Dark Storm

By Dallas Releford

In 1943, the US Navy conducts experiments to make our ships appear invisible to the enemy. The test ship, the USS Eldridge, disappears from the Philadelphia Shipyard and when it finally returns, sailors are embedded in the hull of the ship, some get sick, others go insane, and others become invisible. The government-sponsored project succeeds in creating invisible men; shadow men. Encouraged by their success, they commission an agency, the National Science Research Agency (NSRA) to oversee an attempt to create an invisible army.
Adam Grimes, the director of the project, an intelligent physicist, creates several shadow people and wolves that are large, aggressive killers. The shadow people turn against him and escape taking the wolves with them.
Eager to get rich beyond his wildest dreams, Grimes leaves the project taking the documentation and some of the wolves with him. Using Cold Ridge, Kentucky as a test site, he infects the town with parasites that enter the human body and then are born as wolves. The military, under the direction of NSRA moves in and puts the town under quarantine.
In the seventies, several teens, Brad Randall, Patricia Morgan, Larry Carter, Emily Barber, Carrie Nelson and Jason Kidd encounter the shadow men while on a winter camping trip. The memories haunt them for many years.
Brad Randall returns to Cold Ridge to find out what really happened on that day and runs into a nightmare worse than any of his dreams.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dallas Releford
• Release date: Jul 30, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465957658

Book preview

Dark Storm

By:

Dallas Releford

Published by

Dallas Releford at Smashwords.com

Dark Storm

Copyright (C) 2008 Dallas Releford

* * * * *

This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, places, events, organizations, areas, or locations are intended to provide a feeling of authenticity and are used in a fictitious manner. All other characters, dialogue and incidents are drawn from the author’s imagination and shouldn’t be accepted as real.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without explicit permission from the author or publisher except in brief quotations used in an article or in a similar way.

Smashwords Edition, License notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. The ebook may not be resold or given to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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Dedication

I would like to thank my wife Sharon for her understanding while I was writing this book. She passed away on August 18, 2010. She is dearly missed.

I would also like to thank my agent and typist, Harriet Smith and Martin Smith, my advisor and typist. Their hard work and dedication has made this book much better than it would have been without them.

At the time I wrote this novel, Dana Reed was my agent, editor and counsler. I cannot express my appreciation enough for her help and encouragement. She did a grand edting job.

Credit is also due to my lawyer, Daniel C. Atwood and my financial advisor Ova Helton, Jr. for their sound advice.

I am also grateful to many other people who kept me going through tough times that I have faced in the last year.

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INTRODUCTION

There is a place hidden somewhere between twilight and midnight where things happen out of the ordinary. In this novel, Dark Storm, this place is visited when Brad Randall, a writer struggling to boost his career out of first gear, decides that he has lived with a particular nightmare too long. After many years of dwelling on a day in January in the 1970s when he and several friends encountered something so strange that few of the them remember much about it, Brad decides that it is time to revisit his friends in Kentucky and find out exactly what happened. Hoping to write a book about the incident he is unprepared for what he finds out when he finally arrives in a small Kentucky town.

During the time well spent writing this novel, I was honored and happy because Edwina Berkman, otherwise known to the writing world as Dana Reed was my editor and personal tutor. Without her, this novel would not be what it is today. Dana Reed taught me many things in the many years I have been associated with her. Dana Reed has written many novels. Most of them were published by Dorchester Books. She has written mysteries, horror and in other genere's too numerous to mention. She taught me never to give up, and guess what, I never have given up and never will as long as I can write. This book contains the heart and soul of Dana Reed as well as that of Dallas Releford. I am so fortunate to have her as an editor and mentor.

The working title for this book was Night Shadows. Someone else took that title so I changed it to Dark Storm in 1986. When I began a long association with Dana Reed, I titled it Shadows of the Night. I wasn't happy with the plot so I rewrote it in 1998 and named it Dark Storm.

Now, here are a few precious words that can best describe the contents of this book. Take your time and enjoy every word just as I took my time enjoying every word that I wrote.

In 1943, the US Navy conducts experiments to make our ships appear invisible to the enemy. The test ship, the USS Eldridge, disappears from the Philadelphia Shipyard and when it finally returns, sailors are embedded in the hull of the ship, some get sick, others go insane, and others become invisible. The government-sponsored project succeeds in creating invisible men; shadow men. Encouraged by their success, they commission an agency, the National Science Research Agency (NSRA) to oversee an attempt to create an invisible army.

