Hooks

CHAPTER 22

Dave, Meet the Cartel

“That pinche gringo Pete has split with fifty kilos of our pot, patron,” Sanchez announced to Jesus, as he was eating lunch at a posh restaurant in Tijuana, Mexico. The drug cartel leader put down his fork and dabbed his mouth with a napkin, while his eyes grew dark and narrow.

“You know what to do, Sanchez, when you find him. Meanwhile, watch all his main dealers and do what you have to do to find this gringo son of a bitch.”

Sanchez was a trusted enforcer for the cartel, and he moved quickly to track down Pete or anyone else thought to be an accomplice. He was particularly interested in Dave, because Pete had often bragged about the jock from Escondido who sold more pot than any other dealer. Sanchez had gringo dealers all over San Diego County willing to watch Dave like a hawk, with the promise of getting Pete’s territory. It wasn’t long before word got back to Sanchez that Pete had gotten himself murdered in Tucson. The cartel rules were explicit. If you couldn’t get Pete, you got his closest associate. The rip-off could not go unpunished. At that point, Dave’s life was worthless.

A white van with FTD painted on the sides drove up to Dave’s house at about 10 p.m. A lone driver walked up to the front door and rang the bell. After a few minutes, the delivery driver tried the door handle and discovered it was unlocked. He waved to the van and two more men walked quickly to the door, where all three entered the house, holding drawn pistols.

They found Dave crashed out in his bedroom. He was quickly tied up and duct tape wrapped around his head and mouth. The men carried Dave to the van, deposited him in the back, and covered him with flowers. The abduction was quick, almost noiseless, and efficient. No one on the block heard or saw anything except for Sanchez, who was parked halfway down the block in a nondescript car. Both vehicles headed south on Highway 395 toward San Diego, and a half hour later they were headed east on Interstate 8 toward El Centro. After driving an hour and a half, the van and car crossed the Mexican border without incident and pulled into a gated compound close to San Felipe.

Dave regained enough of his senses to understand something was very wrong. He couldn’t move his hands or feet, and his mouth was bound so tightly that making a noise was impossible. David heard a garage door open as the van drove inside a building, and then the door closed noisily behind them. The men carried Dave out of the van and dumped him like a sack of shit alongside a large hole in the earthen floor of the garage. The dirt smelled putrid, and it was far worse than anything Dave had ever smelled. The men started talking in Spanish, while laughing at the teenager lying in the filthy dirt.

Dave started shaking uncontrollably and he urinated in his pants, at which point Sanchez leaned over and simply said, “Adios, gringo.” The men began kicking Dave until he fell into the hole and landed on his face and chest. He wanted to scream, but no sound could escape the tape’s grip. He felt something being poured on his back and head. Soon, the powdery substance trickled down the side of his face and caused a burning sensation so intense that Dave started to convulse like a worm in a hot frying pan. The men finished pouring the lye mixture over Dave’s convulsing body and then shoveled dirt to cover the white, squirming mound until it reached the floor level and there was no longer any movement.

Sanchez was pleased with the night’s work. He left the garage and headed for a phone booth anticipating the report he would give Jesus. Unfortunately for the parents of Dell and Dave Wilson, they would have to continue life without either of their children. Dave thought of that, just before his light faded to darkness.

You know the drill, readers–give Ann’s work a read and leave a comment for her below! Ann Wahlman’s work in progress is a Young Adult psychological thriller–you can catch more of Ann’s writing by clicking here.

On the afternoon that our new brother came home, Abby and I sat playing checkers on the window seat in the dining room. Our perch overlooked the front yard, where at any moment our parents would drive up and park Dad’s black sedan under the tree by the front porch of the three-bedroom colonial we called home. That tree held a lot of memories for us Valentines. It was the one I fell out of when I was eight and broke my right arm. It was the tree where we took cover from snowball fights in the winter, and the tree where our dad tied up a swing for Abby when she was four years old. It was that same swing she fell off of last summer and broke her leg. She hadn’t cried a bit — she was so tough when it came to things like that. I was sure that when her age, I probably would have.

On that snowy day in January, the winter sun shone bright against the new fallen snow as we hid indoors from the cold. The warmth of the rays penetrated through the window panes and soaked itself into the fabric of the sweater I wore. I pulled at the neck of my sweater and picked at the red cushion on the window seat. I captured two of Abby’s pieces in one move and she pouted at me.

“Come on, Abs. You don’t want me to let you win, do you?”

She pressed her lips together and wrinkled her nose at me, a facial expression that belied her nearly five and a half years.

“No,” she said at last. “I want to win fair and square.”

