Every week we post six lines from a work of ours or a book recommendation with LGBT characters.

This week, in a Christmassy mood, a selection of snippets from my Christmas ghost story “Dusk at Marsden Towers.” A story heavily influenced by M. R. James. Our narrator is the closeted sixteen-year-old older brother whose family is spending Christmas Eve 1978 in the old Marsden Hotel in L. A. Due to a glitch, he and younger brother Todd have separate rooms. That’s when the strangeness starts.

I was awakened a few hours later by somebody crawling in bed with me. I recognized him immediately as Todd. I knew him and I knew his voice. We’d each had a key to the other’s rooms. He was whimpering and telling me to shut the drapes. He kept talking about a face.

He had been dozing when he woke up from an awful dream, a dream of an awful face with wide eyes and a mouth open in a big 0 just inches away from his. He had woken up, stared out the window, seen nothing but the city, gotten up, gone to the bathroom, drank some water and went back to bed. He lay down, stared out the window for a few minutes, he guessed, and started dozing again, when he opened his eyes and saw the face again, for an instant. He blinked and it was gone. It had been the same face and Todd realized it had been upside down. He thought he was having a nightmare.

Thanks for reading! Here’s the link to the Rainbow Snippets Facebook Page:https://www.facebook.com/groups/963484217054974

And here’s the blog post with my original story:https://authorjeffbaker.com/2017/12/28/a-christmas-ghost-story-by-jeff-baker-for-friday-flash-fics-december-29-2017/