by J. C. Allen
“I’m going to sit and read this, but you really need to rest, Rick,” she suggested.
“I will in a minute, soon as I finish reading this.”
Abby looked at the screen, “Aah, you’ve already found it all?”
“Yeah, I think so. It appears that the first of four hangings was on June 10, 1692, when a lone woman, Bridget Bishop, was hanged at Gallows Hill. But,” he looked up at her in confusion.
“What?”
“Well, it says that both eleven-year-old Abigail Williams and nine-year-old Elizabeth Perkins had shown signs of being bewitched on January 20, but nothing states which was first. Bridget Bishop, the first to hang, was not even the one accused of bewitching the first two girls; they had accused a servant named Tituba. Sarah Good and Sarah Osbourne were also accused, but of those three, only Sarah Good was hanged — on July 19. None of it makes sense with the riddle. I can’t find anything about Tituba or Sarah Osbourne, but Bridget Bishop had nothing to do with any of the first four girls mentioned to have been afflicted. I can assume Tituba was simply not hanged because she confessed — the only way to escape hanging — but I can’t make the connection. The phrase, ‘although the court thought’, must mean she was tried and convicted, doesn’t that make sense to you?”
Abby stared blankly at him. “I think maybe we’re both tired, you just confused the heck out of me too. Let’s print it all out, you go lay down and I’ll sit on the bed beside you and read it all. Sound good?”
She didn’t appear capable of accepting any answer but yes, so Rick agreed, “OK, but can you check on the girls; they’re too quiet. I can make it to the bed on my own.” He printed out all the information he had found, and grabbed it as Abby headed to check on the kids.
Rick limped and hopped toward the couch, dropped the printouts on the bed, and nudged Anna to move over so he could lie down while he studied the information.
Abby called down the stairs, “The girls are already in bed and sound asleep, so I’m gonna take a quick shower.”
That was the last sound Rick heard that night before falling into a much-needed, deep sleep.
When Abby came downstairs she smiled as she gathered the pages scattered across Rick’s chest. Settling into one of the recliners, she started reading the first few pages. The infamous witch hunts of Salem, Massachusetts — a dark and troubled era in our country’s history — a time of insanity. Why were they being led into this quagmire of madness?
Now available
Chronicles of Time: Book 2
Part III — Injustice in Salem
Chapter 17 — Kids Do Sneaky Things
Rick struggled from the depths of a dream. In his mind’s eye he could still see the infectious smile of that adorable, precocious Roman girl, Vespasia. Or was it a dream at all? As he felt the surreal slipping away to consciousness, he realized it wasn’t just a fantasy.
His older daughter, Alex, really had found an obscure and intriguing artifact. His younger daughter, Jessica, really did decode its clues with her own unique brand of curiosity. Most startling of all his revelations was that it really had turned out to be the key to a time machine. They had actually located the machine, unlocked its mystery, and uncovered an evil plot to destroy the world. They were given a riddle to solve if they wanted to try to stop the process.
They had deciphered the first part of the riddle and recovered one of the four crystals which would enable them to stop this disastrous event. They had traveled back to ancient Rome and met Vespasia, who helped them find the missing piece. Along for the ride had been Alex’s soccer-loving friend Kaylie, and gymnastics-obsessed Christy.
They had been mesmerized by the beautiful, rolling landscape of the time, taken in by the sights and sounds of the bustling city of Rome, and captivated by the young girl they now considered family. Each had performed an important part in the quest for the first piece of the puzzle. Unfortunately Bergamiser — better known as Bignose — the mastermind behind the plot, had tracked them to Rome and they narrowly escaped with their lives. Rick sported two nasty crossbow wounds from the encounter, and they feared the vile Bergamiser now held their new friend captive.
When they discovered Vespasia could be in peril, it had taken a toll on them. They had been given only a week to complete the tasks necessary to restore the missing time from the time machine, and with his injuries, Rick feared they would have no chance to finish it.
Or save the girl.
Now available
Chronicles of Time: Book 3
Chapter 29 — Can You be Born Before You’re Born?
As Jessica opened the kitchen door, a man in shorts carrying a large knife filled the doorway.
Christy and Jessica both shrieked.
“So… did you get the crystal?” Rick asked calmly.
Both girls flushed with recognition and quit screaming, then noticed he held a melon in the other hand, which he was cutting up for a fruit tray for breakfast.
“Are you gonna beat us?” Jessica questioned.
“That wouldn’t be fair, would it?” Rick asked.
Christy said, “Nope!”
“Well, I’m not feeling particularly fair at the moment,” he waved the knife around menacingly.
They both dashed past him toward the stairs, screeching again, this time in mock panic.
“Get back here!” he roared.
The girls stopped and moped back to him. He held out his hand and Jessica deposited the crystal in it. “The cube too,” he added, and Christy pulled it out of the bag, setting it on the counter. “Go put away your things and get back here. You’re fixing breakfast.”
They whined and complained about being tired, but did as they were told.
Anna heard Rick’s yell and emerged from her room just as the other girls tromped up the stairs. She walked over to Rick and hugged him. “I might as well help. You should be resting,” she pointed to a chair.
