The Blackest Crow: Book Two

By L.W. Ferguson

David Turner has just rescued his wife, Jesse, from a serial killer, albeit after being challenged to believe the impossible. With the aid of medical doctors, David crossed a subconscious plane to commit murder. It is said that beyond all reason, there exists another world. A world not controlled by rationality or predictable thought but the unpredictable subconscious mind. What happens if we discover that world? Through years of research, doctors had protected this well-kept secret. While Davids wife lay in a hospital bed in a coma after a car accident, these same doctors approached him with their research and invited him to believe. In an act of self-preservation, in another place and time, David believes he has killed a man and suffers with the consequences of his actions. When he goes to sleep, he relives the nightmare.

Thomas Keyes, a decorated officer with the Newport police department, intent on bringing some of his own personal demons to rest, after a lengthy investigation into a string of murders, discovers that his main suspect, Aaron Edwards, a victim of a tortured childhood, has cheated death again. Thomas Keyes, who finds that his wife and daughter are a part of that list, must break the news to David and reopen the case. While David is relieved to know that he did not kill a man, he is tormented by the implications that his wife is still in danger. He as well as Thomas Keyes and the Newport police department must work together once again to stop Aaron in his tracks.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jul 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504912280

L.W. Ferguson

LaRhonda Harvey, also known under her pen name as L. W. Ferguson, is a single mother, artist, and accomplished writer in the fiction/mystery genre, as well as juvenile nonfiction. She began by writing poetry but later became inspired to write novels, as well as capture in print her father’s own true story in “Jack and the Bear,” a children’s book. She is a living testimony to hard work, faith, and hope and aspires to carry on in the footsteps of the great authors of her time. Her novels exemplify what it means to be creative and are used as a platform to inspire others. Her favorite quote is “Even a broken watch is right twice a day.”

Book preview

PROLOGUE

Jessica Edwards was a proud mother-to-be. However, she was an unwed mother. She was not ashamed of that fact, but it gave her pause for concern. What would the local folks say about her? She didn’t know if she cared or not. She felt the judgmental stares against her back; she heard the whispers that carried on the breeze. She didn’t mind the attention but because of this, Jessica stayed close to home most of the time so as to not advertise her condition. In spite of the bumps in the road, time had marched on and she had blossomed into the size of a small watermelon. Before another summer passed, she would have the baby and then be wed to John Gregory Thurman.

Mr. Thurman drove a dairy truck for a company called Farm Rich. He delivered milk and dairy products up and down the east coast, stopping in every other town to spend the night and then moving on. He spent most of his time on the road driving, but as often as he could, he stopped in to see Jessica.

Jessica had met John at church picnic. He gave her his undivided attention and she let him sweet talk his way into her heart. What John didn’t know, was that Jessica had given her heart to a few sweet talkers, but one in particular had given her a child. Jessica refused to have an abortion after taking the unwanted money the father had handed her. She secreted the money away for the day when she would bring the baby into the world.

She considered telling John Thurman about the baby on the condition that together they would look forward to having children someday. The prospects of a ready-made family sounded really nice to Jessica, but John told her he didn’t like kids. He told Jessica if she ever got pregnant, he would leave her. In light of this fact, her plans had been crushed. Yet, Jessica resolved she would find a way to keep the baby somehow without him finding out.

The morning and the evening had come and gone when Jessica Edwards went into labor. Her sweet talking John Thurman was halfway to Florida on one of his milk runs. Jessica weathered the pain, walking up and down the hallway of her then basement apartment. She had read every book she could find on the subject of birth and labor. She knew what the difference was between false labor and the real thing. The real thing had been sending waves of contractions and pain for four hours straight. Jessica rocked and massaged her sides as she concentrated on breathing. At last her water broke. Warm water poured down her legs and washed across the basement floor. She knew at that moment that it was dangerous to wait around. She remembered reading about the risk of infection.

Jessica called the hospital again, gathered her things and made the climb up the basement stairs to the parking lot. The hour was four o’clock in the morning and there would be no one to help her, much less anyone who cared. She popped the trunk of her car, threw in her night clothes and extra slippers, and then carefully closed the trunk. Yes she was having a baby, but not many people knew about it. She had no one that she could call or turn to. She had braced herself for the realization that she would go through this alone.

Jessica moved around to the driver’s side of the car, opened the door and eased her body between the steering wheel and the front seat. She had placed towels over the seat in preparation for this event. As she attempted to pull the car out of the parking lot, another contraction grabbed hold of her. She paused to let it subside, and then continued on her way to the hospital.

