A Finger and a Foot: A Sequel to the Queen and the Monster

By Matthew Caputo

An archeological team discovered a mysterious relic clutched in the skeletal hands of an old woman at the floor of the Mediterranean Sea. The ship never made it to shore. Years later, two children were abducted from their bedrooms on opposite sides of Washington, DC. A note left behind detailed the torture of their abductor and invited the FBI into a game for their safe return. This note led the investigators to two serial killers, one incarcerated and one not. A terrifying, millennia-old mystery has come to the surface, and a woman, shrouded in evil, has become the mastermind of all their worst nightmares.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Jul 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781490774855

Matthew Caputo

Matthew Caputo was born on Long Island, New York, and currently lives with his husband, Tim, four cats and a dog in the suburbs of Houston, Texas. He obtained a doctorate in Mathematics Education from Columbia University and has been a mathematics instructor at both the high school and college levels for the past eighteen years. This is his third novel, the conclusion to The Queen and the Monster series.

Book preview

A FINGER

AND A FOOT

A SEQUEL TO THE QUEEN AND THE MONSTER

Matthew Caputo

© Copyright 2016 Matthew Caputo.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4907-7486-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4907-7485-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: Pending

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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Contents

Chapter 1 Old Friends

Chapter 2 Sweet Dreams

Chapter 3 Love Letters

Chapter 4 Group Action

Chapter 5 Playing Doctor

Chapter 6 Secret Admirer

Chapter 7 Tag Team

Chapter 8 Necrophilia

Chapter 9 Extra-Marital Affair

Chapter 10 Hooker Alley

Chapter 11 Dirty Talk

Chapter 12 Sneaking Around

Chapter 13 Fingering

Chapter 14 Ménage À Trois

Chapter 15 Pedophilia

Chapter 16 Voyeurism

Chapter 17 Walk Of Shame

Chapter 18 Demon Whore

Chapter 19 Gourmet Dinner

Chapter 20 Handcuffs And Nightsticks

Chapter 21 Swapping Partners

Chapter 22 Some Like It Rough

Chapter 23 Afterglow

Epilogue A Goodbye Kiss

For Lisa, my sister and protector. Thank you for teaching me how to be brave even when facing the devil.

For Tim, my everything. Thank you for being a source of sanity in a world filled with madness.

I shall bestow upon you a gift. A gift unlike anything anyone in the world has ever granted you before. I give you death to the inconsequential. Prince Alexander, the eventual and brief ruler of the Protecian Kingdom.

When a human dies, the world weeps, and a small part of everyone living in it dies along with him. When a creature like me dies, the reaction is far more varied. Few will cry. More will rejoice. Most, however, will be busy covering up their involvement in its death. Catryna Corpa, entertainer and wanton whore.

Evil will always triumph because Good is dumb. Rick Moranis, Spaceballs, 1987.

CHAPTER 1

Old Friends

K atherine suited up while her husband watched idly by. This was the part of their process that he had no contribution in. Other than to panic. Will this time be the time something goes wrong? It was a fear that Henry always had from their first expedition as The Husband and Wife Archeological Team, as the journals called them even before they had actually tied the knot. Back when they made the first of many archeological finds together. Henry never told Katherine how he dreaded her plunges into the unknown, into a past long deceased and forgotten. He never told her, but she knew from the moment she saw his eyes in the seconds before their maiden expedition. That first trip had been nearly 13 years ago by now. In that time, they had become married, and they built a life together. In each of those ventures, which were now far too many to count, both of them took part in nearly each aspect of every dig or dive. This was the exception. This was the one part that Katherine did on her own. She knew there was a possibility of her gear failing, and she knew what that would mean. Death didn’t scare her nearly as much as knowing that her husband might blame himself if he helped her suit up. If Katherine was to die, she wanted to know that she had only herself to blame. Henry, as he had countless times before, just watched and silently prayed for her safe return back to him and the rest of the modern wo rld.

