Blue Mountain Detour

Synopsis

A veteran with a guilty secret plans to spend some time with his family at a plush mountain resort tucked away in the splendid beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It will be great, Nathan Henderson thinks. But this is before they run into the detour that directs them into the heart of a human wilderness that’s more savage than the forest and darker than the falling night. Nathan alone stands between death and his loved ones, but, for a man like him, one chance in hell may be all he needs!

Sample

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Prologue

Nathan Henderson was sweating profusely, despite the chill autumn air that drifted in through the open bedroom window, fluttering the curtains. He tossed and turned, thrashing about beside his wife, Naomi. She muttered, turning away from him.

The enemy was a young man, hardly out of his teens.

He wore the black pajamas and the flip-flop sandals of the Viet Cong.

He had ambushed them from their hiding place in the bamboo hut on stilts with the thatched roof that stood at the end of the muddy road that led through the village, wounding two of their number before fleeing.

Troops on the periphery of the area of operations had captured him, along with several of his comrades. They were to be sent to the rear for interrogation, but Nathan’s commanding officer, Captain Preston, had intervened, and now they were Captain Preston’s prisoners. He had separated this young man from the others.

The enemy soldier squatted on the ground, surrounded by a trio of guards who kept their M16’s trained on him. They had tied his hands behind his back and blindfolded him with his own shirt. Now, on Captain Preston’s orders, a rope was placed around the young man’s neck.

It was a long rope.

The airplanes that were spraying Agent Orange had not reached this location yet, and the jungle that surrounded this isolated village was impenetrably thick on every hand. A single, narrow trail meandered through the dense undergrowth. Tree limbs and heavy foliage obscured one’s vision.

They had called in air support upon encountering the enemy, but it was entirely possible that Viet Cong soldiers remained hidden along this trail, awaiting their opportunity to ambush the company as it resumed its march to its objective. It was also likely that the trail itself was mined or booby-trapped.

Some of the men in Nathan’s outfit were setting fire to the village’s huts. The heavy, dry grass of the roofs caught fire easily, and in minutes the huts on either side of the muddy road were blazing. Nathan could feel the heat on his face as the flames danced in his peripheral vision.

They had brought the bodies of the dead villagers outside, laying them in the mud along the side of the road to be collected for burial later, after the area had been captured and secured.

As usual, it was a sultry day, and Nathan sweated profusely.

“All right,” Captain Preston said, “get the bastard up on his feet.”

A guard reached below each of the enemy’s armpits and lifted him to his feet.

“Start him walking,” Captain Preston ordered.

One of the guards placed the sole of his heavy boot in the prisoner’s back and shoved his foot forward.

The Viet Cong soldier stumbled forward, tripped over his own feet, and sprawled onto the ground.

Captain Preston, the guards, and the other soldiers watching the incident laughed, some of them, like Nathan, nervously. The other Viet Cong prisoners also wore their shirts as blindfolds, but they had no doubt heard their captors’ dialogue and some, at least, understood English well enough to know what had just occurred. They were very still, very quiet.

Sweat trickled into Nathan’s eyes, stinging him. Sure, Nathan told himself, the boy had killed two American soldiers, but what Captain Preston and the rest of them were doing wasn’t right. The Geneva Conventions, as well as common human decency, censored this sort of behavior. Nathan thought, I should intervene; I should say something.

“Get him on his feet,” Captain Preston commanded. The guards bent forward, each gripping an arm, and lifted the Viet Cong soldier. Captain Preston reached up behind the prisoner’s head, and unknotted the makeshift blindfold, pulling the shirt away.

The enemy soldier blinked at the bright sunlight. Like Nathan, he was also sweating profusely.

“Let’s move out, ladies,” Captain Preston ordered.

One of the guards poked the muzzle of his rifle into the prisoner’s back, and the young man marched forward.

The others stood watching, waiting until he reached the end of the rope. Then, they followed their point man.

They all knew that, at any moment, rifle fire might erupt from the bush, and they were on their guard. They were tense, and their eyes moved continuously as they scanned the thick underbrush, eyeing the gaps between the dense thickets and close-standing trees. The only sound was their own footsteps. Like everyone else, Nathan was frightened, and his fear was a lump in his throat he couldn’t swallow. His jaw was clenched, and his finger was taut on the trigger. He was prepared, at any moment, to dive for cover and fire at any enemy, seen or unseen, that might ambush them.

Nathan had given no more thought to the Viet Cong soldier ahead of them on the trail. The morality of using him in this manner nagged at Nathan’s conscience, gnawed at it like a dog worrying a bone, but staying alive was all that mattered to him at the moment. If he got out of this jungle alive, he could occupy himself with the luxury of contemplating good and evil, right and wrong.

The explosion was a terrible shock, even though they had been expecting it--or something like it.

Their prisoner screamed and fell to the ground.

A column of dust, like smoke, wound into the sky.

Their human minesweeper had found a mine.

“You!” Captain Preston said, nodding toward Nathan and grinning, “go get that rope off him!”

Nathan swallowed.

“Now!” Captain Preston ordered.

I should refuse, Nathan thought. There’s no way I should be part of this. He glanced nervously at his fellow soldiers. Their faces were hard and inexpressive. Their eyes showed nothing.

Nathan ran toward the fallen enemy.

This is wrong! he told himself. Don’t do it!

The young man’s face was flushed. His body was awash in sweat. His lower right leg was gone, and the broken-off bone showed through the mangled flesh of the stump. His blood was a red pool in the dry, scorched soil of the narrow path. He moved from side to side, moaning and groaning through clenched teeth.

Nathan reached out, untying the rope.

He hurried back to his own men.

“Tie it around the next one,” Captain Preston commanded.

A replacement for the wounded minesweeper had already been shoved forward. He was another terrified, thin, young man. His blindfold had been removed, and the prisoner stared in horror at his fallen comrade. He struggled between the guards on either side of him.

“Hold him still, damn it!” Captain Preston barked.

Nathan slipped the noose over the prisoner’s head. Let it drop around his neck, and tightened it.

“Move out!” Captain Preston ordered the terrified youth.

The prisoner refused to budge.

