by Mute80
I remained silent.
He snickered. “After we talked to you the last time, it occurred to us that we’d been tracking the wrong person all these years. Sophia was too dumb to steal the map. She couldn’t possibly have come up with the idea on her own. And then it hit us like a ton of bricks—I killed Nicholas Trenton the same time Sophia died. He knew where I kept things in my house, and he wasn’t as stupid as Sophia had been. We decided to confront him about it and guess what? He was nowhere to be found.”
I involuntarily shuddered as his tone became angrier and he took a step toward me. I took a step back.
“Don’t worry. Our friendly little librarian here paid a visit to your father to find out where you were and why you hadn’t returned your overdue books.” Elsa appeared out of the shadows behind him. “Imagine our surprise when he told her that you’d gone to Virginia of all places.”
They’ve been to my house? They talked to my dad? My mind raced. I had to get out of there, but how? I didn’t want to leave Peter, but there was no way I could pull him from his trap by myself. I didn’t know where Sophia and Nick were and I had no way of contacting Camille. I bit my lip to keep myself from crying. I had to stay strong if I was going to get out of the situation.
Jeremiah was done pretending to be nice. “Give me the map,” he bellowed as he lunged toward me.
“Jamie, run.” Peter broke his silence and yelled from beneath the rubble.
I didn’t hesitate, but turned on my heel and bolted down the path we’d come in on, back toward the old well. I stumbled, but caught myself and continued in a full-on sprint, hoping there was nothing on the dark path ahead of me. At first I heard the yells and footfalls of the Goodwins behind me, but I soon realized they’d stopped.
I dared to sneak a peek behind me, but I couldn’t see anything. My eyes darted in every direction. They had to have vanished. I knew that I couldn’t outrun a ghost and at any moment they might reappear in front of me and I would be caught.
I made it all the way to the well and stopped, my chest heaving from the run I’d just made. I gripped the edge of the well as I tried to catch my breath.
The lights of the new house were still turned off. I thought about screaming in an attempt to alert the owners, but I was afraid the Goodwins would just harm them right along with the rest of us. They had no respect for human life.
I was still searching the shadows, waiting for the Goodwins to reappear when I realized my mistake. I’d left Peter alone. That had to have been why my pursuers stopped.
I didn’t know what to do. Should I go back for him? Should I try to call Sophia or Nick again? Should I pray? Sophia had told me that the only way to beat Jeremiah and Elsa was to con them, but I didn’t know how to do that.
I didn’t have long to think about it because only a moment later I heard them coming up the path I’d just run in on. I could tell by the noises being made that the Goodwins had Peter with them, and he was fighting to be free.
“Get your hands off me,” he yelled.
I heard a thump and Peter moaned. Jeremiah had definitely done something to him. I stepped out from behind the well.
“Let him go,” I yelled boldly.
“Give me what I want first,” Jeremiah answered. He held up a battered Peter with one hand as the other hand held a gun to Peter’s head.
I’d come so close to getting what I thought was the key to Sophia and Nick’s extrication, yet I was so far. I hesitated for a minute and then reached down inside my shirt and pulled out the sheet of paper.
“Is this what you want?” I held up the paper, not yet ready to give it up.
“It’s the map,” Elsa squeaked. I could feel the evil of the people around me as thick as the mist that was gathering after the rain.
“Give it to me,” Elsa snapped.
“Not until you let him go.” I held the paper up with both hands as if I was going to tear it in half.
“Well I guess we have a problem then—because we’re not letting him go until I have that map in my hand,” she hissed back.
I had to stall until I could think of a plan. “If I give you the map, you’ll just shoot him anyway. In fact, you’ll probably just shoot me, too.”
Jeremiah laughed. “That sounds like a great idea. No one can pin anything on us—since we’re dead—and I haven’t killed anyone for a while. I was kind of starting to miss it. I wonder if we can make it look like a tragic murder-suicide of two teenage lovers.”
