Bone China Mausoleum

By Ann O'Dell

A small town Psychic finds her life enmeshed with an artistic Serial Killer during a pandemic. Their mutual interest in Bone Art, an Angelic Biker, and a suicidal student, take the reader on a twisting paranormal path to “The Meadow.” (Suspense Thriller without gore)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Sep 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781982252564

Ann O'Dell

Ann O’Dell is an Intuitive Reader, Author, and Radio Host with a deep connection to Angels and gardening. Raised in a college town, Iowa City, IA, she now lives in gothic Iowa, bringing her passion for organic art and Psychic Reading wherever she goes. She describes her writing method as trance channeling and often consults the Tarot for character development.

Book preview

Copyright © 2020 Ann O’dell.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Balboa Press

A Division of Hay House

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.balboapress.com

844-682-1282

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.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-9822-5255-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-5256-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020914697

Balboa Press rev. date: 05/07/2021

CONTENTS

Chapter 1 Things Unsaid

Chapter 2 Locust Street

Chapter 3 Luke And The Angel

Chapter 4 The Pandemic

Chapter 5 Zeke

Chapter 6 Teacup

Chapter 7 The Visitor

Chapter 8 Easter, 2020

Chapter 9 Girl On The Bridge

Chapter 10 The Caboose

Chapter 11 Potatoes And Pandemic

Chapter 12 Romance In A Mask

Chapter 13 Skin

Chapter 14 The Channeling

Chapter 15 Mothers Day

Chapter 16 The Woodland Path

Chapter 17 Dinner For Three

Chapter 18 Salvation & Beef Wellington

Chapter 19 River

Chapter 20 The Road To The Meadow

Chapter 21 The Art Department

Chapter 22 The Hollow

Chapter 23 Bathsheba

Chapter 24 Power Pause

Postscript

About The Author

Also By Ann O’dell

To my son, Travis, who challenged me

to get out of my comfort zone

and write a suspense thriller

CHAPTER ONE

THINGS UNSAID

Sienna’s mom treats her like a superhero. She trains her to name the classical symphonies she plays for her on the stereo. A massive table for Sienna to draw on is the center of the dining room, where she creates pictures to the background theme music. She has crayons, colored pencils, pastels, finger paints, books, drawing paper, and paste at her disposal. Her mother is like a lioness watching her creative output from the high tree limb of a wingback reading chair, green eyes sparkling, alone, yet married. Sienna, her cub, thrives. If Sienna has a problem, her mother puts paper and crayons before her, teaching her how to funnel her emotions into her drawings. Each face, tree, color, and tiny detail in Sienna’s pictures reflects her feelings and tells a story. Her mother encourages her to write small stories for her pictures while monitoring her choices.

But at school, Sienna is a wallflower. She feels like an alien among kids who don’t care about classical composers, art, and wisdom. They play rough, yell a lot, and need constant supervision. That’s not Sienna’s way, and it feels like a prison to her. If she isn’t a kid like them, what is she?

Her best friend has brown skin, blue-black hair, wears long skirts, and moves slowly and purposefully. Sienna shares silent communication with Victoria, who has wise eyes. Sienna wonders if her friend is Native American. It’s the girl’s vibe she relates to most, a knowledge beyond her years. Sienna asks her mother to let out the hem of her skirts. She wants to dress like Victoria. They stand together at recess like two old Grandmas, silently watching the other kids play. Because they don’t play like the other kids, they are presumed to be slow.

***

One day she is standing like a Grandma with wise Victoria when, whoosh! a soccer ball, thrown hard by a mean boy, hurls her small body backward through the air. The wrought iron guardrail gate busts open and down, down, she goes. Smash! The taste of blood and acid is in Sienna’s mouth. She has fallen a whole story and landed on the back of her head on a hard cement floor. An hour earlier, the janitor had sent supplies down on the elevator lift to the cooks and forgot to lock the gate.

Sienna feels strong arms pick her up off the concrete and carry her upstairs to the playground beneath the blue sky. Muffled voices are all around her, and she feels like she is floating higher and higher above her body. Two hours later, she wakes up in the school nurse’s office.

