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| Ms. B. at the "real" Black Tooth Pond in 2010 |
A little excerpt from the sequel to The House at Black Tooth Pond (possibly titled Broken Barriers at this point)...
My God, she thought, aware of a vague but mounting apprehension, the people of this town had no concept of the horror that had taken root here, somewhere in its dim, distant past. After however many eons, this horror still prevailed, even if it lurked half-hidden in the darkest, most desolate corner of this county. Barely over a month ago, a malign, inhuman something had lashed out and erased from existence at least six individuals, leaving scarcely a trace of tangible evidence. Whether this inhuman something sprang from the same dark netherworld she had infiltrated twelve years earlier or an altogether different one, she had no idea. She didn’t really care to know.
However, preventing any further incursion by the something in question was her job.
Aiken Mill, Virginia. “The cold case capital of the world,” she’d heard this town called.
She slowed her jet-black Ford Expedition and parked it in a muddy circle at the end of the rutted dirt road she’d followed from the main highway. Beyond the windshield, a barrier of tall reeds impeded her view of the misty space beyond.
As she opened the door, a gust of icy air swirled inside and pummeled her face, so she grabbed her black knit stocking cap from the passenger seat, tugged it over her mop of dark brown hair until it covered her ears. Then she slid out and onto the uneven, half-frozen layer of mud. Yeah, it was cold out here, even colder than Alexandria when she’d left this morning. She paused for a moment and glanced around at the skeletal trees that towered around her. But there was no wind now. Not even a whisper of breeze.
Silent.
Damn near creepy.
She ambled toward a narrow gap in the barrier of reeds at the end of the earthen circle and peered into the space beyond.
There it was, glowering in the shadows beneath the skyscraping trees: the dark, glistening surface of Black Tooth Pond, named for the array of jagged, broken tree trunks that protruded from its far end. Around its banks, a thin layer of mist swirled and shimmered like a living, silken shroud. She saw no other movement, heard no sound except the gentlest of lapping of water at the nearest banks.
Still, she sensed an ethereal, dangerous atmosphere about this place, which raised her hackles anew.
And then…
A sharp, warbling trill, uncannily loud, pealed from somewhere in the distance.
A bird cry. The eerie, mournful voice of a whippoorwill.
Only it wasn’t a whippoorwill.
The cry had an unnerving, alien quality, for it was produced by some organ of sound that did not belong to any bird.
She listened for many long seconds, but the cry did not repeat. Whatever had made it was still out there, though. She could feel it: the uncomfortable certainty that some unknown, unstoppable—unearthly—predator was watching her.
After a couple of minutes, her anxiety diminished slightly, and she gazed again at the far end of the pond, studying the jagged, blackened tree trunks, the last remnants of some ancient forest fire.
She had seen countless photographs of this location and read the detailed reports filed by FBI Special Agent Tyler Kincaid, who had headed the Federal investigation of the previous month’s events in Aiken Mill. He had hoped to gather more intel about this place by placing a half-dozen trail cams at various points around the pond and in the woods. However, he had reported that, for reasons unknown, the batteries in those devices continually died within minutes, and none, during their short lifespans, had recorded anything unusual.
Two decades ago, Agent Kincaid had experienced a Close Encounter of the Fourth Kind—a physical interaction with something not of this Earth. It had changed both his life and his official job description. It was for this reason that he had been chosen to lead the FBI investigation of Aiken Mill’s missing six. What he found was a dire—and patently unbelievable—state of affairs.
Therefore, Kincaid’s superiors had turned the case over to Majestik.
And Majestik had dispatched Agent Celeste Muir to take up the torch.
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