The Whitney Powers Paranormal Adventure 3 Book Bundle

by Jason Paul Rice

  “Alright, I will read the directions to you so you don’t have to look. You can turn the audio on too, you know.” Whitney pointed at the button on the dashboard GPS.

  Darominius glanced over at her. “You know how old I am. I try to learn as I have said, but a few clues here and there would be appreciated.”

  “You got it. The navigator is ready to go now. On the clock.” Whitney pretended like she was punching in at work. “In fact, we are only twelve miles from Dankstone. I say we try to find a hotel as close to the town lines as possible. Look out, here we come.”

  Whitney tried to sound confident but her chest tightened and her breathing felt muffled. A compelling feeling to pass out ran through her body and shafts of bright lights flooded her vision.

  She regained her composure for a while but the sensations came back. Sweat built up on the flesh of her scorching body and something unusual tugged at her heart.

  They passed a road sign.

  Dankstone 5 Miles

  3

  “Get yer sorry ass out the way. MOPAR sucks anyway.” A voice screamed from inside the motel’s check in office.

  Whitney paused for a moment before entering, followed by her friends. A man who appeared to be in his early twenties but still suffered from acne stood up from behind the desk with a video game controller in his hand.

  He set down the controller, pulled some Skoal tobacco out of the circular green can and shoved it into his bottom lip before looking up. The smell of mint lofted into the stale air.

  “What is it yis are lookin’ for?” he said and spit down to his left.

  Whitney approached the chest-high desk and sat her purse on the counter. “We would like to rent a room. We were just going to share one if that’s alright.”

  The man smiled, exposing brown teeth with grits of tobacco stuck to them. “We got plenty a rooms so yis don’t gotta share. It’d only be two single beds or one queen in there.”

  “I think we want to stick together.” Whitney noticed some fresh stains on the front desk and removed her purse from the surface.

  The man looked down to the left and spit again. Whitney couldn’t see, but it rang like he had a metal spittoon behind the desk.

  “I shoulda knowed that’s what yis was here for,” the man said and pointed at the keys hanging on the wall before choosing one.

  “What do you mean by that?” Whitney lowered her eyebrows.

  The young man with greasy black hair used his left index finger to scoop out the black tobacco and fling it into the unseen spittoon. He swabbed his bottom lip with his tongue and spit out one last brown wad.

  He said, “Most people that stay here are tryin’ to go into Dankstone. When I seen yis without them video ‘corders and them big things they use for listenin’ to ghosts I didn’t think yis was goin’ in. The looks on all of yis’ faces tells me you gonna go into the belly of the devil. I can see it.”

  “We have to go in. We don’t really have a choice.” Whitney kept waiting for one of her friends to say something and peeked back to make sure they were still there.

  The young man grabbed a pen and shook it before starting the rental form. “If I can give yis some a‘vice. Don’t do it. I seen ‘em go in with a big smile and high hopes and come outta them woods and aint never talk again. That’s why we only take cash in advance now. Thirty-two fifty a night. Too many people done come runnin’ outta Dankstone, aint never to come back.”

  He set the key on the counter and Darominius asked, “Have you ever been in there?”

  The young man had been giving Darominius strange looks since they entered and he focused in on the dragon shifter. “Few times. Not far or nothin’. I done felt it, right in my chest, like a hand squeezin’ and squeezin’, harder and harder. I don’t mess with ghosts. Right here is plenty close enough for me.”

  Darominius asked, “They don’t come outside of Dankstone?”

  The man grabbed the cash out of Whitney’s hand and slid the key over to her. He said, “Them ghosts seem to respect the land lines and so do us people from Havatsun. Most call it the deal with the devil. You leave us alone and we’ll do the same with you.” He handed her the change.

  “I guess that’s it.” She stuffed the wrinkled bills and quarters into her purse and zipped it closed.