One of the guards hit him between the shoulder blades with the stock of his rifle, and the enemy soldier staggered forward.

The guard hit him again.

The prisoner stumbled forward, taking one slow step after another, scanning the ground before him for tripwires, disturbed earth, or any other sign of a booby trap or a land mine.

“No,” Nathan moaned, “no, no, no! It’s not right!”

“Nathan,” his wife called, awakened by her husband’s plaintive objections to whatever nightmare was unfolding for him this time.

“It’s wrong!” Nathan wailed.

Naomi shook his shoulder, and his eyes snapped open as he reared up in bed beside her. His face was a mask of horror.

“Nate?” she cooed. “You were having a nightmare.”

His eyes darted about the room, seeing a chair against a thicket of brush, a lamp on a dresser in front of a stand of trees, a wall beside the bloody, legless man on the forest trail. One of them had shot him, Nathan remembered, as they filed past the wounded prisoner.

“It’s all right,” Naomi said. “It was just a dream.”

The nightmarish figure writhing on the ground dissolved. The jungle disappeared. Vietnam vanished again--for the moment, at least.

He breathed deeply, wiping the sweat from his brow.

“You okay?” she asked.

He nodded. “Sorry I woke you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she answered. “Go back to sleep.”

He almost chuckled at the suggestion; it was so absurd.

“I think I’ll have a nightcap,” he said.

“A drink?”

Her tone, disappointed and concerned, touched him. It also irritated him. He had lived through hell, and sometimes, when the demons revisited him, he needed a drink. Why couldn’t she understand that? Why did she have to be so disapproving of him for wanting to drown the memory of that bloody young man whose leg had been blown off when they’d used him as a human minesweeper? For a moment, Nathan saw the enemy soldier again, writhing on the ground, wailing through clenched teeth.

“I need something,” he explained, “to relax.”

She sighed, looked at him for a long moment. “All right, then, a drink, but just one. Please.”

He tossed back the blankets and rose, making his way around their bed.

When he reached the doorway, she said, “I love you.”

He swallowed. “I love you, too,” he replied softly.

Vietnam had come to symbolize the terrible incidents that had made up his life during the war. The country’s name or even a map of the land made him remember the cruelty of human beings toward one another and how, so many years ago, a young man himself, he had participated in such cruelty. For him, Vietnam had come to mean the worst that was within humanity and the worst that was within him.

For years after he had hung up the green beret forever, he’d drunk himself into a stupor every night.

Then, one evening, he’d met her, and she’d seen what she’d called the “goodness” in him. He had smiled ruefully at that. “There’s no goodness in me,” he’d replied, and he’d told her about Vietnam.

She had saved his life.

She had allowed him, if not to forgive himself, to go on, at least, and he had stopped drinking, mostly, and enrolled in college. Five years later, he’d earned a degree in engineering. Ever since, he’d helped to rebuild civilization rather than destroy it; he’d made sweet love to her, fathering two children; and he’d almost stopped drinking.

He went down the hallway and opened the first door on the right, looking in on his fourteen-year-old son, Henry.

The boy slept the sleep of the innocent, dead weight under the blankets. His eyes moved rapidly beneath their lids, signifying that he was in dreamland, and Nathan thanked God that his son was smiling instead of thrashing about, screaming.

“Sleep tight,” he whispered to his son, closing the bedroom door.

The next room on the left was Julie’s bedroom. He opened it, and saw his sixteen-year-old daughter slumbering soundly as well, dreaming, perhaps, of dancing in a long, formal gown with a handsome suitor under a full moon.

He hoped that neither of his children knew anything of his nightmares or of his cowardly behavior in Vietnam, but he knew that kids often knew more than their parents supposed. It was possible--hell, it was likely--that they had heard his screams in the night. They might even know about the human minesweeper. They might also know about the other incidents, his other nightmares. If so, it was another of the many sins he sorely regretted.

Downstairs, Nathan filled a glass with brandy, and he took a sip of the dark, bitter liquor. It burned its way down his throat and spread its warmth through his stomach.

Tomorrow, he and his family would leave their suburban sanctuary and, for two weeks, anyway, return to nature. They’d rented a cabin deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and Nathan was determined that he, Naomi, Julie, and Henry were going to have a good time while strengthening the ties that bound them.

Too frequently of late, his daughter and son had argued. The family was beginning to drift apart, it seemed to Nathan. Their places at the dinner table were vacant more times than he liked, and neither Julie nor Henry ever seemed to be home much anymore. When they were home, they lived in their rooms, in front of television shows that depicted premarital sex and drug abuse as normal behavior or lay abed with headphones blaring obscenity-laden music into their heads.
Nathan hoped that getting back to nature, even if only for a couple of weeks would--

He shook his head.

Their two-week trip wouldn’t so a damned thing, he knew, except make his kids whine more than usual and his wife even more committed to the conveniences of suburban living.
Well, it would be a change of scenery, anyway. It would be a way to relax without alcohol. It would be a way to get away from it all, with just his family around him.

He lifted the glass to take another sip of the brandy, but decided against it, setting the glass aside, and crept up the stairs to the room he shared with his mate.

She was still awake.

As usual, she had waited up for him.

“You’re back sooner than I had expected,” she told him.

He climbed into bed beside her.

“Yes,” he answered, snuggling against her warmth.

She kissed him.

He smiled in the darkness, appreciative of his wife’s love and devotion, grateful for his children’s love and affection, thankful that, in Naomi, he had found a woman whose heart was bigger than Vietnam.

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The Madhouse

The Madhouse

Synopsis

Emily Coldwater was horrified to learn that her late parents’ estate was built with blood money. She is terrified to have discovered that the spirit of the place is alive and seeks vengeance for the terrible deeds of her father. Can Emily's own extraordinary powers protect her and her guardian aunt from the malevolent mansion that threatens to destroy the sole surviving link to her family--Emily herself? For readers who have graduated from R. L. Stine but aren't quite ready for Stephen King, this novel is a perfect read!

