Story: "Jingle Bob"

I have the honor of having a story featured currently at Cullen Gallagher's new webzine for western fiction, Fires on the Plain. The story, "Jingle Bob,"starts thus:

When she woke, Proud Mary saw the ghost standing right there beside her bed again. “You are sleeping on my grave,” it said, wild eyed and grimacing. Its lips didn’t so much move as pucker. She could have laughed, but she had to wait till her skin stopped crawling with gooseflesh.

By then the damn thing was gone, with a jingling of bells. The air smelt of something rancid.

“Jesus have mercy,” she muttered and slid out of bed to open the window. Outside, the distant ridge of rolling sandhills lay calm in the faint light of a moonless night. Coyotes warbled somewhere far off.

This had to stop.

For the rest, click here.