Jessica Edwards was determined to have a healthy baby. She had made sure that she ate all the right foods. She didn’t allow herself to have any caffeine and she didn’t drink alcohol. Her cigarettes, Newport 100’s, were kept close to her heart. She was forced to quit cold turkey for the baby’s sake. The books that she read had warned against smoking as well. She made it for all of her doctor visits and took her prenatal vitamins faithfully.

As the contractions grew stronger and closer together, Jessica became more determined than ever, that she would have the baby inside the walls of a hospital and not on the street. Traffic at that hour of the morning was virtually non-existent. She ran most lights on the way through town and by the time she arrived at the hospital, her belly was contorted in a ball of pain.

Jessica shifted the car into park, gripped the steering wheel with all her might and screamed. She became overwhelmed with an urge to push. Hospital staff came running outside to find the source of the screaming, when they saw her parked at an odd angle in front of the emergency room doors. Jessica was soaking wet with sweat, and blood covered the towels of the car.

She had almost waited too late. By the time they were able to get her to the delivery room, the doctor had just enough time to get his catcher’s mitts on, before he caught the ball. Less than ten minutes after arriving at the hospital, Jessica Edwards gave birth to a healthy bouncing baby boy.

Jessica lay in the delivery room shaking and shivering from the loss of blood. The cry of the newborn baby melted her heart as tears rolled down her cheeks. The nurses cleaned him and weighed him. Then they wrapped him in a warm blanket and placed a small cap on his head.

Would you like to hold him now? the doctor said.

Yes!

Here he is! Say hello little fella, this is your mom.

The little boy appeared to be looking at her although she knew at that age he couldn’t focus yet. She took him in her arms and looked into his eyes.

So what do you think Mrs. Edwards? Isn’t he precious?

Well, Mama always said there was no such thing as an ugly baby. Even the crow thinks her little crow is the blackest one of all.

Have you thought of a name yet?

Yes. Aaron Lewis Edwards, after my daddy and his daddy!

At that, Jessica Edwards handed the baby to the doctor, reached into her bra, and pulled out a lighter and a sweat soaked cigarette. With trembling hands, she put the cigarette to her lips, lit it and puffed away.

CHAPTER 1

Aaron Edwards was pronounced dead at approximately 7:33 p.m. on a Monday evening. After being plunged through a portal in time, he had watched as doctors operated, trying desperately to save his life. Aaron shook his head in disbelief. Lying on a silver tray next to his body was the missing knife. The same knife he had torn the house up looking for, the same knife he had killed Olivia with. Though he was not inside of his body, he could feel a chill. The longer Aaron remained away, the slower his heart pumped. The beat just out of range of detection had slowed considerably in his absence. Of course they thought he was dead.

Aaron was very tired now. His little charade of escape had grown old and worrisome. Ever since his mother had left him in St. Clark’s Institution, a home for troubled kids, he had needed the clever trick. When Aaron was nine years old, his mother had dragged him there. He had no knowledge of the fact that he was supposed to be dead. His mother had orchestrated a mock funeral with a graveside service, grave marker and a priest. His stepfather, whom he had never met, behaved supportively and comforted his mother’s false sorrow. Aaron only existed as his mother allowed it.

He had waited for her to return but that day was not to be expected. While he was there, attendants at times would come into his room and beat him with leather straps they called Mood Conductors. On one of those occasions, quite by accident, Aaron had closed his eyes and when he opened them again he was on the outside looking in. As he closed his eyes for the first time, he heard the straps striking flesh, but he felt nothing. With practice, Aaron learned that whenever he faced torment, punishment or even death, he could step outside of his body and watch. Aaron had witnessed many atrocities, yet in the midst of them he had only to endure the lasting pain that came with the cessation. Aaron came to acknowledge that it only prolonged the inevitable.

Aaron was feeling and growing old. He wanted to die. His loveless life had eaten away at his resolve. For a brief moment, he thought he had been given a glimmer of hope when he met Jesse Turner. He and Jesse had been involved in a near fatal car accident that threw them together into a parallel world. Though they both lay in separate beds, in separate hospitals, and both in a coma, their lives flourished and continued inside their unconscious minds. Together they discovered the wonders of a complete other life. But Aaron could not escape his evil nature; a tendency to murder. After a fit of jealousy, he killed Jesse’s friend Olivia who threatened to come between them. As things became tense and emotions began to escalate, through an act of desperation, Jesse Turner’s husband David came looking for her.

David was told to follow his heart. His heart belonged to Jesse and she was in trouble. David knew the danger his wife faced as he had only recently come to know the truth himself. Aaron Edwards was a serial killer.

After killing Olivia, Aaron had misplaced the murder weapon, a knife, mistakenly leaving it in the pocket of a coat he placed around Jesse’s shoulders. When David and Jesse were reunited and Jesse realized who David was, Aaron broke into Jesse’s house in the middle of the night, only to lose the struggle with David. During the fight, David found the same knife, and ran the blade into Aaron’s chest.

