This unedited deleted “darling” (as we writers call the scenes and characters we love but must amputate from a story) is from the April 2024 version of Assisted Living: Book One of the Old Grove Lake Trilogy, a cozy-eco horror folk tale. It takes place at the end of Chapter One. I cut it when it seemed I needed to get Margie up to Old Grove Lake faster. At that time, the novel began with this line:

“When Margie Thermopolis sees her first ghost, it isn’t who she’s expecting.”

Margie’s Visited  by a Ghost

Somewhere near midnight, he appears.

She’d been sleeping, surprisingly deep, the kind of dreamless slumber that has been rare for her. Later, she won’t remember just what it was that awoke her: the feeling of a weight sinking beside her, dimpling the mattress, or the scent of earth and something else, like the vague whiff of decay she’d caught in the storage unit—before the cat had exited with its mummifying trophy. She knows immediately it isn’t one of her kitties snuggling in.

After a few seconds when her eyelids refuse to part, Margie opens her eyes. It, he, hovers over her, inches away. Her heart leaps to the back of her throat, and she tries to press her body deeper into the mattress.

Then, she blinks. She knows this ghost.

It takes her a moment to recognize him. Not just because of the physical changes that time in the grave has caused or because he’s so close she needs her readers, but because this ghost is not Deshawn. This specter of a body has been dead far longer and is far smaller. It shimmers and shifts almost like a movie ghost, and Margie wonders how it can be both ethereal and seem to have mass and weight and such powerful presence.

He looks sad, her little brother Theo does, and Margie feels a powerful urge to put her arms around him and pull him close, rags and shreds and bits of flesh be damned. As if sensing her impending hug, his translucent body begins drifts away toward the door.

“Don’t go, don’t go, Theo,” she croaks, her voice rusty from the deep slumber. She sits up. “It’s me, it’s your Margie… “

Maybe, she thinks, glancing down to the soft, sagging shape of her torso and belly, he doesn’t recognize me?

And suddenly, he’s back. Right up almost against her face. His eyes, glimmering in empty sockets, are wide with something like terror. A shred of dark brown hair hanging from a bit of scalp, covers the corner of one. His lips, both withered and still somehow her brother’s perfect cupid’s bow mouth, part. His mouth yawns open. Margie struggles to not scramble backwards. She feels suddenly as if he’s about to swallow her.

But then, the cavern of his jaw pulls back in. It works and moves as if he’s trying to remember how to form words. Then, his image begins to dissipate. Tiny specks like dust lifting in a breeze soften his shape.

“No no no,” she begs.

And just before he’s completely gone, Theo’s eyes fill with something beyond sadness and Margie hears him speak. She can almost recognize his small, yet somehow gravelly voice almost as she remembers it, but there’s a hollow echo quavering up from his rib cage. His words both somehow faint and too loud.

Dooon’t… leeeave… don’t… leeeeave…

Then, the ghost she hadn’t expected, is gone.

If you’ve already read Assisted Living, let me know what you think of this scene. Would it have added to your enjoyment? Is it truly a darling that deserved to live?

If you haven’t read the book and want to, it’s available on all those online stores you know and sometimes hate. You can also order it in print from your local bookstore or online. Here’s the link: