Chills & Thrills Paranormal Boxed Set

by Flynn, Connie

  If I die tonight, my sweet fille will hear the call to take my place. She is the last guardian. No other stands to take her place. Triumph, she must, so darkness does not fall upon the world.

  Yet she be so unprepared. She turned from it so long ago. If I die like Maman, duty will look for her. Run no more can she.

  I pray for my Izzy on this my night of reckoning.

  Oh, Mama, Liz thought, what horrific events you imagined on your last day of life, and how sweet it was to touch your face one last time. Tears lodged behind her eyes, and she was more than willing to let them flow, but they immediately faded. She hadn't cried since the night she left the bayou, and the unrelieved sorrow was nearly unbearable. The recall of the moment she'd stroked Maddie's face only added to its weight. Listening to her mother's voice and believing, oh, believing, made Liz wonder if her mind was slipping like her father's.

  She set the journal down. Perhaps madness did run through her family, a madness that reading these pages could only feed. Better to leave the journal here. Then later she would put it away unread as a memento of her mother.

  "Liz!" Zach called from out front.

  "Coming. "

  Instead of turning to leave, however, she continued staring at the small, prettily bound book. Although she fervently disagreed with her parents' beliefs, she'd never get a better opportunity to know her mother's heart.

  A small laugh rumbled in her throat. She was being ridiculous. How could she even consider let- ting some silly fears stop her from learning more about her mother? This decided, she went to a cupboard and grabbed a large, plastic food-storage bag. She'd keep the book in it to protect it from water, and maybe read it on the journey.

  After tucking the journal safely in one of the larger cargo pockets of her overalls, she walked through the front door to the boat.

  When she climbed aboard and draped her coat over the front passenger seat, Zach greeted her with an appreciative grin.

  "Cute," he remarked. "I remember the last time you wore those."

  Liz felt a bit self-conscious and looked down to see what he found so attractive.

  "They're too baggy," she said. "And my legs look like they belong to a ghost."

  "You've got great legs, cher. Trust me, I'm a connoisseur."

  "I'll bet you are," she replied dryly, wanting to divert his unsettling attention. She had a feeling he was trying to travel down memory lane, a place she definitely didn't want to go. "Well, we're finally off to Fantasy Island. I feel rather inane boating to a place that doesn't exist."

  "Which'll make it a lot harder to find your pa."

  He eased the boat away from the dock, then gave it more gas. As soon as they'd gathered a little speed, he eased off the seat and pulled something silver out of his pocket. When he uncapped it and lifted it to his lips, Liz realized it was a flask.

  Oh, great, she thought. Just great.

  He recapped the flask and put it on the floor by his feet, then lit a cigarette. This hinted that he planned to stay sober for the trip, so Liz relaxed somewhat. She wiggled around in her seat, trying to get comfortable, and felt a prick from the corner of the journal, which prompted her to take it from her pocket. After she'd slipped it out of the bag, she leaned back to read.

  A dog-eared page drew her attention, and she flipped to it.

  "A map."

  "To where?"

  Liz let out a short laugh. "To Quadray Island. There are some notes about it too."

  "That's a piece of luck. It'll give us an idea which way your pa went. Although, I should remember. I headed that way myself . . . once."

  "Yeah," she said, a smile coming to her lips. "To bring me back a spotted orchid."

  "Boys do besotted things," he replied curtly as he extended a hand. "Let me see that for a sec."

  Liz handed the book over, a bit miffed about his dismissal, and about bringing the incident up in the first place. Hadn't she herself decided not to discuss the past?

  They were headed north into a smooth, wide waterway that allowed Zach to prop the journal on the steering wheel and read while they traveled. He'd opened the throttle full bore and wind rushed over the windshield; tearing at Liz's short hair, causing her to experience a feeling of freedom she hadn't known in a long time. "If this map is accurate," he said after a time, "we'll have to cut off here into this cypress swamp." Liz leaned over to see the spot he tapped. "It might be tight for this big tub, and your pa'll get through easy, so that will cost us some time. But I think we can catch him before dark."