Rick hobbled to the table, grabbing the cube on the way. He opened it and started watching Jessica and Christy’s adventure.
The rest of the clan eventually joined them and all listened to the tale. Everyone was shocked at the mere descriptions; Jessica urged them all not to watch it.
After breakfast Rick insisted the three girls in Anderson’s class wear a necklace all day. Oddly though, Mr. Anderson made no strange moves, barely acknowledging the girls. Rick spent all day reading up on the birth of Jesus until it drove him mad and he opted to work on his video game instead. Abby was shopping for supplies for her upcoming expedition and didn’t come home until it was almost time to get Jessica from school.
“It seems nobody truly knows when Jesus was born,” he said with a sigh. “Some say December 25, year 0, of course, but they are in the extreme minority. It ranges from 8 BC to anywhere in the next twelve years. Some say he was born in Jerusalem, some in Jericho, some in Nazareth, some even say Mary wasn’t his mother! How can anyone claim to be sure, much less righteous, and proclaim with such certainty something so incredibly vague?” He threw his hands up in frustration.
“I’ll ask some of my friends tonight to see if they know anyone who knows something…”
Other books by J C Allen
M.O.D.
Check out the YouTube video trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnk8YbBKLOo
Prologue
Tuesday, March 10, 7:30 AM
“We’ve got him this time,” said Special Agent in Charge Sheelia Tanner of the FBI. She sat in the passenger seat of a plain blue sedan belonging to her partner, Special Agent Scott Carver. Scott was a fit, trim, athletically-built man with short blond hair, blue eyes, and chiseled features. He was average height and had a generally serious, but approachable look. Sheelia was only slightly shorter, still quite tall for a woman, also very fit but sleekly built like a dancer. Her father and mother were of mixed heritage, including black, white and Asian, and she seemed to draw all her features out of a hat from them, including a deep, dark complexion, big
round eyes, dainty nose and mouth, and thin sharp eyebrows which angled sharply inward. Her hair was straight, silky and jet black, her eyes dark as midnight. Scott and Sheelia were just arriving at the scene where two dozen agents awaited in the shadows to execute a search warrant.
“I hope so,” Scott answered, lacking confidence.
Sheelia reached up to her ear subconsciously, obviously listening to her earplug. “They’re all in place, awaiting orders,” she told her partner. She then rifled through some papers.
“Tell them we’ll be there in two minutes. I want to park a bit away instead of pulling up to the house,” Scott said. She relayed the message.
Tension enveloped the vehicle. This was their seventh attempt to nab the elusive and enigmatic “M.O.D.” Nobody yet knew who or what M.O.D. was or what it stood for. They did know, however, that M.O.D. was wanted for several counts of every known form of identity theft, computer crimes, and probably several other crimes not even thought of yet. In each of these recent raids, he was positively traced to some unsuspecting location in Vero Beach, Florida, where Sheelia and Scott lived. Every time, the evidence turned out to be some ruse or false trail M.O.D. had purposely led them down.
“He made a mistake this time,” Scott said.
“It could be a she, you know,” Sheelia reminded him, always sticking up for women around the world, even criminals.
“Yeah, right. Sorry, but this is a man, Sheelia, I’m certain. And he made a mistake. He got greedy; he went for too much money and was tracked in real time when the computer flagged the transaction. Usually, it’s not found for hours, even days, and we have to sift through logs of…”
“Katherine Himmel,” Sheelia interrupted.
“HUH?”
“The owner of the house we’re going to is a Miss Katherine Himmel, 37, unmarried, lives alone. She fits the profile, Scott: four years as a programmer for the DOD, fired for insubordination last September. That alone gives her the motive and skills to deliberately mess with the government…”
“Like everyone thus far,” Scott sighed.
“Are you suggesting this one’s a setup as well? I thought you said this one was it,” she challenged.
A grim look crossed his face. “You’re right, it’s not her. It’s a man — I know it.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Listen, Shee, this guy is making a statement of some kind. A defiant statement. In all my years, I’ve never heard of a woman being so bold for so long. Sorry to punch you in the feminism, but women just don’t behave this way.”
“All your years? Do I need to remind you that you’ve only been here three years and I’ve been here fourteen?” she shot back with a smirk. “So we should just call off the search war…”
“Of course not, we have to execute the warrant. I’m just saying we shouldn’t be so harsh on the suspect this time.”
“Maybe, since she’s a woman, she was smart enough to know we’d never suspect her to be a woman,” Sheelia predicted ominously.
“Give it up, Gloria Steinem,” Scott teased as he pulled to the curb a few houses from the suspect’s and shut off his car. “Here we are,” he said rather tensely.
“Want to call it off now?” she joked.
Scott grinned, then got out, talking into his microphone, “Is anyone inside?”
“We’ve seen no movement, no car in the driveway. We have no reason to suspect anyone inside — there are no lights on and the mail is five days old,” an agent responded.
“Let’s knock then,” Sheelia decided, holding up the warrant.
