Contents
Copyright Page
Prologue
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Bonus Short Story
Robbed of Soul
Legends of Treasure Book 1
© Lois D. Brown, 2015
Published by Levanter Publishing
Cover art by NicholeV Photography
978-1-940576-06-0
Summary of Robbed of Soul: Rescued but psychologically damaged from a failed mission, ex-CIA officer Maria Branson takes the job of police chief in the quiet town of Kanab, Utah. Rest and relaxation are the doctor’s orders. She gets neither. Instead, a missing mayor, the spirit of a dead Aztec warrior, and the over-confident-yet-attractive head of Search and Rescue await her in a town whose past has almost as many secrets as her own. As Maria investigates a modern-day murder, she disturbs a world of ancient legends and deadly curses. Yet most lethal of all is Maria’s fear someone will discover just how empty her soul really is.
Of Special Note: In this book, the quotes at the beginning of each chapter are from actual publications. However, Robbed of Soul is a work of fiction. While most of the areas in this story are actual places, the names, characters, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or based on legends. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is unintentional.
Dedicated to Marlin and Delores, with love
Prologue
IT WASN’T THE SILENCE that drove her mad. It was the noises. Water dripping from the leak in the ceiling. Flies buzzing. Her own labored breathing. And the desperate pleas from other captives as they were dragged through the outside door adjacent to her cell.
At first she thought she was lucky to have her room located where she could get a glimpse of the sun at least one time a day through the small window in her door. The beams of light burst onto the gray walls like fireworks on the fourth of July.
It didn’t take long to learn, however, that the prisoners never returned. Only the guards re-entered, wiping bright red blood off their hands with a rag. It was the only time she saw any color besides gray. The rice was gray. The meat was gray. Even the interrogators’ teeth were gray.
A scraping noise on the floor jerked her eyes open. Someone had slid breakfast through the slot that was her main contact with the outside world. She stared at the tiny open space, like she had a thousand times before, and wished she could force her emaciated body through it. But she wasn’t that small. Not yet.
Her mornings consisted of pushups, sit ups, jumping jacks, stretching, deep breathing, and the recitation of the entire periodic table—in song form. Who knew high school chemistry would be one of her saving graces?
Afternoons followed the same routine, with the addition of running in place, playing Brahms First Concerto entirely from memory on the dirt floor, and, on occasion, sitting through hours of grueling questions from bearded men in gray fatigues that smelled of urine and rotten beef.
In the evenings the whispers would start. Sometimes they were in English, other times Farsi, and often she didn’t know the language. The first time she heard them, she thought the sounds must be coming through the drain in the middle of the floor—the one that led to the sewer. But who could live down there with all of the human waste and filth?
Next she hypothesized there must be an unseen vent in her room, but a thorough investigation of every cement wall disproved that theory. It was then she admitted the voices were inside her head. But whose were they?
The first ghost appeared to her in the middle of a typical sleepless night. He had no head, hence no mouth, so where the whispers came from was puzzling. He stood in the corner of her room, arms flailing as if he was trying to take flight. Why she could see him in the dark was a mystery. But there he was, shimmering like moonlight.
Sick, demented, moonlight.
As she watched the headless figure move about, her own stomach lurched back and forth. Her sparse dinner ended up as a puddle on the cement floor. Trembling, with her back pressed up against the wall furthest from the apparition, she hardly noticed the odor of her vomit. Terror, after all, diminished one’s sense of smell.
The other ghosts came later. Night after night. All had body parts missing—a hand, an arm, a leg. Even though they moved as humans might, there was no life in them.
More worrisome to her, however, were the doubts about her own soul—the thing that made her into who she was. Her personality. Her reasons for living. Her hopes and passions. Was any of it still there?
Doubtful.
Certainly her drive for success had vanished. What kind of success could one hope for if life merely consisted of breathing and listlessly moving about? Oh how she missed her family. Her home. Her memory foam mattress and cell phone. The only thing she had was death. It was in her dreams, in her waking moments, and in her mindless stares at the barren cell walls. She wished it would come more quickly. She ached for her nightly visitors to take her away with them. But they only teased and tormented. Just another form of cruelty to add to the list of others she’d experienced.
Please, she begged the empty room, let it end.
A haunted lake, a lost [Aztec] treasure, endangered mollusks, eight thousand ghosts, and one smiling skeleton. Welcome to the wacky world of Southern Utah.
–Range Magazine. “Montezuma’s Revenge” by Richard Menzies, Fall Issue 1998.
Chapter 1
POLICE CHIEF MARIA BRANSON wasn’t sure if her PTSD would let her run within one or two blocks of the cemetery that morning. Yesterday she’d been feeling strong during her workout. Her trim, athletic body hadn’t started to panic until she was less than three hundred feet away from the metal gates of Kanab’s one-hundred-fifty-year-old graveyard—a spot many residents considered the town’s crowning feature.
Maria, Kanab’s newest citizen as of a week ago, didn’t hold the same opinion.
