Mark Edward Hall

Hey, boys and girls. This is the the long chapter I promised you, the last of my five chapters in five nights.  From here on out the heat is on for Doug and Annie as they race toward the final confrontation with the Collector and the startling conclusion to Soul Thief.

Merry Christmas. I hope you all have a great holiday season.

Chapter 35

Doug was dreaming of his mother. Since her death he had dreamed of her often, so he was not surprised that he was dreaming of her now. What did surprise him was the nature of the dream. She was standing on the front porch of their new house—a house he had never seen let alone lived in, but in the years following his parent’s death had conjured its splendid image so many times that it had become real in his heart—and she was calling to him as he rode away on his bicycle.

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Five chapters in five nights. Here’s the fourth, chapter 34. Tomorrow night I will post chapter 35, a long bonus chapter. Thanks for reading!

Chapter 34

During the nights that followed the woman religiously came to him. She would stand by his bed and watch him sleep, sometimes for long stretches of time. After a while she would turn his bed covers down, unfasten his night shirt and place the object over his heart, holding it there, sometimes for hours, feeling his heart beat beneath her hand, feeling the intense, almost unbearable heat of the object as it went about its business of healing.

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Five chapters in five days. Here’s the third one, chapter 33.

Chapter 33

In the days that followed, as Doug became stronger, he and Lucy talked at length about the Collector. There were things in Doug’s immediate past that he could not recall and his frustration was growing because of it. His last clear memory was of being shot. He remembered Annie and him being driven from their home; he remembered the terrible confrontation with De Roché and his fight with Annie on the beach and their subsequent reconciliation. He remembered the dinner party, getting drunk and wandering into the forest behind De Roché manor and the things he’d seen there. Read more…

Note to readers.  I posted chapter thirty-one last night and I will post three more chapters, one each night for the next three nights as a Christmas bonus to my readers. Make sure you scroll down and read chapter 31 first.

Merry Christmas!

Chapter 32

“I cannot allow you to do anything that might jeopardize the health of your child,” Greta said.

Annie snorted a petulant little laugh. “Is that so?”

Greta stared icily. “Yes, that’s so.”

“I’ll do what I want.”

“Your father has instructed me—”

“I don’t give a fuck what he told you.” Annie turned on the woman, her eyes bright with fury. “Tell him if he wishes to hand out instructions he can come in here and do it himself. Well go, tell him. I’ll not take instructions from his whore.”

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Hey, kind readers, just a short note to let you know that I have decided to post the next five chapters, starting with chapter 31, and ending with chapter 35, one a day for the next five days. You can consider it my Christmas present to you all for cruising along with me on this dark adventure.

Marry Christmas!

Chapter 31

Lucy came back the next morning. In the interim Doug had eaten a small portion of solid food and had managed to sit up in his bed propped up against pillows. He looked down at his body in disgust, seeing how thin his arms were. His lateral muscles were all but gone and his abdominals were deflated to the point of emaciation. His upper body was wrapped in bandages so he could not see how bad the damage there was. He sighed in defeat, understanding that it would take him months of rehabilitation to get back to where he was before the shooting. Damn, he needed to be strong now. Not months from now. He had to find Annie. He had to set things right.

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Chapter 30

When Doug woke he felt nothing. He lay on his back with his arms resting like lengths of cordwood beside him. He could not lift them. It took him a very long time to open his eyes. When he did finally manage to get them open he saw nothing but white. In a short, panic-filled moment he believed he’d somehow been blinded. Then his eyes began to focus and he could see the ceiling above him, the room around him and the bed sheets that covered him. Everything was white, brilliantly so and nearly blinding. As his weary and watering eyes further focused he saw tubes running liquids into his arms, a panel with red and green lights winking on and off.

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Chapter 29

“Why didn’t you just grab him at the airport when you had the chance?” Jennings asked. They were in Jennings’s office and he was pacing the floor in front of a seated and relaxed looking special agent Spencer, his frustration palpable. “He’d be alive right now if you had.”

