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Every Foul Spirit
Last Updated : 2021-09-06
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So . . . what am I told? A familiar small town. A wrathful, metamorphic killer with supernatural abilities. A young girl whose time has come—angel of life, and death—is the only one who can stop his unspeakable deeds. Katie Franklin has turned twenty-one at last, and been released from the Ransom Sanitarium. And hell has been released with her. Now it’s back to the Val, where monsters are real . . . Something evil is stalking the shadows of Blackwater Val, and it wants lifeblood and flesh. What she finds waiting in the unhallowed darkness there will forever haunt her—and you. Return with her if you dare. To see the dead children. Feel their torment. To face the old terror. ©️ Crystal Lake Publishing
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Every Foul Spirit EPILOGUE
EPILOGUETHE SLUMBERING MANawakens as he feels something enter him, penetrate his person. It violates him, takes his flesh in unbearable manners. He cries out horribly in the darkness as it works its way inside him, undoing everything, breaking him. Dooming him.I MUST HAVE THIS VESSEL, he hears its voice thunder in his ears, nearly splitting his skull in two.Vessel, the man thinks, not comprehending. Vessel?BODY.He is no longer alone. Whatever this is it is firmly within him. He hears its laughter ...Get out of me, the man thinks. He struggles wildly against it, panicking, and then he screams in torment as the char-blackened entity punishes him with excruciating inner pain, setting each nerve ending alight. The man shrieks and spasms, contorts in agony, until at last his struggling ceases and he has no will of his own left whatsoever.HEEL, PET.All is quiet once again.At length he gets up out of the bed and reels, unsteady on these borrowed legs. He st
Last Updated : 2021-09-06Every Foul Spirit 12
12“HE’S GONE,”Katie said hoarsely into her cell phone. She sat inside her room at Pye’s New Look Motor Hotel, petting the German shepherd that lay on the bed with her.“Gone? That’s all?” said Palm Clemency on the other end.“Yes. He’s gone.” Gone to the dogs. Katie bit her lip, and cleared her scratchy throat. “He burned in the fire—Cornelius Prichard.”“And he was Vespers? Our killer.”“Yes.”“How do you know this?”“I just know it. Did you find the knife in the field?”“Yes.”Katie took a drink of orange soda and winced. “It’s his. Pritchard’s. He was the murderer, Chief.”“Why? Why’d he do it?”“That I don’t know.”“And he died in the fire that turned Shaw-Meredith House into cinders? How did it happen? Why there?”Katie said nothing for several seconds: “He’s gone, Chief.”Clemency exhaled. “So that’s it? That’s all I’m going to get?”“You have his knife, isn’t that enough?”“No. It is not.”“Well, it’ll have to do for now. Trust me.”There was a pause. “W
Last Updated : 2021-09-06Every Foul Spirit 11
11KATIE CARESSED THE small keepsake on a black cord around her neck, the vial containing the last, vestigial ash remains of her dead mother. The feel of it calmed her. I’m flying, she thought as she approached the night-black structure, with its half-collapsed roof and its empty, gaping hole for an entrance. Look at me go.There were specters here. Poisoned. Foul. Insane.Having suffered and died so horrifically within, the ancestral house was theirs—or perhaps vice versa. She could see them in the shadows: a horde of malingering and tortured, crucified souls gathered around the passage, mocking her, anxious to welcome unwary guests into their midst.“Clear out,” Katie ordered them, limping forward, her hands balled into fists. “I’m coming through, so make way. Do not come near me.”They parted suddenly, fearful of her, drawing aside in lunatic tatters to clear a path.Candlelight was flickering inside.Katie invaded the rank, crawling darkness of Shaw-Meredith House. A fou
Last Updated : 2021-09-06Every Foul Spirit 10
10“REBECCA AVENUE,” muttered Katie, straining her eyes in the dark. “Rebecca—where are you, Rebecca? You twat.”She searched for the street her car was parked on, limping along with Blondie in tow. A police car crept by on night patrol, and again she receded into the fog and waited, keeping the dog out of sight. Her legs almost gave out once but she steadied herself, spurring her battered muscles on, and continued walking.Finally there it was: the burnt-orange Dodge Avenger.She popped the locks with her key remote, letting Blondie hop up into the back seat. Katie slid into the front and sat a moment. In her fatigued state, she felt as if she could put the seat back and become unconscious right there. Instead, she drank from the bottle of spring water in her console holder, poured some into her cupped hand so the dog could drink also.Then she caught her own reflection in the rearview mirror.Digging through her glove compartment, Katie found wet wipes and some napkins and was
Last Updated : 2021-09-06Every Foul Spirit 9
9ASTERS, AND LARKSPUR ... Katie kept her eyes on him as she walked backward into the field, moving slowly, thrusting out her bloody hands, and Pritchard hesitated.“No more stalling, witch,” he told her, advancing forward again.“You don’t know where you are, do you?” said Katie, gulping to get air into her lungs. She continued backing away, staggering deeper into the field. The abandoned bell tower rose from out of the fog behind her.“Witchbitch, witchbitch,” he tittered, grinning his spiderish grin. “Deviate from us.”“Do you?”Crickets chirred in the grass. Went silent.“No more, I said.”“Look ... killer of children. Killer of beasts.” Katie’s eyes were ablaze now. She stretched her crimson arms out at her sides, waggling her fingers gently upward, coaxing. Blood dripped and soaked into the earth.“Rise, my lambs. My darlings. Rise.”Cornelius Pritchard came ahead. Smiling. He heard something nearby, and then noticed the ghostly shapes surroundin
