Stolen Prophet: A Horror Supernatural Thriller (The Prophet's Mother Book 1) Read online

  Stolen Prophet

  The Prophet’s Mother - Book 1

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFEDsw87aoA

  Julian M. Coleman, Copyright 2016

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

  Sign up for my New Releases mailing list. Read my Award-winning César for Free.

  WINNER of the IAN 2016 OUTSTANDING Paranormal/Supernatural BOOK of the YEAR.

  "César could join the ranks of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, and John Ajvide Lindqvist’s Let the Right One In" ~ Lee Gooden, Foreword Clarion Reviews

  This occult saga begins with the Thrust sisters. Rachel and Angelina are survivors. Can Rachel use the dark power to save her sister from his demonic charm?

  New Release!

  Can the DETECTIVE save the Prophet from a Monster

  Harry is an Army veteran who survived a childhood tragedy and tough years in foster care. Today, he’s a pragmatic and no-nonsense Homicide detective investigating the Victor Adamson kidnapping. As he digs for leads, Harry realizes he’s in the middle of dark conspiracy and that his life is in jeopardy. His only option is to save Victor. But to do that, he must understand and embrace the supernatural. He has to believe monsters are real. If he doesn’t, both he and Victor may die.

  Credits

  Editor: John Hudspith

  http://www.johnhudspith.co.uk/

  Cover Art: Melinda Burt

  http://www.pixelperfectpublishing.com/

  Table of Contents

  Prologue – The Legend

  Chapter 1 – Selfish

  Chapter 2 – A Normal Life

  Chapter 3 – Stolen

  Chapter 4 – Hopelessness

  Chapter 5 – Obatala’s Mercy

  Chapter 6 – No Peace, No Safety

  Chapter 7 – Quiet Cages

  Chapter 8 – Up Against a Wall

  Chapter 9 – Broken Memories from the Asexual

  Chapter 10 – Lights, Camera, Suspended Animation

  Chapter 11 – Friction

  About the Author

  The Legend

  The oral history was bleak for the mortal orishas. According to folklore, Olorun, the Supreme Being of the Universe, instructed his son, Obatala, to create land on a blue planet.

  Obatala was an obedient son, but he also did much more than make the blue planet terrestrial. He created life, forming the lesser gods and goddesses, known as orishas. He was pleased with them and because of this triumph, he decided to create minor beings. These creatures were called humans.

  For eons Obatala watched over his beloved planet. Initially he was proud of his humans as they first loved one another; but too soon they became violent and began to torture and fight each other. The humans eventually forced the orishas to meddle on their behalf until the orishas began plotting and warring against each other too. Obatala was disturbed but remained aloof until he saw a chance to change things through her…Dolapo.

  Dolapo was the brave and precocious daughter of a wealthy merchant. By the time she was seven, she was a cunning liar and a talented thief. She stole repeatedly to feed those poor souls who lived in the city’s gutters and underbrush, and then she lied convincingly to her father, who--Obatala knew--suspected her dishonesty.

  The prepubescent thief had also stolen Obatala’s heart. He saw a goodness in her that he not only wanted to preserve, but that he knew could benefit mankind. Maybe with her help, the orishas could guide humans away from their warring and back to their idyllic existence.

  One night as she slept, Obatala crept down from heaven and altered Dolapo’s life force. When she awakened, Dolapo discovered that she’d been changed. She was still mortal, but she’d been granted the gift of agrokinesis: the ability to make flowers and plants grow.

  This gift guaranteed that her people never starved even when drought and pestilence devastated their crops. Her power fed harmony just as Obatala had intended. Dolapo’s benevolence extended beyond her country’s borders and earned her many followers. At her death, the gift of agrokinesis bloomed within her only child, a daughter. Afterward, it was discovered that each mortal orisha gave birth to a daughter who acquired all of her mother’s gift at puberty.

  However, one of Dolapo’s descendants, the mortal orisha whose name is still never spoken, perverted the gift by murdering her daughter before the child could reach puberty. It was this sacrilege that cursed the bloodline. After a time, that same orisha became pregnant again and gave birth to another daughter. But this time, her infant daughter was stolen by her most devoted followers before the nameless orisha could falsely sacrifice her to Obatala.

  The oni, the African king, who had seen his power decline as the orisha’s grew, saw the conflict among her followers as his chance to rid his kingdom of the zealots. He arranged for the nameless orisha’s assassination. After she was slaughtered, he tracked down the infant. Ultimately he was afraid of Obatala’s wrath so he decided that she should live. While still in her swaddling clothes, she was sold, along with her followers, to North American slavers.

  Somehow they all survived the brutality of the Middle Passage, but tragedy continued to curse the bloodline.

  At least that was the myth Grace Adamson passed down to Little Evelyn.

  And her daughter didn’t believe a single word of it. She was tired of hearing the old boring story, and on several occasions, she’d interrupt the oral history with vocal contempt claiming that she preferred, The Telltale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe.

  Chapter 1 – Selfish

  April 1973

  Evelyn was drowning, but not for real.

