The Ghost
or How I Became A Female Paraplegic
It was a dark and stormy night. Isn’t that how all the badly written stories are supposed to start? Unfortunately for me, it was true.
I had been a drifter since I was 16. Moving from place to place on foot or hitch-hiking, doing odd jobs to earn enough money to get me to the next town my travels took me to. When the night in question happened I was 23 years old. I had been traveling in the central United States and was in a rural area with a moderate sized town in the distance as my destination. It was nearing night fall and I could tell a major storm was gathering over head. I was sure that it was going to let loose before I found decent shelter, and I was right. I got drenched once it started coming down, but having been hiking for the past 7 years I had my other clothing packed inside waterproof bags so I wasn’t too concerned about that. The bad thing was the rain was ice cold so I wanted out of this weather as soon as I could find some place. The sun was going below the horizon to my right as I was passing a small rise to my left and the light from the sun along with a big flash of lightning lit up a building just beyond the rise in the land. Immediately I headed for it hoping to at least find a corner out of the rain if I could not gain entry into the place.
