THE
HAUNTINGS
OF
SCOTT REMINGTON
Robert B. Marcus Jr.
Table of Contents
Title Page
COPYRIGHT PAGE
DEDICATION PAGE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
EPILOGUE
EXPLANATION OF MAYAN CALENDAR
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
OTHER BOOKS
The Hauntings of Scott Remington is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to local persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The Hauntings of Scott Remington
A Robert B. Marcus Jr. Book
Text Copyright © 2020 by Robert B. Marcus Jr.
All Rights Reserved.
Except for use in any review, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher: Robert B. Marcus Jr., Email: [email protected].
Ebbook Edition
Cover Design: Val Edward Simone
For more books please visit
www.rbmarcusjr.com
Dedication
To Jacob, Oliver and
Eme, of course.
CHAPTER ONE
For me, this was a change of times, not the best of times nor the worst of times. A new beginning, with new expectations, though I wasn’t quite sure what my future now held.
My old life with Anthony Simone was behind me forever. Completely.
I hoped.
My latest impression of my new life was favorable. I was sitting at the dinner table, on a cruise that I had randomly selected, across from the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Now, that was the first thing I noticed about her. The second was how unhappy she looked. She didn’t smile and said little, even when she turned to the young girl sitting beside her, a girl I assumed was her daughter, who looked about ten years old.
I was sitting on the first day of the cruise with ten other people at my table. At first, I thought the woman and her daughter were traveling alone, because she virtually ignored the other four people sitting on her side of our table, but after watching her for a while I came to the conclusion that she did know them but chose to ignore them.
Three of the others were men; the fourth was an older woman, perhaps about seventy. It was somewhat difficult to gauge her age because her hair had remained dark brown with only a few streaks of gray, and her slender figure was timeless. But her face had frozen into a scowl that had not developed overnight. Still, parts of her face resembled the face of the beautiful young woman, and I concluded that she was the grandmother of the little girl.
And the ruler of the family.
As I watched the way they all interacted, I concluded that none of the men at the table was the father. I wondered where he was.
Dead?
Banished by the queen?
Realizing that I likely would never know, I turned my attention back to the people on my side of the table.
My name is Scott Remington. I was raised by a man who ran an organization that most of the public considers evil. After he adopted me—I have no idea who my parents were—I grew up and worked for him, becoming an expert at killing his enemies.
And I was good. I left no mark. An enemy would be found dead, with no evidence left behind that his life had been shortened by another person. I was rarely ever suspected, and never caught. But this life wore on me, so I finally quit. I often felt that this wasn’t the life I was intended to live. My adopted father, Anthony Simone, wasn’t happy about my retirement, but I had moved on, not sure what I wanted to do next.
The first thing I had chosen to do was relax on a cruise. Why not? What could be more tranquil than slowly meandering on a huge boat through the Caribbean, a thousand people waiting on you, serving you all the food you could ever want, providing strange and interesting entertainment at times. After I had walked out of Simone’s office, I had passed a travel agency, saw an advertisement for this cruise and felt strangely drawn to it.
Few things could be less stressful than a cruise like this, but old habits die hard. In my previous line of work I had to assess people and situations immediately. I noticed small details that normal people might not even consider as I sized up every person I met. So I’d quickly noticed the unhappiness of the young mother, the disdain of her daughter for everyone but her mother, and the haughtiness of the grandmother.
I turned my attention back to the three men on the other side of the table.
They were a contrast from the women. All were solidly built, though one carried more abdomen than was healthy. Even when he was sitting down, I could see that another one was quite a bit shorter than the other two. All wore scowls that matched the older woman’s. Two of the three had noses askew, as though they had been in a line of work that had smashed their faces in. I knew the type well, since I had worked with many a thug before I retired. I guessed them all to be in their thirties and knew that they would never be my friends.
I wondered why the goddess accompanied such a group. Of course, part of her attractiveness was her abject loneliness, which exuded from her like a perfume, deep and mesmerizing, but most of it was simply her breathtaking beauty. There wasn’t a hair out of place on her head, not a line on her face, not a blemish anywhere. Her skin was flawless and pale, as if she had never seen the sun, and her hair was black, in striking counterpoint to her skin. Her emerald green eyes threatened to engulf me, as if I was a missing part of her. If her daughter was about ten, I put her at about thirty, though her age, like that of her mother, was timeless.