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Sample

Prologue: The Body in the Cellar

Palm Acres stood amid the shade of broad oaks and towering pines, surrounded by a vast variety of other trees-mimosas, maples, hackberries, sycamores, birches, goldenrains, pears, maples, Eastern redbuds, crape myrtles, Washington hawthorns, Bechtel crabapples, and, of course-palms. There were royal palms, Pauroutis palms, pygmy date palms, cabbage palms, Chinese fan palms, Christmas palms, fishtail palms, key thatch palms, queen palms, Macarthur palms, jelly palms, sentry palms, Washington palms, windmill palms, and yellow butterfly palms.

Flowers grew in banks that divided the estate into various sections or “lawns,” which were designated by reference to the points of the compass as the north lawn, the northeast lawn, the east lawn, the southeast lawn, the south lawn, the southwest lawn, the west lawn, and the northwest lawn.

Shrubs and hedges, ponds and fountains, statues and mosaics decorated the lawns and gardens and marble walkways. Beyond the towering hedge that surrounded the magnificent Tudor mansion that stood at the heart of the estate, looking down upon its lush surroundings from its hilltop vantage point, the dark blue-green sea with its white, crashing breakers relentlessly assaulted the golden sands that comprised the estate’s private beach.

The house boasted over a hundred and twenty rooms, including the great hall, parlors, studies, bedrooms, a conservatory, a library, an indoor swimming pool, a kitchen, a pantry, and a dining room. Some were paneled in oak, others were papered in silk, and still others were plastered with ornamental effects, all under a slate roof of many chimneys, steep gables, arches, and towers behind brick, half-timbered walls and mullioned windows.

The huge house was more than ample for its four residents, their dog and cat, and the servants who tended the family’s every need.

Abner Coldwater had been a rogue. He had done unconscionable things to acquire the fabulous wealth that had paid for this estate. Palm Acres, despite its great beauty and tranquility, was bought, envious relatives in the extended family were fond of observing-if in whispers only, at a distance-with “blood money.” These same relatives pretended to be scandalized by Abner’s deeds, but their indignation never prevented them from attending one of the formal balls or the many dinner parties that Abner’s wife Phoebe sponsored each year.

Quite the contrary was true! These same indignant relatives practically leaped at the opportunity to make an appearance at Palm Acres. At their vilified relative’s home, the sparkling wine flowed freely, the rich food was in endless and constant supply, and luxury was everywhere at hand, both with regard to the landscaped grounds and the elegant furnishings within the lavish rooms. To Abner’s and Phoebe’s faces, they were eminent and distinguished champions of society and culture whose millions were a boon to admirable and charitable efforts to aid the less fortunate. It was only behind their backs that they were rogues and scoundrels who had amassed wealth at the expense of others’ welfare.

Preston never gave any thought whatsoever to any of his distant relatives’ gossip, slander, and abuse. To him, it meant nothing. They could say whatever they wished, in whispers behind his back, as long as, to his face, they remained fawning fools who exuded false politeness and charm. It was enough-far more than enough-that he had inherited Palm Acres from his late parents.

For Lana, the unkind remarks stung, even if she knew of them only second-hand, from those who hoped to curry favor with her by apprising her of the very things about which she would gladly have remained blissfully unaware. Like her husband, Lana took refuge in the vast luxury and deep comfort of the estate, content to have such a fabulous home, a wealthy husband, and a lovely child. Her two-year-old daughter was an angel on loan from heaven, she often told others. Little Emily had made their family complete.

Tonight’s dinner-soup and salad, homemade bread, roast squab, potatoes au gratin, spinach, and cream corn, topped off with chocolate pudding with whipped cream-had been, as always, a delicious, if late, finish to a long day. Afterward, Preston slipped into his silk pajamas, smoking jacket, and leather slippers, taking a seat in the overstuffed armchair opposite Lana’s position on the scalloped loveseat’s velvet cushions. There were a few business papers to review, and then he would retire. To help him to sleep, he would relish a glass of champagne from the family’s wine cellar.

“Damn it!”

Lana looked up from her latest Regency romance, a slight frown of concern on her lovely face.

“I wish I hadn’t given the servants the night off,” Preston complained. “I would love to have a glass of champagne just now, but--”

Lana set her book aside, closing its gilt edges upon the red ribbon bookmark to hold her place. “I’ll get a bottle,” she volunteered.

Preston smiled. “Thanks, darling, but I don’t want to bother you.”

She returned his smile. “It’s no bother, dear. I’ll be just a moment.”

He nodded, embarrassed. She knew of his childish fear of the dank, dark room in the basement. Even as an adult, he loathed the underground wine vault. It was disagreeably damp and dark even when the dim bulb was illuminated. Retreating from the sudden light, the shadows, it seemed to him, just waited for a chance to leap forth from the niches and alcoves and crevices to which they’d momentarily retreated. They bided their time, waiting to plunge the clammy room into impenetrable darkness so that whatever monsters lurked within the walls could assault him, kill him, and devour him.

Such fears were stupid and childish, he knew. Such fears were unmanly. They were also quite real to him, despite his embarrassment. Except in response to an emergency, he would not-could not-step foot into the wine cellar. It was to that dark, dank place that his father had exiled him time and again, locking him within the close, clammy space, alone and trembling in the darkness. Such was his punishment for any infraction, no matter how small, of his father’s countless rules, and such was his father’s means of ridding his son of the boy’s “foolish” fear of the dark.

The effects of such callous “punishment” were to establish within Preston a lifelong dread of the wine cellar and any other small, dark places as well as bitter self-loathing and mortification toward his childish fears and senseless timidity. Even now, he had to rely, in his servants’ absence, on a woman to fetch his wine for him, and he cursed again his unmanly fear of the dark.

Lana knew the arrangement of the bottles in the racks, where the ports, sherries, and brandies were kept and where the amontillados and champagnes were stored. Selecting a dusty bottle of Dom Pérignon, she smiled, knowing how much her husband enjoyed the delicate white wine. She turned, to ascend the narrow stone stairs, and the heavy, blunt object struck her hard in the back of the head. Lana gasped in pain and surprise, falling to her knees. The Dom Pérignon crashed against the stone floor, bursting in a spray of glass and wine. Darkness engulfed her. Lana’s last sensations were the pain in her head and the fine bouquet of the world-famous champagne.

