Power of the Circle

By JT Adeline

Hidden in Hope Cemetery, in the quaint little town of Osceola, Wisconsin, evil walks and it waits for the arrival of the Chosen One.

It wants her dead.

Almost two years after finding her cousin brutally attacked and lying on a grave with a tilted headstone, eighteen-year-old Cejay Daniels returns to her cousin’s hometown in hopes of finding answers to bring Carmen out of her coma-like trance. With the help of her older brother Gabe, and best friends Lacey and Dean, they discover a timeline with similar events spanning two-hundred years. Cejay becomes even more determined to find the truth; even though she is terrified.

Ghosts visit relaying confusing information, and the Devil appears in different forms threatening the lives of those she loves. With the help of the store owner of Simple Living, Cejay soon realizes she must rely on her brother’s clairvoyance, and her own new found power over stones, to unearth evil and put an end to its reign before it takes another living soul.

Even in the darkest of times, love finds its way in. Can Cejay contain her feelings for Dean, or will she act upon it?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Melange Books, LLC
• Release date: Sep 11, 2018
• ISBN: 9781680466959

JT Adeline

Growing up in the seventies and eighties, video games were played at an Arcade and the Wide World of Disney played a different movie every Sunday for families to enjoy. Large families were not uncommon and an imagination was encouraged. I remember mostly playing hide and seek with my two brothers and three sisters, and going to the local library for story hour with my mom. This is where my love of books began. I loved to walk between the rows and rows of books at the library, looking through as many books as I could before picking out my favorites to take home with me.I remember receiving a notebook in Elementary School where I wrote my first stories, and as I got older writing my own version to books I had read. Then one day I heard a quote in reference to writing, and a new goal in life began.‘If you wake up in the morning and all you can think about is writing, then you are meant to be writer.’It has been a long journey, with many rejection letters and giving up, until the day my sister sent me a newspaper clipping for a meeting of local writers at her library. I stepped out of my protective bubble and crashed the meeting. I ended up sitting next to the one person who welcomed me into Fire and Ice.I am a true Minnesotan, born and raised. I share my life with my husband of twenty-five years and two grown sons. If I am not writing you can usually find me in my art room, spending time with family, or outside with my beloved American Bulldog, Mylo.I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it; A Day as Dark as Night is the first book of the Dark as Night trilogy, and my first published work. I assure you it will not be my last.

Book preview

Prologue

Almost 2 Years Ago

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It’s really easy. All you do is run toward that light, he says as he points to it, all the way on the other side of where we are, by following the glow sticks scattered throughout. The first one to take it out of the ground is Master of The Dead.

That’s why we’re deep in this unlit cemetery in the middle of the night surrounded by the glow of flashlights. I follow the route, which zig-zags all over, until I stop at the light. Of course it’s lit up red. What’s the catch?

Ronan glares at me with his beady eyes reminding me of a mouse, his long straight nose and smaller than normal mouth don’t help any either. "You get to be ‘Master’," he responds putting air quotes around the word, and the beam of his light blinds me momentarily.

Yeah, that helps. I’m a girl. Leave it to me to spout back the obvious. Why would I want to be Master of the Dead anyway?

It’s a game, are you in or out, Cejay?

Obviously, this is the only thing to do on a Friday night in Osceola, Wisconsin. One of the guys they call Talon, who is a major hunk in many ways, shifts nervously from foot to foot glancing at me then at Ronan. He catches my eye and looks to the ground, pretending something is interesting there. His lip twitches to reveal a hooked scar at the corner of his mouth that I find very sexy.

I scowl at Ronan. C’mon, Carmen. I grab my cousin by the upper arm and tug her away from the group. She plants her feet and yanks me to a stop.

No.

I pull harder to get her away from the immediate earshot of the local upstanding members of society. Listen, I demand in a harsh whisper, pointing my flashlight beam at the ground. The name of this game is to scare the bejesus out of the local girl and her out of town cousin.

Carmen plants a hand on her hip and scowls at me. So?

I roll my eyes. Really, Carmen? I hook a thumb over my shoulder. This is the group you want to be a member of, Mouse Head and Cronies R Us?

What’s wrong with them? she demands.

Didn’t I just state the obvious? Seriously, my cousin can be so dense.

Well, I’m doing it, Carmen states, turning her body away from me. I don’t need you to hold my hand.

That got a snicker out of Reanne, Ronan’s sister. Thankfully she didn’t inherit her brother’s great looks, but her sense of style really needs to be updated. Who goes around wearing a black hooded cloak?

