Beloved Evangeline (A Dark Paranormal Urban Fantasy Trilogy for Grown-ups - Book 1)

by W. C. Anderson

  My mind worked furiously. I studied my surroundings. In this new context, the home didn’t even look lived in. That would explain the quiet, and the dust. With the change in my perspective, I was able to view the home with fresh eyes. What had seemed sinister and suspect now just appeared run down and dilapidated. Funny how I hadn’t made the connection between dilapidated and abandoned sooner, but then, given my own home furnishings, I hadn’t recognized any of this as being abnormal.

  “You’re sure there was no one else? I mean, how did you find me?” I asked in a monotone, just because they seemed like the type of sensible questions that needed to be asked. I was still lost in thought.

  “I’m sure, hon. It was just you lying here, out cold, with this book next to ya.” He pointed to a large hardcover book lying next to me, a collection of gothic novels, in which I had been perusing Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock just before I fell asleep. Coincidental? Or did the undead have a sense of humor?

  George the EMT continued, though I was barely listening, “We got a 911 call about someone being hurt. Strange, because the house used to be boarded up. We were kind of wondering how you even got in...” he trailed off. “Hey, are you alright?”

  Having finally connected all the dots, my attention was focused at the top of the stairs. I turned from George and bounded up them.

  “Hey, wait!” He called after me.

  I threw open the door of my grandfather’s bedroom. It looked as though no one hand been in the room in years. The bed was made, its covers thinning, aged, disintegrating.

  The EMT came up behind me, putting his hand on my shoulder. “Let’s get you outside, hon,”

  I nodded, staring at the dusty, deteriorating room all the way out.

  Once we were outside, I felt like I could breathe again. “How long ago was it when... the man hung himself here?”

  “Oh gosh... it’s been maybe 20 years now. The house was abandoned after that. I guess, the family didn’t want to live in it after something like that...”

  I can’t imagine why.

  I unfurled my hand slowly, examining the necklace that I’d stubbornly wound around my wrist, refusing to let go no matter what. It was the loveliest, most unusual antique silver filigree necklace I had ever seen.

  20.

  The entire next day was spent holed up in my house, researching my mother’s side of the family online. I was curious to determine whether the EMT had been wrong, or if I was the one who had seen something that wasn’t there. According to the Social Security Death Index, Heinrich Von Olnheisen passed away nearly 20 years ago. My grandfather was dead.

  I longed for one of my famous dinner of chips and homemade salsa, but I was out of chips. Salsa in a pita pocket turned out not to be as good.

  When I was able to continue, I learned that the Von Olnheisens’ had occupied that estate for almost 200 years. No genealogies had ever been formally organized, though, so there were surprisingly few other details that I was able to dredge up. None of them were particularly interesting, and I found no information on my grandmother, not even her name. It seemed probable that she had died young. I needed the entire day to process and contemplate the possible meaning of the information I gathered.

  That evening my cell phone rang, a rare occurrence lately.

  “Hello?” I answered.

  “Ms. Johnson? This is Jenny Blackwell. I’m a social worker. I was notified by the hospital about your recent accident...”

  “Uh...”

  “Well, I know this is difficult because you don’t know me, but my job is to make sure that you’re safe, that you have someone to call in case you ever get in trouble.”

  “Trouble? What kind of trouble?”

  “Well, I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me about your accident. What happened? Did you go out to that house with a boyfriend or acquaintance of some kind?”

  “No, I went there alone. I did tell the EMT that. It was dark... I just fell and hit my head.” I realized, too late, that I’d just given the cliche denial response.

  “The thing is, Ms. Johnson, your injuries are inconsistent with accidental causes.” Her tone was a little too flat, sounding as though she were reading from a script. “How have you been feeling lately? Is everything in your life going alright?”

  Fabulous. Not only did I have a myriad of both natural and supernatural problems, now I was going to have some social worker hovering over me and intruding on my life? At least the tone had switched from domestic violence to suicide prevention, that topic being only slightly more painful and personal to me. I deflected her remaining questions as deftly as possible, but the process was embarrassing and exhausting. I fell asleep nearly as soon as I’d hung up the phone.

  21.

  When an unpleasant task lies ahead, time naturally speeds up to greet it. My life fast forwarded to the Monday morning corporate board meeting. Inexplicably, I was the only woman at the 15-foot long rectangular table—and the only one under 50. I recognized our corporate CEO, Tom McCormick, and VP, Charlie Taylor, from their pictures in the lobby. No one else was remotely familiar.

  The meeting started with a synopsis of stock market reports from our subsidiaries, detailing which of the companies were succeeding, and which were floundering. Several companies were performing poorly, owing largely—I thought—to falling behind current market trends. Aviratia lacks the ability to adapt to the rapidly changing corporate landscape; we’re just too big to change directions when necessary. Momentarily forgetting myself, I could have listened to and analyzed the stock reports all day, but that wasn’t why I was here.