“Preston!” Lana’s attacker cried, the voice shrill and loud over the house’s intercom speakers.

Upstairs, Preston hastily extinguished his cigarette in the smoke stand’s crystal ashtray and hurried toward the elevator that would take him to the feared and hated cellar.

“Preston!” the voice cried again.

When the elevator doors parted, he sprinted from the car, down the subterranean corridors, to the dank, dark room.

Lana lay face down on the wine cellar’s stone floor, atop the broken champagne bottle and the spilled wine.

Preston’s confederate, Natalie Martin, said, “Don’t just stand there. I can’t move her by myself.”

Preston bent over his wife’s corpse. Taking Lana’s body by the wrists, he pulled, grunting, and managed to turn the cadaver onto its back. Lana’s beautiful blue eyes stared sightlessly into his own. He shuddered. The sight of her dead body was more horrible than he had imagined, especially in the close confines of this damp cellar. Together, he and Natalie wrapped the corpse in a heavy plastic bag and sealed the bag with duct tape.

“Take her ankles,” Preston instructed his partner in crime.

The lovely, dark-haired woman with the dark eyes took an ankle in each hand and, together, Preston and she were able to drag Lana’s corpse over the rough, stone floor to a niche behind one of the wine racks.

Waiting on a low table beside the niche was a trowel and a bucket of mortar. Beside the table, there was a pile of bricks.

They stood Lana’s bagged body up against the back wall of the narrow alcove. Preston’s murderess held the corpse erect while her accomplice set the bricks in place, added a layer of mortar between each successive tier, and walled up his late wife inside the alcove.

His partner rewarded his labors with a kiss. “I love you, Preston Coldwater,” she proclaimed.

“I love you, too, Natalie Martin,” he replied, returning her kiss.

She withdrew her lips, stepping back. “You mean Natalie Coldwater, don’t you?”

Preston smiled. “Of course,” he answered, “as soon as a decent interval of mourning has passed.”

“How long do you think we’ll have to wait?” she demanded.

“I think we’ll have to wait at least a year.” He glanced nervously around the damp wine cellar that had just become his late wife’s tomb.

“There’s no way I’m waiting twelve months!”

“How about six months, then?”

She nodded, the smile returning to her face. “Are you asking me to marry you?”

He grinned. “I’ve already asked, and you’ve already accepted.” He again hazarded a glance to his left, a quick look to his right, and a peek behind.

She was distracted by his furtive, darting glances. “What are you looking for?” she demanded.

He swallowed. “You know how nervous this place makes me.”

She snorted derisively. “It was your idea to entomb her body here.”

“I know, but that doesn’t mean that I have to like it.” He started toward the arched doorway.

“Wait,” Natalie said.

He stepped into the hallway outside the wine cellar. Looking into the dank, dark room, he asked, “What is it?”

“The brat,” she said, “and Lana’s sister, Cecilia. “What do we do with them?”

“What do you mean?”

“Wouldn’t it be convenient if they were to take up residence beside darling Lana?”

Preston blanched. “You mean that we should kill them?”

Natalie’s eyes swam with amusement at his discomfort. “Why not?”

“No!”

“We don’t need them underfoot all the time, getting in our way.”

Preston shook his head. “I won’t do it. I won’t hear of it.” He hastened down the corridor.

Natalie hurried to catch up to him. “At least let’s talk about it. We don’t need a brat and her nanny. We don’t need anyone but ourselves.”

In the end, however, Preston was adamant. Needed or not, two-year-old Emily would be allowed to live, as would her Aunt Cecilia.

After all, if they were going to keep the child, they would need someone to mind her.

For more, visit The Madhouse

Mystic Mansion: A Sequel to Saturday's Child

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Synopsis

Mystic Mansion: A Sequel to Saturday’s Child

Crystal Fall and her friends discover that the horrors of Nazi Germany didn't end with Adolph Hitler. An ancient artifact, which he believed empowered him and his Third Reich, has been discovered, and its awesome power has been unleashed in a mysterious mystic mansion. Can Crystal Fall and her friends save the world. . . again. . . even if, as Fran Newell believes, God is not on their side? For readers who have graduated from R. L. Stine but aren't quite ready for Stephen King, this novel and its prequel, Saturday's Child, are perfect reads!



Sample

Prologue

The blonde-haired woman sat hunched against the concrete wall of the underground bunker.

The bunker was one of many in the two-story complex fifty feet below the Chancellery Building. She had the run of the complex, but she preferred to be wherever her soul mate led. At the moment, he was here, planning the army’s defenses.

Now thirty-three years old, she was considered a handsome woman. Only ten years ago, she had been strikingly beautiful, but the last decade had been expensive. It had cost her not only her beauty, but also her youthful lust for life and, very nearly, her sanity.

Now, as she sat in the dank subterranean shelter, she studied her life’s companion, the odd-looking man with the odd-looking mustache who sat hunkered over a table, surrounded by Army officers and staring at maps.

How different life had seemed when, at twenty, she’d met him at Heinrich Hoffman’s photographic studio! He’d struck her, even then, as somewhat odd-looking. She’d mentioned to her sister Isle that he wore a “funny mustache and carried a big felt hat.” At the same time, though, she’d been struck with the air of authority that virtually radiated from him. Even then, he had carried himself with an arrogant pride. He had seemed a man of destiny.

When he’d asked her to become his domestic partner, she’d left Heinrich’s employ. Over the years, she’d gone from living in an apartment in Munich to a villa in the same city, and her lover had provided her a chauffeur-driven Mercedes. Life for the former photographer’s assistant was good. Her perception, it appeared, had been correct. Her paramour seemed to be a man destined for greatness, indeed.

Nevertheless, during the next decade, although her material existence continually improved, her emotional and spiritual health declined. She read cheap novels, watched romantic films, and alternated between exercise and brooding inactivity. Her appearance became increasingly a concern to her, and she assured and reassured her mate that she would stand by him, even unto death.

