The Ultimate Mystery Thriller Horror Box Set (7 Mystery Thriller Horror Bestsellers)

by Perkins, Cathy

  My phone rang again and thinking it might be Kevin I answered it only to hear the same thing I had heard in the previous call — but this time the background noises were louder and the familiar voice seemed closer to the phone at the other end.

  “Hello,” I said. “Who is this?”

  Crowd noise continued but having no one to speak with was frustrating, infuriating.

  “Why are you calling me if you won’t talk to me?!”

  “Jeremy Storyteller.” A voice called out of the crowd on the other end, “Jeremy Storyteller.”

  “Yes! Go ahead. I can hear you,” I urged, almost shouting.

  “Do not trust—” someone said, and then paused.

  “Do not trust who?” I yelled as Anthony sat staring at me mouthing ‘who is that?’

  Then ‘click.’ The call ended.

  I shook my head not knowing what else I could do. I wanted to smash the phone, but thought better of it. I felt like I was in the middle of a battlefield with two armies closing in on me. Opposing one another, yet opposing me together.

  “Is that thing still out there?” I asked Anthony.

  “It hasn’t moved.”

  Just then we saw the sheriff’s deputies coming back talking with Kevin but the veiled figure got their attention and as one of them aimed his weapon, the other seemed to be asking it questions while slowly raising his.

  Kevin shot a picture of it and before he could be stopped he went right up to it and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing him do next.

  He pulled the veil off and threw it to the ground as they all three started to chuckle. There in front of us all was a saguaro cactus. Somehow, the veil had been placed over it. Did whoever or whatever was pounding on the door put it there?

  I opened the door and went outside to join in the comic relief for a moment.

  Anthony said, “That’s nothing to laugh at. Someone snuck up on us and put that veil on this cactus… which wasn’t even there, by the way, before we went to sleep.” He was upset and so was I. We both wondered about the cactus.

  I added that, “Something beyond strange is happening here. Anthony’s right. I know it sounds insane, but that cactus really wasn’t here when we were sitting outside, before we went to bed. Then to have this veil appear, and let me tell you, it stirs a bad memory in me.”

  “Whadda you mean, Tell?” Kevin sounded concerned.

  “It looked like something that haunted me in my dreams when I was a kid. To see it now, under these circumstances, is very unsettling and making me wonder about how deep into my head this is all getting.” I was feeling very threatened by things that were coming at me from out of the night.

  I turned to the deputies and asked, “What did you find out there?”

  “Not much,” said the younger of the two as he wiped his forehead with a bandana.

  “Could’a been coyotes out on the hunt but if it was, it’d be a first for me,” said the older deputy. “Scavenge, yes. Rattle doors, no. I can’t explain what happened anymore than my partner here. I would say that you probably are smart to leave as soon as you get your vehicle fixed. We’re gonna stick around, so if you all want to try to get some sleep, that might be a good idea. We’ll write this up and give you the report number for reference.”

  “One of you said that you have a part being delivered so you can get this thing up and rolling, right?” asked the younger deputy. “What time is that supposed to happen?”

  “They told me about 0800 hours. When I ordered it over the phone,” Anthony volunteered.

  “We can stay until six and then have a deputy come out to standby for you until you get underway.”

  I agreed to that and offered them some coffee, which they accepted. After that I lay down and half-slept for the remaining few hours of the night.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I opened my eyes to broad daylight — and felt strangely well-rested.

  “Guys, wake up!” I said loudly, not knowing what time it was but realizing we had to get out of there and to the airport so we could make our flight.

  Looking outside I did not see a deputy sheriff anywhere, as I’d hoped I would, but driving up to the rig was a small truck with an auto parts store logo. “Anthony, the part’s here! Anthony!” I repeated, and turned around to see him standing right behind me, scratching his head as he yawned ‘okay.’

  He signed for the part and handed the runner his business card for billing purposes.

  Kevin was up and on the phone talking with the research team back in New York about the photos he had and was emailing to them as he spoke. “He’s right here,” he said as he handed me the phone.

  “Been a wild night, Tell?” Henry Khartoum, the project leader, sounded concerned.

  “How about making that ‘been one hell of a year,’ Henry? It’ll all make for a scary movie someday,” I said.

  “You all okay?” He asked me because I was the oldest of the group and therefore perceived as the most responsible. It made me think that responsibility had made its way into my life a little later than most folks. I wasn’t always the most mature of my peers, but I did have a better imagination than most.

  “We’re good — and we’re ready to come home.”

  “How did Anthony do?”

  “He’s great. He’s very responsible,” I said chuckling to myself, proud of how witty I was of late.

  “Anybody see any sign of the deputy who was supposed to be here?” Kevin asked as I ended the phone call.

  “They probably got him, and are now sacrificing him somewhere,” Anthony joked.

  “They… being the door bangers?” I asked. “I’m not sure how funny that is.”

  “Yeah, well, anyway we’re ready,” Anthony said, as he started the engine. He drove slowly as we moved away from the foot of the Superstition Mountains and onto a gravel road that eventually became the interstate.

