I know that many of you are very anxious to read what happens in "War Angel III: Catalina" so I decided to treat you with a sneak peek. Enjoy and be on the lookout for more samples soon.
CHAPTER 6
Dreams of Darkness
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atalina was completely alone, in the dead
of night, hemmed in by towering skyscrapers and vacant buildings in the middle
of a city that should have been flooded with people like ants. For what seemed
like hours, maybe even days, she wandered through the empty streets, littered
with abandoned cars and flickering street lamps that barely provided any light.
The overwhelming feeling of isolation and loneliness had been steadily growing
inside her, along with a sense of unseen malevolence. It was faint at first but
it had been steadily growing stronger. Something that she couldn’t see was
looking for her, or more accurately, hunting her. She began to walk
faster, praying for the sun to rise in the sky to put an end to the night that
seemed as if it would last forever. She wanted to hide but somehow, she knew
that wherever she went, IT, (whatever it was) would eventually find her. She
began to run until she couldn’t take another step because her lungs were on
fire and her legs felt like cooked noodles. Hunched over, with both hands on
her knees as he chest heaved, she stopped to try to catch her breath. That’s
when she felt something watching her.
Quickly, she spun around, expecting to see
some fearsome beast charging right at her with a mouth full of froth and
razor-sharp teeth. Instead, she saw a pair of gorgeous twins with eerie blue
eyes, dressed in long white dresses that hugged their curves, staring at her
from across the street. The broad beam of light cast down from the street lamp
that they were standing next to made it easy for her to make them out clearly,
even in the gloom. As she studied their features, she realized that, although
they were definitely twins, they weren’t exactly identical. One of them had a
gruesome scar that ran down one side of her face and to Catalina’s horror, the
other seemed to be bleeding from what looked like a gunshot wound in the middle
of her chest.
“We’ve been looking for you. Come with us
Catalina,” they said in unison as they raised their hands to beckon her to walk
across the street to meet them.
Their voices were melodic, almost musical
and somewhat hypnotic but when she heard the strange women who she had never
seen in all of her life call out her name, her blood ran colder than their icy,
blue eyes. A wave of panic crashed down on her and she took off running as fast
as her legs would carry her.
Time seemed strange in the city she was
trapped in because, after running like a frightened deer for what seemed like
days, the moon above never changed position in the sky or gave any signs that
it was ever going to surrender sovereignty of the skies to a new rising sun.
Oddly enough, the thing that did change was the landscape. One moment she had
been running in between towering buildings, through deserted streets and the
next thing she knew she had crossed over onto what felt like private property.
Twisted, gnarled and leafless trees replaced the buildings and there was soft,
brown, dying, grass beneath her feet instead of hard concrete.
As she kept running, she didn’t dare look
back over her shoulder, afraid of what might be following her but she still had
pushed forward as fast as she could because she was still absolutely terrified
by the feeling that something malevolent was right on her heels. That vibe grew
and intensified until she ran out of open space to run and found herself
standing in front of an enormous black metal gate with creeper vines entwined
with the bars. She looked up to the top of the metal monstrosity and wondered
what the letter “R” engraved in the ironwork stood for but what really caught
her attention was the scary building at the end of the driveway beyond the
black gate. It was the type of building that most people would be afraid to
walk into of their own free will. It looked like a cross between a haunted
mansion and a prison. On any other night, at any other time, she would have
avoided a place like that at any cost but, with such a sense of evil at her
back, it seemed like the only place to hide. To her surprise, the gate wasn’t
locked and its rusty hinges screeched loudly as it swung open reluctantly when
she pushed on it. Once she was through, she turned around and instinctively
closed the gate behind her, even though there was no locking mechanism anywhere
to be found. She caught her breath for a moment before she ran up the long
driveway towards the menacing building.
When Catalina reached the front door, she
found that it was also unlocked and swung open just as easily as the front gate
had. The lights inside flickered on and off intermittently which only added to
the overall creepiness if the place. On one of the walls, she spotted a large
black and white photograph of the building she now stood in, when it wasn’t so
decrepit and shabby. The caption engraved on the gold plate on the picture
frame read, “The Rottenham Asylum.” She wondered where all of the staff was and
why no one had come out to ask her who she was and what she was doing there.
The feeling of emptiness caused a chill run down her spine and raised the hairs
on the back of her neck. Also, the presence of the malevolent force that had
dogged her footsteps had not faded. She decided that it might be a good idea to
find somewhere secure to hide so she began to explore the asylum with her heart
beating like a bass drum in her chest.
She wandered down long, lonely hallways,
lined with locked cells on each side. The dim, flickering overhead lights
illuminated the cracked, faded paint on the walls. As she roamed the eerie
corridors of the house of straight-jackets, padded rooms and pills, she
occasionally heard whispers that sounded like the incoherent ramblings of mad
people. However, whenever she found the courage to peek inside any of the
padded cells, she found them empty, dirty and stained with the pain of their
former occupants. Urine stains, filth, cobwebs and sometimes signs of dried
blood was all she saw. Finally, she found herself in front of Room # 316.
Mysteriously drawn to it, she approached
the cell slowly but wasn’t afraid and suddenly, Catalina didn’t feel so alone.
She stopped just in front of the door, closed her eyes, took a deep breath and
listened. Very softly, on the other side of the door, a woman sang softly and
although she had never met that poor, trapped soul, the madwoman’s voice felt sounded
strangely familiar. Despite the fact that she stood in the middle of such a
scary place, the lyrics to the songs wrapped around her like a security blanket
and made Catalina feel completely safe. She placed her hand on the cold, metal
door, opened her eyes to look through the thin slot to see who was inside but
then, she suddenly woke up, drenched in a cold sweat.
Copyright © 2014 Keith Kareem Williams
All rights reserved.
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