On the desert world of Stuk's Hollow, there is something quite amiss. A siren call has brought the weak minded out to the Wailing Seas desert to dig out something ancient and cruel. The warning signs are there but the Houses on the Hollow are deaf, dumb and blind after thirty years of peace and neglect. Their memories of the last House War are just that and they wish to keep it that way even if it means surrendering. Eighteen-year-old, salvage operator Melinda Scott is on a job in the New Welles Asteroid Belt when she finds a puzzle piece of intrigue in the form a slumbering Necromancer by the name of Spence MacGregor but before the two can figure out what's going on they're dragged down onto the Hollow. Thrown into a word of magical Houses to the left and techno Houses to the right, the two along with a ragtag group of misfits led by a fallen leader must re-assemble the puzzle pieces before the Hollow is suffocated in screams and drowned in blood. Welcome to Where Weavers Daire.

Former psychoanalyst Fiona Butters is sent to a notorious girls’ reformatory in the middle of the Nevada desert by "Mr. Las Vegas"--her powerful and persuasive boss--to check on his daughter's welfare after the inexplicable disappearance of a counselor. The reluctant Butters is suddenly thrust into the unintended role of private investigator in a search for answers to questions she doesn't yet know to ask. A junk food junkie with a knack for rubbing people the wrong way, Butters encounters evasion by the reformatory Head Mistress, roadblocks by the authorities, and a "handler" compliments of Mr. Las Vegas--a surly alcoholic who would rather spend his time in the local bars. It isn't until Butters forms an unlikely alliance with a button-down professor and an eccentric WWII veteran with a penchant for alliteration and sexual innuendo that she begins to learn the secrets of the desert.

Psychological short story: I wrote this as a spooky short story along the lines of the old Twilight Zone shows. In this story, it may seem as though one person is just talking with another, but something much stranger is going on. NOTE: This story was previously published in a small, independent magazine that is no longer available.