Village (Harbingers) , livre ebook

Baker Publishing Group - Alton Gansky

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50 pages

English

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Description

A visit to a guarded and secretive town in North Carolina becomes the most challenging mystery the Harbingers have ever faced. Expecting a warm, small-town welcome and receiving nothing of the kind, the team experiences a mysterious change that affects the entire village. Can a lost little girl help them solve the conundrum before time runs out?

Sujets

Thriller

Informations

Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	05 décembre 2017
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781441231420
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	3 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
Leviathan © 2017 Bill Myers
The Mind Pirates © 2017 Frank Peretti
Hybrids © 2017 Angela Hunt
The Village © 2017 Alton Gansky
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 Control Number: 2017945988
ISBN 978-1-4412-3147-5
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 Studio Gearbox
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
Epilogue
Selected Books by Alton Gansky
Back Ad
CHAPTER 1
Arrival
T he sun was blinking.
Well, not really blinking. That would be a sign that the end of the world was about to arrive. What it was doing was flashing in my eyes as I did my best to drive the Ford SUV up the narrow mountain road. The real culprits were the trees. It was about an hour from sunset and dogwood trees kept blocking the sun, making it look like it was flickering. Truth be told, it was kinda annoying. Still the forest, the mountains, the clear sky were all very beautiful.
I wished it were that peaceful inside the car.
I shot a glance at Andi sitting in the passenger’s seat next to me, then stole a quick look at the back seat. Brenda sat behind Andi, gazing out the window on her right just as she had been doing since we left the airport in Asheville. She hadn’t said more than twenty words since we arrived in North Carolina. If you knew Brenda, then you know how this was not normal for her. Not a single snide remark. Odd, I found myself missing her occasional barbs. Just as well. She hasn’t been all that warm and cuddly since—
Well, no need to get into that now.
Seated behind me was Daniel, my ten-year-old buddy. He wasn’t himself. I expected to see his young face hovering over the screen of his handheld video game like usual. I hadn’t heard a single digital beep out of that game—or a word out of him.
Of course, I had no right to expect anything to be normal.
My friends and I have been living in a “new normal.” That’s what Andi called it. She’s good with words, and the Internet, and research, and just about everything else. She is really good at keeping me on pins and needles. Anyway, she’s especially good at seeing patterns no one else can see. She can look at ten unrelated things and see what connects them all. That’s our Andi. Now that the professor is gone, Andi Goldstein is the smart one of our group. If I said that out loud I’m sure she’d show me the back of her hand. Brenda might show me the front of her fist.
That’s not to say that Brenda Barnick is any kind of dummy. She’s smart in a different kinda way. Street-smart is the best way to describe her. She’s a gifted artist, although most of her art decorates people’s skin. No one can ink a tat like Brenda. She’s dynamite with pen and paper, too. The strange thing—not so strange to us these days—is that her drawings somehow show a bit of the future.
Me? Well, if we haven’t already met, then all you need to know is that my name is Bjorn Christensen but I go by Tank. It’s easier to say. At six-foot-three and 260 pounds, I’ve been gaining weight, so no one asks, “Why do they call you Tank?” My size is why Daniel sat behind me while I drove. He didn’t need as much leg room as Andi and Brenda.
“Much farther?”
Whoo-hoo. Two words from Brenda.
Andi kept her eyes on her smartphone. “GPS says about five minutes, but it’s been on-again, off-again. Cell coverage up here is abysmal.”
Double whoo-hoo. This was almost a conversation. I decided to risk it and say something myself. “The road is slowing us down. Too narrow. Too many hairpin curves.”
“Ya think?” Brenda sounded sour. “I’m getting carsick.” There was a pause, and I redirected the rearview mirror to get a better look at her face. She was staring at me. “And when I get carsick, Cowboy, I tend to vomit forward and to the left. Just about where you’re sitting.”
Brenda likes to call me “Cowboy.” No one else does. “Should I stop and give you a chance to . . . you know . . . let you get some air?”
The three in the car all said, “No!” Even little Daniel.
“Okay, okay. Cool your jets. I’m just trying to keep everyone safe.”
“I’m sick of the car,” Brenda said. “I’m sick of flying to out-of-the-way places.”