The boat rocked and their stateroom lurched as Katherine pulled the black neoprene diving suit over her thermal undergarments. Probably nothing more treacherous than a wave. While the water was choppier today than they would have hoped, rescheduling this dive would have been impossible. The scuba tank was on the deck of the ship, and Katherine would be assisted with that process in a few moments. With her dark, curly hair in a swim cap, she glanced over to her husband and flashed her eyes at him. Not quite a wink, but a subtle change in facial expression that only a married couple could interpret or even notice. With this glance exchanged, they shared a smile, and Katherine continued pulling on the wet suit. That smile made the tense atmosphere of the stateroom a little calmer. This could have been the romantic cruise of the Caribbean that normal married couples took, rather than a deep sea exploration to a possibly drowned ancient civilization.

Henry stood from the small chair in the corner of their stateroom and began to assemble the video equipment that he had earlier laid out on the bed. The room was cramped, and the bed allowed the only surface to organize the rolls of wires and electronics. As with all their joint efforts in the past, Katherine did the diving and exploration of whatever ruin or crypt was the current subject of her scrutiny, and Henry would do the videography. He did particularly hate the underwater projects though. So much could go wrong: her scuba gear, the video equipment on either end, the connection between her helmet-mounted camera and his screen, and the countless species of underwater life that could do anything at any moment. Even though modern science had discounted the tales about monsters of the deep, Henry knew better. There was always something ready to attack in those dark waters. Still, he began to prep his equipment. In a few minutes, they would be emerging from their stateroom to deck of the Persephone.

It was almost six months earlier when they had been contacted. An American on vacation in Greece noticed something while snorkeling. Something under the water of the Mediterranean Sea. He could not be sure what it was, but in the distance, he was able to describe a structure that looked like a primitive hut on some kind in an outcropping that he had thought was coral. The diver conceded to his lack of experience on the subject as well as the lack of the proper diving equipment to further investigate. He reported his unusual observations to an old professor of his at Boston University, and this academic started the ball rolling to have a proper search and investigation conducted. That ball was now rolling passed Henry and Katherine Scarpini.

Despite the bright day and the heat of the sun, the deck of the Persephone was cold and damp. The boat kept rocking, and the wind sent a cyclone of mist in every direction. The Persephone was a Greek-registered ship that was on loan to the United States Government specifically for the use of the Scarpini Archeological Team. Now, the husband and wife stood on deck, being pummeled by water droplets that felt like flying stones, and assembling the last pieces of their gear before making another joint quest together.

It was two months shy of the thirteenth anniversary of the couple’s first meeting. Katherine had been completing a research study on a mass grave discovered outside of Rio de Genaro. This research was to be a key piece of her master’s thesis from Boston University. A Comparative Study of Death Rituals in Pre-American Cultures. A wordy, therefore academic, title saying: how different civilizations buried their dead. The fellow research student that was accompanying Katherine on this dig was unable to make the climb down into the grave to document the findings. He had injured himself the day before in an accident that Katherine assumed involved falling off of some girl he met at a bar. A nearby spring-breaker overheard their argument and asked if he could be of any assistance. Katherine handed this head-strong, cocky, and, in her opinion, very good-looking man her video camera, and Henry and Katherine went on the complete their first archeological expedition as a team.

It was a year later when Katherine graduated with her Master’s degree (Katherine’s thesis got an A), and within another six months, the two were married. Henry found a job in Boston as a local anchorman for a news broadcast, but that job was only to pay their bills. His main interest, as it had been since that long ago Spring Break was Katherine. She was his life. Henry became her research assistant and the videographer of her voyages into the past. In those 13 years, they became as close to a household name as was possible within archeological circles, and actually had been interviewed and featured in three research journals. It was the sort of accolades that Katherine had always expected would be on the horizon and Henry had always felt were a pipe dream.

There was no reason for this dive to be any different than any of the others that they had completed in the past years, but there was something strange about the sea that day. It had a sinister look. Somehow darker than it should be. There was also a smell. It was not the sort of thing that could be explained easily, but there was definitely an odor to the sea that day that gave off a feeling of impending doom. Metallic. Stale somehow. Even rotten.

