The Haunting of Rachel Harroway- Book 1

by J. S. Donovan

  She moaned in pain but quickly silenced herself with her own soaked and muddy hand.

  Something growled in front of her. She smelled toxic breath.

  Slowly, Rachel craned her head up to the massive mastiff staring down at the other end of the five-foot creek. Drool spilled from its gnashed teeth and dripped into the water, mixing with stirred mud and Rachel’s blood. Slowly, Rachel crawled backwards, not taking her eyes off the wild dog. Was it real? She didn’t know.

  The moon reflected in the water. So did the Roper’s silhouette. He watched from the top of the ridge, noose in hand, ready for the kill.

  Whether the dog was real or not, Rachel scrambled to her feet and ran across the river, toes sinking into mud. The mastiff chased her as she leapt over a collapsed, mushroom-covered tree.

  The woods stretched forever across the rough terrain. Rachel hiked up steep ledges, using roots as handholds. She had no plan, no direction. Obeying the order carved into that faraway tree, Rachel ran.

  Her lungs exploded with pain. She walked on fire. Mud and sweat hardened and dried on her face. Littered with leaves, twigs, and spider webs, her dark hair frizzled and glued together in nasty clumps. Her hands landed on the bark of a tree as she struggled for breath. Around her were tall rocks, taller trees, and high bushes active with gnats and fat spiders sowing webs. She wiped her eyes and grabbed one of her feet, balancing her back against the tree. Thorns and pebbles lodged into her soft soles. She swept them away and peered out into the darkness. No one. A new horror crippled her consciousness. Whether the Roper found her or not, with no food or water, she’d die out in this wilderness.

  She prayed to her father’s God and marched farther up the inclined plain. Her muddy thumb toggled the switch on her flashlight. The beam shot out into the woods. Rachel theorized that the flashlight was how the Roper tracked his victims. It was the only light for miles. But she’d been running for a while, and there were no longer footsteps behind her.

  The night dragged on. Rachel hobbled, one hand on the flashlight, the other on a thick stick she used for balance. Every step was painful. Every breath was painful. The Sense tugged at her like an anxious child constantly, making it impossible to tell what was a threat and what wasn’t.

  “I’m not dying out here,” she told herself, looking for comfort in the words but only finding lies. Sweet, sweet lies like what Brett told her when he departed.

  “We’ll both be happier this way,” her ex-husband said, eyes downcast behind his black-rimmed glasses.

  “Yeah, I know.” What a load of BS. Rachel tucked her hair behind her ear and signed the divorce papers. On the afternoon of the separation, Brett kissed Rachel one final time. Mutual sadness hid behind their lips. Brett left her the house key, never asking for his half of the investment, and walked out of the old door that, years prior, had been meant to revitalize their relationship.

  Was helping these Orphans worth it, Rachel wondered with the taste of copper on her tongue. They’re dead. She wasn’t… not yet, anyway. Maxine Gunther, Dakota Mulberry, the rest of them, where were they when she was the one needing to find a home, to find comfort and hope? Her father’s words came to mind: “Never expect anything from anyone and you’ll never be disappointed.” It was a cynical outlook from a pastor. “Still, be the light you wish you saw, and you can give what you may never have. It’s not fair, but nothing in this world is fair.”

  Rachel’s body wanted to quit. It longed to flop down on the soft dirt and rest. The Roper might not find her that way. Or, he could strangle her while she slept… if she could sleep. She forced her eyes open and commanded her legs to move. Leaves rustled. Face black and neck red and swollen, Maxine Gunther approached her. Her pale white finger extended toward the darkness.

  A faint light showed in the distance. Rachel strained her eyes, seeing the outline of a building at the mountain’s peak.

  Her heart fluttered.

  Hope.

  All she needed was to make a phone call, and Albert Jacobson would be Highlands’ Most Wanted.

  She turned back to Maxine, but the girl had vanished.

  Invigorated, Rachel jogged up the mountain side, using her walking stick to compensate for the pain in her feet, calves, and thighs. The journey to the building proved much farther than she realized. Without a defined trail or path, she found herself backtracking around walls of foliage or thorny underbrush. The building bobbed in and out of view with every misguided turn or redirected trail, slowly revealing more about its architecture with each glance.