Her daughter was even more intriguing. I felt as
if she was a missing part of me, which made no sense at all. Watching her glance across the table at me, I suspected that she thought I looked familiar also.
On my side of the table, everyone but me had finished their entrées and all of them were awaiting the arrival of the dessert menu.
“Where are you from?” asked the woman to my left. Her name was Bobbie, and the man beside her was her husband, Jack. They were well-educated, she a retired teacher, her husband an accountant. To their left was another mother, with her probably late-twenties daughter, who was attractive, with brown hair, a deep tan, and a nice nose that turned up a little at the tip. There was something unusual about her, though I wasn’t sure what it was. Her eyes were friendly but a little distant. I’d heard her mother call her Carolyn sometime during dinner, and I also thought I’d heard her say her last name was Wiggins when she’d introduced herself to Bobbie.
“Virginia,” I replied when it was my turn to identify myself, having planned for this. “Newport News.”
“I know where that is,” Carolyn replied. “I had an uncle who worked in the shipyard. Did you work there?”
I was ready for that as well. “No,” I said as I shook my head. “I was a furniture salesman.” And if anyone asked further, I would have told them Butler Brothers Home Furnishings on Jefferson Avenue. Anyone bothering to check on that would have discovered that the Butler Brothers store burned down two months before.
“Was?” asked the short woman to my right, Darlene, a nurse from Indiana accompanied by her quiet husband, to her right.
“I injured my back over a year ago lifting a heavy sofa. Just recently had surgery and I’m still disabled.” Somewhere in Newport News existed records of a Scott Remington, furniture salesman. The records, including the registration of his 2015 Ford Taurus, said he was alive. He was not. At least not the other Scott Remington, though I didn’t kill him. He certainly hadn’t been one of my targets. I was also Scott Remington, and it had taken me a couple of weeks on the Internet to find a person with the same name that I could assume the identity of. I had a number of aliases but had chosen to use my own name on this trip, which for some illogical reason appealed to me. Maybe I wanted my new life after retirement to be with my real name. When I discovered Scott Remington of Newport News on the Internet, I adopted his identity. I even had a passport with his identity, though of course it had my photo.
But I doubted I would meet anyone who wanted to eliminate me, as I had on many of my previous excursions when I was in the employ of Anthony Simone. With the exception, of course, of the three thugs across the table, who I suspected, would love to take me out just to pass a little time.
The dessert menu listed chocolate mousse, cheesecake, and various flavors of ice cream. I chose the mousse. Everyone else had coffee and talked about spring break while I studied the young woman across from me. And her daughter.
This pale woman had been born of mist and shadow—I could see it in her eyes even from where I sat—but there was a weariness not often seen on the face of a woman so young. Maybe she was older than I thought.
Her side of the table had been served faster than mine, or maybe they just talked less, so she was picking at her mousse, as was the young girl, who was stirring it in the glass as if she was mixing hot chocolate. Once in a while she licked the spoon, but I couldn’t discern any decrease in the height of the dessert even when she finally pushed it away and said, “I want to go to bed.”
“What about the show?” her mother asked, a question that generated an even denser glower from the old woman.
The daughter rubbed her head, her hair as perfect as her mother’s and just as dark.
“The show will be boring,” she said.
“How do you know?” her mother asked. “You haven’t even seen it.”
“I saw a replay of one from the last cruise on the room TV a little while ago. Borrring. I didn’t understand the jokes.”
I sympathized with her. I’d been on only one other cruise, and the jokes on it were definitely boring. I expected the same tonight. But that didn’t bother me; I had come on this cruise to relax and be bored.
Our desserts came as the six people from the other side of the table arose and left, walking by us toward the door. As she passed, the beautiful woman’s eyes flicked to mine, then were gone. I wasn’t sure what I saw in them. Fear? Loneliness? Maybe a little curiosity as well?
Behind her, bringing up the rear of the procession, the large man with the larger belly saw me watching her and made sure I also caught his eyes. They were black and said quite clearly, She’s off-limits. Any fool can see that.
I knew, because I could read eyes. It had kept me alive.
I ate my mousse, enjoying it a great deal, not at all concerned about the threats from the man with the large belly. I engaged the couple on my right, Bobbie and Jack, in a discussion of the cruise’s itinerary, particularly Vacation Cays, the first stop tomorrow.
