Nightmare (Dangerous Times Collection Book #2) , livre ebook

Baker Publishing Group - Robin Parrish

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171 pages

English

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Ghost Town is the hottest amusement park in the country, offering state-of-the-art chills and thrills involving the paranormal. The park's main ride is a haunted mansion that promises an encounter with a real ghost. When Maia Peters visits during her senior year of college, she's not expecting to be impressed. Maia grew up as the only child of a pair of world-renowned "ghost hunters," so the paranormal is nothing new. In fact, the ride feels pretty boring until the very end. There, a face appears from the mist. The face of Jordin Cole, a girl who disappeared from campus a year ago. Convinced what she saw wasn't a hoax and desperate to find answers to Jordin's disappearance, Maia launches into a quest for answers. Joined by Jordin's boyfriend--a pastor's kid with very different ideas about the spirit realm--Maia finds herself in a struggle against forces she never expected to confront.

Sujets

Thriller

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Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	01 juillet 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781441212115
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	3 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0259€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

© 2010 by Robin Parrish
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 2010
Ebook corrections 07.20.2015
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—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—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 978-1-4412-1211-5
Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
To my brother Ross, who has never once stopped believing in me.
“Whatever else a ‘ghost’ may be, it is probably one of the most complex phenomena in nature.”
FREDERIC W. H. MYERS Founder, Society for Psychical Research circa 1882
CONTENTS
COVER
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT PAGE
DEDICATION
EPIGRAPH
ONE
TWO
THREE
WAVERLY HILLS SANATORIUM
FOUR
FIVE
THE STANLEY HOTEL
SIX
SEVEN
THE MYRTLES PLANTATION
EIGHT
NINE
ST. LOUIS CEMETERY #1
TEN
ELEVEN
USS NORTH CAROLINA
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
MOUNT HOPE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
ALCATRAZ
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
GETTYSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
EPILOGUE
FROM THE AUTHOR
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
BOOKS BY ROBIN PARRISH
PHOTO CREDITS
BACK AD
BACK COVER
ONE
“Doesn’t matter who you are or what you believe. Everybody has a ghost story.”
My father said those words to me as a child whenever I would question his life’s work. Scratch that. His life’s obsession .
I came to learn that he was right. Everybody has had at least one of those moments when their insides say something’s happening that’s far outside of normal. A fleeting second when something is seen moving out of the corner of their eye. A prick at the back of the neck alerting them to a presence. A location that for no discernible reason fills them with dread.
I had plenty of my own stories of ghosts and the paranormal. As Maia Peters, daughter of the famous Malcolm and Carmen Peters, it was to be expected. I thought I knew everything there was to know about the paranormal. One warm night in New York City, I found out just how wrong I was.
A sign just inches from my face read “YOU WILL BE TERRIFIED” in a scrawled typeface. The words were blood red, splattered in a sloppy fashion across a plank of rotted wood.
I looked at the sign not with suspicion or doubt, just weariness. It was the third such sign to be thrust in my face since my friends and I had stepped into the line. It might have seemed more authentic had “Ghost Town ® ” not been printed in the bottom right corner of the faux wood.
“There was always this one closet at my grandparents’ house that gave me the creeps when I was growing up,” said Jill, rubbing her gloved hands together both to keep warm and—I assumed—out of nervousness. “It was a linen closet in the bathroom at the back of the house, and it was really dark inside. Whenever I looked in there . . . I don’t know. It made me feel cold all over.”
Jill had been my roommate at Columbia University for our sophomore and junior years. For our senior year, I was paying extra for solo on-campus housing.
Angela, meanwhile, was Jill’s best friend since high school. She was similarly coifed with long, straight hair, and talked so much like Jill that I often thought their brains were psychically linked. At Jill’s words, Angela shivered slightly but smiled. “I’ve got one,” she said, glancing around to make sure none of the other amusement park patrons in this line were listening too closely. “When I was like nine or ten, sometimes my great-aunt would pick me up after school and I’d stay at her house for a couple of hours until my dad got off work. Her husband was this really mean old guy who’d done all these awful, evil things to her, but he died before I was born. She kept this old recliner in the house that belonged to him, and I hated it. It was ratty and nasty, and it smelled funny. And when I was in the room with it alone . . . I swear sometimes I could see a figure out of the corner of my eye. When I’d turn to look, there was nobody there. But for just a second, it was like this guy was standing right there watching me, and he wasn’t moving. It terrified me to death , even though I eventually figured it was all in my head.”
