“Wreck” was a bad choice of words, since it had been a UPS truck that had killed Bone, but it fit because her hair hung in oily red tangles. She was a permanent sixteen, pale freckled skin with rosy cheeks, figure filling out but still carrying a little baby fat. As usual, she wore the dress she’d once said she’d never be caught dead in, a chambray ruffle knit with a shoulder-hugging lace top.
“And so’s your outfit,” Crystal couldn’t resist adding.
“Family,” Bone said. “They’ll just bury you any old way.”
Crystal pointed to the wall. “Umm. Did that follow you here?”
“Haven’t you noticed?”
“Noticed what?”
“It’s how I get here.”
“I know, but it’s always on the wall in my room, where I can keep an eye on it. Now it’s showing up here.”
“Yeah, but who cares? It’s just some hole thingy, a little tunnel to Darkmeet and back.”
“If Fatback Bob finds out, I’m toast. And I need this job.”
“You’re just here to meet hunks. I saw you checking out Chain Boy.”
“I’m happy with Pettigrew.”
“Pettigrew’s okay if you like that sort of thing.”
“Hey. He’s loyal, and tall, and kind of cute.”
“He drives a tow truck. You’re going to grow old in Parson’s Ford trying to beat a lump of coal into a diamond.”
“At least I get to grow old.” The cheap shot gave Crystal a rush, but it quickly faded to guilt when Bone gave a sad, wistful smile.
“You get old, but I get to be young forever,” Bone said, fading just for spite.
“Come back here.”
Crystal cast a glance at Madame Fingers, who appeared to slide a DVD into her purse. If Fatback Bob weren’t such a smelly old pervert, Crystal might care a little more about inventory control.
Bone knocked over a few DVD’s in the Foreign Films, causing the old lady to jerk erect and sniff the air like a rodent checking for danger. Bone drifted back to the counter and went solid again.
“How do I close that hole?” Crystal asked her.
“Like, how would I know? Ask your Momma.”
“And get the lecture? About how all the other Aldridges could cast closing spells by the time they were twelve?”
“Either that, or just ignore it. Works for me.”
“Something’s moving in there.”
The thing that looked like a swollen tonsil throbbed in the recessed shadows of the Orifice. Crystal had never seen anything move in the Orifice on her bedroom wall, except Bone plopping through like an overgrown fetus with an attitude, so maybe this one was different. And if there were two gateways to Darkmeet, that meant twice as much trouble on the way.
“That’s a Lurken, the afterlife’s version of a peeping tom,” Bone said. “They just like to watch.”
“Lurken? Should I recommend a movie?”
“Maybe you can give it one of Dempsey’s.”
“Drop the Dempsey stuff already.”
“He speaks French.”
“I don’t do subtitles.”
Crystal cast a sideways glance at the Lurken, which now appeared to be about six feet away from the mouth of the Orifice, though distances were difficult to judge, what with all the undulating stalactites and pulsating walls. Splotchy, wet noises spilled forth and a few trickles of dark goo made trails down the wall.
“Get a load of this,” Bone said, going solid by the door.
“Get over here,” Crystal said. “You’re supposed to stay close, remember?”
“What, are we joined at the hip now?”
“As soon as I get my magic down, you’re dead meat.”
“I’m not holding my breath.”
The Lurken let loose with a rattling belch, though that may have been the Orifice. Crystal wasn’t sure about the rules of Darkmeet, and Bone was either just as ignorant or else reluctant to share. Every time Crystal asked her dead best friend about the other side, Bone developed a convenient case of laryngitis and amnesia.
Madame Fingers, who was now over at the Disney section ripping off Mickey, said, “Excuse you,” in that accusatory tone reserved for old bags who lived alone with a dozen cats.
“Excuse me what?” Crystal said.
“Really.”
The Lurken expelled another oily burp. Crystal, who smiled through the whole thing, said, “Can I help you find anything?”
