Showing results by author "Scott William Carter" in All Categories

After narrowly surviving a near-fatal shooting, Portland detective Myron Vale wakes with a bullet still lodged in his brain, a headache to end all headaches, and a terrible side effect that radically transforms his world for the worse: he sees ghosts. Lots of them.

A curmudgeon. A loner. That's how people describe Garrison Gage, and that's when they're being charitable. After his wife's brutal murder in New York, and Gage himself is beaten nearly to death, the crippled private investigator retreats 3,000 miles to the quaint coastal town of Barnacle Bluffs, Oregon. He spends the next five years in a convalescent stupor, content to bide his time filling out crossword puzzles and trying to forget that his wife's death is his fault. But all that changes when he discovers the body of a young woman washed up on the beach....

Charles Manson. Ted Bundy. Jeffrey Dahmer. Known for their cunning and savagery. In the late eighties, another infamous serial killer sent 17 innocent people to early graves. Then, suddenly, the murders in the panicked city of Portland, Oregon, stopped - and the Goodbye Killer got away. Myron Vale remembers it well. Long before a fateful bullet cursed him with the ability to see ghosts, he was the young son of the city's most esteemed detective. The case changed Hank Vale, haunting him with a single glimpse of the killer's otherworldly face. He was never the same man again.

A week before Christmas, John and Laura Ray storm into Myron's office, desperate to find their missing daughter. Money? They don't have any. Clues? They have few. Plagued by mounting bills and a skull-crushing migraine, Portland's only ghost detective wants nothing more than to show them the door. But defying his conscience always proves tougher to Myron Vale than saying no, and he soon finds himself embroiled in one of the strangest cases of his career.

In these four riveting tales, Carter takes a classic of science fiction - the time-travel story - into surprising new territory. A man finds a room where time doesn't pass in the spellbinding "The Time of His Life". When a scientist becomes the first person to time travel, "The Time Traveler's Wife" refuses to be left behind in this touching tale. A salesman on the road has a chance encounter with a girl who gives him a glimpse of his "Happy Time", a better life that might have been. And in "Static in a Still House", a garage sale hunter finds a baby monitor tuned into the future.

Former FBI agent Karen Pantelli lives by a simple philosophy: never, ever care. Three years after a tragic mistake ends her once-stellar career, she drifts from one dead-end job to another, quickly moving on when she finds herself getting too attached. A new city. A new life. A new way of forgetting and being forgotten. Until one chilly night behind a seedy bar, when a frightened girl leaps out of the back of a speeding van.

Nearly a year has passed since Garrison Gage became the reluctant guardian of a troubled teenage girl, but neither fatherhood nor the intervening months has improved his mood. His right knee is still mostly worthless. He still prefers to drink his bourbon alone. And even with a certain blonde bombshell a persistent part of his life, he still can't be bothered to buy a cell phone. Or any phone, for that matter. Why? Then somebody might call him.

A troubled young man. A murder that shocks the town. Buried secrets exposed to the world. They find him on the beach, shooting bullets into the sand. His name? Jeremiah Cooper, the son of the bullheaded high school football coach. Slight of build, soft of voice, he's got all kinds of torment lurking behind his eyes. But despite Garrison Gage's best efforts, he can't pull the kid out of his shell. Then someone turns up dead at the local community college, and Jeremiah's fragile world shatters.

Harriet Abel never shows up for her appointment. Irritating as hell? Sure. It's hard enough to work as a private investigator without potential clients standing you up. Of course, it's difficult to show up when you're dead. A revered community figure in the Oregon coast town of Barnacle Bluffs, the teacher extraordinaire never gets a chance to explain why she wants to hire Garrison Gage before her body turns up in a sandy grave. Seldom deterred by the lack of a client, Gage barrels forward intent on discovering the woman's killer.

