The Wayward Waffle: Book 4 in The Diner of the Dead Series Read online

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  THE WAYWARD WAFFLE

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  The

  Wayward

  Waffle

  Book Four in the Diner of the Dead Series

  By

  Carolyn Q. Hunter

  Copyright 2016 Summer Prescott Books

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  The Wayward Waffle

  Book Four in the Diner of the Dead Series

  PROLOGUE

  “Come on, Dad. Time for bed.” Shamus Bidwell walked into the living room for the fourth time that evening where his father sat in a large brown easy chair—enamored with late night television.

  “Just a moment,” the elderly gentleman protested. “I just want to see who wins.”

  Tilting his head to one side in a gesture of both annoyance and amusement, Shamus raised one eyebrow at his father.

  The old war veteran, Lincoln Bidwell, continued watching the old tube television screen, where a competitive cooking show was currently airing, without looking up at his son. The contestants were trying to make the best breakfast dish possible in only half an hour while a celebrity chef heckled them about their cooking skills.

  “Dad?” the perturbed son pushed. “It’s almost ten o’clock.”

  “Shhh,” his father insisted, hushing his son with a wave of his hand. “This is the final cook-off.”

  Shamus nodded and sighed. “Alright, but as soon as that show is over you need to get off to bed. You wouldn’t want to fall asleep during your own award ceremony tomorrow, would you?”

  Lincoln laughed, a deep booming sound from deep within his belly. “I’ll be fine, son. Now, stop your nagging. You sound just like your mother.”

  Shamus patted his father lovingly on the back.

  The old man shifted away. “Stop that,” he muttered. “No need to get all handsy.”

  Slumping his shoulders, Shamus headed back into the kitchen to finish cleaning up the dishes.

  He finished scraping the last bit of dried food from the serving bowl into the trash, tying the bag closed. Lifting the heavy black bag of garbage, he stepped out the back door into the darkness.

  For a moment the house was still—utterly quiet except for the low hum of the cooking competition on the television in the background—voices argued and orchestral music played a tune to go along with the tension of the reality show.

  An ear-shattering crash broke the quiet evening like a jarring explosion, followed by a rocky thud.

  “What the devil was that?” Lincoln shouted from the living room.

  Shamus came bursting in the back door.

  “Shamus?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “What broke?” Lincoln insisted.

  Shamus sighed. “I didn’t break anything,” he defended unnecessarily. “Someone tried to brain me with a huge rock outside.”

  All across the yellowed kitchen tile lay broken glass and at the center of it all a large rock. “Whoever it was broke the window, too.”

  “Broke the window?” his father exclaimed. Struggling to stand up from the easy chair, Lincoln eventually managed to get to his feet and hobble into the kitchen.

  A black rock lay at his feet, a piece of string and paper tied around it. “You didn’t see who it was?” the old man insisted.

  “No, the rock just came whizzing past my head and smashed into our window.”

  Squatting down, Shamus gingerly picked up the rock. “It’s from mom’s rock garden.”

  “What is it?” Lincoln pressed.

  Shamus read the scribbled words carefully. Your past is never far behind.

  “Let me see.”

  “I’ll put it back” his son mumbled, his facing draining of color as he headed for the door.

  “Don’t take it away,” Lincoln shouted. “Let me see it.”

  Shamus looked up into his father’s insistent eyes.

  “Give it to me, boy.”

  With reluctant and shaky fingers, the son handed over the rock.

  Lincoln turned it over in his hand. “This was . . .”

  “The centerpiece of mom’s garden. It was her favorite.”

  “Don’t interrupt me,” he whispered, turning the rock again. He hadn’t recognized it at first because of the color. The stone had once been a colorful array of different sediment—it was the main reason his late wife had picked the rock for the centerpiece. Now, however, someone had painted it all black.

  Shamus looked up at his father again. The man’s face had changed, almost as if the light had faded within. No longer did the war veteran command power and confidence as he usually did, instead his face was written with remorse—pain even.

  “Dad?”

  “Shamus,” he muttered. “I think this is a warning.”

  CHAPTER 1

  Sitting up in her bed, Sonja gasped for air, covered in cold sweat. Another nightmare. These frightening night terrors had been coming on consistently almost every night since her return to Haunted Falls. The trouble all began on the night she found the dead body in the freezer at the diner. Now, almost three months later, she had encountered three additional dead bodies—all tangling her in complicated police investigations.

