Haunted Market

Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE — THE LAST MORNING

Halloween morning, 1957, began like any other morning for Charlie Miller.

He woke before daylight...

Looking around his one bedroom house and started his morning like so many others.  Get the coffee going.  Get dressed in his work clothes while he was eyeing the pressed clean shirt he saved for church on Sundays.

Charlie didn’t have a car; truth was he never really saw a need for one.  He lived only a short 12-minute walk to work, 8 minutes in the other direction took him downtown to get his groceries and the occasional beer at the bar with the rest of the crew of Fridays. A car would just come with issues he did not need.

Charlie had made that walk hundreds of times. What he didn’t know was this would be the last time.  Somewhere along the way, he noticed something sitting on a fence post.

A raven.

“Just a raven” Charlie thought to himself, then he remembered what his mother had always told him...

Charlie stopped.

"Raven in the morning is bad luck, it means trouble. Raven at day's end means the trouble has passed.  Mind that you hurry home and not tempt fate."

Charlie watched the bird for a moment.  Then he continued toward the Machine Shop. This was his last day on earth.

He never made it home.

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