  It was two stories tall. Its loft was built like a boat’s point that hung over an incline so steep it might as well be a cliff dressed with bushes. The home’s multi-peak roof grabbed at the heavens, its points reaching for the stars high above. The full moon shined on its long windows of the loft open deck that extended far over the “cliff.” Dim light radiated from both floors, making the building a beacon for the surrounding woods.

  Out of breath, caked with mud and blood, Rachel stumbled across the lawn and toward the double front doors. The world, life, existence, all of it was agonizing. A little farther, she told herself as she crossed the long driveway that curled out of view. Finally, her wounded feet touched down not on weeds, spikes, and thorny things but on trim grass, refreshingly damp from the evening dew.

  Sending her weight from foot to foot, she neared the front door and hammered on it with the back of her fist.

  “Hello!” she shouted, her voice cracked and dry. “Please! I need help!”

  No reply.

  Rachel cursed and twisted the knob.

  Unlocked.

  Surprised it was that easy, she hurried inside the house and slammed the door behind her, twisting the lock tightly behind her.

  Stained wood floors ran the length of the small entrance hall that opened into the living room and kitchen area. Nearby, stairs hiked up to a loft that overlooked the first-floor couch and massive flat screen TV.

  “Hello?” Rachel called out as she moved into the living room. Dimmable lights were set on low, giving the place a relaxing dim hue.

  Seated on and standing around the couch were Dakota Mulberry, Louise Richardson, Kensie Herd, Heather Lee, Cara Dummer, Tiffany Dummer, Amber Catiline, and Maxine Gunther. Silent, they watched Rachel as she entered.

  “What’s going on?” Rachel asked, momentarily forgetting the Orphans couldn’t speak.

  A photo propped on the stand above the fireplace took flight, flinging itself toward Rachel. It smashed at Rachel’s feet, shooting glass across the floor. The Orphans stared at her.

  Carefully, Rachel picked up the picture. An older Albert Jacobson and John Parkman smiled at her. She glanced around the home. More photos of Al. Rachel let the photo fall to the ground.

  “This is his house.” Rachel glared at the Orphans, boiling with anger and fear. “You led me. To his house.”

  Unfazed and apathetically, the girls stared at her. Their bloody red eyes silently commanded her to finish the job.

  Behind her, the doorknob jiggled.

  Rachel opened her mouth but was too angry to speak. She darted to the kitchen. No landline, of course. It was 2017. Rachel went for the next best thing: the knife rack. With a swing, she drew the steak knife from its wooden block.

  She heard the front door open. Boots clacked on wood.

  Risking it, she opened a drawer, looking for a spare cellphone, pager, or anything to help her reach the outside world. The drawer contained Post-It notes, pens, knick-knacks, and a plastic candle lighter. She took that and shoved it in her back pocket.

  The steps neared. Rachel remembered her bloody, dirty feet. There were probably footsteps. Quickly, she hunkered behind the kitchen island. Every breath was loud. Every heartbeat seemed to shake the entire building. Her crusted fingers coiled tightly around the black hilt.

  A man’s shadow grew over the island and up the wall before her. The light dial turned up, brightening the room. Rachel heard him move inside, walking to the
right. She slid herself to the left, the knife trembling in her grasp. The Roper turned the island corner.

  No one.

  On her hands and knees, Rachel scurried across the floor. Her journey took her to the living room where she pushed herself up. She ran for the stairs. Something caught her wrist. The noose. It tightened as she tried to pull away. The Roper yanked at her from the kitchen hallway. She crashed down the four bottom stairs as the Roper reeled her in.

  “No!” Rachel screamed, being dragged across the hardwood floor. She slashed the knife across the rope. It split threads but didn’t cut through. She sliced it, faster and faster, unsure if she’d hit her own arteries. The hemp severed as her wrist landed at the toe of the man’s muddy boot.

  Rachel craned her head up. Her eyes met the black holes cut out of the burlap sack.

  “Mother--” Rachel’s curse turned to a cry as he stomped on her hand.

