Hallowed Horror

by Mark Tufo

  Ellen Carver, then age 59, had been seen by witnesses standing on a seaside cliff in North Laguna. Eyewitnesses reported the woman wore a long, flowing, formal dress, which is what drew their attention. At first they thought she was with a wedding party – a bridesmaid or something. But nobody ever joined her, and it became a bit odd. They reported she stood there unmoving for nearly an hour.

  She was there one moment, and the next time they glanced over, she was just gone. Several strong gusts of wind had buffeted the cliffs as the woman stood there, so some assumptions were made with regard to the cause of her fall, if that’s what it was.

  Her body was found a week later, dressed only in her undergarments. Police ultimately ruled it a suicide.

  As they drove back to Isabel’s, Peter couldn’t shake the feeling they’d learned some important things.

  “Isabel. A couple of things don’t make sense. First of all, I thought you said Vickar killed them, as he always has. But you cast a spell to make them invisible. So how did he find them?”

  “Spells, especially those cast by younger witches, fritter away over time. I lost track of them and could not renew it from a distance. I could possibly have saved them both.”

  “Okay, I guess I’ll accept that, but now for my second question: How could they have a child that was unknown to Vickar? He wouldn’t have allowed that to stand, from what I know of him now. Wouldn’t he have felt her the moment she was born?”

  Isabel sighed.

  “I haven’t been entirely honest with you, I’m afraid,” she said.

  “In what way?” Allyson asked.

  “I didn’t completely lose my powers. My father was not successful in making me forget everything permanently, and much of it returned in the matter of a few years. And did I mention that in my younger days I was a nurse?”

  “What does that have to do with it?”

  “Quite a lot, actually,” she answered. “Chris and Ellen ran away and married. They moved, for a time, to Oceanside, California. Not far, but with my help, it was far enough. As a child, before my father cast his memory spell, I was able to make them both invisible to him, allowing them to slip away. Vickar could no longer feel them or detect their whereabouts. This allowed them to leave, and he could not find them. They changed their last names to Jameson, and lived their lives, for a time. When I learned Ellen was pregnant, I drove to them and delivered Chantelle. I cast another protective spell on her the moment she was in my arms. Ferguson Carver never knew she existed.”

  “But then why did they come back and take their old names? We found their obituaries.”

  Isabel’s face became consumed with grief.

  “I wasn’t strong enough in my ability to convince them to remain where they were. They wanted their lives back. They loved Laguna Beach, felt it was their home, and Ferguson Carver had disappeared. It was reported in the papers that his home was found intact, his possessions still there, everything. But he was just gone.”

  “Did they know who you were? That you had powers?”

  “No. Neither does Chantelle. She believes me to have an extraordinary intuition, which of course I do.”

  “So you kept in touch with Ellen and Chris until their deaths?”

  She shook her head.

  “No. They did not tell me when they returned to Laguna Beach. I would have urged them to stay away, keep their false names. They didn’t officially change them, they merely used other names. Chris sold his paintings for what he could, unconcerned with money. Ellen worked as a teacher for a while, substituting when she could. When Chantelle was born, they just had enough to get by.”

  Peter listened, and couldn’t understand why she hadn’t told them this before. She had far more knowledge than she’d let on – knowledge that could have helped them in their quest of discovery of their past lives.

  Allyson was apparently thinking the same thing, because she said, “And you knew who we were from the beginning, but didn’t think it important enough to tell us?”

  “In order to gain the power you required to destroy The Evil One, you had to discover much on your own. That is what I believe, anyway. Chris and Ellen were already dead, and Chantelle was protected. If I’d told you too much, you would’ve come to rely on my powers, when yours, both individually and as a group, had the potential to be much stronger.”

  She stopped speaking for nearly a minute.

  “And,” she finally said, “If you recall, it took all of you – all of your individual strengths – to put an end to him. Not to mention to discover who and where he was.”

  “I like her,” said Allyson.

