The first half of this story was originally written as a stand-alone piece, called SILVER AEROPLANE. I had no intention of extending the premise, but the idea whispered to me: All that stuff that disappeared--where did it go?
I love a shocking time-jump--who can forget the thrill of watching Castaway for the first time and seeing that mindblowing 'four years later' right after Tom Hanks knocks his tooth out with an ice skate, and now he's a scrawny, bearded prophet spearing fish in the lagoon? I hit on the idea that the stuff that was disappearing from the coat closet in SILVER AEROPLANE was traveling not only in space but also in time. Jump back fifty-thousand years, to a tribe of cave dwellers, and see where the story goes. That segment of the story, originally titled TWO DREAMS AND THE LIGHTNING STONE, forms the bookend of the story arc. The strangeness of the artifacts create their own mystery for Two Dreams and his grandfather, and the ominous turn at the end suggests that the course of human history might be about to change.
CLOUDSCAPE won the Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award in Spring of 2019, and will appear in the 21st Century Ghost Stories Anthology in 2021.
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