Haunted (Harbingers) , livre ebook

Baker Publishing Group - Frank Peretti

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45 pages

English

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Professor McKinney, an atheist ex-priest, and the Harbingers team confront a supernatural mystery, a case of murder, and an exploration into the darkness of the human heart--all centering around a mysterious house that seems to have the ability to appear and disappear at certain times.

Sujets

Thriller

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Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	11 avril 2017
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781441231321
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0086€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 2017 Frank Peretti
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
www.bethanyhouse.com
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan
www.bakerpublishinggroup.com
Ebook edition created 2017
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4412-3132-1
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the authors’ imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by Gearbox
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
1. Clyde Morris
2. The Phenomenon
3. Encounters
4. Earthsong
5. Gustav Svensson
6. The House
7. Explorations
8. During the Night
9. Four Messages
10. A Heated Debriefing
11. Daniel
12. One Final Message
13. The Prison
14. The Third Death
15. A House Afire
16. The Monster
17. A Hero
18. Reflection
Selected Books by Frank Peretti
CHAPTER 1 Clyde Morris
C lyde Morris looked entirely the part of a wraith: neck tendons tuned like a harp, white hair wild, fogging corneas following unseen demons about the old dining room. “My life, my years, all over. Done! Can’t reach them from here, can’t change them, no more chances!”
His frumpish wife, Nadine, could make no sense of his ravings, his clenching and unclenching hands, his rising, pacing, sitting again, his seeing horrible things. She reached across the table to touch him but drew her hand back—it felt chilled as with frost.
He leaned, nearly lunged over the table, his face close to hers. “It knows me! It knows all about me!”
From down the hall came the shriek of door hinges. Clyde’s eyes rolled toward the sound, his veiny face contorted. A wind rustled the curtains, fluttered a newspaper, swung the chandelier so it jangled.
Clyde stood and the wind hit him broadside, pushing him toward the hall.
“Clyde!”
He reached across the space between them but the wind, roaring, carried him down the hall along with cushions, newspapers, the tablecloth.
A doorway in the hall, glowing furnace red, pulled him. He craned forward to fight it, stumbled, grappled, and slid backward toward it.
The doorway sucked him in like a dust particle. A high-pitched scream faded into infinite distance until cut off when the door slammed shut.
The wind stopped. The newspaper pages settled to the floor. A doily fluttered down like a snowflake. The chandelier jangled through two diminishing swings, then stopped and hung still.
Now the only sound was the wailing of the widow, flung to the floor in the old Victorian house.
CHAPTER 2 The Phenomenon
W hen A.J. Van Epps first called to relate what had happened—or allegedly happened—to crusty old Clyde Morris, I fidgeted, perused lecture notes, indulged him. Why would a learned academic and researcher like Van Epps trouble himself—and now me—with a ca mpfire tale too easily debunked to warrant the effort? The largely one-sided conversation took a feeble turn toward interesting only when I discerned in Van Epps’ voice a tone of dread so unlike him, and it was after that hook was set that he sprang his proposal: Would I come and assist in the investigation? Would I help him regain his objectivity? Would I lend my knowledge and experience?
Oh yes, exactly what my frayed nerves needed. Being in a near plane crash and hauled into a misadventure in a so-called “Institute for Advanced Psychic Studies,” not to mention having my personal and deepest fears vivisected by one and the same, was a sleepy, monotonous ordeal. I needed the change.
Besides . . .
We were old friends and associates. I would be lecturing at Evergreen State College in the Puget Sound area in the next few days. Of course I could afford a side trip to help him look into the matter. I agreed to come—and kicked myself the moment I ended the call.
McKinney here. Dr. James McKinney, sixty, professor of philosophy and comparative religions, emeritus, at large, published, and so on and so forth. Generally, a scholar of religious claims and systems, but specifically, a skeptic, and it is to that last title I devote the most attention. This, I trust, lends explanation for why I and Andrea Goldstein, my young assistant, drove our rental car through the meandering and sloping village of Port Avalon and located the quaint Victorian residence of Dr. A.J. Van Epps.

