Harry spotted Lucy as she tried to blend in the shadows while taking pictures of the bystanders. Noticing his interest, she gave him an odd look. She raised her thumb and pinky up to her ear and mouthed, call me, and then she fell back into her task.
Harry huddled closer to Mason for a conversation. “So the mother’s name is Evelyn Adamson. Adam and Eve? Sounds like a joke.”
Mason shivered; his expression was unreadable. He stared at Harry as if he didn’t know him. After a minute, he said, “It’s a peculiar name. I feel her, though. How many boys from the hood do you know is named Mason? It’s rough, man. Kids are mean. I used to get called Perry Mason, or Mason Jarhead. It was a good thing I played ball.” He smiled, “I almost made pro…”
Harry finished, “…until you blew out your knee. Yeah, Mase, we all know how the scouts showed up to see you play. And besides, you ain’t from the hood. But nice try.”
Mason said, “Don’t be hatin’, man. It ain’t cool on you.” His expression became somber again.
Harry said, “Hey married man, roll up your tongue.”
Mason laughed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
That moment of camaraderie dissolved when Harry’s attention was drawn back to the lackluster plea from Evelyn Adamson. The lulling sound of her voice conjured up an image of tulips.
And the world inexplicably slowed down.
Even Mason’s yakking dwindled to a slow-mo banter.
Harry pretended normalcy as his focus shifted back to the news conference. The police chief had taken the stage and began spewing words without answering a single question. The chief’s super slow drawl had Harry wondering if he was suffering from a symptom that was a prelude to a heart-attack or some other serious condition.
He couldn’t go down now at the start of another child abduction case. He couldn’t…his attention reverted back to Evelyn Adamson and the odd way she stared mutely into the cameras. Underneath the chief’s answers, Harry thought he heard a whispering…her whispering, but she wasn’t moving her lips.
He was definitely going nuts, but he couldn’t look away and he couldn’t turn it off. He remembered what Mr. Accountant had said, She knows you’re going to be looking for that boy.
Was Evelyn Adamson that she?
Harry jumped, a little startled when he saw the appearance of a shadow.
Yes, he was going crazy because the damn thing looked as if it had misted out of her skin, and through her clothing, until she was momentarily blotted out before it draped over her like a garment.
Harry was speechless. Maybe the brain damage from his accident had taken a decade to fully surface. He was crackers, there was no mistake. Even now, Mason was clueless as he laughed in slow motion at some corny joke about Ethan. He wouldn’t have been joking if he had witnessed what Harry had just seen.
Harry couldn’t stop gawking. The shadow took on a feminine physique. For Harry, the world seemed to freeze frame the moment the shadow developed eyes. There were no other facial features. And those eyes were just a pair of flickering flames that seemed to sear his soul.
He was incapable of movement. He couldn’t swallow or breathe. Cold terror sliced through his marrow. He watched as the shadow woman separated from Evelyn Adamson like an amoeba as they stood side-by-side.
Harry thought the human woman appeared a little duller and less perfect when they divided. The shadow woman leapt gracefully off the ground while at the same time the human she pierced Harry with a knowing gaze. Through her tears, she smiled.
Harry eased out his breath as he questioned whether his treasured sanity was skipping reality grooves. The non-reaction from the crowd, and the continued jawing from his glib partner also had him questioning why he was the only one embracing this latest lick of Southern-sautéed crazy. Was there something airborne? Had he picked up the cuckoo germ passed through touch? Had he actually touched that slick-haired accountant? After all, he had seen the shadow at the precinct too.
What if he was wrong? What if the day was backwards because he wasn’t actually awake? Maybe he was in the middle of a doozy because of too good a time with his old pal Jack Daniels.
That seemed logical.
The shadow woman swam on the air with the grace of a ballerina, as if she enjoyed her freedom. Harry was amazed as the shadow she swirled with her arms upraised while she leapt into a ballet emboîté. Although she didn’t have any features, her eyes seemed to burn in a gleeful riot of red and yellow.
