Dobbs / Kozeniewski / E. Young The Perfectly Fine Neighborhood

1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 979-8-8604-8750-5
Verlag: French Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 360 Seiten

For all of human history ghosts were real and they were everywhere.  Then, one day, after a horrible cataclysm, they all disappeared.

That was the story of THE PERFECTLY FINE HOUSE.

But there are more tales to be told from that world.  And a thrilling lineup, ranging from horror legends to relative newcomers, have joined forces to bring you:

- a roadside attraction featuring a real, dead serial killer

- a pair of twisted sisters whose sibling rivalry only begins with suicide

- a hitman hired to facilitate a ghostly sexual liaison

And more!

The first unhaunted house was just the beginning.  Come, stake your claim in...

THE PERFECTLY FINE NEIGBORHOOD

Autoren/Hrsg.

Dobbs, Kayleigh

Kozeniewski, Stephen

E. Young, Wile

Leseproben

Stephen Kozeniewski

“Is that light still on?” Connor asked.

Emily looked over her shoulder.  The dark, eerie nightscape was hard to read, but the snow on the ground reflected even the light of the stars.  They were in the hot tub, on the south side of the house, and so the entire cabin was blocking their view of the north side, where the fire pit and wood pile lay.  It was impossible to be completely sure from this angle, but despite their obstructed view, it did seem like the Ghost Away light was still shining.

“Yeah, I guess so,” she said, moaning lightly as her shoulders sank into the warm, bubbling soup. 

“Soup” was a better word for it than “water,” considering how oily and greasy the hot tub had become in just the three days the couple had been there.  She hadn’t wanted to spend her vacation learning how to maintain a hot tub, but it was clear that the owners of the cabin hadn’t been up here in a while, or else hadn’t put any bromine tablets in since the last guests.

“I swear that fucking thing has stayed on all night, every night.”

“Huh?” Em replied, her mind obviously wandering.  “The hot tub?  It’s supposed to stay on.”

A devilish smile crossed Connor’s face as he bobbed from his seat on the far end of the hot tub and wrapped his arms around her.  “You’re not listening,” he said kissing her nose.

“The light,” she said, remembering the subject of his interest.

“The light,” he agreed.  “The motion sensor must be busted or something.”

She reached down and wrapped her hand around his penis.  He was already impressively erect.  “What difference does it make?” she asked.  “You worried someone will wander by and catch us doing it?”

“Ha!” Connor replied, slipping away and leaving her body throbbing for him.  “That’s my last worry here at the ends of the earth.”

Emily leaned over the side of the hot tub, wiped her hand off on the terrycloth bathrobe the owners had left for them, and pulled up her glass of wine.  According to the house rules which had been laminated to protect against the weather (to little avail), they weren’t supposed to be drinking in the hot tub.  It didn’t explicitly say not to have sex in the hot tub, either, but they had already broken both of those taboos.  She had traveled 3,000 miles to forget about rules, not be bullied by a laminated sheet of paper.

“It’s so weird, isn’t it?” Em asked.

“The Ghost Away light?”

She shook her head.  “Just the whole idea of being free from haunting.”

Connor shrugged.  He broke another can off from his six pack, popped the top, and took a long drink.  “That’s why people come to Greenland, right?  Least densely populated place on the planet.”

Em rolled her eyes.  Yeah, that was what all the reviews online said.  In practice, though, when they’d landed in Qaanaaq Resort it had looked like Woodstock.  Tourists from all over the world came to the barely populated area to enjoy the thrill of a practically ghostless existence.

Considering how packed the resort town was these days it seemed counterintuitive, but having been a barely-there fishing village for most of human history had left it one of the least haunted places on the planet.  The town boasted a living mayor and an all-living municipal council, which was practically unheard of, even in countries with very progressive affirmative action laws for the living. 

The few ghosts in the area, mostly tourists who had had heart attacks these days, were handsomely compensated – or cajoled, she imagined, too – by the locals not to harass the tourists.  People who stayed in town could enjoy a practically ghost-free experience at a local B&B or the only hotel in the world which could legitimately claim “No Local Haunts.”  Ghost Away lights, similar to the more common Ghost Away modules which could be purchased at any five-and-dime, were liberally sprinkled all around town, and mostly scared off the dead squirrels and deer that happened to wander by.

