Eva Rose

By Jonathan Phillips

Eva Rose Morgan might be an average twenty-two-year-old college student in North Carolina if it were not for the nightmares. While struggling with nightmares, visions of a past life, Eva finds a close friend murdered on her kitchen floor. Worried she might be losing her mind, the coed goes on the run to discover the truth about her visions. Soon, Eva discovers a century-old curse may bind her to a psychopath who will either have her in this life or send her to the next. With the killer closing in and the police only one step behind, Eva faces a sinister stalker to stop her past from repeating. If she fails, she may be doomed to live the same story again and again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jonathan Phillips
• Release date: Dec 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463210239

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Eva Rose

Copyright 2020 Jonathan Phillips

Published by Jonathan Phillips at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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

For information contact:

www.phillipsjonathan.com

ISBN: 9798608008757

For my children, who believed in me long before I dared.

Prologue

Richard Dugan felt the leather reins slip from his grasp. His tattered cavalry gloves served him well until this very moment when everything seemed to betray him. Like all else born of the confederacy, the gloves were soaked in blood. But this time, the blood was his. So, when the startled horse reared and bolted into the darkness, it left Dugan’s hands grasping at air.

Richard slammed face up against the hard Carolina dirt. The impact emptied his lungs of air and left the man mouthing out words not suitable from a true Southern gentleman. But then, Richard was no gentleman.

Dugan was a product of his environment. He endured an impoverished childhood, brutality from the only parent he’d known, and a war he neither started nor within it held any stake, save for his own survival and his friendship with a man who ultimately betrayed him. During the conflict between the North and the South, he became an animal unleashed and never again tamed. However, after a night of unreserved betrayals, Richard was tired. He yearned to renounce his rage and accept a release that only death could provide.

Hope, like everything else in his miserable life, seemed a waste of energy, a pointless endeavor to be sure. Lying on the ground, he wondered, Why go on? Isn’t this a perfect night to end it all? As Richard reached for his Remington .44, he remembered Colonel Anderson’s hired men beating him mercilessly. His trusty revolver remained nearly five miles down the Carolina dirt road in the hands of those bastards.

For the briefest moment, Richard looked up at the dark sky before sitting upright. As he stared down the path where his horse had abandoned him, Richard believed that it could get no worse … until it started to rain. Richard could no longer contain himself and poured out to the gods a hardy laugh for his bad luck and his lot in life.

For a young man who strove to be in control, Richard was thrown twice in less than an hour. First, he was thrown off the property of the man whom he trusted more than any other, his mentor and friend, Henry Anderson. Now Richard sat in the middle of the dirt road, thrown from the only thing left to him in this world, his horse. A chill came over Dugan as a southeasterly gust rolled in the angriest looking storm clouds he had ever seen in all his twenty-six years.

Richard shivered from the cold rain as it began pounding his face. The storm took moments to start and less time to soak him to his foundation. He felt alone and defeated until lightning revealed a dark shape standing directly in front of him. The figure stood erect in the middle of the crossroads, appearing as quickly as the storm, a mere five feet away from him. The creature wore a black, flat-brimmed hat on top of a squared head that it tilted while introducing itself. We are Orisha.

The silky-smooth voice echoed deep within Richard as his eyes slowly adjusted to dim light inexplicably emanating from his new acquaintance. The creature stood on two legs like a man but moved with a predator’s prowess, reminding Richard of a time before the war. When he was rambling through Colorado in his later teens, Richard was hired by a landowner to hunt down and kill a cougar. Before Richard finally killed it, the beast cost the rancher eleven head of cattle, counting a calf used for bait. This individual moved like the cougar, swift and cunning.

Fate is a fickle bitch, no? The creature voiced a peculiar accent, reminding Richard of General Beauregard from Louisiana. The general gave his troops a riveting speech just before the Battle of Shiloh near Pittsburg landing in Tennessee. The Cajun accent triggered memories of that, the bloodiest battle he experienced during the war.

Richard’s thoughts spun out of control as his mind clawed desperately for some sense of reason. In his confusion and shock, he could only muster three words, Am I dead?

It was the stranger’s turn to laugh. "Fate is a fickle bitch indeed, and it seems that she is not at all finished with you. No, sir, not at all."

The wind whipped and roared as the storm rolled upon them, but Richard could not react. He sat frozen. On the battlefield, Dugan knew fear and expected death on many occasions, but this was different. He experienced no panic; Richard felt only astonishment.

As the figure drew near, Richard heard the Creole voice whisper, We are Orisha, boy. We are vengeance.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.

Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven

Chapter One

Eva Rose Morgan poured the last few tequila drops into her shot glass, then tossed the empty bottle into the trash. Another soldier down. Eva slurred her words. And here is to a good night’s sleep.