Adam Grimes, the director of the project, an intelligent physicist, creates several shadow people and wolves that are large, aggressive killers. The shadow people turn against him and escape taking the wolves with them.

Eager to get rich beyond his wildest dreams, Grimes leaves the project taking the documentation and some of the wolves with him. Using Cold Ridge, Kentucky as a test site, he infects the town with parasites that enter the human body and then are born as wolves. The military, under the direction of NSRA moves in and puts the town under quarantine.

In the seventies, several teens, Brad Randall, Patricia Morgan, Larry Carter, Emily Barber, Carrie Nelson and Jason Kidd encounter the shadow men while on a winter camping trip. The memories haunt them for many years.

Brad Randall returns to Cold Ridge to find out what really happened on that day and runs into a nightmare worse than any of his dreams.

The adventure into a gray area between twilight and midnight begins. Anything can happen here, and often does as Brad Randall is about to find out. Often, the past has secrets we should not know about.

Dallas Releford

* * * * * *

Chapter 1

An animal, a branch rubbing against another branch, or a slight movement in the dense snow-covered forest surrounding her caught the young girl’s attention. Dropping the wood she’d gathered for the campfire, she knelt in deep snow shielding her eyes with her gloved hand. Using the pine tree near her for cover, she strained her eyes attempting to see what had caused the disturbance. Maybe a deer or a wandering bear, she speculated as she squatted under the branches peering through the limbs and the dense, falling snowflakes.

Brad? Jason? Are you guys playing tricks on me? Only the whispering wind blowing through barren limbs answered her.

Pulling the hood of her parka closer to her face to safeguard it from the bitter, blowing ice and snow, she peered through the heavy falling snow toward leafless trees at the other end of the meadow. She’d seen something. She was sure of it. If it wasn’t Brad, Larry and Jason trying to scare her, then what had she seen. What was she—a high school senior—doing out in the middle of the woods in February, anyway? Had she really thought about what it would be like before she agreed with Patricia Morgan, her classmate and best friend, to go with her on the outing? They hadn’t expected the blizzard’s sudden onslaught and they had not anticipated that their teachers wouldn’t be able to join them until later because of the weather. They were on their own.

When she had learned that the class was going on an outing in cold weather, she’d laughed and wondered how anyone could even consider such a thing. When most of the class had declined the offer, only she and five other friends accepted the challenge. Now, huddled in almost a foot of cold, fluffy snow, she somehow wished that she’d declined, too.

The wind was colder than it had been when they’d started out on the class outing in the forest. The weatherman hadn’t predicted any snow and now they were caught in a blizzard fighting for survival. Snow flurries, the man on the radio had said. Everything would turn out fine though, she told herself, searching the large popular grove for any sign of movement. A deer would provide them with food. A wandering bear might present a danger they wouldn’t want to deal with.

Now she saw it. At least, she saw something. Fear urged her to run, to get out of the place and seek help. Curiosity held her tight refusing to let her feet move, her mind react or permit her body to move to safety. With her heart pounding, racing madly, she knelt on her knees in the snow attempting to believe that what she was seeing was real and not part of the maddening nightmare she’d suddenly found herself part of.

Several blurry, shadowy figures moved through deep snow toward her with the stealth and dexterity of ghosts moving in a heavy fog. As they approached, she thought they were hunters until she realized that they didn’t have distinguishable features. Nothing more than dark shadows, she screamed silently. Watching them nervously, horrified as they stood in the swirling snow looking at her, she tried to make sense of what she was seeing and could not.

Before she realized it, they were walking toward her, and she couldn’t move. Carrie Nelson, alone in the blizzard with her friends only a few hundred yards away, wondered if she wasn’t going to die. They looked evil to her, like something out of one of her nightmares after she’d stuffed herself with pizza and drank her share of Coke. Six shadowy figures, nothing more than that, with indistinguishable features, stood not more than twenty yards away from her. Attempting to scream, she discovered that the sound just stuck in the bottom of her throat and nothing audible escaped. As they moved slowly nearer to her, she cowered and scampered backward like a scared rabbit until her body pressed against the trunk of a tree. Trapped, she shoved her gloved hands over her face and began to scream.