  With her free hand, she plunged the knife into the Roper’s stained jeans, wrecking the man’s calf muscle. He grunted through his teeth and used the foot that crushed her hand to kick the knife from her other palm. The weapon bounced and skidded across the floor, leaving behind a ribbon of blood.

  Rachel tried to stand--fight--when he took her by the hair and pulled her from the ground. She clawed at his grasp with her numb and swollen hands. He lifted her to eye level, spinning her hair in knots to face his inhuman mask. The Roper’s posture slopped from his injured leg. Through his eye holes, there wasn’t a monster. There was only Albert Jacobson. Rachel could hear his disjointed breathing. She reached her uninjured hand to her back pocket.

  “At least say something,” Rachel taunted.

  The Roper stared at her. His other hand tightened around Rachel’s throat and squeezed.

  Her head became light. Her vision blurred. She pushed at his face with her stomped hand, but he didn’t react. Meanwhile, Rachel’s thumb activated the candle lighter behind her back and just as he looked into her eyes to take her life, she shoved the flame against the burlap. The flame danced up the mask’s corner. The Roper twitched his head to the side as if to distance himself from the fire, but it was already set and climbing. Panicked, he strangled Rachel with more pressure. The world twisted as the man with a partially flaming head tried to make quick work of her. The fire spread to his shoulder.

  He cursed loudly and threw Rachel to the floor. She gasped for air, holding her throat. Frantically, the Roper undid the strings tightening his mask to his neck. The fire overtook his head. He screamed as he pulled at the fabric and strings. It wasn’t fast enough - his head was a fireball. Desperately, his gloved fingers drilled into his eye holes and tore it apart, splitting the mask into flaming rags that fell to the floor. The fire took, slowly but surely.

  Rachel scrambled to her feet. She darted for the hall, her body a beacon of agony. The Orphan girls stood in her way, blocking the door. Maxine Gunther pointed to the stairs. Rachel twisted back, hearing the Roper’s scream. Albert Jacobson had shed his mask. His face was blood red and the hair around his crown had been burned away, root and flesh. He charged toward Rachel, his injured leg dragging behind him.

  Outside, Rachel would be safer, but that’s not what the Orphans wanted. They had led her into this death trap. Why should she trust them? She had one second to decide before Albert would catch her. Stairs or safety. She trusted her gut and ran for the stairs.

  Using the railing, she hustled up. Al followed, leaving behind a crimson trail. The loft was much larger than she thought. It had multiple rooms and a U-shaped platform that folded over the living room on both sides, which ended at doors leading to the balcony. On the other side was a hall with multiple rooms. She heard something inside one of them. Muffled shouts.

  Rachel ran that way as the Roper struggled up the stairs. Grimacing from the pain, he drew out a syringe and jabbed it into his own neck. A third of the contents spilled into his bloodstream before he carelessly removed it and tossed it away. Numbed to the pain, he started climbing.

  Rachel pushed open the first door. A guest bedroom. Nothing out of the ordinary except for the naked man with blood-soaked hands. He rushed Rachel, and she slammed the door in his face and tried the next. Bathroom. A child with cute braids leaking bile from her lips. Rachel pushed toward the door nearest Maxine Gunther, who’d appeared without notice. Locked.

  The muffled screams sounded from within.

  Rachel slammed her shoulder into the door. It took three shoulder-killing hits before it flung open. Strapped to a chair in the master bedroom was Detective Jenson Peak. Judging by the pink mark on the left side of his neck, he’d been injected too. Hands and ankles bound to the chair, he thrashed. “Rachel?”

  His hair was disheveled and his sight was blocked by a sleeper’s mask.

  “It’s me, Peak.” Rachel said, working to untie his wrist with her feeble fingers. “We’re getting out of here, but we need to -- Nooooooo!”

  Suddenly, she was sucked out of the room, Peak getting farther and farther away as Albert dragged her down the hall and to the balcony.

  “You should’ve let what was buried stay buried,” Albert shouted as he limped. “It took me many long years to get rid of this addiction, and you just had to wake me back up.”

  Rachel clawed and kicked. Nothing worked.

  “But damn does it feel good to be back.”

  With both hands, Al heaved Rachel up and flung her over the balcony. She plummeted to the ground floor, belly first. She heard, “Stronger than I loo--” before smashing into hardwood floor.