Katherine looked down at the water below. It was dark and shone her reflection back at her. Such blackness of the sea could have been blood. The ripples in the surface of the water played with the image of her face like a funhouse mirror. Katherine looked, and the face she saw certainly did not resemble any reflection she had seen before. It could have been that she was enveloped in enough scuba and camera gear to look like some kind of cyborg, but it felt like more than that. The ripples in the water did something to distort her face. It made her features appear alien or monstrous, but somehow oddly familiar. Katherine felt it was like trying to make sense of an image from the past rather than seeing an image of the present.

You okay, Kat? She jumped at the sound of her husband’s voice, and the sight of his concerned eyes did nothing to ease her panic. They both exchanged a petrified look of dread towards one another, and for a brief moment that dread wasn’t at all misplaced. You don’t have to make this dive if you don’t want to. You know that, right? Henry’s voice was reassuring, but Katherine knew she had to jump into the water. Even if the only reason she could find to do it was to keep from giving into her own irrational fear. After doing that once, surrendering the next time would be so much easier, and that would mark the first day of the end of her life.

Before she had a chance to answer her husband, a voice rang out behind them. If you’re going to do this, you have to do it now. There is a storm coming in the next hour. It was the voice of the ship’s first mate, thick with a Greek accent and filled with aggravation. This was not the cruise ship of vacationers that he was used to dealing with, and these were not the passengers he wanted to haul around the water.

There were dark clouds approaching fast, but it was still bright and sunny in the other direction. This storm that the first mate spoke of was probably going to be brief and intense. Not something you would want to contend with while at sea.

Without speaking a word of response, Katherine looked behind her, and with the sun beaming around her like a starburst, she stepped over the side of the boat and down into the water below. There was a small splash as the deck hands, under Henry’s direction, started feeding optical wire down after her. Soon, that bundle of wires was the only sign of her existing under the blackness of the water. With Katherine beneath the surface, now it was time for the husband and wife team to shine.

While calmly tapping the ship’s railing with his fingers, Henry muttered out, Good luck, babe. It was time to push the worry to the side and do his part.

Henry switched on his monitor, and he could immediately see the image, the exact view his wife was seeing, on his screen aboard the Persephone. Aside from the occasional school of fish swimming past, there was nothing of interest to see. Not yet, anyway. Just the dark expanse of nothing the water provided in every direction. People had always told him that the Mediterranean Sea was supposed to have bright blue water making it perfect for diving and snorkeling. Paradise to swim in. Henry had no idea why this was not the case today. Even with the sun beaming as brightly as it was, the water was ominous. Henry would never know that Katherine was thinking the exact same thought at that moment.

After ten minutes of diving, Katherine’s distorted voice came through the speakers on Henry’s AV setup. Do you see this okay? There is definitely some kind of a land mass here. Not coral. From the looks of it, an entire island sank. There was only the sound of her breathing as she dove farther down. Henry could see what appeared to be mountains that were submerged in the murkiness. As Katherine swam deeper, more horrifying details became visible. They had seen countless bodies and remains of dead civilizations in their experience, but there was a unique iciness about the look of this sank world. There are definite signs of people that used to live here. Somewhat advanced. Definitely civilized. Roughly Bronze Age in time frame from what I can make out.

With his eyes locked on his monitor, Henry saw the structures come into focus. Buildings. Some as grand as palaces and others as simple as huts. Massive relief sculptures reached from the mountains. This was not only a civilization that had been drowned, but it was something great. Through the darkness, a carved stone face or body would emerge and vanish back again into the murk. The faint image of a castle began to clarify as Katherine swam closer to it. She was becoming so enwrapped in this uncovering mystery that she gasped as a school of bright yellow tiger fish swam by without a care.