Tears again threatened to spill from my eyes to my cheeks. That time they weren’t so much tears of sadness or fear as they were tears of anger. Anger for the lives the Goodwins had ruined in the past, and anger at myself for getting Peter involved in the stupid affair. I stuck my hand in my pocket. I thought if I could feel the right buttons, I could dial Camille’s number on my phone—if I had reception. She might not be able to do anything to save us, but maybe she could at least hear what happened to us so she wouldn’t have to live with the mystery of how her best friends were killed.
When I reached into my pocket, my hand brushed against something small and square next to my phone. I felt it again. Even though every part of me was still damp from all the rain, that thing was miraculously still dry. My heart thumped. I knew I had to do it. It might mean that I was sacrificing my life and Peters, but I was compelled to do it to save the souls of Nick and Sophia.
“Enough games, hand it over,” Jeremiah growled.
A split-second of hesitation was all I still needed before I yanked the hotel matchbook out of my pocket and tore a little cardboard match from the row. I rubbed it along the coarse back of the wrapper, praying that it would light. It started immediately, a little orange glow breaking up the darkness of the night.
“What’re you doing?” Elsa demanded.
“I’m getting revenge. For Sophia . . . for Nick . . . and for everyone that was on the Mary Celeste,” I said. I lifted the brittle paper to the match and it began to burn, engulfing the aged paper immediately.
“Noooooo. You witch!” Elsa screamed and lunged for the burning paper.
I stuck my hand out over the top of the well and let go. Jeremiah shoved Peter to the ground and jumped to the well. He vanished immediately and I felt a brush of air pass me as he raced into the well after the burning paper. The screams of horror coming from inside the well echoed up at me and I stepped back, trembling.
“I’m going to kill you.” Elsa’s eyes had become wild and she loomed large as she bent to retrieve the gun Jeremiah had dropped as he jumped into the well.
I backed away slowly. I knew there was no outrunning them that time. They had no cards left to play—nor did I. Elsa lifted the gun as Jeremiah reappeared at the edge of the well, shaking with rage. I closed my eyes and covered my face, waiting for the sound or the pain, whichever came first. But instead of a gunshot, I heard a scream and a thump. I opened my eyes to see Nick standing over a lifeless Elsa, holding one of the shovels we’d left at the barn. Sophia was right beside Nick, staring down Jeremiah, posed for a fight.
Elsa recovered quickly and tried to sit up, but in the faint glow of the moonlight I saw a look of pure terror spread over her face. Confused, I looked at Jeremiah. He had the same terrified expression, staring at his wife.
“Nooo . . .” Elsa moaned quietly. “Not now.” She tried to crawl toward Jeremiah as the rest of us gawked in wonder. But just before their outstretched hands touched, their bodies slowly disappeared. Nothing remained except for a pile of clothes and the pistol that had threatened to end my life.
Peter picked himself up from the ground and limped toward me. I whipped my head around, trying to figure out where the Goodwins had vanished to. Sophia sat on the ground where she was and sobbed—huge, body shaking sobs. Nick hunched over her, his arms wrapped tightly around her heaving shoulders.
“Where are they?” My voice trembled in fear.
“They’re gone,” Nick said.
“I know they’re gone, but where did they go?
” My body still pumped adrenaline and I couldn’t calm down.
Sophia lifted her head and instead of the fear I expected to see, I saw the smile I loved so much. They were tears of joy.
“They’re gone, Jamie. Forever. You finished their business for them. That’s why when they vanished this time their clothes were left behind. Their auras disappeared with them. They’re not ever coming back.” She sobbed again.
I was so overwhelmed and relieved that I had to sit down, too. I stepped back against the rock well and slid down until I was sitting on the ground. Peter sat next to me and put his arm around my shoulders.
“You got our revenge for us, Jamie. You took away the thing that was most important to them, just like they took away the things that were most important to us when we were alive,” Nick said quietly.