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Chapter 28

Annie sat in stunned silence as the jet raced through the night-sky at thirty-five thousand feet above sea level. She stared out the window into an unyielding wall of darkness as almost ten years of her life dissolved before her eyes. Numb and unable to weep, she was trying to sort out her emotions. Yesterday, in a state of shock, she had watched the news of the crash unravel on the television set in her father’s study. The announcer said that the conflagration had been so great that there was little identifiable left in the wreckage.

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Dear readers,

Below you will find the beginning of Part Three of my long novel, Soul Thief. A little late, but here it is. It is an especially long chapter, 22 standard pages or about 11,000 words. Again I would like to thank you guys and gals for staying with me on this, for your patience and understanding. For the most part this novel is being written on the fly, which is to say, a chapter a week, even as I am working on a multitude of other projects and trying to meet several deadlines. So I hope you will forgive me if I’m not exactly on schedule from week to week. I am doing my best to craft the best possible story under the circumstances and like you, I am anxiously awaiting the payoff, which will come, I promise you.

So, without further ado, here we go—

Mark

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Chapter 26

At quarter past nine Doug was settling into seat 22A of Delta Flight 942 with a scheduled stop in Boston, continuing on to Portland. With his jacket off and draped across his lap, Doug leaned back, closed his eyes and tried not to think about Annie. But it wasn’t possible. His heart ached with her absence.

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Chapter 25

Doug stood at the foot of the bed watching Annie sleep wondering how his life had come to this moment. Ten years gone. From where he stood right now it felt like another life entirely, not his and Annie’s life. They’d been happy, hadn’t they? Or was it all some sort of illusion. Now, suddenly all his hopes and dreams were in jeopardy. Annie had come under the spell of some terrible darkness, factions beyond his worst nightmares wanted his firstborn for reasons yet unclear, De Roché wanted him dead; the hammer blow could come at any moment. The man might not be mortal, perhaps he wasn’t even human. And if he wasn’t human then what of Annie? If she’d come from the seed of a monster then what was she? And what of their unborn child? Suddenly there were far too many questions without answers. Grief wanted to drive him to his knees, but he knew now, more than ever before in his life, that he had to be strong.

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Hey, readers. Just a little update on the status of Soul Thief. It’s been a couple of weeks since I uploaded a new chapter. Sorry about that, but things have been crazy around here and I have a gazillion projects going all at once. I’m frantically trying to finish my novel, Cross my Heart and Hope to Die, before Halloween. (It’s a personal goal) Also I’m working on three new stories. Two that will accompany my novella, The Holocaust Opera which is being published by Damnation Books in March of 2011, and one that will be published in a magazine that I cannot name yet. It’s a secret and very exciting. Plus I’ve been working on converting some of my books to audio format. I’m attempting to read them myself and it’s a challenge, but also a lot of fun. Some of them should be available in the near future on sites like I-tunes and various other sites. I’ll keep you posted.

So, as a bonus, this week I have added two long chapters to Soul Thief. Chapter 23 and Chapter 24. Both can be found just below this message. Again, thanks for bearing with me on this. I look forward to your comments.

Cheers,

Mark

Chapter 24

Inside the church the atmosphere was heavy with the scent of flowers. A fat woman in a rose-spattered dress sat at a gigantic pipe organ playing softly. The trio was led by ushers to reserved seats in front, but first they passed by the coffin which stood open.

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Chapter 23

The funeral attracted many onlookers. The service was held in a large church surrounded by a huge cemetery. Scores of people were in attendance, so many that most had to stand outside, for there wasn’t room inside the massive cathedral for everyone.