To her, he would confide his most intimate fears and concerns. One was that he would lose the source of his power, the Spear of Destiny, as he called it.
As a youth, long before he had come to power, he’d stood in the Hofburg Treasure House, where the holy relic was on display, staring intently at the wondrous weapon—the spear that the Roman soldier Longinus had used to pierce the side of the crucified Christ.

According to the lore associated with this spear, it was imbued with Jesus Christ’s passion. It was steeped in the very agony and ecstasy that Christ had experienced while hanging on the cross. Consequently, the spear was said to equip its possessor with enormous power to do good or evil.

Now, it was 1945, and their enemies had surrounded them, forcing them to retreat to this last refuge.

Leaving the conference at the table, he came to her. “It is still not too late,” he said, passionately. “You can save yourself, my darling. I have yet within my hands the power to secure your life, your future. I have ordered you to go. Now, I beg you.”

“Have you accepted your advisors’ counsel that you should flee to the mountains around Berchtesgaden?” she asked.

Without hesitation, he replied, “My place is here.”

“As is mine,” she declared.

“No, you must save yourself!”

Eva Braun smiled at his thoughtfulness, at his love. “It is better that ten thousand die,” she replied, “than that you be lost to Germany!”

She had said this when she’d heard that millions of Jews were being tortured and exterminated and that millions more were scheduled for such a fate. It was necessary, he had explained to her, to feed the demons with which he was in allegiance. They thrived on misery and human suffering. Under his regime, the demons had fattened and had rewarded him accordingly. His rise to power had been meteoric.

He averted his gaze, not wishing for her to see the emotion that her words had engendered within him. Her fierce devotion was moving.

“Then you will not go?”

She shook her head. “My place is at your side.”

“This is no game,” he told her bluntly. “This is the end. We will die.”

“Then,” she said defiantly, holding his gaze with hers, “we will die together.”

He kissed her hand before returning to his generals.

Eva thought of the sacrifices that he had made in leading his country to its glorious destiny as the Third Reich.

The First Reich had lasted for well over two hundred years, from 700 to 936, from the time of the Merovingian kings to the time that the Vikings threatened to tear the empire apart. The First Reich had blossomed under Charlemagne, who had also possessed the Spear of Destiny. It was not until long after his death that the First Reich was divided into the five duchies of Franconia, Swabia, Bavaria, Saxony, and Lorraine and a long period of weak kings ruined the glory that had been the First Reich.

By 1860, Germany had been divided into the German Confederation of thirty-nine states. The Second Reich began when Kaiser Wilheim I was crowned. Thereafter, through warfare and political machinations, a succession of leaders established the Weimar Republic at the end of World War I, and the Second Reich came to its end.
Some time between or during the first empires, the Spear of Destiny passed into the hands of the Hapsburg family, who displayed it in a kind of museum, the Hofburg Treasure House, in Vienna, along with their other regalia.

In 1933, the German Reichstag burned down, and the communists were blamed, giving the Nazis the opportunity to capitalize on the German people’s fears and limit their rights under the Weimar Constitution. Wondrously, Hitler then secured the authority to enact laws without parliamentary action, and the beginnings of his rise to power began as the Nazi Party became the only legal political organization in the state and the rights of other groups were methodically repressed through the Gestapo’s brutal tactics. Now, Hitler was able to pursue his dream of a Master Race exercising world dominance.

Behind the scenes at every turn, Hitler had wielded the Spear of Destiny. Always, the miraculous weapon had inspired visions in which Hitler had seen his dreams unfold. Even as a youth, he’d visited the Hofburg Treasure House to see the wonderful artifact, standing for hours before the ancient weapon, spellbound by it.
As soon as he’d risen to power, Hitler had taken the spear as his own, and it had both guided and empowered him ever since.
Now, however, something was wrong.

The enchantments were failing.

Hitler himself had lost faith in his glorious dream of the worldwide rule a pure Master Race.

Eva Braun shook her head in disbelief. Despite Der Führer’s words, she could not believe that the end had come. She could not believe that they would die.

How could their dream end this way?

The Spear of Destiny assured her paramour’s success, had it not? For years, the spear had led him to victory after victory until his dominion over the entire world seemed inevitable.

Nevertheless, the Russian army had done the unthinkable, forcing them to retreat to this subterranean bunker.

She looked at the spear, which Hitler had set against the wall near his seat at the head of the table. Its point glowed blood-red, as bright and glorious as ever.
They would not be defeated—not now, not ever!

Had not the Reich created an elite force of commandos, the Werewolves, to disrupt the enemy? No less a personage than Goebbels had vouchsafed the sanctity of the
Werewolves’ mission, asserting in his radio messages that “Satan has taken command."
He had sworn, further, that “"We Werewolves consider it our supreme duty to kill, to kill, and to kill, employing every cunning and wile in the darkness of the night, crawling, groping through towns and villages, like wolves, noiselessly, mysteriously” to wreck vengeance on the Reich’s would-be conquerors.”

The bunker shook. The bare light bulb in the suspended fixture swung madly back and forth as a thick cloud of earth and concrete dust billowed within the close confines of the chamber that, Eva believed now, for the first time, might actually become their tomb.

“My Führer, you have received a telegram,” an aide announced, presenting the message to Hitler.

Hitler slit open the sealed communiqué and read the text:



My Führer!

In view of your decision to remain in the fortress of Berlin, do you agree that I take over at once the total leadership of the Reich, with full freedom of action at home and abroad as your deputy, in accordance with your decree of June 29, 1941? If no reply is received by 10 o'clock tonight, I shall take it for granted that you have lost your freedom of action, and shall consider the conditions of your decree as fulfilled, and shall act for the best interests of our country and our people. You know what I feel for you in this gravest hour of my life. Words fail me to express myself. May God protect you, and speed you quickly here in spite of all.

Your loyal
Hermann Göring



Hitler flung the telegram aside, color rising through his neck and reddening his face. His countenance was transformed. Where moments before had appeared the features of a man, there was now something indubitably demonic about the twisted visage. He pounded the table with his fist, glaring at the officers surrounding him.
“This is treason!” he cried. “This outrage will not be brooked!”

The officers looked fearfully at one another or averted their gaze altogether, glancing at the tabletop or the floor.

