Snowbound with Ghost (Excerpt)

Chapter 1

"All that was left was my scarf, clawed into pieces and scattered on the ground."

Lily Holroyd rolled her eyes at the vintage radio on the shelf. The worst snowstorm of the season was approaching and the local radio station was devoting its airtime to sightings of the Virginia Devil Monkey. This happened disturbingly often in Banshee Creek, Virginia, also known as America's Most Haunted Town.

She glanced at the antique tambour clock on the fireplace mantle. It was five o'clock and the storm wasn't scheduled to arrive until seven. She'd be able to get home in time, if the traffic jam on Stuckeyville Parkway had cleared up, but that was a big if. She couldn't even check the traffic conditions, because the isolated cabin had no television, Wi-Fi, cellphone signal or even a landline phone. Her only contact with civilization was the refurbished radio on the bookshelf, an appliance so old that its polished wood exterior felt like soft leather. She'd tried to tune another station, but tonight it only received one signal: WPRV, the official radio station of PRoVE, otherwise known as Paranormal Research of Virginia Enterprises.

"Was there any blood?" the deejay asked, clearly hoping for some gore.

"No," the radio caller answered, sounding heartbroken. "Just some tracks and a dead squirrel."

"Now that's interesting," the deejay replied thoughtfully. "Apes are mainly herbivores, but most ape and monkey species live in tropical climates. The carnivorous behavior could be an adaptation to the temperate Virginia climate. The Japanese snow monkey, for example, is an omnivore."

She fought the urge to slam the radio against the wall. She didn't want to listen to a dissertation on simian eating habits, she wanted the traffic report. Unfortunately, WPRV could happily continue to chat about the fictional monster all night long. The accident on Stuckeyville Parkway may have been cleared, but she wouldn't know about it for hours. Should she just get in her car and leave? She glanced out the window, trying to make a decision.

Thanks to last week's storm, a baby compared to the one heading their way, the ground was already covered with snow. The lake access road, a dark, winding thoroughfare with lots of trees and very few houses, was already partly blocked. No, she shouldn't leave unless the streets were clear. Being stuck in a snowstorm in a rustic lake cabin was bad, but being stuck in a snowstorm on an isolated mountain road would be worse.

"Japanese snow monkeys eat insects, man," the caller scoffed. "They don't eat squirrels. This thing's not a natural monkey. It's one of them geomagnetic fault critters."

She sighed. Ah yes, the famous Banshee Creek geological fissure that causes all the hauntings and attracts everything weird and unexplainable to their small Virginia hamlet. But, she shouldn't scoff. After all, like most of her neighbors, she made her living out of the town's paranormal mystique. A one-time commission to paint a couple of murals spoofing horror movie classics had, miraculously, snowballed into a career. Fortunately, one does not have to believe in the supernatural to profit from it.

"That's what I'm saying," the deejay explained patiently. "The creature probably lived in the tropics, maybe Florida or Alabama, and the fault attracted it here. Then it adapted, mutated maybe, to fit its new environment."

She snorted. The PRoVE staff was going too far. When did Alabama become a tropical locale?

"Why is it attacking cars then? Maybe it thinks my Ford Ranger is a banana tree?" The caller laughed at his own joke and the deejay chuckled and called for a commercial break.

She threw herself on the distressed leather sofa in exasperation. This could, and most likely would, go on all evening. And she really, truly, positively didn't want to be stuck all night in this cabin.