  "Glad to hear you being optimistic."

  "No, cher. . Just not quite so pessimistic."

  As she settled back into her seat, she noticed him scanning the opposite page, which was written in a combination of French and English and contained baleful warnings about the island. Dividing his attention between the book and the waterway ahead, he studied the information with obvious interest. Once she saw him mouth a phrase she suspected was in French and wasn't easy for him to understand.

  Finally, he handed back the journal, tossed his cigarette overboard, then bent for the flask. The tour boat sped across the water as he took another drink.

  Zach sighed as he put the flask down. He was getting downright schizoid around this woman. Sometimes he saw so much of Izzy in her. At those times he was torn between intense hostility at the absence of the girl he'd loved, and a craving to yank this replacement close and kiss her till she begged for more. At this precise moment, he wasn't sure which he felt.

  She looked soft and cuddly now, with her hair curling into soft tendrils around her face and bare legs sticking out of those shapeless shorts. Yet intense, too, in the passionate way she'd been as a girl. Alive and eager for each experience. Feeling each one deeply. Looking almost as she had the last time he'd seen her wear those denims.

  Her parents had thrown another fais do-do shortly before Liz disappeared. Only they hadn't been little kids anymore. As teenagers, they'd thought they were so grown up and had two-stepped and waltzed on the lawn with the adults, trying hard not to betray the heat they felt for each other.

  That was no longer all there was to the girl he'd loved. That was only Izzy. A "what you see is what you get" girl, incapable of hiding her thoughts and feelings. A girl who'd touched his heart so much he'd once wanted to find her a golden orchid.

  Liz Deveraux isn't Izzy. Liz Deveraux isn't Izzy. If he repeated it enough times, he might get it through his thick skull.

  Man seedling, come to me.

  The words intruded into his thoughts and wiped out the mantra he'd been repeating. He shivered, recalling the day he'd attempted to find the fabled Quadray Island.

  On a dare. After one of the guys on his eighth-grade football team had said he was too chicken to go after the orchid that reputedly grew there. They'd been scaring each other with stories: Half-Man, a creature missing half its body who traveled by forming himself into a hoop; and the ghost of Jean Laffite, which no one bought because good old Jean was reported in every spooky nook and cranny of Louisiana.

  But le fantome noir. Even the name made kids tremble. A swirling mass of inky black, he was said to turn men's blood to ice, to suck up young boys, only to spit them out like icicles.

  Izzy had been listening to the stories, too. When the dare came up, she looked at the other guys like they were fools and said, "Zach can do it."

  So Zach, barely thirteen, and wanting so badly to impress her, had climbed into his pirogue one summer morning and headed out to fetch the orchid. He'd paddled and poled through the swamp all day until, as he let everyone think later, he'd actually found those mythic shores.

  The sun was nearly down when he entered the bog near the island's reputed location. Cut grass and lily pads choked the shallow water so badly he couldn't row more than two or three feet that the vegetation wasn't grabbing at his paddle or slicing his hands and arms. Mosquitoes swarmed, biting him and raising welts that itched all the worse when he scratched them. Nothing else moved out there—no
t an alligator or a nutria, not even a fish surfacing for food. He hadn't seen a bird in over an hour.

  But he was determined to get Izzy that orchid.

  Then things got scary, real, real scary. The sky darkened, but Zach saw no clouds in the sky. The falling sun looked like a pale fuzzy moon behind the gloom. He stopped paddling, scanning the area for anything to explain it.

  Fires danced on the bogs, lifting and falling, falling and lifting, or so it seemed. He knew they were just swamp gases, not spirits of the dead as some believed, because he'd learned it in fourth grade. But he could never remember will-o'-the-wisps glowing red like that.