Eva also averted her gaze.

She hated to see him like this, during one of what she had come to regard as his “fits.” Lately, it seemed, he was having more and more of these fits.

During such moments, he was transformed, and the inner, hidden beast within came to
the fore in all its savagery.

He turned to his top aide. “Borrman, send a reply at once! I want Göring to understand that I regard his message as an act of treason for which he deserves no less than death. However, in deference to his previous long-term loyalty and service to the Reich, I will spare his life, provided that he resign immediately.”
Martin Bormann nodded. “It will be done, Führer.”

As the aide started to turn, Hitler stopped him. “I want him arrested at once! See to it that the S S receive the order.”

“Yes, my Führer.”

Another artillery shell struck near the Chancellery Garden. The bunker filled with
a thick, choking dust.

The point of the spear seemed just as bright and luminous, Eva thought.

They could weather the Russians’ assault.

Their elite Werewolves would prevail.

The Spear of Destiny, after all, was still in the hands of the Reich.
She consoled herself with the thought that the spearhead still shone as brightly as ever.

Didn’t it?

Then why, she wondered, had Hitler earlier allowed all but essential personnel to leave the bunker complex?



A few days later, Eva and her beloved took time to marry.

“I wish that I could be a proper bride for you,” she apologized.

Hitler held her face in his hands. “I wish that I could have given you the world.”
The officiating officer awaited Der Führer’s command. There was little time to waste on pleasantries. More and more of the Russian’s artillery had been striking closer and closer to the Chancellery.

Without taking his eyes off his bride, Hitler gave the official permission to begin, and he and Eva were wed. In death, if not in life, they would be married, at least.

“I regret that we cannot have a proper honeymoon,” the groom said.

“My entire life with you has been a honeymoon.” She replied.

“I am sorry, my darling, but I must return my attention to—“

“There is no need to apologize,” she said, shushing him.

Yesterday, he had sent for Luftwaffe General Ritter von Greim, who had arrived through a barrage of Russian ground fire, landing his plane in the street near the bunker complex. In the process, the general’s foot had been injured, but he was here, now, and that was all that mattered for, today, Hitler would name Greim as Göring's successor, and the general would become the field marshal in command of the Luftwaffe.

Yesterday, Hitler had performed a more unpleasant duty. Word had reached him that S S Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler had resorted to treason as well, attempting to negotiate with the accursed Allies. Himmler had even offered to surrender some of the Reich’s western armies to the American general, Eisenhower!

Hitler’s rage had frightened even Eva. He’d ordered Himmler’s immediate arrest and, to make an example of what would befall such traitors, he’d had S S Lt. Gen. Hermann Fegelein, Himmler’s personal assistant in the bunker, taken to the Chancellery Garden and summarily executed. When she’d heard that her brother-in-law had been shot on Hitler’s command, Eva supported her paramour, repeating what had become almost a mantra. “It is better that ten thousand die,” she had sworn, “than that he be lost to Germany!” It was, perhaps, this expression of her uttermost devotion to him that had persuaded Hitler to marry her.

Hitler, however, had not been the same since the disastrous defections of Göring and Himmler. The latter’s treason affected Hitler more than anything in his late career. Himmler had been a trusted confidant from the beginning. “Faithful Heinrich,” Hitler had dubbed him. Next to Eva, there was no one in whom Hitler trusted as much. He had allowed himself to put his faith in this one man above all others, and Himmler had sought to betray that trust in the end, when he perceived his own life to be endangered. Hitler had meant nothing to the coward! The Reich had meant nothing. Only the worthless life of Heinrich Himmler had counted in the end.

It was Himmler’s betrayal that made Hitler understand that, Spear of Destiny or no Spear of Destiny, the Reich would fall and he would die.
All that remained within his power was to determine the manner of his death. It was unthinkable to allow his enemies to execute him.

If die he must, it would be by his own hand.

“Bring me Blondi,” he ordered.

“Yes, Führer,” Borrman replied, fetching Hitler’s favorite dog. Hitler commanded that Blondi be administered a lethal dose of poison. When the animal died a few minutes later, Hitler and the others in the bunker knew that the toxin was effective, and he handed capsules to each of his female secretaries. “I wish that I had better parting gifts,” he said. “At least these will allow you to die with dignity, rather than at the hands of our accursed enemies.”

By now, it was common knowledge that the Russians were only blocks away from the Chancellery. Their artillery fire had begun to score direct hits.
To her horror, Eva had seen that, at last, the bright spearhead was dimmer—much dimmer than it had been even days before.

Along with her groom, she had come to accept the inevitability of the loss of the war and the failure of the Reich. She did not wish to live in this world any longer if her husband could not rule it absolutely. She was prepared to die. Taking her husband’s hand, she walked with him through the gloomy bunker, into their private chamber, having bid farewell to Bormann, Goebbels, Generals Krebs and Burgdorf, and the other staff.

Soon afterward, those outside the couple’s chamber heard a gunshot.

Bormann and Goebbels entered their room.

Hitler’s body lay sprawled upon the couch. He had shot himself in the right temple. Blood ran from the wound, streaking his cheek with its crimson stain.

His bride was also dead, but she had died from having swallowed the same poison that had killed Blondi.

Outside, Russian artillery rounds continued to rain down upon the Chancellery Garden.
Bormann and Goebbels ordered the bodies of Hitler and Eva carried to the Garden, saying “Douse them with gasoline.”

Nazi soldiers poured the fuel on their bodies, and the corpses were ignited. The fire raged, dancing furiously. The roasting corpses blackened in the blazing inferno. The air filled with the sickening stench of burning flesh.

Bormann and Goebbels presented stiff-armed Nazi salutes.

From time to time, the soldiers poured more gasoline onto the fire. The blackened bodies crackled and sizzled in the flames.

“I think they’re done,” one of the officers observed dryly.

The soldiers removed the blackened corpses, wrapped them in a tarpaulin, and buried them in a shallow grave.

The Third Reich had fallen to the combined might of the Allied forces.

In the subterranean bunker, the Spear of Destiny rested against the wall. Its head no longer glowed. It had the dull, lackluster appearance of flint.