There must have been some massive seismic activity down here to do this. It looks like the island was nearly split in half. A moment later, this observation shone on the monitor. By this point, the deck hands had gathered around Henry and were silently watching everything he was documenting. Probably they were expecting nothing of such magnitude when they received this charge. All of them were quietly begging Katherine to turn back, but she kept swimming forward towards the great rift between the two sides of the island that was before her. It was just as she had described it. Mountains and man-made structures on both sides of this enormous crack in the land. It appeared as if some mighty hand simply struck down on these people and made their world crumble beneath its force. It was definitely larger before it sank. Erosion, most likely, swept away a good deal of the land mass.

There was the briefest of sparkles deep within that crack, like the first star in the night sky. Did you see that? There is something down there. From the movement of the image on the monitor, the people on the boat could see that Katherine was swimming faster towards where the twinkle of light had erupted before growing dark again. Past another fleeting school of fish, Katherine swam into the fissure that broke the island into two pieces, and then she stopped suddenly. She saw it. A moment later, the crew on the boat saw it as well. This is horrid.

A fully intact skeleton was contorted inside of that crack. Whether it was always like this or as a result of something that happened over time, it was entangled in some outcropping of rock along the wall of the fissure. Clasped in the boney fingers of the skeleton was a large and heavily ornate staff. Covered in algae and housing a fleet of crabs, it was hard to make out the details of that scepter, but it was definitely something of great importance to this civilization. Especially to the person who had died holding it. It had a rod of about five feet in the height and a large headpiece that was a stone orb with some kind of creature wrapped around it. There was a jewel partially exposed from the algae along the surface of that orb. That must have been what caused the glimmer of light. It had been reflecting one of Katherine’s diving lights while one of the crabs or other sea life living in its contours had briefly moved out of the way. Doing so turned the staff into the beacon that drew Katherine closer towards the fissure in the sunken island. Towards the treasure that it offered to her.

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Two hours later, Katherine was removing her wetsuit in the state room. It took a three of the deck hands suiting up in their own scuba gear and joining her at the sunken island before they were able to remove this one artifact. The only one that was a manageable enough size to move. They noted the location of the sunken island referring the ship’s charts and sent a message to the Greek consulate to contact the States for a more extensive excavation process. This was a mission that would require more than these two. Their governments would need time to plan such an undertaking, but it needed to be done. The island contained mysteries that must be unlocked.

All they recovered on this dive was the skeleton and the staff it held. The two were inseparable. Centuries of sediment had fused them together. Right now, these remnants of the past lay on the deck on the Persephone under a blue tarp to protect them from the elements. Since returning to the ship, the skies had opened up. The rain had begun to pour and wind had begun to howl. As the clouds of the approaching storm swirled above them, the sky lost its bright gleam and was now as dark as the sea had been. It was as though the heavens were angered by the rising of these remains. The awakening of a past that had slept for millennia.

The husband and wife didn’t waste any time doing a preliminary examination of the body and the artifact. As soon as it was on board the Persephone, they began to see what details they could find and were scribbling hasty words and diagrams in a small notebook despite the onslaught of rain that had begun. The deckhands watched from afar. They were scared. Something about this didn’t feel right. From the video monitor, through the yards of coaxial cable, the staff looked mysterious. In person, it looked unyieldingly evil.

In their stateroom, Katherine was speaking at the pace of a rant while she was removing her wetsuit. Henry was eagerly listening and replaying the video feed of her dive. He couldn’t take his eyes off it, which was unusual. So soon after Katherine being returned to him, Henry typically didn’t want to think about their work for a few hours. This was different. Out of all of the discoveries they had made over the years, this one was, by far, the most significant.

It’s amazing that that body was preserved so well all this time. I am guessing its position inside of that crack shielded it from a lot of the currents. It is female. At least, I think she was female. There were no ridges on the forehead or back of the skull and also the hips and pelvic bone looked wide. She took a breath, and Henry turned to speak to her, but she didn’t let him. Actually, Katherine verbalized exactly what he was going to say to her. We need to get an anthropologist to examine the remains to be certain. It has been such a long time since I took physiological anthropology, and I never examined anything this old. I may be wrong about my findings. An older woman, I am thinking, based on the curve of the spine. Her back shows signs of beginning to slump. Probably some kind of a laborer, but that doesn’t make sense in a society that was led by royalty. Traditionally, those civilizations held to a very strict caste system. All cultures like that I have studied wouldn’t even let a commoner near a religious scepter like that. Why would a lower-class person be holding such an obviously important object as this?

