling of peace comes over me. I no longer have my omamori, my personal amulet, but I continue – making my main prayer to Tenjin, the patron of writers and poets. His ofuda occupies the central part of our shrine. I complete my prayer and fall silent, opening my awareness. I expect that the kami will disapprove of my absence.

  The response is terrifying.

  STARLESS, AIRLESS...In this place there was no-time and no-space. It was devoid of light...except for the Doors.

  Each Door was a pathway to a human heart, a conduit to the physical world. An open Door was a prayer, a supplication, an invitation to interact. Not all were heeded. Within this place—were you to think of it as a place, existed the kami. This was the All, the Musubi, the interconnecting energy of the Universe, the true Nature below all Nature. The countless kami were its manifestations, the Doors were its pulse and breath.

  He waits, as patient as death. Only one Door concerns him.

  AS I RELAX AND EXPAND my receptivity, I feel the touch of contact. The familiar room, with its shabby furniture, fades. I am surrounded by a gray light, an intangible mist.

  “Saa-Roo-MAY!”

  “Him-Mee-Ko Sa-RU-May!”

  A voice, its tones so low they shake my very bones—echoes through the mist. It is a strange voice. Not Tenjin, the kami who inhabits my ofuda, yet it calls me by name. Fear grips me and I breathe deeply, reassuring myself. I am in shinkai, the otherworld of the kami. My person cannot be harmed. The kami calls me again, louder. I feel my body grow cold. The mist suddenly clears.

  All around me is void. I feel a sense of vast emptiness. This is not the shinkai I am familiar with. I realize that my earlier interactions with Tenjin had led me to a false sense of security. My fear rises again, choking me. My eyes search the darkness, but it is as though I’ve been blinded.

  “Himiko...”

  I start, more in surprise than terror. Another voice calls my name, but it is a whisper, furtive and almost musical. “Here! Himiko, I am here!” It whispers. The voice is small, but crystal clear. I turn toward its source, but I see nothing.

  “HIM-Mee-Ko Sarume!” The subterranean growl booms again, filling the void once more. I’m confused, disoriented, and I cower in fear, falling to my knees and curling into a protective ball. My breath seems stolen from me and a great compulsion to reply, to submit, comes over my mind. The space around me is no longer vast, I feel as though I am being crushed at the bottom of a lightless ocean. The pressure grows, inflicting horrible pain. I cry out, not in response but in agony. The voice hears me, and its cruel laughter shakes my body like a leaf in a gale.

  “Ah! You are in pain. Good! Good!” It gloats, coming nearer. The pain grows, hot knives seem to tear at my chest, stab into my back and sides. I scream again, echoless. My voice is consumed by the darkness.

  In the midst of my terror and pain, unbidden, a memory, clear and present as though it is playing like a movie reel, appears in my mind’s eye. It is our sixth anniversary. Jim and I are sitting together on our deck, newly built by our hands. It is a beautiful, early summer evening. The last rays of the sunset are framing his sweet face. My hand stretches forward, my fingers entwine with his. My present heart fills with an aching longing as his warm hand enfolds mine.

  ‘I love you...’ His lips mouth the words, his gaze dwelling on my face. Just as suddenly, it is gone. Hot tears fill my eyes, burn down my cheek. A sob of grief is torn from me.

  “Ahhh...yes... I feel your agony,” The voice, almost forgotten in my distress, fills my mind once more. “More!” It commands, “Feed me!”

  I shake my head like a boxer, trying to resist, but the pressure and pain intensify. I feel as though I am burning.

  “What do you want?” I scream.

  Never before had my experience in shinkai been so brutal. I think of the stories I had heard as a child. Ghost tales...superstition and legend. Tales of the goryo, the rampaging spirits, run through my mind. Powerful, subtle and quick to anger, the goryo were credited with many tales of destruction and violence. How could I have angered a goryo? My heart pounds in my chest, I am almost unable to form the words.

  “Great One!” I gasp. “Who are you? What do you want with me?”

  The voice laughs once more, mocking me and my pain. Suddenly I am no longer afraid. Anger kindles deep within my heart. I am Himiko Sarume, Daughter of the Sun, I will not be afraid. I force my eyes open, uncurl my shaking body. The voice grows silent; I can feel the goryo’s attention focus upon me.

  “Yes...!” the crystal voice whispers, seeming to be within my very ears, “Yes...fight him! Your power is greater than you know! Fight!” I nod. The pain is great but I find that I can bear it. I shake my head once more. I stand.

  “Hmmm”, the voice rumbles. I stare in the direction it seems to come from. There is a faint outline, a darker shade amidst the near complete blackness that surrounds me. Fear threatens once more to overwhelm me, but outrage still burns in my heart.

  “Great One!” I call again as my father had instructed me. “I beg you to indulge me. How may I address you?” I bow deep, a sign of respect, but in my heart, I am defiant. The shadow moves, drawing nearer.

  “Mortal...” the voice booms, “cast down your proud eyes! I am no common kami that the likes of you may be allowed to address me. I am Michizane-sama, conqueror of the Sun. It was I who brought Amaterasu to her knees. Abase yourself!”

  As I wat
ch, the shadow seems to shrink, becoming man-shaped. Its face becomes clear; stark white, hanging in the void. Great fiery eyes, a hawk-like beak of a nose, a leering toothy mouth. I am shocked, but less by the appearance of the goryo and more by what he holds. His right hand is clenched into a great fist, from it runs a chain of black iron. It leads to a huddled shape of a man. He is pale, dressed in the white robes of the dead, and bent down by the weight of a cruel collar. His grey eyes are half-closed with pain. It is Jim.

  My head swims. Jim...my love...I am so sorry! The goryo’s cruel laughter rings in my ears, but I ignore it. My eyes are fixed on my Jim’s dear face. I yearn to rush to him, but I know he is dead, and enthralled by this monster. My anguish is made worse by the fact that it is surely my fault.

  “So, Himi-ko, my slave! You see there is no choice for you!” My head snaps up, and I bite my lip to still the words of rage and defiance that spring to my lips. For Jim’s sake I must not provoke the demon. I lower my gaze, bowing my head almost to the ground.

  “I abase myself my Lord” I intone. “What does the Great One wish me to do?”

  The goryo looks at me, triumph on its hideous face. “You will feed me!” It hisses. “I hunger slave! I will have your pain, your grief, your fear!” His eyes pop open even wider. “You will come to me each day. Satisfy me or I shall destroy him!” The blood drains from my face. Sudden mists rise from the ground, obscuring my eyes. I can feel myself slipping. ‘Jim...,’ I cry, ‘I love you!’ No sound escapes my lips. The contact is broken.

  I AM BACK. THE CABIN windows are bright with the frigid sun of midday. My body shakes with cold and hunger. My right shoulder is bruised and my jaw is sore. Sometime during my spirit journey my soulless body had fallen. I wipe a thin line of drool from my cheek.

  I rise and my body groans, stiff joints aching. I ignore the pain, forcing myself into motion. There is no time for the petty issues of the flesh. “Jim...” I whisper. His soul, his reikon, has been ensnared by the goryo. I know that Michizane-sama’s true target is me; he craves my energy, my strength. Jim is his hold on me. Unless I wish Jim to be a yurei, doomed to wander the earth in eternal unrest, I must feed him.