I laughed and shook my head at her. Abby was a precocious little girl, and I adored her.

“Then you’ll need to start playing smarter,” I chided her.

She put her hand out to make the next move, but caught sight out of the shiny black sedan making its way up the snowy driveway. She snatched her hand away and jumped down from the window seat, knocking over the board in the process and scattering checkers all over the floor.

“Oh, they’re here!”

“Abs!” I protested loudly. “What about our game?”

“They’re here, Jack. Forget about the silly game.” She pointed out the window impatiently.

Our father’s sedan came to a halt underneath our tree, the snowy chatter of the tires up the drive finally being silenced. The pristine white snow found itself juxtaposed against the dark car parked on top of it. I knew that I would remember today because it was an important one — just like I remembered all the other days of importance in my nearly twelve years of life.

I remembered the day that my sister had been born clearly, like a clean, crisp sheet of paper in an album with an over-saturated photograph pasted neatly at the top of the page. Underneath it the caption would read in bold, black letters: Abigail May Valentine, born August 12th. A little farther back in the album would be one of my toddler photos, taken at the local department store. There would be a blue-carpeted background against my dark hair and my deep green eyes. My mother would have dressed me in a navy sweater, since she always said it brought out my eyes. Underneath the caption would read: Jack Francis Valentine, born April 11th.

I would remember today because it was the day that Daniel came home. Daniel Thomas Eagan. He wasn’t a Valentine yet, but once the adoption papers had gone through he would be just as much a part of our family as Abby and I were. He was nine months older than me, so we were inheriting an older brother.

We watched as the car doors opened and out popped three heads. Two were the familiar ones of our mom and dad. The third was an unfamiliar reddish-brown one. He was about my height — maybe even a little taller, but I was tall for my age. He had pale ashen skin and wide eyes. I couldn’t tell what color from where we stood, but they were dark. A mass of freckles spread across his nose, which no doubt caused him endless cruelties in the schoolyard. I imagined however, that they came in handy when you were trying to look cute enough to get adopted. It had worked on my mother, at least… or rather, our mother.

As they trod up the walkway and up the steps to the house, Abby and I watched from behind the full-length glass storm door. Our mother was smiling down at Daniel, her hand on the back of his head. Our father carried a small black suitcase that could not have contained more than a dozen items of clothing even if had it been stuffed to capacity.

It was the picture of a happy family, the crust of the snow-topped trees behind them sparkling in the full winter sun. I captured the moment in my mind. The date was January 4th.

A new Hook for your consideration–leave your gut reaction/feedback/comments below!  You can read more of Wyatt Harvey’s work at his web site.

Prologue

Hers was the last face I would have expected to see again. Nevertheless, she stared me down, silently daring me to say anything, to offer any spoken sound. Big, blue eyes, the first thing about her to entice me so long ago, invited me closer, yet warned me away from her at the same time. I could not stay away, however, and I felt she knew that, perhaps better even than I knew it for myself.

I weathered the thunderstorm to meet with her. I assuaged the urge to stay inside, safe from the stinging, chilling rains. I faced the deafening thunder as it bellowed its fury at the night and I braved the journey beneath skies scorched with wicked lightning trails. As I did, the ominous, churning black clouds seemed in and of themselves to be mocking me. I did not falter. All this I did to see her one final time underneath the onslaught of the worst storm I had ever seen.

I would not ignore even the slightest invitation to come a bit closer.

The storm did not move her, nor did its buffeting winds seem to bother her. She stared defiantly through the storm, her childlike countenance telling a story all its own through the innocence painted there. She wanted to tell me the story, but the night had taken her voice, and left her as quiet as I myself had become. She did not even pull the rain-soaked strands of blonde hair from her visage. She looked past those as well. Big, blue eyes focused beyond it all, beyond the storm, beyond the street corner and its grays and shadow, and beyond me.

I wiped clear my eyes and drew closer, rain-blind and wind-blown. Nothing stayed my approach. I had to hear her one last time, hear what she called me there to tell me. Rumpled, drenched clothing topped by a sodden raincoat told me she had been out in the elements too long already. I needed to listen quickly and hear her well.

I smoothed the unruly hair back from her face when I drew near enough to touch her. She was cold and wet and still unemotional, unwilling to even acknowledge I had come. She ignored me with her blank stare and her angry eyes and her cold demeanor. I wished it could have been otherwise. I wished she was not so silent, so angry, so detached.

I wished she had not been dead.

When I took away my hand again, I saw in the half-light of the storm the thick, sticky blood clinging to my trembling fingers.

She lay on her back in a gutter not ten feet from the street drain. Her neck was mutilated, torn by what most would have thought to be an animal mauling. Most of her throat was gone. Much of the neck’s flesh around the spine was missing, too.

