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Authors: Patricia Gauthier

Seduction of Souls

BOOK: Seduction of Souls
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SEDUCTION OF SOULS

BY

    Patricia Gauthier

 

             COPYRIGHT PATRICIA gAUTHIER 2013

 

 

 

COMING SUMMER 2013

 

 

HITTING BELOW THE BELT

 

CHA
PTER 1

 

RayeAnn placed the old books from the historical society carefully on the back-seat of her car and climbed into the drivers side.  Though she sweltered in her car she would soon feel cool air as she rolled down the windows in her ancient car.  A shiver of fear ran down her spine and the hair on the back of her neck stood at attention.  She sensed someone behind her.  With a quick jerk she checked the backseat again.  No one was there, of course
.  Weird.
  Usually she wasn’t the jittery type. A shiver ran through her as the windows slowly eased their way back up.  She watched the crank handle whirl furiously in circles without her touch.  Her hands began to tremble.  She blew out her breath and put the key into the ignition.  She turned the key, but nothing happened.  Dead battery?
   Shit, now what?
  Before she could turn the key again all the door locks clicked.  She jumped as fear gripped her stomach and made her heart race.  She shivered again and looked around warily.  Suddenly she felt like a cold blanket had been draped over her.  She could see the vapor of her warm breath against the cold air filling the car.  The windows were covered with a thin coat of frost.  Frantically she tried to wipe it away with her hand, but it refused to leave.  Her body shivered uncontrollably.  When her jaws chattered she clinched them tightly together.  One of the books fell to the floor behind her, and she glanced into the rearview mirror and froze.  The ghostly face of an enraged man glared back at her.  She turned to confront him and saw only a face floating in a dark cloud of anger.  It hovered above the books, rippling. Panic consumed her.  She slammed her hand hard on the horn, hoping to get someone’s attention, but it wouldn’t work.  She rested her forehead on the steering wheel and tensed every muscle in her body while she waited for the blow she was sure would come.  She only had one weapon left.  Silently she prayed, “Our father, who art in heaven…”

As suddenly as the nightmare had beg
un, it was over.  Her skin warmed, the frost was gone, and the locks popped up.  She looked around the car.  No evil entity hovered over the books and they all sat just as she had placed them.
What the hell
?   Had she just suffered a hallucination?  Maybe she shouldn’t have skipped her lunch.  She sat there for a moment and tried to make sense of what had happened.  If she ever told anyone about this, they would lock her up in the funny farm for the rest of her life.  She definitely needed to take better care of herself.  She vowed to herself to eat more nutritious food, drink plenty of water, and get eight solid hours of sleep each night. The plan would have her right as rain in no time.  With new resolve she turned the key and drove home.

By the time she had reached the parking lot of her apartment she
’d convinced herself that nothing had happened.  Her imagination had just run away with her.  She walked into her tiny apartment, arms loaded with the research materials for her latest article on the 100
th
anniversary of the Cassidy County Historical Society.  She pushed the door closed with her foot.  With her key fob still stuffed in her mouth, she yelled a garbled hello to her roommate.  She allowed the books to tumble out of her arms and onto her desk, sneezing at the cloud of dust that rose from the old books, not because of her housekeeping. Though she tried to keep things neat and organized, the thought of dusting and scouring broke her body out in hives.  Thank goodness Bryn took care of most of that, besides being the resident chef of the household and her best friend.  More accurately, the dicer and slicer, since salads were their food most days.  They saved real meals for date nights, not out of cruelty but as a weight control measure.  Neither one of them was very committed to an exercise routine.  Only using guilt and shame would make either of them head to the gym, just one of the many reasons they were such a great team.  It had been that way for them since the moment they’d met in middle school. 

RayeAnn
remembered vividly the first time she laid eyes on Bryn, the new girl in a sea of selfish, evil, clickey classmates.  She’d sensed the fear emanating from Bryn as she’d stood in the front of the class, arms held tightly around her waist, keeping her head down while Miss Wilkins introduced her to the rest of the class.  Immediately RayeAnn’s heart had gone out to her.

“Hey, how’s it goin’?”  Bryn walked into the room
and plopped onto the couch with a muffled ooph.

“Good.  Got all the research materials I need for the article.  I’ll start it tomorrow.  You working
at the Blue Bull Inn, tonight?”  RayeAnn sat on the avocado green third-hand couch, straddling the worn arm and playing with the keys now in her hand.

“Yeah, six to closing. 
Cocktail waitressing sucks, but it pays the bills.  Don’t change the channel on the television though, I have the DVR set to record my favorite shows.  Tomorrow is couch potato day for me.”

“Ahh, which shows are you recording?”
  RayeAnn rolled her eyes. 

“The usual paranormal reality shows.  They’re so cool.  I love learning all about ghosts and shit like that.  Chuck at the bar swears the place is haunted and if the stories he tells are true, I believe him.”

“Bryn, you are sooo gullible!  All that stuff on television is such crap.  I thought you were too smart to fall for all that mumbo jumbo.  Don’t you know it’s all fake?”

“No
, it’s not, otherwise they wouldn’t call it ‘reality’ t.v,” Bryn answered smugly.