By some miracle of the imagination he had met Jesse in what felt like another place and time. He had not the words to explain the phenomena; he just knew he had crossed a line somehow. What had happened to him?

Time was running out. Aaron had to return to his body. As he did so, his heart rate increased until it was audible on the heart monitor. Doctors and nurses returned to assess his condition and to stabilize him. He would live after all. They had patched the hole in his chest where the knife had once rested. He was back in the real world now. Yet somehow he knew Jesse was real and so was the man who had stabbed him. Aaron had been given a second chance. Once he was fully recovered, he would sort through his experiences and images then draw a conclusion. Where and what had happened to him? Was Jesse Turner a real person? Till then, he would keep his eyes and ears open.

CHAPTER 2

After Jesse Turner woke up in Newport General Hospital, she had to learn about the real world again; the world that was predictable. The real world that said if you run you will get tired. If you sleep you may often dream. The world she was born into had consequences. The past few weeks had been a bazaar journey into an existence she had no power of her own to escape. She learned that she had been in a coma. In her mind she traveled to a real place and encountered real experiences. Though her body had lain in a hospital bed, her being had traveled to a tangible world where there were no limitations and the imagination was in charge.

She found out firsthand what it felt like to live a nightmare. She refers to it now as a nightmare because her husband David and her son Jimmy had not been there. She didn’t want to imagine a world without them in it, but for a while she had. She was surrounded by all of her favorite things except her family.

When she woke up in the hospital room and saw all the different faces, faces she did not recognize, she knew it wasn’t just because she had been in an accident. She learned that together, the research, the science and one man’s faith had crossed a threshold from theory to actuality.

David Turner loved Jesse enough to believe in a parallel world. He would risk his life to save Jesse’s, so much so that he allowed doctors to put him into a coma as well. David had in fact saved Jesse’s life. While the threat was not in this world, it was from this world. On a subconscious horizon the possibilities were endless. David was forced to do something he would not normally do. He had stabbed a man. He struggled with the magnitude of what he had done. He did not know how to process what had happened. Should he feel guilt and remorse, or was it part of a dream? His gut instincts told him he had killed a man. While he had not seen the man die, he knew that because of the location of the wound, the outcome would be fatal.

During the days following the incident, David hid his personal war from Jesse but often went to St. Matthew’s to confide in his good friend Manny. Manuel Ramirez was the priest over St. Matthew’s Cathedral. David had not kept in touch in the past as friends should, but he and Manny had witnessed and shared a profound mystery. Their lives would never be the same after almost losing Jesse. They had to make some tough choices and as a result they talked often and prayed often.

Jesse didn’t speak much about what had happened. David explained the eminent danger she had been in. He explained the identity known as Aaron Edwards and that he had as she suspected killed someone from the world she came to know. He told her about Adam Granger, the man who saved her life by getting her to the hospital. Together Adam and David had discovered the threat to Jesse’s life.

David, Jesse and their son Jimmy, spent the first nights back at home sleeping in the same bed. David lay awake watching them both sleep. He hoped that what he saw was not also a dream. He vowed to keep Jesse in sight at all times, just until he felt his feet were safe. After the journey he had taken, waking up in his grandmother’s house and actually speaking to her years after her death, he didn’t trust anything. Everything carried meaning now. He constantly worried about how much of the parallel world overlapped into his reality as well as the opposite. He was traumatized. He didn’t know who to go to or who to ask for help. He would continue to talk to Manny until he found his bearings.

Good Morning Sweetheart! How long have you been watching me sleep?

Long enough. . . I missed not being able to watch you sleep in your own bed next to me where you belong.

David hugged Jesse tightly and kissed her on the forehead.

I just want things to get back to normal. I still feel a little light headed sometimes, but that will get better and pretty soon I’ll be able to go back to work.

Don’t worry about work. Let me take care of you. You just concentrate on getting better. Besides, now we only have one car. Women drivers! Jesse slapped his shoulder. Jesse, I was kidding.

I knew that. Everybody knows you drive slower than my grandpa and he never drove a car.

Oooo! You are so going to pay for that one.

They both laughed and relaxed, enjoying the rest of the morning.

CHAPTER 3

Thomas Keyes, a decorated police officer with the Newport Police Department, had an itch he couldn’t scratch. He carried his work home with him often and while he slept, he set his invisible secretaries to sorting out the clues and drama that was cluttering up his head. Thomas did his best thinking when he was asleep. He tossed and turned but to no avail. Something didn’t feel right in his mind.

He opened his eyes and set his