  Unfortunately, the dead bodies and traumatic investig
ations were the least of Sonja’s problems.

  What really bothered her were the ghosts. Sonja had slowly come to believe in the supernatural over the past months. At first, she had doubted herself, assuming she was just under a lot of stress.

  However, after recurring encounters with the supernatural, particularly with one ghost who haunted The Waffle Diner and Eatery, she could no longer deny the experiences. At this point, either she was simply going stark raving mad . . . or ghosts were real.

  Sonja decided to go with the later explanation.

  Getting out of bed, Sonja walked toward the window of the guesthouse, built behind her mother’s home—which had been turned into the daughter’s permanent residence.

  The nightmare was still present—stuck inside of her mind like an afterimage that simply wouldn’t vanish.

  Her estranged father’s face floated in her mind’s eye. The disloyal parent seemed to always play a role in the nightmares, always acting in some sinister way.

  She just couldn’t understand why he was always there. Perhaps her subconscious was bringing up the pain of the memories with him over and over, or maybe it meant something.

  Shaking off the thoughts, she tried to rid herself of the painful negativity of the nightmare—and the memories—it brought on. Pulling back the curtain, she opened the window and breathed in the fresh mountain air.

  It was a cleansing sensation.

  The constant restless nights were beginning to wear on her, thus putting a damper on her efforts at The Waffle Diner and Eatery. The sleepless nights were affecting her ability to create her gourmet waffle dishes, and while many of her patrons never noticed the difference, Sonja noticed. That was enough to bother the weary diner owner.

  A light in her mother’s house caught her eye, a yellowed illumination from the topmost window of the house—the attic.

  Glancing at the clock, Sonja noted the time, it was three thirty-two in the morning.

  What was her mother doing up there at this time of night?

  There wasn’t a single light on in the rest of the house. Her face pale with worry, she quickly grabbed her hoodie and slipped it on over her sleep shirt and walked out the door.

  The night air felt chilly for the mid-summer season, and light droplets of rain brushed her skin. Using her house key and stepping in the back door, Sonja stopped in the laundry room at the back of the house and listened for any hint of noise from the floors above.

  Only the silence answered her.

  Tiptoeing into the kitchen, she opened the door leading to the house’s back stairway. The house had an older design which gave an odd feeling that always reminded her of “old dark house” mystery movies from the 1930s—although her mother’s house was relatively small compared to the creepy mansions featured in those films. The back stairway was just one element of the house that spoke of its history: a working dumbwaiter, saloon style doors here and there, and beautiful classic wood moldings all added to a cozy, yet mysterious, ambiance.

  The back stairwell, a skinny little staircase that would make even the smallest mouse feel claustrophobic, twisted up to the second floor where it emerged near Sonja’s childhood bedroom. The bedroom stood under the house’s gable and thus had a sloped ceiling, as well as a snug window well where she often curled up with a book during many snowy and rainy days. Thinking about it now, she always liked the room because of its small stature.

  Tonight however, standing outside her old bedroom door, the atmosphere was far from comfortable. Instead, her childhood home felt cold, foreign, and ominous. The sloped ceiling threatened her with its overbearing closeness, almost if it were closing in on her. The attic door, situated near the top of yet another cramped and dusty staircase, stood directly across from the bedroom door. A thin yellow line of artificial light escaped beneath the door.

  Gulping down the lump in her throat, Sonja moved up the attic stairs one at a time, each step responding with a hollow creak and fresh cloud of dust, swirling in the air and catching in the sickly yellow light. Coming to the door itself she pressed her ear against the wood and listened. At first, there seemed to be no noise on the other side.

  She was prepared to open the door and just turn off the light, forgetting the whole matter, when the low whimper of someone crying caught her attention. Its desperate echo sent a shudder through her body, chilling her to the core. “Mom?” she called quietly through the door. “Is that you?”

  Somehow, she knew it couldn’t be her mother. The distinct chill against her skin—even through her jacket—was a tell-tale sign that something supernatural was waiting for her on the other side of the attic door.

  Her frequent experience with needful ghosts, a series of events she was less than thrilled with, had taught her how to spot these ghostly encounters as they were happening.

  However, the spirit sensitive woman never expected to find a ghost in her own childhood home and had no intention of letting the entity loiter in her mother’s attic.

  Determined to find out who was crying, Sonja slowly reached down and grabbed the door knob, and at the same moment her hand touched the metal handle, the sensation of a cold hand touched her shoulder, grabbing her from behind.

