The Whitney Powers Paranormal Adventure 3 Book Bundle

by Jason Paul Rice

  The kidnapper said, “Ah, just kidding. I spared him. You’re lucky this time, but you will pay for this. No one keeps me waiting. No one. I keep other people waiting if they are lucky enough to get to see me. Do you like boats, Whitney?”

  Whitney couldn’t believe he would joke about that. “Sure, I love boats.” She didn’t really like boats that much.

  He said, “I hope you like little boats, canoes actually. You are going to get to take a luxury ride down the Devil’s Waterway. But don’t worry. I’ll give you a guard. He will be your “Virgil”, if you will. Hell, you probably don’t even know what I mean.”

  “The hell I don’t. I was a librarian most of my life so I am familiar with the works of Dante Alighieri. I’m not sure I would consider this a divine comedy.”

  The man said, “Are you trying to be funny? This isn’t joke time. You should stick to being a whore and getting banged out in public on the hood of a government owned vehicle. Tsk, tsk, on so many levels there, Mrs. Perfect.”

  How did he know all that? Does he know everything? How does he know everything?

  She answered defensively. “I’ve never claimed to be perfect. And, I was with my husband, thank you very much.”

  “That husband of yours will be waiting at the bottom of the canal. You might have to fight for him. I don’t think you are going to like the opponent. Bring one friend if you dare. Drive to the end of the road into Dankstone and wait for me to call with more directions. Leave the hotel at 4 p.m.”

  He hung up and so did Whitney.

  “I have to go on a boat ride in Dankstone. Who wants to come?” Whitney tried to sound enthusiastic.

  The trio looked at each other in silence.

  “Darominius is off the hook. He’s already taken his turn. Why don’t you come, Tara? It might be best to keep you two apart. I can only imagine the assignments are going to get worse from here.”

  Tara responded, “That isn’t exactly the greatest form of enticement. I’ll go, but I need to lay a few things out first. I will probably scream a lot and I am definitely going to swear a lot.”

  “I know that. I have known you for a while. I know you are going to be all scared. I do appreciate it, though.” Whitney lightly tapped her on the cheek with her palm.

  “Yeah, whatever,” Tara said and started going through one of her bags.

  Whitney didn’t want to tell Tara the stories about the Devil’s Waterway and how many dead bodies had ended up in there over the years. She had read several descriptions chronicling the journey and wasn’t going to tell anyone else about them. She didn’t even want to think about them.

  Whitney stepped out of the car and into the chilly fall air. The surrounding leafless trees and silence brought back the tight pressure in her chest.

  “You alright?” Whitney tried to sound strong.

  Tara replied, “I had some weird vibes here and there back at the motel. It’s nothing like this, like, panicky feeling I have right now. My hand is numb.” She tried to shake it out and bring it back to life.

  “This place will definitely give you the heebie-jeebies if you let it. Just ignore the creepiness and you’ll be fine.” Whitney adjusted the strap of her backpack.

  Tara said, “Thanks for the advice, coach. I’m not sure that’s going to work.”

  The phone rang and Tara screamed.

  Whitney pulled the phone out of her belly pocket of her hoodie. “Easy girl.” She answered the phone. “Hello.”

  The kidnapper gave the directions and the two women kept moving downhill. They walked for about an hour and a smell worse than rotten eggs kept intensifying. Sloshing water sounds in the distance kicked up a wind that brought the sour stench right to their noses.

  Tara went down to one knee and started throwing up. Whitney tried to delay the kidnapper, but he wouldn’t stop with the directions. Tara finally got up, took a few swallows and hustled to keep up with Whitney.

  The kidnapper hung up.

  A wide waterway glistened in the dusky atmosphere about one hundred yards ahead. The stream sounded like a steady flow, rather than some whitewater rapids. The distorted silhouettes of the trees shone on the surface of the slow, rippling waterway.

  A rickety wooden dock bobbed up and down, leading to a red canoe in the water. The women walked down the hill in silence. Whitney wanted to say something that would help, but she couldn’t untwist her tongue.