  “Me, too. Think she’ll mind if we keep in touch?”

  Isabel smiled, clearly relieved.

  “I don’t think she’ll mind. And I’m glad you understand. I’m sorry for deceiving you, but I did it for all of us. And by that, I mean all of mankind. There is one more thing I have to tell you.”

  Peter sighed. “Why am I not surprised?”

  Isabel smiled. “The dress Ellen wore that afternoon, as she stood on that cliff, appeared on my table, soaking wet and bloodstained. I did not know how it got there. It just materialized. I had seen the portrait by this time, however, so I recognized it. I knew it to be Ellen’s. I put it in the trunk. For no other reason than to preserve what she believed should be preserved.”

  “In my dream, she told me that The Evil One killed her. I didn’t understand it then,” Peter said. “And from what Chantelle told us, I believe he used the power of wind to cause her to lose her balance and fall onto the rocks.”

  “We can not know, yet we can,” said Isabel.

  “She was terribly sad,” said Allyson. “I’m sure her heart was shattered at the loss of Chris.”

  “It was,” said Isabel. We know this without needing any proof other than what I saw in them when I knew them. And what I see in you. Please don’t be upset with me for deceiving you as I did. It was important.”

  Peter understood. He put his hand on Allyson’s knee as they watched Isabel mount her two wood steps and wave at them from the front porch of her little shack.

  *****

  Epilogue

  August 18th, 2065

  Matt sat on a blanket with Emma. Their son Josh had gone to the store to get some more baked beans, and while he was in his fifties, he still made it a point to attend almost all family events.

  Allyson and Peter came walking up the beach hand in hand. Their kids didn’t make it down from Seattle and Washington DC this weekend.

  Several men in dark suits stood at a distance, their eyes covering the wide beach in all directions.

  Izzy was in Seattle, and had an important conference to attend for the Globular Foundation, an organization working on the moon colonizing project, which was well underway. She had developed low cost oxygen generators as part of a larger complex of equipment that allowed nearly normal life to be lived by humans pretty much anywhere they chose – so long as they could get there. And she had a lot to do with developing that technology, too.

  Damned MIT grad. Thought she was brilliant. And, of course, she was.

  Their son, Lawson Weldon Webster, was now President Webster, as in of the United States of America. He was kind of tied up at the moment with an urgent issue involving, of course, the Middle East.

  Both kids, including Matt’s kids, had attended their Uncle Glenn’s funeral the week before. They had great respect for him, and his political career is what inspired Lawson to get involved with politics.

  Glenn had died at 85 years old, having served as a Supreme Court Justice of the United States for nearly thirty years. Just after the confrontation with Vickar, Emma had made him whole again with her amazing magic.

  In turn, Glenn had made an anonymous phone call to Senator Cerrano’s office saying that Cerrano had been poisoned by a chemical agent that affected his heart. This was, of course, a lie, but it did expose his heart problem Vickar was so confident would kill the Senator, and it was discovere
d and corrected in plenty of time.

  From that moment forward, Glenn reversed course in his career, moving to become the best prosecuting attorney you’d ever want on a criminal case. From there be became District Attorney.

  He worked hard until he became a circuit court judge, and then sat on the Supreme Court of the State of California. And after years of service, Glenn had the great honor of being appointed by the President of the United States and ultimately confirmed to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.

  They sat beside Matt and Emma on the blanket, enjoying the air, which was as clean as it had been in decades. The new wireless electricity had changed everything. Harnessed from the sky, delivered automatically, it powered everything. Not only could they see Catalina Island from Main Beach, they swore they could even see the people on the rocks of Avalon.

  “Gorgeous day,” Allyson said. “I wish Isabel could have come with us. Have we got beans yet?”

  “Josh is right there,” said Emma pointing.

  He walked up the beach, a paper bag in his arms. He waved to Allyson and Peter.

  “He’s a good kid,” Peter said. “You done good.”

