Old Shadows: The Tangled Dreams Series, #1

By Brooke Brennan

When Liza Diamond faked her own death, she never expected her own mind to unleash shadows that were memories that never happened and visions of a future that could not be. The visions derailed her well-planned new life.

Plagued by dreams and visions, Liza stepped into the dangerous world of the past where old demons lurked in her heart and in the small town she had fled. She could not trust the people around her. Could she trust the voices that guided her to impulsive actions that defied logic?

She had no choice. There was betrayal in those nearest to her. All she could trust were her visions of the future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joanne Reid
• Release date: Apr 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386252351

Brooke Brennan

Brooke Brennan writes about paranormal ways of seeing things. 

Book preview

1

The shimmering was happening again. Liza Diamond slowed down and pulled her car over on the elm-bordered block of Walker Avenue. She had to stop driving until her sight normalized. She took deep breaths and tried to concentrate on her breathing.

It was a challenge to slow her breathing and be calm as her hands gripped the steering wheel so hard her wrists ached. She relaxed her shoulders and uncurled her fingers and release her grip. Breathe in. Breathe out. She was parked against the curb on the opposite side of the street, the car facing against traffic. Or, it would be, if there had been any traffic.

Her panic was clearing and being replaced by puzzlement. How did she end up parked on the wrong side of Walker Avenue? What had happened. This was not the first time Liza had what she called a spell but it had been years since her last fuzzy-brain episode.

It didn’t take a genius to understand why she had this bad moment today. It was her first day back home. She snorted out loud at the concept of Walkersville as home. A girl named Elizabeth Coffin had grown up here, on the other side of the town. Liza Diamond had been born and created in Boston.

Was her brain damaged? Was this a lingering side effect of that old blow to her skull? Her vision had cleared. Mercifully, there were no cars on the street. She looked around and her gaze stopped at the large old mansion to her left.

The house had been there for nearly two centuries. Liza remembered it from her childhood. It was one of Walkersville’s first buildings. As she sat in her car, gathering her equilibrium again, she looked at the house and felt a sensation wash over her.

When she drove off the 95 turning east toward Walkersville, she had felt cold and nauseated. It was barely an hour’s drive from her home in Boston but it was a lifetime away, a different universe. Not once in ten years did she ever have the urge to even think about the miserable town. Not even in those dark moments when revenge motivated her, could she think about the town.

Yet, here she was in Walkersville, in Armstrong Point. As if the car had a mind of its own, it turned off the Line Road and drove along the curving street leading toward the center of town and then before swinging right towards downtown, went left through the large stone markers and entered Armstrong Point.

Armstrong Point, with its gentle slopes with elms, maples, and pines, with its stately old homes and sleek new oversized creations replacing the old homes that had outlived their beauty. She drove the meandering wide streets. She shook her head, trying to regain her clarity of vision and thought.

She had been driving toward the tip of the point and the Walker mansion when she had the spell. Whatever compulsion had driven her to come back home – she snorted at the thought of this as home – still held her in its thrall. The spell was likely brought on by stress, she told herself as she steered her Lexus back out on Walker Avenue.

She rolled her shoulders to get the tension and continued her journey to the tip of the point and the old house – her point of departure. The mansion had dominated the town for more than 200 years since Josiah Walker built it on ten acres of land in 1799.

Large, white, with an actual turret at the southern corner, the mansion was surrounded by rolling green lawns and copious flowerbeds. As she drove slowly past the elaborate wrought iron gates, Liza Diamond allowed herself a small smile. Even from the main highway, it was obvious that the lawns could use a trim and that pleased her.

The satisfaction Liza took from the ragged grass lasted as she eased her Lexus over the next hill and down past the golf course towards the Armstrong Point that was on the river side of the town. She was halfway through the complex network of curving streets and the exit from the Point, before she realized that her little smile had frozen on her face, nearly a grimace.

Oh God, I hate these people, she said as she took the next corner too sharply, steering towards the exit from the enclave of doctors and politicians and lawyers and old money.

