DEADLY HOPE a gripping detective mystery full of twists and turns

by Jack Parker

  She squatted and lovingly smoothed her hand over the symbol, an unreadable emotion in her eyes. I followed her and stared at her eyes, studied her face, trying to gauge her reaction to the knot. "The third is called the Triscele. It represents the natural course and circular repetition of the life cycle by representing all faces of the goddess, the maid and the mother and the crone. A face of innocence, a face of experience and a face of wisdom that repeats for eternity within the knot."

  "The tree, the Celtic Tree of Life, is a general symbol of spirituality. The Celtic creation story names mankind's ancestors as trees. It provided food, shelter, life, essentially, and those with the ability to commune with and respect Nature in her purest sense was considered particularly blessed. It was believed that the most sacred tree was an Oak, which is what the arch is made from. Oaks are nature's natural pathway to the gods, a portal between the two worlds." She stood as she spoke and stepped back to examine the tree at the top of the arch with glazed eyes. She truly put a lot of thought and emotion into her design of the arch, and seeing it completed was affecting her more than me, I believed.

  "It's beautiful. David, this is gorgeous. Thank you." I wrapped my uninjured arm around his back as my emotions played tug of war in my mind. His heavy arms encased me, and I nearly cried. He hadn't hugged me since I'd returned from Baltimore. Perhaps we could move beyond my abandonment after all.

  "You're welcome, Hummingbird." Tears sprang into my eyes, and I embraced them. My family had come together again. I glanced over at the driveway when I heard the crackling of gravel beneath a moving car tire. Katherine had arrived.

  "David, will you see her into my study please. I'd like a moment with Lauren." He nodded wordlessly and strode across the yard.

  "I'm so very pleased that you approve." She wrapped her arms around me from behind and I leaned into her as we watched the stout redhead charge towards the house. I enjoyed her spunkiness.

  "It's beautiful. I love it." I circled in her arms and wrapped my arm around her neck as I pressed a kiss to her mouth. She held me tightly in an emotional embrace that I didn't understand, but I chose not to question it. Luci's emotions selected odd times to rear their heads, and I'd learned to simply ride the wave until it passed.

  "I'll see you after your meeting, okay?" She nodded and sniffled into my shoulder. "Hey, it's okay. What's wrong, Darling?" She sighed.

  "Everything is right, my love. All has found balance." She pulled back and kissed my forehead slowly. I sighed into the contact. "Until then." She walked away from me, but I still felt her lips on my skin, her arms at my waist. I watched her leave, disappear inside the house. A long, turbulent path has led us here, but we'd finally reached a fresh, smooth patch of pavement to glide across for now. I smiled as I ran my fingers over the smooth pillar of the archway before easily trekking the pebbled path. Steam from my breath proceeded each step, and I allowed the cool late morning air to calm my soul, rejuvenate my mind.

  It'd be snowing soon. The leaves had mostly fallen from the trees and littered the ground in and around my path. I crunched them intentionally as I walked, remembering my joy of playing in the leaves as a child. Lilly and I would make huge piles of them and hide in the center or jump into them. Maybe Mattison would play with me later today. I smiled. She's probably never played in the leaves. I lowered myself to the bank gently and hung my feet over the side. My once vibrant forest was now dull and dying in preparation for the coming winter months. The wild flowers were gone, and even the grass had laid down in concession of the power of Mother Nature's coldness. I ignored my slightly shivering body and allowed the peace of this place to wash over me.

  My eyes slipped shut as the faint trickling of the low stream built new pathways of thought in my mind. The wind rustled the leaves slightly and whipped through my black riding shirt. I smiled as the feeling of being atop Dodger washed over me. That was the ultimate feeling of power and control. I would eagerly await the day I could ride solo when my shoulder healed fully. I'd found my peace. Of course it had come with a cost, but most things worth having were difficult to obtain and more often than not even harder to maintain.

  "Lauren?" My eyes opened slowly, and I turned my head to the side as Katherine's squat form filled my vision. "I'm sorry." She handed me a tan envelope with my name on the front in Luci's elegant cursive script. "It was the tea. I'm sorry."

