Quite the Life (and all in Times New Roman 10pt!)
We last encountered Erasmus about two months back (posting time).
We know Coyote been around. There signs are easy to recognize, step in, or slip on.
Still shy (and rightly so), we know there’s a pack near us. We can hear them at night.
Lately we’ve heard one and their call is so mournful we worry.
But until we learn more, there’s Erasmus.
And she’s such a dear.
Thorne let the Lady Eglesia‘s systems bring it into the harbor while she dozed on the deck, barely moving from where she slept through the night. She headed out to deep water after hallucinating being back home and visited by her people’s mythical water being, the Bunyip.
Those hallucinations were becoming more frequent.
Usually a quick trip home cured such things. She’d take AirCon’s corporate jet and be there and back in four day’s time. One day to get there, two days with her people, one day to get back.
But who to leave in charge?
Shaul. Not here next-in-command but capable never-the-less.
The Eglesia’s alarms sounded. A shoreside distress signal. Somebody breaking into AirCon HQ and caught in her team’s latest tech gadgets?
She sighed and her eyes fluttered open to the Boston skyline, the the morning sun at her back.
Something bobbed in front of her boat. It looked like a man in the water. It faced the same direction she did.
It turned towards the Eglesia as if suddenly realizing it was there. The sunlight shone off the water making it difficult to see.
Thorne shaded her eyes then opened them wide. “What the – ”
Her mobile alarmed.
The thing in the water dove and was gone.
Thorne read the message on her mobile. She shaded her eyes and looked towards AirCon HQ.
A cloud of gray smoke climbed the thirty story Innovation Square tower. Swirls of denser smoke pulled and pushed the cloud up the side of the building like some Wind Spirit King Kong waving its arms and legs.
Previous entries in The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery):
We don’t see enough of Deer.
A sad fact, that.
We know there are deer out there.
There was one beautiful fawn who we saw regularly when walking our dog. She would see us before we saw her – duh! and we’d hear a gentle movement through the woods announcing her presence.
Ever cautious, she observed us long before she deigned to accept us as part of her pleasure.
Less while ago we were blessed with a herd led by a magnificent buck.
A glory, that.
The kind folks at BizCatalyst360 just published my LifePath Work, an excerpt from my forthcoming The Shaman.
The Shaman came about because a good number of people kept asking me about my background and training. I’d meant to write a book for years, and have a really poorly written manuscript dating from the late 1980s to prove it.
Several times I’d take that manuscript out and massage it. Into a different yet equally poorly written manuscript.
Finally, I took it out in late 2019 and asked myself, “What would make this an interesting story?”
That, and getting permission from one of my teachers (who spoke for all of them) was what I needed.
Originally entitled “Shaman Story,” the graphic artist who did the interior and exterior artwork mistakenly wrote “The Shaman” on the bookcover and Shaboom! it was done.
Previous excerpts from The Shaman include DeathSong and The Paraclete.
Enjoy!
Rexall Shaul stood quietly at the top of thirty flights of stairs. He held the door open for a moment, leaned over the railing, and peered down the stairwell’s center shaft. Music wafted up the from far below. He closed his eyes to concentrate on the sound.
So let me introduce to you
The one and only Billy Shears
He opened his eyes and softly sang along. “And Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, yeah.” He gazed down the center shaft again. “That’s an old one.”
The stairs descended from the art deco paneled hallway on AirCon’s corporate office floor to the garage underneath their building. There were many such buildings, some taller, some shorter, many shared, dotting Boston’s Incubation Square’s waterfront, and Shaul sometimes believed he could feel the waves scouring the building’s foundation piles buried deep into the landfill supporting the Incubation Square population.
He let go of the door and waited, quietly, meditatively, listening to the pneumatic cylinder ease the door shut behind him. The click of the latch served as his runner’s starting pistol.
His breathing slowed and he relaxed his still-lean body with techniques learned as a USAA level competitive gymnast.
Lift his arm to check his Omega Dark Side of the Moon watch?
Lifting his arm would raise his pulse a beat, maybe two.
The hesitation alone raised his pulse a beat or two and he wondered if he was losing his edge.
The sound of the pneumatic piston slowly increased as it reached the last moments of its transit.
Quick glance at the Omega. The door closed, the starting pistol sounded.
Off.
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Previous entries in The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery):