by Dan Alatorre
An Angel On Her Shoulder
© This book is licensed for your personal use only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. © No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author. Copyright © 2017 by Dan Alatorre. All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover by DAVID DUANES DESIGN
Edited by Allison Maruska allisonmaruska.com
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Praise for An Angel On Her Shoulder
Alatorre weaves a tale of mystery and suspense tied together by the heart of a loving father.
Doug is an average family man who experiences strange disasters, all surrounding his daughter and all occurring around the same time of year. Finding no answers in the physical world, he faces his own disbelief and seeks them from the supernatural one, taking him down a path darker than he ever expected.
With echoes of King's The Shining, An Angel On Her Shoulder will keep readers guessing and challenge what they believe is real. This exciting story is one readers won't soon forget.
- Allison Maruska, bestselling author of The Fourth Descendant
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
About the Author
Other Books By Dan Alatorre
Chapter 1
“Call 911! CALL 911!”
The man’s shouts ripped through the tasting room of scenic Hillside Winery. At the counter, Mallory lowered her brochures for 2017 vintages and glanced over her shoulder, unable to see who had called out. The other customers, two dozen or so elderly tourists and a smaller group that called the server by name, were looking around, too.
With confusion working its way into their expressions, nobody moved or called 911.
The man’s voice rose, straining with fear and urgency as his words boomed down the hallway and spilled over them. “Somebody call 911! There’s been an accident in the parking lot!”
A robust fellow, gray at the temples but broad in the shoulders and belly, pushed away from the tasting counter and headed toward the shouts.
“Martin.” The woman next to him reached out for his arm. “Don’t. You’re not on duty.”
He didn’t break stride. “A cop is never off duty.”
Rejoining the others at the granite countertop, his wife muttered to herself but for the benefit of anyone within earshot. “Retired ones are.”
Mallory set down her Virginia Wine Country pamphlets and smiled at the woman.
The officer’s wife sighed, having found a willing audience. “He just can’t relax. He’ll—”
“Jenny!” From the window, Martin wheeled around, his eyes wide. “Tell the bartender to call an ambulance. Now!” He lumbered toward the front doors at a pace slowed only by his age and size. “Tell them there’s an accident with severe injuries and we may need a medevac unit.”
In a wave, curious winery patrons moved from the counter to the windows, gathering close to view the parking lot as Martin rushed outside.
Mallory moved with the mob, checking around the tasting room as she did. No sign of her husband and daughter. She clutched the brochures to her chest, a tiny knot of fear gripping her belly.
Behind the bar, the server picked up a telephone. “Where’s Mr. Hill?” His finger hovered over the buttons as he directed his gaze at the closest employee, speaking with hushed urgency. “Avery—anybody know where Mr. Hill is?”
Carrying an unopened case of wine, Avery did his best to shrug.
“Okay . . . grab any other volunteer firefighters from the warehouse crew and get out to the front parking lot. See what’s going on.”
“All right, Mike.” Setting down the white Hillside box, Avery scurried into the back room. “José! Ron!”
An uneasy feeling gripped Mallory. Her eyes darted around the room as she held her breath and searched for her family. She’d said goodbye to her husband and three-year-old daughter a moment ago, but how long had it really been? A few minutes? More?
Her stomach tightened as the wave of uneasiness swept through her. She recounted her conversation with Doug. He had gone to get their little girl something to eat from the car—their rental van—for lunch.
“We’ll have a little birthday picnic in the parking lot. Does that sound fun?” He flashed his amazing smile at their daughter. “It’s nice out. Maybe we’ll open the van doors, sit outside on the cooler, and watch a DVD.”
Mallory grinned as her daughter’s blonde ponytail brushed the collar of a new yellow dress. Hand in hand, her man and her baby strolled past the racks of t-shirts and souvenirs, then Mallory returned her attention to the tasting list.
A few moments later, a loud crash. The vibrations came right through the floor, but she and the other customers ignored it. In a bustling winery warehouse filled with forklifts and trucks and massive juice pumps, loud noises weren’t unusual.
But panicked shouting was.
Her heart in her throat, Mallory tried to press through the curious onlookers gathering at the windows. A quiet morning at a picturesque Virginia winery was turning into chaos. Straining on her tiptoes to see past the others, she caught a glimpse of the scene.
Enough to make the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.
A pickup truck with the Hillcrest logo on the door had somehow wrecked into several cars in the lot. Her car. The van she and Doug had rented for their vacation. The entire side was demolished, the windows shattered. Broken glass covered the pavement all around the vehicle.