“I changed my mind,” the old woman said, shouldering her handbag, which appeared to be bulging with hot merchandise. She walked past the counter, nose tilted indignantly in the air. “I think I’ll try someplace where the clerks mind their manners.”
“Want me to trip her?” Bone asked.
The woman stopped and squinted at a spot beside the door, where the glass was grimed with handprints. Maybe she’d heard a faint whisper or echo. Bone sometimes had that effect on people.
“Special this week,” Crystal called out. “Steal three and get one free.”
“Hmmph,” the old woman said.
“Come back and see us,” Crystal said, waiting for the electronic alarm to buzz as the woman left. Two panels by the door should have detected the microchips in the DVD’s. Paying customers had their chips demagnetized. Thieves got the old “woop woop woop.”
But she passed right between the panels with barely a stir.
“She’s getting away,” Bone said. “You can’t just let her walk out.”
“I don’t stick my neck out for nobody,” Crystal said.
The woman turned, one hand on the door. Technically, if she stepped outside the store, she was a lawbreaker. “It’s not polite to mutter,” she said.
Crystal wasn’t sure of the next sequence of the events. Perhaps they occurred simultaneously, or in two worlds at once.
Parson’s Ford was weird that way.
Read more or view October Girls at Amazon for Kindle or Amazon UK)
Table of Contents
###
The Lost Ark
An Adventure Novel
By J.R. Rain
Chapter One
The dream was always the same.
It’s a warm day with the sun hot on the back of my neck as I set up the tripod on the steep mountainside. The sky is clear and Mount Ararat, fabled resting spot of Noah’s Ark, sits in silent repose, a dormant volcano that dominates the landscape of Eastern Turkey. A small wind works its way over the rocky surface, bringing with it the scent of wildflowers, ancient dust and something else.
Death.
The great mountain shakes suddenly, violently. I look up, my heart racing. A single word instantly crosses my thoughts: landslide. And it’s nearby.
Immediately, I snap my head around to where Liz, my fiancé, has disappeared around a bend in the trail to, as she puts it, “go potty.” We’d been engaged for the past two years, traveled the world together on assignment with the National Geographic, and still she can’t pee in front of me. Cute, right? Endearing, right?
Except now I didn’t find it so cute and endearing. Now we were separated, and something bad was happening, and it was happening now.
And it was happening directly above her.
I’m moving. I snatch my tripod and camera, hastily shoving both into my lightweight field backpack.
The mountain shakes harder.
Angrier.
“Liz!” I shout, but my voice is instantly swallowed by the deep, primeval rumblings of the legendary mountain.
The outcropping of boulders she had chosen to pee behind is fifty yards to my left, along the face of a steep slope. Above, the mountain continues to shake. Dust drifts lazily across the upper slopes. Something is coming, something very bad, and it’s coming down on top of her.
I see to my horror that there is no easy trail to the outcropping. Indeed, the path is paved in loose shale, akin to walking on bowling balls. Earlier I had watched as she carefully picked her way over the shifting rock, arms outstretched, balancing herself
with amazing cat-like grace, marveling once again at the extremes she was taking for privacy. But, alas, I respected her need for a peaceful pee, although I didn’t completely understand it. Indeed, I loved her for all her quirks.
I had never been in love before. Not true love. I was never around long enough for anything to develop, at least anything substantial. I was a photojournalist. The world was my home.
But this was different. Liz was different. We had met in Nepal three years earlier, and the chemistry between us was frightening. She was all I could have imagined—and often more than I dared imagine. Hell, I don’t think we left the hotel for a week. It was love and I knew it and I was terrified to leave this one behind, as I had left so many others. So I asked her to join me, to work together as a team. To my utter shock, she had agreed, and now I was traveling the world with the girl of my dreams. Part daredevil and part Mother Teresa, she was unstoppable in her pursuit of justice and equality for those less fortunate. We had been jailed twice for her beliefs, and once sentenced to hang. But that’s another story. She was the best photojournalist I knew, stronger than any man and heartier than even me. And, of course, sexy as hell.