  Too quickly, the meeting arrived at the subject of my research, my armpits and upper back already damp with nervous perspiration. Our company doesn’t tolerate mistakes. I watched them escort an accountant out of the building who’d transposed a couple of numbers—once. They tossed his belongings out into the street. Though I’ve been over and over the research, I can’t think of anything more publicly humiliating than making a mistake with the corporate folks, my recent escapades notwithstanding.

  Taylor read the bottom line and my conclusion aloud, the last sentence being, “Due to the lack of accountability for perpetrators and the number of unreported claims, the future of controlling affinity scams appears equally grim.”

  The research on internet predators had been particularly unpleasant, but the scams perpetrated on the elderly had been just as distressing. In some cases, even when presented with direct evidence, the victims still refused to believe they’d been swindled. The work had been heartbreaking, but… what exactly did this have to do with our corporate structure?

  “Ms…. Johnson?” Taylor began, checking his paperwork for my name. “Perhaps you’d like to tell us more about your research into this subject.”

  I scanned the faces of the corporate officers for some hint as to what this was all about. All were stoic.

  “Sure. What, exactly, needs clarification?”

  The next two hours were among the most harrowing of my entire life. I had been grilled over and over on all minutia of the report in excruciating detail. I don’t think I handled it well—my heart just wasn’t in it. The board was in desperate search of new revenue sources and were more than willing to exploit even the most vulnerable populations. I felt like a rabbit in a room full of hyenas.

  My niche in this company suddenly became clear. I was nothing more than a puppet, the invisible kind.

  When the meeting ended, I marched out of the conference room, straight to my office, without an upward glance, drenched in sweat and feeling as though I’d aged twenty years.

  I lost track of the time passing by. Every day at work was like a new kind of torture. I had fibbed to the corporate board and would likely be beheaded if found out, or at the very least blacklisted from getting a job at any other business in town. And there were already no other jobs to be had in this economy, particularly with Florida having the worst unemployment rate in the country. Being a misfit trapped
in a cruel, artificial existence only seemed to get more and more difficult, rather than easier.

  Life was a blur. Worried that every time I stepped into the building would be my last, I had stopped paying attention to the weather outside, and failed to notice the seasons were passing me by. One afternoon a guy named Tim stopped me in the hallway. He was laughing. “What are you, cold or something?”

  It took me a moment to process, but eventually I found myself wearing a black turtleneck sweater and gray woolen trousers. I’m guessing it was 95 degrees outside. I hadn’t even realized it was already late June.

  Summer had arrived. Daily thunder and lightning storms would soon be bearing down, the best time of the year. How could I have missed the passing of the seasons? I seemed to have skipped right through the spring, completely missing the azaleas and Carolina jasmine.

  But on some level my manner of dress seemed to make sense. Lately I had found sunlight difficult to withstand. I often read outdoors or just sit on my patio to soak up some sun, but recently the glare and heat had become intolerable.

  I spent one entire weekend indoors, doing nothing but watching an Avengers marathon on BBC America. Emma Peel was my first real style inspiration when I was a teenager, and to this day, I continue to be completely mesmerized by her.

  Though I was more anxious and distracted than ever, I somehow managed to keep up with my responsibilities. Much of the time I wasn’t sure how I was able to do so. I had to suspend all logic just to get through each day. The quest would soon be drawing to a close, and... then what? My life would just resume its pathetic pre-quest status. July, August, and September blurred past. October was upon me again before I even knew it. It felt as though my life may soon blur by me just the same as the seasons had.

  Lunches with Nicky, Lyle, and Tina were just about my only pleasant distraction from this line of reasoning. And then, slowly, gradually, even through my fog-addled brain, something miraculous happened. A trickling of people began to gather with us at lunchtime. Though just a handful at first, within a few weeks no less than ten people congregated together to dine with us each day. Many of them social misfits, all of them lonely in some way or other; it was truly beautiful. The gathering of so many people caused my frozen soul to thaw just a little. And, just when I thought there were no other oddballs left, Natasha Tanner, a wicked-pretty blond, walked straight up to me while I was in line for my weekly lunch splurge of creamy tomato basil soup and warm molasses bread.

  “Hey, I know we don’t know each other very well, but I‘ve been wanting to talk to you about something.”

  “Oh?” I nodded encouragingly, thinking this was about work.

  “Yeah. I know a lot of people think I’m arrogant or something, but I’m just really… shy. It takes a lot of effort for me to just walk up and talk to someone. It’s hard for me, you know?”

  I smiled. “We definitely have that in common.” She was so beautiful that I was literally a troll by comparison. I self-consciously smoothed down my perpetually messy tresses—that today, of course, were sticking out at even more severe angles than usual—a slight scowl on my face. Hers were so perfectly coifed; they glistened like silk.

  “That’s not everything,” she began sadly. “I wanted to talk to you about… Steve.”

  My brow furrowed quizzically.

  “He invited me over for dinner last year. I don’t get asked out on a lot of dates, so…”

  My expression must have shown the surprise that I felt.