  The young man picked up the video game controller. “Oh yeah, one more thing. I didn’t say this, but don’t eat the food here. You gotta go into Havatsun to get anything good. This place made me sick so many times, I’d rather eat dog shit. I bring stuff from home now.” He held up a light brown paper bag with dark oil stains running down the side.

  “Thanks for the advice.” She swung her purse over her shoulder.

  The foursome left and before the door could swing shut, they heard the young motel owner scream, “What the shit? How did the game get unpaused?”

  They walked around to unlucky room number 13. They entered the musty room and Whitney immediately shoved the heavy brown curtains aside and opened two windows.

  As the group tentatively unpacked, the phone rang. Whitney picked it up and before she could say hello, the voice had started talking.

  “Do you think I killed your husband yet?” the creepy voice asked and followed the question with a long laugh.

  “I’m glad you are having fun with this.”

  The man on the phone said, “I’m having a great time. Don’t worry. He is tucked away in a dreamland. Somewhere in Dankstone, just waiting for you to save him. Remember when you were arresting all those people and ruining their lives. Payback is a cruel bitch, no?”

  “I was doing my job. Those people were breaking the law. What was I supposed to do?” She unzipped her duffel bag.

  The man paused for a few moments. “Chirp, chirp, chirp goes the self-righteous birdie. Because you wear a badge? That puts you on the side of justice? Hardly. I tried to play on that side. I went to the University of Ordego. It was all on student loans. I was fourteen credits short of graduation when they cut off my loans. Fourteen credits would have been about nine grand out of my pocket. That’s when I realized those holier-than-thou assholes like you, didn’t really understand struggle. You will understand that word when I am done with you.”

  Whitney pulled some clothes out of her bag, but didn’t want to set them down anywhere in the grungy room. “You think I don’t know pain?”

  The man cut her off before she could continue, “I know you haven’t. I already told you I know about your family. I know you had a cushy upbringing and never left home until this year. I know you’ve never been abandoned by your family and had your heart broken.” He stopped for a moment as he started to get broken up.

  He cleared his throat and continued, “It’s time you know what fear really is. You will be sleeping at the Dankstone Cemetery tonight. I know it’s been a warm autumn, but you may want to bring a pillow and blanket. Bring one friend if you wish. However, if your jaundiced friend tries to change into the beast that we know he is, Trent will die. Yes, I know that too. Back to the Cemetery. I was just down there earlier today and it looks quite lovely. I’ll call you when the time is right. Be ready.”

  The man hung up and Whitney pressed the button to end the call. She set the phone down on the glass-topped desk.

  All four friends were sharing one open room with two single beds covered in worn gray comforters, an old, redwood desk with scratches all over it and no accompanying chair, two chipped wooden nightstands with a Bible and pamphlets of the local attractions in each nightstand’s drawer.

  There weren’t many pamphlets and most of them were faded restaurant ads, stuck to the bottom of the drawer. A small bathroom with a tiny shower had a door that wouldn’t close all the way. As Whitney got closer to the bathroom an odor of bleach and old sweat became more prominent.

  The motel sat about a half-mile from Dankstone, the closest one to the haunted town’s line.

  She turned around and noticed that everyone was looking at her.

  Tara
said, “Well shit, what did the doofus have to say this time?”

  “I have to sleep in the Dankstone Cemetery tonight. I guess I’m supposed to be scared. One person is allowed to go with me.”

  Tara, Bo and Darominius looked at each other as Whitney searched for her bag with the iPad in it.

  Darominius was the first to speak up. “I shall escort you, Whitney. I’ll make sure no harm comes to you.”

  Whitney smiled. “Alright, we just have to wait for the guy to call.”

  Tara was staring at Darominius again, which made Whitney long for Trent. Her stomach churned and she wondered when or if she would be able to see him again. She hadn’t been able to figure out who the kidnapper was and didn’t even know if Trent was still alive. The eeriness of Dankstone and uneasiness from Trent’s kidnapping was wreaking havoc on her nerves.

