I mentioned in my last post that a friend of mine and I are working on a supernatural mystery story. We have a good start, over 15,000 words. But it won't be ready for a long time. Below are a few of scenes from Chapter 2. We're going to go over them a few times, I'm sure, so this is just a rough draft.
I chose these scenes since Lantashi (me!) is introduced. In this story I am just a sassy human, but a sassy human in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, which is almost as good as being a Sylvan!
The friends met at the Keweenaw Kitchen. They were seated at a table near the window, enjoying their breakfast together. It was late Sunday morning, a quarter to eleven. They were all church-goers, and lived in different towns. The Keweenaw Kitchen was in Lee's community, and the usual haunt where the friends would get together.
The "Kitchen" was old fashioned, with wood tones and simple tables and booths. Adorned on the walls were "Yooper" memorabilia, and it was currently filled with the aromas a coffee and bacon.
On one side sat Samantha and Lee, often holding hands as they nibbled at their breakfast. Samantha was wearing sky-blue dress, the delicate lace overlaying a soft, flowing skirt. Lee wore a white polo shirt and a pair of dark-wash slacks.
Lee was eating biscuits and gravy, which were considered excellent at this restaurant by all around the area. Samantha's breakfast consisted of eggs and hash browns, though she had pushed most of the latter to the side, warning about her figure.
On the other side of the table was Kish. Kish wore a charcoal gray t-shirt with collar, and dark indigo jeans. Kish had gone for a light breakfast. He had already finished his portion of scrambled eggs, and was now working on his second glass of orange juice.
The events from a day earlier were the topic of conversation. The unnatural fog, the woman, the song, the disappearance all were being discussed in low tones. They had often walked in the woods, but it was always looking at scenery and joking together. This excursion had been different. Much of it, most of it, didn't make sense.
"The way the woman was just gone, it was completely unreal!" Kish exclaimed.
Samantha held up her hand while making a "shush" sound.
"Kish, all this talk is crazy. Yes, it happened, but no one is going to believe us," she said, in a low voice.
"I don't want any of my students talking about their crazy history teacher," Lee added . He looked over at a group of teenagers in the corner, guys and girls. "A couple of those are in one of my classes."
"Okay, okay," Kish said, talking more quietly. "But it happened. The fog dissipating just like that when the woman disappeared, and all of a sudden our hearing and sight cleared up."
Lee looked at Samantha, and then back to his friend Kish. "It is the strangest experience I've ever had, and that is a lot when you spend your days teaching a classroom of teenage kids. Or being friends with you!" Lee added with a smirk.
Once the "woman of the fog", as they had started referring to her, had vanished, the strange weather had receded. It had been several minutes before Sammy, Lee and Kish had gotten their wits back.
Kish was especially affected, and it looked like he had only partly woken up from a dream. He kept looking around for the woman, and called out for her, but it was not any good. She was just gone.
"I think it is pretty cool. We're part of a mystery," Kish said. "We're still part of it too. It isn't like we woke up this morning, and it was over. Don't you want to know more about what happened?"
Just then bells jingled as the door to the restaurant opened to admit another guest. A pretty redheaded woman entered. She had long hair, glasses, and beautiful green eyes. She was wearing a brown vest over a white flowered blouse, a long red skirt, and black high-healed shoes.
The woman looked over at the friends and made her way over to the table. Her walk was lively, her hips swaying rhythmically and her chest bouncing just enough to attract attention. She seemed unaware of the affect she had with the other patrons in the diner, especially the teenage boys that had stopped talking to watch her. One of the teen girls at the table slapped the boy beside her, trying to get his attention back.
She sat down opposite Kish. She gave him a fun smile, and then looked over to Sammy and Lee. Despite her red hair and angular face, she bore a resemblance to the writer. She was, in fact, his older sister, and taught at the university Kish was attending for his Master's.
"Hey Kish. Hi Lee, Sammy. Sorry I'm late. I had to pick up some paperwork at the office. How is everyone?" The woman spoke with a melodic voice, and with the hint of an Indian accent, which was surprising considering her Gaelic ancestry.
Samantha put her fork down and turned to look at the woman.
A waitress made her way over to the table. She was older, a heavy-set short lady with brown hair tied back in a bun. A small name-tag identified her a Marissa.