Pulse racing, she grabbed the shoulder of the man in front of her, craning her neck to get a better glimpse. She couldn’t see her husband or daughter anywhere, but too many gawkers blocked her view through the small window. Outside, volunteers and arriving customers gathered in the lot, further obscuring her line of sight.
An audible groan escaped as she clutched her aching gut. Where were Doug and Sophie?
Outside, Avery reached the gathered onlookers and immediately turned white. He stepped back, almost losing his balance for a moment, then shouted at the windows. “Tell Mike we need an ambulance! Tell them to hurry!”
Inside, each customer moved forward t
o look past the others, jamming the space in front of the windows and blocking the hallway that lead to the front door. People trying to get outside to help ran into people straining to see. Everyone rushed to get through the door at the same time, so no one did.
Mallory was pinned to the wall. The fear inside her was mounting to an uncontrollable level.
“How many people were hit?” Somebody asked.
“I can’t tell. A few,” another voice replied.
A man near Mallory put his hand to his mouth, gasping. “My God, there’s a girl pinned under the van!”
His words ignited the surging panic inside Mallory. She heaved against the rotund man next to her. “Let me out!”
Wedging her arms and lowering her head, she forced her way out of the crushing mob and into the tasting room. Not stopping to catch her breath, she ran at the packed entryway, clawing her way through the crowd of curious onlookers.
An elderly woman came in the front door, wringing her hands, her mouth agape. “Oh, my God, I’ve never seen such a thing.” She shook her head. “That car hit her and she flew right up in the air!”
“That girl is going to die.” The man behind her muttered.
Surely they can’t be talking about my daughter.
“It plowed right into them! It didn’t even slow down!”
The exit hallway was completely blocked. Mallory’s heart pounded. She looked around, frantic.
“I don’t know how anyone could survive that.”
Mallory tried to see out the hallway window. She strained, on tiptoe, looking over shoulders and between bobbing heads. She swallowed hard, pushing down the panic welling inside her.
“Okay, I’ll go feed Sophie her lunch. You come out when you’re finished.” He turned to their daughter. “We’ll have a little birthday picnic in the parking lot. Does that sound fun?”
Mallory craned her neck to catch a glimpse of anything. Inside, too many people blocked her view. Outside, too many helpers crowded around the victims. There were tire marks showing the path the truck took, straight into her rental van and the car next to it.
Fear rose up in her throat. She fought her way through the crowd to the door.
Where is my baby? Where’s Doug?
She clawed her way to the next window. It gave fewer answers. The volunteers had rolled someone over, but there were too many people in the way to see who it was. The others worked to get the girl out from under the van.
Her van.
Putting a hand on the wall to keep from falling, the elderly woman shook her head. “My God, the blood . . .”
A volunteer by the vehicle moved. Mallory caught a glimpse of the blood splattered clothing—a bright yellow dress—and a stream of blood running from it to the parking lot gutter.
She gasped in horror.
Panic and adrenaline took over. Mallory had to get down the hallway. She had to get outside. She shoved and punched at the onlookers, but everyone else seemed to be moving in slow motion. “Let me out! You’ve got to let me out!”
Shouts from the crowd obscured her cries.
“We need some towels for them! Get some towels!”
“Where’s that ambulance!?”
Tears streaming down her face, Mallory squeezed between the wall and the last customer in the hallway as she grasped for the door. “Please! I’ve got to get outside!”
She fell forward, latching onto the large iron door handle. She squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath, desperately whispering a prayer. “Please, God. Don’t let this be happening to my family.”
Please.
Chapter 2
We would never have called it bullying.
Not back then, when Nixon stepped down as our president and plaid pants dominated the business fashion world. In Millersburg, Indiana, whining about being bullied would get the crap kicked out of you.
Some kids were towel snappers in the high school locker room, but they were usually fifteen or sixteen years old. Jimmy was already there when we were ten. He was my best friend, and even though he was a little small for his age, he made up for a lot of that in effort. He had to. It would be a long time before we were as big as our older brothers, if we ever got that big. And like a lot of older brothers, Jimmy’s was pretty ruthless on him in public. It was one of those, “I can pick on my little brother but you can’t” things. Only, Jimmy’s older brother didn’t care who else picked on him.
It wasn’t bullying. We called it “teasing” or “tormenting.” That was some sort of parental code for getting close to the line but not quite crossing it. If you got punched, it was in the arm, as part of a “game.” Your grade school friends might give your triceps a good shot playing slug bug while riding bikes, but if you hit a kid hard enough to make him cry or wreck his ten speed, you probably paid for it when you got home. Nobody got punched in the face or drew blood—not on purpose, anyway. Accidents happened all the time, but a cut caused by a go-cart with no brakes that crashed at the bottom of a hill, that bleeds differently than a cut caused by a tough kid at the park with a pocket knife or a broken bottle.
