Coming around the curve

      Another 2,000, and that brings the total to 47,002. Just 3,000 more, and I will have won NaNoWriMo for the first time! I am so looking forward to hitting that 50,000 word mark.
      I sure appreciate everyone's support. To reward you (if it is a reward, but if it isn't, I don't have any cash to send you, so you're going to have to make do) here is another excerpt from Darkness, Oklahoma.

Excerpt 2 from Darkness, Oklahoma

Copyright 2005. All rights reserved. You may not copy, print or use this in any form. You can read it, but read it real fast so that it doesn't stay stuck on your eyeballs. Otherwise two men in gray suits will visit you and break your knees ...

      Nurse Darcy Trutell hung up the phone and swore softly.
      "What's up?" Lisa Dixon asked, dropping a chart into the receiving tray at the nurses' station.
      Darcy looked over at the aide. "That was Helen. She's going to be late. She wants me to cover for a couple of hours."
      Lisa shook her head. "You should have said you wouldn't. What was her excuse this time?"
      "She said her daughter forgot a paper that's due today," Darcy said. "She has to take it to the school, and then she needs to pay her insurance."
      "If you keep letting her get away with it, she's going to keep taking advantage of you," Lisa said. "It would piss me off, that's for sure."
      Particularly since I know Helen is lying, Darcy thought. Just like she knew that Lisa wouldn't volunteer to help and that Lisa didn't care about Darcy one way or another. Once, that uncaring would have hurt Darcy or made her mad. Now it just made her tired.
      "Well, I'm off," Lisa said. "At least Margaret won't be late." She and Darcy exchanged a look at the mention of the day aide.
      "Have a good day," Darcy said, wishing that Margaret wasn't so lazy. In the month Darcy had worked at the Eliza Rhiden Memorial Hospital, she hadn't seen Margaret do much of anything, and that she did grudgingly. Any other hospital would have fired Margaret, but her father was on the board. Besides, ERMH had the same staffing problems that other small hospitals had. Why work in Darkness when an RN could make triple the money in Oklahoma City?
      That's what Darcy would have done if things had been different. As it was, she was grateful for the job. At least she wasn't in North Carolina any longer, and if she could build up a good record again, she might be able to make the move to the city in a year or two. For that, she could work a couple of hours extra. She just wished she wasn't so tired. She hadn't been sleeping well; this was the first time in her career that she had to work the night shift.
      She picked up the report she'd prepared for the day shift and put it in the flow tray. Then she checked for new orders and began her rounds. Thankfully the patient census was low. She only had three patients.
      She shivered in a sudden cold draft. The hairs rose on the back of her neck. She looked over her shoulder to see the dead man.
      She swore, closed her eyes, and then opened them again. He was still there. "No, not again," she snapped. "Go away."
      She walked into her first patient's room. As she did the morning assessment, she was conscious of the dead man standing in the door. Her mouth tightened. She wouldn't let this happen again. She wouldn't.
      "You must help him," the dead man said.
      "I'll be right back, Mrs. Simpson, in a few minutes," Darcy said, brightly. The elderly woman smiled at her and turned her attention back to the television.
      Darcy stalked out of the room and made the rest of her round with the ghost watching her. With the vital signs of all her patients checked, she went to the pharmacy and pulled the meds. She pushed the meds cart to the nurses' station. Margaret sat at the nurses' station, leafing through a magazine.
      "Margaret, Mr. Fields in 212 needs to be turned," Darcy said. Margaret looked at her and then back at her magazine. Darcy felt her face tighten. "Now."
      Margaret looked startled, dropped her magazine, and hurried to the room.
      "You must help him."
      Darcy glared at the ghost. She looked up and down the hall, then said in a furious whisper, "Get out of here. I don't want you here. I'm not going to listen! I'm not going to help you. I'm done with that." She turned back to the cart, double-checking to make sure the meds were correct. She still needed to take vitals before she passed out any medication.
      "I am beyond help," the dead man said. "I am damned by own actions. I was misled, but it was my choice. I took the Mark willingly. It was my sin, and now I will pay for it."
      Darcy paused. This didn't sound like the run-of-the-mill haunting. None of that "Tell her I love her even though I was sleeping with her sister" or "You must take a message to my estranged son whom I haven't seen since I kicked his sorry hide out of my home years ago." She shook her head. No, she wasn't interested. It was none of her concern. She had enough to deal with. She had learned that if she ignored a ghost, eventually they went away. But any attention just fed them. She should have never spoken to him at all.
      "I am doomed, but you must help him," the ghost said. "You both have been called to a Purpose. You will know him by his eyes. He has the eyes of a hunter. You must save him so that he can save you. The Bone Queen has awakened and even now seeks the Sword of Silence. You must not allow her to wield it or all is lost."
      "What?"
      "She will do to all what she has done to me." The dead man reached his hands inside his shirt and pulled open his chest to reveal a black void that spun out toward Darcy. She didn't even have time to scream before the cold blackness closed around her and crushed her into oblivion.