Night of the Amber Moon

Helen Dunlap Newton

Description

Izzy just wants to be a normal eleven-year-old kid with friends, less homework and a dad that doesn't turn mean when he drinks. Having a birthday party would help but how does she convince her parents when there's never enough money? None of it matters when her family's house burns to the ground and her father doesn't escape the flames. Even worse is the guilt she feels, thinking the fire is her fault. Afraid to tell anyone about the cause of the fire, Izzy obsesses about the old brick theater next to the family's store and the strange noises from deep inside the building. Will an elusive cat, the creepy theater, and a strange old lady guide her to the forgiveness she so desperately needs?

Sujets

• Fiction Jeunesse
• Death
• Dream
• Ghost
• Family
• Histoires de fantômes
• General
• Animals
• General officer
• Dreams
• Juvenilee Fiction
• Ghost Stories

Informations

• Publié par: Yorkshire Publishing
• Date de parution: 18 mars 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781957262222
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

ISBN: 978-1954095-52-6 (Paperback)
978-1-954095-87-8 (Hardcover)
978-1-957262-22-2 (Ebook)
Night of the Amber Moon
Copyright © 2021 by Helen Dunlap Newton
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
For permission requests, write to the publisher at the address below.
Yorkshire Publishing
1425 E 41st Pl
Tulsa, OK 74105
www.YorkshirePublishing.com
918.394.2665
Published in the USA

