Door Knocker
September 30, 2024 by Dianna Sinovic in category Quill and Moss by Dianna Sinovic, Writing tagged as flash Fiction, short fiction, writing
The staircase is steep, a small hill of thirty-five steps to ascend to reach your room. This was not in the description you read of the quaint New England hotel when you did your research. You realize quaint has more than one definition. The stairs are only the first of several aspects of this lodging that were omitted in the details provided. The second is that there are only three rooms in the hotel, because the first floor houses not only a podiatrist’s office but also a small gift shop (with only intermittent hours). The third omission is one you will come to realize as the day slips into night.
Room One overlooks a winding creek and a stand of white pine. You are glad for the quiet until the innkeeper informs you that you are currently the sole guest. When you push for a reason, she explains with a shrug that it’s the off-season in this tourist town. She also informs you that she leaves at five o’clock and then entrusts you with the security code for the hotel’s entrance.
The room has a coffeemaker, so you brew a cup and unpack your suitcase—only half full because you are only there for two days, the more important day being tomorrow, when you will give a presentation to a potential client.
At a table big enough for only your laptop and the cup of coffee, but with a serene view of the creek, you review your slides—which ones to edit and which to scrap. Tomorrow’s pitch holds the key to your future and that makes your hand shake as you raise the cup to your lips.
After a dinner down the block of grilled chicken and a side salad—you are trying to lose ten pounds!—you read in your room until nearly midnight. It’s after you turn out the bedside lamp that the noises begin.
First, a bump against the far wall of your room. Then a crackle. More bumps. Muffled voices arguing. This is the off-season; you’re the only one here this week. The innkeeper had told you this conspiratorially. Now you wonder if she somehow forgot about the guest next door.
You put a pillow over your head to block the noise, but the commotion seeps into your subconscious, putting you into an uneasy sleep with dreams of your PowerPoint slides disappearing as you click on them before a room full of people who frown.
Finally, at two-thirty, with the noise unabated, you pull on clothes and march to Room Two. The hallway lights flash on with your movement.
Taking a deep breath to steel yourself, you give a polite knock. No response, but you can hear sounds of laughter, clinking glasses, the thrum of a bass beat. A stronger knock. You consider how tired you will be by morning.
You raise your fist to pound on the door, and the noise ceases. The only sound now: a lone cricket chirping in the hallway behind you. The latch clicks and the door slowly swings open. The dim interior is illuminated only by a nightlight on the opposite wall. Beyond the doorway is silence—no movement, no whispers, nothing. And you remember that you are alone in this building.
The next morning, all is quiet next door, and as you splash water on your face, you wonder if what you remember was just a bad dream. After all, you are stressed: The success of your business hinges on how well you do today.
The crisp black slacks and stylish silk shirt hide those extra pounds, and you approve of the young woman looking back at you from the full-length mirror. Sipping coffee, you check your bag for the files you’ll need, then touch up your lip gloss. You’ve masked the circles under your eyes as best you can; you are not a night person, as much as your friends want you to be.
Checking your watch, you slip your laptop bag over your shoulder and open the door to leave. You have enough time to drive to the interview, stopping at Starbucks on the way. More coffee will either energize or frazzle you. So much for a good night’s sleep.
In the hallway, precisely centered before you, sits a white bakery bag, the top folded closed. You look left and right, but the hallway stands empty. Cautiously, you pick up the bag, noting that someone has written your name in neat script. A perk from the hotel?
The bag opens easily, and nestled inside is a frosted muffin: scents of butter, cream, and brown sugar waft up, and you dig out the treat. Along with the muffin, your hand catches on a slip of paper, which flutters to the floor.
Now ravenous, you bite into the muffin, then pick up the paper. Another bite finishes the muffin. Delicious, maybe the best muffin you’ve ever had.
You unfold the paper and read the words written in the same neat script:
Our apologies if our party disturbed your sleep. Please accept this peacekeeping gesture. You will get the job.