Fran Newell tossed and turned.

A full moon was high in the star-studded heavens, peering through the tangle of twisted limbs that the mimosa tree outside her bedroom window stretched into the sky.

Fran’s heart beat fast, and she panted for breath. Her arms flailed.

Shadows shifted in her bedroom as the night breeze gently lifted and tossed the mimosa branches. The soft fragrance of the pink powder-puff blossoms wafted through Fran’s open window.

Fran opened her mouth to scream—but, then, she saw him—the white-robed figure stood before her. A dazzling white light emanated from within him; he was its source.

Fran slunk backward, frightened.

She heard his voice. It was gentle, peaceful, full of love. Fear not.

What frightened Fran even more was that she hadn’t seen his lips move. The light
was so bright that she could not see his face clearly; it was like a sun—so brilliant that it hurt her eyes to look at it directly. Somehow, she knew that his lips hadn’t moved—yet he’d spoken to her; she’d heard his voice.

“W-who are you?” she stammered.

I am Alpha and Omega, he said, the Beginning and the End.

Wasn’t that a verse from the Bible? Fran thought. Wasn’t that something that Jesus was supposed to have said? What would Jesus want with an atheist like me?

Your time has not yet come, the voice informed her. You shall live to serve me. Your eyes shall be opened, and you shall see.

Fran frowned. What was that supposed to mean? She wondered. There was nothing wrong with her vision. I see just fine, she thought.

You shall see visions; you shall prophecy in my name.

Okay, Fran thought, this is all too weird. I’m going to wake up now!

Abruptly, the dazzling figure was gone, and Fran felt an enormous pain in her head.

She heard another voice. We have a pulse!

Fran gasped, sitting upright in her bed, the disheveled counterpane in tangled mounds. The moonlight shone through her window. Her teddy bear lay beside her, and she clutched it to her chest. “It was a dream” she told the plush animal, “just a dream.”

It was a dream inspired by a reality, though. Unknown to her best friends, Crystal Fall, Dee Dee Dawkins, and David Lewis, Fran hadn’t merely suffered a concussion during their battle with Dr. Trask and his hypnotized servants in their bid to take control of Edgar Allan Poe High School and its students’ minds. When Randy Sheffield had shoved her headfirst into that bank of lockers, Fran had sustained injuries that had actually killed her—if only for a few moments. At first, she’d attributed her strange dream about the brilliant figure in white to a “near-death experience,” but research showed that, whatever had happened to her, she hadn’t had such an experience, even if she had been clinically dead.

No, her research showed that, other than seeing a shining figure in white, she’d experienced few of the common characteristics associated with a near-death experience. Fran had felt no calmness (she’d been frightened). She had heard no buzzing sound, and she had felt no tingling sensation. There’d been no awareness before the dream that her soul had separated from her body (Fran believed, in fact, that there was no soul). She’d fallen through no dark tunnel. She’d felt no ecstasy. She hadn’t met bewildered spirits. She hadn’t seen a beautiful garden.
She hadn’t watched a filmstrip of her life that highlighted missed opportunities to lend others a hand. She’d met no deceased friends or family members. There’d been no sightings of celestial cities of light.

Yes, she had encountered a Being of Light and, yes, she had been sent back to this world with a mission—but, to her mind, two out of more than a dozen possible characteristics did not constitute a near death experience.

It had been only a dream, induced by the powerful sedatives she’d been administered in the emergency room.

It had been just a dream.

Then, the emergency room team had revived her.

Thereafter, she’d lain in the hospital for a week, recovering.

Except that she hadn’t recovered—at least, not completely.

The dream or vision or whatever she’d had while she’d been clinically dead continued to haunt her.

There was no God.

Jesus had been only a great teacher and a superior moral leader. Certainly, if there were no God, Jesus couldn’t have been the Son of God. That was just a myth.

So how did she explain the figure that had said, I am Alpha and Omega?

Obviously, it had been a hallucination, the effect of chemicals in her brain, or misfiring synapses, or something. There was no reason to think that it was actually Jesus Christ who’d appeared to her in another realm somewhere beyond this world.
Ockcam’s razor, she reminded herself, was the sensible position to take with regard to such a dubious hypothesis as her being visited by God in the flesh: “Never needlessly multiply hypotheses.” The simplest explanation was to be preferred.
There was no need to bring in the supernatural to explain something for which natural causes could account.

Sure, she’d been dead—for a few minutes—and she’d seen a brilliant, shining man in a white robe that had quoted the Bible, but it had been her own mind creating the imagery and the words, just as her mind created dreams during sleep.

Again, Fran frowned. Why should I, an atheist, dream about Jesus Christ? The question was unsettling, and Fran shivered. Perhaps, she thought, she wasn’t as immune to superstition as she’d supposed. Maybe part of her—a deep part beyond logic and emotion—believed despite her disbelief. What was it that Blaise Pascal had said? “The heart has reasons that reason does not know?”

Even if hallucination could explain the figure in white, what about the other visions—those that she’d had while she’d been wide awake—those that had been of future events—those that had come to pass?

She had tried to repress the memory of these visions, had tried to deny them, but she couldn’t.

The little boy who’d fallen from the tree house in his back yard—he had fallen, just as she’d foreseen. It had been in the newspaper. Wasn’t she responsible for his injuries, his paralysis? After all, she had known—or had seen, at least—and she had done nothing to report the impending catastrophe. Now, the boy had lost the use of his legs forever.

A week later, she’d had a vision of the hornets’ nest in the woods near Eureka Creek—and of the girl taking a shortcut home being stung by the hornets—stung and stung and stung. How many times had the newspaper article said? “Over a hundred.” Luckily, the girl had lived but, again, couldn’t Fran have prevented the calamity? Hadn’t the shining, white-robed figure told her as much?

Your eyes shall be opened, and you shall see.

Fran’s denial had resulted in a boy being paralyzed and a girl being stung nearly to death.

That was absurd!

There was no God.

She was sure of it.