“Wow,” said Jill, her eyes wide and sincere.
“Here’s the really crazy part. After a few years, my aunt decided to finally get rid of that chair. And would you believe—after it was gone, I never saw the figure again.”
“Ooooh,” said Jill, not quite grinning but still enthusiastic. I saw Angela and her glance my direction, hoping for a response.
I think they were frustrated when I didn’t react to either story. I couldn’t help it; I was bored and distracted by thoughts of the beginning of classes in a few days. I leaned out and inspected the line the three of us stood in, estimating there were at least a hundred people in front of us, waiting to enter the ride. It was going to be a long night.
Jill and Angela were hardly my closest friends, if I even had anyone in my life who qualified. But Jill always paid her portion of the dorm room rent on time and never threw any parties—she just attended them elsewhere with Angela—so I found it hard to complain about the two of them. Even if I wasn’t all that compatible with them, personality-wise.
They’d gone out of their way to invite me on this little pre-senior-year jaunt, even though, as Angela had not so delicately put it, “We realize this isn’t something you’re dying to do, because of . . . well, you know .”
It was an unspoken but absolute rule in the dorm that no one ever talked about my upbringing. I wasn’t ashamed of it, or even made uncomfortable talking about it. It wasn’t some big trauma, either. It was just . . . out of the ordinary. Way out. And I wasn’t interested in looking back. I only wanted to look ahead.
But I had impulsively agreed to come along with them, and the pleasantly surprised faces that Jill and Angela displayed when I said yes were all too genuine, and I knew why. I was serious about my studies and my chosen major, and I wanted very badly to be taken seriously. But senior year hadn’t yet begun, and as crass as I knew this silly trip would probably be, the truth was, I longed for a little company. My last friendship had ended badly, and I was surprised at how much I missed the companionship and solidarity of having someone around. It was something I’d never expected to need, but once it was gone, I wanted it more than ever.
“So what’s your biggest fear?” asked Jill, trying to keep the conversation going.
“Um,” ventured Angela, “forgetting to wear clothes to class?”
Jill laughed. “That’s not scary, that’s just embarrassing! I’m talking about knee-quivering, pee-inducing, ‘I-want-my-mommy’ kind of terrified. What scares you that bad?”
“I don’t know,” replied Angela as the three of us wormed through the zig-zagging line and I took another peek at the line’s progress, trying subtly to distance myself from this conversation. “The thought of being chased through the woods by a crazed ax murderer?” Angela finally answered.
Jill laughed again. “Well, it’s a cliché, but it’s scary, I’ll give you that. Personally, I don’t think there’s anything worse than a creepy little girl. I mean, think about all those old movies and video games where some bizarre, detached little girl with haunted eyes just stares blankly at everyone while terrible things happen to them. It’s like she has no soul. It freaks me out just thinking about it!”
We turned another corner in the line and my eyes found a new sign. This one warned, “YOU MIGHT VOMIT.”
Jill and Angela laughed nervously at the sight, but then Angela turned to me. “What about you, Maia? What’s the scariest thing you’ve ever seen?”
My mind slowed down for a moment, and my eyes shifted slowly to Angela as an answer came immediately to mind. “Uh . . . I don’t think I should say.”
Both girls watched me with sudden caution. Their demeanors betrayed that they knew they’d suddenly trodden into unwanted territory. “Why not?” Angela almost whispered.
The only answer I could give was the honest one.
“Because if I told you, you would wish I hadn’t.”
I looked away from their stunned expressions, trying to act nonchalant. Finally, after a long pause, I heard Jill exhale quickly in a halfhearted attempt at laughter, but it came out awkwardly and sounded like a nervous cough.
They quickly changed the subject. “Did you hear about that children’s advocacy group that’s suing Ghost Town because its rides are so scary?” asked Jill.
“That’s so stupid!” replied Angela. “I mean, if you’re dumb enough to bring your kids someplace like this, you deserve whatever you get.”
I’d heard about it, too. It was big news. Having opened just six months ago, Ghost Town amusement park had become the hottest ticket in America. Fright junkies from all over the world were drawn to its state-of-the-art thrills and chills, which were reported to contain the most realistic recreations of the paranormal ever fashioned. I doubted that claim very much, having seen the paranormal firsthand, and knowing it to be nothing like the over-the-top digita