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Chapter 22

Rick Jennings came awake with a start, his head pounding, his stomach sour and churning. Staggering away from his bed he made his way to the bathroom. By now his entire body was thumping like a vast heart. More than a year without booze and he knew he had poisoned his entire system. He went to his knees hugging the bowl as the wretched undigested whiskey spewed up from the center of his being like liquid fire. He hated puking. He hated whiskey. On this morning he hated everything and everybody, but mostly he hated himself.

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“Teach us, Good Lord,

To love thee as thou deservest

To give, and not to count the cost,

To fight, and not to heed the wounds,

To toil, and not to seek for rest,

To labor, and not to ask for any reward,

Save that of knowing—that we do thy will,

Amen.”

—Saint Ignatius Loyola

Chapter 21

Following the short Jesuit prayer, the six monks in the black robes rose somberly from their places of worship and filed one by one toward the stairway door beside the altar. They had all arrived within the past two hours, most were tired from their journey and tempers were heated. The discussions thus far had been impassioned and vociferous, as Redington suspected they would be. Read more…

Chapter 20

By the time Rick Jennings left the scene of the murdered family in Exeter New Hampshire it was late and he was severely depressed and weary with fatigue. He knew very little about why a seemingly disaffected family had died the way they had, and even less about why their young daughter had literally disappeared without a trace. The more he thought about it the more he believed that CSI Kohler had been right when he’d said that something supernatural had happened to them. It was the only explanation that made sense, tasteless as it was. Read more…

Part Two

The Artifact

Chapter 19

April 22

The temple sat on a hilltop so that God could see everything that went on inside. This was the hope at least. That the maker, in all His beneficence, would see what man had sacrificed in His name, that He would peer in the windows and come to know and respect the name of man as man had His.

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Note from the author

This chapter is a little late, like by a week. For those who anxiously await these chapters I hope you accept my humble apology. I have a book launch coming on September 1st and I’ve been running myself ragged. Hope you guys check out The Lost Village. It will be available everywhere in September.

Thanks!

Now, on with the story . . .

Chapter 18

Doug ran into the forest, the wet undergrowth dragging at his legs until he was so deep in the stand of trees he could see neither house nor lights. There he stopped, bent forward, breathing in vast spasms, his sweaty hands resting on his trembling knees. Bile gurgled at the back of his throat. No longer able to hold it back he let go. His head spun and his ears whined. A sudden and irrational fear crawled up from his belly along with the undigested food and wine. He made no effort to control the spasms, and the fear was something beyond him, all mixed up with his drunkenness, all mixed up with the darkness in his life. For a moment he was certain of nothing, not even his physical existence.

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I like stories. I like writing novels, novellas, short stories and songs, playing in my band, going to camp.
I like good, edgy, writing, something with meat and teeth. It doesn’t have to be horror, scifi or fantasy; those things are nice but not necessary. It just has to be good. It has to make me think and be in awe.
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Chapter 17

De Roché Manor hummed like a well oiled engine. The place was a hive of activity, people in white coats, all business, scurried to and fro carrying silver trays and steaming dishes, arranging furniture and lighting.

Doug roamed the rooms of the estate’s ground floor feeling like an intruder. He’d left Annie in her room with promises that she’d catch up later. It was still more than an hour until dinner, the guests had not yet arrived and Doug felt restless, praying for some convenient get-out clause, a means by which he could escape what he was certain would be an unbearable evening.

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The Haunting of Sam Cabot by Mark Edward Hall.

Set in Davenport, Maine, Sam Cabot and his wife and son get a great deal on a house in what of course seems like a “too good to be true” situation. And of course they soon find out that it is. Hall does a good job of taking a fairly typical plot and giving it a good twist. He builds it up nicely and then pulls the rug out from under you. Reminded me a bit of some of the novels of T.M. Wright.

Recommended.

- Reviewed by James R. Beach, Dark Discoveries Magazine

http://darkdiscoveriesreviews.wordpress.com/page/2/

New cover for The Lost Village. Neil Jackson is an extraordinary artist. Thanks Neil.

Click on book cover to purchase.

