The Last Goodbye
of Harris Turner
A ghost story for Halloween
When reporter Cassidy James got assigned to write the annual "spooktacular" article on local haunted houses for her small-town newspaper, she never expected to run into an old friend of one of the town's famous ghosts. But the elderly Harris Turner begs her to arrange a reunion with the spirit of his long-dead boyhood pal, and he says this paranormal encounter must be scheduled for Halloween night.
All Hallows Eve promises to bring a full (and blue) moon. Turner insists this is prime time for the souls of the restless departed to appear to the living, particularly those who died on a previous blue moon--like his buddy Kingston Grand, who was only twenty-two when he succumbed to the Grim Reaper, more than sixty years ago.
But what's keeping Kingston earthbound in that stately old house, and why is Harris Turner so intent on communicating with the dead after all these years? Cassidy has no idea where this story will lead, but there's no way she's going to miss this once-in-a-lifetime "spook scoop."
“When Kingston came home from college, too sick to continue at school, his parents bought him a brand-new convertible. A 1950 Packard Custom 8, astral blue, all shine. She was a beauty. We’d escape in that blue demon of a Packard and drive up into the hills….”
Harris reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a black-and-white photograph: two handsome young men and a beautiful dark-haired woman, lounging against the hood of a gleaming convertible with its top down. They were grinning and striking a glamorous pose, looking like movie stars of the early 1950s....
Lydia, beaming at center stage, wore a sundress and movie star shades. On her right, Kingston Grand held up a wicker picnic basket and a tennis racket, while on her left Harris Turner palmed the car keys high in his fist, triumphantly, as if he’d just caught them. The picture froze a moment in time, a summer day with three smiling friends on their way to an outing, not a care in the world.
“There we are,” he said to me. “That’s Lydia.”
Adapted from
The Last Goodbye of Harris Turner
by Ellen Byerrum, courtesy of the author
Copyright 2014 by Ellen Byerrum
1950 Packard Custom 8 convertible in astral blue
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