  The whole fluid-filling-up-burning-lungs-as-her-nostrils-snotted-up-with-a-mean-hurt-for-oxygen wasn’t actually happening. Still, she was drowning in a misery that had her thinking about suicide. She didn’t want to snuff it, but she knew that she had to die to save her mom. She loved her mom more than anything or anyone else.

  Just the thought of ending her life had her suffocating in an emotional whirlpool. Each time she thought about what they wanted her to do, she had to swallow down a scream. This could not be happening! The old stories surely couldn’t be true! Why couldn’t she just be a normal 12 year old?

  The day was beautiful, unforgivably so, and Evelyn saw this as an insult as she glanced out at the manicured landscape from her hideout in the Walker’s attic. She felt like a fugitive among a real family’s boxed-up memories and discarded furniture while her thoughts cycled through one theme like a worn out groove from a beloved LP, What was taking Sissy so long?

  Maybe it was because their plan was bogus?

  She and Sissy were best buds, so maybe the Walker home wasn’t a good hiding place. They could find her once they pieced together that she had run away. No one seemed to be searching yet, and there were still a few hours more before the Walkers came home.

  “Come on,” she pleaded. Sissy had to hurry. After all, her dad wasn’t that hard to find. Although he was her dad, Bill Adamson was the only adult Evelyn knew who wouldn’t tolerate any suggestion of a sacrificial ritual. He could save her from the craziness.

  She wiped the tears from her eyes.

  She didn’t want to be this ori
sha-thing. She couldn’t be this orisha-thing. She couldn’t kill her mom. They were all crazy.

  Evelyn paced the cluttered floor, kicking up dust as she did so, before collapsing in a rocking chair that creaked. The house was too quiet; the whole world seemed too quiet. She felt entombed. Her hands were neatly folded in her lap. They were trembling.

  She had long slender fingers with manicured nails. Each ring finger was adorned with a one-carat ruby or sapphire surrounded by diamonds. Yes, it was always about the money. As long as an orisha bled for them, the followers would keep the rituals intact. The orishas kept them rich.

  Damn them! She hated all of them. Except for Sissy.

  She flipped her hands over and stared at her palms. Did they really expect her to dig into her mom’s chest with her weak hands? She grunted with a grimace. Not happening.

  Tears slid down her cheeks and fell in splotches on her jeans. Her lips quivered as she wiped away her tears. She loved her mom in a way that was sort of like worship. Maybe their bond was like that because they were different in the same way.

  Evelyn let out a harsh sigh. Why did they have to be different at all? Why did her mom have to lead a freaky cult that demanded blood sacrifices? Wasn’t that crap supposed to be outlawed? Maybe she should call the police? But where was her proof? Who would believe her? She was just a kid and they had been doing this for a long time.

  “I won’t do it,” she said.

  Emboldened by the silence, she screamed at the ceiling, “I don’t want it, Obatala! If Mom dies, I’m walking the fuck away!” She’d said a bad word and it was strangely liberating.

  She took a breath, stared at the rafters, at the wood and beams and webbing, and silently challenged her Father-god to strike her down. She braced herself for precious seconds. Nothing happened. She unclenched her body and said, “I thought so! It’s all fucking bullshit. They’re nothing but a bunch of crazy-ass fuckers!”

  Somehow that bit of knowledge made everything a million times worse. They expected her to kill her own mom for no good goddamn reason.

  She bit down on her lower lip and saw an image of herself in festive robes and a matching African headdress, clasping that damnable jewel-encrusted knife and thrusting it into her mom’s chest. Blood spurted and soaked her.

  She shivered and hugged herself as fresh tears rolled down her cheeks. She whispered, as if her plea was a prayer, “Daddy, help me.”

  She tried not to, but remembered how she’d been skewered with a feeling of wrongness when she’d awakened that morning. She’d gone to bed a normal person, but woke up a freak.

  Her senses were off, but not in a bad way; smell was sharper, taste was richer, and touch was weirdly sensitive. Her sight was the most different. While her other senses were just revved up a notch, there were a few instances where she saw the world in a hazy glow. Everything flickered in shades of yellow and red.

  Evelyn understood why her life had turned into a freak show when she’d found the source of the stickiness in her panties - menstruation.

  She screwed her knuckles on her eyes like a small sleepy kid as she continued to weep. In her religion her puberty was the big deal.

  She remembered how she’d fled the restroom and tracked down Sissy. Her best-bud had been chatting up the dark and lovely basketball player she had spent weeks not-so-secretly ogling. Yet, one look at Evelyn’s face was all it only took for Sissy to shoo him off.

  Evelyn led Sissy to their favorite smoking spot under the stairwell. Evelyn thought she would explode as she blurted her tragedy. Sissy’s cherub face first registered shock and then grief.

  The girls cried, hugged, and bickered to a solution. They couldn’t drive, and although Evelyn had a trust fund, she didn’t have any money. The only plan they came up with was getting Evelyn’s dad to sneak her out of the city.

  Bill Adamson was the only choice because he had married into their religion, and wasn’t a true believer. He privately denounced them all as loony-loon fanatics. Evelyn was pretty sure her dad wouldn’t stand for any cult-arranged sacrifice.

