Free Call of Shadows: A Fearless Series Short Story (The Fearless Book 0) by Terry Maggert Page A

slowly, causes detestable changes to my body, especially after decades of beautiful existence without the fear of death. I still feel the sweaty back of a horse under my legs when I dream, or my feet pounding the glorified cow paths that once passed for roads, now covered with the weight of time, or progress-- perhaps a strip mall that was even now itself fading into obscurity as time left me further from the shore of my youth, in place so remote I could not recall the most basic snippets of my own beginnings. That is how completely she inhabits me, body and soul, or whatever I have left that currently serves as my conscience.
     The advent of the internet created limitless opportunity to spread bait stories, neatly excising the need for face-to-face contact in order to cast our nets among the herd, but the digital footprints left behind with this new vector for scratching her particular type of itch are too great an exposure. That, I could not- we -could not afford, it was too vain, and pride is the mark of a weak Helper, which I am not. I know my limitations, which in itself is a type of strength, and one of the reasons that she chose me. I am careful, prudent, and even suspicious of the most innocuous details that drift into my focus. 
    I trust nothing outside of my own hands and her ability to bring me life, so I choose the tested and true method. I had to observe, blend when and where I could. I was never too intense or memorable, merely insistent and quietly confident in my delivery, polished over these decades of trial and error, and to the kids who listened, I became a storyteller who bridged myth and ridicule while playing to their deliciously free sense of wonder. I would interject the story of Sammy Ridgeway when, and where, I saw an opening. Asking directions and casually mentioning the cross was a simple means to plant the first seeds of lore about Sammy, and a small layer in the nuanced story, tailored, of course, to each group of potential visitors to my little stage. A good Helper is also adaptable, and can think swiftly enough to seize success from targets that may have seemed dismissive or openly hostile to my curious little ghost story.
     Because of my laconic but persistent approach, I was assured that with the first dewlapped nights of October the rumors would start, and they were always the same. Kids would smirk and swear they knew it was true. " They say…I heard…she saw. . . ” 
    The story would mount from a whisper campaign to the critical stage, where a truck full of jocks and cheerleaders, awash with hormones and simmering competitive spirit, would prowl unsuccessfully along the back roads, looking for the cross. When they found it, there was never a ghost, if that was what I had promised, and no moaning shade to prove the story true, leaving a hooting mass of teens  proven right. The momentarily crestfallen leader of the group would then pronounce that the story was bullshit. With the male jocks’ collective hands firmly on the springy, youthful tits of their female prey, they would ride back, groping and forgetting all at once, their faith in the natural world as unshaken as their position in the social order. 
    The cross would sit undisturbed, coated with the dusts of summer, fall, and disbelief, but even as the group denounced my carefully planted rumors, there would always be a single believer, lonely and shunned from even the minimal circles of this place. That was the fatted prize that we waited for; the lonely adherent who believed that something existed at the periphery of their known world, and  would drive up hesitantly in cars of every kind- even one painfully shy girl who squeaked her way to the bait on an ancient bicycle taken from a slumping, tired barn. Their movements were always the same; darting eyes drinking in the sheer boredom of the scene except for the cross, which stood stoically as if unaware that it was part of such an unusual tale. Gradually, their breathing