Dedication
NIGHT OF THE AMBER MOON is dedicated to Merle Newton, who always encouraged me to go for my dreams, and to Anna Myers who took me and so many others under her writing wings.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and especially my SCBWI-Oklahoma Region. Someone told me 20 years ago, “If you are serious about writing for children, join SCBWI.” They were so right.
I also have to thank my numerous critique friends. You read bits and pieces of many versions and helped me carve out the real story.
How can I write a story like this and not thank my brother, Paul and my sister, Betty? This story is not about us, but they were the inspiration for the siblings watching out for their little sister.
Chapter 1
I f it weren’t for the cell tower near the cemetery, visitors would swear the town was a 1950’s village—only emerging from the mist when the time was right. On its postage-stamp plot of earth, bisected by train tracks and surrounded by cornfields, Taggert Creek kept its secrets hidden. Some said the town was boring. Others thought something else.
Peaceful.
Contented.
Happy.
But none of those words defined the girl sitting with her friends in the back row of the bus as it stopped in front of her parents’ feed store.
This girl studied faces.
This girl dreaded finding empty liquor bottles in the trash bin beside the store.
This girl let out the breath she didn’t even realize she’d been holding.
Dad’s truck was gone.
“Good,” she whispered.
“Good what?” Ariel asked, then nudged Izzy with her shoulder.
“Uh...good, I got a B- on my math test.” Izzy searched Ariel’s face for a reaction, but Mrs. Mackelhaney’s scratchy voice distracted her.
“Hurry it up, Isabel Dunn. Got to get this bus back by four.”
Izzy scrunched up her face and shouted, “Izzy! My name is Izzy.”
Ariel grabbed her arm. “Don’t forget. Ask about your birthday as soon as you see your mom.”
“Yeah. Don’t chicken out,” Jody added from the other side of Ariel.
“Bawk, bawk!” Izzy flapped her arms like a chicken—trying to cover the pressure she felt from her friends. Her forehead crinkled. “I...I’ll try. It depends.”
“Today,” Ariel demanded, then smiled and pushed Izzy from the seat.
The bus horn honked, and Mrs. Mackelhaney did a whirling thing with her finger.
“Sorry. Be right there.” Izzy inched through the maze of legs in the aisle then focused on the bus driver’s face in the mirror.
Mrs. Mackelhaney growled into the reflection, “Isabel’s a good name. It’s my own grandmother’s name.”
“Exactly.” Izzy mumbled.
Ariel and Jody called from the back seat, “Today!” Their laughter made Izzy wince behind her smile. She was tempted to go back and ride the rest of the route with them. Instead, she raised her thumb in fake agreement, then hopped from the bus steps to the sidewalk.
Jody was right. Izzy hated asking Mom for stuff. She’d been promising she’d ask about her birthday for weeks, but Ariel and Jody didn’t get it. She couldn’t just ask. It was about more than a birthday. The timing had to be right. Ariel kept pushing her for a slumber party—almost planning it. Izzy shook her head and turned to wave. She smiled when her friends made dorky faces through the back window. The bus roared away, leaving her alone and coughing in a cloud of diesel fumes.
A cold breeze scuttled along Park Street and cleared the air. It pushed at her. She shivered inside the coat of her dad’s she’d grabbed by mistake that morning. The smell of cigarettes and his musky scent filled her head and made her nose wrinkle. She turned to blink grit from her lashes, then stuffed her tangled hair under the hood. Instead of heading straight into the store’s office, she angled to the left, hoping to snatch a few minutes of reading in the store’s feed storage building next door.
On the other side of the feed building, the wind swirled the tarnished weathervane on the roof of the old abandoned brick theater. Izzy stared at the metal version of a regal-looking cat squeaking on top of the pole.
She shuddered.
The rattling and other sounds coming from behind those brick walls always gave her the creeps—squeaking doors, wings fluttering from the roof’s tower. And then there was the thumping that echoed deep inside the empty building.
She had first heard it with her brother, Michael.
“Don’t freak,” he had said. “It’s just a door blowing in the wind,” She had believed him, even though his eye twitched.
He hadn’t told her the rest, though.
Hadn’t shared the town legend about the ghost of Dirty Bertie.
But Jody did.
“They say she thumps through the theater with her broom, looking for her lost love,” Jody had whispered at a sleepover in fifth grade.
Someone had squealed. Someone had said, “Let’s find a way in and see her ghost.”
And they’d tried.
Over and over.
But the back door was always locked tight.
Izzy itched to add words to her theater story in the spiral notebook she hid under her pillow. She pictured the scene—her flashlight beam making tracks in the dusty air—Ariel and Jody begging her to go first.
She was the brave one.
In her stories.
In the real world, not so much.
The wind grew stronger. She leaned against it as it pushed at her like an invisible hand shoving her toward the theater. She imagined a vast room, dark and musty. A slanted floor and her feet slipping and sliding past hundreds of cold and empty seats. The smell of decay filling her nose and throat until she choked. Remembering the nightmare triggered a thousand prickles through her body and one of her greatest fears.
What would she do if the back door ever opened?
A rap on the side window of the feed store office made her jump. She willed her heart to slow its racing and her breathing to steady. No question why Mom was frowning through the glass. She had said the theater was off-limits right after Dunn’s Feed & Seed opened a year ago.
Izzy dropped her shoulders in one big sigh, then counted her steps to the office building and opened the door. Tension snapped in the air like static after touching metal.
“You don’t understand, Mom.” Izzy’s older sister said. “I have to do this. No one from Taggert Creek has ever competed in the Kansas Math Olympiad!”
“Sorry, Beth, we can’t afford it.” Mom pounded the keys on the computer. “Izzy, put your things in the back room, not on the couch,” she said, using the Jedi-mom trick of knowing without seeing.
Beth rolled her eyes, and Izzy stuck out her tongue at her sister—their typical communication. Beth turned back to their mom. “I think the school pays for most of it.”
“We’ll see,” Mom said, which probably meant no. “Izzy, after you put your bag up, go see if your brother has finished stacking the feed next door.” Mom glanced at the clock. “Your dad wasn’t feeling good when he went on the feed delivery. Should’ve been back by now.” She ran her hand through her short hair. “You kids don’t need to bother him tonight.”
Izzy glanced at Beth. Her sister’s face mirrored the same dread she felt—color-drained, eyes darting back and forth. One sister biting her lip, the other biting her nails.
Mom gathered papers from the counter. “I’m closing up early to start supper.”
Anxious to escape, Izzy tossed her bag, causing it to skid across the cement floor and Maverick to startle from his blanket on the floor.
Izzy kneeled to pet the dog’s long ears. “Sorry, Maverick. How come Dad didn’t take you with him?” She walked into the back room and hung Dad’s coat on a hook. Grabbing her own jacket, she hurried out the door, glad to escape Beth’s sad face and mom’s pounding fingers on the computer keys.
The sun’s last horizontal rays peaked through the trees in the park across the street. Taggert Creek was closing for the night, with pickups roaring their way home and streetlights buzzing to life.
Izzy felt a throbbing in her chest from the bass of her brother’s music in the feed storage building between the office and the theater. Michael was probably running sprints between the long rows of stacked bags of feed. She glanced in the trash bin beside the office—one empty bottle—three scrunched beer cans.
She opened the storage-building door and pulled the neck of her sweatshirt over her nose to mask the stink of animal feed and sweat. The air was cool inside the building, but the heat from Michael’s body rushed past her with each of his laps.
“Michael,” Izzy shouted through the fabric. He smiled as he kept running. He flipped the hood of her jacket over the top of her head when he slid around the corner.
Izzy pressed the stop button on the music to get his attention.
“Hey, what’d you do that for, Isabel?” He pulled the front end of his shirt up to wipe his face and leaned against bags of horse feed.
She let go of her shirt’s neck and tried to breathe through her mouth. “Don’t call me that. Mom said she’s closing early. You beat your time?”
Michael dropped to the floor and grunted with each push-up. “Shaved off three seconds. Got two weeks till tryouts.”
“You ask Mom about the running shoes yet?”
Chances for even the smallest celebration on her birthday were not looking good with Beth’s math thing and Michael needing running shoes.
Five more push-ups, then Mi