The Ultimate Mystery Thriller Horror Box Set (7 Mystery Thriller Horror Bestsellers)

by Perkins, Cathy

  * * *

  I went back toward the house but before entering I paused to see if “Uncle Joe” was still there, but he wasn’t.

  My head was spinning and I now absolutely believed that something was going on that dealt with the land of the dead and the land of the living and I was right in the middle. Furthermore, it was becoming apparent that the land of the dead was probably another dimension of existence, somehow, somewhere.

  * * *

  I went back into the house stopping in the doorway to look back to where Joe had been standing almost wishing I would see him there again. Seeing nothing but darkness, I closed the door and headed up the stairs to the bedroom where my wife lay sound asleep thinking to myself that I might be developing a family attachment to a phantom. I got back into bed with my mind wide awake in a very tired body. Sleep eluded me for awhile, but when it finally did come I fell into a dream full of ringing phones from eras long past. They were reminiscent of my early teen years and the hours I spent in the phone booths at the local pharmacy talking with my girlfriend; I had privacy there, unlike one phone at home which was situated in the living room right next to my father’s favorite chair. Someone called my name on the phone in the dream. That was the last thing I could remember upon awakening.

  * * *

  Getting out of bed was laborious, having not had a complete night’s rest. I went downstairs in my pajamas and bathrobe and out to get the paper in the driveway. As I started back to the house I saw my seventy five year old neighbor, Conley, walking my way across the lawn. He flagged me down saying, “Hey, neighbor. How are you this fine morning?”

  “Still sleepy,” I replied.

  “I’m not surprised,” he said sort of sarcastically.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You woke me last night when you were out in your back yard,” he said while watching me intently.

  Thinking he must have thought me crazy out there bantering into thin air I felt a bit embarrassed and as I started to explain he cut me off with a question.

  “Who is that kid and what was he doing in your yard in the middle of the night?”

  “You saw him?” I was stunned.

  “Of course I did; and I heard him talking but it sounded like he was a little off center,” he said. “You weren’t making much sense either, Teller. Now don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop but the night being so quiet and all, it isn’t hard to hear things clearly that you might not during the day.”

  “He’s just a troubled kid, Conley, who needed to talk with someone,” I said.

  “His parents must be heavy sleepers for him to be able to get out the house without them knowing.” He went on, “You know when I was a kid, my old man would be up checking on me if I got up to go to the can.”

  I started walking back to the house as I said, “Yeah they probably are heavy sleepers. Sorry I disturbed your sleep. See ya’ later.”

  “That’s okay, I just thought it weird for a kid that young to be out that late.”

  So sometimes these phantoms might be visible to other people. This was somewhat heartening. Then I remembered that Conley had been in a coma after he had a stroke about a year ago. They weren’t too optimistic about his chances for recovery but one day after almost three months he awoke from his coma and seemed back to normal. Maybe there was a connection… He certainly looked spry and in good health during our conversation.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  In my next session with Doctor Keough I was extremely cautious about what I told him because I had a feeling that he was somehow not who he presented himself to be as Doctor John Keough. He welcomed me as usual and gestured toward the chair.

  “How are things with you?” he asked, not looking up from his notes.

  “Just peachy, Doc.”

  “Peachy? Why not bananary… applely?” He asked, seeming disinterested in what my response would be. Was this a joke of sorts?

  “Umm, okay.”

  He looked up from his notes and smiled. “Okay what?” he asked, while looking at me in a very measuring way.

  “Okay,” I reiterated, knowing that just the word bothered him somehow.

  “Tea?” he asked as he got up to get himself a cup.

  “Green?” I asked.

  He poured cups for both of us as he nodded in the positive and we settled into our next session.

  “How have things been going?” he asked as he started writing on his yellow pad.

  “Lots of things. Strange dreams continue. Visits from people who are not of this Earth. Others morph into one another,” I said quietly.

  “Is this a movie or what is actually happening? I have a feeling that it is not a movie,” he commented, looking down at his note pad.

  “Speaking of movies, Doc, what did you think of the one the other night?”

  He looked at me with a strange puzzled expression. “What are you talking about? I haven’t been to a movie in months.”

  “You haven’t?”

  “No, I haven’t. I’d really like to know what you are talking about. Am I missing something?” he asked, obviously annoyed at my question.

  “No. I’m sorry. Just… nothing,” I said intending to change the subject but he didn’t want that.

  “Come on now, you have something on your mind. Let’s hear it.” He said taking his eyes off the pad and placing them on me as he relaxed further into his chair.

  So I told him what had occurred at the movie and waited for his reaction which never came, other than his sometimes glassy stare.

  “You are really having a time of it, aren’t you? I’m beginning to think that it may now be time for us to consider having you thoroughly evaluated,” he said in a very doctoral manner.

  “Evaluated? In what way? Do you think I need to be committed?”

  “No, of course not, but I do think that there is something going on with you that might be explained by a series of tests. We have to first make certain that you are heart healthy enough,” he counseled.