Whoever had thought of building a town around the markers of dead bodies had some serious mental issues. Maybe even worse than hers, she mused. Then again, probably not.
But truly there was something wrong with the fact that she could see tombstones from the parking lot of the main grocery store and from the main gas station in town.
Noting the acid forming in her gut, making her stomach and throat burn, Maria concluded it was going to be a two-block perimeter day. Oh well. She’d run around her condo complex a few more times when she got home. No big deal.
Sweat dripped down her neck. Reaching back, Maria gathered her thick, dark brown hair and slipped a ponytail holder over it. For the thirty-ninth time that morning, she reassured herself the move to Kanab had been a good choice. Her co-workers at the CIA had said she was going out to pasture. She’d denied their accusations, of course. Admitting they were right would mean her time in Tehran had really happened. That she really had lived through it. That it wasn’t the bad dream her mind tried to convince her to forget.
Instead, she’d told the other special agents it had always been a passion of hers to work in Kanab—the booming movie town of the mid 1900s th
at had lost its Hollywood popularity but never its charm. It was where her grandparents had lived. A place she had visited every summer as a child, where she had fondly played in the creek, swam in the reservoir, and hiked red-dirt bluffs.
It wasn’t a lie. She really had always wanted to return to her roots. Just not at the age of thirty-two, when her career as a CIA operative was supposed to be taking off.
Maria breathed in deeply and gagged on the hot air. Running in a desert climate was nothing like running in Pittsburgh, where she had grown up.
On the sidewalk, walking toward Maria, was an elderly woman. Maria veered to the right to give her plenty of space to pass. The woman was a grandmotherly type, with perfectly coiffed, lightly tinted, purple-silver hair and laugh lines framing her mouth. Only today she wasn’t laughing. She wiped her cheeks, wet with tears, with a handkerchief.
“Excuse me,” said Maria, stopping mid stride. “May I help you?”
The woman’s bottom lip quivered. “Goodness me. Yes.” A sniffle.
“What’s going on?” asked Maria, unsure if she should introduce herself as the police chief or maintain anonymity. Dressed in her neon orange running shorts and fuchsia shirt, she looked nothing like someone in law enforcement, at the moment.
“I know this sounds ridiculous,” said the elderly woman. “It’s so horribly cliché. But my cat is stuck in a tree.” Dabbing her eyes with a cloth hanky, she continued. “I’ve tried everything to coax her down.”
Wincing, Maria envisioned the kind of heyday her co-workers at the CIA would have if they ever heard about this. But they wouldn’t hear about it. She now lived across the country from them. “A cat, huh?” Doing her best to keep a straight face, Maria continued, “I think I can help with that.” Her hand-to-hand combat training was most certainly overkill for this sleepy town. “Where is he?”
“She’s up there.” A wrinkled index finger pointed to a skyscraper oak tree planted majestically in the middle of the graveyard.
Seriously? Of all the trees in Kanab, and there were a few, the dumb cat had to climb one in the graveyard? A sick feeling sank from Maria’s throat into her toes. All confidence was gone. “H-have you tried a bowl of milk?” she stammered.
“Everything. All my cat’s favorite treats and toys. I even tried singing to her. She won’t budge. You look the tree-climbing type. Could you scamper up the branches and get her down?”
The shaking in Maria’s extremities had started. She knew sporadic breathing was the next symptom that would manifest. She tried to fight it, but couldn’t. Like robots on autopilot, her fingers started to tap out the fingering to Brahms First Concerto on her leg. The racing of her heart slowed a little. But not much. She’d have to pull out all of her tricks—or compulsions as her therapist called them—to get her through the next few minutes. That or she’d have a full panic attack on her hands, which she just might anyway at this pace.
Glancing at her watch, Maria let out a fake gasp. “Is it really almost eight? I’ve got to get to work. I must have lost track of time. I’m actually the new police chief in Kanab. How about if my assistant comes and helps you?” She sounded so pathetic, so weak; and she hated herself for it.
The woman’s face fell. Even more tears dripped off her wobbly chin. “It wouldn’t take long,” she said. “Certainly helping my Cocoa Puffs is part of the job. Don’t you think?”
Maria was wordless. Yes, she was a police chief—one trained in espionage and clandestine operations and one so scarred and damaged she could hardly pull a cat down from a tree. Taking a deep breath, she said, “Of course.”
“Excellent!” With amazing energy, the woman grabbed Maria’s forearm, and the two practically jogged to the cemetery. The woman was in great shape for being well past sixty-five. “I’m Adelaide Wolfgramm,” she said loudly, turning her head so Maria could hear. “I do appreciate your help. They say my big-and-ugly cookies are the best around. I’ll whip you up a batch later and bring them by the city offices.”
The thought of food—especially anything sugary—was nauseating. Maria highly doubted there was any way the gallons of adrenaline sloshing in her stomach right now would ever mix well with cookies. “N-no need.” Her breath was so fast she could hardly talk. Everything inside of her ached. Her head, lungs, even her eye sockets.