A light came on at the back of the new house. “Hello? Is someone out there?” a male voice called from the balcony.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Peter whispered. “We can’t just disappear like you two.”
We quickly gathered the Goodwins clothing and, removing their wallets first, dropped the pile and the gun into the old well. We listened until we heard a faint thud and knew the items had reached the bottom. It would be a long time, if ever, before they were found again.
Peter stuffed the wallets into his jacket with the leather pouch, took my hand, and we all ran into the trees beyond the well, back to where our wild night had started.
We didn’t get very far into the grove before Sophia yelled for Peter and me to wait. I turned to see that she and Nick had stopped a few paces back. They weren’t moving.
“What’s wrong?” I whispered loudly.
“Jamie . . .” From the tone of her voice, I knew immediately what was wrong.
They’d finished their business, too.
“I can feel the pulling sensation everyone talks about—it . . . it’s . . . time for us to go.”
A lump worked its way up my throat. I couldn’t speak. I wanted to say so much, but I couldn’t form my thoughts and feelings into sentences. Sophia let go of Nick and walked slowly toward me, concentrating hard on every step she took. She put her arms around me and we hugged, both of us crying into each other’s shoulder.
“Thank you,” she managed to whisper.
I still couldn’t say anything but I hugged her tighter, desperate not let go of the one person I’d ever felt was truly like a sister.
“Sophia . . . it’s time,” Nick said quietly from where he stood.
Sophia unwound herself from my arms as another sob escaped my throat. She walked back toward Nick and Peter took over the place she’d just vacated, holding me tight in his strong arms.
“Jamie . . . I should . . . warn you.” Sophia stopped to catch her breath. “Once someone . . . becomes a soul saver . . . they’re more likely . . . to become one . . . again.”
“What did you say?” I lifted my head to look at her, but it was too late. She and Nick were gone—and their clothes lay entwined on the muddy ground of the forest floor.
CHAPTER 25
Morning came with a vengeance the next day. The sun had returned and mocked us with its presence. I would have preferred to go to sleep and not wake up for a month. After Nick and Sophia had extricated the night before, Peter and I gathered their things and went in search of their rental car. We found it parked at the fork in the road at the spot where Peter and I had climbed through the barbed wire fence hours earlier.
We found the car keys in the pocket of Nick’s jeans and Peter insisted he could drive. I climbed into the passenger seat. That was the least crazy thing we’d done all night.
We drove back to Newport News and into the parking garage of our hotel in silence. Everything we did seemed to be done in a blur. I didn’t want to explain everything to Camille. All I wanted to do was take a bath and pull the covers over my head, but Camille met us at the door, gasping in shock when she saw the way we looked.
“What happened to you? Where’s Nick and Sophia?” she said.
I still couldn’t speak so I just walked past her and closed the bathroom door behind me, stripping down to nothing and climbing into the tub before it was even full. I sunk down into the water with nothing but my mouth and nose showing. When I finally emerged an hour later, Camille was sitting on the floor outside the bathroom door, holding my pajamas for me.
“Peter told me what happened.”
I took one look at her and tears started streaming again. The two of us sat in the hall and cried for a long time. Peter had gone back to the other hotel room by then and it was just the two of us. Eventually I crawled into bed and stayed there until noon the next day.
We had three more days on our hotel reservation and before our round-trip airline tickets would work. We weren’t really sure what to do with ourselves. We didn’t dare risk driving the rental car again. We took some time going through Sophia and Nick’s luggage—keeping some things and discarding others. Camille was devastated that she hadn’t gotten to say goodbye to Sophia and Nick, but she was ecstatic to claim most of Sophia’s clothing. I didn’t think I could ever bring myself to wear any of it. The memories were too close.
I did take the flowers Sophia had carried during her wedding and pressed them between the pages of a book. I would do something with them later—when I was ready.