  “Hold on Doctor; let’s slow down here. I know that I have been having some strange things happen to me both awake and asleep. You’ve told me that some strange things have happened to you after your near death and here you are practicing psychiatry.”

  “I know where you are going with this but please don’t misunderstand, I want to find a starting point where I can begin treatment for you. This process I recommend is just to get us started.” He was defensive — and that made me suspicious. I felt that something was amiss and I was beginning to feel very alone all of a sudden. If my shrink thought me crazy then that would not be a very good thing.

  “Let me chat with your cardiologist and get his slant before we go forward.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said with resolve. “We are not in agreement here and since it’s my head and heart we’re concerned about I think what I want to do, should at least fit into this equation.” I rose from the chair and excused myself and left the session.

  Rain had been falling; a cold autumn rain, the kind of rain that chilled to the bone. As I walked to my car I could smell the exquisite aroma of a wood burning stove or fireplace somewhere in the gathering gloom. I wanted to just go home and cuddle with Kate under a blanket with a hot chocolate in front of the TV.

  The rain pelted my face as I got into my car and as I started it I put a classic rock music station on the radio. Pink Floyd blared out as I rolled out onto the main street that would take me to the highway. It’s funny how music can grab your mind instantly, if it’s the music of your mind.

  Pink Floyd suddenly changed to 1930’s big band without me changing the station and the change was quite startling because I am really into Pink Floyd. I thought that maybe it was a quirk in the radio but if it was, it was a first time quirk. The music sounded like someone singing like Al Jolson or a young Bing Crosby. “What the hell?” I said to myself.

  “You mention hell a lot,” came a voice from the back seat which caused me to almost drive into
the car on my right.

  “Holy shit… where did you come from?” I said to the kid who claimed to be my Uncle Joe.

  “You wanted something from me so you can prove that I really exist. Who do you want to prove it to?”

  “Me… I need to know that I’m not going crazy,” I said.

  “Then here,” he said as he flipped a small pocket knife over the back of the front passenger seat onto the front passenger seat. “Now let me out of the car.”

  “Wait a minute kid, we need to talk. We really need to talk more.”

  “I know we do. But before we can you have to find out the name of God or what is at the end of the universe. But once you find it out you must never say it in Latin, never say it, on purpose or even by accident. Because, if you do, there is no telling of what might happen to all that is,” he said.

  “How old are you?” I asked him sternly. “How do you know about things like what’s at the end of the universe? Why and how would I know the name of God in Latin? What the hell?”

  “There, you said it again. Stop saying the word ‘hell.’ It beckons things from there. Things you don’t want around you.” He was serious in his admonishment of me.

  “Answer me!” I demanded.

  “You would not understand the answer to either of those questions — at least, not yet. But maybe you will someday. I told you what I know about the Name of God having the right vibration to open the door to His presence. The dead say it will relieve the pressure on the next level where all souls congregate waiting to go on.” He paused for a moment, then added, “Although that’s what some of them believe, I believe that I know the truth. They are being fooled by the evil one. He wants them to help him.”

  “So you mean to say that the land of the dead is overcrowded? That’s hard to accept since the dead don’t have physical bodies. Do they?” I asked.

  “The dead are souls and souls are energy and energy takes up space, and it changes too. That’s why you have ghosts on this level. They are souls or spirits who are frustrated with the land of the dead and are looking to move on but don’t know the way,” he said as if he were the adult and I, the child.

  “And you’ve got this all figured out, right?”

  “Yes I do,” he said matter-of-factly.

  I didn’t say it, but that made an awful lot of sense. Smart kid, my Uncle Joe.

  I didn’t notice that I had missed my turn off to the highway and had to continue on the street I was on until I could get to the next entry.

  “Let me off here,” he said.

  “Why here? It’s raining and this is in the middle of nowhere,” I said, concerned for him.

  “Here.” He smiled and as he looked at the house to our right; my blood froze as I realized that this was the house I saw in my dreams when I first met Joe.

  He got out of the car and walked in the rain up to and through the front door.

  I turned off the engine and followed him across the lawn and up the small stoop to the closed door. After hesitating for a moment I knocked and knocked again. There was no reaction but then, after a moment, the door opened and standing there was a woman in her fifties dressed like she came out of the 1920’s. “Yes?” she said.

  “I’m sorry to bother you but I gave your son, or maybe it was your grandson, a ride home and he left something in my car that I wanted to return to him,” I said.

  “My son?” she asked, seeming surprised. “He’s been home all day and so far this evening. You couldn’t have given him a ride. I’m sorry but I have to get back to preparing dinner.” She started to close the door.

  I placed my hand on it and asked to speak with her son but she grew annoyed and slammed the door shut after saying, “I am not going to allow that. Please leave.”

  I turned and walked slowly back toward the car and as I got into it I saw Joe staring at me from the window. Then he was gone.