Harry forgot that he was in the throes of a nightmare as her hypnotic eyes somehow forced him to calm down even as fear branched out from his guts.
The shadow doppelganger’s head lifted up. Her attention no longer focused on Harry. Although he was scared, he had to see what caught her attention and followed the path of her fiery stare even though he had to step out on the porch to get a better view.
The house was old with peeling blue paint and rotted boards. The first and second windows were covered up with plywood, but Harry saw that the tiptop opening, possibly an attic window, was slightly ajar. He saw something protruding out. It looked like a rifle barrel.
The wind suddenly kicked up a notch. It bellowed like a wounded mother’s scream. For seconds, or maybe years, he gritted his teeth as he endured the eternal screech. He dared himself not to look foolish by covering up his ears against a scream that seemed to elude everyone else. He endured the banshee-like wail until he thought his eardrums would explode and drip blood down the sides of his face.
Mason asked, “Hey what’s wrong with you? What’cha lookin’ at?”
Harry was startled out of his painful bubble. In a split-second the world righted and the black essence evaporated. “Do you see anything?”
Mason said, “Up there? N’all man. You all right?”
Harry felt lethargic and shrugged as if trying to wake up. Everyone else seemed to be reading the flyers that may have been handed out during his freefall from reality.
He lied, “Yeah, I’m fine. Why you asking?”
Mason said, “Cuz you look sick.”
Before Harry could answer, he heard a bang followed by a loud crash.
He knew a gunshot when he heard one. Instinctively he ducked. The shot probably came from the nonexistent rifle barrel that Mason just said he hadn’t seen. Harry glared at Mason. His partner had been spoon-feeding him lies all day.
Panic turned the press conference into a frenzied event. The subdued crowd dissolved into a screaming mob as they frantically sought shelter. The reporters, true to their craft, took cover as they transmitted the turmoil for media consumption.
The detectives, however, were automatic in their responses.
Harry drew his gun as Mason shouldered the door. The thing was locked and it didn’t give under the pounding. The B-team, Ethan and Tommy, helped disperse the crowd as the police chief hustled Evelyn Adamson to safety. Harry saw there was a jagged hole in the school’s window a few inches from where she had stood. Someone had been a lousy shot.
Ethan scurried up the porch just as another shot rang out.
Mason shouted, “Hey, give it up! She’s in the wind. You’ve got a chance to come out of this alive. Take it!”
The detectives mimed their strategy. Mason and Harry would circle the house in opposite directions, break a window and get inside to try and collar the shooter. Ethan would keep banging on the door as a distraction. Tommy would try to enter through the backdoor in case the shooter doubled back and was able to give the duo the slip.
The detectives moved.
Harry could hear Ethan knocking into the door. He jumped off the porch and landed into a thick iciness that wrapped around his legs like snowy concrete. The day and his bravado were waning as mundane shadows took on ominous implications. He scurried, with gun drawn and head low, to the side of the house. The banging sound of shoulder on wood grew fainter.
He was cold, but grew colder still when the black harbinger materialized right in front of him…or had it been
there all along, waiting just for him? He was amazed that he couldn’t actually see through it. Did it mean that damnable thing possibly had substance?
Snow fell from the sky like miniature ice missiles. Thunder boomed and lightning flashed as the day rolled to a menacing close. Harry knew for certain that he wasn’t mental. Fear rooted his feet in the snow and stifled the scream in his throat. When he crouched down low, so did she. He was forced to stare into her fiery eyes. If his bladder hadn’t been empty, he would’ve pissed his pants.
He opened his mouth to call for backup. Nothing came out.
Harry…Harry…
He was shocked. He felt her. She didn’t speak directly to him. Her singsong chant was inside of him. It was a sweet melody that rolled through him warmly and filled his nostrils with the delectable aroma of vanilla. The song also brought to mind an image of tulips.
His thoughts hooked a sliver of a memory. When he tried to reel it in, bile crept up his throat and Harry started to gag. The vomit was accompanied by a blast of pain that knifed between his eyes. A drip-drip slipped from his nostrils and then blood dotted the snow.