We took a wad of cash we found in Jeremiah’s wallet and ordered a simple headstone for Sophia’s grave. “Nicholas and Sophia Briggs Trenton—Together At Last, Never To Be Forgotten” was the inscription we chose. We thought it was much better than the crudely etched stone currently at her grave that only said, “Sophia Mason.” We cleared the dead leaves and weeds from her grave and covered the site with flowers, hoping Nick and Sophia were somewhere watching—knowing we had not forgotten them. The rare visitor to the Old Plantation Cemetery would never know the true identity of the person buried there, but maybe wherever she was, she could watch and appreciate our gesture. The three of us sat under the tree next to her grave for a long time that day.
“Do you wonder where the map would have led? I mean, if you hadn’t set it on fire, do you think we could have figured it out?” Peter asked.
“I know I’ve been wondering about it. What if there was actual buried treasure somewhere?” Camille added.
I looked at Peter and then looked back at the ground. “I didn’t burn the map.”
“What?”
“I didn’t burn the map.”
“What are you talking about, Jamie?”
“When we were getting ready to leave the barn I saw another piece of paper lying in the dirt. Out of curiosity I picked it up. It was just an old bill of sale for some horses, but I stuffed it in my shirt with the map anyway. That’s the paper I lit on fire.”
“Are you being serious right now? Why didn’t you tell us before now?”
I shrugged. “After the Goodwins disappeared, I was scared to say anything because I didn’t want them to come back.”
“Jamie, do you realize you conned the con man?” Peter asked incredulously.
I nodded.
“Ooo! We’re going on a treasure hunt,” Camille squealed.
“Not now,” I said. “Someday we will, but not now. That adventure can wait.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Shadow of a Life is a work of fiction. But not entirely. In November of1872, Captain Benjamin Briggs really did board the Mary Celeste with his wife Mary and daughter Sophia. Captain Briggs was a seasoned mariner and sailing had been a part of his family for generations.
In early December, the ship was spotted by Captain David Morehouse’s ship, the Dei Gratia, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Morehouse was an acquaintance of Captain Briggs. As the Dei Gratia approached the Mary Celeste it became apparent that something was not right. After boarding the ship, the crew of the Dei Gratia found that no one remained aboard. The Mary Celeste had become a ghost ship, seeming to sail itself.
Although theory after theory ha
s been given for what happened on that fateful trip, no one will ever be able to say for sure what really occurred. And no one will ever know what really happened to little Sophia Matilda Briggs.
Special thanks to Brian Hicks. I found “Ghost Ship: The Mysterious True Story of the Mary Celeste and Her Missing Crew” by Brian Hicks to be an extremely important research tool.
The second book in the Soul Saver series is available now.
Haven Waiting
Soul Saver: Book Two
Continue for an excerpt.
She rose to her feet, brushing the dirt from her clothes, and stuck her hand out for me to shake. “I don’t think I’ve introduced myself properly. I’m Haven Mills.”
My mouth dropped and I stared at her. Haven? With an H? Could this be the ghost of the person who made the map? My mind screamed and every part of my body felt as if electricity was running through it. I’d felt that feeling before—right before we found the map in the barn in Virginia.
Haven still held her hand out to me and I forced myself to reach one of my own trembling hands out to shake hers. It felt as if a shock went through my body the moment our skin touched. I knew Haven felt it, too. We continued to stare at each other for a long moment, not breaking the grip of our hands. I forgot that Peter and Camille were even there.
Finally, she whispered, “How do you know about ghosts?”
My voice caught in my throat, but I managed to choke out, “I’m a soul saver.”
About the Author
Tifani Clark grew up on a farm in southeastern Idaho (yes, that’s where they grow all the potatoes) as the middle of five children. She had a lot of space to imagine and daydream and often pictured herself as a character in one of the many books she read. She was habitually found pretending to be Scarlet O’Hara. Tifani loves mystery and hates it when one goes unsolved. She is married to the love of her life and is the mother to four fabulous children. When not writing, she enjoys playing the violin and piano and traveling to new places. She especially enjoys visits to national parks and places of historical significance.