  She turned from me as tears began streaming down her face and briskly returned to the path without further comment. My heart pounded as I watched her go, afraid to look at the envelope again. When she disappeared from my sight, my eyes fell to the thick package clutched in my hands. I swallowed roughly as I flipped it over and lifted the flap. My throat felt as though I was being choked. Several pages were folded inside and I removed them with trembling fingers and took a deep breath; my chest shook as I released it and opened the pages.

  My Darling Lauren,

  I have given much time and consideration to my final words to you. What wisdom could I impart in a few poorly written pages that are littered with memories and emotions I cannot escape? Already you have surpassed every expectation I had dreamed, and you only need to rely on your own compass to lead you down a proper path. I have shined a light through the darkness, and you followed. I'm so very proud, honored, to have shared with you my life's mission and I rest easily knowing I have left it in your hands. Trust yourself, Darling, and you shall find your way through the pain of my departure from this world and find that light once more.

  Remember my first lesson keenly and prepare yourself. They will ask you questions I shall answer in the following pages, and I hope you speak kindly of me after you've read them. Take care of those I've collected because they will follow you, especially Mattison. She will need you now more than ever to find her way through the darkness as you needed me. I have provided you with the means for success. Save equal compensation to Cal, David and Berta for their services, I have named you sole heir to the empire I've spent my lifetime building in preparation of your ascension to my position.

  Even before I met you, I felt you would find me and fill the void that had encompassed my soul. You set me free, Lauren. I had grown so unbearably tired under the burden of my mission, and you willingly accepted that weight from my shoulders and placed it upon your own. Only the gods may bear witness to such an auspicious moment in time and applaud your bravery and determination as I do. You've touched the life of me. Take comfort in knowing that I have departed this world in peace because of your gentle touch and willingness to understand and appreciate my flaws.

  You asked me once if I loved you or if you were merely a challenge. Darling, in my entire life, I'd never encountered such a kindred spirit. You lack my seductive finesse and patience, of course, but you attract the eyes of all when you enter a room. Before we physically addressed our mutual attraction, I struggled, I'll admit, with maintaining my distance. Your very existence begged me to be consumed by your essence, the energy that surrounds your very being. I wanted to be swallowed body and soul and never again return to my senses. You did that to me, unwittingly, of course, because you underestimate the effect you cause in the people around you. Trust it, my sweet darling. You are your greatest commodity. You could make kings tremble in your presence if you batted an eyelash in their direction.

  I have only met one other with that ability. Mattison, my daughter. She wasn't meant to be. I understood that her presence may interfere with my mission as I interfered with my mother's, and her birth marked the day I decided to only take female companions as lovers. I longed to spare her the pain of a distant mother, the knowledge that she was birthed to one who could not love her. Her father may live still, but he had been dismissed only hours after I discovered our spawn growing inside of me. I gave her to the one person who had more love to give than any other I'd encountered, my beloved Mattalyn. I failed to calculate the abuse she would suffer at the hands of her adoptive father, like you failed to factor Jason's presence in Baltimore. I never inten
ded for Mattalyn to be injured the day her husband's car failed to stop at a busy intersection. (A pinhole in a hydraulic brake line can do more damage than one would imagine and is virtually undetectable for future reference.)

  I begged Mattalyn the day before the event to stay home, but she would not heed my warning. She asked me to go through with the plan with the reason that she'd failed our daughter and had become too exhausted to continue in life. I kissed her one last time and then bade her one last goodbye. I had hoped she would somehow survive the carnage, and she did for two days and then slipped into a slumber from which she never awakened. She was weak, unlike you, or I would have fought harder to save her. Had she been willing to join me, I'd have saved her a long time ago, but she was unable to cope with the drastic actions required of her. She'd have been at my side everyday had she not crumbled under the pressure of the values my mother instilled from my birth to her death.