  I searched my pocket for the knife but could not find it. Then after looking under the car seat it was not difficult to assume that the knife was back in Uncle Joe’s pocket.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Two days passed and I began to think that I should be talking with a spiritual teacher or an out-and-out holy man or woman and it was then that I started researching mysticism. I bypassed the mainstream organizations, fearing I might be blown off as a nut case. So why not go where I would feel more comfortable with telling my story?

  The internet was fraught with practitioners of all types of mysticism and the choice of one led me to the choice of several, so I started my rounds with a woman named Teresa who was well versed in the mysticism of the people of Siberia. She operated out of her home where she had a meditation area and a small office. She was middle-aged, a woman of medium build with blazing blue eyes, plump and pretty face with a somewhat heavy Slavic accent. She could have easily fit into an Amish community looks-wise.

  “I am here to try to get help with understanding exactly what it is that has been going on in my life lately,” I told her as we sat opposite one another in her study.

  “Good,” she said in response. “Understanding is good word. Ability to change always follows understanding.” She smiled as she offered me coffee.

  I told her the whole story leading up to that moment as she sat expressionless looking at me.

  “You think that life ends at last breath?” she asked with her prominent Slavic accent.

  “No… I don’t. The fact that I died and was still alive in death proves otherwise. Doesn’t it?”

  “So you believe that you were living in the land of the dead and not the living when you had heart attack?” she asked.

  “Yes, absolutely. What happened then, I somehow understand, but what is happening since then, I do not understand. At all. That’s why I’m here…I need help with this.”

  She thought a moment and then asked me, “You have meditated? No, let me ask this differently. You have experienced the metaphysical before?”

  “Before now?”

  “Yes. You have seen ghost? Or you have been called by someone who wasn’t there?” She studied my face as she spoke.

  “I don’t remember anything like any of that. But now it happens all the time.” I responded listening to myself and feeling like I was being asked a question which the answer to, she already knew.

  “Do you meditate?” She asked me again while she lit two candles which were sitting on a table to her left, right between us.

  The candle light changed the way she looked. Her face in the shadows created by the flickering candle light took on a different shape and presence. “Have you ever heard of church called “The Circle of Friends?” I noticed that she seemed to look younger than she was in brighter light.

  “No, can’t say that I have. Why?”

  “Hmmmmm, we’ll discuss at other time, Mr. Storyteller. But please try to remember the name. I have a feeling you will go there some time in future.” She smiled as she reached for an incense tray on which a very aromatic smoldering stick was emitting an exotic smoke.

  I started to relate to her what had been going on with me since my near death. During the telling, she repeatedly interrupted me with the question “You have meditated on this?” Each interruption followed a section of the story.

  “You can reach Joe?” she asked me.

  “Reach him?” I responded.

  “Can he be called to your side? Would he come if you called him?” she asked, as she was looking over my head, and seemed to be smiling at a spot on the wall behind me.

  I turned around to see what she was smiling at and all I could see was the wall with the shadows of the flickering candle washing it. “How are we doing?” I found myself asking her while I thought ‘why the hell did I say that?’

  She didn’t answer me and it was apparent that she might not be all there at that moment. She did not move and her face seemed to be changing again as she was slowly transformed into someone who looked completely different from the person who had greeted me less than a half
hour before. Her hair went from black to the most beautiful shade of silver I had ever seen; her face lost its roundness and grew younger by twenty years. Her smile stayed as her focus remained on that spot in the wall which was turning into a spinning dark mass and now transparent looking out upon a dark place filled with many people.

  I sat transfixed on what my eyes could not believe. Through that dark mass I could see houses, rain, trees, streets and a marching band playing music that was seeping through as the band played on in the driving rain which was relentless. It seemed like a scene from a macabre movie filmed with a gyrating camera moving in a rhythmic pattern like it was mounted on a flying plane performing a ballet. I had never seen such a sight before, not even when I was dead, yet there seemed to be something familiar about it; an… unknown familiarity.

  Then it appeared from out of the dark rain, standing out on its own… the church. I knew it was the Church of the Circle of Friends even before I was shown the sign that said so standing in front of it. People were entering into what looked like a warmly lit interior. The camera point of view changed from the front of the church as it turned completely around and there I was sitting looking at this bizarre scenario. The strangeness of the occurrences of my life was escalating at a dizzying pace. I kept waiting for the dream to be over and awakening back into my normal life. But this was no dream and normalcy seemed like something I had experienced a long time ago in a life far away.

  The camera turned from me back to the church and then zoomed back from it as the darkness took over and the mass returned to its original state.

  I turned my attention back to Teresa who had returned to looking like she had when I first arrived. “What was that all about? What happened to you? Where did you go during all this?”

  “You ask many questions my friend. If they had answers I gladly give them to you, but they don’t. At least, not at this place, or this time,” she said as she blew out the candles.

  “I saw a church in a vision on the wall over there.” I said without looking at her.

  “Really?” she said, expressing surprise.