Another state. Another city. Another dead-end job. A stellar FBI agent until tragedy set her adrift, Karen Pantelli finds herself working at a pizza joint in Billings, Montana, trying to ignore the increasing global unrest dominating the news, when three armed men walk through the door. Soon a shocking turn of events launches her on a cross-country quest for a former college classmate, an alluring but manipulative woman with just one goal in life: to marry rich. Very rich.

When the cops collar one of the people closest to Gage for murder, the desperate hours ahead become a frantic push to right a presumed injustice. Add in a daughter’s secret life, a bad boy Hollywood star, and a troubled new police chief with something to prove, and the night doesn't just get worse. It forces a quickly unraveling Gage to choose between cold, uncomfortable truths—about himself, about someone he loves—and shallow but comforting deceptions.

Gage might go mad. With most of inland Oregon enduring a record-setting heatwave, the hordes descend on Barnacle Bluffs seeking cooler ocean air, and it's all the curmudgeonly private investigator can do to keep from shooting somebody. What's the harm in one fewer tourist, anyway? Yet when a desperate young woman shows up claiming her depressed husband has gone missing, Gage will need all of his wits to find the man before something terrible happens.

On a rainy night at a tiny Oregon college, a shadowy figure at the back of the hall interrupts Bullwick Farley's mythology lecture: "Little Red Riding Hood has done something terrible," he says, "and I desperately need your help before it's too late." Just another story in a class all about stories? A myth, a fable, a tale told and retold? The students might think so. But 10 years after leaving a life where even the strangest stories turn out to be true, Farley faces a choice.

In this touching Christmas tale, a Minnesota widower has a magical encounter with an enchanted snow man—and gets a last glimpse of the love of his life. Originally appeared in Cicada Magazine. Narrated by Scott William Carter.

Years after his wife dies in a mafia hit gone wrong, Garrison Gage finally pieces together a life for himself in the Oregon coastal town of Barnacle Bluffs. Some days the cranky private investigator with the bum knee and the caustic wit could even call himself content. Maybe even happy. But marrying again? Never. Yet not long after quirky Rita Rodriguez enters the scene, Gage can’t imagine life without her.

They find his body at the bottom of Heceta Head Lighthouse - Ed Boone, a longtime volunteer who commits suicide rather than see his grim diagnosis to its bitter end. The strangeness of the old man's death makes the local news, but Garrison Gage thinks little of it until the famous Nora West sneaks into town with a strange letter in hand.

A beached sailboat. A missing man. A distraught woman staggering ashore. There to greet her - Garrison Gage, full-time curmudgeon and part-time private investigator, who quickly finds himself thrust into his familiar role of crusader for the desperate and downtrodden. The woman claims to have no memory, but is she lying?

We all look up at the moon and wonder. And maybe dream. For centuries, the moon filled our imaginations. Eleven professional writers took those dreams and set original stories on moons scattered all over the galaxy. Yet, as the dreams of centuries, every story holds a human touch. From a mythical man fulfilling a childhood wish to a fantastic addition to Kristine Kathryn Rusch's best-selling Retrieval Artist series, this volume of Fiction River allows you to travel to 11 different moons without leaving the comfort of home.

Jason Rosewood loves to draw. In fact, he'd rather draw than do anything else - especially rather than hang out with his annoying ten-year-old sister, Emily. But on the day of Emily's tenth birthday, his sister is kidnapped by three black demon-creatures with glowing white eyes and huge wings. All hope seems lost until a strange little creature named Naja arrives with news that Emily is alive - in a world called Rymadoon, as a prisoner of Dago the Dreaded, an evil dictator who rules the Lost Land of Nogero.

Equal parts riveting and stirring, Carter takes a staple of campfires and rainy nights - the ghost story - into surprising new territory in this collection. No gore or gratuitous splatter here - these tales are meant to raise the hairs on the back of the neck and leave the reader feeling quietly discomfited hours after reading. These five tales have all the makings of good ghost stories with a touch of strange thrown in for good measure.