  He paddled on and on, dedicated to getting Izzy that orchid. He couldn't stand to let her see the other boys laughing at him, humiliating him, letting her know he wasn't an idol, just a damned scared thirteen-year-old boy, who still coughed and puked when he smoked cigarettes, and hadn't really laid Suzie Martin, no matter what he told the guys.

  Hell, why was he doing this? She was only ten; it was not like she was a girlfriend or anything. And everyone said things about her. She was being raised to be a voodoo queen, had second sight, and you better not make her mad or she'd put a hex on you.

  But all he knew was she laughed all the time and made him feel like a king.

  He paddled on.

  Until he heard it.

  He hadn't heard it exactly, not with his ears. It was in his head, echoing like his conscience.

  Man seedling.

  Man seedling, come to me.

  I need your soul.

  The bog came alive with light—skimming the murky water, first as one yellow-and-red flame, then exploding into myriad fingers that surrounded his pirogue and flooded him not with heat, but with a icy chill that numbed his fingers.

  Ankouer!

  He grabbed the pole and stood up in that little pirogue, not nearly as afraid he'd overturn as he was that whatever talked in his mind, whatever danced on the bog, was coming to suck him up and spit him out like an icicle. He lurched and pulled, lurched and pulled, turning his little canoe almost in a circle.

  The mud grabbed at his pole like it had strong bony fingers, and sometime he fell on his butt in his struggle to pull it out.

  Man seedling, come to me.

  Small flames bobbed around his canoe.

  Worse, something inside him wanted to answer that call. But the part of him that wanted to run was stronger. This was danger, danger that wanted Izzy, and he had to get back to protect her. He knew that, knew it as well as he knew that something horrible called him. So he kept on lurching and pulling, lurching and pulling, driven by a need he didn't understand.

  Then the spiders came. Tiny spiders, crawling as with one mind around the pirogue, spinning webs that covered everything. They crept up his bare arms and legs, biting his skin, making it itch worse than the mosquitoes. He'd let out little horrified cries that scared him almost as much as the swarming spiders and the strange voice calling him. And all the while, the fires danced around him.

  Somehow, he blocked it all out. He just shoved that pole in the mud and pulled and pulled, ignoring the swarm that he swore covered every inch of his skin.

  At some point, he saw the lights of the Port, and he poled more furiously, running and running from the mesmerizing voice in his head, the icy fire, and the spiders that assaulted him.

  Finally, the grasses thinned, and each pull propelled his little craft a greater distance. By the time he lay down the pole and picked up the paddle, the fires were gone, the voice no longer called him, and the spiders had vanished, taking their webs with them.

  When he reached the dock, his parents were out looking for him with searchlights. And while he waited for their return, his grandmother wrapped him in a big blanket because he'd been shivering like crazy, even though it was one of the hottest nights of summer.

  He'd never told anyone about the voice or the flames or the spiders, and when asked if he'd really found Quadray Island, he just forced a smile and refused to answer.

  Man seedling, come to me.

  But he'd never forgotten the flames or the voice and, damn it all, he still dreamed about spiders

  Chapter Six

  Liz appreciated Zach's steady hand on the wheel. It gave her a chance to relax, and also to call Stephen before they got out of range. She didn't particularly want Zach overhearing, and since she'd put her purse in one of the storage bins, she had a perfect excuse to go to the back of the boat.

  The conversation was brief, covering the stock she'd finally decided on the previous night. After business was done, Stephen perfunctorily asked how she was, then told her a little bit about the basketball playoff game he'd attended the night before with his girlfriend.

  When Liz disconnected, she replaced the cell phone in her handbag, then returned it to the bin, being careful to secure the complicated latch that kept the seat benches that served as lids from flying up in a brisk wind.

  When she returned to the front seat, she thought about telling Zach how glad she was he'd come, but before she could, he spoke.

  "You ever go anywhere without that phone?"

  "Not if I can help it."

  He gave no response to her answer, and dropped back into the funk he'd entered earlier. She didn't know the reason for it, but since he appeared in no mood to talk she decided to go back to the journal. She read for quite a while, her throat thickening when she encountered a passage about how deeply her mother had loved her. Later that sentiment turned to guilt as the pages relayed the grief Liz had caused during the months she'd allowed her parents to think she was dead.

