Fatal Storm (19 page)

“Found dead?” Padre asked.

“He was found beaten to death in an alley.
Must have been getting close to the truth. Official report claimed
it was robbery. Charles Sebold obviously felt all of these cases
were connected. Including the kidnapping of his daughter.”

“Found it!” Sara claimed as a low rumbling
could be heard in the distance. The eye of the storm was moving. “I
have been searching through Jewel’s research hoping to discover
what might have been in this location prior to the Sebold
mansion.”

“You mean like an Indian burial ground?”
Padre asked.

“Not quite. Leeland and Louise Walker had a
house on this property from the late 1800s until 1918 when the
house burned down. Although it was believed the entire family
perished in the fire, remains could not be found. According to
reports, John was a woodworker but drank more than he built things.
Louise was a housewife but according to a local doctor, she was
slowly going insane. Doctor Raymond Cullerton felt Louise, Leeland,
or both were abusing their son, Adrian. Doctor Cullerton saw signs
of aggression in Adrian as early as seven years of age. When Adrian
was ten, Louise gave birth to a girl...Colleen. He suspected Adrian
of setting the family’s house on fire. No one in the Walker family
was seen again after the fire but some people claimed to see
Leeland, or someone who looked like Leeland, in 1939. A young woman
witnessed the murder of a prostitute and described a man who
resembled Leeland Walker. That is where it ended.”

“If Cullerton saw aggression in Adrian, it
would be my guess that the bodies we found in the well were Leeland
and Louise. But then how could Leeland have killed someone in
1939?” Padre looked at his companions for answers, but all he
received was a strange smirk from the squirrely guy. “Okay, Skizzy.
What’s with the shit-eaten grin?”

A flash of lightning signaled the start of
the next round of storms. Then the clouds opened up. Outside the
windows lightning lit up the gardens revealing a sky churning with
fast-approaching clouds. With it came the swirling winds bending
the trees and ripping dead branches from their limbs.

“I don’t suppose you guys heard of the U.S.S.
Victory.” After he was met with blank stares, Skizzy continued.
“The U.S.S. Victory disappeared in 1918 off the coast of England.
It reappeared in the same place it disappeared ten years later. Not
one of the sailors on board had aged one day. Now, how can that be,
you ask.”

Sara smiled. Skizzy was enjoying the
opportunity to shock Padre.

“This is where it gets interesting.” Skizzy
was interrupted by violent flashes of lightning interspersed with
pounding thunder while the rain morphed into hail. Skizzy raised
his voice to be heard over the storm. “Authorities believe a
combination of the magnetic fields and electrical charge brought on
by the lightning opened a portal. These two elements combined with
the year of a solar storm which has a ten to eleven year cycle,
could possibly account for the disappearance of boats and planes
over the years, especially in the Bermuda Triangle.”

“Are you outta your mind?” Padre looked to
Dagger for a plausible explanation. “Are you listening to
this?”

Dagger gave Padre a few seconds to think back
to some of their previous cases with the Friday the Thirteenth
killer who transformed during a full moon and a Friday the
thirteenth, and then the Mitch Arnosky case. Mitch had acquired a
scientific prototype that could make him invisible.

“But still.” Padre washed his hands over his
face, wondering how nice it would be to have a simple homicide
again. “How can energy and magnetic fields create that much
havoc?”

“Look around you.” Skizzy pointed at Padre’s
cell phone. “We have all these unseen energy fields from cell
phones, TV remotes, car remotes, GPS, WI-FI, satellite, cable,
microwaves, you name it, criss-crossing the atmosphere. Hell, they
mentioned recently on the news that the earth’s magnetic field
somewhere down in Florida went haywire and all the compasses had to
be reset. Add to that the solar storms. Every ten to eleven years
the sun throws a hissy fit and flips its north and south poles. One
well-placed solar flare through either of the earth’s two polar
regions which are completely open can wipe out everything. And
let’s not even talk about alien death rays and radio
frequencies.”

“That’s great, Skizzy. You had us at magnetic
fields and lost us at death rays,” Dagger said.