Chapter 16

When Doug got back to the house at least half a dozen young men and women in white coats were efficiently transferring dozens of shiny stainless steel containers from vans into the kitchen’s rear entrance. There were several security types inspecting the containers and watching the crew’s every move.

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Chapter 15

The rain shower passed quickly. The air felt crisper and cooler than before. Doug, still restless, strolled along the paths of the estate, determined that there was some mystery here that he could not see, some important clue that might shed light on the reasons he and Annie had been so suddenly wrenched from their quiet lives and propelled headlong into the world of high power, brutal murder and abject uncertainty.

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Chapter 14

Annie stood at the window hugging the rag doll from her childhood to her bosom, watching Doug make his way up from the beach. She saw him stop in the garden among the life-size figures of David, the Thinker and so many others of her father’s fancy. For a moment Doug looked as if he belonged there with them, forever frozen in some weird and classical time warp.

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Chapter 13

He stood on the beach alone, breathing raggedly after his run, hands on knees, feeling a terrible weight in his heart. The calm blue surface of the Gulf of Mexico spread out before him, a wilderness he wished he could get lost in. Tiny swells lapped earnestly at the shore. On the western horizon huge thunderheads bruised the sky. Doug bent down and picked up a smooth flat stone, angrily throwing it, skipping it along the surface of the calm sea.

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Chapter 12

Annie and Doug were announced and they entered the study. De Roché sat with his back to them. He did not turn but simply addressed them from his vantage point in the plush leather chair. The only part of the man that was visible was the back of his head and the neatly-groomed shock of iron-gray hair that covered it.

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Chapter 11

Annie needed to think. She should not have taken the drugs. But she’d been angry at Doug and she’d done it out of defiance. Now she was sorry. Her actions had reminded her of the other Annie, the Annie she’d left inside the walls of this soulless house more than a decade ago. That Annie was not the woman she was today; confident, self assured, happy. The other Annie was sullen and pensive and almost always afraid; a little girl who had hidden in her room and had welcomed the dreams because reality was so painful.

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This is an especially long chapter. Some of you have said that you want more each week, so I decided to group a few chapters together as one and see how it works. Let me know what you think.

Enjoy,

Mark

Chapter 10

August 12, 1996. Regressive Therapy

“To the best of my knowledge the visions began when I was nine years old,” Doug said, “and I always associated them with that punch Tommy Ricker gave me in the nose. I could be wrong about that but I don’t think so because there is not a conscious memory of anything even remotely similar to those experiences before that day. From then on it seemed that I was in possession of some terrible power of sight, something that would haunt my life for years to come. I tried to dismiss it, I tried to deny it, but every time I became complacent something would happen that reminded me of who I was and of the terrible things I was capable of seeing. Yes, it all began the day Tommy Ricker broke my nose.”

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Chapter 9

The chopper landed right on schedule. Jennings was shown to a waiting car. He got in and sat back trying to relax. But there was no way in hell he could. All his muscles were tensed and his mind worried. Spencer seemed quite anxious to pin these deaths on McArthur? McArthur was a suspect; there was no doubt about it. But perhaps he was more than a suspect. What if the government had been watching him since—? The thought struck Jennings suddenly that perhaps they’d never taken their eyes off him. Yes, it was a definite possibility. Frankly Jennings was a little surprised they’d waited this long to make their move. He supposed that guys who could see the kinds of things McArthur could see were valuable. Sure they were. Doug’s was a rare gift and the government wanted to dissect him, to see what made him tick, and they were looking for an excuse to grab him. Jennings was suddenly and absolutely certain of it. McArthur would be a hell of a guinea pig for those CIA spooks to dissect.

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Chapter 8

The Blackhawk helicopter was waiting at idle when Jennings got to the airport. There were no problems with security. They rushed him right through. He boarded the military transport, strapping his hulking frame into a seat as a crew member handed him a headset.

“What’s this for?”

