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    Night Cruiser: Short Stories about Creepy, Amusing or Spiritual Encounters with the Shadow
    Night Cruiser: Short Stories about Creepy, Amusing or Spiritual Encounters with the Shadow
    Night Cruiser: Short Stories about Creepy, Amusing or Spiritual Encounters with the Shadow
    Ebook105 pages1 hour

    Night Cruiser: Short Stories about Creepy, Amusing or Spiritual Encounters with the Shadow

    By Veronica Dale

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    About this ebook

    Ten different people must deal with the dark side. What is "the shadow" they encounter? For Isabel, it's the whisper from the basement that invites her to come on down. For second-grader Emma, it's the tortured spirit that has haunted her family for generations. For Deacon William, it's the damaged android that frightens visitors in the retreat house halls.
    These insightful, award-winning stories move from fantasy to faith, from horror to humor to hope. They ask questions like:
    What’s driving the car that prowls a lonely street at night?
    Can Brent save himself from the deadly creature he’s sure his wife has become?
    Donald teaches a night class, but what’s behind those thick glasses he turns upon his shyest student?

    “We all have a shadow side,” the author says, “a part of ourselves that we’re not proud of and would rather not look at. The more we run away from it, the more we will project it into our horror movies, our fears, and even onto other people or groups. Those who meet the challenge, however, will find that dealing with their shadow can reveal an inner light.”

    With a background in pastoral ministry, the author has found inspiration in psychologist Carl Jung’s studies of the Shadow and in J.R. R. Tolkien's belief that even the worst catastrophe can be redeemed.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherVeronica Dale
    Release dateMar 6, 2015
    ISBN9781310099878
    Night Cruiser: Short Stories about Creepy, Amusing or Spiritual Encounters with the Shadow
    Author

    Veronica Dale

    Veronica Dale writes genre-bridging fiction that includes fantasy, psychological intrigue, tender romance, and the spiritual journey. She is the author of the Coin of Rulve series--which consists of Blood Seed, Dark Twin, Time Candle, and Leaf and Flame--as well as of Night Cruiser: Short Stories about Creepy, Amusing or Spiritual Encounters with the Shadow. Her work has received the five-star Silver Seal from Reader's Favorite Book Review, plus commendations from Writer's Digest, Writers of the Future, and New Millennium. With a background in pastoral ministry, Vernie is an Established Author with Detroit Working Writers, an Ethical Author with the Alliance of Independent Authors, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa. She is also a graduate of the Viable Paradise Science Fiction and Fantasy workshop. "I love dark chocolate," she says, "and am a real fan of what you might call the Holmes-Data-Spock archetype." One of her favorite memories is of the time she actually touched a grey whale calf off the coast of Baja California.

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      Book preview

      Night Cruiser - Veronica Dale

      Night Cruiser:

      Short Stories about Creepy, Amusing or Spiritual Encounters with the Shadow

      by: Veronica Dale

      Published by Nika Press

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright © 2014 by Nika Press

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your own personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. Thank you for respecting this author’s hard work.

      Many thanks to Cynthia Harrison, to Dora Badger and Woodward Press for author services, to James Price who created the book cover, to Joe Ponepinto for book design and to all the talented writers at Detroit Working Writers who generously gave their suggestions and support. Without their help, and that of many others, Night Cruiser would never have backed out of the garage!

      Praise for Night Cruiser stories

      I read ‘Persons of Marred Appearance’ two or three times and discovered it was full of compact meaning. It’s innovative and creative, with an author extraordinaire!

      Annick Hivert-Carthrew has written several books, including Ghostly Lights Return and A Pictorial History of Michigan Civilian Conservation Corps.

      ‘Sealing the Deal’ is hysterically funny! Excellent details. I love the whole bit.

      F. J. Bergmann writes speculative poetry and fiction. She is editor of the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s Star*Line journal and poetry editor of Mobius: The Journal of Social Change. Her many awards include the SFPA Elgin Award and the Rannu Award for Poetry.

      ’Jake and Jamal’ is a thought-provoking and tragic piece, [describing] the potential of evil unleashed. Excellent.