My stomach churned and my face flushed. I knew the feeling. My dinner wanted to rise from its grave in my stomach to join the graveless death before my eyes.

The young woman before me had a name, once upon a time. Before life had been stolen from her, before her breath had been ripped from her very throat, she had a name. Events as of yet unrevealed had delivered her to the land of the dead, however, and my knowing her name did little to offer her any consolation.

I whispered it anyway, perhaps a last farewell to a friend.

“Amanda…”

Thunder clapped and the pavement beneath us shook. The wind struck me and forced me to lose my balance where I crouched beside her lifeless form. I toppled onto her just as lightning flared again and turned the night into an oddly blue flare, only seconds come to life.

It was just long enough to let me see her eyes move.

I jerked upright, frightened beyond reason.

0 She was already in motion.

Fear clutched at my insides, twisting hard and fast to tie me up in knots. I reeled backward, but she had my overcoat in her grasp and held me near her. I smelled her then, the death on her, even as despair in the ragged voice suddenly gasped alive when I knew it could not be.

“It comes to this, it comes to you!” she screeched, a banshee in blood.

The voice cut me with icy talons and left me shivering. I jerked against her grip with panic but to no avail.

She continued with the dire message.

“You came to me to know the truth! It is hidden! You must find it, don’t let it find you!”

I tore away, gagging at the smell, unnerved by the empty, staring eyes and the voice gargling in blood. I fell back, looking skyward. It was then I noticed the rain falling. It had become blood.

The buildings around us, the pavement beneath us, the dim streetlights glowing upon us all at once were awash in the blood rain. A green street sign not far from me glittered in the red downpour. The name on it leapt at me. ‘White Chapel’.

“You must find it!”

She was howling again, though I was no longer afraid. I had seen enough, and it was time to elude her.

000 I grasped the Cross beneath my shirt.

I awoke in my bed, safe and secure beside my sleeping wife, my breathing torn and razed. Sweat bathed me in its salty sting, yet I felt chilly in the night air. Darkness blanketed the room, and gave my hearing even more authority in the lack of sight. I listened to my raspy breath and my pounding heart…and the rainstorm buffeting the night outside my bedroom.

I touched my Cross, then thanked the Savior for His Mercy and Grace and a timely intervention into the dream I was certain could have killed me. He kept me from harm, just as He always did when those dreams came at me.

I prayed He planned to keep me safe after the call came, too. Any second, I knew, the telephone would ring. Those dreams always preceded a telephone call I would not want to receive, information I would not want to know.

Secrets I did not want to share.

Tamara rolled over to look at me and spoke in grave concern.

“You okay? Something wrong?”

I figured I had awoken her. I shook my head and offered a faint, forced smile, then started to speak. I would have told her not to worry. I would have told her not to concern herself, to just go back to sleep.

Before I could, the telephone rang from its perch on the white oak night stand.

I froze, and so did Tamara. I felt the tension in the bedroom squeeze in upon both of us. The hair on the back of my neck raised in apprehension.

After a long, ominous moment, the ‘phone rang again.

Chills bit into me. Tamara touched my arm. Her hand was cold.

“You were-” she began.

“Dreaming,” I interrupted. “Yes.”

Her eyes, hauntingly beautiful in the night’s obscured light, spoke on the fears her words would not give life.

“I know,” I answered her silent plea.

I knew, but I did not relish the thought of what I had to do.

On the fourth ring I answered the telephone with a good idea of what to expect.

“Priest here.” My voice was barely audible, a whispered regret of that which I had not yet been told.

A pause answered me first, then a sigh. A man’s voice chased the uncertainty.

“Hey, Mick,” the man slurred through a few too many drinks. “Hey, man, this’s ol’ Creek. You ‘member, we dated the Kenan sisters at the same time ’bout four or five years back-”

“I remember you, Creek,” I interrupted sadly.

The man on the other end cleared his throat. It was clear, though I could not see him, he was attempting to gather his wits about himself. I knew Bartholemew Creek well enough to know that he was probably running a shaky hand through his hair and shifting from one foot to another.

“Yeah, figured you would,” he said. “You always were a pretty sharp guy. How ya been? Heard you got married and finally learned to relax a little…”

I squinted my eyes and sighed myself. I wanted the call to be over. I wanted to know if I was right. Had another dream come true? Had something reached me from another place and time as I slept? It would not be the first time.

I let the detective linger in his own silence as I strangled in mine.

