Goodbye Lucifer

Harold McCoy John

Description

Hell closes down when Lucifer falls in love, quits his job as the Prince of Darkness, and becomes a bartender in Ft. Lauderdale.Deep in the rugged mountains of southern West Virginia, nestled in the cradle of an idyllic little valley, the tiny town of Brandell, and its colorful cast of lovable characters, hold an ancient secret.Here, in this most unlikely of places, the women of Brandell Valley cook, clean, shop, gossip, dream, fall in love - and guard the gates of Hell.The tranquility of daily life in the valley is disrupted when Lucifer finds a way out of the depths. He simply quits his job as the Devil, packs his bags, and heads for Florida.Pandemonium erupts in the valley when, without the devil to keep things in check, various demons find their way out of Hell and wander into Brandell.A rather likeable Lucifer, decidedly un-evil demons, sorcery gone awry, romance and hilarity set the tone of this heart-warming, very tall tale.

Sujets

• Fantasy (canción de Mariah Carey)
• Fantasy

Informations

• Publié par: Untreed Reads
• Date de parution: 31 mars 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781611872958
• Langue: English

Extrait

Table of Contents
Copyright
Goodbye Lucifer by John Harold McCoy
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
FORTY-ONE
FORTY-TWO
FORTY-THREE
FORTY-FOUR
FORTY-FIVE
FORTY-SIX
FORTY-SEVEN
FORTY-EIGHT
FORTY-NINE
FIFTY
FIFTY-ONE
FIFTY-TWO
FIFTY-THREE
FIFTY-FOUR
FIFTY-FIVE
FIFTY-SIX
FIFTY-SEVEN
FIFTY-EIGHT
FIFTY-NINE
SIXTY
SIXTY-ONE
SIXTY-TWO
SIXTY-THREE
SIXTY-FOUR
SIXTY-FIVE
SIXTY-SIX
SIXTY-SEVEN
SIXTY-EIGHT
SIXTY-NINE
SEVENTY
SEVENTY-ONE
SEVENTY-TWO
SEVENTY-THREE
SEVENTY-FOUR
SEVENTY-FIVE
SEVENTY-SIX
SEVENTY-SEVEN
SEVENTY-EIGHT
SEVENTY-NINE
EIGHTY
EIGHTY-ONE
EIGHTY-TWO
EIGHTY-THREE
EIGHTY-FOUR
EIGHTY-FIVE
EIGHTY-SIX
EIGHTY-SEVEN
EIGHTY-EIGHT
EIGHT-NINE
NINETY
NINETY-ONE
NINETY-TWO
NINETY-THREE
NINETY-FOUR
Goodbye Lucifer
By John Harold McCoy
Copyright 2012 by John Harold McCoy
Cover Copyright 2012 by Ginny Glass and Untreed Reads Publishing
The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold, reproduced or transmitted by any means in any form or given away to other people without specific permission from the author and/or publisher. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to the living or dead is entirely coincidental.
http://www.untreedreads.com
GOODBYE LUCIFER
By John Harold McCoy
Lucifer sat at his desk grumbling and shuffling papers. The papers weren’t important; he just wanted something to do while he grumbled. Finally, all grumbled out, he dropped the papers on the desk, sat back in his chair, crossed his arms and pouted. A few minutes of pouting, a long resigned sigh then a sudden thought. He sat bolt upright.
“Lauderdale!” he pronounced loudly.
A demon appeared in the office doorway. “Are you all right?” it asked with a concerned look.
“Yes!” exclaimed Lucifer. “Yes, I’m fantastic. Oh, and by the way, I quit.”
He stood up, strode across the room to the door, patted the little demon on the head and said,
“I’m outta here.”
ONE
IN THE SPRING, when clear moonlit nights are just right, gentle breezes carry the fragrance of newly bloomed night jasmine through the open windows of the fine old houses on Meljac Lane. In the second story bedroom of one such fine old house, Jilly Meljac lay sleeping in the massive old bed, the frame for which her great grandfather, Karol Meljac, had hewn from the corpse of a great oak, ravaged by lightning and causing numerous casualties in the chicken coop atop of which it fell almost a hundred years ago.
In sleep, oblivious to the ghosts of long-dead chickens, Jilly wove through a world of dreams reserved for well-adjusted sixteen-year-old girls from well-adjusted families—well-adjusted that is except for David who although semi-okay as a little brother was in Jilly’s estimation crazy as a loon.
Little David’s latest obsession, brought on by too many ill-chosen comic books, was playing vampire. Yesterday, while running around the house gnashing his teeth and nipping at everyone in sight—as he imagined vampires did—David had bitten Jilly and consequently was grounded. There was a new rule in the Meljac household—no more vampires. Then again eight-year-old vampires, even play ones, don’t always follow the rules. And on this clear spring night, Hugo the Terrible—David’s new adopted name—stood in the moonlit bedroom beside Jilly’s old oak bed with the intention of giving her another good solid bite.
The wooing squalls of two amorous cats from a neighboring yard had brought David out of his own dreams only a few minutes before. Frightened at first by the strange caterwauling, a sound he’d never heard before and one which even grownups find somewhat unnerving, he’d eventually figured out it had something to do with cats, but nothing to do with him. David was a bright boy.
