The Skates

A short story.

A tragedy from the past that will not die.

Reverend Renner’s quiet, well-ordered Michigan life is turned upside down after he purchases a pair of nineteenth-century ice skates at a yard sale. First an enormous black dog takes to following him all over town, and then the skates attach themselves to his feet in the middle of the night. Frightened but curious, Renner seeks help from the one man he’d most like to avoid, ex-linebacker Dale Quist. Together, Renner and Quist work to unravel the mystery of the skates, a potentially fatal task that will lead them to England, and one of London’s greatest historical disasters.