“Technically,” I said, “Tampa is not out of the way. It’s a pretty big city. And when we were in San Diego—”
“Shut up, Bjorn.”
Yikes. Brenda never uses my first name.
“Yes, ma’am. Shutting up.”
Andi’s guess of five minutes was a tad off. Not by much, just a quarter hour. Brenda would have chewed through the car door if she could have managed it, and a big part of me believed she could.
By the time we rolled into town, the sun had dipped below the mountains and what had once been shadows was now full-blown twilight. The streetlights, which looked a hundred years old if they were a day, flickered on and made a brave effort at pushing back the dark of evening. I was glad to pull onto Main Street and leave the twisty two-lane road behind. Newland, North Carolina, wasn’t all that far from Asheville, but it was all uphill.
“No cell service, guys,” Andi said. “We’ll have to find the hotel the old-fashioned way. Look for it.”
“You made reservations, right?” Brenda made the question sound like a statement.
Andi shook her head. Her flighty red hair flopped around a little. Some might think it looked funny, but I think she’s adorable. As far as I’m concerned, she is gorgeous from the tip-top of her hair down to those tiny things she calls feet.
“I couldn’t make reservations. They don’t have a website, and when I called all I got was an answering service. And by answering service I mean answering machine. Didn’t know those things were still around.”
Brenda leaned forward and for a moment I thought there would be three people in the front seat. “You’re kidding me, right?”
“C’mon, Brenda. I’m not known for my sense of humor.”
That wasn’t completely true. I’d seen Andi laugh many times. She could be witty when she wanted. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t feeling it at the moment.
“I’m not spending the night in the car,” Brenda said with some heat.
“We shouldn’t have to.” Andi didn’t bother to turn to face Brenda. “You know how this works. We get a message with a destination and information on where to stay. Maybe our keepers made reservations for us.”
“They had better.”
“Okay, ladies,” I said, “let’s see what we’re dealing with before we start shooting at each other.” Of course, for self-protection, I glanced over my shoulder to see if Brenda was coming for me. She wasn’t. Instead, I saw little Daniel patting her leg. Daniel might be the only person in the world who can settle Hurricane Brenda. It was working.
I motored slowly down the street, taking in the town. There wasn’t much to take in. I’ve been in a few small towns in my time, and this one was pretty much the same thing. The buildings were old, maybe built in the thirties and forties. Some were made of redbrick, some had wood exteriors. I didn’t see any stucco like what I see in California. There were a few shops and one department store, though most would be hard-pressed to call the small two-story building much of a department store. There were two eating establishments that I hoped offered biscuits and gravy, and a bar for those that liked to drink their meals from a beer mug. I slowed when I came to a building with a gold star on the door and a sign that read Sheriff’s Office .
I pulled to the curb. A second sign hung below: GONE FISHING. We saw a hardware store, a feed store, a shoe store, and a few other stores.
“Anyone else notice the weirdness?” Andi was leaning forward as if by doing so, the town would release its secrets.
“Like what?” Brenda asked.
“Like there’s no one on the street. No pedestrians. No cars on the road. I don’t even see parked cars. Shouldn’t there be a beat-up pickup truck or something?”
“Maybe . . .” I began.
“Maybe what?” Andi said.
I put my brain in high gear, then said, “I got nuthin’.”
“Tank’s got nothing.” Daniel snickered. At least the kid hadn’t forgotten how to talk. He was a quiet kid most of the time. Emotionally challenged his doctors say, but he’s not. He’s just different, and since Brenda took over his care, he is more open than ever. Not a chatterbox, but he no longer hesitates to speak. He has a special gift all his own.
“Hey! I thought you were my pal,” I said with a big grin.
“I am. Pals. You still got nuthin’.”
I caught Brenda and Andi smiling. Sometimes I think the kid could walk into a dark room with no lights and somehow lights would come on anyway. Don’t analyze the statement. Just take it at face value.
We reached the end of Main Street and I saw something that gave me hope—a church. A church with a real steeple. It was small, but beautiful. I’m the spiritual one of the group, and I love church. My friends, well, they haven’t come around. Yet.
Just as we reached the end of Main Street, Andi piped up. “There. I see the hotel. On the left.”
There was movement in the back seat as Daniel and Brenda scooted forward for a look-see.
“I see it.” I did and it looked good to me. I was sick of the car. At first it was hard to make out detail in the dim light, but I could see clearly enough to know I was looking at a three-story, wood-framed