Is it time to go to the fire station yet? Sienna asks groggily.

No, sorry, Sienna, you missed it. You were asleep. School’s over now, says the nurse glancing sideways at Sienna from her desk. She seems unconcerned. A field trip planned for the day has taken place without her! Shame washes over Sienna. Why would she fall asleep on such an exciting day? She quickly gets up, puts her shoes on, and walks home. She never tells her mother, nor does the school. She doesn’t see Victoria again.

Sharp headaches make her want to throw up. She begins to have lucid dreams, circles of lights zoom by, and the sound of two sheets of sandpaper rubbing against each other traps her in her bed. She screams. Her father comes running, holds her, and tells her to calm down.

Sienna has constant headaches following the fall and often feels like she’s looking through a smoky haze. At school, the teacher moves Sienna closer to the front of the room when she notices her peering intently and tells her parents that she seems to be having trouble with her eyes, though she never mentions the fall.

Sienna has eye trouble at home as well. One day, while riding her bicycle, she doesn’t see that her mother’s garden hoe has fallen across the sidewalk until it’s too late. BUMP! Sienna falls off her bike and onto the blade of the hoe, slashing her face. Blood is everywhere, and Sienna screams and screams. Her mother comes running, and seeing her daughter’s face ripped open, grabs her and heads for the hospital emergency room. Sienna needs 18 stitches to hold the left side of her little face together.

That’s when the whispers begin. Sienna finds herself tuning in to the kids around her as if listening to a radio. She hears stories when no voices are speaking. It won’t stop running, like a fan that never turns off.

Years later, she tells this story to her mother and sister. They are shocked and believe Sienna has fabricated the story. You fell in the playground, Sienna? How could something so impactful not be spoken of? her mother says. If what you are telling us is true, we would have known.

And there it is. Sienna tells stories to get attention, they say. She believes this is another way to call her a liar. When she becomes an adult, she can’t remember small things, only the significant events.

CHAPTER TWO

LOCUST STREET

Maybe it was the name of the street that attracted her, Sienna reflects. In the early ‘90s, she moved to Locust Street, the college town hub, and still loves it’s summer evening romance. There are nights at the college pub, guitars-strumming under Tiki torches, she can see people silhouetted against rose-hued sunsets, sitting outdoors at candlelit tables.

In the morning, she loves to stroll the sidewalks listening to the pigeons cooing, with the smell of fresh bread and pastries in the air. She is still a social loner and prefers her solitary time.

Fifteen mosaic storybook bears are placed in front of the town’s most popular landmarks, giving the town community charm and tourism appeal. Sienna’s favorites are the bear reading a book before the library and the one holding a mug between its paws before the Coffee House.

The tourism board hired a local artist who had a love for bone china to complete the project. Notice was put out to the community asking for donations of china. They were overwhelmed with a considerable-sized mountain of discarded antique plates and cups brought in by the truckload from the young, who had no place for grandmother’s heritage dinnerware.

On to the giant ceramic bears, piece by piece, pattern to color, the artist glued a mosaic skin made from various segments of broken historical dinnerware.

The artist did not stop with the bears! So much of the community grandmother’s dinnerware remained, that the city cemetery mausoleum, in tribute to the fallen train passengers of a historic flood, was mosaicked. It twinkles like a Victorian Taj Mahal in the sun. Still, at night, its real beauty is when floodlights showcase it, resembling a china tapestry of pastel pinks, greens, blues, and filigree gold. A sign entering the cemetery points the way to the Bone China Mausoleum.

High above the city sidewalks, from ornate gaslight streetlamps, big baskets of cascading petunias in bright Crayola colors, punctuated with this year’s city favorite, black petunias, are suspended. A sweet floral aroma fills the air.

Sienna gets a kick out of watching the shopkeepers trimming the glossy ivy from their display windows. It’s a job even the street planners have a hard time keeping up with as the vines entwine on the historic brick buildings at phenomenal speed.

This town has a rich train history that attracts visitors, yet the trains can also be a curse! Sienna sees the frustration on hurried travelers’ faces as they wait for a train to pass by. They won’t take this area as a shortcut