Ultimately, she made me happy. Very happy.
* * *
From high above, beyond a rocky cornice to the east, I can see movement. Big movement. Rock and dirt and debris are in motion. Moving slowly at first, but picking up steam, gaining momentum. Massive boulders are soon mixed into the fray.
By my judgment, the landslide is directly over Liz.
And I am moving myself, clawing my way over the loose rocks. Mount Ararat, at least this lower section, is comprised almost entirely of loose shale, which made footing treacherous. At the moment, I could give a damn about my footing. I use my hands to help claw my way forward. I slide and fall often, slashing my knees and palms on the sharp-edged rocks. Whole sections of shale slip out from under me as if they were banana peels. I fall hard, painfully and often, but still I continue.
The mountain shakes harder. From behind me, emerging from his tent, I can hear my Kurdish guide shouting at me, warning me to stay away.
To hell with that. The churning wall of rock has now picked up considerable steam. Anything could have set this rock slide in motion. We are just below the snow line, and so there are some pastures above and around us. A wandering sheep, shepherded by local Turks, could have set off this raging, churning mass of earth. The mountain is called Angri Dagh for a reason. The Mountain of Pain.
I continue my mad scrabble forward. My knees are badly cut, pouring blood into my boots. My palms are torn and slick with the stuff.
The outcropping of boulders is just ahead. Thirty feet. I can hear my own breathing rattling in my head and lungs, my desperate gasps mixed with the ominous rumblings around and above me.
Errant loose pebbles shower down on me. I am at the fringes of the coming rockslide. Now larger rocks pelt me, cracking my jaw and skull.
Still, I keep moving forward. Falling, crying out to her.
And there she is. Appearing from around the corner, hastily pulling at her loose drawstrings. She stops and looks up. I do, too. A wall of rock, a tidal wave of earthen fury, rears above her like a living nightmare.
“Sam!” There is fear in her voice. We have traveled through the world’s most dangerous places, we have endured tyrants and terrorists, and this is the first time I hear such fear.
And it will be the last.
I move forward, faster, falling hard. A churning cloud of dirt and debris fills the air. Liz lunges forward, moving as fast as she can—
Just as a speeding wall of rocks slams into her, hurling her fifty yards into the air. She disappears in a hail of merciless churning debris that continues down the mountainside.
She was there one moment and gone the next. I am left standing in shock, gasping and weeping and bleeding.
It would take me three days to find her mangled body.
And when I do, true to mountain climbing tradition, I bury my sweet girl high on the desolate slopes of Mount Ararat, deep in a secluded mountain cave....
* * *
Now, with the distant rumblings of a thunderstorm approaching, I sit up in bed, gasping, hearing her calling my name over and over again, as if she were just outside my window. The cracking thunder sounds ominously similar—too similar—to the devastating rockslide.
At least, the rockslide in my memory.
Dreams are a funny thing. Often they only give you a feel for a memory. Half memories, perhaps. The reality was, Liz had disappeared for many days. She had indeed wandered off to use the bathroom...and that was the last time I had seen her alive. I found her three days later, broken and battered at the bottom of a ravine. She had indeed been a victim of a rock slide. Only, I had not witnessed it. She had died completely alone, and there hadn’t been a damn thing I could do about it.
I take a deep breath and my fumbling hand finds my lighter and a pack of cigarettes on the nightstand. I light up and move over to my window, where I sit on the ledge and stare down at the empty street below. The first drops of rain splatter against the glass as I exhale a plume of billowing gray smoke.
* * *
I must have fallen asleep, because Liz is suddenly standing just outside my two-story window, which overlooks a battered industrial street. Liz has no business standing out there in the middle of the night, in the rain. Besides, she has been dead for three years.