I cock my hip and scatter my light to survey the group, two girls and four boys, the greatest members of this fine small town. Why can’t they be like kids in St. Paul and go run someone over with their skateboard, or dive over their heads doing parkour? This cemetery would be great for that. But no, we have to go retrieve a light. Seriously? I sigh heavily as Carmen rejoins the group, turns, and smirks at me. This isn’t her type of thing, I know that, but peer pressure has won over even the best of us and whether I want to or not, I’m going to have to play this game. I’m not leaving Carmen alone. I curve a lip at one of the boys whose name I don’t know and am rewarded with a jut of his chin. That confirms it, Carmen and me, we’re going down. Oh joy.

You in? Ronan asks when I rejoin them.

I decide dragging my feet isn’t going to prevent the inevitable. Yeah, I respond, and Carmen smiles and jumps a little. She really needs to find some better friends. I have one question.

Ronan clenches his jaw and glances at his watch. Alright.

How many others are hiding in the cemetery? I give myself credit for not calling them lowest levels of the gene pool.

Ronan scoffs while Carmen narrows her eyes at me. The rules are simple, he explains, ignoring my question. As I stated before, you’re going to go and get that light, he points to it again where darkness hides everything but its glow, while dodging obstacles along the way. He gives me a cocky grin that sends shivers up and down my spine. I really don’t like this guy.

Line up right here and keep your flashlight on. He looks at his watch and then to me out of the corner of his eye.

Great, I have an admirer.

Five, four, three, two, one…go!

Carmen bolts ahead and I glimpse behind us to see everyone scatter in different directions, their flashlight beams bobbing until they suddenly disappear. I try to keep Ronan in my sights, but he dodges behind some shrubbery and I lose him along with his light. I jump over a low headstone and follow Carmen as she zips and zags around the markers of the dead, then lets out a squeal when a hand appears and nearly grabs her ankle. I proudly stomp on it and chuckle at the yelp of pain. One down.

I catch a glimpse of a shadow reflected in someone’s light and shout out a warning. Dodge right, Carmen! Some kid I haven’t seen yet dives to the ground and swears when he misses his mark. He turns onto his back and lifts his leg into the air at me; I spin out of the way never faltering in my steps and shine my light in his eyes. That’s what you get for trying to take down a kid from the city. Several taller headstones are right in my path and I jump up onto the nearest one and use the others as stepping stones.

Where the hell is this girl from? someone shouts on my left and I almost lose my footing. I push off the last headstone as hard as I can and fly in a summersault over his head, landing on my feet and running before he knows what happened. That’s two.

I make out my next steps in my head and steal a glance in Carmen’s direction. She screams and drops her flashlight as someone shoots out from behind a mausoleum, overcompensates, and goes into a roll. Carmen does a messy sidestep, snatches up her light, and darts toward the red light. She’s fast on her feet and has obviously been paying attention when I’ve taught her some moves. I’m impressed. We aren’t out of the woods yet, or maybe I should say cemetery.

Carmen is ten steps ahead of me on my left, and I don’t like my choices up ahead; a towering headstone, or a massive tree, and unfortunately these goons have the upper hand. I opt for the headstone, going for the outside, but Carmen goes down in a tangle of limbs. Instead of kicking off the base and jumping over what I can, I have to plant my feet on the ground and push off. That’s all he needs to dive out at me and catch me around my middle. I go down hard on my left shoulder, bringing my right elbow out and up to catch whoever it is in the nose.

I got it, Cejay! Carmen’s doing a happy dance with the light in her hand. I scramble to my feet until a hand clamps onto my leg stopping me.

You bitch! Ronan snarls with blood seeping through his fingers.

I can’t help but smile. My gift to you, I respond, taking a few steps toward Carmen when he growls. Way to go, Carmen! I shout lifting my arms over my head and whooping. Carmen grins from ear to ear and the light winks out.

The rest has seeped into my dreams at night, and every waking moment of every day for the last two years. Carmen’s screams still tear at my heart and has buried itself into my soul. I remember running and bumping into others as they came out of their hiding places, too scared to move any further. The spot where I had last seen Carmen was a hole of nothingness and I’m running blindly to get to her, following her gut wrenching screams of utter terror which seemed to be all around me the closer I got.

I found Carmen fifty feet away, sitting on a lone grave with a headstone leaning sideways into the dirt. Her clothes were torn, her exposed skin bleeding from claw-like gouges.

Now, she spends her days in a care facility in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She hasn’t spoken a word since that awful day and neither of us has stepped back into this town…until today.