It wasn’t the alcohol that made her shiver as it burned its way toward her stomach, but the strong wind that was whipping and rattling the front door and windows that gave her goosebumps. She hoped this would be the shot that would grant her a peaceful night’s rest as the category two hurricane pushed through the Carolinas.

Eva never liked lousy weather, but since the nightmares began six months before, she needed all the help she could get to sleep during a storm. After the drink, Eva made her way to the bedroom and dropped onto the bed. As the tiny room spun in concert with the whistling wind outside, she imagined herself as Dorothy, heading to the Land of Oz.

Unfortunately, Oz was not on Eva’s dance card this particular night. Instead, her mind gravitated toward a distant dream or perhaps memory that haunted the young college student. Pushed onward by a distant voice, echoing in her head, she slid into another world. Walls formed from the mist around her as Eva eventually found herself in the front parlor of a large, Southern plantation, looking out an oversized pane glass window and into the face of a storm.

In Eva’s dream, torrential rains surged sideways with gale force, smashing into the main house as she watched two men grapple on the lawn between the front porch and the stables. Although she did not recognize either, she felt a sense of concern toward one and most definitely feared the other.

The man who wore breeches tucked into tall, black riding boots and a dark brown caped overcoat lost his footing in the mud and dropped to one knee. Helplessly, Eva watched as his assailant dressed in a Confederate Cavalry uniform took advantage of the slip and struck down the unarmed opponent.

As the older man toppled to the ground, the officer pulled out his saber and began swinging it wildly. The victim’s hands and coat sleeves did little to protect him as the attacker hacked and slashed downward until his grey wool uniform was wet with more than just the cold Carolina rain.

Eva screamed, catching the attacker’s attention. Even from a distance, she could see a pair of glowing red eyes beneath the brim of the Civil War hat as they glanced upward toward the house. The eyes were not those of a human.

The butcher moved quickly toward the front door as Eva tried to run, but she was bound tightly by her Southern gown. Eva’s heart raced as she heard the rebel officer stomping across the front porch.

A subconscious reflex forced Eva to grab at the crinoline underskirt to lift it, but it was too late for her to get free. She stood in the foyer, frozen in fear as the murderous bastard kicked in the door.

Eva woke to a heavy thud. Disoriented and hungover, it took her a moment to comprehend where and when she awoke. She relaxed when she realized that the thud was her next-door neighbor, Charlie, playing video games.

Eva often heard the boy through the thin apartment walls, playing his video games, but it never bothered her; she liked Charlie. Today, she was thankful he interrupted the nightmare even though she was not ready to climb out of bed after such a dreadful night’s sleep. Eva desperately needed rest.

She pulled the comforter over her head to block out the sunshine that found its way into her bedroom through the east window. The oscillating fan betrayed Eva by gently swaying the Belgian curtains in its breeze, allowing the sunlight to peek around the blue linen guard.

Eva knew that she was late for class by the angle of the sunlight, but the tequila screamed in her skull like JDevil Davis shouting at a rowdy crowd. Every beat of her heart sent a shockwave of pain through her brain. Worse yet, bits and pieces of the nightmare she experienced still lingered in her mind, clouding her thoughts. Even her favorite tequila could not stop the bad dreams that usually accompanied passing storms. And, like last night’s hurricane, the nightmare it spawned was a doozy.

Her phone vibrated on the nightstand, forcing Eva to withdraw from her thoughts and her goose feather fortress. She winced as the sunlight flooded her bloodshot eyes, so she turned her head from the morning glare and instinctively squinted at the alarm clock sitting by her full-sized bed. "7:32 … Shit!"

While reaching her lightly freckled arms above her head ’til she touched the pinewood headboard, Eva yawned, forcing both eyes shut again. After she stretched out her athletic 5’6" frame, she once again opened her pale green eyes and focused on the alarm clock. Eva hoped that she had misread it the first time. No such luck, she was late.

The caller was persistent as her phone continued to vibrate until she was finally awake enough to answer, Yeah?

Where are you? Eva’s best friend since childhood, Lisa Young, sounded concerned.

Switching the phone to the speaker, Eva set it back down on the nightstand. "Lisa?

If you don’t haul ass, you’re going to be late for class!

Eva stretched again, making her friend wait for an answer before stripping away the cotton sheets. I’ll be there as soon as I can.

Eva rolled out of bed as quickly as her aching head allowed, and while pulling back her dark brown hair, she hurried to the shower. With every step, Eva cursed her luck, life, and bad dreams.

You need to hurry, unusually bossy, Lisa lectured with a self-imposed authority.

Eva forgot to hang up in her rush but instead left her cell phone on the nightstand charger. She did not realize that Lisa was still scolding her on the other end of the line.

After the much-needed shower, Eva dried off and slipped on her underwear before leaving the steamy bathroom. Even though alone, she