It's a killer gig...Grad student Matt Diaz learns he can make a quick thousand bucks. All he has to do grab a book from a deserted house for a mystery boss. He makes it in, and realizes that was the easy part. Getting out alive is the hard part. A 5700-word supernatural suspense short story. * * * * * * EXCERPT:Matthew Diaz read the plain text ad on his iPhone again, making sure he had the right address and the date and time. He double-checked the time on his phone, then went ahead and looked at the ad again on the miscellaneous board of the oddjobs site, wondering what the catch was. It looked legit, but it could just as well be a scam. A thousand cash for what looked like a cakewalk was no joke in this economy, but he wanted to see the money and the situation before he signed on to this dumbshit gig. He'd pulled his fair share of boneheaded pranks and gags in college, and at thirty-three and starting to go bald, he wasn't about to be the ass on the wrong end of a Punk'd episode.He stood outside a huge, rundown Victorian-style mansion with an overgrown, weedy lawn on the outskirts of the small town. It was a dull gray-brown, with a bunch of lace-like iron work around and a huge-ass covered porch. Par for the course in any small New England town, full of aging populations and dying Puritan standards for keefor New England's aging population and dying Puritan standards of cleanliness and godliness. He got out of his Toyota Prius and pocketed his phone, wondering what the hell he was doing here on a perfectly good Saturday morning with crisp fall weather instead of going to the mountains for a good hike and then kicking back with a nice cold microbrew. The microbrew that cost a pretty penny to enjoy, even if it did make only a few batches at a time. Times were rough, money was tight, and dammit, he wanted his beer.