The long honking of a car horn startled her and annoyed her at the same time. She glared at the driver coming out of a side street. It was a teenager, a girl with long pale brown hair falling straight back from a white hairband.

Some local snob in training, just letting Liza know that driving faster than a delicate and classy twenty-five miles an hour was not acceptable. Liza curled her lip in the general direction of the girl and stepped on the gas a little more firmly. Let her call the police. Report that someone in a silver Lexus had glared at her.

Liza drove through the stone gates, her heart racing. At the first red light before entering the business district, she caught a glimpse of her tense face in the rear view mirror. If just driving through the Point makes you feel like this, how the hell do you think you’re going to be able to settle down and live here? Tell me that, Miss Diamond, she said to her reflection, emphasizing the Diamond.

She knew she should forget checking into the Atlantic Inn, turn the car around, and return to Boston. Never mind that every action, every stroke of work, every dream for the past ten years had the single goal of her revenge. That revenge meant she had to return to Walkersville.

Now that she was here, she knew that some things were just too hard to fight. It had been a form of insanity, dealing with the dichotomy of seeking revenge while avoiding the reality of being in Walkersville for that revenge.

Face it, Liza. Just face it, you’ve got to face it. Sooner or later, she told her reflection in the rear-view mirror. But could she? Perhaps at the age of twenty-eight, it was time to get on with her life as it was and not go chasing after what might have been.

She could do a lot worse than she was doing. The employment agency she had established because she couldn’t find a decent job without references at the age of nineteen had grown and grown until she became a headhunter for the oddest and most elite array of clientele.

Liza Diamond had an absolute genius for bringing the right people together. In the beginning, it was a matter of helping her friends work on their resumes and interview skills. She had a second sense, an intuition, that guided her in executing these skills.

Then, she began to go back to places that had not hired her, wearing clothes she borrowed from the friends she stayed with, her hair and nails done by friends who worked in beauty parlors in return for her help in getting them the job. She even used breathing and projection skills taught to her by an aspiring actress friend who needed someone to help her prepare for auditions.

She strode into offices, asking for a brief meeting with the manager, and she explained that she was a personnel broker. Tell me exactly the kind of person you’re looking for and I’ll find that person for you.

Her business card simply stated her name, her title, Personnel Broker, and her phone number. The number was an answering service and she had the calls forwarded to wherever she was currently staying. If anyone asked where her office was located, she simply smiled and said, Beacon Hill. But you don’t come to me. I come to you.

It was gutsy. But she was young and after what happened in Walkersville, nothing could scare her. Today, driving through the downtown of her hometown, she was discovering the hard way that maybe nothing in Boston could scare her but everything in Walkersville could.

Liza no longer placed secretaries, hairdressers, and receptionists. Her specialty was placing people with unique skills with people who had specific needs. Because much of her clientele was in the arts and entertainment business, they were a mobile lot. As a consequence, her reputation had spread across the continent in a strong thin thread of satisfied clients.

The agoraphobic writer who needed an assistant to handle his life so that his agoraphobia was not noticed. The high-powered high profile lawyer who needed a personal shopper who could be trusted not to sell his secrets to the tabloids.

Liza could live anywhere in the country. Why did she feel compelled to stay living so close to Walkersville? She must have known at some level that she was going to make the decision to go back home. She blinked back tears. She could make deals with the biggest names in the country. And yet, here she was. Afraid of people she despised.

2

Liza drove slowly along Main Street. Not much had changed. The Book Nook was still there. The Sentinel office was still as shabby as ever. The restaurant was closed and there was some sort of community storefront there.

The Atlantic Inn marked the southern side of the downtown. The Inn had been modernized and Liza wondered if it had turned into a decent hotel. She pulled into the wide parking lot along the side of the Inn and took a deep breath.

It was getting late in the day and she was hungry. If nothing else she could get something to eat at the Inn, get a good night’s sleep and head back to Boston in the morning. She locked her car and took her luggage out of the trunk. One large suitcase. A compromise between an overnight bag and enough belongings to stay for a month. She hoisted it out of the trunk, slammed the trunk shut and strode toward the Inn.