They walked down a narrow sidewalk to the house, which had a half-circle driveway and a fence all the way around, encompassing all but the front entryway. Scott admired the house as they approached. Situated in an older neighborhood of stucco-walled and tiled-roof homes typical of the building style of a few decades past, the concrete arches and warm colors left no doubt they were in the tropics. Even the pavement reinforced that feeling, with crushed shells imbedded in the surface instead of gravel. He marveled at the carefully groomed lawn and shrubbery, imagining the time it must take to maintain the manicured look. Each blade of the thick, lush St. Augustine grass appeared to have been trimmed individually with manicure scissors to the exact same height, and all were a uniformly dark green. The edging along the walk and driveway seemed to have been accomplished with the precision of a scalpel. The plants and hedges had been placed with an eye for beauty and symmetry. At this point in his life he was glad he lived in a condo and didn’t have to worry about taking care of the grounds, but wondered what it would be like to be responsible for such a place.
Sheelia rang the doorbell as a dozen agents stood behind her with guns drawn and aimed at the ground. They waited several tense seconds before she rang again and added several loud pounds on the large, wooden double doors.
At the same time, agents approached the back entrance, by the pool. “Nobody’s home,” she called to them. “Check the doors and windows.”
A few seconds later, an agent announced the back door was unlocked. She ordered the rear team to enter and secure the area, and then let them in the front door.
Two minutes later, the front door opened and a beefy agent smiled at her, “Come on in, ma’am, but I don’t think you’ll like what you see. This has ‘innocent victim’ written all over it,” he said, standing aside.
Sheelia strode in and Scott closely followed, holstering his weapon. The agent led them directly to the left, through a wide arch and into the living room where a desk sat with a computer on it. “The computer is on, but the monitor is off. We didn’t want to disturb it,” said an agent who stood by the desk as they entered.
“Turn it on,” she ordered.
“But, it could contaminate the…” he started to protest.
“All the computers so far were on and none of them were rigged to destroy any data. I want to see what’s on the screen,” she told him.
With a shrug he said, “Very well, you’re the boss.” Then, with a latex-gloved finger, he reached out and pushed the power button on the monitor. It flashed and faded on. In bright, red letters, taking the entire screen, read “M.O.D.”
Sheelia snapped on a glove and moved the mouse. As she had expected, a message popped up, “Kathy is in the Bahamas — she has been since Friday. You should do your homework, Sheelia. I thought you would like it to be a woman this time, though. Nice touch, eh? I’ll have an exclusive interview on ABC News tonight at 11:35. You might want to watch.”
She stared at the message, reading it twice, her face knotting up with each word, then angrily she ordered the team to unhook the computer and seize it as evidence. “Let’s go, Scott,” she added in a huff, and stormed out.
Other books by J C Allen
Novel Ideas
Check out the YouTube video book trailer at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8gf1oVYZAI
Prologue
January 1, 2040
Jordan was nervous. He was about to make the biggest announcement of his career — to him anyway. He sighed deeply, waiting for his latest understudy, Samantha White, to begin the report.
“Today, on his seventieth birthday, world-renowned author, Forrest Reed, has announced in a statement issued by his agent, Philip Conrad, that he is releasing his final novel,” Ms. White read from the teleprompter with an appropriately despondent tone, which actually appeared to be fairly genuine. She was situated in front of a breaking news logo which rotated slowly, while dozens of books swirled in the background, emerging from the blackness as if bubbling up from the bottom of a stew pot. Forrest Reed’s familiar covers adorned the front of each book — and more surfaced endlessly. She continued to read the statement. “It is with a heavy heart that I am forced to inform you that Mr. Reed has decided to hang up his vocal processor and enjoy the remainder of his life at his newly completed home at an undisclosed location. He has requested everyone respect his decision to retire, and refrain from future contact.”
As
Samantha finished her script, the camera switched focus to Jordan. “Wow, Samantha,” he soberly intoned, shaking his head in disbelief. Jordan, a legend in the business, had been spinning the news from the same desk since the inception of the interactive 3D Holo-TV broadcast. Now in his sixties, he was by far the oldest anchor still on HV.
Samantha White was the newest face of the show, which seemed to cycle new, young, attractive women into Jordan’s evening news show annually. Jordan was obviously rocked by the news, but managed to finish his comment with, “He’s the last of a dying breed.”
“Yes, Jordan, he is. With 150 novels reaching number one on the bestseller list over the past thirty years, he has consistently released an average of five books per year, when nobody else seemed to be writing anything. That’s going to cause a severe void in the ever-declining book market.”
“And movie market as well,” Jordan added. “Seventy-two of his books have been made into films. His movies have grossed $48.9 billion in box office sales and have sold a staggering 3.4 billion copies in the aftermarket. He is reportedly worth an incredible two hundred billion dollars — definitely one of the world’s richest men.” As he spoke, the statistics appeared in colorful displays all around the two reporters.
“How did he become so popular?” Samantha asked the experienced newsman.
“Well, Samantha, it’s really quite simple. “He was the only person out there who could come up with interesting, unique ideas.”
“What do you mean?” she pursued, genuinely intrigued.