  She didn’t see the guide that the kidnapper was talking about either. Whitney discovered the reason for the gag-inducing smell. The Devils Waterway was polluted with bloated dead bodies floating on the surface.

  The water appeared to be black and the shiny surface reflected myriads of colors like oil. Whitney wondered where this guide was hiding.

  8

  “I don’t know. The guy on the phone said he would be here,” Whitney told Tara.

  Her shaking friend responded through her chattering teeth. “This is creepy as all hell down here. I don’t like this at all. If this guy doesn’t get here soon, we should leave.”

  “Maybe we passed him on the way down here.” She grabbed Tara’s arm.

  Whitney and Tara turned away from the nasty water and peered into the darkening woods.

  Whitney heard a growl from behind and spun around to find a stout man in a hooded black robe. Tara screamed and grabbed Whitney’s upper arms, digging her long nails in. The man’s head faced down. His pointed hood hung low and made it impossible to see his facial features.

  The man walked further out onto the bobbing pier and Whitney and Tara followed in silence. A small tan canoe sat at the end of the floating wood structure. The offensive stench intensified as the wind shifted in their direction and pushed the funky odor lingering on top of the water at them.

  Tara kept her death grip on Whitney’s arm as they neared the canoe. He motioned for Whitney to get in and she stepped into the tiny vessel. There were bodies all around them floating on top of the water. Tara almost fell getting in and screamed. Whitney took off her backpack and set it down in front of her.

  The man looked up and exposed a wrinkled, pale face, spider webbed with red scars. He put his index finger over his lips and made sure that both women saw his command. The mysterious man reached over the side of the boat and used the head of a body as leverage to get the canoe going. Whitney almost threw up but Tara wasn’t as lucky. She lost her lunch in the water.

  “Whitney, we can’t do this. We need to turn this mufucker around and go back now. This shit doesn’t feel right. I’m going to lose my mind,” Tara said frantically as she wiped the vomit from her mouth.

  Their guide turned to Tara with an angry look on his face and gave her the sign to be quiet again.

  “I don’t care what this mufucker says. There’s no way I can be quiet,” Tara said.

  The man’s right arm sprang out from behind the brown robe and hit Tara on the left shoulder, knocking her into the water.

  “Oh my God,” screamed Whitney.

  She tried to look around the guide to find Tara. She couldn’t hear her friend as the canoe slowly drifted away in the opposite direction. The moonlight illuminated the glowing emerald sheen over the water and highlighted the bodies that ranged in size from babies to massive adults.

  Whitney didn’t hear any sounds from Tara and bent her knees to jump in. Whitney tried to dive in but something had hold of her hoodie and yanked her back into the little boat. She could feel the man’s knuckles on her spine. He had a firm grip on her hoodie and he pulled her back to the middle of the canoe.

  Is Tara dead? I shouldn’t have brought her here with me. I don’t even know if she can swim. How come I didn’t hear her splashing around in the water? Where is this boat headed? When will this madness be over?

  The canoe moved slowly toward an opening in the hill that looked like an open mouth with two fangs hanging down on either side of it. The hole in the hill swallowed the canoe into complete darkness. Distant shrieking sounds reverberated around the narrow c
anal.

  Faint firelight appeared ahead and her stomach tightened. She had read a few books about this ride and hadn’t believed the tales until she actually entered the tunnel. Everything had been happening so fast that she had forgotten.

  “Lies, lies, lies,” a soft voice echoed through the watery cave.

  The light became brighter and exposed a line of people standing inside a carved-out area in the right wall. The dancing flames showed a group of nude women with their heads on backwards.

  The women screamed in unison. “Turn around. Go back now. This is what they do if you’ve lied. Go back. Nobody returns.”

  The tunnel went dark again and the women stopped yelling as the boat hit another floating body and bounced off. The lazy moving channel was only about fifteen feet across with stone walls on either side.

  The firm hand still tightly gripped her hoodie, making it tight around her neck and Whitney yanked the collar away from her throat again.

