Death Knell: The Frontenac Sisters: Supernatural Sleuths & Monster Hunters, #3

By S.H. Livernois

An ancient enemy plots in the shadows.

In 1960, a quaint vacation town in the Smoky Mountains was torn apart by a mysterious explosion. People who'd lived there for generations were forced to leave, turning their beloved home into a ghost town.

 

Until, under the cover of night, someone else moved in. Or perhaps something.

 

Six decades later, the surrounding towns have fallen into a state of neglect and decay, forgotten by the outside world. In places like this, it's easy for people to go missing. But dozens of people? Hundreds?

 

Detective Tristan Sidders seems to be the only person keeping track, and he has a strange theory to explain the disappearances. He believes a powerful mob rules these mountains and that every misfortune ties back to them.

 

Only Hyla and Lizeth Frontenac will listen to Sidders, but the more they listen, the closer this mysterious mob moves in. And then a strange old man appears, spouting threats and prophecies too bizarre to be believed.  

 

Prophecies that threaten the entire world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Boonies Press
• Release date: May 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393984009

Book preview

Prologue

Maury leaned against the charred oak tree in his front yard. Its leaves had been burned away by fire, along with his childhood home.

Only the blackened stone foundation remained. He drew the lines of the house in his mind—the front porch, white siding, the windows marking the living room, Ma and Pa’s room, Lula’s, Willem’s. He imagined them in their usual places. Ma, sewing. Pa in his shop. Willem, helping him. Lula at her piano, practicing scales, which had always annoyed Maury.

He would give his life to hear her play now.

Everything and everyone but him was gone—because he didn’t get the measles. It had infected his little brother and sister, and his mother had stayed home to take care of them. Pa had likely stopped in to check on them. All of them, together…

Maury squeezed his eyes shut, forcing out the tears. He’d been a brat that morning. It was a beautiful late-spring day, and he’d wanted to stay home, too.

No, Constance had said. School is important.

How important was school now? If Ma had just said yes, Maury would be with them now. His mother’s soft voice sounded in his ear, telling him what he knew she’d say: This was how his life was meant to be. She’d said such things as a comfort, but staring at the ruin of his home, Maury didn’t feel comforted, just broken and alone.

The sun crept low in the sky, washing golden rays over the scorched meadow behind Maury’s house. He pushed himself off the tree and whispered goodbye to his home and to the dead.

See you tomorrow, he said.

He walked toward town, past a collection of foundations that were once his neighborhood. He remembered every house and who had lived there. Wood and bone, both burned to ash in a few minutes’ time. It was a horrible way to die—at least fate had spared him that much. Ma would say he’d been saved for some purpose, but it was easy for the dead to say such things. The dozens of children orphaned that day asked themselves why, but no one living had an answer.

As Maury neared town, evidence of the fire dwindled to a few charred trees and the burnt frames of the buildings that still stood. Then, two miles from his house, every sign of the fire vanished, as if the explosion hadn’t happened at all. Everything was untouched—the striped awnings and benches, the fountain in the town square, the hardware store, the barber shop, ice cream shop, pharmacist.

The survivors were supposed to accept the official explanation—that a gas leak had caused the explosion. Accept it and then move out of town and on with their lives. Maury didn’t believe the story, and he wasn’t the only one, but everyone who had voiced such concerns publicly had been silenced one way or another. The fire chief’s body had been found in an empty field two weeks before. The father of Maury’s friend, Shep Mills, talked to the paper and then disappeared. Maury may have been only seventeen, but he wasn’t stupid. He understood what people would do to keep a secret.

Maybe that was the purpose fate had saved him for: to honor the dead by uncovering the truth.

He walked through the abandoned streets, searching for clues to a mystery he didn’t understand. Someone had destroyed his hometown for a reason, and that someone wanted to keep that reason secret. To destroy evidence, maybe? Was there some valuable resource like oil or gold beneath the soil? Maury had lived here his whole life, and he saw no value in the place other than it was the place he grew up.