He backhanded his nose, and he saw that once again, the shadowy she had disappeared.
Harry wasn’t given time to absorb the meaning of her disappearance because a choked scream erupted from within the house. The sound was ripe with pain. Aware that he had been delayed, and maybe on purpose, he stepped up his gait. The scream was followed by a crystalline sound, like glass shattering. Harry doubled back fearful that his lateness had cost his partner’s life.
A male, black, mid to late twenties; approximately five feet seven, weight between one sixty-five to one-eighty-five stared up at the sky with unseeing eyes. He was twisted like a pretzel and his every orifice bled out.
Chapter 10 – Lights, Camera, Suspended Action
“Poppy? You ready? You’re on in 5…4…3…”
Poppy Stevens was exhausted although no one would know it by the artificial smile on her perky face. She was told that she had an effervescent personality.
Bubbly, bright – let’s not forget perky – Poppy had emerged out of her pampered mother’s womb into an equally pampered life. She had attended good schools, graduated with honors, and had landed a dream job at the number one ranked news station which immediately launched her into local celebrity status.
The job hadn’t paid that much, and it was too removed from her real desire, the anchor’s chair. She had time, so she didn’t mind covering local interests. She was proud of her Arts in the Park, First Day of School, and other nice human interest segments. Still, her flimsy career had been enough to attract her future husband, Jack.
Jackson McKinley Polk had the name of Presidents. He even looked presidential with thick, wavy hair, a face that seemed chiseled out of marble by Michelangelo himself, and a body that was just shy of bodybuilder perfection.
Jackson McKinley Polk was suave and wealthy. He hadn’t been born a man of affluence, he had cultivated his wealth by learning, adapting and then assimilating. Poppy had been impressed by his rags to riches to filthy riches story. He’d been a surgeon who had dabbled in stocks and real estate until he just dabbled in surgery. By the time Poppy happened upon him at a posh fundraiser, Jackson was worth twenty million.
Poppy made her first mistake by retiring from her passion. Pleasing Jackson had become her new life’s work. By the time they celebrated their tenth year anniversary, she was a pleasantly plump stay-at-home mom with two kids in elementary school. Once the kids were in school, Poppy devoted her mom time to causes like fighting against homelessness, or helping out at the SPCA. She knew that she was blessed to have a life that was so perfectly perky.
By the time they celebrated their eleventh year anniversary, Poppy suspected that Jack was cheating on her. He was a sloppy philanderer. She’d found panties in the Lexus, and receipts in his desk drawer for extravagant jewelry purchases and posh hotel stays. She’d also found cell phone bills which told her the bastard actually had a secret cellphone. It had been an easy guess for her to discover his password. She’d listen to the impatient voice of Deborah as she demanded that he come home…home…to satisfy her. Deborah had sounded every bit of twenty!
Poppy’s life had descended into a heartbreaking cliché. It became obvious that she was now that woman, the one others avoided at dinner parties, the dumpy housewife that had let herself go. She was the clueless, and career-less, person who boasted about how important being a stay-at-home was to the development of her children, while nannies and maids did all the heavy lifting.
Truthfully, Jack hadn’t touched her in months. Their love life had been on the wane right before she conceived Abby, their adorable little girl. Poppy had to admit that she did sort of look the other way whenever Jack worked late or had frequent trips out of town and absentmindedly left his cellphone turned off.
After realizing his deception, Poppy tried, but couldn’t ignore the whispers that trailed her from the PTA to the tennis club. At the most recent gala they attended, Jack had openly flaunted his admiration for a stunning brunette. Perky could never describe that exquisitely attired man-stealing barracuda. Plus, the equally fabulous rock on her left hand told Poppy all she needed to know about the next chapter in her life.
Poppy had been an idiot for giving up her dreams just to please Jackson. Going along to please him was officially over. She found strength in her humiliation. She vowed not to lie down and let those two horses’ asses grind their hooves into her spine.