* * *

Normally words came easy for him because he was a writer, a weaver of fancy words and an experienced novelist who had published several books. On this cold, snowy winter day, good words were more elusive than they had ever been before. Arising from the chair in front of his computer where he had been sitting for the last grueling four hours, he walked over to the window and pulled down the shades hoping to wipe away some of the distractions. The classical music on the local radio station was the next to go and even after all that, he still couldn’t think of two words that he could put together that would make any sense, much less make a sentence. He had reached a gridlock for the first time in his long, illustrious writing career.

The problem was simple to explain, he told himself not caring if anyone else heard him or not. Then realizing that he was alone in his study and maybe the silence—the insane silence that surrounded him—was the problem, he wondered if he shouldn’t turn the radio back on again. The housekeeper always watched the kids during the day when he was working in his office. They didn’t bother him when they knew he was working. His publisher wanted another novel in six months and so far, he didn’t even have an idea about what he was going to write about. Ideas were as vague as the shadows in the forest had been that day. An old memory was still haunting him, taunting him for an answer.

Brad Randall, aging writer with dark hair that was slowly graying around his ears, sapphire blue eyes and broad shoulders struggled with a problem that was only one of many on a cold, blustery winter day nearly thirty years after his encounter with a mystery that had haunted him ever since. Who were the shadow people? He’d asked himself that question through the last months of high school, the four years he’d spent in college earning a degree in literary arts, through a marriage that had ended in tragedy and every night as he struggled to find peace in sleep. Often wondering if there was an answer, he’d shrugged his shoulders and committed himself to forgetting about the matter altogether. Usually after a few hours, he would return to asking himself the same old question as if he thought there might be some logic, some reason for what had happened to him and the others.

Since he was a kid, he had been troubled constantly about an incident that occurred near his hometown in the forest. He’d spent many sleepless nights with that on his mind. Nightmares, morbid troubling dreams and now, flashbacks during the day bothered him.

Somehow, he’d struggled through a troubled marriage, two kids, eleven novels, dozens of short stories and so many problems that Einstein couldn’t count them. His marriage to Jan Miracle had given him two wonderful children, however, it finally ended in death for Jan, the love of his life.

Even with all those problems and tribulations, he’d still found time to produce one novel after another. No matter how hard he worked, how much he slaved, he could not forget about the incident. Realizing that he would never have peace until the facts about the incident were clear in his mind, he decided that he was going to do something about it. His mind had been tortured for too long. He would go back to the town where it all began, talk to those old friends that had been involved, see how they were and write a novel about it. Encouraged for the first time in months, he was appalled because he couldn’t remember all the details of the incident.

Sitting down at the computer again, he stared at the blank screen. What had happened and why couldn’t he remember much about it? There were only certain, foggy, nagging memories about what had happened and no matter how hard he tried to remember the incident in picturesque detailed scenes and in surround sound, they remained unclear. Realizing that the memories were too painful to recall, he attempted to force them from his mind and onto the computer screen.

After typing a few words on the keyboard and lazily watching them appear on the monitor, he found himself stuck on the second paragraph. He couldn’t seem to force the words from his mind to his fingers and then to the computer’s hard drive. Suddenly his fingers found the keyboard again and he began typing as if he were in a trance brought on by painful memories of all the things that had inundated him for many years. Seemingly unaware of what he was doing, he typed for several minutes and then stared at the computer screen. He couldn’t believe what he’d written.

It's not your fault that your wife died.

It's not your fault that those horrible creatures scared Carrie Nelson out of her mind.

Reluctantly, he cleared the screen realizing that he had been on a guilt trip that wasn’t going to go away. Yes, he did blame himself for the death of his wife and he was sorry that he hadn’t stayed in Cold Ridge and married Patricia Morgan, the most beautiful girl in the county. Many other things bothered him too such as the fact that he wasn’t there at that exact moment to help Carrie Nelson when the creatures attacked her. By the time he’d gotten to her, she was already frantic, panicky and scared out of her mind. He had done all that he could even though he still blamed himself for her discomfort and pain.

Clearing the screen easily with the Delete key, Brad wished that he could clear everything just as easily from his tortured mind that haunted him and then realized that nothing in life was that easy. Sighing, he tapped his fingers on the desk probing his mind attempting to shove the painful memories into a shadowy area of his mind where he wouldn’t have to think about them anymore. He knew they would never go away. It was something he would have to face. It was something he would have to learn more about before he would have peace.