No signature, but you assume it’s from the innkeeper.
Oh, well. You crumple the bag, hoping at the truth of her positive message.
When you arrive at the appointment, the client job offer is waiting for you; no presentation needed.
Back at the hotel, you thank the innkeeper for the morning muffin and share your good news.
“Muffin?” she says, her eyebrows raised.
Some of Dianna’s stories are in the following anthologies.
Salad Days
August 30, 2024 by Dianna Sinovic in category Columns, Quill and Moss by Dianna Sinovic, Writing tagged as paranormal, short fiction, writing
In the shade of a red maple, Ana helped spread the tablecloth over the picnic table and stepped back to let her family lay out the food: tuna salad, pasta salad, chips, grapes, strawberries, brownies, muffins. She and her grown children and her two grandchildren had gathered at the edge of Lake Nockamixon to celebrate her seventieth birthday, on an August afternoon laden with humidity.
Unscrewing a thermos lid, her son Jasper poured sparkling wine into paper cups. Alcohol was banned at the park, but in a nondescript container, who would be the wiser? When everyone but the teens, Luna and Geoffrey, had a cup, Jasper raised his.
“To our mom, on this milestone birthday.” He chugged his drink. “If only Dad could have joined us.”
“Here, here.” There was polite applause.
Ana raised her cup and smiled at the group. There had been some bumps and potholes on the road of life for her family—perhaps the biggest bump, Emery’s death almost a year ago from a heart attack.
Jasper’s eyes glistened as he poured himself another round. Her oldest seemed the most deeply affected by his father’s passing. Kaitlin, his wife, laid a hand on his shoulder in comfort. Ana’s other son, Paul, and her daughter Mindy and partner Sonja lined up for another splash of wine.
What the rest of the family didn’t notice—or failed to sense—was Emery’s presence just beyond the picnic table, a shimmering apparition with waving arms. Emery showed up with regularity, frightening Ana at first when he popped into view a few days after his death. Picking up the shards of the plate that broke when she dropped it in surprise, she wondered what a hallucination of a dead spouse portended for her mental health. But as his sightings continued, she realized he was benign if annoying, much like he’d been in real life.
On this day, Emery signaled to her with his arms. As always, he was silent. Apparitions didn’t make noise anyway, did they? He had been a silent bear of a man, and his children took after him. The group remained quiet around the picnic table, until she sighed, picked up a paper plate, and dug into the spread.
Emery was still waving at her, gesturing at the table—did he want a glass of the wine? How would that work?—but she decided to ignore him, as she too often had done while he was alive.
“Thanks, everyone,” she said. “This is a wonderful get-together. Let’s eat!”
Plates filled, the group moved to the next picnic table over to sit down. Paul and Jasper talked about the Phillies prospects, and Mindy chatted quietly with Sonja.
It was Luna who took the volume up a notch.
“Grams, I made the tuna salad. Don’t you want any?” Luna, at thirteen, could still pout if the mood suited her.
Why had she passed up the salad?
“Your granddad—” Ana started, but knew that explanation wouldn’t do. On her seventieth birthday, she didn’t need to worry her family that she was going crazy.
Jasper broke off his conversation with Paul to look at Ana oddly. “Mom? You okay?”
She nodded. “Of course.” She reached out and gently squeezed Luna’s shoulder. “I just didn’t feel like tuna today. I’m sure it’s scrumptious.”
Smiling, Luna returned to her own plate, scooping up mouthfuls of food. “It is. Mom said so.”
What had Emery been so insistent about? He was now standing behind Jasper, hands on his hips. No more waving or acting agitated. Words from the past bubbled up. I kept trying to tell you.
Kaitlin brought out from a cooler a boxed birthday cake. Luna crowded next to her to plunge the candles into the frosting. Geoffrey, Luna’s older brother, seemed uninterested as only a fifteen-year-old can be at a family gathering.