“Please, don’t tell me you believe everything you see on television.  I thought we covered the differences between reality and fantasy back in middle school.  Let me guess, you believe everything you read
, too, right?”  RayeAnn crossed her arms over her chest and tapped her foot impatiently on the floor.

“Sometimes.”

RayeAnne grinned.  “As a person holding a degree in print journalism, I’m here to tell you what a fool you are if you do.  Heck, I even embellish the obituaries I write in our little hometown newspaper.   Even people in Cassidy crave the embellished details of someone else’s demise.”

“I distinctly remember working on the school newspaper with you and us sticking adamantly to the who, what, where, when, how and why principles of writing.”

“Sorry, honey, that’s so old school.  Now it’s all about grabbing the readers by the throat and squeezing until their eyes bleed.  It’s a messy business, especially the area I’m going into.  Investigative reporting can literally be a mater of life and death if you don’t do it right.”

“Just to be clear, you haven’t started investigating anything since you graduated from college.  Human interest stories about a dusty old historical
society’s birthday don’t exactly qualify as gritty, hard news.”  Bryn stretched out on the couch, her bare toes touching RayeAnn’s thigh.

“I know.  I’m stuck on which industry I want to
bring to it’s knees, begging for mercy.  I think I need a little more hate and cynicism added to my sunny disposition.”  She crossed her arms over her chest.

“Just write it before your first cup of coffee.  You’re really mean and cranky then.”

“Oh, you’re so funny, I forgot to laugh.  Don’t worry, I promise on my honor as a Girl Scout to not change the channel.”  She held up her fingers, giving her the official Girl Scout salute.

“Honey, you were kicked out of the Girl Scouts, remember?” Bryn
sat up and patted her shoulder gently.

“I told you, that was all just a terrible misunderstanding.” 
RayeAnn stuck out her bottom lip like a two year old who couldn’t have any candy before dinner. 

“Then why didn’t they invite you back once it was cleared up?”

“Oh, shut up.  You know perfectly well why, and I’m not going over it again.”  Her crossed arms tightened over her chest now, her lips were drawn in a straight, thin line of anger.

“All right, settle down.  We’ll just skip over that sore little subject,
again
.”

“Good.  I’m going to soak in a hot bath with a glass of wine, maybe even light a few candles.  See you tomorrow.”

 

RayeAnn
lay back in her bubbly suds with her glass of wine in her hand.  She enjoyed the silence that was only broken by the occasional popping of bubbles when she moved. Ahh, peace and quiet.  Setting the wine glass on the floor next to the tub she closed her eyes and let her mind wander, never focusing on any one thought for more than a moment.  Her eyes drifted closed.  Before she knew what was happening she began to dream. 

 

As if a movie played in her mind, the girl in her dream strolled in an open field of wildflowers, the slight breeze blowing the few strands of hair that had escaped her bun at the base of her neck.  Her blonde hair shimmered in the golden sunlight.  No cloud moved in the sky above.  She wore a long sunny yellow, calico print dress with a high collar and long cotton sleeves, but somehow wasn’t overly hot in the sun.  Freckles spread across her pale ivory complexion. 

As
the girl walked, she gathered an assortment of flowers to adorn the dinner table tonight.  Humming to herself, as she drifted along, throwing in an occasional twirl of her skirts as she performed some dance steps, pretending to be at her upcoming sweet sixteen party, only two short months away.  She curtsied low to her imaginary partner before placing her hand in his, gliding along as he led the way.

When she realized a man was watching from the tree line by the creek, a scream escaped her lips before she took off in a full run back to her
house nearby.  Scared and breathless, she only stopped running, looking behind her quickly once she reached the front steps of their house.

 

RayeAnn startled awake, breathless from running with the girl.  Her heart raced from fear of the unknown man in the dream.  Splashing barely sudsy, cold water made her shiver.  When she raised her glass to take a sip of wine, it tasted soapy.  Wow.  What a weird dream.  Usually she didn’t even remember her dreams, let alone have one she actively participated in, not to mention a totally different century.  Victorian era, she guessed.  What creeped her out the most was that it felt as if she’d had an out of body experience.  She had watched her own actions as if she were a spectator in a movie theater.  Yet she still felt the emotions as if they were her own. 

With a shake of her head
, she tried to slough-off the dream.  Her conversation with Bryn had probably been the catalyst.  Yet for some reason it still haunted her for the rest of the evening.  There was a meaning to the dream that eluded her, waiting just barely out of her grasp.

Frustrated, she popped some popcorn and started to do her favorite part of her job, research.  The nerd in her came out i
n full force, becoming absorbed in her research and forgetting about the bowl of popcorn almost immediately.

Everything about research intrigued her, though she would never admit that to anyone but Bryn.  She had never met anyone in the field of journalism
who enjoyed research, or at least anyone who admitted to liking it.  It was considered a necessary evil by most.  Many famous journalists had started out paying their dues by doing research for the big guns who considered it beneath them and therefore pushed off to the underlings at the very bottom of the ladder of success.  The only jobs lower on the prestige ladder were mailroom clerk and custodial services, not necessarily in that order, hence the necessity of keeping her love of research a secret.

BOOK: Seduction of Souls
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