“I woke you…I shouldn’ta woke you like this…” he stammered. “I ought’a let you go…”

“Tell me what you called to say,” I snapped, a little more harshly than I had planned. At least it was mercifully quick and to the point. “I haven’t heard from you, any of you, in over seven years. I know you didn’t just call me to wish me well on my new life. Spit it out, Creek. What’s got you drinking… and me dreaming again?”

And, there it was. I had told him. I was dreaming again. I knew something before he even told me. He had been counting on that, and I made that part easier on him. He knew my past, and he was looking to make it my future.

He soaked it in for the longest empty, quiet seconds of our entire history.

“You dreamed? Like before?”

I shook my head though he could not see it. I thought it had stopped.

“Mick?” he asked again. Suddenly, he seemed a lot more sober than he had been.

“You tell me,” I growled irritably. “Did you call about Amanda Kenan?”

He began to whisper unintelligibly and swear at himself for ever calling. He sounded genuinely frightened to even be on the telephone with me. He ranted for several seconds, and then whispered to me again.

“She’s dead, Mick…found night before last…but, you knew, didn’t you?”

“I knew,” I admitted. “Just now, just tonight. But, if I remember correctly, Creek, you don’t believe in such things.”

“I need your help,” he said.

The statement fell from his mouth as if unbidden, but instinctive. I felt the thickness of the silence afterward and wondered if he would have taken it back if he could, if he would have said it at all had the alcohol not been so fluid in his veins.

He sniffled, then cleared his throat again.

“Creek,” I said.

“I’m working a…a case down here,” he spat through strained intervals. “I can’t…get a break…get a lead…or a witness. Now, the latest…victim…”

Creek was crying, trying to hold it back.

“Amanda,” I finished for him. I whispered the name, as I had in the dream. Some part of me expected her to speak back to me now in that ragged voice with which she had ripped the silence in the dream. She did not, however. Only the young man I had known as Bartholemew Creek did.

“Amanda…my wife’s own sister…oh, man’o’ man…you just don’t know…” he muttered, his voice broken and dislodged from his throat. “The way Brittany looks at me now…the way she talks to me…”

“I’ll be there by noon tomorrow,” I said.

I could imagine him nodding emphatically.

“Yeah, yeah, you sure you can..?”

“Good-bye, Creek.”

I dropped the telephone back into its cradle without hearing his response. Part of me wanted to flee this circumstance. Part of me wanted to open its mystery and unlock the terrible truth. None of me wanted to spend any great deal of time talking to Bartholemew Creek, his wife, or her family. I would not have even wanted to speak to the dead Amanda, if she had not spoken to me first.

“What was it, Mikhael?” Tamara asked again, wanting to hear more.

No words came out of my mouth, but Tamara heard in the quiet whispers of my eyes and my expressions that the dreams had begun again. She was like that. The last of the great wives, I believed. She knew me inside and out, my public and my secret sides, my conscious and subconscious selves…and she loved me anyway.

“Mikhael,” she insisted. She laced long, elegant fingers over my bare arm and squeezed. Her lovely nails dug in with urgency. “You have to talk about it.”

“You should get back under the covers. Your hands are cold.”

I evaded her urging. I did not look at her eyes, either, but I knew their sea-green pools churned with a passionate concern. They always did. Soft, pink lips would purse in the newly forming pout she would display if I did not allow her inside, if I did not bring her into my dilemma and let her help.

When I dropped back into the pillows and covers of our bed, I stared at the darkness and saw images from the dream again. I covered my face with one hand.

“Tell me,” she said again.

I moved my hand and stared into the black.

“Amanda Kenan,” I said slowly, “as you may remember, was a friend in Wilmington.”

“One of your old flames, if I remember it right,” she inserted without missing a beat. “What happened?”

“No, she wasn’t,” I corrected. “We were never more than friends.”

“Oh, okay,” she shrugged. “Go on.”

“We weren’t,” I reiterated. “It was hardly anything even remotely romantic.”

She nodded again, her eyes swallowing me. Her only expression was one of concern for me, and for what news I may present. “Okay, I get it. Go on.”

I was suddenly aware how little that faded attempt at romance mattered now, to Tamara, to me, and, for that matter, to Amanda.

Tamara’s voice was lovely there in the dark, almost as beautiful as she was. I wondered what I had ever done to deserve her love, the love of a kind, considerate soul and a heart as big as the oceans.

“She’s dead, Tamara. And, not just dead.”

Her lovely features took on that haunted look. Light played over her pale face like moonlight spilling over a cool lake.

“She’s been murdered.”

Tamara squeezed her eyes shut and lowered her head a little.

I waited a moment, and then added an additional thought.

“I wouldn’t be so quick to declare it, but the ‘phone call was Bartholemew Creek.”

