“Honey, I’m home!”


The old house was bitterly cold, because Fall had arrived with a vengeance while he had been gone, with colorful leaves blowing outside and sharp gusts of cold air coming through the multitude of cracks in the windows and siding.  The front door fought against being closed while his hands were full of his luggage, but he leaned up against the dark varnished wood and jiggled the latch until it finally caught, leaving him alone in the wood-panelled living room.  Ignoring the backlog of mail for the moment, he bumped up the thermostat, dragged his suitcase into the bedroom, and walked into the den.


It was almost just as he left it, with a light powdering of dust on the ancient manual typewriter and his creaky antique wooden chair.  He dropped his tired rear end down on the lumpy cushion, picked up the partially-completed manuscript from the table, and leaned back to flip through it.


“You should have seen the convention,” he said between page flips.  “Hundreds…  Well, dozens of people lined up to get autographed copies of Andrea Martin’s latest murder mystery.  Twenty-five book store signings, three different flights in coach, and enough Red Bull to float a boat.  It’s good to be home.”


A faint breeze stirred the curtains on the nearby window, fogging the surface while the gas furnace in the basement chugged away in a futile attempt to heat the drafty old house.  The thin ends of dry branches scraped across the glass with the outside breeze, fluttering the papers with the inevitable draft and blowing one blank sheet across the table.


He rolled the paper down into the old manual typewriter and went back to musing over the manuscript.  “Three chapters in and the body count is higher than anything Andrea has published so far.  The readers seem to like it when the bodies start piling up, but maybe we should wing a few instead of finishing them off.  Change the pace up a little.”


He read in silence for a while, skipping forward at times, backing up when something interesting caught his eye, and ending with a grunt when he ran out of pages.


“It needs a lot of work, like the unfinished first novel you wrote, but—”


The author cut off abruptly as strong, cold fingers touched the back of his neck.  They stroked gently at first, then dug into the corded muscles in long, slow strokes.


In short order, the body of the author was motionless, draped across the wooden chair in the drafty den.  Then the manual typewriter began to peck out a message, one letter at a time.


[i]you like it/ [/i]


Taking a deep breath, the author glanced at the message before giving a brief chuckle.  “Yes, and yes.  Every book has been getting closer to the New York Times Bestseller list, but this is better than all of them so far.”


[i]really/[/i]


“Yes, really.  Just like you said you wanted before you pass on.”


The wind outside the old house died down until the silence became almost oppressive.  Then again, one letter at a time, the antique typewriter pecked out another sentence.


[i]what will you do then/ [/i]


He shrugged.  “I may branch out into a different genre.  Ghost stories, maybe.  After all, I have a similar unfinished goal I’d like to accomplish [i]before[/i] I pass away.”


The typewriter was silent.


“Yes, really.”  He paused to take down the empty frame on the wall and brush the dust off it.  “That notification is going right here, just as you wanted, with your name on it.  Any residuals will go into the scholarship fund, and I’ll have to make my own way in the world.”


The typewriter remained silent.


“First things first,” he said, placing the unfinished manuscript to one side and turning on his computer.  “Let me get this into a document so I can start editing, and you can write out some notes on the second half of the story.”  He paused, glancing over at the silent typewriter while the computer finished booting.  “So have you been thinking up lots of new and interesting ways to kill people while I’ve been gone?”


The typewriter immediately started tapping away.


[i]lots[/i]


“That’s my girl.”  He lined up the first draft and began typing, only to stop and chuckle to himself.  “People would have such a fit if they found out Andrea Martin uses a ghost writer.”