Ghostly Summons: A Lars Kelsen Spectral Thriller by John Andrew Karr

Author:John Andrew Karr [Karr, John Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Drystone Arch Press
Published: 2023-05-20T22:00:00+00:00

...what horror.

— “The Pit and the Pendulum,” Edgar Allan Poe

CHAPTER TEN

Kelsen pulled to the shoulder at the entrance to the Dare County Bombing Range. The rush of wind vanished with the certainty of Jeanette Broughton’s life. The target areas for the fighter-bombers were not visible from here. Google had them miles deeper into the range, off-shoots that cut into a great chunk of undeveloped land, and the pseudo-Iraqi-Afghani town within. The trek here had revealed alternating patterns of forest, vines, hanging moss, swamp, water channels, stretches of lowland scrub and weeds. Nature at its beautiful and formidable best. Alluring to those who appreciate the wilds, perhaps unremarkable to city-dwellers.

Haunted to Kelsen.

The Pit, typical of Hell.

The Ultima Thule of man’s punishments.

The Pit.

Why Poe’s words had sprung up, he had no idea. Peter Miller’s intense interpretation of The Pit and the Pendulum came too easily to Kelsen’s mind. Maybe he should opt more for Miller’s Pines than Pendulum. Or Float, for that matter. Oh, we’re angels. Yes we’re angels. Oh, we’re angels, yes we’re angels.

Like a bullet through the brain.

Or the heart.

Her body had been revealed here. The subconscious plays upon such events, particularly one prone to conjuring images of staring victims with silent demands. He’d sat in enough shrink offices to know what “his condition” meant in a clinical sense. Projecting a victim at their life’s most vulnerable moment, trying to “help them” after death, it was all just a means of coping with his own losses, his own emptiness, his own failures. In summation, a marginally successful mental head fake.

With a mind like his, who needed enemies? More like two for one, the inner and outer enemy.

Take the anxiety. It was on him again as he’d known it would be. The undercurrent found him right after the 264 split from 64, as if it had waited to see if he’d play it safe and veto the trip. He didn’t. Couldn’t, really. He dallied sometimes, but in the end his psyche would continue to defy logic and present Jeanette as an image to him. The answers needed to put her to rest were out there, somewhere. Crime scene review wasn’t on his List of Favorite Things, but try and ignore it and the pull only grew stronger.

By the time he drove up to Stumpy Point Bay, trepidation morphed into a constricting hand around his stomach. He was close now. Ten times smaller than the bay, Back Lake could be found at about the same latitude, only shielded from view by the game lands slash bombing range wilds. Hardly a vacationer’s attraction, no signs informed the traveler of its whereabouts.

Kelsen gnawed his inner lip in contemplation.

The killer knew how remote this place was.

But even that was ambiguous. Just because the killer found a remote spot did not mean he was local. Knowledge of the place could come from Google, or just by driving down the Pamlico Scenic Byway, a.k.a. Route 264. Once again, nothing pointed to the killer’s identity.

On purpose, no doubt.

There were only two options on how Jeanette’s body arrived at this location.

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