Just to the right as she entered the hotel was a lounge and Liza deliberately didn’t look toward it. She wasn’t ready to make eye contact with anyone she might know. Who might know her. The clerk was young, not much more than eighteen. He would not know her.

She checked in and took her key to a room on the second floor. She freshened up and washed her hands. There was no room service so she locked her room and went back down the steps and looked at The Hitching Post and the at the restaurant on the opposite side of the lobby.

Inside the lounge, The Hitching Post, decorated in a western motif, Paul Walker nudged his drinking companion, and said, There she goes again. He was watching the slender woman standing near the front desk. I tell you, that’s Betty Coffin’s brat.

His companion, Grayson DeWitt, blew at the foam on his beer and watched the leggy redhead stop and speak to the clerk before striding towards the restaurant.

Right. Uh huh. Yeah. Those Coffins out on the Line Road are noted for their beauty. And their dress style. Seems to me I saw old Betty herself come into town just last week wearing an outfit exactly like that. He indicated the coffee-colored linen slacks and jacket the redhead was wearing with a nod of his bald head. Must have been one of those mother-daughter matching outfits they carry down at Rose’s Clothing.

Grayson laughed, a deep belly laugh. Hate to disappoint you, you gossiping old woman, but that Coffin girl died years ago. If you don’t believe me, ask Betty. That’s what put her right around the bend, losing her daughter like that. Besides that hair color’s all wrong. Way too red.

You never heard of hair dye? Paul snapped.

3

That evening, in her trailer on the Line Road leading out of Walkersville to the north, Betty Coffin Haniman shoved her feet into her husband’s old slippers. Her feet didn’t so much ache as throb.

I got to lose me some of this weight, she said to no one in particular. Her husband, Jim, was in the living room area of their trailer watching Jeopardy. He never bothered trying to ask the questions but he did enjoy it when the contestants were wrong.

Betty was in the kitchen corner on the other side of their chrome set, slicing potatoes for a big fry-up of potatoes and eggs. Her sister-in-law, Mabel, sat at the table rolling her own cigarettes with a little black plastic gizmo. A pile of tobacco and a stack of preformed white, filter-tipped tubes were stacked in front of her.

Jehoshaphat! Jim. Can’t you turn the darned thing off and talk to a person for a change?

What for? She’s got you to talk to. Besides, I know better than to say anything when she gets talking diet. What’s a man supposed to say?

I’m not talking about that. Mabel slammed more tobacco into her cigarette roller.

Jim turned himself slightly sideways and looked hard at his sister. I been sitting here all day long with you two. What else is there to talk about? We decided we couldn’t stand the new preacher so we wouldn’t bother starting to go to church again. We picked out the shows to watch tonight and, I might add, you got your first choice. We did our critique of Oprah. And you informed us that you couldn’t quite afford to move out yet. So what do you expect me to talk about now?

Our critique of Oprah? Mabel snorted emphasizing the word ‘critique.’ To Betty, she said, I think he watches too much of that public television stuff.

Betty didn’t reply. She dumped the sliced potatoes into a sizzling skillet, nibbling on one of the raw slices. She let out a long, shuddering breath.

Aw, Mabel. You and your damned big mouth. Now, look what you’ve done. Jim pushed himself out of the chair and moved into the kitchen next to his wife, Don’t cry, babe. You know I hate to see you upset.

I’m not crying. She poked at the potatoes with a spatula. It’s just too much to think about. She turned suddenly to face her husband, the spatula held up as if it were a weapon. What if it is her?

Jim looked at his wife and he knew who she was talking about. Her daughter, Elizabeth Coffin. He’d heard a rumor that she was seen in town today and he had been hoping that Betty wouldn’t hear it too. Betty was just fine until she got to thinking about the old days too much and then she just took to her bed.

"Babe, it ain’t. You know it ain’t. I mean, I loved her just like she was my own kid and all and I miss her but