Even so, his initial fear had shocked him wide-awake and he lay there inwardly grumbling over being grounded for play-biting silly Jilly. He hadn’t even bitten her hard, at least not as hard as he should have, being a vampire and all. If she knew what was good for her she’d watch out from now on because of his blood lust. You didn’t mess around with blood lust. Everybody knew that, at least everybody in the stack of tattered, many-times-read comic books on the nightstand beside his bed.
David started at the sound of another cat squall from the yard below his window. He wondered if the moon was full, in which case there was always the possibility the cats below were actually were-cats. If there were were-wolves, he reasoned, then there must be were-cats, too. He decided to stay awake for a while just in case.
He sat up in bed and reached over to the pile of comic books. Taking the top one from the stack, the moonlight from the window providing enough light for his young eyes, he began scanning pages filled with pictures of fanged creatures terrorizing frightened maidens. One picture in particular caught his attention. In it, a young woman lay asleep in bed, an ominous figure with bared teeth looming over her. David stared at the picture for a moment, a plan forming in his mind, then slipped quietly out of bed. In less than a minute, Hugo the Terrible stood in Jilly’s bedroom looming over her sleeping form.
The same cat sounds that had awakened David had brought Jilly to the brink of wakefulness, and the slight creak of her bedroom door as David crept into her room finished the job. She lay on her side, awake but unmoving, wondering what the little creep was up to. Through barely open eyes she watched him tiptoe to her bedside and bend over her. As David’s fangs drew near her bare shoulder, inspiration struck Jilly in the form of a slight grumbling in her lower abdomen. Barely able to suppress a giggle, she farted: long, loud and fragrantly. Eyes still almost closed, she watched as David jerked upright, stood for a moment as though confused then backed slowly towards the door.
Jilly could hold it no longer. At her sudden burst of laughter, David yelled, “Jilly, you’re gross,” and ran out of the room, all blood lust forgotten.
* * *
Asleep in another room, Melanie Meljac stirred as the sound of her son’s yell slipped into her subconscious—and dreamed of her children playing in the backyard; Jillian teasing her little brother, pretending to eat a bug and little David yelling, “Jilly, you’re gross.”
TWO
DAWN FLOWED GENTLY down the sides of the valley and into the small town of Brandell. The mountains nestling the little town between them hid the sudden harshness of sunrise and the morning sky shone in full light, the night mists having retreated into the forested slopes by the time the sun peeked over the high ridges.
As she did every morning during the quiet time between soft light and full sun, Melanie Meljac sat with coffee cup in hand on the veranda of the big stone house on the oak-shaded corner where sedate little Meljac Lane crossed equally sedate Stillman Road.
From her veranda Melanie could look across Stillman Road to where Meljac Lane became Brandell Boulevard; an impressive name for the narrow two-lane street on one side of which stood Brandell’s single block of what was optimistically referred to as downtown.
Of the seven businesses fronting the Boulevard only two attracted enough patrons to keep the little business district from extinction: Walkers Drug Store, with soda fountain and prescription counter, and the old Brandell Movie Theater—their closest competition being fifteen miles of winding mountain road away.
* * *
Melanie Walker Meljac, daughter of the same gentleman who, at this very moment she could see unlocking and entering the front door of Walkers Drug Store just across the street, had at twenty-one, and to the disappointment of many of Princeton County’s young bachelors, married her childhood sweetheart Karol Meljac the 4th. The happy newlyweds moved into the big rock house where Karol had been raised by an aunt. His parents and many other valley residents had been taken by a particularly virulent flu when Karol was only twelve.
As fate would have it, nine years later, Melanie’s beloved Karol met a drunk driver at the curve in the road where Brandell Boulevard followed the bend of the river out of the valley, leaving Melanie heartbroken: a widow with two children. The ease with which death had slipped into her life became a constant fear and she clung to her children, not taking them out of the house for fear of losing them. Only with the start of Jilly’s first year of school had Melanie, begrudgingly, allowed either of her children away from her side.
Finally, after a few years brought no further tragedies into her life, Melanie’s fears subsided. The passing of time soothed her wounded soul—her children’s laughter and the loving scolds of Karol’s Aunt Claudia healing the pain of loss. Eventually the big house on Meljac Lane and the little town of Brandell, West Virginia, became again for Melanie the happiest place on earth.
A commotion from inside the house, and a loud, “ Ow ” from David, probably the result of a pin