  Josh sat down and saw the fire in the pit had gone down. He pointed to it, swirled his finger, and the flames licked up again. Then he ran his finger in another spiral, and the inside edge of the can split open and the lid peeled away.

  “Beans, anyone?”

  They all smiled. Peter ate too much.

  THE END

  MORE BOOKS BY

  ERIC A. SHELMAN

  AND DOLPHIN MOON PUBLISHING

  Out of the Darkness: The Story of Mary Ellen Wilson

  Case #1: The Mary Ellen Wilson Files

  Dead Hunger: The Flex Sheridan Chronicle

  Dead Hunger II: The Gem Cardoza Chronicle

  Dead Hunger III: The Chatsworth Chronicles

  Dead Hunger IV: Evolution

  Dead Hunger V: The Road To California

  Dead Hunger VI: The Gathering Storm

  Dead Hunger VII: The Reign of Isis

  Shifting Fears

  A Reason To Kill

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Eric A. Shelman was born in 1960 in Fort Worth, Texas. In his early teens, his widowed mother remarried and they moved the family to southern California. Eric used to write short stories that featured all of his friends as characters, but because Eric was a longhair living in Laguna Beach, California in the 1970s, you can bet they usually involved drugs of some kind.

  Fast forward … to the mid-nineties. Eric started writing some short stories, and finally had one published. After that, he felt it was time to write a book. He initially intended to write supernatural fiction, along the lines of Stephen King and Dean Koontz, as well as many others. But when he discovered the story of a little, abused girl who was rescued by the ASPCA in 1874, he got sidetracked and wrote the very first book on her case, Out of the Darkness: The Story of Mary Ellen Wilson. It came out in 1999, and since that time, thousands have read it, and it is one of his biggest selling books ever. It’s also been optioned for a Major Motion Picture.

  From there he wrote a thriller called A Reason to Kill and shelved it. Eric began work on a witch novel called Generation Evil that involved past lives, but he became so confused while writing the book that he put it down at 53,000 words and didn’t write again for eleven years.

  Wow. That was dumb. Zombies actually brought an author back to life – he wrote Dead Hunger after the long hiatus. For Eric, it was like bursting from the starting gate, pumped up on adrenaline and unable to stop. Over the next three years, he would write or revise and release TEN novels, including 7 volumes of his Dead Hunger zombie series. He spends an average of 4 months to write a 400+ page novel.

  Eric is currently working on his next release, The Camera: Bloodthirst. This one can only be described as a camera … with a demonic past.

  So … time travel, zombies, witches, demonic intervention and serial killers. Something for everyone … everyone twisted, that is. You should check him out. You’re falling WAY behind, you know.

  Eric A. Shelman lives in Southern Florida with his wife of 28 years, Linda. The future looks bright.

  Life is good.

  ###

  Pride

  Is this how Lucifer felt when he fell from the heavens?

  Adolf Zakerny stood on the roof and looked down the twenty three floors of the University of Technology; below lay the bodies of his last victims, their limbs sprawled like crushed spiders. Blood pooled around them, tinting the concrete below with dark stains. All around the courtyard, students peeped up from their hiding places, their eyes on him.

  The killer’s chest rose and fell rapidly with the excitement of the hunt. A noise behind him drew his attention, and he turned. Zakerny caught the nervous glance of the policeman who aimed a gun at him with a trembling hand. His adversary was a young man, Zakerny guessed him to be inexperienced from the way the sweat pearled on his brow and upper lip, and the way he stood, tense and unsure of how to proceed. In the officer’s hazel eyes Zakerny saw the reflection of the hundreds of victims he left in his wake. I never did make it to a thousand, he thought with a pang of disappointment, but I made every victim count.

  “Drop your weapon,” the officer yelled, his voice cracked and high with nerves. Behind him more policemen inched forward, their weapons drawn, muscles tense, and Zakerny recognized the eagerness to kill. He could smell the faint hint of their sweat in the breeze.