I dash out my cigarette, mashing it against the woodframe of the window. Liz is standing there on the curb in her cargo pants with its too-many pockets, pockets she always stuffed with her essentials. Liz hates purses. Even from here, through the slanting rain and darkness, through the window and my tears, I could see her pant pockets bulging with everything from basic cosmetics to snack food. Once, I had even seen her place an injured lizard into such a pocket.
“Come out of the rain,” I say. As I speak, I try desperately to open the bedroom window, but it won’t budge. Strange, it has never been stuck before. I frantically work at the lock, growing increasingly desperate and furious. I am nearly ready to drive an elbow through the glass, to get to Liz, when she speaks to me from the street. Her voice rising up through wind and rain and a closed window supernaturally easily.
“It’s okay, Sam,” she says hauntingly, her voice sweet and raspy. “Leave the window be. I don’t mind standing out in the rain. I like the rain, remember?”
“Yes, I remember,” I say frantically, thrilled that I am talking to her again, but still frustrated to no end by the stubborn window. “But if I can get this window open you can come inside and stay dry and I can protect you and keep you warm.”
“Forget the window, Sam.”
I try the lock again.
“I said forget the window. You can be so stubborn. Please, Sam. We need to talk.”
At her insistence, I let the window issue drop and settle for pressing my hot forehead against the cold glass.
“Were you just smoking, Sam?”
“Yes.”
“When did you start smoking?”
“When you died.”
“You’ve been drinking, too,” she says.
“Yes.”
“Too much, I think,” she says.
“Yes, probably. I miss you. I can’t help it. I miss you so much. The drinking...it helps a little. I’m sorry.”
She lets the issue go. “So what are you doing with yourself these days, Sam?”
I shrug, suddenly ashamed. “Not much, really. I run a small bar here in town, and lead the occasional expedition. I’m a certified Ararat guide.”
The rain continues down. The image of my fiancé wavers briefly behind the glass. Lightning flashes directly overhead, illuminating the street. And when it does, she briefly disappears. But now she is back, to my great relief.
“Why are you still in this godforsaken place, Sam?” she asks.
“Because I don’t want to leave you, Liz. Don’t you see? I can’t leave you. You are burie
d all alone up on that fucking mountain, and I’m the only one who knows where you are buried, and I visit you as often as I can.”
“It’s been three years, Sam. You can leave me now. It’s okay. I’m okay. I’ve moved on. You should, too.”
“But you’re still here,” I say, speaking into the glass at the figure standing on the dark street below. Her pants flutter in the wind, and her raven-colored hair lifts and falls. I could see her eyes sparkling with tears even from here. “I can see you, and you’re still here.”
“No,” she said. “I’m not.”
And then my heart breaks all over again, because now I can distinctly see through her. Now amorphous, she shimmers like a ghost.
“Please,” I say, real desperation in my voice. I press my face hard against the glass, fingernails clawing. “Please don’t go. You’ve only just returned. You’re the only girl I’ve ever loved, the only girl who’s ever loved me. I can’t live alone, not anymore.”
“Go home, Sam. It’s time for you to go home.”
“I love you,” I say.
“I know you do,” she says.
And then she disappears, and the wind and rain blows across the empty street, and I hang my head....and when I awoke this morning, this was the position I found myself in.
Sample more and view The Lost Ark at Amazon for Kindle or Amazon UK
Table of Contents
###
View other Kindle books by Scott Nicholson
Novels
Liquid Fear
Disintegration
The Red Church
Speed Dating with the Dead
The Skull Ring
As I Die Lying
Cursed (with J.R. Rain)
Ghost College (with J.R. Rain)
Bad Blood (with J.R. Rain and H.T. Night)
October Girls
Crime Beat
Transparent Lovers
Creative Spirit
Chronic Fear
Collections
Curtains
Flowers
Ashes
Scott Nicholson Library Vol 2 Page 85