“Things are noisy,” the crewman hollered above the racket. “Besides, the boss man wants to talk to you.” Jennings nodded and put the headset on. The chopper’s engines whined distantly as the craft lifted into the air. The airport slid away beneath him giving way to the Portland skyline, a jagged coastline, and finally, open ocean.

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Chapter 7

The jet taxied to a stop. When the attendant opened the door, a dreadful blast of heated air rushed into the aircraft cabin, reminding Doug of a sauna. He hated saunas almost as much as he hated Florida. They both gave him claustrophobia. He took Annie by the hand and led her down the steps to the tarmac. A black limo sat at idle patiently waiting.

The driver was a solid muscular man who looked like he’d been sculpted from stone. His hair was black as wet tar, his skin, olive and he was appallingly handsome.

“Hi,” he said casting a small polite smile at Doug and a bright, toothy grin at Annie. He held the door. “I’m Theo. Mr. De Roché sent me. You must be Annie?”

“Yes,” Annie said, falling into the car. “This’s Doug,” she said slurring her speech.

Doug shook the man’s hand.

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Chapter 6

It was nearly 10 am before Portland Police Lieutenant Richard Jennings left the scene of Doug and Annie McArthur’s ruined house and the subsequent carnage left in its wake. Five men were dead from gunshot wounds; none had been carrying identification. Even worse, there had been a massive pileup on both the north and southbound lanes of Interstate 95. Two motorists were dead and six were in the hospital, three in critical condition. Two separate individuals had come forward saying that their cars had been hijacked by gunmen. One had identified photos of Doug and Annie McArthur; the other had no idea who the two gunmen were that threw her out of her vehicle, and furthermore, she could not adequately describe them. For unknown reasons, their faces were just blanks, she told authorities.

Following the initial stages of the investigation, things had happened fast. The State Police had quickly moved in and taken charge of the investigation, followed almost immediately by people in plain dark suits that Jennings recognized as federal agents. When he quizzed them about what agency they worked for he was given the cold shoulder. The State Police were gone in a heartbeat, leaving Jennings to deal with the feds. For the most part they were rude assholes who treated Jennings like a boy scout. By mid-morning they’d dismissed him altogether, telling him in no uncertain terms that his help was no longer needed on the case. He was too close to McArthur and his wife to be objective. Jennings had left the scene feeling like a beaten dog, vowing that there was no way he was going to sit idly by while his best friends were in trouble and on the run.

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Chapter 5

“I am an artist,” Annie had proclaimed without conceit on the very day she and Doug had met. It was almost the first thing she had said to him, in fact, as though she were setting ground rules around which the two could establish a relationship. Doug had been left with little doubt that art was Annie’s calling. Regardless of her position in life as sole heiress of a political and financial dynasty and the responsibilities that went along with that position, Annie considered herself first and foremost an artist. They’d met at the University of Maine in Orono. It was their first day of classes, freshman year when Annie had made her proclamation.

“Oh?” Doug had replied. “What sort of artist are you?”

“I paint pictures,” she said.

“Pictures? Lots of artists do that. What kind of pictures?”

“Whatever comes to mind,” she said with a broad and beautiful smile, her mysterious eyes twinkling. Doug was lost in them almost immediately.

The University of Maine was the only school Doug could afford, and he was grateful to be there. Annie could have afforded anything, but that’s where she’d decided to go. At first Doug had been skeptical, little rich bitch slumming with the commoners, but the better he’d gotten to know her, the more he believed she was sincere. She was bright, and so filled with life. Like she was tasting freedom for the first time.

Little did he know.

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Chapter 4

The large business jet was waiting when they arrived at the airport. The small crew was cordial but businesslike. The flight left the ground within five minutes of boarding. An attendant, a smartly dressed woman in her forties named Greta with a pretty but smug face and shifty eyes handed Annie a phone.