He stopped in the center of the street. After this block came the iron truss bridge, which spanned the black waters of Deephole Run. On the other side of the bridge, the road shot into a countryside dotted with the occasional house and farm. Maury stared at the blue mountains to the west, which caught the pale-yellow light of the setting sun. The woods to the north remained dark and impenetrable.

Who would choose to live in Centralia? There was nothing to do here. It was in the middle of nowhere, a hundred miles from any city that mattered.

That’s it…

A remote town in the boonies was the perfect place to hide. But who needed a whole town to hide in?

A yellow light flared on the horizon north of town, emerging quickly from the woods and down the hill toward him. Headlights. Twenty more pairs followed behind the first. Maury bolted off the street and toward the nearest building, which was Centralia Housing and Loan. He plastered himself against its mural of the Smoky Mountains, painted sometime in the fifties by schoolchildren. Its cartoonish animals—red wolf, cougar, black bear—peered blindly across the landscape, toward the cars now whizzing over the bridge one by one. A Bentley, Cadillac Coupe deVille, Aston Martin, a row of vans. When the last one passed, Maury crept to the edge of the building and peered around the corner and into town.

Pairs of taillights lined up in the middle of the street, glowing like red eyes. Maury turned onto the sidewalk and ran back toward town, quietly as he could. A couple blocks from the closest van, he ducked into an alley and took out his camera. Black-clad figures emerged from the vehicles. He snapped their pictures as they pointed east into town, and unfamiliar voices called out indistinct commands. Strangers walked into the square, down side streets. Van doors were opened and bulky items were hauled out and carried down the street. There must have been a hundred people.

I can smell you! a voice called, soft and polite.

Maury hadn’t noticed that one of the figures had broken off from the rest and now stood on the street’s center line, a mere fifty feet from where he hid. Maury snapped the man’s picture; he was tall and broad shouldered, but it was too dark to see his face. The man breathed in a deep pull of air.

How strange. I thought you had all left.

A pause. The man took a few steps forward, his form black against the silvered lines of Ginny’s Beauty Salon.

I imagine you’re having a hard time letting go. I can understand that. The stranger’s voice echoed eerily. But you need to understand something in return. You no longer live here. This is no longer your home, and you must leave.

The stranger’s head pivoted, and Maury assumed he was searching for him. He pressed his body tighter against the building.

Now.

Maury couldn’t explain what happened next. He felt a hand slide between his body and the building and… push against his head, shoulders, back, legs. The violent, jarring shove steered him out of the alley and into the street, the pain spreading inward to squeeze his muscles, organs, bones. He’d never been more afraid. It was worse than the day of the explosion, when he’d huddled inside his English classroom and the floor trembled beneath his feet. He was more afraid than when he ran toward home and saw a great ball of black smoke above his neighborhood.

The fire chief and Mr. Mills were right—it wasn’t a gas leak. Now Maury knew the truth: It was these people. Whoever they were, they were the ones who had destroyed his hometown and killed his family and a hundred other souls. These people wanted to hide in Centralia.

As he was shoved across the bridge, Maury tried to fight it. He needed to face them and get the answers the dead deserved. But instead he ran. Faster than he thought possible. He ran past the bridge and down the road, past the houses and farms. By the time he reached the town sign, his entire body was aching with cramps, and his lungs were on fire.

Centralia

A Mountain Playground

Population, 2,500

It was his home, not theirs. Ma and Pa, Lula and Willem—their souls rested in Centralia, and he couldn’t leave them. Maury tried to take a step forward, back into town, but his feet were glued to the asphalt. He tensed every muscle in his body and tried to yank himself free, but he felt the skin on the bottom of his feet begin to tear and fell to his knees.

Crickets sang in the fields, and the moon was high. He sat there in the road, staring at Centralia hidden on the horizon within the trees. He imagined his home as it was, its lines and rooms and the happy noises inside. He cried until his entire body hurt, wishing again he’d died that day, too. Dying was easier than this.

