From the Indie Side Read Online Free Page A

scream, and Froestt crumbles into a shining wet pile of
clothing and snow, and the gallery falls utterly silent.
     
    * *
*
     
    The rest of the program is rescheduled for
the following day, and the host dismisses all of the guests from
the store, and locks the doors. He returns to the dais, which has
been moved aside, and watches as the ambulance technicians shuffle
around, unsure what to do.
    “Lucy,” the host says to the girl, who still
rests on her knees beside the melting heap of bluish snow.
    She looks up at him. “He was real,” she says,
dazed. “I touched him.”
    “I think you should let these men talk to
you,” he says, nodding at the medical team.
    “He was real,” she repeats.
    The men take her out of the store to the
ambulance to check her over. When they’ve left, the host walks over
to the damp pile of snow and old clothes and kicks at them with his
toe. The old man is gone, as if he had never been there. The snow
fades quickly under the shop lights, turning to water and running
away in rivulets across the wood floor.
    “Huh,” he says.
    There’s little else to say.
    He bends over and grabs the collar of the old
man’s coat and picks it up, shaking out clumps of snow. The collar
has a label, and on the label the words J. Froestt are
written in black marker. The words are smeary and damp, the ink
bleeding deep into the label’s threads.
    The host folds the coat at the shoulders and
lays it over the dais, then sighs and goes to the back of the store
and into a closet, and comes back holding a mop, and gets to
work.

A Word From Jason Gurley
     
    Short stories have an advantage over the
novel, I think. In a novel, readers expect answers. They demand
closure. But in a short story, there are no such expectations.
Ambiguity is not anathema to the short story, and so when I write
the odd short story now and then, I find myself stepping away from
the microphone just before the final note plays. “The Winter Lands”
is no different. Who are the Snowlings? What do they want from John
Frost? Was Jonathan Froestt’s perpetual novel-in-progress not a
novel at all, but a work of nonfiction?
     
    Having spent over thirteen years writing a
book called  Eleanor , I know a little something about
novels that never seem to end. I’m attracted to the idea of writers
who fall so deeply into their stories that they can’t seem to find
their way out again. Jonathan Froestt may have taken that habit to
greater extremes than others I’ve known.
     
    But  Eleanor  will be
published in 2014, and I’ve written a few novels that aren’t too
difficult to find. In addition to being invited to contribute to
this anthology, I also designed its cover, something I do quite a
lot of these days. More of both—my books and my cover design
work—can be found at my web site ( http://www.jasongurley.com ).
     
    Many thanks to David Gatewood, Brian Spangler
and Susan May for inviting me to be a part of this fine collection
of stories. I’m honored, and humbled to share these pages with such
amazing independent authors. 

 

     
    “Emily… I need you
to wake up.”
    A stir.
    “Come on now!” a voice cracked.
    The warm touch of someone’s hand.
    “Huh?” she muttered.
    Someone nudged her, squeezing her shoulder
until she moved.
    “What?” Groggy and disoriented.
    “Emily! Girl, it’s an emergency!”
    Reluctantly, her eyes swam dully in a sliver
of fuzzy dim light. She found the outline of a familiar figure
standing over her.
    “Mom?”
    “Come on, Emily. You have to get up. We have
to go, now!”
    Emily peered over to her bedroom window and
tried to focus. The night’s blackness encouraged her to go back to
sleep.
    “It’s still early… and teens need more sleep,
anyway. ’Kay?”
    Another shake came then, harder, pulling the
sleep out of her.
    “What, Mom?” Her voice sounded scratchy,
caught in her dry throat. “What is it?”
    “We’ve got to go. There’s something wrong…
terribly