With the sound of Katherine’s excited rant filling the stateroom, Henry turned back to the video monitors watching her perspective of the dive again and again. Trying to see if there was some further detail that he could find. Henry whispered without looking away from the screen. Do you think she was trying to save that staff from the disaster that was happening to that island? You said there were signs of an earthquake. Maybe she was giving her life to save that scepter from ruin. Henry sighed and then added, Or maybe she was trying to steal it? While he spoke, his eyes were carefully studying the image on the monitor. There was something there. Something that was overlooked before.

I don’t think so. Katherine had completely removed the wetsuit and was now wearing a terrycloth robe. She walked over to her husband and sat in a chair beside him. Based on the positioning of the body, she was holding onto that staff when she died. So tightly that her remains are still fused around it. If she was trying to save it, why drown holding onto it? It doesn’t make any sense. If she were to drown, the staff would be lost regardless. If she felt like her life was in danger, it would have made more sense for her to let go of the staff, swim back to the surface to catch her breath, and then dive down after it again. Katherine looked at the monitor over Henry’s shoulder. There definitely was something unusual in the image on the screen. Something that first could have been a smudge on the camera lens but was starting to take a definite shape. Now they both watched the deep murkiness to see what it was as Katherine continued brainstorming. I am thinking that she stole the staff to keep it from someone or hide it from a new order that took over. Maybe to keep it away from everyone. Katherine paused a moment to let this idea gel in her mind. I think she gave her life to make sure that that staff was never seen by human eyes again.

Henry began to turn his head to reply. And we brought it back to the world. Where it can be looked at by God knows how many people. He was about to chuckle at the irony of the situation when the laughter died on his tongue. Instead, he screamed out, Did you see that? There was only silence. Katherine hadn’t seen what he was talking about. His finger was pressing against the screen, but there was only darkness there again. Henry rewound the video a few seconds and pointed to the lower left corner of the darkness.

This time, they both saw it even though they knew it was impossible. These waters were not deep enough, but there it was, only for an instant. A shark. Not a small shark either. In the darkness of the water, there were not enough details visible to identify the species, but it was definitely a shark. That is impossible. Katherine’s voice was hoarse and spastic. There shouldn’t be sharks that size in these waters. Not for miles. Despite them both knowing this to be the case, there was no denying what they saw on the screen in front of them. There had been a shark circling and watching idly by as Katherine was recovering the body and the scepter that were shrouded in mystery from the sunken island. A body they now assumed to have once been a woman who died trying to keep something awful hidden from all life. The same hidden thing that was currently lying on the deck of this ship, covered in a tarp, less than fifteen feet from their stateroom door.

Leaving the monitors behind them, the two walked out of the stateroom together. They both had the intention of reporting the shark sighting to the captain of the Persephone. If for no other reason, to keep him apprised of the situation even if it meant a long lecture about how they were mistaking and to leave the ship’s operations to those who were trained in them. As they walked past the tarp on the deck with the faint outline of a body hidden beneath its folds, the wind gusted and lifted the corner of the blue plastic. For a moment, a glimpse of skull was visible. One horrible, vacant eye socket flashed into the view and then vanished again as though it was winking at them. It knew a dark secret that they could only guess at.

Katherine, whispered, I don’t think I can do this anymore.

The silence between them was almost palpable. Henry was sorry for Katherine because he knew how much joy she got from her work, but he couldn’t help feeling relieved. Putting aside Katherine’s love of being in the trenches, he was scared for her on each voyage. It was only a matter of time before their luck would run out. The shark they had just seen was proof of that. That is fine. If you want to make this our last expedition, I will support you. They stopped walking and looked at each other. Any other day, that would have been enough to make them both feel at ease with the world again. Henry reached out and held Katherine’s hand in his. We can do anything together.