Jimmy might get his butt kicked, but he would get right in there if a confrontation occurred. That impressed me about him. I could never do that. If I rode my bike to the park and there were some rough-looking older kids there, I would go home and come back later, or maybe wait for another day. Jimmy would stay there and ignore them, deciding that we’d come to test our bikes on a makeshift bike ramp or to hike the trails through the woods, and we were gonna do just that. It never bothered him that the rougher kids were around. If it did bother him, he never let on.
He never had to. I would always mention it.
“Aw, come on, Dougie, ignore them.” Jimmy would say. “Let's splash some rocks in the deep part of the creek.”
They were only a few years older than us. Punks, as my brother would later call them when he grew up and joined the Millersburg police force. But at that age, when we were barely ten years old, a few years makes a big difference. An extra thirty pounds and eight or ten inches of height can make for a pretty unfair fight. The tough kids were bigger and stronger than us, and they had been around. They probably actually knew what to do in a fight.
I never saw Jimmy’s attitude toward them as being brave. It was, but it was also a kind of nonchalant. He was indifferent, somehow not seeing them as a potential threat. He’d heard the same stories I’d heard, about kids getting beat up and having their bike stolen or something. Jimmy was patient, taking in the situation like all good hunters learn to. If those kids wanted to smoke cigarettes or read a stolen Hustler magazine, they didn’t want a bunch of us younger kids around watching. They would leave. And Jimmy always seemed to know that.
One time, my family went to a fundraiser for our church. We were always selling raffle tickets or chocolate bars or some damn thing for St. Matthew’s. Going door to door asking strangers if they wanted to buy an overpriced candy bar so we could get new basketballs. It never ended. I was the worst at it, too. I ate as many candy bars as I sold; probably more. I’d come home with ten dollars in cash and twenty dollars in missing chocolate, and Mom would know that she was going to have to write another check. Jimmy moved his allotment of candy, but his mom helped. She worked in a big office, so she pushed it to the other employees. Jimmy almost never had to go door to door.
My mom helped me by driving me to neighborhoods I hadn’t door-knocked yet.
Hawking chocolate bars for the church was lousy, but the church festivals were great. Candy selling was a lonely business, done by yourself or with a friend across the street, but the festivals were packed with people. There was music, bright lights, and games of chance. They had a big spinning wheel lined with poker cards. There was a ring toss, where you could win a huge glass bottle of Pepsi if you could get the little wooden ring to land on its neck. I don’t think they make them anymore, those big glass bottles. They must have been almost as big as the plastic two-liter ones they sell now. A kid who cou
ld get the little ring to stay on the neck of the bottle got to walk away with an enormous warm soda to share with their friends. Winning a big Pepsi was a really huge deal—those little rings never stayed on when you threw them. They always bounced crazy and landed on the floor of the booth, so players would end up paying two or three bucks for a one-dollar bottle of soda. Kids didn’t care, though. We never got soda at home unless our parents hosted a big party with all our friends and relatives, like New Year’s eve or something. Winning the massive Pepsi was a treasure for a ten-year-old kid.
Like a lot of small cities in southeast Indiana, we had a large German population—and our church festivals showed it. There was always a long line at the beer booth, and they sold nasty smelling stuff in the cafeteria: sauerkraut, turtle soup, red cabbage—stuff like that.
Jimmy looked at the sign as he sipped warm Pepsi from the enormous glass bottle. “‘Rathskeller?’”
“That means rat cellar.” My knowledge of German was embarrassingly weak, but overhearing Mom and Grandma when they played canasta at holiday get-togethers, I’d picked up a few words.
“Rat cellar?” Jimmy snorted. “It doesn’t mean that.”
“It does.” I eyed the sign and reached for Jimmy’s big glass Pepsi.
He shook his head. “Why would you call the cafeteria the ‘rat cellar’? That sure doesn’t make me want to eat there.” He glanced at the windows of the darkened upstairs. A thick metal wire mesh protected them against errant baseballs from the asphalt playground that doubled as the parking lot. “Do they cook rats in there?”
“Worse.” I gulped the warm Pepsi. “Turtle soup. And sauerkraut.”
“Turtles? Yuck!”
“Yeah.” I held the thick glass bottle in both hands, waiting for the fizz to stop hurting my throat from taking too big a swallow. Jimmy could hold it with one hand sometimes, and even drink from it that way.
It was too heavy and awkward for me to do that. “I tried turtle soup once. It’s pretty awful. And the sauerkraut is just as bad.”
