Tales of Chills and Thrills: The Mystery Thriller Horror Box Set (7 Mystery Thriller Horror Novels) (64 page)

“How? When? Where?”

Mara let the single-word questions hang
in the air without attempting to answer any of them.

“If you can figure out why you’re here,
the answers to those questions might show themselves to you.”

“Do you know why you’re here?” he asked.

Mara nodded. “Yes.” It was all she
said.

Mara’s eyelids fluttered, and Samuel felt
her breath hitch in her chest. He wiped her forehead with the back of his hand
and felt the cool, clammy touch of death descending upon her, challenging the
reversion for the last spark of life left.

“This is my time,” Mara said.

Samuel closed his eyes and felt the
oppressive force of nothingness closing in on him.

“How will I know? How will I know how I
got here and what to do about it?”

Mara opened her eyes and looked at Samuel
for the last time. He saw the forgiveness and sadness inside, the emotional
turmoil simmering in the deep recesses. She bit her lip and spoke again, her
words barely audible this time.

“I will show you.”

***

Samuel saw the inky blackness, like
oil-slicked surf, the silent waves pulsing over her body. He felt weightless as
the power of the reversion disassembled the atoms left in the locality. He
screamed in helpless futility as he watched the darkness creep over Mara. It
slid over her foot, and when it retreated it left nothing but empty blackness
behind. He watched as the forces nibbled and bit at her essence like fish
feeding on a floating corpse.

He knew whatever was happening to her
physical body was a different experience than what was happening to her spirit.
Samuel smiled, seeing Mara’s angelic face from the coffee shop in his mind’s
eye, rather than the pasty, sickly face of her lying in the cold dirt of the
cave and waiting for death.

Samuel watched as the last remnants of
Mara’s body disappeared beneath the relentless pursuit of the reversion. With
her body gone, he became a drifting ship amidst a horrific ocean of darkness
and silence. The reversion began the same process on him, albeit at a much
slower pace. He reached down to touch his knee and became queasy, uncertain of
his bearings and feeling, like an astronaut tumbling through deep space,
carried into oblivion without the slightest friction to stop it. He closed his
eyes and opened them to try to stabilize his mind, but the attempt failed.
Samuel opened his mouth to scream when a voice entered his head. He knew it was
Mara before she even spoke.

I must show you what you can no longer
access from your own memory. If I don’t do it now, the reversion will claim you
forever.

Samuel cried, ready to follow her, ready
to do anything to escape the fate perched on the threshold of his humanity.

Your final moments, those inaccessible
to you since you arrived here. Those moments will enlighten you, provide
answers to questions you have not asked. They will also explain your presence
here, and once you have that knowledge, you will know what you must do.

“What if I don’t?” he asked.

All you can do is trust in what I have
to share.

Samuel felt Mara’s essence dissipate. The
energy in his body shifted, and he felt his mind snap back into the physical
realm. The blackness of the reversion retreated until the fuzzy hole of a dream
reality filled the middle, like viewing it through a telescope. The blackness
surrounding the edges of his vision reminded Samuel this was something for him
to witness, but the reversion still held him in its clutches.

The objects swam through his vision until
they began to settle and form within the frame. A burning knowledge began in
his stomach, and the pain blossomed outward as the scene materialized. When the
objects stopped and the lens on the vision focused, Samuel cried. He remembered
the scene, he remembered the cast, and even though the pain tore through his
psyche, he also remembered his lines. Samuel was not sure he could manage to
sit through the clip until he felt the inner strength of Mara, speaking to him.

You must. And from your suffering will
come your salvation.

***

Samuel slid the triskele from
underneath the thin mattress that smelled of piss and disinfectant. He smiled
and held the item in his hand, pleased to have been able to smuggle the
talisman into his cell without hiding it within one of his body’s orifices.

The cinder-block wall stared at him
from all angles, disguising up from down and inside from out. The
stainless-steel sink sat next to the basin that functioned as a toilet. Both
fixtures faced the bars of the open cell and anyone that happened to be walking
the corridor of his ward. A black marker sat in the corner of the room, while a
simple calendar hung from the wall above it. The air inside the prison hung as
if it too was sentenced to a life of pure, dead boredom.

“I’m cold,” Samuel yelled.

He shuffled to the front of the cell
and looked out. Samuel saw nobody.

“I need a fucking blanket.”

The sound of scraping metal preceded
the methodical tapping of boots on the polished floor.

“’Bout time.”

Samuel stepped back and waited as the
guard approached with a thin blanket folded down to the size of a postcard. He
looked at Samuel and sniffed, turning his nose up at the stench.

“Flush the damn toilet, you animal.”

The guard tossed the blanket through
the bars. It landed at Samuel’s feet. He bent down and picked up the linen.
Samuel listened as the boots clicked their way back to the front desk, sealed
off with the massive, steel door shrieking into place.

Samuel unfolded the sheet masquerading
as a blanket and did the mental calculations in his head. He looked up at the
heating duct burrowing through the cinder-block walls and hoped the sheet was
long enough. He took the thin, felt slippers from his feet and knotted the end
of the sheet around both until the ball of cloth outweighed the rest of the
fabric. He looked up at the three-inch gap between the ductwork and the
ceiling, and then visually measured the ball in his hand.

He walked toward the sink and splashed
his face with water. The pungent stench of chlorine invaded his mouth, and
Samuel remembered the inmates telling him to never drink the water from the
sink inside the cell. Samuel laughed at that advice and its absurdity in his
current situation. He looked at the calendar and the mangled photo tucked under
the corner. It would not matter for Samuel. He would never see his family
again.