  After some time, Kevin glanced up from his laptop. “Tell? Do you have what you need to complete your writing?” Kevin picked his head up from looking at his laptop and the array of photos he had accumulated. The man was very good at what he did and he was also a strange one, much in keeping with the genius level he possessed as was obvious in his photographic art.

  “I sure hope so. But if I don’t, I know where to find you.” It felt good to finish the important field work of the project. “We’ll have plenty to do when we get back to Albany and the project center.”

  Anthony dropped us at Sky Harbor Airport in the center of Phoenix. Kevin and I bid him goodbye and complimented him on a job well done.

  “I’ll see you in New York,” he said as he closed the door and drove away leaving us curbside at the terminal entrance. Anthony had to do some follow up before he could leave the Phoenix area.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The sun was setting as I was driving home from my first day back at the project center. I was approaching the loneliest part of the road which ran right past the cemetery, when I turned up the radio; sort of ‘whistling past the graveyard’ as it were. I found myself thinking that I’d gone from relishing the thought of coming face to face with a ghost to dreading it; knowing how scary that all had become since actually interacting with them. Why, I had actually spent time as one when I had my near death experience and crossed over for that short while.

  My phone rang. I hoped it was Kate, but when I answered it I heard the awful voices. “Teller, be careful of who you tell. Teller, be careful of who you tell. Teller, be careful of who you tell.” I hung up. It was the only way I could stop what was now becoming crank calls from the great beyond. I had the strong sense that the Arizona desert, the cemetery I was passing, and my near death were all bound together and sending a message regarding something that had been thrown into my life — and if I wasn’t careful could have a devastating effect on a lot of people both dead and alive.

  Suddenly I noticed a woman standing next to a car with the hood up, near the entrance to the cemetery. Her back was to me and I was
surprised to see the manner of her dress, like something from the era of World War II. I stopped and rolled down my window and asked her if she needed help. She turned around slowly, and I saw that she was wearing a veil so dark that her facial features were obscured. The image of the veiled figure I had seen in the Arizona desert jumped into my mind and my heart practically leaped out of my chest. As she started walking toward my car I gunned the engine and peeled out, careening down the highway. In my rear view mirror I could see her standing there motionless, watching my rapidly departing car.

  After arriving home, I looked around the garage and in Kate’s car; it was a great relief to see that there was no one else there.

  “Honey, I’m here!” (I used to do the ‘Honey I’m home’ routine a la Ricky Ricardo, but stopped when I discovered that I did a better impression of a certain governor of California my wife found very appealing.)

  “What’s the matter?” Kate asked, walking into the kitchen as I entered from the garage.

  “Why are you asking that? Do I look like I’ve just seen a ghost?”

  “Yes, you do. What’s up, Tell?” She sat down wiping her hands with a kitchen towel, looking at me very intently.

  “You want to take a ride with me, Kate?” I asked as I nodded my head toward the garage. “I need you to do that.”

  “What happened? Did you see Joe again? What happened?” She grabbed her coat and walked toward the garage with me.

  I told Kate about the woman near the graveyard and what she was wearing and how scared it made me. She was interested in how the woman was dressed and that she was wearing a veil and a hat from a bygone era. I had the feeling that my skeptical wife was beginning to believe in ghosts.

  I slowed the car as we got close to the cemetery and as I expected there was no sign of the woman’s disabled car. I stopped in the exact place the car had been.

  I got out of the car and Kate did the same. As we looked around for any evidence of what I’d seen earlier I realized that this was now some cat-and-mouse game with me square in the middle. “Let’s go, Kate. It seems like the lady got her car started.”

  “What did the car look like?”

  “Not sure. An old Mercedes, maybe?” I shrugged “Who knows. It could have even been a Ford.”

  Just then I saw someone on the other side of the gate, smoking a cigarette in the half-dark.

  “Say, excuse me. Could you tell us if you saw a woman here with car trouble about an hour or so ago?” I asked the person behind the gate.

  I could see the cigarette was dropped to the ground and stepped on but I couldn’t see the person doing it. My question wasn’t answered and I walked up to the gate and peered through into the darkness… but saw no one.

  I turned to Kate and motioned toward the car and as we got in my phone rang.

  “Brother Scheible knows,” came the message from a weak-sounding voice on the other end. The phone showed no caller ID but the sounds, other than the voice speaking about Brother Scheible, were the sounds I had been hearing during the strange calls I’d been receiving lately. “Brother Scheible knows what?!” I demanded of the voice on the phone.

  “He knows. He heard you say it once.”

  “How can that be? How do you know that? Who are you? Where are you?” The questions flew from my lips.

  The call ended with a click on the other end. I looked at my wife as she mouthed the question “What?”

  I turned the car around and pointed her back toward home as I said, “I know how crazy this is, Kate, and I can’t believe that I believe this, but it may be how the other side is communicating with this side. It happened when I died; something changed that night. I returned from the dead but the door I came back through must have remained opened somehow.” Uncle Joe’s words were echoing in my head.

  “I don’t know what to think,” Kate said.

  “Look: the phone voice is talking about Brother Scheible and whatever they are looking for is something that I apparently said when I was in high school because that was the only time that I was ever around him.”