Ma was wrong. This wasn’t how his life was meant to be. To hell with fate and purpose. He just wanted to hear Lula play the piano again.

1

Hyla couldn’t get the last words Zeke spoke to her out of her mind.

His confession was hurtful for being brutally true, but also because it was an omen, foreshadowing an end Hyla had always known was coming. She’d felt it in her bones.

You are so hard to love.

The sentence had replayed in her mind from New York to Virginia. All seven hundred miles. It had become a mantra, a reminder, a slogan for her entire life.

You are so hard to love.

Despite her hurt and anger, she understood why Zeke had said it. She and Lizeth had taken their first new case since the ice storm trapped them in Claribel and Arthur’s house, and he wasn’t ready. Perhaps he’d assumed the sisters had given up their business. So when Hyla told him she was leaving for Tennessee, he gave her an ultimatum: if she took the case, he would leave her.

Zeke knew what they did. He’d known back when Hyla was a journalist and he her source. He’d known every time she’d called him from the road, seeking his expertise on a difficult case. But he’d never seen her in danger or held her while she sobbed hysterically in the middle of the night, plagued by nightmares that relived Stuart’s murder.

And it had changed him. He’d grown distant, callous, cold. Lizeth explained that Zeke was protecting himself because he was afraid Hyla would be hurt beyond repair or killed. Or worse. But he’d never said as much—just the ultimatum.

Hyla gripped her phone, willing it to ring. Their parting two days before had been angry. She hated leaving on bad terms, and Zeke wasn’t answering her texts, though she had to admit they were just a weak attempt to fix what she’d broken. Sometime in the past few months, she’d grown to need him.

Hyla, Lizeth whispered.

Soft fingers grazed her arm, and Hyla snapped into the present. She was standing in an uncomfortably hot gas station. They’d stopped for provisions on an isolated rural road somewhere in Virginia, where the air was wet and the sun felt like it hovered inches from her skin.

Hyla’s gaze found her sister’s face: freckled, sweating, scowling.

What do you want to eat?

Nothing.

I haven’t seen you eat in twelve hours, Lizeth said, her voice soft and cautious. You’re gonna collapse…

Hyla searched for the menu but instead found the community bulletin board, its cork pocked with holes and fliers hung up with masking tape. A faded Virgin Mary peered back placidly, asking, Pregnant? Need help? A number was scrawled below. A fly landed on her shoulder, its tiny insect feet tickling Hyla’s skin.

What you would like, miss?

The voice directed Hyla’s attention to a middle-aged woman staring at her from behind the counter with a smile. Her blonde hair stuck up from her head in frizzy wisps, her shoulders sunburned. The menu board was above her head, the kind with the small plastic letters in all caps, and Hyla picked the first thing she saw, even though her stomach turned.

The Italian mix, half. Everything on it.

The woman slipped on gloves to begin the process. Hyla wondered if it was wise to eat a sub made in a gas station with a stained ceiling and filthy bathroom. She peeked at the deli counter; it was passably clean, but it looked like a grandmother’s kitchen, complete with a bread box that hid the sub buns. The woman rolled it up smoothly, retrieved one, then snapped it closed.

I’ll take that hamburger, Lizeth said, pointing into a small hot box. It’s just plain, right? The woman nodded. Lizeth turned to Hyla. Do you think that’s enough?

Their road-trip snacks made a small mountain near the register: Lizeth’s M&Ms, orange soda, a cup of vanilla yogurt, Hyla’s Cheez-Its, granola bar, and a withered apple. They had already driven ten hours, with five left to go before they reached their destination—a remote spot in the middle of the woods, not far from the Appalachian Trail in Tennessee. Evidently their client was either frightened or paranoid or both.

If it’s not, we need to go on a diet, Hyla answered, pointing up at a small tube TV mounted high in the corner, broadcasting the local news. A young reporter stood in front of a stone building, which the headline identified as a post office.

A grisly discovery was made here yesterday, where postal workers intercepted a large package emanating a ‘foul odor,’ according to one official.

