Forsaken Read online

  “J.D. Barker’s Forsaken is a remarkable debut, a gripping tale of suspense in the tradition of Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and John Saul. Truly the birth of a new master in the genre.”

  Praise for Forsaken

  “Incredibly written, supremely creepy. I don’t say this lightly: J.D. Barker is a force to be reckoned with.”

  – NY Times Bestselling Author, Tosca Lee

  “Scary as hell!”

  – Editorial Review, Horror After Dark

  “Barker’s ambitious debut is aimed squarely at fans of classic horror. Witches, spells, miniature demons, and personal doubt give plenty to latch on to… the plot moves at a brisk pace… a promising start to a planned series.”

  – Editorial Review, Publisher’s Weekly

  “Barker is a master wordsmith.”

  – Editorial Review, AudioBookReviewer.com

  “A talented writer with a delightfully devious mind!”

  – International Bestselling Author, Jeffery Deaver

  “J.D. Barker has conjured a modern cauldron of horrors based on historical fact.”

  – Editorial Review, The Tomb of Dark Delights

  “Harry Potter for adults. The imagery will haunt you.”

  – Author, Jack Stevenson

  “A horror book that grips you from the start. I grew up reading horror by the likes of Stephen King, Dean Koontz and James Herbert, to name but a few. J.D. Barker deserves to have his name up there with them.”

  – Editorial Review, By The Letter

  “Classic gothic horror at its best. A truly impressive debut.”

  – Author, Joan Hall Hovey

  “Scary, exciting, fun in all the right ratios, Forsaken is the right kind of book for anyone who enjoys a racing heart and a pounding pulse.”

  – #1 Bestselling Author, MichaelBrant Collins

  “It’s a superlative read!”

  – Author, Robin Spriggs

  “Incredibly atmospheric and cinematic – it would make a fabulously creepy movie.”

  – Editorial Review, Lucy Literati

  “FORSAKEN is one of the best first novels I’ve read in a long time. Well written, a compelling story line. Put J.D. Barker’s name down on your must read reminder on the fridge – highly recommended.”

  – Author, Gene O’Neill

  “This was hands down the best novel I’ve read this year. Without a doubt, it deserves five stars.”

  – Editorial Review, Word Gurgle

  “Creepy, atmospheric, well written…this novel surprised me. If you love horror novels this is a must read.”

  – Author, Roxanne Rhoads

  “Magnificent read. The story exists on the land that straddles suspense, thriller, and good ol’ supernatural chill-fest. The term “page-turner” has become cliched to the point of lost meaning, yet with Forsaken, we are reminded where the phrase was born: between the pages of just such a book as this. Moving the story along at a rushing river’s clip, Barker braids two tales together in a dance between present and past. We begin getting the slightest feeling that the two might be more intertwined than we at first suspected, but are kept in delighted suspense until Barker lets us see. He is generous in a manner. The reader is given an omnipresent view of the world inside the covers, and this serves to build tension as we become invested in the characters, sometimes wishing to grab them by the shoulders and shake them to their good senses, other times wanting desperately to tell them what’s happening just outside their line of sight. All of these ingredients are combined in a clever and delicious story, one that reads fast and fun, and with just enough darkness laying over Barker’s land to make us wonder, to make us check over our shoulders one more time, to watch the shadows… they’re only shadows, right?”

  – Blogger, www.princessburlap.com

  Nominated for a Bram Stoker Award by the Horror Writers Association

  Best Debut Novel 2014

  FORSAKEN

  Published by:

  Hampton Creek Press

  707 Lake View Drive

  Shadow Cove, MA 02105

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental unless noted otherwise.

  Copyright © 2014 by Jonathan Dylan Barker

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Hampton Creek Press is a registered Trademark of Hampton Creek Publishing, LLC

  Cover Design by Julie Meek and Bioblossom Creative, www.bioblossomcreative.com

  Ebook formatting by Maureen Cutajar, www.gopublished.com

  ISBN: 978-0-9906949-1-5

  For PB

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Day 1

  Day 2

  Day 3

  Day 4

  Epilogue

  Notes and Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE

  “DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE, HOW MAY I help you?”

  Rachael peered down the hallway from the kitchen. She could see light peeking out from under the door to her husband’s office. He had been locked in there for hours. She cupped her hand over the receiver and spoke in a low voice. “I’m trying to find the number for a store in Maine. It’s…it’s like an antique shop, but different. It’s hard to explain. Imagine a garage sale, but in a store. Like a thrift shop. I think it’s called Needful Things.”

  “What city?”

  Rachael had tried to remember. For days she had tried to recall the sleepy little town but it was just beyond reach, teasing her mind with slivers of recollection, then drifting back into the abyss. “Castle something,” she said. “Castle Cliff, Castle Point, Castle…something.”

  “Castle Rock?”

  Rachael frowned. “I don’t know, that might be it.”