On the other side of Bobbie and Jack, the middle-aged woman and her daughter, Carolyn, arose to leave. Carolyn caught my glance and gazed at me, a hint of a strange emotion, almost surprise, deep within her eyes. Bobbie and Jack were also standing up, ready to leave. Our assistant waiter was already cleaning off the table with some impatience, preparing for the arrival of the second seating in only fifteen minutes. I arose and left.
Loneliness is a relative thing. I was alone, but I didn’t feel lonely. I had always been alone, though I had friends—at least I called them that—and employers, and some who served as both. I worked alone and never questioned it. In fact, I insisted on it. And now that I was retired, I still didn’t question being alone. At some point in my life, I knew I would have to seek companionship, but for now I would just relax and watch life continue without any intervention on my part.
The cruise was scheduled for four stops, two of them focused on exploring the Mayan ruins in Yucatán, including a stop at Cozumel, with a tour available to Tulum, and a two-day stop at Progresso, where tours to several Mayan sites could be arranged.
The first stop was at Vacation Cays, a small islet in the Bahamas owned by Vacation Cruise Lines. The Sea Lady was a 105,000-ton vessel, and although it drew only twenty-seven feet, it belonged in the open sea. The waters near Vacation Cays were too shallow for the ship to dock, so passengers were obliged to ride tenders into shore.
There really wasn’t much to do on Vacation Cays. You could lie in a hammock or on a lounge, you could swim and snorkel in the crystal-clear water, you could rent a sailboat, and you could eat the free hamburgers and hot dogs prepared by the ship’s crew at lunchtime. And you could drink, of course. You can always drink on a cruise, virtually anything you want. You just have to pay for it.
For me, the small island stop was perfect.
I rented a mask, a snorkel, and some fins, but the hammocks looked so inviting I decided to lie and read for a while. I put my gear under the hammock and took out a book by Paul Theroux, The Pillars of Hercules: A Grand Tour of the Mediterranean. Strange to be reading about the Med while touring the Caribbean, I thought. Maybe I could write about the Caribbean in the same way, though my job certainly hadn’t prepared me to be an author. The problem was that the Caribbean didn’t have the thousands of years of written history that oozed from the countries lining the Mediterranean.
Or did it? I had read somewhere that the language of the Mayan civilization went back over two thousand years, maybe even further. I didn’t know much about the Mayans. I would have to learn quite a bit. Still . . . I didn’t have anything better to do. Maybe I did have a book in me.
I remember reading about Cyprus, then I slept. I awoke with the feeling that someone was watching me. It was not a pleasant feeling, but it was one I had lived with all my adult life. It came with my job.
I had learned to trust my feelings over the years and had also learned how not to give away the fact that I knew I was being watched, so I yawned without even having to pretend, stretched, and picked up my book.
A shadow appeared over me. I looked up and saw one of my tablemates from dinner standing there. The attractive brown-haired woman who had come with her mother. Whose name I couldn’t remember.
“Carolyn,” she said, amused by my confusion. “And you’re Scott. I didn’t catch your last name.”
“What?”
“Carolyn, that’s my name. You were trying to remember as you woke up. I’m sorry to disturb you, but I just wondered if you wanted to go for a swim. I couldn’t help but notice that you have snorkel gear under your hammock. I went in a little while ago and the water’s great. You can see all the way to the bottom. The fish are spectacular.”
She was attractive, but I wished she would stop talking. Well, with a snorkel tube in her mouth, she couldn’t say much, so I stood up, dropping my book into the hammock.
“Oh, you’re coming,” she exclaimed. “Great!”
Her enthusiasm wasn’t faked, I noticed.
I also noticed as I surveyed the terrain and its inhabitants around me that I no longer had the feeling of being watched. Whoever it was had gone. Or had it been Carolyn?
The water was perfect, and to tell the truth I was glad to have some company. The coral reef was close to shore and through the clear water I could see fish of every hue and size swimming in my peripheral vision around and through the coral, though none would approach us.
The boundary of the swimming area was roped off not more than thirty feet from shore. Very little effort was needed to reach it. Just beyond the rope the water was probably twenty feet deep or more, but so clear I felt as though I could touch the bottom if I tried. There was no coral reef here; the bottom was sandy and almost lifeless. Only a few small fish scooted over the barren white floor of the bay.
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