Missing his wife, he wished that she was still here looking over his shoulder and encouraging him as she used to do when they first got married. She wasn’t with him, he kept telling himself, except in his mind, in his dreams, and yes, in his heart.

Jan had everything that she ever wanted and his hard work allowed her to have it. Jan never realized that. She wanted something that he couldn’t give her, all his time. She had actually told him that the books and his writing had to go. Emphasizing that they had enough money to live on, she’d threatened to walk if he didn’t spend more time with her. Not much of his time was left after he slaved over the keyboard for eight hours a day. That effort left him exhausted and tired. The situation had worsened as he sold more books. The publishers invested millions in him and wanted him to keep on producing more manuscripts while he was still in demand. Brad had attempted to explain to Jan that he just couldn’t walk out on them. He was selling books and everyone was making money. With the fear that he was losing her nearly paralyzing him from head to toe, he spent less time writing and more time with her. His decision placed a greater demand on him for more productivity in the short hours he set aside for writing. Finally, he explained to her that they would have time together when he retired at fifty. Jan frowned, walked away and he could hear her sobbing as she closed the door to their bedroom.

In the following months, Jan had seemed happier and he had figured she had thought it over and was happy because he would be retiring in a few years. Maybe she was happier, more content because he was actually spending more time with her, he contemplated.

It had been a Thursday and the rain came down in torrents. Returning from a book signing at a local library, he’d been shocked to find a letter on the kitchen table. It was from Jan. The coldness of her words and the insensitivity of her actions stunned and paralyzed him for months. She’d found someone else and had moved out taking everything that she could. Torturing him mercilessly, she’d written about how nice Robert was and how well he treated her. Fuming, he’d tossed the letter into the fireplace, went upstairs to their bedroom and grieved for her for many hours as if she had died. Maybe she had died that day, he thought. Maybe she had.

You’re not responsible for her death, he whispered. The words clung to the end of his tongue and would not escape. She cheated, lied and her own evil was the gavel that sentenced her to her death. Pounding the desk with his clenched fist, he bowed his head and cried. Would the pain ever go away, he wondered.

He supposed that it all was true even though he knew deep down in his heart that he wouldn’t have been able to convince Jan to come home to him no matter how hard he tried. She was too focused, too merged with the man she called Robert, the man that had taken her away from him. Robert was the man that had taken her away and the man that had killed her. Brad really wasn’t responsible for her dying and he tried continuously to tell himself that he couldn’t have done anything to prevent her death. Anyway, he’d taken the divorce in stride managing to keep his eyes off her and her new boyfriend as the judge declared that she no longer belonged to him. With tears in his eyes, pain in his heart and a loneliness he hadn’t felt for a very long time, he’d wandered out of the courthouse. Behind the wheel of his new red Mustang, a recent gift to himself, he drove aimlessly around the city before finally stopping at the park. He had purchased the Mustang because he had figured that he might as well enjoy some of his money.

Most of the time, he’d spent his money on his wife and kids rarely buying anything for himself. He knew that he could afford just about anything that he wanted except that he really didn’t need anything. All he’d ever wanted was his wife, kids and the joy they’d brought to him. Now she was gone and he missed her even though she had walked out on him. Fretting, grieving and angry, he wondered why any God would let such things happen. Things would never be the same without Jan and he knew it. Wandering in the park, he thought about all the good times they could have had, if his profession and the incident hadn’t gotten in the way.

After the divorce proceedings, he had sat on a park bench in the drizzling rain, thinking about the incident, his wife and what would happen to the kids. The two girls, Trina and Melissa were still in school. They would live with their mother because she’d proven to the judge, with the help of a crooked lawyer, that he didn’t have time for them. His lawyer had argued. The judge, a woman, had ruled in Jan’s favor. He would be allowed visitation rights on weekends, however, that still didn’t make the pain go away. He had lost his family, some of his wealth and he was alone again except for the nagging memories of the incident that happened so long ago. Another man had his wife, his kids, a good chunk of his hard earned money and his life.

No matter how hard he attempted to prevent it, the memories of that day in the forest lingered in his mind, haunting his thoughts, preventing him from concentrating on his work and it was getting worse. Memories of the good times he’d had with Jan haunted him unmercifully and he couldn’t get her off his mind.

