‘Take My Hand: Exit Light’ by Mel Anastasiou

Haunting and Hiding

In this latest instalment of Mel Anastasiou‘s paranormal mystery, ‘Take My Hand: Exit Light’, our protagonist Jamie Stewart is in the grip of a haunting while hiding out from her past.

Enjoy the beginning of this instalment, excerpted here from Issue 44, Autumn 2024. And keep an eye out for the conclusion to this story in future issues of Pulp Literature. 

Take My Hand: Exit Light

by Mel Anastasiou

Jamie cradled her aching right hand. On her lap lay the final page from the ghost’s latest possession of her. More pages were stacked on her coffee table. Seconds before, the ghost had held her blind and immobile. Now he was gone.

She managed one free breath before she heard a clatter in the kitchen. Wes, who was meant to be waiting outside her apartment building in his Le Mans, sat down next to her on the sofa.

He said, “You’re back. From concentrating. On your writing, I mean.”

“How did you get into my place?”

“Door’s unlocked. It was cooling down outside, so I brought my book in with me.”

Jamie glanced down at The Quick Red Fox on the coffee table, half-hidden by the pages of the ghost’s writing.

Wes continued, “We did have dinner plans. I thought you wouldn’t mind if I waited here.”

When Jamie didn’t answer, Wes coloured. “Maybe I was wrong. Anyway, somebody named Zane was shouting at you on your machine to pick up, so I did. She said a patient named Maria got her tests back and you’d want to know before your early shift on Monday. They came out negative. It sounded like good news?”

Jamie nodded.

“I didn’t know you were a nurse as well as a writer.”

She said, “I’m an orderly.”

She had nothing to add to this statement that wasn’t an obfuscation or a lie. Already her deceptions divided her from Wes. She couldn’t bear to tell him even one more untruth, but reality sounded like a lie. I’m not a writer, I’m an orderly with a boring life, as beige as this sofa, except when I’m being possessed by a ghost. Or chased by a family of criminals.

She put a hand to her forehead. Her head felt stretched, as if Casey had been moving around inside her brain like Dylan inside his ectoplasm; as if the teenager, the ghost, and she were a set of nesting dolls.

Find out what happens next, in Issue 44, Autumn 2024!

Want more mystery from Mel? Pick up your copy of Stella Ryman and the Fairmount Manor Mysteries and The Labours of Mrs Stella Ryman, or The Extra: A Monument Studios Mystery, available now!

---

Mel Anastasiou writes the Fairmount Manor Mysteries, the Hertfordshire Pub Mysteries, and the Monument Studios Mysteries. She’s the winner of a Literary Titan Gold award and was longlisted for the Leacock Medal. She also wrote two illustrated thirty-day workbooks: the steampunk-themed The Writer’s Boon Companion and The Writer’s Friend and Confidante. For news on published and upcoming new works, visit her website, melanastasiou.wordpress.com, or visit her on X.