  While I was still a child, I wondered how different my life would be if my mother had taught me how to bake or draw? Would I have ever understood my purpose for living? Would I have been blissfully ignorant to the evil that must be eradicated for my entire life or would I have been crippled like Mattalyn in the face of it? I understand why she prepared me for these things now, but then the only thing I understood was my mother was often absent but never understood why. Even when I was in her arms, she was never fully with me. Her mind constantly pondered her next plan, her next "purification", she called them.

  The scars I wore most of my life reminded me of her abandonment. I'd seen her torture a particularly wicked man, my father, in the same manner, filleted alive as it were. She told him that she loved him before he died, and I knew that if she saw me as she saw her victims, she would love me, too. So, I became a victim of her methods. I inflicted the wounds that now track my body with the hideous reminder that I would never feel the gentle caress of my mother's love. I vowed to never cause that pain in another human being, but to restore faith in the goodness of humanity by purging the plights of their lives.

  She sent me away at Berta's urging after I recovered, to protect me from the trauma of her mission. I've always wondered if Berta feared I would become a younger version of the woman she served so faithfully for decades. She was so hard on me because she understands the darkness I inherited. Use her, Lauren, she has always been a guide when I found myself surrounded in darkness. My mother taught me how to kill, and Berta provided me a moral compass to temper my actions. There are many in this world who were provided a chance at redemption by her influence of my hands.

  This is why I must leave you now. Like my mother, I fear that the burden of this destiny has removed all judgment of reality that even Berta's wisdom cannot restore. I believe my irreparable slide into depravity began the day I ended Mattalyn's life, but I only realized it two years later, the moment I realized that I had ended Emily's life. Yes, I murdered her that day I discovered her with Mattison. I hadn't the heart to tell my poor daughter the truth, and I hope you would honor that secret as Berta has. That was the day I agreed to her demand that I find a partner to share the burden of my predetermined path.

  She was hesitant at first when I informed her of you after our first meeting in April, the first time you entered this mansion of secrets. She was unsure of your ability to cope with the demands of the calling, but I knew. I recognized your tactics of seduction and manipulation the second I responded to your touch on my wrist. I'm not so easily taken with many, but you were so bold, so confident in your ability to deceive and very good at it if my momentary lapse of judgment after knowing you only a few minutes is any indication. You stopped yourself. You recognized a brokenness, a fracture in my soul that you dared not widen by your influence.

  I wanted you to see me that way. I needed certainty that you would not betray one who had been destroyed by life, and you passed the test with flying colors, my love. Everything I made you endure was only meant to test your resolve, your moral compass. In the end, you came to respect me and love me. You cradled my fragile being in your hands and feared that you would crack it if you pressed too roughly. That, my darling, told me that you were ready to assume the responsibilities that I now bestow upon you. There are those in the world who need your gentle hands and hardened determination, those who cannot protect or fend for themselves. Those who need to feel the relief Death brings when their tormentor has been removed from being. Trust yourself. You will know them when you see them.

  That is the last sliver of wisdom I can offer to you, Darling. Trust yourself. You will recognize, as I did, when it is time to chose a successor and depart this world. Each individual has a large capacity for good and evil, and when you look at the faces surrounding you one day and see only the evil, you will know. When you've lost your ability to recognize and enhance the goodness of humanity, you have reached the end of your journey and must prepare the next in line. I only regret that I could not hold on longer to watch you blossom into the great protector I know you will become, but it is my time to go.

  I go with a dignity that my mother could not fathom when I ended her reign of terror with my own hands. She'd become uncontrollable and could not accept her journey's end. If my death leaves any legacy at all, I hope it is that dying with the dignity of a clear mind and conscience is better than groping at the scraps of sanity that cannot be pieced together again. Remember my lessons, my purpose. You are the reason I no longer fear the peace of Death, that eternal slumber of bliss we all try desperately but unsuccessfully to achieve in life.

  Farewell, my Darling. Perhaps we shall reunite when your path has reached its end. Until then, think of me in times of darkness that shall surely find you, and know that I shall never truly leave you as long as you believe in your destiny. I'd lost hope that this day would ever come, then there was you.

  All my devotion and gratitude,

  Luci

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  Copyright © 2017 by Jack Parker