  Blackness.

  The stench of smoke violated her senses. She opened her eye, coughing violently. Around her, the classy home burned. Walking among the dancing flames were men, women, and children, scarred with grizzly wounds and dressed in their appropriate timely attire. Rachel tried to lift herself up, but her arms wouldn’t move. The flames licked at the walls, furniture, into the kitchen and around the living room.

  Through the smoking haze above, she saw Al dragging Peak’s chair down the loft balcony and outside to the deck. You have to get up, Rachel, she screamed at herself, but her bones were brittle, like she’d been in forty car crashes at once. She couldn’t stand, but she could crawl. Army-style, she dragged her belly across the floor, avoiding the fire.

  A rafter cracked above her. The wood moaned. She blinked and grabbed at the stair railing and used it to rise, wailing as she did. Using every ounce of strength, she forced herself up the first step. The second step. The third. She paused for a moment, feeling the smoke in her eyes and lungs. Al would kill Peak if she didn’t move quickly. Holding her breath, she pulled at the railing, giving her enough leeway to conquer another step. Only eight more times.

  By the time she reached the top, the smoke was unbearable. It hung to the rafters above the second floor like a black cloud. Rachel hacked and coughed. She used the railing to guide her to the open door outside. Her ankle twisted. She fell against the vertical railing posts. Through them, she caught a glimpse at the pool of fire that was once the living room. Bloody, muddy, battered, and broken, Rachel forced herself to the door where her detective partner and their murderer resided.

  She reached the doorway and stretched her arms out on both sides. Hot smoke and embers seared her back and billowed out to the starry night beyond. The deck expanded to a point that overlooked the vastness of the Appalachian Mountains. Head burned and eyes crazed, Albert stood by Detective Peak as he tied a new noose from the rope hanging diagonally across his chest.

  “I’ve never killed a man,” Albert told Peak, finishing up the final wraps of his noose. “I like women a lot more. Their screams. The way they gag before the life is sucked out of them. It’s so much better than sex. I don’t get why everyone is so worked up about a few dead teenagers, anyway. An animal, that’s all man is. It’s only natural for us to hunt. To dominate.”

  Quietly, Rachel dragged her feet toward him. The cold breeze stabbed her with its icy gusts that wailed through the trees
.

  Al slid the noose around Peak’s neck and pulled it tight. He peeked over the railing and nodded. “That’ll work.”

  He glanced down at his leg. The bleeding had stopped, and it seemed as though he felt no pain. He turned his eyes up fast enough to see Rachel shove her whole body into him. However, her tackle wasn’t strong enough to send him over the railing. He reeled back, spine popping on the railing as he struggled to stand up straight.

  With a groan, the building shifted forward at an angle. Rachel’s body pressed against Albert’s as Peak’s chair smashed to the railing.

  “Now we’re intimate,” Al chuckled.

  Rachel bashed her forehead into the bridge of his nose. He screamed.

  “Rachel, the rope,” Peak gasped.

  Rachel noticed Al’s arms still pulling the rope, strengthening its binds around Peak’s throat.

  Crack!

  The balcony sank lower. The handrails moaned under Rachel and Al’s weight. Rachel shoved her body against him. The handrails bowed in.

  “You wouldn’t --” Albert said.

  Rachel slammed into him again.

  The railing snapped.

  She snatched ahold of a vertical post as Albert howled and vanished into the tree line below. The rope tumbled down into the darkness, pulling Peak with it. Grabbing both posts on either side of the railing’s break, Rachel created a wall with her body. Peak’s chair smacked into Rachel’s ribs, taking her breath.

  The angle of the deck forced his weight into hers. They would both be going down soon. Rachel’s fingers slipped. Suddenly, the rope around Peak’s neck went slack. Rachel grabbed his chair with one hand, and, in a swift motion, she pushed herself and Peak away from the break in the railing. Feeling the deck shift beneath her, she untied Peak’s arm from the chair.

  “Hurry!” She said, taking off his noose.

  Peak freed himself the rest of way. Supporting one another, they raced up the balcony just as it snapped. No time to hesitate, they dived through the doorway and into the flaming building. The balcony tumbled into the trees.