Little information was available, but what the reporter had uncovered was enough: Police ultimately discovered that the package contained unspecified human body parts.

Jesus Christ, Hyla said. Clarington… that’s not far from where we’re meeting this detective, right?

Right.

Detective Tristan Sidders, their client, had reached out to the sisters for a different reason—an epidemic of missing women and one in particular who, after climbing out her bedroom window, wandered into the woods and inexplicably killed a hiker while still dressed in her pajamas.

A girl who, a week before, had also killed a small animal with her bare hands.

The woman plopped Hyla’s sub and Lizeth’s burger on the counter. This all today, ladies?

Lizeth nodded. Their items were tallied and bagged. The news shifted to a piece about a teen girl with a cherubic face and mischievous eyes who’d vanished a year prior. A vigil was being held for her in a few days; a skinny young man told an older reporter about the event with tears welling in his eyes. Hyla wondered if she was one of the detective’s missing women.

Tina Kaczmarczyk, the clerk said, shaking her head somberly at the girl’s picture while dropping change into Lizeth’s palm. It’s a shame. Pretty girls like that always get the attention of bad men.

Hyla scowled, suddenly irate. Well, you’re still screwed, ’cause no one cares when an ugly woman goes miss—

All right! I think that’s enough small talk! Lizeth said, grabbing their bag. She nodded to the clerk. Have a good one.

Lizeth dragged Hyla to the door, and Hyla kicked it open with a chime of bells. A gush of hot wind hit them like a wall.

What is wrong with you? Lizeth swooped around the van and opened the door. Hyla did the same on the passenger side.

I hate victim blaming, she said. And I hate that some people are forgotten while others get vigils.

And, she admitted silently, she was feeling a bit rejected and disliked herself.

Well, you can’t snap at strangers, Hyla. Lizeth climbed into the van. Let’s go.

Hyla climbed into the van and slammed the door shut, then rubbed the sweat from her face. A sick feeling pricked her stomach—she’d just proved Zeke right.

Do you want me to drive? Hyla said.

No.

Are you sure?

Lizeth’s jaw clenched. Yes, Hyla.

We’ll switch halfway there, how’s that?

Unnecessary. And the next time you ask me a question like that, I’m gonna chuck you out the window. Lizeth turned on the ignition, and the vents blew hot air into Hyla’s face. I could punch Zeke in the face for what he said to you, because now you’re driving me nuts.

Lizeth eased the van to the edge of the small parking lot and leaned over the steering wheel. There was no oncoming traffic, so she rejoined the road south.

It’s not just Zeke. Hyla didn’t elaborate, but she didn’t need to. They’d discussed it many times since the ice storm. How their spat had forced Hyla to face herself: a pushy woman who controlled others and didn’t listen. A woman who’d nearly shoved her sister into another universe.

I didn’t want to leave the business, you know, Lizeth said. Not really.

Could’ve fooled m—

Stop that. It’s just… Lizeth shifted a little behind the wheel, searching for the right words. Love is powerful and very tempting. But we were never meant to be together. Louis and I. We both had another purpose in life.

But if you were meant—

There’s no ‘if.’ This is what is meant to be. You and me. Chasing monsters. And Zeke shouldn’t ask you to give that up. He’s wrong.

No, he’s not. Hyla leaned back against the headrest and watched thick, humid woods pass by. If I’ve learned anything in the past few months, it’s that I’m selfish. I force people into things. You, for sure; Zeke, probably. I only think of myself and what I want or think is right, and that kind of thinking got Stuart killed.

It did not, Lizeth said firmly. They’d also discussed this a hundred times, but Hyla still wasn’t convinced. You don’t need to be punished. And Zeke hurting you like this is not okay, no matter what he’s feeling.

Hyla blinked tears from her eyes.

We all make mistakes, Hyla, but you have to move on.

So I can make new mistakes…

Hyla. That’s enough.

Lizeth was right—Hyla had spent enough time in her pity party. She checked her phone again. There was still no message from Zeke. This was one of those