Okay, I get to help them. But how? Can I touch them with my mind, send them on their way?
A gaping hatchway looms, and rushes closer. They follow a twisted path below the decks, and Rachel sees the first bodies. A middle-aged woman and a boy of about fifteen float in a corridor, turning around slowly, not quite touching. The woman is clutching a crucifix.
“Help them!”
Clara's plea is even more urgent than before. Rachel tries to reach the boy with her mind. Nothing happens. She moves closer, tries to merge with the floating body despite her natural repugnance, but fails. She tries reaching the woman, again finds no response, not even a hint of a presence.
So where are they, if not here? I saw nothing on the way down to the wreck.
“Deeper, go deeper.”
They descend down into the tilted bowels of the great ship, find the hold where the captives were kept. A great gash in the hull shows where the torpedo struck. Bodies, some intact, drift on a gentle inner tide. Around the hole that sank the ship, souls still in panic, unable to go beyond the moment that they have been reliving here for over four years.
Rachel moves among them accompanied by Emily and Clara. She touches them with her spirit, trying to ease their passing, struggling to take some of the burden of terror onto herself. Slowly, the screaming dies away in the green-lit gloom of the passenger hold and eventually Rachel can go back.
“Thank you,” says Clara, her sad smile beginning to fade. “Be good to him. He deserves all your love.”
***
That night, Rachel and Tony lie awake talking.
“Clara came back because she loved you, and that connected you to me.”
Tony looks baffled.
“I did have a silly crush on her, you were right. I never thought she felt anything for me. I mean, I was a spotty little English boy. I was four, I'd never even kissed a girl. I thought, ‘why should a lovely girl like Clara feel anything for me?’ ”
Rachel moves closer to him on the cramped guest house bed.
“But she did. You were the one who led her to me, without even knowing. Maybe she saw something in you that you couldn't see yourself?”
“Perhaps,” Tony concedes with a shake of his head. “And you really felt Emily going with you, all those hundreds of miles over the sea and dozens of fathoms deep?”
“Yes, she was with me then, just as surely as she is inside me now,” she replies.
They lie in the dark talking but reach no more conclusions. Then Tony asks, “Do you ever think that it's insane to bring a new life into this world? I know I shouldn't say it, but sometimes we think terrible things, fear for people we care about.”
She reaches out to him.
“We're bringing Emily into a world that's as bad, or as good, as it always has been. The war's nearly over, and who knows what the peace will bring?”
They move closer as he says, “You've got enough faith in humanity for the two of us.”
***
There's an oddly brittle atmosphere at breakfast as Tony and Rachel enter the small dining room of the Sea View Guest House. One of the guests greets them with, “Well, soon be over now! Soon finish the little bastards off!”
Yet other guests seem confused, worried even, and unsure how to react. It's clear that something in the news is responsible, as people are passing around a mixture of papers. When they take their seats, there's a chorus of subdued Good Mornings, then someone hands Tony a copy of the Times of London.
“What is it, honey?”
He hands her the paper, seemingly without looking at it.
Almost as if he already knows what it will say, she thinks.
She notices the name of her new president, reads the sub-heading:
TRUMAN DECLARES 'FORCES THAT POWER SUN UNLEASHED'
She sees a map and the name of a city she's never heard of.
* * *
Rachel Rubin is back in another adventure: The Smog!
FREE Bonus Novel!
Thank you once again for downloading this book. I’d really appreciate it if you took a minute to leave a review, it helps tremendously!
Don’t forget to download your FREE full length novel: Sherman’s Library Trilogy by Ron Ripley. Let us know where to send it by signing up for our mailing list below. You’ll also learn about upcoming releases, future discounts and giveaways: www.scarestreet.com/davidlonghorn
FREE books (30 - 60 pages):
Ron Ripley (Ghost Stories)
Ghost Stories (Short Story Collection)
The Boylan House (Novella sized preview of Trilogy)
The Blood Contract (Novella sized preview of Trilogy)
The Enfield Horror (Novella sized preview of Trilogy)
Victor Dark (Supernatural Suspense)
Uninvited Guests (Novella sized preview of Trilogy)
Listen To Me Speak (Novella sized preview of Trilogy)
A.I. Nasser (Supernatural Suspense)
Polly’s Haven (Short Story)
This is Gonna Hurt (Short Story)
Multi-Author Scare Street Collaboration
Horror Stories: A Short Story Collection
And experience the complete novels (150 - 200 pages):
Ron Ripley (Ghost Stories)
Sherman’s Library Trilogy (FREE via mailing list signup)
The Boylan House Trilogy
The Blood Contract Trilogy
The Enfield Horror Trilogy
Moving In Series Box Set Books 1 - 3 (22% off)
Moving In (Moving In Series Book 1)
The Dunewalkers (Moving In Series Book 2)
Middlebury Sanitarium (Moving In Series Book 3)
Moving In Series Box Set Books 4 - 6 (25% off)
The First Church (Moving In Series Book 4)
The Paupers' Crypt (Moving In Series Book 5)
The Academy (Moving In Series Book 6)
Berkley Street (Berkley Street Series Book 1)
The Lighthouse (Berkley Street Series Book 2)
The Town of Griswold (Berkley Street Series Book 3)
Sanford Hospital (Berkley Street Series Book 4)
Victor Dark (Supernatural Suspense)
Uninvited Guests Trilogy
Listen To Me Speak Trilogy
A.I. Nasser (Supernatural Suspense)
Children To The Slaughter (Slaughter Series Book 1)
Shadow’s Embrace (Slaughter Series Book 2)
Copper’s Keeper (Slaughter Series Book 3)
Kurtain Motel (The Sin Series Book 1)
Refuge (The Sin Series Book 2)
Purgatory (The Sin Series Book 3)
David Longhorn (Supernatural Suspense)
Sentinels (The Sentinels Series Book 1)
The Haunter (The Sentinels Series Book 2)
The Smog (The Sentinels Series Book 3)
Eric Whittle (Psychological Horror)
Catharsis (Catharsis Series Book 1)
Mania (Catharsis Series Book 2)
Coffer (Catharsis Series Book 3)
Sara Clancy (Supernatural Suspense)
Black Bayou (Dark Legacy Series Book 1)
Haunted Waterways (Dark Legacy Series Book 2)
Keeping it spooky,
Team Scare Street
Table of Contents
Prologue: December 1944
Chapter 1: Encounters and Revelations
Chapter 2: Ghosts and Horrors
Chapter 3: Communication and Confusion
Chapter 4: The Evil Within
Chapter 5: The Living and the Dead
Chapter 6: Lost and Found
Chapter 7: A Strange Inheritance
Chapter 8: Closing In
Chapter 9: Deeper Than the Darkness
Chapter 10: The Garden of the Cosmos
Chapter 11: What Lies Beneath
Chapter 12: The Black Sun
Epilogue: Life in Wartime
Bonus Scene: Empire Star
orn, The Haunter (The Sentinels Series Book 2)
The Haunter (The Sentinels Series Book 2) Page 17
