Excerpt from House of Dead Trees! Featured character: Allen Mandel

Allen Mandel is the "leader" of the Ghost Scout team, and one of it's founding members. Allen is a pragmatic and rational man. He became interested in the supernatural following the death of his father, who he worshipped growing up. He seeks incontestable proof of life after death as much for himself as for the fame, but he's recently been distracted by a marriage which seems to be stalling out.

Please remember this is a work in progress...

From Chapter Two...

Allen Mandel cursed as he sliced the ball and watched it arc across the greens, its descending trajectory angled straight at the water hazard on hole eight of Diamond Lake Golf Course. “God DAMN it!” he cried, and his golfing partner, Jim Dagstine, chortled. Allen squeezed the grip of his driver, trying to quash the image that flashed suddenly in his mind: him, wrapping his golf club around his buddy’s skull. His ball went into the little pond with a distant ker-plunk! and then he felt the tension drain out of him, and he couldn’t help but chuckle, too.

Fucking whore! Fuck-shit!

“I hope you piss straighter than you golf, my friend, or I feel sorry for your housekeeper,” Jim said with a pat on the shoulder.

“Naw,” Allen said with a rueful grin. “My aim in the bathroom’s just as terrible.”

 “That’s nasty, dude. I wouldn’t have admitted that,” Jim laughed. Allen stepped out of the way and Jim squatted to place his tee. “So what’s up? You’ve been golfing like shit for the last two or three weeks.”

As Jim bent to place his ball on the tee, Allen wondered if his buddy knew just how fat his ass looked in that position. Jim was dressed in one-hundred-dollar-a-pair, green and yellow argyle Loudmouth golf pants, and the breadth of his derriere was really quite remarkable. Jim Dagstine had a peculiar pear-shaped body, normal-sized everywhere but through the hips. Allen considered mentioning it to his friend—a little jab for all the enjoyment his buddy had derived from Allen’s terrible showing so far today—but he held his tongue.

Save it for later.

“You having problems with the old lady again?” Jim asked, as he stood upright and squinted across the fairway. He shaded his eyes with his gloved hand, lips pulled back from his teeth. The chrome-bright June sun glimmered on the surface of the water hazard, the ripples made by Allen’s golf ball still oscillating outward from the spot where it had plunked into the drink.

“Trouble? No. There’s no trouble,” Allen said. “I wish there was trouble. That would be better than what she’s doing.”

Jim glanced at Allen sympathetically. They’d been friends for five years, practically from the day Allen moved next door to him. They didn’t have much in common aside from sharing a demented sense of humor. Jim was a proctologist, and Allen… well, Allen was a famous television personality, star of the cable reality program Ghost Scouts. But they got along pretty well. They’d even been known to admit they were best friends from time to time, but only after they’d gotten enough beer in them to get a little maudlin.

“She giving you the old silent treatment, huh?” Jim asked.

“It’s more than that,” Allen said while Jim slid a club from his golf bag. “It’s like she’s just shut down. Or shut me out. When she looks at me, it’s like she’s looking right through me, like I’m not even there. It makes me feel like Bruce Willis in that movie The Sixth Sense.”

“You guys still fucking?” Jim asked, examining his 9 iron.

“Nope. It’s probably been two or three months since we made love.”

Jim grimaced. “Yikes! Two or three months? I noticed your forearms were getting bigger.  I just thought you were going to the gym more.”

Allen chuckled. “I’m even getting callouses.”

Jim stepped up to the tee. He thrust his gigantic ass out and wiggled it around, then took a couple practice swings. “You should have an affair,” he said after a swing or two. “Famous TV guy like you… I bet you could take your pick from a million nubile groupies.”

Allen cocked an eyebrow. That was actually not far from the truth. He could take his pick from hundreds of eager female fans—young, good-looking, hot-for-his-dick Ghost Scouts fans. He’d had plenty of offers, been followed to his hotel room when Allen and the gang were on publicity tours, even got cornered in the men’s room a couple times. One gal, a thirtyish bleach blond with giant breast implants, had walked up to him in the back room of a convention hall, dropped to her knees without saying a word and dived straight for his zipper. She’d actually had his pecker out before he’d had time to collect his wits and disentangle himself from her.

And then there was Tish. Young, attractive, unattached and willing.

“But I don’t want them,” Allen said stubbornly. “I want Sharon.”

Jim stepped to the tee and swung. It was a beautiful drive. Both men stood and watched the little white ball rise into the blue porcelain sky. It hung in the air for a moment, then gracefully descended to the green, bouncing once, twice, then coming to rest just a few feet away from the cup.

Allen laughed as Jim grinned back over his shoulder at him.

“You’re a real cocksucker,” Allen said, shaking his head.

“Don’t you wish,” Jim replied smoothly.

They shouldered their bags and headed toward the golf cart.