“That junior deputy friend of yours?” Tamara asked. “I remember him, I think.”

“That junior deputy is a Lieutenant in the Detectives Division of the Sheriff’s Department down there, now. They’ve been working a case, and he thinks the perp in it is responsible for Amanda’s death.” I paused, reminiscing. I came back to my thought a second later. “Oh, yeah, and they need my help.” I chuckled at the irony.

“After what they did when-” she blurted angrily.

“Now, Tamara,” I soothed.

She was very defensive of me, and took the imagined and real slights I suffered at the hands of the New Hanover county legal system more seriously than I ever would. It was one grudge she clutched very close to herself. I, personally, had almost forgotten the entire thing. Almost…until the dream.

“They are at the end of their collective wits. If there is really anything I can do, you know I have to try.”

“You have to,” she answered, a sad smile on her face, her eyes pooled with concern. Her gentle hands fastened onto my arm under our covers.

“I have to,” I confirmed.

She offered only a rebuttal of silence.

“Tamara?” I whispered in the dark.

She rolled closer to me and pressed against me.

“I know you do,” she allowed softly, “and that is one of the reasons I love you so much. But, you have to be careful.”

I cradled her head with my hand and pulled her into a long, soft kiss. I tasted the sweet of that kiss and closed my eyes, feeling a rush of heady emotions.

She stroked the side of my face with a soft hand and made me promise to be careful. I did, of course, and did my best to convince her all would be well. She did not need to have the extra worries of the dreams, the subtle details I often left out when relaying them to someone. She did not need to know that the night had told me in the dream that there would be danger in talking to the dead girl. There would be danger in helping. There would be danger in doing what I could.

Tamara felt cold in my arms and I squeezed her and wrapped her in covers and embraced her, stroked her, loved her.

Hours passed. She again slept. I drifted somewhere between awareness and slumber for the longest while, remembering Amanda in her laughs and jokes and smiles. Eventually, I lost consciousness and slipped into dreams again.

Amanda Kenan did not come with them to see me. Nevertheless, her voice still haunted me in remnant dreams. The stage was set, and the song being sung was one of challenge, and of reckoning. All that was left was to dance.

Knight’s Armor

Chapter One
There are one thousand. Some sniff the cool, afternoon air. Others writhe effortlessly in the sky. None of them are friendly. They wait near the pinnacle of Candor’s Shield, located in the mountains, for the Commander’s shriek announcing the advance.

Each member received a specific assignment. The target, Boomtown, 50 miles west of their present location. Boomtown is nicknamed for its production of the famous Philico brand boom box radios.

Among the throng, a little being hovers anxiously. She trained with the previous regiment and successfully drove her victim insane. A tall figure wriggles next to the little one. Looking down with its solid, black eyes, she threatens, “Don’t fail or you’ll pay dearly, understand Bulba?” said Sifter.

“I understand,” said Bulba, staring in return. She didn’t like being intimidated by the likes of Sifter, the second assistant. That was Bulba’s job, to frighten. She did not welcome Sifter’s disapproval or her intimidation tactics.

The vaporous figures twisted suddenly and came to attention. With eyes fixed on Commander Planter, they prepared to move out.

“Go!” echoed the long, eerie cry of the Commander. The massive horde of grey beings extended their necks, beckoning the updraft to snatch their large heads into the air current. Bulba joined the throng and collectively, they swarmed toward Boomtown. Their bodies looped and coiled. Rhythmically they pulsated, then glided, then pulsated. Body slots widened, consuming the air, thrusting them high above the rocky terrain.

Gliding over the twin rivers, Bulba glanced over at Sifter, whose gaze was fixed toward the east. The Commander’s first assistant, Lure, chose Bulba for this mission after her last victim ended up in Graceland Sanitarium under a suicide watch. Sifter would know Lure chose wisely after this assignment was over.

The city skyline came into view. To the human eye, the group looked like a dissipating cloud, hardly noticeable in close proximity to the waning sunset. The dwindling pack descended lower and deliberately.

After passing Lake Freedom, Bulba sniffed the air. The insecure strengthened her, and there were plenty of self-doubters in this town. But she must remain focused. She learned that her new target was younger than the one before. It wouldn’t take as long to weaken this one, at least that’s what Bulba believed. She turned right at the Philico factory and slowed down at a tiny row house. Number 1349. She slipped in unseen and unheard through the bedroom wall, straight through the floor, into the living room.

Ever wonder if your readers will get it!  Want feedback on something you’ve written?  Send up to 500 words of your writing to greengirlinwisconsin(at)gmail(dot)com.  We’ll post it here, and you can find out if you’ve hooked us!