  “No, really…” She went on to explain her own encounter with the Steve, the details of which I’ve sworn to take to the grave.

  I sighed, unsure how to make her feel better. I pushed up my sleeve and showed her the now permanent discoloration on my forearm from my own night with Steve.

  Natasha threw her arms around me, crying.

  Crying makes me squeamish, and we were already attracting more undue attention than I found comfortable. I couldn’t manage to make myself appear normal and un-awkward. Patting her shoulder for want of anything better, I turned to Nicky and Lyle with pleading in my eyes. Although they had been casually stealing glances in our direction during the entire conversation, they only shrugged, misunderstanding my silent call for help.

  She was really not going to stop crying any time soon, and I began worrying that many of my more vocal detractors among the onlookers thought I’d actually done something to make her unhappy. Taking matters into my own hands, I motioned to my friends with my I-don’t-know-what-to-do-now face. Finally, Nicky understood the cue as I hoped she would, and called out, “Do you want to come have lunch with us? We’ve created our own little haven for misfits—no judgment.”

  Natasha looked up, momentarily unsure, glancing between me and them.

  “We’re standing up for the nonconformists,” Lyle added, “Evangeline’s gonna kick anyone’s ass who messes with us.”

  I shook my head in frustration. “Not really.”

  She laughed and sat down across from him, and blissfully, there was no more crying.

  A different type of waterworks persisted, however. Lyle didn’t stop drooling through the entire lunch hour.

  22.

  I managed to invite Nicky for coffee with me on several occasions, and our relationship continued to improve. We began a regular Saturday morning hike and coffee expedition, just like we used to with Simon and Gavin, but I tried not to think too hard about either of them. Lyle even tagged along with us a few times—watching him learning to hike was worth every moment. Only a true friend would attempt something he’d never done—and was truly terrible at—just to spend time with us.

  One morning while Nicky and I were enjoying our coffee, Lyle rushed toward us in a whirlwind of excitement.

  “I found the common thread!” he shouted as several people turned to us in annoyance at his commotion.

  Nicky and I motioned simultaneously for him to sit down.

  “These are newspaper clippings of all of the murders. The cause of death is never the same... to make it appear that there’s no pattern, but clearly, there is. The pattern is that there’s no pattern.

  “Look, one woman’s mangled in an engine turbine, another torn apart by alligators, and yet another was somehow decapitated in a freakish accident with manufacturing equipment, and then there are several that seem to have no evident cause of death. Nothing is ever this random. There’s now been at least 15 of them in a 50-mile radius. It’s statistically impossible for all of these freakish, deadly coincidences to be occurring at the same time.”

  I examined the clippings, my attention catching on a fact reflecting at least three of the women showed evidence of sexual trauma. Most of the other bodies were too badly decomposed or mangled to make any determination.

  I couldn’t look at the pictures something about them—besides the obvious—made my blood run cold.

  “I think you might really be onto something, Lyle.”

  Lyle rolled his eyes. “I’ve been wrong exactly three times in my entire life, Evangeline. Give me a little credit, please.”

  I had a lot to think about on my way home that evening. Not the least of which involved Bruce Vaughn. I’d successfully avoided him for the past several weeks, for which I was very grateful, but without our little feud, my life just seemed all the more lacking. I came home to no commotion outside most nights, and I found myself oddly longing for those fights. I curled up on the couch with my tea and music and lounging pants, but without having to work for it, I found I didn’t really crave the relaxation the way I had before. I’d spent several weeks now coming and going as I pleased, leaving my garbage cans out for several days after trash day, neglecting my lawn, and parking my car out on the street, all without intervention of any kind.

  Tonight I just felt... restless. The quest that had started out so promising was now feeling more and more disappointing.

  I rummaged in my closet and pulled out the chest I’d reclaimed from the swamp. I examined it carefully, studying t
he intricate carving and wondering what kind of wood this could possibly be to have held up so well, but still nothing came of it. I wondered if I’d been too late, and someone else had just gotten there first.

  I hadn’t watched television in forever, but it seemed like as good a distraction as any to help turn my mind off. I shuffled to the living room and plopped myself on the couch, flipping through the channels before settling on CNN. I frowned at the commercial that was on, a cereal company telling us by eating their cereal we can be thinner because research suggest people who eat whole grain foods have lower body fat ratios.

  This is a clear example of irresponsible research. Not that in this case the cereal will do anyone any harm, but perhaps, people who go to the trouble of seeking out whole grain foods are just healthier in general. Clearly there are unaccounted for variables, the foremost being exercise and a person’s overall diet. To someone who guzzles two-liters of mountain dew and snacks on half-pound cheeseburgers and Twinkies, adding this particular cereal to the mix will do nothing to diminish their love-handles. I wanted the names of the researchers who so carelessly drew causal relationships from this data—the most dangerous aspect of any research. They should have to provide the numbers along with such claims, just like nutritional labels on food, so the rest of us can check these things for ourselves.