1

Day One

Osceola, Wisconsin

I cross my ankles as I lean back against my black with pink racing stripes four-door Countryman Mini Cooper and fold my arms over my chest. After a year of saving, and taking time off from our jobs, we are finally here. My eyes are trained on the exact location I last saw Carmen, and even with the sun shining down straight overhead, I still see the darkness and the underlying chill of evil. For some reason I thought it would look and feel different now that I’m eighteen.

This place is pretty and creepy all at the same time. Lacey Harris, my best friend since third grade, pulls her long black hair into a ponytail and winds it up into a messy bun while leaning on the open passenger side door. Lacey and her older brother Dean are a perfect mixture of Polynesian and Black. Lacey inherited their mother’s straight black hair, where Dean’s is kinky like their dads. Their skin is beautifully golden brown and they both have incredible tropical green colored eyes.

My brother and I are basic American kids; brown hair and eyes with skin we have to work at to brown in the summer sun.

There are no lights in there. Imagine seeing it in the middle of the night, I answer coolly, scooting to the side when my brother Gabe pushes open the back driver’s side door and climbs out. He scrubs his hand over the crown of his shaggy hair as he towers over my five-foot-four frame with his hands on his hips, looking more like a man every day. I guess that happens when you turn twenty and you’re six feet tall.

Gabe puts his arm around my shoulders and gives me a squeeze. You really weren’t afraid of anything, were you?

I sigh. No, I wasn’t. Even though I enjoy my brother’s comfort, I know, weird, I pull away and lean inside the driver’s window, grabbing my black and pink bag from off the seat, and sling it over my shoulder. For two years I cowered in the fear of darkness, losing a part of myself and who I was meant to be. I decided living in fear wasn’t the way to live, and with the help of Gabe, Lacey, and Dean, I pulled myself up and out of the inky abyss placing reminders right before my eyes of what I’m fighting against every day. Hence, my black car, black bag, black clothes, and the pink tie-in which is Carmen’s favorite color…get it?

Dean climbs out of the other back door, stretching his legs. He’s two inches taller than Gabe and even though my car is small it surprisingly has nice leg room. Why anyone would want a mini car is beyond me. He stretches his arms over his head and grunts when Lacey jabs him in the gut. He looks sheepishly at me with his gorgeous eyes and rubs his stomach. Sorry, Cejay.

It’s alright. I slide my hand down my prized possession. It’s not your fault I like to be able to see everywhere at once. And in a big vehicle I can’t do that. There’s just some things I’m not going to be able to change. I face Hope Cemetery in Osceola, Wisconsin and finger my protection bracelet. We each wear one. Being homeschooled, and my mom afraid of sending me deeper into the darkness, we began to study the use of stones and rocks for healing purposes. I embrace the cosmic reality, believe whole-heartedly, and make bracelets and necklaces with all forms of healing and protection contained in each one. How else would I have gotten here? Everyone ready and protected?

Yup. Gabe grabs my hand and I look up into his dark brown eyes holding warmth and understanding. Nobody will think less of you if we need to do this in stages, he says, and I almost tear up. Take your time. We can always come up with some excuse if they get home before us.

I squeeze Gabe’s hand in response and take my first step in the direction I swore I would never take again. In nine days it will be the anniversary of Carmen’s change. I’m going to find the answer within that timeframe or at least have some kind of understanding of what really happened here. So when both our parents decided to go on an Alaskan cruise together without their children, we assured them we were old enough to take care of ourselves. Why wouldn’t they believe us, especially with one who has a messed up head?

I walk through the open gated entrance where we had met the others that night. My steps pick up speed as I walk, my head knowing I need to do this and my body panicking in every way imaginable. I stop two steps away from the tree line and our meeting place, and a massive headstone taller than me seems to taunt me. This is it; once I take these last steps there’s no turning back. I’m here and I’m going to find something, no matter how terrified I may get.

I pull out my tiger’s eye necklace from under my shirt and rub it between my thumb and finger. Although a smoky quartz would’ve removed negative energy and emotions, it was the element of keeping me rooted to the earth that prevented me from wearing it today. Carmen had disappeared, and then reappeared, fifty feet from where it all happened. The tiger’s eye will give me determination to move forward and give me the willpower I’ll need to get through this.

This is where we met Ronan, Reanne, and the others, I begin, their faces popping into my awareness as I remember them. There were two other girls and four more boys waiting with us; Talon is the only name I remember from one of them. I take a step forward, making my way between two headstones, my brother and friends quiet beside me already knowing the event. This is where we started from, Carmen and I. I point at Dean. You’re standing where Ronan was when he counted down for us to run.