Van Epps, thinner and grayer than I remembered, took our coats, then expended no more than a minute or two on greetings and how-are-yous before he led us to his kitchen table and brought up a photograph on his computer: A two-story Victorian home, dull purple, richly detailed, turreted, with a covered porch and sleepy front windows.
“My interest, of course, is to ascertain how it works, what empowers it, what measure or means of controlled stimuli will produce predictable results.”
Andi and I studied the photo. I saw a house; it was Andi’s way to see more, always more, which was one reason I took her along.
“Seven panels in the door,” she said. “Each window has seven panes. There are seven front steps.”
Not that I appreciated her timing. “Save it for later,” I advised, then asked Van Epps, “So this is a house here in town?”
Van Epps inserted an artful pause before answering, “Sometimes.”
This whole affair was ludicrous enough. “A.J., I’m not known for my patience.”
“Check out the landmarks: This tree with the large knot; this fire hydrant; this seam in the street.” He arrow-keyed to a second photograph, what one would call a vacant lot: some brush, some trees, nothing else . . . save for the same knotted tree, fire hydrant, and seam in the street in front. “I took this soon after the first. The house was there, and then it wasn’t.”
I didn’t stifle an irritated sigh. “If I may—just to cover the obvious—these photos are digital.”
He sighed back. “I didn’t alter them. No Photoshop.”
“And you’ve presented them in the order you took them?”
“Yes.”
“So I’m to take you seriously?”
He leaned back and held my gaze with his own. “I’ve found something, James, something atypical. As you’ll observe, Port Avalon is one of those . . . alternative kinds of town that attracts all brands of superstition, so the locals have their legends about the House, how it’s a harbinger of death, how it knows you, follows you . . .” With an unbecoming cryptic note, he added, “Takes you.”
I rubbed my eyes, mostly to buy time. I was at a loss.
“I came to Port Avalon with the specific objective of encountering this House in order to study it, know it. I saw it for myself a month ago, even before the incident with Clyde Morris, and yes, there is something about it that would trigger such legends, so I have to ask, what is it really? And can we control it—maybe harness whatever powers it?”
“Harness? What are you talking about?”
He fidgeted, composing an answer. “Some friends and I are interested in occult power—not as occult power, you understand, but as . . . power. Power that could be useful.”
“Friends?”
“Investors, shall we say.”
I knew he wouldn’t go any further into it. Maybe another time. “A.J., if you want me to bring balance to this—”
“Absolutely! I can see the handwriting on the wall, this is no plaything.”
“Then I’ll be skeptical. Digital photographs? Legends? To waste my time is to insult me. Show me evidence beyond this.”
“There’s Nadine, Clyde Morris’s widow. You should hear her account. She was there, in the House, when it took him.”
I rose deliberately. “Then we’ll go there now.” I turned to get my coat.
The closet door was locked.
“Other door,” Van Epps said.
I found the closet, grabbed and put on my coat. Andi threw hers on.
“There’s more,” said Van Epps, clicking on another file.
It was my role to get him on track and I persisted. I recognized his favorite jacket in the front closet: fine leather, and a distinctive smell. I grabbed it and held it out to him.
With his eyes turned away from his computer, he swiveled it to show us another photo, that of a ghostly old man with glassy eyes and hunched shoulders glaring at the camera. The lighting was rather dim, the photo taken outdoors at dusk or later. “Clyde Morris.”
I would have none of the chill I felt and shook it off. Andi showed the same chill plainly. “He could have been dead already.” I was being sarcastic.
“He was,” said Van Epps. “He died a week before I took this.”
CHAPTER 3 Encounters
N adine Morris took one look at Van Epps’ photo of the House and looked away, tears once again filling her reddened eyes. She nodded yes, and Van Epps gave me a look.
“And where was it?” he asked her.
We were sitting in her small, long-dated living room. She pointed through her front window at the woods across the street. “It was right there, like it was waiting, like it was watching me.”
Andi immediately pointed out the knotty tree, fire hydrant, and concrete seam.
I had to look around Andi’s explosive red hair—like a sea urchin with a perm—but I expected as much.
Nadine continued, “And then it was here. It wasn’t our house anymore, it was that house, and I was sitting in it and . . .” She trembled. “There was Clyde, sitting in the dining room.” She broke into a whimper. “But he was only a spirit. His time had come.”
“He’d passed away a week before—” Van Epps began.
I cut him off. “I want to hear it from her.”
“At Daisy Meadows,” she said. “The assisted living facility. He died in his sleep. But the House wouldn’t let him rest. It chased his spirit around town until that ni