  Moaning cries bounced off the water. “Don’t steal. Don’t swear. Don’t steal. Don’t swear.”

  Rippling flames appeared to the left as the creeping canoe approached another dugout area in the wall. A group of nude men stood in a row facing the boat. Each man held his head in his right hand next to his knee. The necks weren’t bleeding and the hunched over men gripped the objects by the hair. The beheaded men had ivory bodies with thick tracks of blue veins around their arms and legs.

  All the lips on all the pale heads started to move, “If you do proceed past here. For your life, you must not care. If cursing ever crossed your lips or a stolen belt once graced your hips. It matters not for what you’ve done. Go back now, you better run.”

  The canoe bounced off another bloated body and floated away from the talking heads. Whitney didn’t realize that she had been gripping both sides of the wooden canoe with her sweaty fingers.

  A whisper crept through the warm, stale air. “Beware the ones with wings you must.”

  Screeching and scratching noises followed and grew louder by the second. Whitney instinctually moved back in the boat but the fist in her back prevented her from doing so. The sound increased to a fever pitch and a unified fluttering followed as the canoe drifted into darkness.

  Flying objects smacked into Whitney as she tried to feverishly swat the incoming swarm away. She tucked her hands into her sleeves and protected her face while trying to remain safely in the boat. She could feel the bats smashing into her and wanted to throw up again.

  Her back spasms from the lack of sleep in the past week made it hard to hold her arm up to deflect the flying creatures that just kept coming out of the dark. A rotten feeling centered in the painful area of her back as she could feel a couple of bats walking around on her head. Even with the hood up, it created an extremely uncomfortable sensation.

  She shook her head around but that didn’t work. A heavy hand that felt like a hammer slapped her in the back of the head. The smack stunned her for several moments as sparks streaked through her eyes in the darkness. Once the dizzying feeling relented, the bats were gone.

  Whitney didn’t appreciate the slap and flung an elbow back that landed in the middle of the man’s chest. She got a sense of satisfaction from the wheezing sounds coming from the man.

  Another light appeared ahead on the right side as the boat came to a stop. Her guide reached over the side and pushed a small body to get the canoe moving again. Whitney wondered why he didn’t have a paddle or oar to use.

  A collection of dark, raspy voices sang in harmony. “We feed our master, yes we do. We feed him the best food, and now we have you.”

  A carved-out area on the side contained three cauldrons hanging over fires. The dancing flames crept up to almost the top of the five-foot-high kettles. The big, black cauldrons stood taller than the ghoulish, dwarf-sized beasts in front of them.

  The green, purple and blue creatures, covered in uneven patches of black hair, had long, skinny arms that hung to the ground. The goblins held silver hooks in their hands. Two of them swung the hooks into the water and pierced a floating body.

  A pffftttt sound released an unimaginable odor of putrefaction that smelled like piles of raw meat that had been left out in the sun for months. Whitney instinctually tried to crawl out of the boat, but the firm hand held her in place.

  The ghouls dragged the perforated bodies up onto the ledge and used their long hands to work together to throw the bodies into two of the cauldrons. Moaning and wailing echoed around the inside of the fiery round kettles before erupting into the tunnel and attacking Whitney’s ears.

  The sound resembled sliced mushrooms going into hot oil, when they seem to be begging for mercy. Whitney’s body had been tense for the entire trip on what compared to the worst amusement park ride ever. Sweat built up on her brow as the temperature seemed to be rising substantially.

  Whitney leaned back and didn’t feel anything. She turned, expecting to see her robed guide but there wasn’t anyone there. The walls started to close in and the number of bodies in the water increased. A hissing sound caused Whitney to whip her head around to find a group of big snakes in the back just as the boat plunged back into darkness.

  She moved to the front of the canoe as it started to slide down an incline. The heat continued to rise to an unreasonable temperature and a bright light appeared at the bottom of the incline. She could hear the snakes sliding over toward her, giving her something else to worry about.