He punched the wall and felt the skin
on his knuckles pull back until the warm blood flowed over them. Samuel punched
the cinder block again until the bones in his hand succumbed to the power of
the cement.

The lights in the corridor buzzed. Samuel
looked up to see the overhead fluorescent bulbs wink and extinguish as the
electricity retreated from the wires. Several wire-encased sconces flickered to
life where they were mounted between cells. The curfew buzzer sounded, followed
by a sighing symphony of incarcerated souls. Samuel did not feel tired, but
then again, he lost track of day and night long ago. He slept when the lights
went out and woke when they came back to life.

Samuel waited for his eyes to adjust,
staring at the battered photograph. He kissed two fingers on his right hand and
touched them to Kim’s face. Samuel would give anything to be standing in that
frame, his hand on her back as they smiled at the optimistic future awaiting
them. He sat on the edge of the bunk and put his face in his hands.

There could be an appeal.

He swore at himself as soon as the
thought appeared. His attorney had taken him through those permutations, and an
appeal was as likely as the guard opening the door and setting him free.

Then stop stalling and get to it, you
fucking coward.

Samuel stood and nodded his head,
shaking the last bit of doubt from it. He took the end of the sheet containing
the slippers and balled it in his right hand. Samuel stepped back and lobbed
the sheet toward the duct. The first two tries bounced off the wall and fell
back to him. The third toss landed on top before sliding across it and out the
other side. Samuel stopped, hoping the guards would not have heard it strike
the duct.

It’ll never hold you.

He cursed the voice trying to keep him
from ending the pain once and for all.

“Got steel straps tied into the block
to reinforce the duct. It’ll hold.”

He winced at the sound of his voice.
It sounded foreign to his ears.

Samuel pulled the loose end until the
knot held between the top of the heating duct and the wall. He clutched the
sheet with both hands and pulled his feet off the floor. Samuel dangled a few
inches in the air, neither the sheet nor the duct giving any indication they
would not be able to finish the job.

He climbed on the bunk and stood on
the edge of it. Samuel took the loose end and tied it around his neck several
times, taking all of the slack from the fabric. He reached up and tied a knot
behind his head. Sweat poured from his skin, causing a shiver in the cold chill
of the cell. Samuel’s mouth went dry, and his palms became moist. He slid the
triskele out of the waistband of his underwear and held it in his right hand.
Samuel did not pray. He did not ask forgiveness from the all-powerful forces of
the universe. If the talisman did not serve him as he crossed over, nothing
would.

His bare toes extended over the edge
of the bunk that sat two feet from the floor. Samuel looked up again to verify
the knot held at the top before reaching around to check his noose held firm. He
took shallow, rapid breaths, trying to exhale the last remnants of hesitation.

When Samuel stepped off the bed, the
last things he smelled was the distant aroma of moldy bark.

***

Samuel pushed the twisted sheet from his
shoulder and let the makeshift noose coil on the ground like a dead snake. He
looked up at the decaying branch, shook his head, his eyes darting about the
empty forest as his heart raced in his chest.

He drew a breath, exhaling slowly and
wincing at the pain in his throat as his lungs tried to pull in more oxygen. He
smiled from the joy of being alive until the memory of his prison cell wiped it
from his face. Like a leaf at the mercy of the wind, the image of the bars
floated from Samuel’s reach. Worry rushed back in to fill his mind as he
struggled to find a connection, a reason for being here.

He noticed the sun dropped closer to the
horizon as if touching the tops of the trees to ignite them. Darkness crept
closer, surrounding the far edges of his vision. He closed his eyes and felt forgiveness
in his heart. He could not recall her name or remember why she had granted him
absolution.

To be continued...

Acknowledgements

The beta readers for this project, SB Knight, Ren Warom,
Peter S. Scott, and Adam Phillips provided invaluable feedback and helped to
mold the story into what it has become. I would
like to thank my fellow authors that have supported my endeavors over the past
year, including Scott Nicholson, Vicki Kiere, Jack Albrecht, Dana Martin, Pat
Mason, George Sirois, Virna DePaul, Tammie Clark Gibbs, Tim and Claire Ridgway,
Taylor Lee, Carolyn McCray, and everyone else I am forgetting at the Indie Book
Collective. Talia Leduc brought her magic red pen to this novel and her
suggestions were exactly what I needed. In addition, I am eternally grateful to
a host of faithful readers, reviewers, and
bloggers, such as Elizabeth Buttle, Bryden Yeo,
Bernadette Davies, Stefan Yates, Carol Scott, Cole Dowden, Regina (from
Goodreads), and Katy Sozaeva.

Thank you for taking this journey with me. If
you enjoyed the book please leave a review on Amazon. It can be brief (as little
as 20 words)
and written in a few minutes. Authors depend on reviews from readers like you.
As an added bonus, if
Reversion: The Inevitable Horror
(The Portal Arcane Series - Book I)
reaches 100 total reviews on Amazon,
everyone on my mailing list will get a free copy of the third and final book of
the trilogy BEFORE it is available to the general public. To join my mailing
list. Go to
http://jthorn.net
, enter your
email address and then hit submit.

If you enjoyed this story continue the
adventure with
The Law of Three: A New
Wasteland (The Portal Arcane Series - Book II)
. Find out why readers
who enjoy the
creeping doom of Stephen King's
Langoliers
are diving into the engaging
world of the
Portal Arcane
series. Browse the entire J. Thorn catalog at
http://bit.ly/JThornBooks
.