Last Updated : 2021-09-06Every Foul Spirit 8
8KATIE SAT IN her car on the darkened road, holding the hand-stained glass fragment in her lap. Her thumb hovered over the darkest of the etchings upon it, the rose with black-red petals. Crucian Crowe.She longed to touch it, stroke its surface, and to feel the climbing roses shimmering and warming to her caress ... but she hesitated, knowing it would bring them forth, snatching them from their home inside the ancient glass——The Rosarium Glass, world unto itself, sustained by its own garden’s bewitchments, and by the illusive ones partaking of its magic who might or might not be immortals.Katie stopped herself, and wrapped the piece of rose glass within its coarse red buckram again, slid it under the front seat of the Avenger. She got out and locked up the Dodge with her key remote, left the car there with its alarm light blinking. Started walking.She wasn’t even sure where she was—the street sign read Rebecca Avenue.Leaves were moving in the night wind. The
Last Updated : 2021-09-06Every Foul Spirit 7
7A BLUE TARP COVEREDthe cinnamon-haired girl’s body. Katie could see her shape, lying discarded there in the eroding drainage ditch. Coils of her hair, still attached to her head presumably, spilled out from under the tarp. A bicycle lay tipped over on the hill.“It’s Jilly Sweet’s little girl,” Clemency was saying as he led her down. “Woman from over at the café.” His face was strained, weary in the overcast light of day.“What’s going on, Chief?” It was Lou Garko, trailing after them. “What is she doing here?”“Keep the stragglers away please, Deputy. If you would.”“Who is this person? Why’s she—”Clemency spun on him. “Goddamnit, Lou, just keep everyone back. Do you understand?”They descended side by side. “This is bad, Katie Kate,” mumbled the chief, his voice grim. “I shouldn’t be doing this. You cannotbe here.”“I’m already here,” Katie said. “We can’t stop now.”Chief Clemency pulled on some tan Latex gloves and motioned for her to halt. “Stay there. Do n
Last Updated : 2021-09-06Every Foul Spirit 6
6KATIE SAW THEIRhuge woolly heads coming over the rise, heard the loud, guttural noises they made as they charged across the open grazing plains. Three massive bison were nearing, dark brown in color, a gigantic bull and a pair of cows; four, really, including the smaller reddish calf tagging along. Katie noted their shaggy bulk as they ran, the short sharp horns.They all stopped abruptly in their tracks, stood unmoving, ghosts in the tallgrass, staring blankly, then one of them broke away from the rest—the giant bull whose rear half was a dirty white, Kate could see now, sable brown fur covering its head and mottling back over its humped shoulders. It came rumbling like a train across the rolling meadow land, leaving the others behind.“Miracle,” Katie breathed, her eyes dreamy-wide, her heart soaring.He was headed straight for them, she realized with some alarm. Right for the boundary fencing and the individuals this side of it. Katie stepped away from the group, who wer
Last Updated : 2021-09-06Every Foul Spirit 5
5BLESSING ACRES CERTAINLY had changed a lot. Gone were the apple orchard and the small Pick-Your-Own pumpkin patch Katie remembered, and the Christmas tree grove. Also absent were most of the outbuildings, including the Petting Corral and its animals. Only the old lime-green farmhouse and great round barn remained, with a few tents here and there, surrounded on all sides now by sedge meadow and grazing pastures.After paying for parking next to the buses, Katie trudged up the lane past the BLESSING GRASSLANDSsign, the legs of her denim jeans tucked inside her faux leather knee-high boots. She rolled her head around, feeling the tightness in her neck muscles from sleeping in the chair the way she did last night and waking up so out of sorts.She could see an American Indian woman at the Welcoming Tent near the barn, black hair tied back from her dark, pretty face. When she got closer, Katie glimpsed a silver ring in her pierced lower lip and at once recognized the woman. Excit
Last Updated : 2021-09-06
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PROLOGUE
PROLOGUEA FIGURE WALKSwith grim determination through the dark heart of a silent graveyard. Mindful of her surroundings, she searches, cloaked beneath a canopy of midnight clouds, for one marker in particular. She is young, still a girl really, barely twenty-one, yet she moves between the shadowy tombstones as though completely at home. As if this is where she has always belonged. Home amongst the bones.So, what am I told?She finds the marker she is looking for, the one she’s dreamed of in nightmares—WINTERMUTE—and kneels at the grave. She brushes debris away from the footstone: dried dead leaves, a condom wrapper, a willow tree seedpod.What lies under the ground becomes instantly aware, currents running through its decomposed husk. It tenses and listens for her, eye sockets agape. Its fleshless jaws widen to scream ...The young woman catches it in time. “Shhh,” she whispers. “I’m here. They wouldn’t let me out.”Lips gnashed and gone, finger bones worn awa...
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To Readers
Every Foul Spirit is a mystery/thriller novel by Crystal Lake Publishing about a girl who has an important mission to fulfill. After Katie Franklin turns twenty-one, she can finally leave the Ransom Sanitarium and the hell that came with it. But now it is back to the Val, the place where monsters exist, and there's something evil stalking the Blackwater Val shadows that wants flesh and lifeblood. Things that are waiting for Katie in the unhallowed darkness can forever haunt her. Will she have the power to fight evil? Read the story to find the answer.
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