God couldn’t exist—not in a world of suffering and pain, not if God was, as Crystal Fall had assured her, omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent. How could a loving God countenance starving babies and famine and pestilence and railroad accidents and tornadoes and disease and insanity and paralyzed boys and hornets stinging girls and teenage girls dying because they’d been shoved by a brainwashed, hypnotized zombie into a bank of high school lockers? If God existed, he’d have to be a sadist, not a loving God.

On the other hand, what if there is a God? she asked herself.

What if Job had been right in his answer? What if, despite evil, pain, and suffering, God is good and all-powerful and has reasons for allowing bad things to happen to good people? To a cat, it may seem evil that its master won’t let it out, but its owner may know that this apparent evil could save the pet from being squashed to death beneath a car’s tires or from being torn apart by a pack of wild dogs. Maybe God, being all-knowing, knows a thing or two that people don’t. Maybe people should trust him, as Job had argued, saying, “The just shall live by faith.”

Fran thought of the latest vision she’d had. The vision had involved Crystal’s discovery of a dead body in the park they called “The Swamp.”

What if that happened, too?

“It won’t,” she told her teddy bear. “There is no God.”

She recalled her visions of the paralyzed boy and the bee-stung girl.

Coincidence, Fran decided.

The high, full moon seemed to grin at her from its vantage point among the stars.

Saturday’s Child: A Prequel to Mystic Mansion

Synopsis

Edgar Allan Poe High School, Home of the Ravens, was a normal academic institution, populated by normal teenagers--or was it? Once the new principal took over, things quickly went from normal to bizarre, and Crystal Fall’s and her friends’ lives were in danger. But the teens had a secret ally: God was on their side! For readers who've graduated from R. L. Stine but aren't quite ready for Stephen King, this novel and its sequel, Mystic Mansion, are perfect reads!

For more, visit Saturday's Child

Sample

Prologue

Amy Black nodded. Her head dropped, and she woke with a start. Mr. O’Brien was droning on, something about a bare body or a bear named Bodkin or some other such Shakespearean nonsense. Why couldn’t Shakespeare have written his plays in English? she thought drowsily.

She closed her eyes.

Her head fell forward again, and she saw the gun--

It was there, in her locker, under her gym bag.

She reached in, took the cold hard steel in her hand.

Him! That jerk!

She watched him enter the boys’ rest room. Her legs carried her down the hallway, and she pushed the door open.

He was at one of the sinks, washing his hands. He turned, saw her, his mouth and eyes wide with surprise.

“What are you doing in here?” he demanded.

He was always demanding something.

“Can’t you let me have even a moment’s privacy? Do you have to--”

There was a sound of thunder, a flash of lightning, and the gun kicked hard in her hand.

Somewhere, someone was screaming.

She sat bolt upright in her chair, barely able to distinguish her dream from the commotion around her and the ringing bell.

The other kids were gathering their books. They left their seats and hastened toward the door, toward a few minutes of freedom, toward a five-minute rendezvous with their friends. Mr. O’Brien called after them, reminding them of their homework. Amy grabbed her book, too, stuffed it into her book bag, and strode from the classroom, the deafening sound of the gunshot still in her ears.

In the hallway, outside Mr. O’Brien’s English Lit class, Amy paused to lean against the wall. She was breathing fast. She was shaking, and she felt faint. The dream, the vision, the hallucination, whatever it was--it had been so vivid, so real! And this was the third time in two weeks that she had had the nightmarish vision.

Why did she keep seeing herself shooting Ed Warner?

She may not love him, exactly, not anymore. But she still had some feelings for him. Certainly, she didn’t hate him. And, most definitely, she did not want to hurt him, least of all to see him dead. After all, he was her boyfriend, for the time being, anyway.

Sure, sometimes Ed could be a little too pushy--all right, a lot too pushy, demanding even, but, hey, that wasn’t any reason to have such violent fantasies.

Maybe I need help, Amy thought. Maybe I’m going crazy.

The thought frightened her. What would Ms. Martin, the counselor, do if Amy dared to confide in her about her “dreams”? Call the cops? Have her arrested? Or put her into a mental institution? Amy shuddered, feeling even weaker. She couldn’t bear being torn from her home, from school, from her parents and friends, and she didn’t think that the understanding Ms. Martin would, in fact, be all that understanding. Maybe no one would, not doctors or her mom and dad or even her friends. She didn’t understand it herself. How could anyone else?

No, Amy decided, she couldn’t risk telling anybody about these strange hallucinations. She would just endure them and maybe, eventually, they would no longer plague her.

She bent over the water fountain and drank deeply of the ice-cold water. Her head hurt. There was a dull ache behind her eyes that threatened to explode at any moment.

“Hi, Amy!”

She straightened, forcing a tight smile.

Her friend, Dee Dee Dawkins, looked at her, an expression of concern on her face. “Are you all right?” Dee Dee inquired.

“Not bad for a Monday,” Amy lied. “Just a little headache.”

“Yeah,” Dee Dee replied, with a giggle. “A headache by the name of Ed Warner.”

Amy gasped.

Dee Dee’s eyebrows lifted. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Sure,” Amy said.

She didn’t sound too convincing, Dee Dee thought. Then Dee Dee said, “Duh!” and smacked herself on the forehead with the heel of her hand. “It’s because you’re breaking up with him today, right?”

Amy smiled. This time, the smile looked more genuine. “Well, maybe not today, not with this headache,” she said, “but soon.”

“I’m glad,” Dee Dee said.

Amy arched an eyebrow, looking pointedly at her friend.

“Well, I am,” Dee Dee insisted. “He’s become such a jerk!”

The girls came to a junction in the hallway. “See you at lunch,” Dee Dee said.

“See you at lunch,” Amy repeated mechanically, her thoughts elsewhere.

Dee Dee, looking at her friend as Amy walked slowly down the other hall, shook her head. “Boys!” she said, exasperated.

Amy thought about lunch, about Dee Dee, about the test coming up in Biology, about what a mess her room was and how she’d promised her mom she’d clean it up after school, about the new teen club that she and her friends were considering visiting tonight--about anything and everything she could think about to keep her mind off Ed Warner and the awful visions she had had of the smoking gun in her hand and his lifeless body on the bloody rest room floor.

For more, visit Saturday's Child