Paul pulled a lighter from his pocket, but paused, arm extended toward the candles, his face now a pale shade of green. He thrust the lighter at Kaitlin and hurried to the restroom facility across the picnic area. She lit the candles.
Instead of a sweet chorus of the birthday song, one by one, the members of Ana’s family fled to the restroom, their faces wan, holding their stomach.
“What’s going on?” Ana muttered. She watched the candles flicker in the breeze off the lake. “Happy birthday to me,” she sang softly. “Happy birthday to me.” She blew out the flames. Emery moved closer to her and pointed a shimmering hand at the tuna salad.
Oh.
“Food poisoning?” She addressed her husband’s ghost out loud.
He nodded vigorously. Death apparently had given him license to add drama to a situation. Why couldn’t he have been a little more lively before?
“I’m sure they’ll be fine. Just a touch of ptomaine.” She idly began cleaning up the picnic debris, collecting the paper plates, pouring out the bubbly left in glasses. She closed up the food cartons, including the suspect tuna salad. No one had yet returned from the facilities. Should she call 911?
Before she could pull out her phone, Jasper staggered back to the table.
“Taking everyone to the hospital,” he croaked.
“If you must go, I can drive,” Ana said. “I feel fine.”
“No, no,” Jasper said, waving his hand half-heartedly. “It’s your birthday.”
“You are sick. Everyone is sick. This is ridiculous.” She picked up the cooler and bags and carried them to her van. Emery walked beside her, fading in and out. Fourteen months ago, he kept complaining about back pain, an ache that wouldn’t ease up. For a man who said little, that should have been her clue. And now, he’d tried to alert her to another threat, and she’d failed again to understand.
Ana started the van, picked up Jasper and then the rest, who were puddled by the restrooms.
At least she could help salvage the remains of the day.
As she pulled onto the highway, Emery, hovering near her window, smiled.
Some of Dianna’s stories are in the following anthologies.
The Clue in the Weathered Hardback
July 30, 2024 by Dianna Sinovic in category Columns, Quill and Moss by Dianna Sinovic, Writing tagged as mystery, Nancy Drew, short fiction, writing
Emma worked her way through the tables of used books laid out at a community fair in Bucks County. Books! As if she didn’t have enough of them on her bookcases and her bedside table. Balancing an armful of books—mysteries, a literary classic, two romances—she spied a familiar cover.
“It’s a Nancy Drew.” She smiled at the memory. Her mother had bequeathed her small collection to Emma, who only skimmed them—too dated for her. But she had kept a few of the titles, mostly as a reminder of her mother, who had passed on three years before.
The book, The Secret in the Old Attic, was not one she’d read. Picking it up, mostly out of curiosity, not out of a desire to buy it, Emma opened the cover to leaf through it. Instead of a full complement of pages, though, the interior was carved out to make a book safe. Within the safe lay a folded slip of paper. She smoothed out the slip. On it, in spidery handwriting: IOU.
Fascinated at the clever use of the book, Emma added it to her stack of purchases and left the sale with the bag of used volumes.
At home, she googled the topic and learned that book safes had long been a common way to hide valuables, including money. As long as you remembered which books you’d carved up, no one else would be the wiser as they perused your shelves, either as a guest or a thief.
Lured by the information, she tucked away fifty dollars in the Nancy Drew book and slipped it onto the bookshelf in her living room. An experiment, she told herself. On a run to her public library after work several weeks later Emma remembered the book safe when she passed by the children’s section on her way to the checkout.
She pulled it from the shelf when she returned home and popped it open. The bills had vanished; in their place sat a folded slip of paper. It was identical to the one she’d seen earlier, at the sale, down to the faintly creepy message.
Feeling her pulse flutter in alarm, she dropped the book and the paper. WTF? She spun in a circle to take in the room. It was empty, as was the rest of her modest ranch, but she shivered. Who had been there? And when?