      Iris Lee Underwood’s feature articles have appeared in over a dozen magazines and newspapers. She is the author of Encouraging Words for All Seasons.

      Striking and fascinating, ‘Scorpio’ has accomplished a lot in a short space.

      Diana Dinverno is a poet and author of feature stories and essays which have appeared in Metro Detroit and national publications.

      ‘Night Cruiser’ is a story we can all relate to! It’s told in a great voice and held my interest.

      Christian Belz. is an architect, the author of the Ken Knoll Murder Mystery Series, and the Grand Prize winner in Aquarius Press’s Bright Harvest Prize for his short story Chambers.

      Dear Reader…

      …you might enjoy these stories at a deeper level if you know where they’re coming from. A brilliant psychologist, one of my favorite authors, and a medieval mystic all inspired them.

      The psychologist Carl Jung wrote about the shadow. This is the dark side of ourselves that we don’t want to look at, the thing we don’t wish to be—and which therefore gets projected into our nightmares, our horror stories, and even onto other people and groups. Yet Jung believed that, if acknowledged and correctly come to terms with, The shadow is ninety percent pure gold.

      The author is J.R.R. Tolkien, who wrote about the eucatastrophe, how a tragic event, the catastrophe, can become redemptive. His Lord of the Rings is a prime example of that, as are the New Testament Passion narratives.

      And the mystic is a woman whose writings I discovered when I was working toward my master’s degree in pastoral ministry: Julian of Norwich. In one of the most famous lines in Catholic theology, she states: All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.

      These expressions of faith intrigued me, even though I knew they sometimes run counter to what we experience. In my work as a pastoral minister I had to face the fact that bad things can happen to good people. But I also experienced something else. I saw how men and women of every religious persuasion were able to find unexpected strength in their encounters with the dark side. They have discovered that, as Jung put it, their considerable moral effort in becoming conscious of the shadow also made them aware of their inner light.

      The characters in these stories, as well as those in my upcoming fantasy series Coin of Rulve, also struggle with this encounter. They all come face-to-face with the shadow, and must decide what to do about it.

      Some of these stories are disturbing, but it’s the shadow’s job to disturb. Other stories have humorous or spiritual dimensions, which have to do with our job: to use these uniquely human abilities to mine the shadow for its pure gold.

      The first story here, Night Cruiser, is an invitation to embark on this mining expedition. Enjoy the ride!

      CONTENTS

      NIGHT CRUISER

      DRIED BEANS

      SEALING THE DEAL

      SCORPIO

      PERSONS OF MARRED APPEARANCE

      WITHIN FIVE FEET

      ONE LEVEL DOWN

      JAKE AND JAMAL

      ADVENT

      END OF STORY

      Questions For Discussion

      NIGHT CRUISER

      What’s inside the dark car that prowls the street at night? A shorter version of this story was an award-winner in the Rochester Writers’ Micro-Fiction Contest.

      I see it from time to time, always in the middle of the night: a car moving slowly down our quiet streets. I’ve asked my neighbors, but no one else has ever noticed it. That’s probably because my house is at the far end of our small subdivision, so I’m the only one who gets this particular perspective.

      The car enters from the main road, prowls past my house, turns around at the end of the block, passes me again, and then leaves. I can’t tell if it’s the same car all the time, but it’s not any make or model I recognize. Since we have no streetlights, I’m not sure about the color either. At night all cars are black, aren’t they? But sometimes I think this one could be red.

      This strikes me as odd; you’d think anyone would be able to tell the difference.

      Once I was startled to see the car parked directly across the street from my house. The windows were dark, the headlights turned off. It just sat there. I watched, hidden and motionless behind the stacked vertical blinds, my heart thumping. A red point of light moved in the front seat. The lit end of a cigarette perhaps, held in an unseen hand. Was the face turned toward me? Studying me? I eased back from the window and returned to my chair in the living room. It’s a comfortable chair, conformed to my shape after many years. I tried to read under the bright circle cast by the table lamp, but my mind was outside in the dark. When I looked again, the car was gone.

      It’s important that you know I have a life. I go to work, have lunch with friends, watch the 11 o’clock news. It’s always the

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