The Comfort Shack Read Online Free PDF

very entertaining and the girls loved it. Thanks
again. Good night.” Leanne glanced at her husband. Stu was ogling
Ellie like a schoolboy with a crush. She nudged him. “Say good
night, Stu.”
    “Good night,” he said.
    Ellie returned to the reception desk while
Leanne led Stu to their room.
     
     
    By morning, the fire had burned itself out
and the air inside the cottage had turned chilly. Leanne awoke
wrapped tightly, burrito-style, inside the comforter. Sunlight
brightened the room. Poor Stu must have spent the night
blanket-less and shivering. She glanced over. No Stu. His side of
the bed was empty. She called for him. The girls poked their heads
into the doorway. “Have you seen your father?”
    The girls shook their heads. Perhaps he'd
gone for a jog. He could definitely afford to drop a few pounds.
She showered, dressed, and packed her things.
    Stu still hadn't returned and her concern
shifted to fear. Where was he ?
    She went to the reception desk. A man with
'Robert' printed on his name tag was busy restocking a display of
brochures. “Hi, I'm Leanne Brown. My family is staying in the
Commandant's Cottage. You haven't by chance seen my husband Stu,
have you? He's missing.”
    Robert smiled meekly, his expression a mix of
sympathy and helplessness. Leanne knew the answer before he spoke.
“No ma'am. I haven't seen anyone.”
    “How about the girl who works nights, Ellie?
Could you ask her?”
    He stepped back; an incredulous look on his
face. Was it too big an imposition to make a simple phone call? Her
husband was missing. Didn't he get that? “Ma'am, we don't have a
girl working nights, nor anyone named Ellie on staff.”
    “You must be mistaken. She checked us in, and
gave us a tour. She's Native American, maybe twenty-five, pretty
with a scar on her chest.”
    “No ma'am, nobody like that.” Robert slid
behind the counter and typed something into the computer. “Did you
say your name was Brown?”
    “Yes.”
    “We show a reservation for Brown. You
reserved the Commandant's Cottage for last night, but never checked
in.”
    “It's wrong. It's got to be.”
    “I'm sorry ma'am. Do you want me to call the
police?”
    Leanne nodded. A dreadful thought occurred to
her. She didn't want to acknowledge it was a possibility, yet
something told her to check. She left Robert punching numbers into
the phone and pushed open the door. She stood in the cold of the
parking lot to get her bearings. At the end of the lot, she found a
trail leading down to the beach. She hoped she was wrong.
     
     
The Comfort Shack Tidbits
    I have
always been fascinated by the way the past ripples into the
present. How atrocities from centuries ago boil over into war
despite generation s of peace. It‘s as if echoes of evil can never
be silenced. The horror is that it’s so often true, as witnessed by
the genocide in Serbia and Rowanda.
     
    I wanted this story to have that unstoppable,
Carrie White’s hand thrusting up from the grave feeling. The
Comfort Shack originally appeared in the Pill Hill Press anthology
Fem Fangs. The theme for the anthology was strong female vampire
characters . I took it a step further and made all the female
characters in this story strong.
     
    At first I wasn’t interested in writing a
vampire story. The call came too close on the heels of another
vampire story I’d written, and I thought I was vampired out. Then I
saw the cover artwork and knew I had to get a story into that
anthology. It had the distinctive look of Alberto Vargas, and was
reminiscent of racy detective and men’s magazines from the forties
and fifties.
     
     
    About the Author

    Mark Souza lives in the Pacific Northwest
with his wife, two children, and mongrel beast-dog, Tater. When
he’s not writing, he’s out among you trying to look and act normal
(whatever that is), reminding himself that the monsters he’s
created are all in his head, no more real than campaign
promises.
     
     
    Upcoming Titles
    My novel Robyn’s