As the moments ticked past, she felt silly. I must have left the slip in the book when I brought it home. As for the money, maybe she’d imagined placing it there.
“Let me try again,” she said aloud to break the spell that seemed to keep her feet glued to the floor. Digging in her wallet, she pulled out two twenties, folded them in half and dropped them into the book safe. She tossed the IOU into the recycle bin.
This time she marked her calendar: Check in one week. Determined to solve the mystery—was she now Nancy Drew?—she set up a surveillance camera aimed at the bookshelf. If there was a thief—but there couldn’t be!—the camera would capture the culprit.
When the week had crawled by, Emma eagerly jerked the book from the shelf, then hesitated. The camera hadn’t caught any strangers in her home. What would the book reveal?
Inside the safe, the same slip of paper beckoned her to unfold it. The money was gone.
“Dammit,” she said, frustration coloring her expletive. Staring at the open book for a few moments, she hit on a solution. Two can play this game. She lay the paper slip on the kitchen table, found a pen, and printed neatly: You owe me ninety bucks. Pay up! With the refolded slip back in the book safe, Emma once again reshelved the hardback.
Barely twenty-four hours passed before Emma succumbed to temptation and pulled out the book. She laughed in surprise. No more notes; the safe contained ninety dollars in crisp bills—a fifty and two twenties—all neatly folded in half.
The cycle, she decided, had ended. She would keep the Nancy Drew book, but forgo putting anything into the paper safe, lest the mystery of the borrower be reactivated.
It was later, as she sat on the couch watching an episode of Stranger Things, that she looked at the returned cash more closely. She switched off the TV and turned on a lamp to inspect. The bills felt and looked authentic—the texture, the watermark, the colors shifting in the numerals—but the portraits . . . She struggled to remember who should be there. Jefferson? Jackson? She was fairly sure a guy named McCall wasn’t one of them. She turned the bills over. On the back, although each building was identified by caption, neither the Capitol nor the White House looked familiar.
The biggest, most obvious difference stared right at her. She ran a finger along the banner words above the buildings: United Territories of America.
More of Dianna’s stories can be found in the following anthologies:
Night Vision
June 30, 2024 by Dianna Sinovic in category Quill and Moss by Dianna Sinovic, Writing tagged as paranormal, short fiction, writing
The night the eyes appeared in the window for the fourth time was the night Casie moved to the guest room, leaving Benjamin to sleep alone in the master.
He laughed at her the next morning. “You were dreaming. There’s nothing out there but a few deer, maybe a raccoon.”
She stirred sugar into her coffee and frowned. “They were glowing—the eyes.” She shivered at the memory, now running on a loop through her brain. “Our bedroom needs blinds or drapes—something to give us privacy.”
The floor-to-ceiling windows looked out on a dramatic hillside of wildflowers, studded with hemlock and pine, a captivating view during the daylight hours. But at night, the blackness beyond the glass made her uneasy.
“The eyes were … glowing?” He chuckled. “Some dream, sweets.” He drained his mug and shoved back from the table. “See you tonight.”
She noted that he’d ignored her request.
They both loved the light, airy feel of the house. The wood floors, the kitchen with its cute eating nook, the guest room tucked into the second story—every aspect said this was a place they would be happy in.
And they had been, over the last seven months since moving in.
Until the eyes.
Casie slept lightly on a good night, and tossed and turned on a bad one. Benjamin barely stirred on his side of the bed, even during fierce thunderstorms that had her wide-eyed until the last rumble receded.
A month ago, as summer burst onto the hillside behind the house, Casie saw the eyes for the first time. Benjamin had been out of town and she was reading in bed. She sensed that someone was watching her, but the darkness beyond the windows showed nothing; the shine from the bedside lamp masked any details. Switching off the light, she waited for her vision to adjust.
There, about four feet off the ground, a pair of golden eyes glowed.