The formerly perky Poppy wasn’t beaten. She was sneaky. She sought the best divorce lawyer in Richmond and paid her retainer using Jackson McKinley Polk’s money before the egotistical prick froze her out of their assets. By the time he’d actually cut her out of their accounts, Poppy had catalogued his portfolios the best she could and approached her old employer, WKLF, for a job. Working had given her newfound vitality.
She stayed in the grand castle on Mulrey Drive, because her lawyer advised against moving, and because damn it, the house was her children’s home. Jackson, who had lowered his trousers and tried to crap all over her self-esteem, had assumed that she would crack under his will. He had demanded that she leave her kids, and her extravagant lifestyle, to preferably live in a cardboard box on the nearest skid row.
Poppy was a fighter and she wanted this fight. But lately knocking head-to-head against Jackson just left her drained all the time. Suddenly he started behaving nicely to her…he was too considerate and there was something off about his smile. Perhaps he’d changed his mind and wanted to be a family again.
“Poppy, you ready for the intro?” Carl, her cameraman, centered the lens on her face.
Poppy heard the anchor in her earpiece and focused her blue eyes directly into the lens. She said, “We are at Saint Michael’s Catholic School where…”
After her opening spiel, Carl panned the camera, careful not to include any of the other syndicate stations in his scope, and then returned the camera’s eye back to her. Poppy explained all that she had been able to cull from her police sources, when they’d been waiting for the press conference to begin.
“Young Victor Adamson…” She held up a flyer with the boy’s face. “…is missing. He was last seen at 2:30 pm and was heard screaming. No one saw the abduction. The only clues to his disappearance are a basketball and a pair of eyeglasses. Victor was last seen wearing the school uniform: dark green slacks, dark green V-neck sweater, black shoes and a dark green down coat. He is described as a quiet and trusting child. A press conference is scheduled for 4:30 pm. If you’ve seen anything or know anything, call the Richmond Police. This is Poppy Stevens, live at Saint Michael’s Catholic School. Back to you, Bradley.”
The red light on Carl’s camera dimmed. Poppy lowered her mike and checked her watch. They had another ten minutes before the press conference preempted the local programming.
The weather was cold, colder than her marriage.
Well at least her children weren’t m
issing.
Poppy would never give herself marks for being astute especially since it took her so long to realize what everyone else, it seemed, knew – that Jackson had been screwing around. But even she could see that something wasn’t quite right at this assembly for the press conference.
It was the people. She’d gotten this plum assignment because the real reporters were covering the effects of the blizzard. Crashes, power outages and the complete shutdown of the airplanes, trains and the interstates were being covered by seasoned reporters. The stars of the gloomy show were the weather folks who confounded the populace by trying to explain how a system emerged out of nowhere and parked over the city. How can a weather phenomenon respect city borders?
Poppy yawned again, but the simple act of yawning caused her a smidgen of pain in her stomach pit. Strange weather, strange people, strange life.
While she shivered in her parka, the bystanders seemed to have no visible reaction to the blizzard. They huddled around the makeshift riser as men in heavy coats assembled microphones to the podium. Maybe the producer had gotten it wrong? Maybe the real story wasn’t the weather system? Maybe the real news goldmine was here and now?
“Come here, Carl.”
Poppy scanned the expressionless faces. They were a diverse group who stood three rows deep. What crowd voluntarily stands at a press conference in exact rows? They were like statues, as they stared up at the podium as if waiting for…what? The mother?
Carl visibly quaked inside his coat. He clasped his hands together and blew into them. “Got the engine running. I’ve cranked up the heat. Let’s warm up before the press conference starts. I’ll even share my cocoa with you.”
Poppy thumbed at the group of onlookers. “What do you see?”
Carl knitted his eyebrows and after a few moments he said, “I see I’m going to have to get my camera.”
Stolen Prophet: A Horror Supernatural Thriller (The Prophet's Mother Book 1) Page 10