"Hi darling, what are you having for breakfast?" the waitress asked.
The redhead looked up and the waitress and smiled.
"Just some coffee for me, and some wheat toast. Thanks."
The waitress nodded and as she walked away the redhead looked over to her friends.
"Hi Lantashi," Samantha said. "Do you know what kind of trouble your little brother got us into yesterday?" She said it with mirth in her voice, and Sammy got the exasperated reaction she wanted from Kish.
Lantashi gave Sammy a skeptical look, peering over the top of her green-rimmed glasses.
"Kish filled me in a bit after church," she said. "I think you are all are crazy. It sounds like one of Kish's fantastical books to me."
"I told you Tash wouldn't believe me," Kish said, using his sister's nickname. "Truth be told, I wouldn't believe me if I hadn't been on the trip."
Marissa returned, setting down Lantashi's coffee and toast. Lantashi thanked her, and when the woman had left she turned back to her friends, giving them a big smile.
"I... just haven't had much time to think about it. I'm sure something happened. And if there was anyone in Yooperville that would stumble across a ghost, it would be my little brother." She winked at Kish.
"I didn't say it was a ghost," Kish objected. "And you don't believe in ghosts anyway!"
Lantashi held a hand up to her chest, feigning shock
"I never said that. We're Irish, you and me. We have to believe in legends! Besides, you are the physics student, not me. You tell me how what happened to you lot yesterday. How does a fiction-writing physicist get into such trouble?"
"Oh, he manages that just fine," said Lee.
"I have a lot of help getting into trouble," Kish retorted, glaring at Lee.
"I asked Simon on the way over about ghosts and stuff up here. You'd be surprised what he said!" Lantashi said excitedly.
"Who's Simon?" asked Samantha.
"Tash named her phone's AI helper," Kish answered.
"I like the name!" Lantashi said. "And it is a suave voice."
She continued, "Well, there is the legend of the ghost of the miner's wife at Lake of the Clouds. A miner and his wife had a home there. One day, the miner died walking home, and was never seen again. The woman refused to believe that she had lost her love. She waiting by the lake every night for her husband to return. Eventually, the woman took her own life, thinking she would be reunited with her husband. But instead, she now haunts the land, and if you are at the Lake of the Clouds after dark, you can hear her anguished wailing after dark."
Kish was enjoying the story, but Samantha interjected.
"You, you... Tash, you are supposed to be the voice of reason here! Tell Kish it wasn't a ghost. There has to be a logical explanation. You teach computer stuff at the university. Tell him, I don't know, logic stuff."
Lantashi giggled.
"You have a strange idea of people in computer science, sweetie. Yeah, a lot of the computer science professors have neatly trimmed beards and nice suits. Some are all stuffy. But then there are the scruffy ones. The stuffy ones are all logical, if, ands, ors, logic gates, recursion, the whole structure of it all. But the scruffy ones, they approach computers as an art, not a science. Instead of approaching coding as establishing standards and reusability, the scruffies pursue new paths, new ideas, new thoughts. They love creativity more than standards."
"Which one are you?" Lee asked. "A stuffy or a scruffy?"
Lantashi giggled again, smiling.
"You're not going to be the one to find out," she said.
Turning her attention back to her little brother, Lantashi said, "Well, Kish, seems like I am supposed to be your guardian sister. So, anyway, Simon said that there is a ghost not too far away from here. It is just up over the bridge and a short drive to Calumet, in an old shut-down theatre. The ghost is an actress, Madame Helena Modjeska. She died something like a hundred years ago, and is still said to haunt the theatre today. Have you ever been there?"
"I've never been in the theatre, but of course I have friends up that way. We all do," Kish said.
"Well, if you want to visit a haunted place, that is the place to go! Or Brockway Mountain. Brockway has stories too, and it is so beautiful up there under the stars at night."
Lantashi had grown animated talking about the local legends. She had attracted a bit of an audience, with the other diners stopping to listen. The waitress, standing a small away, had stopped to listen as well. Local legends were always a favorite subject in the beautiful and sparsely populated wilderness.
Lee, noticing the attention, whispered to Sammy, "I don't think she's helping."
Samantha smiled, and whispered back, "No, not at all."
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