THE MOANING ROCKS AND OTHER STORIES
What The Critics Say
“David Kubicek deals with the most profound of emotions, betrayal in a small community, and does so wonderfully.”—Lincoln Journal Star on Pushcart Prize-nominated “Ball of Fire.”
“…Surprise endings, unexpected twists, and just a good general sense of foreboding. Bravo!”–Lisa Kovanda.
“…If you like great thrillers, you’ll love this book.”–G.K. Fralin.
“…By turns terrifying and enlightening, any lover of horror or science fiction is sure to find a story to enjoy!”–A Novel Idea Bookstore.
The Stories
15 short stories and one parody ranging from commonplace to bizarre and from deadly serious to whimsical. After each story is the author’s commentary on how it came to be written.
In the Pushcart Prize-nominated story “Ball of Fire”, Jill Tanner’s UFO sighting makes her a laughingstock in this small farming community—until everyone starts having close encounters of the weird kind.
In “What’s Wrong with Being A Nurse?”, Chris can’t understand why her seven-year-old daughter wants to be a human sacrifice.
In “A Friend of the Family”, set in a desolate future world where practicing medicine is illegal and doctors have been replaced by Healers, one medical man risks his life to help a member of a Healer’s family.
In “The Moaning Rocks”, George Winterholm believes the old legend about death coming to the prairie is just superstition until he comes face to face with it on a cool autumn evening.
In “Elevator”, a simple means of transportation turns into a man’s worst nightmare.
Read an Excerpt from “Ball of Fire”
Suddenly, an explosion of UFO sightings.
Tom Cherry awoke at 2 a.m. to a bright light flooding the room. He rolled out of bed, squinted out the window, and saw the thing hovering over the barn.
Milo Bartusek claimed that his prize bull had been killed and chewed up in a horrible way and that there were strange tracks around the carcass. They looked something like deformed bear tracks but were much larger than any bear tracks he’d ever seen. When a reporter asked to examine the evidence, however, Milo admitted sheepishly that this had all happened several days before. He’d not wanted to be branded a lunatic, so he had not mentioned it. He had burned the carcass, and the recent rain had obliterated the tracks.
Even Alan Peterson had seen the thing once, drifting purposefully along the western horizon at sunset.
The best times for viewing the UFO, folks agreed, seemed to be at twilight and from midnight to dawn.
Old Man Jonas, too, finally conceded that there was such an object, that it frequented his property, and that it probably contained some form of life not native to this planet.
In fact, Old Man Jonas seemed to be enjoying his sudden notoriety. He told his story over and over again for reporters and the curious who came to town to poke around. Apparently, he had seen the thing several times, and each sighting was better than the previous one. Jill even noticed that every retelling of any particular story seemed to be a little different, improved. But if others noticed this, they didn’t seem to care.
“Didn’t mean to cuss you out the way I done,” he told her. “But I was scared. I saw this thing zippin’ around my place for months.”
“You saw it before I did?”
He nodded. His grizzled head with its tuft of beard reminded her of an old billy goat.
“Didn’t know what folks’d think of me if they knew I had that sort of thing on my property.”
“I wonder,” Jill said, remembering how her neighbors had teased her when she’d been the only one to see the UFO.
Well, at least the ribbing had stopped, the spotlight shifted away from her. Being the center of attention had always made her uncomfortable.
She knew she should feel happy now that she’d been vindicated, now that others knew she had seen something. But she felt an emptiness inside, as if she’d been robbed of something that had been uniquely hers.
And some of their experiences upstaged her short, lackluster sighting. Could she be jealous?
“You ever see it again?” Old Man Jonas asked casually.
“No,” Jill said. “No, I never have.”
Old Man Jonas slurped his coffee and looked at her with pity.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction 5
PART 1: SUSPENSE AND HORROR STORIES
What’s Wrong with Being A Nurse? 8
Clinical Evaluation 19
The Moaning Rocks 36
Elevator 49
PART 2: SCIENCE FICTION STORIES
Prospect Street 59
The Letter 77
It Was the Time Machine 81
The Sands of Time 100
A Friend of the Family 109
PART 3: CONTEMPORARY STORIES
Two Coffees 151
Be a Man 156
Ball of Fire 165
Time Capsule 181
That Time of Year 194
Bones of Past Years 203
Ass Freezes At -17 Degrees, Study Says 214
About the Author 216
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