In Harry's Footsteps

by Edward Lodi

About the Author: Edward Lodi has written more than 30 books, both fiction and nonfiction, including six Cranberry Country Mysteries. His short fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous magazines and journals, such as Mystery Magazine, and in anthologies published by Cemetery Dance, Murderous Ink, Main Street Rag, Rock Village Publishing, Superior Shores Press, and others. His story “Charnel House” was featured on Night Terrors Podcast.

Excerpt

As he rounded a bend in the two-lane rural highway, Charles Redcliffe spotted the sign he’d been looking for. PLEASANT VIEW EATS.

Odd location for a diner. Across the street from a graveyard.

PLEASANT VIEW. Someone had a sense of humor.

He swung into the parking lot and nosed the BMW into a space where it would remain in full view from within. It was an expensive car, one worth keeping an eye on. The diner itself was an eyeful: tarnished chrome with orange trim shaped—appropriately, given its location—more like a coffin than the traditional trolley car; a half-hearted attempt at ornamental vegetation defeated by the recent drought, the handful of shrubs to have survived, streaked with brown, shriveling in the August heat; red neon sign, the N missing, sputtering the word OPE. For no particular reason a line from Dante’s Inferno flashed through his mind: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

Who’re you kidding? he chided himself as he stepped inside. There’s a particular reason for The Inferno coming to mind: Harry.

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