As they entered the graveyard, the first few tombstones were gray blurs. And then, as if someone had pushed the focus button on a camera, Maria’s vision cleared. She saw every word, every letter, on every marker. Husbands who left bereaved wives. Parents who outlived their children. Entire families who died on the same day. All of their bodies now decayed. Only skeletons remained of the complex biological system once called human life.
And where was the rest of them? The essence of their souls?
It was the same question that had driven her mad in Tehran each time a prisoner was dragged outside, never to return. It was the question that haunted her as hallucinations replaced dreams, and fear replaced breathing. During the time she’d spent in solitary confinement, she’d never been alone—terror had been her companion; dread her full-time enemy. And then, of course, there had been the ghosts.
“Do you see my little Cocoa Puffs up there?” Adelaide motioned into the air, thankfully pulling Maria from her thoughts. “Doesn’t she look scared? She needs someone brave like you to save her.” She patted Maria’s arm.
Next to her feet, Maria saw the green grass in front of a burial marker split in two. Please no! Oh help me. Please no! Maria screamed inside her head.
The gap in the earth grew; soil spilled out. White grass roots entangled together like the intestines of a dead man’s body picked over by vultures. She had seen a man just like that once—in a remote area of East Tennessee. During her life before Tehran.
The old woman still rambled. “… must admit, I was slightly surprised to see the town hire a woman chief. Sometimes they can be such a good old boy’s club around here.”
Usually listening to real people talk kept Maria’s phasmophobia in check. Not today. It made it worse.
The air was quickly disappearing. Maria was in the middle of a town with a population of only five thousand people and there was no more oxygen. Not a single particle of it. She was going to die.
“… I wonder if they hired you so they wouldn’t have to pay as much. You’re so young and all. The city budget has been tight this year. At least that is what Teresa said, Bill’s wife. Oh, you know, the wife of the town’s accountant. Anyhow, we go walking in the mornings and …”
It was hard to believe anything but complete horror existed anywhere else in the world, let alone two feet from Maria’s side. The old woman droned on, completely oblivious to the fact that Maria had just spied a rotten hand reaching outward from the black abyss by a tombstone. An arm in the same condition followed.
It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not real. Maria pounded the piano concerto on her leg. There’s no such thing as ghosts. Ghosts are a figment of my imagination. A symptom of my time in Tehran.
“So …” the old woman stared at her, expectantly. “… are you going to climb up?”
They were at the base of the tree. Maria hadn’t realized she’d still been walking. It surprised her, since all of her extremities felt like cement posts.
“Cocoa Puffs likes it when you purr at her.” Adelaide waved at her pet and cooed.
All around Maria, bodies long past their prime extricated themselves from their earthly graves. Each one walked toward her. They didn’t float. At least Maria’s ghosts never did. Instead, they glided with feet touching the ground.
The good thing, the very, very, very good thing, was that Maria’s ghosts couldn’t fly. And she highly doubted they could climb trees either. Without a word to the old woman, Maria jumped from a standing position straight into the air, catching a low hanging branch that was at least ten feet from the ground. With one jerk she pulled her body up and scrambled into the leaves, finally straddling a limb twenty feet i
n the air. If sanity hadn’t left her, she would have been amazed at what her body was capable of doing in less than ten seconds.
The dead forms beneath her wailed in muted, pitiful frustration. Perspiration rolled off Maria’s chin. A sharp pain on her forearm forced her to look forward instead of down. A furry creature—a cat—pawed at her. Its wail echoed the tormented souls below. Interestingly, as the cat rubbed against Maria’s thigh, purring, the ghosts stopped wailing and began to purr as well. An evil, deadly sort of sound. One meant to tease its victims before the pounce.
“Oh, wonderful.” Adelaide called up into the tree. “Cocoa Puffs seems to like you.”
Her cheerful voice mocked the terror that pounded inside Maria’s head.
The entire scene unfolded itself like a movie. Maria watched herself in the tree. The cat was by her side. Adelaide encouraged her from the ground. Next to the old woman were ten, no twenty, ghastly beings that scratched at the trunk. Their fingernails tore off their fingers, dropping to the ground like a spilled box of cornflakes. Still, they didn’t stop.
What had Maria’s therapist called this? When she left her body? Realization? No. Deprivation? Maria shook her head. No, that wasn’t it either. Depersonalization. That was right! Unfortunately, simply remembering its name didn’t make it stop. She couldn’t force her body to move. She could never leave this place of safety.
Away from her captors.
Maria’s cell phone buzzed inside her exercise bra. She saw herself answer it automatically. Habits were hard to break, even in the midst of being consumed by the undead.
“Chief Branson?”
The voice was familiar, but Maria’s mind couldn’t stop racing enough to identify who it was. What should she say? What did normal people say when they answered the phone?
The silence had gone too long. The person on the other end knew something was wrong.
“Maria? Are you there? It’s Pete. Pete Richins.”
The assistant chief of police.
“Oh.” That was all Maria could get out. She was proud of even that little bit.
“Listen, something has happened. We need you at the station, pronto.”
Robbed of Soul: Legends of Treasure Book 1 Page 1