  “Almost time now.” He whispered the words, just loud enough to be heard. “I’ve prepared for this moment for so long.” A slow smile spread across his thin lips, and Zakerny raised his arms as if they were wings. The sun, hot despite the mild spring weather, shone at his back, surrounding his tall thin body with a golden halo.

  The police officers shouted at him, their voices mixed with the sound of the sirens that played their disjointed melody below, but Zakerny had no interest in their words.

  He aimed his weapon at the first policeman with a flourishing movement even though the bullets had been spent on the young lives of the students below.

  Sound exploded from the police weapons as bullets sped towards his naked torso, whistling their tune of promised death. The impact burned with a pain unlike he’d ever felt, and the shock sent his body plummeting down from the tall university building.

  “I was meant to fall,” he yelled through bloody lips. The sky above him was blue and the sun mocked him. “Only falling can elevate me to a new level of being. Like Lucifer himself.” He turned around in mid air to face his death. Zakerny imagined his shadow on the ground below, dark and magnificent, with wing-like protrusions. His body crashed to the ground. The last thing Zakerny felt was his spine being pushed up through his skull before his brains spilled in grey gelatinous chunks onto the concrete.

  The most notorious serial killer of his time no longer walked the earth, and humanity exhaled in relief.

  ***

  Death was similar to birth, a process even more complicated. Dying tore the man apart, and his essence—his soul, for lack of a better word—reformed to a new consciousness. Zakerny instantly remembered who he was. His whole life had built to this; he was finally where he was meant to be. His mind was strong, and as in life, it was not distracted from its task and its desires. A void surrounded him. To describe the environs as darkness would be inaccurate. ‘Nothingness,’ Zakerny thought.

  With a deliberate slowness he woke to more than just his mental shape, and from the ethereal essence grew a physical frame. Cells clustered together to form matter, and from matter bones grew strong and white. His eyes developed and saw with an astounding clarity, and Zakerny looked on as his body rebuilt itself with a rapid pace. Thick sinewy muscles formed, their tendons latching on to the bones, and rubbery purple veins began to pump hot red blood.

  The rebirth fired all his senses, and Zakerny marveled at the process of his development. Any other man would fear this, he thought, but I am stronger than t
hat. Lungs, kidneys, stomach, bladder, all evolved, and his heart bloomed to life as it merged with the aorta, drumming rhythmically—slow at first, but faster with each beat.

  Nerve ends completed, bringing with them the sweet memory of sensation, but also the sting and burn of pain. Everything about this new body was raw and pure, and Zakerny fought the weakness of succumbing to agony.

  Soft tissue expanded behind the ivory teeth, developing into a tongue, and he tasted the waxy meat of his own palate. The tissue of his eardrums formed, bringing with them the sound of his own beating heart.

  In order to truly experience death, one must simulate life, Zakerny mused.

  The last two stages of his rebirth, the reformation of his skin and hair, completed the man. Matter formed all around him, a thick dark red material that engulfed his entire being. It was warm, meaty and sticky like placenta, and it obscured his vision. Zakerny struggled to breathe when the substance blocked his nostrils and mouth. He didn’t panic. He was a man who could keep his head cool, and with his new fingers, skin soft and fragile as a baby’s, the killer poked through the matter. He worked his way out, ripping and tearing, until the material gave in to his strength.

  A force that resembled gravity pulled him down. Zakerny landed on gravel, sharp enough to create bloodless pits in his new skin, with a deafening crunch. His vision was blurry, tinged with red, and he fought to make sense of his surroundings. He was as naked as a newborn, his skin a pasty pale color that gleamed with moisture, as if he just stepped from a bath. Thin strands of the sticky matter, delicate and strong like the web of a spider, still clung to his form. With the grace of a cat, he got to his feet, still blinded from the meaty liquid. Something brushed past him. Lukewarm flesh rubbed against his own. His hand lashed out and he grabbed a wrist.