As he sat in front of his computer, fighting the urge to get up and go for a walk, he pondered over how it had been back then and how it was now. After the divorce, the next few months without his wife and kids had been hell on earth. Writing had become an obsession because it allowed him to forget about his problems, at least for a little while. Concentration had become a problem as he finished his last novel and sent it to his agent. They wanted more novels and he only wanted to forget about the incident and his wife. He loved the kids, so he attempted to focus his love for them into something that would help him to deal with the loneliness.

Two weeks before the divorce, he’d mentioned the possibility that he might be interested in writing about a real-life event that had happened to him as a teen to his agent, Sam Burrows and Sam was impressed with the idea. After answering several questions concerning the incident, Sam thought that it might be a good idea. He was concerned about the shadow people and thought that Brad should write the novel as a fictional work. Brad had agreed. People would never believe that he’d actually seen something so bizarre. Sam had encouraged him to write the novel and told him that the publisher was sure to like it. Immersing himself in his work, Brad Randall began work on the plot when he received more bad news.

On a cold, desolate Chicago morning, the police had arrived at his front door and informed him that his wife was dead, murdered in her sleep. Her husband, Robert Jackson had been arrested and charged with the murder. Jan had finally found her dream man and her dream had murdered her.

The funeral was sad as most funerals are, the weather had been cold and he had felt out of place with the other mourners. The kids had been glad to see him. Two weeks after the funeral, he felt upbeat because the courts had finally given him custody of the kids with the stipulation that he would have to hire someone to stay with them when he was away. Deciding that he’d had enough, that the kids had to have the best of care, he’d hired a woman that he’d known a long time as a housekeeper. Her main job was to take care of the kids and see to it that they did as they were supposed to do. The woman had worked for him before and practically considered herself part of his family.

Brad grieved for the next several weeks. The only bright spot in his life was his kids and his work. He’d lost his wife and had told himself quite confidently that there would not be another.

* * *

That had been over two months ago. Now, on a cold stormy winter day, he sat in front of his computer at his desk staring at a blank screen. His agent had called several times wondering how the book was going. He’d lied to Sam feeling guilty about the fact that he hadn’t written one single word. Something had to be done and he knew it. He couldn’t go on forever feeling guilty about something that he wasn’t responsible for.

Picking up the phone, he dialed a number and waited. Wondering what it would be like to see Patricia Morgan again, he was relieved when someone answered the phone. Patricia?

Yes. Who is this? The voice was soft, sweet and painted pictures in his mind of a dark haired girl with twinkling brown eyes, creamy white skin and a shapely figure. What can I do for you?

Uh, Patricia, I don’t know if you remember me or not. This is Brad Randall. We went to school together a long time ago.

Of course, I remember you, she said and he thought he could detect a tinge of happiness in her voice. How are you doing?

That question led to others and he talked to her for a long time as if he couldn’t tear himself away from her. Measuring every word as if it were gold, he enjoyed the conversation and was so wrapped up in it that he almost forgot the time. It seemed to him as if the very sound of her voice erased the bad memories from his mind and he was happy. She agreed with his idea about the book and invited him to come down and see her. He thought she was as eager to see him as he was to see her.

When the conversation ended, he began preparing for the trip. Hesitant to leave the kids at home, he finally assured himself that they would be okay with Mrs. Moore. She’d raised seven kids of her own before her husband passed away. Packing a suitcase and his laptop, he said goodbye to the kids and Mrs. Moore and drove out of Chicago.

He wondered what he would find in that place he had called home so many years ago as he drove through the slick streets and finally made his way onto the entrance ramp to the expressway.

1

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Chapter 2

After thirty years or so, he was finally on his way to find out the truth about what had really happened to five friends that he hadn’t seen for so long. After years of suffering with the memories and the terrible nightmares, he had called the one woman that he’d regretted not marrying in those faraway times and had arranged for them to get together. Patricia Morgan had been his childhood sweetheart. They’d been together since the sixth grade. He’d regretted the day he’d told her that he had decided to move to Chicago and pursue a writing career. She’d cried that sunny fall day as they were standing in front of Cold Ridge High School. That was the last time he’d seen her as he walked away and didn’t look back at her. It wasn’t the last time that he had seen her image in his mind. The fact that she’d decided to go to college and pursue a career that