  She heard the woman typing. Over the years, Rachael had searched the Internet more times than she could count, but she wasn’t able to locate it.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m not finding anything called Needful Things in Castle Rock. Nothing at all in Maine, actually. Maybe you have the wrong name? Or maybe they’ve closed?”

  Rachael hung up the phone without bothering to respond.

  It wasn’t closed.

  She doubted a store like that ever closed; it just learned to hide.

  A witch is a magician, who either by open or secret league, wittingly and unwillingly contenteth to use the aid and assistance of the devil, in the working of wonders or misery to those about, both friend and enemy alike.

  —William Perkins,

  A Discourse on the Damned Art of Witchcraft (1608)

  I woke with a start, knowing the light of morning was still hours away. I had seen her face, heard her voice. “Help me,” she had pleaded.

  —Thad McAlister,

  Rise of the Witch

  DAY 1

  Charleston, SC

  CHAPTER ONE

  Day 1 – 1:13 a.m.

  THE CHILL OF NIGHT bit at her skin as a wintry howl moaned through naked branches just beyond her window. Rachael pulled the sheets up tight around her neck and slipped over to her husband’s side of the bed, searching for the warmth of his body. He wasn’t there, though; she found herself alone.

  “Thad?” she breathed.

  With the fury of the night’s storm behind it, the dark room whispered back at her—a hard, bitter whisper filled with the hollow tone of a place devoid of life, void of the safety that came with knowing a loved one was close.

  Rachael watched as her breath hung in the frigid air, a white mist gobbled up by the surrounding darkness. She watched as it disappeared, replaced with her next.
>
  Has the heater broken? she wondered. They had grown accustomed to such problems living in an older house, although the heater had never failed them before.

  Outside, the wind kicked up, each bellow somewhat louder than the last as if locked in some strange contest of strength, unwilling to be outdone by one another. The thick branches of the oaks surrounding their modest home leaned in, scraping against the walls and roof.

  Rachael rose from the bed, the child within her kicking in protest at the sudden movement.

  “There, there, sweetie,” she said. “We’re just going for a little walk.”

  She reached for the silk robe she had draped over her dressing table chair the night before—it offered little warmth against the icy chill of the air around her.

  Reaching for the wall, her fingers fumbled across the smooth surface until catching the light switch. She flicked it on, but nothing happened.

  The power must have gone out, she told herself.

  “Thad? Where are you, honey?” she said, this time louder than the first, but not loud enough to wake Ashley, who was no doubt snug and still curled up under her Winnie the Pooh comforter in her room at the end of the hall.

  With the wall as her guide, Rachael worked her way down the hallway, pausing at her husband’s office.

  Why is the door open? He always closes it.

  She had expected to find him, but even before her eyes adjusted to the thick darkness, she knew the room was empty. His most recent manuscript, now only half completed, stood beside the monitor of his computer. A stack of blank paper nearly as tall was piled at its side, awaiting words so it could graduate to the other. Beside them both was the antique journal in which he kept the notes for all his projects. She had found the old book for him a decade earlier in a small oceanside town. A relic of the past. Once belonging to the town scribe of some long-forgotten place, its cover was the softest of leathers, bound with thin wire.

  Rachael frowned. It wasn’t like him to leave the journal out like this—in fact, he rarely let it out of his sight, even for a short moment. Rachael had grown to think of it as his security blanket, his refuge from the world around him. He would spend hours at a time lost within its pages, his pen scribbling away, or sometimes just reading the faded ink of entries written long ago. Within those pages, he had found the fragments that had become his first bestseller. And now, nine novels later, his name topped the New York Times Bestsellers list again. As of yesterday, he was number one for the fourth week in a row.

  Rachael knew his latest story had come from that journal, just like the others before.

  From somewhere between its covers was the idea that had led to what the Chicago Tribune had called: “A masterpiece of nail-biting terror—Diary is a chilling glimpse into the mind of a madman eight hundred and sixty-three pages deep.” He had shrugged off the write-up, not even bothering to finish reading the article. Instead, he had gone back to his office and lost himself in his current project, the journal at his side, the clicking of his keyboard shattering the stillness throughout the otherwise silent house.

  It was a drug to him, it truly was.

  Clickity, click, click, click… Rachael could hear the echo even now.

  Clickity, click, click.

  “Thad?” she uttered again, already knowing he was nowhere near.

  He never left it alone… Never.

  This started with that journal; it will end with that journal—that cursed antique.

  The thought came into her mind as any other—seemingly fresh, although she knew in her heart it had been there for some time. Only now did she have the courage to face the truth. She never wanted to hurt him, not intentionally, but she had, she knew she had. She had hurt him in ways she couldn’t even begin to explain.

  Their lives were perfect. A fairy tale. She knew the truth, though, and it burned at her. Their perfect life hadn’t been earned. It had been a trade, and the deal was concluding much too soon.

  A deal she had made without him.

  Rachael reached in and snatched the journal up without so much as a second thought, clutching it tightly against her chest.

  Tonight it would end. She would make things right.