As soon as their hands touched, Henry knew this was bad. Her fingers felt cold in his. Somehow foreign. Just like everything about this expedition felt otherworldly. Their fingers, which in the past had naturally interlocked with one another, now refused to match up as though trying to unlock a door with the wrong key. Katherine pulled her hand from his, looked directly in his eyes, and said, "You don’t understand. I can’t do us anymore. The look on Henry’s face was as if someone had thrown a pile of bricks at him. Only more hurt. I can’t stay with you anymore."

For a moment, Henry stood on the deck of the Persephone, dumb-struck and silent. Let’s talk about this, Katherine. This has been an exhausting day. A mentally straining day. Things will look better in the morning. Or when we’re back home. While he was speaking, Henry was trying to replay the last weeks and months of their lives, trying to find some warning sign he may have missed. Something that made sense in hindsight. He could think of nothing. Until a few minutes ago, they were acting like newlyweds, dreading to be out of one another’s sight even for a minute. That body you found is probably just creeping you out. It is creeping me out. Anyone would react that way. Let’s get this trip finished, get back to our home and talk this out.

Despite Henry’s pleading, Katherine’s words still hung in the air between them. I can’t go back to that house. It was hard to tell if she was crying. The rain was drenching her face. There was a waver in her voice that sounded genuinely scared at the thought of returning to their home. I can’t go back to that life. I have been realizing for months now that there is more to the world than what we can find together. We’re both tying each other down. Anchoring one another to a pile of shit. That body lying there was only the last piece of the puzzle. Seeing that made everything so clear to me. Like I am finally seeing the world in a way that makes sense. Katherine was shaking her head, preemptively denying the retort she knew was coming. Please let me do this. I just need to be… not here. I need to be not us.

Katherine turned away from her husband and walked towards the closest lifeboat. Nothing fancy or elaborate. A rowboat suspended off the side of Persephone. A few of the deckhands that had been listening, while trying to look busy, began running to the boat to stop her. It was only a matter of seconds before Katherine had climbed into the lifeboat and untied the knots that suspended it in place. They were all in shock. Katherine acted as though she had been working on this ship for years. She had cast the boat into the water hard and it hit the choppy surface with a crash. Henry and the deck hands crowded at the railing and looked over the edge. At the bottom of the lifeboat, Katherine was lying, obviously knocked off her feet by the force of it hitting the water. Two of the deck hands began to climb over the railing to get to her, but she had already climbed to the seat and was rowing to shore. She had no idea which direction was the best option or even why she was doing this other than the fact that she needed to be away from Henry and her old life as soon as possible. Something awoke inside of her needed and was pulling her away. Begging her to leave the familiar for something that was somehow more familiar. In a moment, Katherine had rowed out of sight.

Less than a minute later, before any of them had a chance to process what they had just seen, the Persephone began to rock as though it had hit another ship. The crew lost their balance and went sprawling to either side of the deck. One of them fell to the water below. The covered body and staff began to slide towards the railing. As the ship lurched back, the first mate walked from his cabin to see what was happening just in time for the ship to rock again. As he was thrown overboard by the jolt of that impact, he caught a glimpse of a great white shark careening into the hull of his ship.

Within the next ten minutes, the Persephone was destroyed by a single shark that had no earthly reason to be residing in those waters. The shark attacked relentlessly and brutally, as if on a mission. It was as though it had appeared from nothing, willed into existence by Katherine’s anger. Or maybe it was simply trying to bring the staff they had recovered back to its resting place on the ocean floor. Whatever its purpose, the shark smashed the Persephone to pieces, and then it swam quietly to whatever dark corner of the world it had previously resided.

The wreckage of the Persephone washed up onto the shore of the island of Crete. By this time, the storm had cleared. It was, as predicted, brief and powerful, and now the sun was beginning to cut beams of white light through the clouds. Among the wreckage, there were smashed bits of wood, the ship’s masts, and bodies littering the sandy beach. Mangled corpses were half-buried in sand and seaweed, some missing large chunks of flesh from ragged bites.

