Shadow Riser
by
Deborah Barreto
Copyright 2012 – Deborah Barreto Hernández
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Joryson Lee
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Dedication
For my boys, Kenneth & Kayden…
Who give me reason to always see the good in life, no matter what.
You guys are the kights in shining armor that saved my life.
Also, for Mina,
my favorite cousin, the Super Girl.
Thanks for making Damien your dream guy
and stalking me until I finished the damned story.
And Kenny, because he actually read the story,
even when he didn't want to, and felt for Kennedy
like I'd hoped, but had never expected anyone to do.
“What would your good do if evil didn't exist,
and what would the earth look like
if all the shadows disappeared?”
- Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
Table of Contents
Prologue
1. Antisocial
2. Up for Breakfast
3. Lonely Day
4. Emergency
5. Kill All Your Friends
6. Read My Mind
7. Don't Fear the Reaper
8.Vertigo
9. Tie Your Mother Down
10. For a Pessimist, I'm Very Optimistic
11. Near Life Experience
12. Communication Breakdown
13. Road to Nowhere
14. To Live is to Hide
15. Sweet Little Sister
16. Point of Know Return
The Good Left Undone (Epilogue)
About the Author
Connect with Deborah
Book Two Preview
Prologue
Thick black smoke obscured her vision as she moved around blindly.
Her outsretched arms tried to find something solid to hold on to. She knew that she was searching for someone, but she couldn’t remember who.
The foggy haze disipated by fractions.
Soon, what appeared to be the outline of a man could be made out. His features indistinct, darkened by the shadows of the still dispersing fog.
She walked closer wanting to see who it was that she needed so badly. The form shifted. It moved, getting farther and farther away from her with every step she took. She was frantic.
He couldn't go. He couldn’t leave her!
“Wait!” She shouted desperately, but he just quickened his pace. She ran after him, nearly catching up to him.
Just two steps behind him, she reached out to touch him, to take his shoulder and make him turn to look at her. But, as soon as her fingertips made contact with the fabric of his shirt, the figure simply vanished.
He faded away into nothing and left her hands grasping at air as she ran them through the remaining smoke left in his place.
Her knees gave out. She collapsed, broken on the ground as the murkiness engulfed her once more.
And she fell, like a poor man's version of Alice through a dark and dreary rabbit hole.
Then, just like magic, she sat up on her bed.
1. Antisocial
“Please, come back!”
“Soon.”
“But, everything here is so warm and sunny and extremely boring without you!”
“It's only been a week, Nedy.” Lauren's voice reached her ear out of the cordless phone that she held in her hand.
“Yes, but a really long one.” Kennedy whined into the phone. “I've done everything there's to do around here.”
“What about the movies in Villa Grande?” Her friend suggested.
“Done it, twice.”
“The mall, then?”
“Can't find anything worth spending my parent's hard earned money on.”
“Museum?”
“It's not the same without you there to make fun of the exhibits.”
“Beach?”
“Too crowded.”
“Lagoon?”
“Too many bugs.”
“Okay, I give up.” Lauren concluded.
“Exactly!” Kennedy exclaimed, glad that she had managed to make her point. “When are you gonna put me out of my misery?”
“You know that I won't be back for another three weeks.” Lauren reminded her. It just wasn't fair. What did her friend have to go on vacation to celebrate her eighteenth birthday with her parents for?
“No!” She cried, the dramatic effect of it lost on her friend that listened all the way from the other side of the receiver, on the other side of the island they lived on.
“Don't be such a crybaby. It's only a few weeks. How about El Gato Negro? I'll bet anything that you haven't been there since I left.”
“I'm not going there by myself!” Was she crazy? She was truly appalled at Lauren's audacity at telling her to go to the local pub all by her lonesome.
“How does the saying go, misery loves company, right?” Well, that was how Kennedy felt, miserably bored out of her mind.
“You're my only friend, Laurie.” It sounded so pathetic when she said it like that, but it was the sad and ugly truth.
She was the only one to ever stick by her, even when it meant that she would never be as popular as she wanted to be because of it. Lauren was the Freak Girl's sidekick. Because being her father's daughter made her the punchline to their jokes. By them, she meant that year's graduating class of San Miguel Arcangel's Bilingual High School.
“Then it would be a good opportunity for you to make new ones.” Lauren urged.
“Easier said than done. I'm the Freak Girl, remember?” She couldn't keep the bitterness out of her tone.
“High School's over, Kennedy.”
“Yeah, tell that to the douches that look at me funny every time I walk into the drugstore.”
“Well, they're asses. But, not everyone went to our school.”
“Enough of them did.”
“Hey, you're going off to college in seven weeks.”
“And?”
“Fresh start, new people. No more Freak Girl, just Kennedy.”
“No more Freak Girl.” Kennedy muttered. That would be a welcome change for once.
“Good. Now, I have to go. Stop contemplating the barrenness of your social life and go get yourself a really cold glass of your mother's delicious lemonade.” With that, she was gone, leaving her to deal with the tediousness of summer vacations in that small town on her own. She should have accepted the university's offer of early admission.
“Fine.” Kennedy grumbled as the line went dead. She hated to admit it, but Lauren was right. At that moment, her only choices were to hide out there on the far corner of the porch or to stay locked up in her bedroom upstairs.
She could always opt to spend the day listening to her father’s lectures on paranormal investigations. They were fun to listen to around a campfire, but had lost their appeal to her after having heard them a hundred times over.
She felt bad for him. Kennedy never saw him with anyone apart from her mom either. Although, he would sometimes leave on one of his investigations for days on end.
Ever since she was a child she had always seen him spend all of his spare time sheltered in his office studying the occult and its meanings. And yet, she was sure that his most authentic encounter with a ghost had i
n all likelihood been a kid with a white sheet thrown over his head on Halloween night.
She couldn't help but giggle out loud at the thought.
Her skin flushed with laughter and the once soft fabric of her white top turned into rubber. It clung to her skin like wrapping paper.
She had come out of the house dressed in what her father liked to call her, “almost indecent”, pair of denim shorts, with a cotton tank top to stay cool. Now, she would be going back in wearing a wetsuit. Her mouth felt drier than the Southern woods during wildfire season.
The heat was nearly unbearable.
Kennedy placed her bare feet upon the swing and readjusted her position so that she could support her head with the armrest. Her shoulder length brown hair danced in the air as she fanned herself with a hand.
Her parched tongue craved a nice cold splash of that lemonade that Lauren had mentioned earlier. But, it was in the kitchen. If she wanted it, she would have to either walk all the way around the house under the scorching rays of the sun and go in using the back door or go in through the front door. Meaning that she would have to go by her father’s study to reach her goal.
The question stood, did she want that lemonade bad enough that she would risk being spotted by her Ghostbuster father?
She actually considered going through the back door. Then her eyes landed on her bare feet.
Great, she had no shoes on.
“Aw, Screw it!” She was so thirsty.
Kennedy got up. The seat swung forward after her due to the sudden absence of weight. She opened the front door as silently as she could and made her way down the hall walking on her tip toes.
‘Thank God!’ She thought. The door that belonged to her father’s headquarters was closed. The sound of muffled classical music could be heard coming from inside. She kept on with her quest for refreshment before her luck ran out.
When she finally arrived at her destination, she found it empty. She looked around and spotted a piece of paper held in place by a small fruit shaped