Dean lifts a foot and I snort. Leave it to Dean to give me the tension breaker I need. His lip twitches and a flash of memory invades my sight and I swear I see Carmen right then and there.

What is it? Lacey asks, touching my shoulder and Carmen disappears.

Just a memory. My feet feel frozen where I stand. I have to make them move, I feel like I’m weighted down and attached to the earth. Thank goodness I hadn’t worn my smoky quartz, or I’d be overly freaking out right now. I take a deep breath. We went this way. I move forward, stepping between headstones and the shadows deepen. I shove my hand in my pocket and latch onto my aquamarine stone to help clear my mind and strengthen my protection. Even though the patches of darkness are still there, they don’t feel threatening anymore and I’m able to move forward.

Carmen ran that way, I remember, pointing. I had to go this way because someone was hiding behind that headstone. My finger points at each memory, the scene coming alive as I speak. I ran across those stones there and a guy commented, wondering where I was from and I did a somersault over his head. My pulse quickens as the memories come stronger and more realistic, my breathing building the closer I get to the beginning of the cemetery and where the red light had been.

Cejay.

I push away the interrupting voice and plod on. Carmen was on the other side of those shrubs when I went this way. I had intended to kick off the headstone when I saw Carmen go down with someone else.

Cejay, stop.

But instead I had to push off of the ground and Ronan came out catching me around my middle. Someone grabs my arm and pulls me out of my path, breaking my connection with my memory. What’re you doing? I exclaim, panic building in my chest and I shove at the nearest person not even seeing who it is.

Cejay, snap out of it!

I’m grabbed from behind and the image of Ronan floods my mind. I lift my right elbow and before I know it I’m being crushed forward by arms stronger than my own, my forehead being thrust down to the earth. My breath comes in a rush, refilling lungs I hadn’t known were empty.

Dean, get water out of the trunk, Gabe demands and lifts me into his strong arms.

What’re…

Shut-up, Cejay. Just shut-up.

It’s his voice that does it, the tense reply of my brother filled with worry. Something has happened; something that I’m not aware of. Instead of fighting, I rest my head against his chest and let him carry me across the cemetery and away from memories that were probably best forgotten.

I rest my forearms on my thighs while I sit on the curb across from the cemetery, letting my almost empty water bottle dangle from my fingertips. The darkened patches inside the cemetery are gone now, only lightly shadowed areas remain where the sun can’t reach. Nothing looks as ominous as it had only moments before. I finish my water and crush the plastic in my hand.

Eat this.

I shield my eyes from the brightness of the sun to see the package dangling before me. I’m not hungry.

I don’t care, Gabe answers, thrusting the power bar in my line vision. You nearly passed out and I can bet you didn’t eat breakfast this morning.

I only look away and attempt to take another drink, forgetting the bottle is empty and crushed within my grasp. Great.

Gabe sighs loudly and drops next to me. Please, Cejay, take two bites. That’s all I’m asking.

Then you’ll shut-up?

Only about the power bar.

I jerk the bar out of his hand tearing it open. A corner of the wrapping falls, hitting the pavement and Gabe reaches down picking it up. I take a bite and my taste buds scream at the amazing taste of quinoa, dark chocolate, and almonds. I’m not going to show my pleasure in the outstanding taste and let my brother know he’s right. I’m disappointed when I take my final bite and crush the wrapper in my hand. Tell me again what happened, I say.

Gabe takes a drink and hands me his water bottle, I chug down a few gulps and hand it back. He stretches his legs out, crossing his feet at his ankles and leans back on the palms of his hands. You were describing everything in detail, like you were actually reliving it, Gabe answers.

You started talking faster and louder, Dean adds, his deeper voice making me want to swoon at the sound. Have I mentioned I have a major crush on Dean, my best friend’s brother? Then your breathing started to get labored and you started to hyperventilate.

You don’t remember any of it? Lacey asks.

I shake my head. Not hyperventilating.

Gabe pulls his feet back and drapes his long arms over his knees. What aren’t you saying, Cejay?

I bite on my top lip, a habit I do when I’m thinking. When Dean first stood in the spot where I said Ronan had been, he smirked at me and I swore I saw Carmen standing off to the side. I shove my wrapper inside my crushed bottle to keep my hands busy. I know it wasn’t her, it just sparked a memory I had forgotten about. Carmen had looked at me like that when she insisted on doing this cemetery thing and I couldn’t stop her.

There’s more. Finish.

Sometimes I hate that Gabe can read me like a book. Mom calls it intuition; I call it annoying and sigh again. I’ve been doing that more and more. My body’s way of relaxing, my therapist had said. Gabe clears his