  Kate asked, “What subjects did he teach?”

  “Just Latin.”

  “Latin? You are old Honey Bunch. They haven’t taught Latin since Wilson was president.” She enjoyed a laugh on me.

  “I think that this is starting to come together. It’s about the name of God and I have said the word God so many times in my life and I even said God in Latin.” I was thinking out loud.

  “How do you say God in Latin, Tell?”

  “Deum or Deo.”

  “Is that what this is about? Deum? Brother Scheible would obviously know that already, being a Christian Brother and Latin teacher. Wouldn’t that make sense?” “In a normal situation, sure, dealing with a person who was alive. Brother Scheible? The answer without question would be yes. But this is so far from anything normal… why, we don’t even know for sure if the person I am seeing is Brother Scheible.”

  “Didn’t you say that he looks the same as back in High School? Well, he wouldn’t look that way today. He couldn’t.” Kate was stating the logical.

  I countered with an illogical comment, “Maybe he left the brotherhood and got married and had children and that was his son I saw.”

  “Really, Tell… you can’t be serious.”

  “Of course I’m not, but it could be possible. It’s not any nuttier than what else has been happening.” I was admittedly somewhat defensive.

  “Ya’ wanna bet?” she said. “How on Earth would his son know you?”

  “I’m a very popular guy nowadays — especially with the dead, way more than with the living,” I said matter-of-factly.

  “You’re number one with me,” Kate said with a smile in her eye.

  “Thanks Honey. And I can’t say that I blame you,” I quipped lightly, pretending to be smug.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The next morning during the drive to the project site I got a chill approaching the cemetery. Through a thick drizzle the mausoleums looked like lonely mini mansions with a morbid stench of stoicism emitting from them. I wondered if any of the spirits within were of a mind to wander off the grounds at night.

  The rain had a haunting effect on me lately; and I was now more receptive to the idea that spirits seemed to make more appearances than I would have previously imagined likely to occur in my life. Maybe it was because falling water reverses ions and that in turn was an energy shift, and who knows, maybe opened a door to the other side? Shaking myself from my reverie, I continued on to work.

  At the project site Kevin made ready to show his PowerPoint presentation of photos he’d taken in the Superstitions in the Arizona desert. I sat with the gathering at the large table in the conference room in anticipation of seeing how his camera work married up with my words of commentary.

  I put two pieces of pizza on a plate, poured a glass of soda and sat down while biting into the pizza, which I should not have been eating anyway.

  “Mike Paulsen, the middle-aged, portly, gray-bearded scientist who was managing my project team called the ten or so of us to order while Kevin started his presentation. The pictures were of the moon in a cycle of three days prior to full, then one of it being full, and then three days waning. About a quarter of the photos were taken of the moon in broad daylight. Another quarter of them, were in the evening. Then, another quarter was during the night time and the remaining quarter was in the early morning right before sunrise.

  The photos were framed by my writing, in header wording, and it was interesting to see the blending of them. It was really clear to me at that point, that this method was going to work very well in a book format. Everyone seemed to like what they were seeing, and frankly I was feeling pretty full of myself.

  A round of applause accompanied the end of the presentation as Mike Paulsen gave kudos to Kevin and me for producing the media side of the project. Melanie Morris, an energetic young physicist and member of our team immediately cornered Kevin; during the presentation
he’d referred somewhat cryptically to “unexplained” desert events, and Melanie wanted to know all about it. Covering him with all kinds of questions about what he was referencing in the experience in the desert. Kevin was cool in his responses, instead pointing her toward me for details. The rat.

  “Come on, Teller! What was he talking about?” Melanie nodded her head toward Kevin. “You can tell me. I can keep it to myself… come on.”

  “I think Kevin is the one you should be having this interrogation with, Mel.”

  “I heard some stories about the weird things that happened.” She was pesky.

  “From whom?” I said with a questioning frown on my face.

  “Secret,” she said. “You see how good I am at keeping secrets; so, come on. Tell me, Teller.”

  “Not now, Mel. Really. I have to get back on my laptop and wrap this up by tomorrow.”

  “How about I buy you a drink and we can talk then?” She was very persistent.

  “Only, if I can bring my wife.”

  “Teller,” she said shaking her head. “I want to get into your brain, not your pants.”

  “Jesus, Mel. I didn’t… I didn’t think you were trying to do that. What I’m saying is I haven’t spent a lot of time with my wife lately. So every spare minute I have, I am spending with her.”

  “So will you both meet me for drinks?”

  “Yeah, okay. When and where? And why?” I asked, joking on the ‘why’ because I darn well knew the ‘why.’

  I called Kate and asked her if she was okay with having a drink with Melanie the next evening.

  “I don’t know, Tell. She might show me up. She’s taller, curvier, younger, and better-looking than me,” kidded Kate.

  “Yeah, right. That’s why whenever we go anywhere every guy we pass gets whiplash checking you out. She isn’t more than an inch taller than you, and so what if she’s younger? When it comes to the rest of it there is no contest. Besides, she’s buying.” Well, that was all it took.