  Nearly jumping out of her skin, Sonja let out a high screech of both surprise and fright.

  Spinning around she expected to come face to face with a ghostly specter—which would be her first time coming so close to an apparition.

  Instead, she faced her own mother, who held her own heart. A sense of relief and disappointment flooded Sonja’s chest at once.

  “Sweetie, you scared me half to death,” her mother spoke, whispering so quietly you would think she was afraid to wake the dead.

  “Likewise, Mom.”

  “What are you doing up here? It’s nearly four in the morning, honey.”

  Slumping her shoulders, she released the tension she felt from only a moment before. “I saw the attic light on. I thought someone might be up here.”

  “But sweetie,” her mother replied, “The attic light isn’t on at all.”

  “What?” Face scrunched in both confusion and distress, Sonja turned toward the door. Sure enough, the yellow light that had been there only moments earlier had vanished.

  “You were probably just having another nightmare,” her mother insisted.

  Sonja nodded, a blank look on her pale face. Had it just been her imagination; had she conjured up the ghostly experience from her own fears?

  “Why don’t you sleep here in the house tonight?” her concerned mother offered. “Maybe it will help you sleep better.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” she whispered. “I’m okay. I’ll go back to my own place. Night.”

  “Night, sweetie.”

  Turning and walking back down the stairs, Sonja felt the distinct chill again. Rushing back to her own house, she put as much distance between herself and the attic as possible.

  CHAPTER 2

  Sonja drove into The Waffle Diner and Eatery’s parking lot around six in the morning, a little earlier than her usual time to arrive. She and her best friend Alison had an extra special order to fill that morning, and it didn’t help that she was kept up most of the night by nightmares and potential hauntings in her own childhood home, but ultimately she didn’t let it bother her.

  There were many preparations Sonja needed to make for the day’s big events. Stepping into the back door she was greeted by the aroma of freshly brewed coffee and the sound of the radio playing in the background.

  “Good morning,” Sonja announced as she hung her purse over the hook on the wall and adorned her usual red and white apron.

  Her best friend and business partner, Alison, was already in the kitchen sipping her coffee. “Morning,” her friend beamed. “I just made coffee.” She motioned to the hot coffee pot.

  “You’re a goddess,” Sonja admitted. “That is exactly what I need,”

  “I thought so,” she replied with a knowing smile.

  Walking over to the coffee
pot Sonja pulled one of the white mugs off the shelf and poured herself a hearty cup of the black gold. She dropped in two cubes of sugar and poured in a little cream. “You’re here awful early,” she commented, stirring the coffee and leaning against the counter.

  “Well, you said we needed a head start on today, so here I am.”

  “I just never expected you to beat me here,” Sonja commented with a wink.

  Alison teasingly rolled her eyes in response.

  The song on the radio ended and Tommy the Tornado, the radio show host, came on. “Hello guys and gals of Haunted Falls,” the host spoke in a grandiose style as if he were giving an inspirational speech. The phrase Haunted Falls was followed by a ghostly sound effect from a synthesized theremin. “I hope you are all having a lovely day. I know I am.”

  Sonja rolled her eyes at Tommy’s goofy voice.

  “And I hope to see you all in person later this morning, as I’ll be broadcasting live from The Founder’s Day Picnic in the park, near the community center.”

  The Founder’s Day Picnic was one of Haunted Falls biggest celebrations, only triumphed by the usual holiday trio of Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. The Founder’s Day Picnic even outshone the Fourth of July in celebrations, games, and events—and it was the reason Alison and Sonja had arrived early to The Waffle that morning.

  The Waffle Diner wouldn’t be open itself until late that evening. Instead, the aspiring restaurant owning duo had plans to cook up a storm of picnic appropriate eggs, bacon, sausages, fries, pancakes, and—of course—waffles to take to the event for the patrons to purchase and enjoy. They had splurged on purchasing a booth in the main traffic area of the picnic.

  “You’d better get that grill fired up,” Sonja instructed.

  “I’ve got it heating as we speak,” Alison proclaimed proudly.

  “And the fryer?” Sonja pushed expectantly.

  Ally nodded triumphantly, “And the fryer. We’re set to go.”

  Satisfied, Sonja clapped her hands, “Then all we need is the waffle irons. I’ll get to work on those while you get the bacon and eggs started.”