  Straight ahead was a glowing chamber of burning coals with a dark figure moving around the flames. The boat picked up speed and Whitney tried to figure out what the creature was. A square cutout in the rock looked like a barbecue pit with glowing embers on the ground, ceiling and walls.

  The distortion from the rippling heat made it almost impossible for Whitney to get a clear look at the figure. The upright person was jumping around like an angry animal. It had an extremely hairy face and bounced around on the fiery ground. A growl of epic proportions exploded as the embers cracked and rocked the small canoe.

  The intense heat on her cheeks and forehead made her move toward the back of the canoe until the loud hiss of the snakes forced her to stop in her tracks. She turned around and the radiant embers spotlighted three big black snakes.

  Whitney tried to steel her shot nerves to simply reach over and throw the snakes in the water. She gagged a couple of times just at the thought of it. She couldn’t decide if she should cover her hand with the sleeve of her hoodie or if that would prevent her from being able to grab the snake. Both options caused her to shudder at the possible outcomes.

  She decided to go with the bare hand and moved in as the heat blazed against her back. One snake made a quick head motion and Whitney jumped back as her heart jumped up into her throat, causing thick, laborious breaths. A lightheaded sensation followed and she leaned to one side of the canoe.

  The tiny watercraft almost tipped over and Whitney scrambled to the other side to even out the weight. The canoe almost tipped on that side until Whitney fell into the middle. It rocked back and forth before finally righting itself.

  Her focus shifted to the crematorium she appeared to be headed toward. The dancing dark figure got hazier as she got closer due to the extreme heat. She backed up toward the other side of the boat. She spun around, almost forgetting about the snakes.

  They were gone. She must have sent them overboard when she shook the canoe. She moved all the way to the back of the canoe.

  The craft going down the incline toward the fire beast slowed to a stop. A few moments later, the canoe started to move in reverse and go back up the hill. It seemed like whichever side of the boat she sat on, the canoe moved in that direction. She would have liked the pace to be much faster as the hysterical cries of the angered beast assaulted her ears.

  The ride came to a congested junction of oversized bodies and her stomach stirred again. She searched around the small area for something to use but came up empty. She considered her backpack for a few moments bef
ore dismissing the idea.

  Her trembling arm reached over the side and pushed the shoulder of a dead body with the heel of her covered hand. The barge of bodies shifted around but not enough for Whitney to get through. She put all four fingers of her right hand on the shoulder and pulled it to her right.

  She vomited over the side as the canoe spun in a circle and found an opening in the Devil’s Waterway. To her surprise, none of the things she had seen on the way down were in their designated areas on the way back.

  The complete darkness made for an uneasy environment and Whitney shifted around near the back of the canoe. She emerged from the venomous opening and the bright starlight dancing on the polluted water greeted her.

  She had to use her hands as paddles to get back over to the dock. She jumped out of the canoe and onto the shaky wooden structure. In all the craziness, she had forgotten about Tara and looked out into the water at the area where she had disappeared.

  She found nothing but bloated dead bodies. Luckily, none of them looked like Tara.

  The phone she had forgotten about rang.

  She pulled it out of her pocket. “Hello.”

  The voice said, “I have your friend.”

  Whitney could hear Tara screaming and cursing in the background.

  He continued, “I’m going to send her to the Dreamland, I think. I believe she will like it there.”

  “So I guess this stupid game is going to keep going on. Why don’t you fight me one on one? You see how small I am and I am a woman. Why not just end it now with a fair fight?”

  The kidnapper told her, “That wouldn’t be any fun for me. I don’t take pleasure in women’s displeasure.” He let out a wisp of a laugh. “I won’t lay a finger on your friend even though she berates me like a sailor.”

  “So what is it then? You’re just going to keep sending me into Dankstone for your pleasure? This is really getting old.”

  The man said, “Really? I’m having a gas. This won’t go on much longer, don’t you worry. My plan to pull off the biggest heist in the history of the world is about to go down. With you and your stupid husband out of the way, there will be no one to stop us. I’m going to send you away like I am about to do with your mouthy friend.”