“Daddy?” Annie said, her voice breaking, sounding oddly like that of a child’s. “Tell me what happened. Yes, I’m okay. I want to know everything.” Annie kept the phone to her ear for a long time, occasionally exclaiming in awe or grief. “Oh no. My God, no. Daddy . . . please don’t cry . . . please. I know. Yes, I love you too, Daddy.”

Slowly, as if in a trance, Annie put the phone down. Doug wanted to puke. He was pitting his love for Annie against his hatred for her father and in the process he was totally ignoring the fact that her mother was dead and that she was hurting. But he couldn’t help it. This was all wrong. They’d vowed never to go back there. Now they were being forced into it; De Roché was manipulating Annie’s emotions like a talented maestro conducting an orchestra.

Annie fixed Doug with a vacant, helpless stare. “Oh . . . Christ, Doug,” she said, and the words were choked in an odd way, as though she was trying to swallow them.

Doug reached over and touched her trembling hand. “God, Annie, I’m so sorry.”

“Daddy . . . heard . . . her . . . get out of bed around midnight. He drifted back to sleep and woke up to the sound of gunfire. He went . . . looking for her and someone shot at him. The gunman somehow escaped. Daddy found Mama on the bathroom floor with a  . . . bullet through her heart.”

“Annie, that place is a fortress. How could a gunman get through security?”

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An interview concerning my latest story, The Fear, which appeared in Lee Pletzers Masters of Horror Anthology.

http://catherinemede.wordpress.com/2010/05/05/interview-with-mark-edward-hall/

Chapter 3

In a room beneath an ancient cathedral, a telephone began to ring. The monk in the simple black robe and white collar turned away from the altar at which he had been praying and stared at the ringing telephone as if it were something not of this world. Carefully he tucked the object which he had been clutching tightly in his praying fists into the side pocket of his robe. This was only the third time in as many years that this particular phone had rung. The telephone number was unpublished and there were only seven men in the world who knew it. After the third ring, the monk got to his feet and picked up the handset.

“Yes?” he asked.

“I have news,” the voice on the other end of the line proclaimed. The caller was male and he sounded winded and overwrought.

The monk hesitated for a long moment before replying. “What is the code?” he asked. He would never acknowledge his identity unless the code was repeated exactly as he knew it; exactly as they all knew it. To do so would be to violate the most sacred of all oaths.

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Chapter 2

Doug had been right. Their pursuers were close. Dawn was almost up when they reached the highway. Morning commuters sped past, whirring tires shooting rooster-tails of rainwater at them. Gunshots blasted behind them. The bullets missed but struck a passing car. The vehicle fishtailed wildly before slamming violently into guardrails. Sparks erupted into a column of orange flame. Behind it braking tires howled on pavement and cars skidded to avoid colliding. Doug, still carrying Annie, ran out into the busy northbound lanes. He just managed to dodge a speeding SUV when more gunfire erupted somewhere behind them. He heard bullets striking metal.

Collisions.

A concussive explosion.

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Chapter 1

APRIL 20th

The telephone call that saved their lives, and nearly destroyed them, came at five o’clock on a rainy, windy morning in April.

Douglas McArthur was having a terrible dream.

No . . . please, God, no. Not after all this time. It couldn’t be happening all over again. I need to wake up before this gets out of hand.

But it was already too late; he was fully immersed in the nightmare and there didn’t seem to be any way out of it. He saw the shape standing on the door stoop—tall, impossibly tall—wearing the familiar fleshy, black robe, the cowl covering the head, the single burning red eye bright as a miniature sun. And he saw the kid’s startled expression a split second before his body fossilized, turning to something akin to sandstone, and then crumbling to dust at his feet. And it was so real, like he was somehow a part of it, connected to it in some elemental way. Yet he knew it was impossible. He was asleep in his bed with Annie beside him.

But the dream that could not be real would not end. He knew the killer was aware of him watching, knowing that he knew, and taking some sort of perverse pleasure in knowing. He saw the shape streak past the dead boy and move on into the house.

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