  She bounced back and forth around the room for a little while as she tried to corral the unbridled energy. She pulled a burgundy cushioned footstool over to the desk and laid her iPad on the top. She searched for Dankstone Cemetery. The first few results were articles about paranormal investigators trying to get video footage of the witch ghosts. The most recent attempt appeared to have been in 1995.

  Whitney made a mistake and hit the Images button. She had seen these images before, but they appeared much worse this time. She shut off the power and paced around the room again.

  Whitney pulled an old paperback out of her backpack and opened it to one of her favorite passages. She hoped reading it would calm her down. She opened it to the back and started reading.

  The Trial of Ellen McCarron

  “Have you any final words?” the judge asked.

  “Yes.” The unsturdy chair screeched against the wooden floor as Ellen McCarron stood up to respond.

  Black-painted fingernails swept dark locks streaked in gray from her pale face. The older woman tucked the hair behind her pointed ear.

  Her purple lips began to move and a deep voice followed. “I have statements to make and offers to present.”

  Forty people were seated in small chairs around Hanging House, not to mention the actual court participants. Ellen searched the room for a sympathetic eye and came up empty. She was the last of a nearly extinct breed of strong women.

  She continued, “When we arrived on this piece of land, nobody wanted to come near it. A group of women saw the vision. We saw the crops. We saw the tobacco plants and apple trees. We produced more than we needed so we sold some to other folks.”

  Ellen lit a match and held it above the dark wooden pipe in her mouth, exposing the silver flecks in her eyes. She took a few draws from the pipe and exhaled the cinnamon-scented tobacco into the audience. The thick smoke hung around the room until several men fanned it away and chased it out the open window.

  The unmarried woman found guilty of running a whorehouse, amongst many other charges, said, “We prospered and when we prospered, jealousy apparently developed. We were somehow deemed a threat. A group of women without weapons. We had no guards, no form of defense, yet Adoxia had to send in the National Troops to surround Dankstone, a small town in a big country. Fear is an awful vice. It often shifts to senseless retaliatory violence.”

  She started pointing at people around the room as she continued, “You men think you are so powerful to convict an old woman of witchcraft and sentence her to die by hanging. Every single woman in the Coven has been found guilty despite no proven evidence. Time to hang the last one.”

  Ellen refreshed her pipe with some fresh goldenleaf and hit it in between sentences. “Kill the last one so you can steal our land. Steal our crops. Allow me to venture the thought that my possessions have been seized for profit. Dark motives often meet dark fates. Hang me and you shall release the spirits of all the women you’ve falsely judged. Our wrath will be felt by anyone who stays here or tries to live here. This will always be the land of the Coven, once stolen, only to be taken back and never relinquished again.”

  The smug audience of all men was becoming uneasy and most people were shifting around in their seats. She continued smoking and pointing at people in the room as she went on, “From beneath the dirt we conspire to take back that of the surface. Cursed be this land. Ye fields shall run true and verdant, yet be enjoyed by none.”

  The bearded judge pounded the gavel against the desk and yelled, “Enough. Enough. That will be all. Take her to be hung.”

  The Court Marshall’s hand grabbed the back of her soiled gray dress that had been shiny and silvery before her two-year imprisonment. The hand shoved her toward the front door. She looked around the room, studying everyone’s face as the Court Marshall pushed her outside.

  The strong rays of the golden sun wouldn’t allow these crimes to be unseen by God as Roger Uplot prepared the noose. The bloodstained rope hung from a branch of a huge green-leafed tree full of shiny burgundy apples.

  The Court Marshall and Roger worked together to get Ellen’s neck in the noose, although the woman never resisted their efforts. In fact, her lips appeared to be curled up in the corners. The shaky stage constructed of thin plywood bounced as both men stepped down.

  Ellen McCarron stood alone in the eyes of God.

  She smiled and said, “I’ll give you one last opportunity to give me back my land and let me live in peace. Only then will you be spared.”

  The men broke out in laughter and Roger screamed, “Pull.”