A lifeboat was resting on the shore. Its paddles were tucked neatly to its sides. The sun glistened off the sea water that was covering it. It was empty. There were no signs of its passenger except for a fading trail of footprints in the sand. They led away from the shoreline and towards the life that promised to be ahead. The life she wanted. The life she was willing to end her marriage and abandon her career for. The life that came into perfect clarity after laying her eyes upon a skeletal woman who died clutching a staff she had no reason to behold.

One other survivor clawed his way through the sand, feeling its gritty texture sliding between his fingers. He slowly dragged himself further from the wreckage. Through the blinding sunlight, he could almost see his wife’s beautiful face ahead of him, but always ahead of him. She would be the goal he could never again attain. The sunlight bleached out all the colors of the world. Or maybe he was dying. No matter how fast he crawled, he could never catch her. Still, he tried. Dragging himself further along the sand forgetting all other priorities behind him. He would spend the next several years of his life chasing after her, and she would always be just ahead of him. Leading him along his way like the ferryman to the underworld.

With a single lap of a wave, the once-again calm waters of the Mediterranean Sea reclaimed their prize. The blue tarp that was on the deck of the Persephone washed on the shore of the beach, now vacant. The skeletal remains of that long-dead woman and the object she sacrificed everything to keep from the world now drifted back into depths of the water. A dark, watery grave from where it should have never been excavated.

While Henry dragged himself to along the blistering hot sand towards the mirage that was his wife and the water continued to lap against the beach, a buzzing could be heard. As crowds of spectators and scattered police began to trudge across to sand to gawk and render assistance, the skies began to darken again. A swarm of hornets, easily thousands of them, flew through the air, eclipsing the sun momentarily before disappearing into the daylight.

CHAPTER 2

Sweet Dreams

W hen Bev Lopez woke up in a sweat, she went through her normal routine for waking up in the middle of the night. It was difficult to say when she had adopted such a procedure, but one night similar to tonight, she had realized that she was entrenched in it. Her life and career were riddled with routines, so this development was understandable if not nor mal.

First, check the digital clock next to the bed. The time was 3:19 AM. Next, was to check her cellphone, lying on the nightstand, charging while she slept. No missed calls, no texts. Finally, was to listen for Charles, her son. There was no sound from his room, which was the next door down the hall. It was a dream that woken her. A dream she couldn’t quite remember. Nothing more sinister than that.

Agent Beverly Lopez joined the Federal Bureau of Investigations five years ago. Since that time, she had found her niche in the Behavioral Analysis Unit, or as her mother called it, The Crazy-Hunters. There were some days when that was exactly what it felt like, but lately things have been on the quiet side at the office. It was pushing two months since she had been woken by a late-night phone call that swept her off to some remote corner of the country to investigate a crime scene left in the wake of some serial killer. Still, one of the first things she did when she woke up in the middle of the night was the check her cell phone to see if her sleep had, in fact, been interrupted by a call from work. It was a far worse wake-up call than her alarm, set to start beeping in just over three hours, and Bev was relieved that her sleep hadn’t been shattered by a work-related crisis.

The final action in her middle-of-the-night ritual, to listen for her son, was added to the process one year ago, when Charlie was born. With a career that was riddled with the dregs of modern life, her time with Charles gave her the strength to continue. Most people got to enjoy a world where the deranged and twisted only occupied a small percent of their lives. Bev worked and lived within that small percent. Still, after a minute of holding her baby in her arms, the pain of her job just melted away and left nothing but bliss to fill its void. Charlie made a welcome addition to her nighttime ritual, even though she always felt a moment of fear when listening for a disturbance from his bedroom. A constant, low-level fear was, like a detailed ritual for disturbed sleep, an understandable symptom of her line of work. And this crept in upon her just as silently.