With a yelp of fear, Casie fled the room. She spent the next three nights that Benjamin was away lying on the living room couch, the drapes drawn, willing herself to sleep. During the day, she struggled to sit for more than a few minutes at her laptop. She had an article to write, but couldn’t concentrate, jiggling her foot, pacing through the house, stopping to study the yard from the master bedroom’s windows. The hillside beyond was benign, peaceful, lush and green.
When her partner returned, Casie weighed how to tell him what had happened but ultimately opted to say nothing. She began to discount what she’d seen. Had there been something staring at her? Their property was far from any neighbor—that was one of its appeals. An animal—even a bear—posed no threat as long as it stayed on the other side of the glass.
Benjamin was back home for a week before she next spotted the eyes. They had made love in the dark, then turned away from each other to sleep, he facing away from her—and the windows.
She muffled a gasp at the golden eyes, this time positioned higher up, maybe five or six feet from the ground.
“Sweets, what’s wrong?” he mumbled, already drifting into dreamland.
The eyes held their position and slowly blinked. Casie pulled a pillow over her head and closed her eyes. It’s outside, outside, outside. She repeated the mantra silently to herself.
The third night she saw them, she woke Benjamin.
“Something’s out there,” she whispered.
“Where?” He propped himself up in bed.
The eyes, which had appeared only a few feet off the ground, faded away.
“Never mind,” she said.
Sleep would be futile that night, but she took comfort in Benjamin’s soft snoring beside her.
#
Over a dinner of chicken salad, Casie listened to Benjamin recount his day. When it was her turn, she sighed. Her stomach felt as tightly coiled as an overwound watch, with her jiggling left foot the ticking second hand.
“I got nothing done today.” She stabbed a chunk of chicken with her fork. “It’s the weird eyes—I am so freaked out I can’t sit still.”
He shook his head. “This is how you get me to do what you want about those damn windows, isn’t it?”
“I’m not making it up.”
He carried his plate to the sink. “Here’s what I’ll do. When we’re ready for bed, I’ll go out, scout around with a flashlight, make sure we’re safe.” The way he said safe carried a whiff of belittlement.
True to his promise, Benjamin made a show of traipsing through the grasses and wildflowers that grew near the house, while Casie watched from the bedroom. He swept a high-power flashlight across the area, then stepped back inside the room through the glass door.
“Not a spooky thing out there, sweets.”
“Whatever,” she said, resigned that he would never believe her.
At his suggestion, they traded sides in the bed that night; he would sleep closer to the windows.
Perhaps it was that switch, or the effect of her emotional exhaustion, but she fell into a deep sleep almost immediately.
When she woke later, her phone said it was nearly two-thirty. In the dimness of the bedroom, she grasped two things: Benjamin was not in bed, and the glass door to the outdoors hung open.
“Benjamin?” she called, but softly, now aware of yet a third thing: The glowing eyes were in the room with her.
The following anthologies contain some of Dianna’s short stories:
First Step
May 30, 2024 by Dianna Sinovic in category Quill and Moss by Dianna Sinovic, Writing tagged as Feathers, First step, wings
From the fourteenth floor of Kaitlin’s apartment building, the view of the atrium was breathtaking, even gut-wrenching, especially if you were terrified of heights, which Kaitlin was. Because of that, she lived on the second floor, just high enough to feel the thrill of looking down onto the atrium’s floor, but not paralyzing.
Floor 2 was also safe enough for her son, Zeke, all of seven. He wasn’t a climber, so she didn’t have to worry about him falling from the overlook. He was content to peer through the balusters, or on tip-toe, peek over the top rail. Occasionally, he would beg her to take him up to the fourteenth, the top floor, so he could ooh and aah at the building’s lobby floor far below.
“We’ve already been up there once this month,” she said, when he asked for another look only a week after they’d ridden to the top that May. “Other people live up there. We don’t want to be bothering them, or the management will restrict who can visit.”
“Oh, Mom!” He pouted and ran to his room.