“Well try this on, boys and girls.” Skizzy
leaned across the table, his eyes a strange combination of genius
and madness. “That electrical power station just west of here was
built in 1917. In 1920 we had a solar flare. That could have been
the first time a portal appeared here.”

Padre sighed, waiting for Dagger or Sara to
contradict him but they were silent. “And now you think this Adrian
Walker comes and goes every time this portal opens and wreaks havoc
then disappears again.” Padre tried to choke out a dismissive laugh
but it was cut short as a strange green tinge filtered from
outside. They could feel the electrical charge in the air as the
hairs on their arms bristled. Skizzy quickly turned off his
computer as the lights flickered and then died. They each took a
collective breath and waited. A deathly howling could be heard as
the wind and storm appeared to circle the house. Padre slowly
pulled out the crucifix from under his shirt and held it.

Candlelight flickered. A soft whimpering
could be heard from a corner of the room. Skizzy let out a chuckle.
“I just knew when things started popping the little guy would curl
up in a fetal position and suck his thumb.”

Sara locked eyes with Dagger across the
table, silently wondering if he gave any credence to Skizzy’s
assessment. It was one of the most far-fetched ideas she had ever
heard from Skizzy. His
big brother
conspiracy theories paled in comparison.

“Is no one going to call his idea crazy?”
Padre said. “Are we supposed to believe Sheila has stumbled into
some...some...”

“Parallel universe,” Skizzy whispered. “Come
on, copper. You can say it.”

But he couldn’t. Padre looked to Dagger for
some intelligent explanation but Dagger just shrugged.

“That would explain Rick Jensen,” Sara
said.

“Absolute...in...tee, girlie. Time stands
still in a parallel universe, just like those sailors. You go in at
age twenty and fifty years later you are still twenty. How’s that
for a face lift?”

“But doesn’t time eventually catch up with
you?” Sara asked. “Don’t you suddenly age?” But a movement in the
foyer caught her attention. Between the continuous lightning and
lit candles in the foyer, there was enough light to determine that
something strange was happening. Sara called on her enhanced vision
to make sure she wasn’t imagining things. She clamped a hand on
Skizzy’s arm. “Skizzy, the wall,” Sara said. “It’s rippling, like a
mirage in a desert.”

“There’s the portal.” Skizzy rose from the
table as Padre and Dagger headed for the doorway. They gathered at
the foot of the staircase and watched as a portion of the wall
started to reshape itself.

Sheila had searched the entire second floor
but couldn’t find Colleen. The lightning show was non-stop now, but
Sheila was so used to the thunder that the vibration in the floors
no longer affected her. Where was Adrian? Maybe there was a storm
shelter under the house where Colleen and Adrian were hiding. She
had witnessed one other tornado in her lifetime and the storm
outside was fast approaching tornado level.

Rick Jensen’s wallet still bothered her. And
it had to be Jensen’s cell phone that Adrian possessed. If Rick
Jensen had been here, where did he go? Were there others besides
Jensen? Was there a way out of this town? She was beginning to
doubt that she was in a coma, but what other explanation could
there be?

She opened a closet door but found only more
suits. Hopefully, Adrian was with Colleen and wouldn’t know that
Sheila was snooping in his room. The wooden floors squeaked under
her weight so she tried tiptoeing across the floor to a book case.
On one of the shelves was what looked like a scrapbook. She glanced
quickly at the doorway, then set the scrapbook on the desk and
flipped through it. Instead of photos there were newspaper
articles. There weren’t any articles newer than 1949, as though it
were the last year a newspaper had been purchased.

As she flipped back to the beginning, a piece
of paper flew out and landed on the floor. Sheila picked it up and
slowly felt the room spin. It was an obituary for Colleen Walker.
At the age of four she had fallen down a flight of stairs and
broken her neck. The only witness had been her fourteen-year-old
brother, Adrian.

“Find something interesting?” Adrian stood in
the doorway, a murderous gleam in his eyes. All Sheila could think
of was that beautiful little girl who said her name was
Colleen.

“This article says your sister died. Who is
the little girl you are holding prisoner?” she demanded.

Adrian smiled. “I do love a feisty
woman.”

“Answer my question.” Sheila wasn’t about to
be intimidated by the likes of him.