  The air grew colder as she descended the stairs, carefully taking each step in the thick darkness, her bare feet shuffling across the cold, wooden steps. She came to the first landing and fell still when she heard something—her name crawling to her on the tail of the wind, a garbled voice, a snake’s hiss. It had come from somewhere below.

  Rachael.

  The voice scratched at her.

  What are you doing, Rachael?

  A tingle raced across her spine and she pulled her robe tight at her neck, a feeble attempt to keep the frigid tendrils of cold air from slipping across her skin.

  She grasped the journal tighter still, her knuckles turning white.

  We had a deal, Rachael.

  She wanted to answer, to shout out, to tell it she wasn’t afraid, but when she opened her mouth her voice had abandoned her; only the slightest breath escaped her dry lips.

  As she found her way down the remaining steps, the journal began to grow warm in her hands. It became hot, but she wouldn’t let go. She couldn’t.

  Without warning or the touch of a match, the fireplace at the far end of the living room came to life. Angry flames reached halfway across the room, then pulled back with a violent roar, wrapping snugly around the few charred logs remaining from the previous night.

  A deal, Rachael.

  At first, Rachael shielded her eyes from the bright light but then forced herself to look, to stare into the searing red flames lapping greedily at the dark. She stared until her vision began to fill with tears, to burn, to pain her almost to the point of screaming.

  She deserved to hurt.

  She deserved to hurt for all she had done.

  The spiral wire of the journal’s binding cut at her hands as her grip tightened.

  Rachael found herself approaching the fireplace, her eyes lost in the dancing flames.

  His last book had come from the journal.

  His last.

  She would make this right.

  With a deep breath Rachael threw it to the flames, flinching as they reached out, snatching it from the air. A searing heat flooded the room.

  The eager fire licked at the leather binding, reaching around the journal with the hungry tongue of an unfed child, engulfing the pages within a muddled chaos of orange and red. The logs crackled and popped with excitement. Smoke bellowed forth, thick and dark, choking the surrounding air.

  Then it was gone.

  The hearth fell silent, filled only with the cold cinders of yesterday’s burn.

  She looked to her hands; Rachael found herself still holding the journal, her grasp so tight that a trickle of blood had begun to drip from where the wire binding had cut into her palm.

  “I want what’s mine,” a woman’s voice hissed from behind her.

  Rachael turned to face her, the added weight of her unborn child causing her to stumble in the darkness. She grasped an end table to steady herself as her eyes found the form lurking among the shadows in the far corner of the room. The woman stepped back, slipping deeper into the dark. Rachael had no need to see her; she had seen her twice before—two times more than she wished she ever had.

  The room had grown colder, filled with a numbing chill. Rachael tightened her robe, but it did little good.

  “I want what’s mine,” the woman repeated, this time louder, angrier. Her face edged into the moonlight for one brief second, and Rachael found herself wanting so desperately to turn away, to turn from the hideous creature in the far corner, to turn away and forget what she had come down here to do, to forget it all. But she could not. She only stood still, shuddering as the voice crept up her spine. The woman sank back further, as if pained by the thin moonlight, retreating into the welcoming gloom.

  Long, white fingernails protruded from her interlaced bony fingers. They made a
clicking noise as she tapped them against each other at a nervous pitch.

  A drop of saliva fell from her lips; it burned with a hiss as it touched the polished wood floor.

  “I…I can’t do it,” Rachael stammered. “I can’t.”

  The woman mumbled the angry words of a long-forgotten language, her coarse throat gritting each syllable as she spat it out. She uttered the last six words in quick succession. “The choice is no longer yours.”

  Rachael flinched as the journal dug deeper into her skin. She tried to drop it but found herself unable to let go.

  “Three days,” the woman told her. “And the child is mine.”

  Moonlight crept deeper into the room and the woman seemed to sink further into the corner, disappearing altogether in the night’s grasp.

  The fingernails remained, though, their wicked noise—

  Clickity, click, click, click… It grew louder with each passing second.

  Clickity, click, click… Much like her husband’s typing.

  A sudden pain filled her abdomen and Rachael buckled over, grabbing the edge of the doorframe. A loud moan escaped her lips.

  She felt herself falling, falling.

  The journal fell from her grip, quickly lost in the darkness beneath her.

  I want what’s mine.

  “No!” she cried out, her voice lost in the surrounding ocean of murky black.

  “Rachael? Are you okay?”

  Short of breath, Rachael sat up in bed with a start, covered in sweat.

  “Did the baby kick again?”

  Disoriented, Rachael glanced around, her bedroom coming into focus through tear-filled eyes.

  She was downstairs.

  She was in the living room.

  The journal, she had to find the journal.

  “Oh God, you’re bleeding—”

  “What?” Rachael breathed.

  “Your hand, it’s bleeding…don’t move…”

  Thad jumped from the bed and bolted to the bathroom, returning with a moistened towel.

  It was a dream...

  It had all been a dream...