What she didn’t tell him was that she frequented the top floor during the day when he was at school. On a break from her home-based editing work, she would ascend to the upper floor and fantasize about standing on the top rail, spreading her imaginary wings and gliding down. In her dream-state, she pictured landing at the bottom with a whisper touch of her feet.
One morning, a woman with frizzy red hair surprised Kaitlin by appearing at her side without warning, making her jump. “You sure come up here a lot.” The woman was early fifties, with frown lines, freckles, and green eyes. “If you’re on a suicide mission, I’d rather you take it somewhere else.”
Kaitlin felt her face grow warm, in opposition to the coldness of the stranger’s voice.
“I just love the view,” she said, quickly turning to walk to the elevator.
“Well, so do I. That’s why I leaped at the chance to rent up here.” The woman watched her narrowly. “No pun intended. If you like it so much, tell management you want the next opening on fourteen.”
Not willing to admit to her acrophobia to this woman, Kaitlin opted for a gesture of friendliness. “I’m Kaitlin, down in 203.” She thrust her hand out and looked the woman straight in the eye. “I didn’t mean to intrude on your floor.”
The woman blinked at her for several moments, and the frown on her forehead smoothed away. She glanced down and then back to Kaitlin, and slowly extended her own hand to shake. “Chris,” she said. “You’re not intruding. We’re all tenants.”
Chris hesitated, and Kaitlin checked her watch. “I’ve got to run,” she lied. “My son will home from school soon, and I’ve got a work project to finish.” She would come back another time, when Chris wasn’t there to snoop.
Before she could turn again for the elevator, Chris stopped her. “Wait. I have something I think you could use. I’ll be right back.”
Kaitlin stood at the railing, idly running her fingers along the metal. She heard a rustle of softness and spun around.
“Here.” Chris held an armful of . . . feathers? The bundle overflowed her arms and trailed to the floor. Mostly grays and whites, but with flashes of teal. “I haven’t used these in several years. They’ll fit you; we’re both about the same size.”
“What is this?” Kaitlin reached out and stroked the feathers. They were synthetic and strong. “A costume?”
“Better.” Chris shook out parts of the bundle. “Try them on. I’ll help you.”
Together, with Kaitlin following Chris’ instructions, they fastened the pieces to Kaitlin’s arms and torso. When every bit had been strapped and buckled in place, Chris smiled, a sadness in her eyes. “They’re perfect on you. I want you to keep them.”
“To do what with?” Kaitlin felt awkward in the outfit, like a circus performer in a Big Top act. “Am I supposed to be a chicken?”
Chris laughed. “Not a chicken. More of an albatross or eagle, a bird with a broad wingspan. I could see it in your eyes. You want to glide down from here. This will let you slowly spiral your descent.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Not a bit.” Chris straightened a section, tightened a strap. “Try them.”
Kaitlin’s stomach churned; this interaction couldn’t be real. “You’ve used these . . . wings?”
“Don’t worry. They’ll support you fully. The hardest part is the first step. After that, easy as pie.” She considered for a moment. “Watch out for the fountain in the center, though. Aim to land anywhere but that.”
A deep panic set in, and Kaitlin fought to calm her breathing. Part of her wanted to run for the elevator, ripping off the feathers as she went. The other part, despite the terror of free fall, wanted to witness the sensation. She had imagined this for weeks on end, and now it was happening.
“You’re sure these work?” Kaitlin half-hoped Chris would burst out laughing with a “fooled you!” response.
“Let me help you up.” Chris didn’t seem to have heard her. She stood at the rail, her hand out. “Remember to extend the wings fully, grip the supports firmly with each hand. Relax your hips and legs. Keep your head up so you can see where you’re going.”
Kaitlin took a deep breath and flexed her arms. “Got it.” Far below, the tiered fountain splashed and gurgled. A few tenants chatted at its periphery, unaware of the miracle poised to launch above them.
She stepped off and was airborne.
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