He advanced slowly, exuding an air of
confidence. He glanced briefly at the scrapbook and by god she
could swear he looked proud. “I was saving my sister from the
brutality of my parents. As I was growing older and would be able
to defend myself, I knew they would turn their attention to
her.”

Sheila wasn’t buying it. “You were jealous. I
bet they doted on her and you couldn’t stand it. You pushed her
down the stairs, didn’t you?”

“Think what you want.”

No wonder Adrian was so many years older than
Colleen, or whoever the little girl was. Sheila had interviewed
cold-blooded killers in prison before and Adrian didn’t look much
different. If he thought nothing of killing a child, what else was
he capable of? And why had he kept this girl alive?

“Why would this little girl be afraid of your
mother when she didn’t know her?”

“I told her all about my mother, even showed
her the barn, showed her my scars.”

Sheila shuddered at the kind of impression
these stories left in a young mind. “You didn’t answer my question.
Who is the girl and why is she here?”

“She is a companion. As are you.”

“Not for long.” Sheila threw the scrapbook at
him and fled out of the room and down the staircase. She needed to
find the little girl and get both of them out of the house. At the
bottom of the stairs she started opening doors. Perhaps one led to
a basement. But behind one of the doors was someone she hadn’t
expected. “JOSH?”

Josh was covered in blood from a wound to his
neck. He fell forward, the bulk of his weight falling against her.
Sheila screamed and pushed him off. He fell to the floor with a
thud. She heard Adrian descending the staircase with slow,
deliberate steps, as though he knew she wasn’t going anywhere. She
tore down a hallway, but suddenly realized her mistake. It was a
dead end.

“What’s happening?” Padre stared in shock as
the solid wall became a mist of churning smoke. Not sure what was
taking place, all four of them hung back while the house shuddered
and the howling wind made it feel as though the huge fortress was
being ripped from its foundation.

“There’s one way to find out. I’m going in
there.”

“What?” Sara moved in front of Dagger and
shoved him back. “Are you crazy? I know what you’re doing. You
think that’s a way to hide from BettaTec.”

That was exactly was Dagger was thinking. How
like Sara to read him like a book. Her eyes were more than angry.
They were fiery and she was doing her best to hold back the
tears.

“Look on the bright side, girlie. In ten
years when the portal opens again, he’ll be closer to your
age.”

Sara turned her fiery gaze on Skizzy.

“Hell, I’m going to join him,” Skizzy said.
“Let the government try to find me in there.”

“NO ONE IS GOING ANYWHERE,” Padre yelled but
hardly anyone paid attention. They were looking at the wall where a
mist was seeping from under the baseboard, spreading like fingers,
and swirling around their feet. It was as though hot and cold air
had separated.

And then there was a muffled noise. At first
it sounded like someone yelling from the basement, but there wasn’t
a basement. Then it sounded like a scream from outside, from
somewhere in the forest. The scream intensified until the four
realized it was coming from somewhere behind the wall.

Suddenly two figures burst through, as though
ejected from the wall, a woman pursued by a man who looked dressed
for a turn of the century costume party. They knew immediately that
the woman was Sheila Monroe. The man reached out and grabbed a
handful of her hair, spun her around and pressed a knife to her
neck. Dagger and Padre pulled their guns.

“DROP THE KNIFE!” Padre shouted.

Sheila was tossed against the side of the
staircase. As though waking from a dream the man took in his
surroundings, blinked rapidly and gasped. The knife clattered to
the floor but it wasn’t because of Padre’s order. It was because
the man’s fingers had started to disintegrate.

Then the rest of the body began to rapidly
age. The skin became dry and brittle, changing from flesh color to
brown then black. The eyes sank into the skull while the lips
curled back exposing his teeth. The hair, though long, appeared
longer as the skull caved in. Sheila didn’t just scream, she
shrieked. An endless staccato of sheer terror. The turn of the
century clothes collapsed as the body inside of them shriveled,
muscle and bones turning to dust. Sheila’s knees buckled and she
fell on her ass as her hands frantically tried to brush his
clothes, bones, and dust off of her. But they clung stubbornly to
the fabric and her skin so she ripped and clawed off her own
clothes desperately trying to remove any trace of his remains.