  After they had come up with their plan, Evelyn called his office. Although each time she called, his secretary, Mrs. Alford, responded in a nasal voice with barb-wired efficiency that her dad was busy or in meetings.

  Evelyn didn’t believe her. She suspected that somehow word had gotten out. If one suspected she was menstrual and crying in the girls’ room, then they all knew. They had been waiting for a long time for the transition. They had served up prayers to Obatala for a fruitful continuation, blah, blah, blah.

  Evelyn had been left with no choice. She’d sent Sissy on the fragile mission to find her dad, tell him what had happened, and that she needed rescuing. Now!

  Her thoughts were jolted back to the present when she thought she glimpsed peripheral movement. Maybe it was just a shadow? She nearly threatened herself with whiplash as she craned to track down the source.

  Although she saw nothing except barren walls and crates, she wasn’t fooled. She caught a whiff of her mom’s lavender scent. It was subtle and aromatic and usually comforting, and Evelyn was determined to locate the source. Once the scent faded, Evelyn wondered if she was just sampling crazy now that her world was going schizoid.

  Slowly, she began to breathe unaware that she had been holding her breath, and settled back into her seat. The rocking chair tilted a little to the left. Evelyn felt as unbalanced as the chair. Eventually, her thoughts drifted.

  She tried not to, but she zeroed in on how she didn’t have any maternal relatives. Once she had a grandfather. Grandpa James had been a sour old guy who used to smell like hemorrhoid ointment. That memory caused her to giggle.

  He’d been an outsider, just like her dad, and Evelyn supposed that maybe he’d been a nice guy once. But Evelyn had only known him as a hateful man who was mean to everyone, especially her mom.

  Grandpa James used to say peculiar things. Knife to butter, yes that had been his favorite phrase. He used to brag about how he could kill people just by moving through them. “Like knife to butter,” he used to say, “I can slide through them and bleed them out. I can make it happen real quick, like knife to butter.”

  Evelyn had been scared of him. But her mom? Not at all ever. Grace would just laugh at him and then say in a voice that sounded sweet, but wasn’t, “Your gift to me, Dad. Remember?”

  His eyes would squint, and his mouth would move, but he wouldn’t say another word. Instead, he would trot off on his bowed, old guy legs, grumbling. Weird. Later, a heart-attack stopped him from moving through anyone.

  Evelyn suspected she knew the reason for his hatred. Would her dad hate her too if she was forced to…?

  She shook her head to free herself of that thought. She tried to think of anything nice while she waited with antsy anticipation for rescue. But she just couldn’t let it go.

  Evelyn had never really participated in the religion. She preferred watching television or gossiping to performing any of those boring duties in the temple. But after she grew boobies, her mom insisted, which Evelyn couldn’t do without frequent eye-rolls and under-the-breath backtalk. She was forced to listen to yawn worthy stories about orishas. She really didn’t know what all that meant until her mom started explaining about the transfer of power.

  Grace had made the transitioning sound magical. And at first, Evelyn kind of bought into it the way her mom surrounded the crazy with pretty words that described dancing and singing and feasting to celebrate the power passing and all the while praising Obatala.

  Hey, wait a minute. What did you just say?

  Of course it was a joke.

  But no, wait a minute?

  Her mom, wearing a silk robe and fancy headdress, was going to get carried down the aisle, and placed on a ghoulish looking marble altar. Everyone else was supposed to be dancing and singing and worshiping Obatala and Olorun while Evelyn was supposed to take that big knife, the one with the jeweled handle, and carve open her mom’s chest. At the end of that
gruesomeness, the power would completely pass from mother to daughter. Everyone would praise the new mortal orisha who bravely saved her mother from suffering the curse.

  The power transference had to take place at the start of puberty. Any longer and the mother would be compelled to kill her child. So the consequence was that if the daughter didn’t kill her mother, then the mother would suffer unendurable agony until she was forced her to kill her only child just to end the pain.

  That was some rancid screwed-up story.

  Evelyn had no intention of ever being a part of any transitioning again. Murder was murder. Did that mean that one day her daughter would have to kill her too?

  Well she had a remedy for that, then, she would never have a child. She just added another never to her list of Nevers. In addition to never having a child, she was never going to cut open her mom, and she was never ever going to forgive Obatala for cursing them for something somebody else did!

  She checked her wristwatch. So far, still no Sissy.

  Now Evelyn was growing terrified. What was taking so long? She wished that she could know what was taking…so…so long.

  The room started to spin. She collapsed in the chair as her eyes rolled back in her head. A sweet feeling swelled within her chest. It was so warm and sweet that it reminded her of sunshine and honey, or a sticky sweetness like tree sap? What a bizarre thought…but when her eyes finally rolled back in place, she saw the world in a red and gold haze.

  She was sort of dreaming, and in this dream, she saw into her dad’s office. She saw him trying to comfort Sissy. Poor Sissy was weeping as she pleaded Evelyn’s case, but her dad regarded her tenderly as he shook his head, no.