Qaanaaq was one of the few places on earth where someone could enjoy a night’s sleep without any rattling chains or have a meal without too many spectral flies buzzing about.  But for the true zero-haunt experience, the curious could rent an SUV and drive ten or twenty miles into the wilderness to a cabin like the one they had rented for five thousand smackers a night.

“Do you wish we’d come during the midnight sun?” Em asked.  “I know you need to work on your tan.”

He chuckled.  “No, I’m good with the dark.  You know I’m kind of a night owl.  The cold sucks, but between the hot tub and the never-ending sex marathon...”

“Oh, never-ending sex marathon, is that what you think?”

He grinned, showing off that wide, white set of pearls that had made her fall in love with him.  But then his smile melted away.  “That damn light is just getting to me.”

She shifted her wine glass to the other hand and put it on top of the chlorine modulator.  If she didn’t change the subject, he would natter on about this all night and become hyper-focused on it.  Then she’d wake to him in the middle of the night, a toolbelt around his waist, trying to fix a buggy light fixture on their vacation instead of spending quality time with her.

“It’s weird, isn’t it?  Not having animal spirits running through you all day, I mean.”

“You know what it’s like?  It’s like when your ear pops.  Sometimes you didn’t even know it was going to pop.”

“Yes!” she agreed vociferously, “It feels right afterwards, but you were so used to it the other way you didn’t even realize it was wrong.”

Yeah, they weren’t going to spend thirty-five thousand on a vacation every year, but for what it was worth, this experience had been unique.  It was just like Connor had been saying.  When they got back to Ganesh City, the pigeons and rats and things would start running through them again and they’d forget they’d even been without it.  But for now, she was filled with a weird sense of calm.

“We should figure out how to turn it off,” Connor said.

He was back on that damn light.

“Well, it ain’t rocket surgery, Einstein.  There’s four switches by the front door and one of them has a little plastic sheath around it.  It’s probably that one.”

Connor touched his finger to his nose, before Em even realized what he was doing.  “Not it.”

“Sir Connor of Ganesh!” she shouted, mock aghast, “You would not be so ungallant as to let your fiancée get out of this toasty tub and risk frostbite on her tiny, perfect toes?”

He pulled one of her legs out of the water and ran his lips along her foot.  But that was a mere ruse, because in his next motion he snatched her up entirely and dumped her outside the tub.

“Hey, no fair!” she shouted, wrapping her arms around herself, less to protect her shame (who was out here to see her naked anyway?) than to protect against the chill.  Outside the tub the cold Greenland night smashed into her like a freight train. 

“Get me another beer, too, will you?”

“You are so not getting laid tonight,” she said, shaking an angry fist at him.

He snorted.  “Yeah, I’ll believe it when I see it.”

She pulled her robe on and tried to fight the chattering of her teeth.  She snatched up her wineglass and gathered his empties.

“All right,” she admitted, “We’re still having sex.  But I won’t enjoy it.”

“I’d like to see you try.”

“Always so cocky.”

Shaking her head and blowing her nose against her hand, she hurried across the deck.  They’d cleared it of yesterday and even though it wasn’t currently snowing, the cold wood burned her uncovered feet like hot coals.  As soon as she got inside the cabin, she put first one foot to the radiator, then the other, until they warmed up.  She grabbed her flip-flops and Connor’s too, to be safe.  She was not cutting this extravagant vacation short because one of them had been dumb enough to catch frostbite.

She slopped another lush’s glassful of Zin into her glass and yanked another of Connor’s beer cans out of the fridge.  The window in the little kitchenette faced the north side of the house.  With the nighttime all the time they’d more or less taken to sleeping each day when they felt like, waking up when they felt like, making a fire in the firepit on the north side each “afternoon,” then spending a good portion of whatever they decided constituted “the evening” in the hot tub.

Right now, she was staring out at the firepit, which was bright as day because of the damn Ghost Away light.  She walked over to the light switches by the door.  She flicked the first one off.

“Hey!” Connor shouted, his voice muffled through the windows but not completely indistinct.  “I’m trying to read out here!”

“Deck light,” Em murmured, flipping it back on.

She flicked the next one.  Above her head, the ceiling fan began whirling.  She toggled it back off.  “Overhead fan,” she murmured in the same monotone.

She flicked the third one.  The light in the ceiling fan came on.  So those were on independent mechanisms. ...