In the darkness of her room, Bev rose from her side of the bed and looked over at the other side, Oscar’s side of the bed, which was now vacant. It had been vacant since the night she told Oscar that she was pregnant with Charles. She was scared that her unexpected pregnancy would have driven a wedge between them and started a long dissolution of their happy marriage, but their marriage ended that night for a very different reason. Overjoyed with the thought of being a father, Oscar went out to celebrate, drinking with some of his friends from work, his bros, as he called them. He was walking home from the bar around one in the morning, always careful not to drink and drive. Ironically, it was a drunk driver that lost the road, drove up on the sidewalk and hit him. Oscar was killed outright. Two of his bros that he had been walking with were injured but managed to make full recoveries. When Bev arrived at the scene of the accident after receiving a call from the responding officer, she could smell the reek of whisky off the other driver’s breath and clothes. He was ranting about having to swerve to miss a woman that was crossing the street. A woman with a big scar on the side of her face. Thankfully, Oscar’s body had already been removed by the time Bev arrived on the scene, but she could see the tire skid on the concrete ending at the store front where the car finally came to rest. This skid mark was in Oscar’s blood. If she had not seen so many of these gruesome scenes through her work-related experiences, she would have thought that the gray clumps mixed into those tire treads were simply dirt or fabric. It was regrettable that she knew better.

Still to this day, most of the time when Beverly rose from her sleep, she looked back at Oscar’s side of the mattress. The right side of the bed. His nightstand contained a picture from their wedding. The traditional picture of both families together with the happy couple in the middle. And they were happy. Bev could see a glimmer of Oscar’s eyes every time she looked at Charlie. Happiness and sorrow had a way of weaving together to create the tapestry that was life.

With a sigh that contained a mixture of painful and happy memories, Bev took a few steps away from the bed and stretched in the dark room. It felt good to reach for the ceiling and feel her muscles come alive after being asleep. The room was not really all that dark, actually. Bev never slept in total darkness. A little bit of paranoia she had picked up since taking her oath with the FBI. Too many things can hide in the darkness, and eliminating surprise is the best first line of defense in a bad situation. Bev sighed again, now thinking of all the bad habits she had picked up in the past five years. Her ridiculous nighttime rituals were only part of it. There was more.

Her bedroom felt colder than it should have. Nights always felt cold, but this night felt oddly such. It was July, and the evening had been cool. Not the pleasant kind of cool either but a creepy sort of chill. The humidity from the day didn’t want to leave even after the warmth had, and it left the world feeling damp and icy. Like walking into a tomb that had been sealed against outside eyes for some time. Unconsciously, Bev wrapped her arms around herself and began to walk towards the window. Another of her bad habits was to always keep an eye on her street. Her neighbors must have either thought she was nosy or over-protective of her community. It was a little bit of each.

The blackout curtains were only halfway pulled, and the privacy sheers allowed through enough of the streetlights into the bedroom to make her feel safe. With a hand that was growing steadier and more awake, she pulled those sheers back as well and took another step towards the window. Cold air was radiating in from the glass in waves. The quiet suburban street stretched out before her, and Bev took in the view. It was a cul-de-sac that got little traffic and most of the cars that were parked on the street she knew as belonging to her neighbors. She didn’t know all their names, but she knew them all by house and by car. These were all the ones that should be there at night. With one distinct exception. A white compact car was parked across the street. It was not one of them that she was used to seeing, but that didn’t mean anything. Overnight guest of the twenty-something-year-old that rented the space above her neighbor’s garage, maybe. Not everything out of place was the sign of foul play, and Bev was happy to know that her street was typically free of incident.

While Bev was staring at this car, she began to lose the image of the street into that of her own reflection. In the window, Beverly Lopez looked into the face that she had known her entire life, and began to realize how much she had aged in the last few years. Her curly, black hair had not yet begun to gray, but there were definite lines beginning to creep out of the corners of her eyes. Without the benefit of the make-up she would usually apply before leaving the house, she did look a bit homely. Bev chuckled to herself as she realized that she was beginning to look like her mother.

Standing in the middle of the dark room, staring out of her window to the