  She lifted her head, staring out. A warbler sang in the distance, and a little blue heron stood on the shore. Willows and oaks rimmed the shore, interspersed with the occasional cypress and maple. She'd forgotten how beautiful the bayou was, along with why she'd left it.

  All she remembered was being convinced that the swamp had killed her grandmother. Why she thought so, she could no longer say, but she'd believed it so completely that after her grandmother's funeral she'd taken her pirogue downstream to Vermillion Bay and hitchhiked north.

  The dangers to a young girl traveling and trying to get along on her own were unspeakable. But everything had gone her way. At a truck stop in Arkansas, she'd met another runaway from Detroit who was headed for New Orleans to become a singer. She was about Liz's age, and she had a warm jacket she was more than happy to trade for Liz's lighter one. And other than an overly friendly man who'd offered her a ride to Little Rock that she wisely refused, she'd encountered none of the perils many runaways faced.

  When she'd finally reached St. Louis, only fifteen, and with no education, she'd found a job as a live-in babysitter and housekeeper. Liz had realized right away how lucky she'd been to find Mrs. Ashton and wanted very much to please her, but even that hadn't stopped her from telling the woman she was from Arkansas.

  The rest of that time was mostly a blur to her now. She remembered the homesickness, the way she'd yearned for her mother's understanding ear, for her father's big bear hug. And she'd ached so much for Zach she sometimes cried herself to sleep. But every time she'd tried to write her folks, every time she'd tried to pick up a phone to speak to Zach, her stomach rolled so badly she'd nearly lost her supper.

  What if they came for her? What if they made her go back? So crazy, now, but then she'd honestly believed she'd die if she ever returned. Six months passed before she found her courage to write her parents.

  She'd been horrified to learn that the girl she'd traded jackets with had drowned in the bayou and been identified as her. Despite her poor recollection of those events, the day she received that telephone call from home remained etched in her mind. So did the tremors that came to her hands the instant she heard her mother's teary voice.

  "Sorry, I'm so sorry," she'd babbled, then selfishly pleaded with her folks to keep the news to themselves. Her father came on the phone, angry, saying the other girl's parents had a right to know about their d
aughter. "Please, please, please do it quietly," she begged. "And don't tell Zach, never Zach."

  Later, Mrs. Ashton helped Liz get her GED, taught her proper grammar and even found a speech coach, who Liz paid from her small earnings. By the time Liz finished college, majoring in economics, she never, ever said "y'all" or "ain't," and she sounded as if she'd grown up in the Northeast. She'd also developed a knack for the financial markets, which she took to Chicago. After a tearful good-bye to Mrs. Ashton and her children, she made new friends who accepted her fabricated upbringing. As time passed, and with no little amount of guilt, she deliberately fell out of touch with the family that had been so good to her.

  For several years after, she still looked over her shoulder to see if anyone had followed. But no one came after her, which made her confident that her folks had kept their word. Judging by the shock the Port Chatre residents exhibited when she'd appeared at her mother's funeral, none had known she hadn't drowned in the swamp twenty years earlier.

  Looking back, she failed to understand what would have been so bad about returning to the Port. True, she would have never become the person she now was. But she couldn't imagine thinking in that vein. At fifteen she'd had no clue to the direction her life would take. Neither did she remember such intense self-interest being a part of who she'd been.

  She tapped the spine on the journal. What could it have been? What provoked the overwhelming fear that still plagued her whenever she thought her true background might be exposed? The deception she still practiced? Even when she'd purchased the Fortier house for her parents, she'd used a third party to hide her identity. Nothing short of her mother's death would have ever brought her back.

  But the agonized outpourings on the pages of the journal in Liz's hand brought home the bitter truth of how much pain she'd caused. So many goodbyes, so much heartache, so much deception, and all because of her.