  The stage beneath her bare feet disappeared and Ellen fell. The rope tightened like a boa constrictor around the convicted witch’s neck as her veins bulged out of the pale white skin. Ellen gagged and slobbered when a crack of thunder darkened the sky.

  As life slowly fled from the body of Ellen McCarron, a streak of lightning flashed down from the sky and struck the branch that held the noose. The long branch crashed to the ground along with Ellen McCarron, who rolled around gasping for air.

  Several of the witnesses had seen enough and ran for the hills. Two men raised their loaded muskets and officially ended the life of Ellen McCarron. As the men prepared to drag the body to the Dankstone Cemetery and throw it on the pile, a rumble started from within the earth.

  The dead body of Ellen stood up and faced the crowd. Covered in blood and bullet wounds, she said, “All of you will die before you leave here. You shall all be drowned in the Devil’s Waterway and that is where you will spend eternity. In the dark depths below.”

  The body of Ellen McCarron collapsed again as shadowy figures resembling women started to sprout from the ground like carrots. The angry ghosts surrounded the people who had judged them guilty and moved in.

  Whitney closed the book titled, The Strongest Witch in the All the Land. She had hoped it would help to calm her nerves. She was wrong.

  Whitney knew how the book ended. The men never left Dankstone. They were drowned in the Devil’s Waterway and nobody ever lived in this town again. There were even reports over the years about people being physically picked up by the ghosts and run outside the town limits.

  Whitney had read several books on Ellen McCarron and identified with the outcast woman of strong will and determination. She hoped her connection would help her deal with some of the darker spirits but that hadn’t been the case so far. She had wanted to come here as a teenager, but nobody would come with her. She started to think that wasn’t really a bad thing.

  The brown stain on the once-white lampshade caught her attention. The phone rang. She ran and grabbed it from next to the iPad.

  “Hello.”

  The voice said, “It’s your time. Grab your things and get into the car. I will guide you with directions as you go.”

  Whitney and Darominius got in the car and followed the directions. As they went deeper into Dankstone, Whitney tried to rub her tingling gooseflesh back to normal, but it only got worse.

  An awful smell seemed to seep out of the earth. Whitney remembered that awful smell from when she had walked into the wrong room at the funeral home as a child wafted into her no
se. A strange pressure filled the car and started to squeeze Whitney’s shoulders and chest.

  Why were the surrounding woods so quiet? There weren’t any buzzing locusts or cicadas. She could almost hear an echo from the kidnapper’s voice on the phone as he told them to come to a stop. They were at the end of a dirt road.

  Surrounded by sweeping autumn forest, Whitney stepped out of the car. As soon as her foot hit the ground, the sensation of someone sticking pins in the souls of her feet began. She jumped around until the sharp, jabbing pains slowly dissipated. Then the gag-inducing smell of death hit her in the face like a shovel. She was taken aback and tried to breathe through the sleeve of her hoodie.

  The kidnapper directed them into the dull woods with nothing but dead shades of brown to entertain the eyes. The crusty leaves covering the ground gave the appearance that they had fallen a long time ago as they cracked under their footsteps. Whitney still hadn’t heard any animals or birds, adding to the morbid feel.

  She felt a hand on her shoulder and spun around to find nobody. She remained on constant alert, scanning the woods in all directions as the kidnapper continued to direct her. They waded through a knee-high brown grass field in between two expanses of covered forest.

  She tried to find a different color than brown as they trudged along, chasing the setting sun.

  “Walk forward one hundred yards and you will see the Cemetery,” the kidnapper said and hung up.

  The tightness in her chest and queasiness in her stomach exacerbated as some different colors finally appeared.

  The fifteen-foot high rusted gates wrapped in green ivy couldn’t hide the enormous pile of skeletons. The pile occupied most of the rectangular fenced-in area and stood taller than the gates. The hair Whitney never knew existed on the back of her neck started to stand up and the overwhelming putrid stench that kept coming in waves almost brought her to her knees.