Whispers in Time Read online

  Whispers in Time

  Becky Lee Weyrich

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 1993 by Becky Lee Weyrich

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

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

  For more information, email [email protected]

  First Diversion Books edition August 2014

  ISBN: 978-1-62681-331-1

  Also by Becky Lee Weyrich

  Swan’s Way

  Savannah Scarlett

  Rainbow Hammock

  Captive of Desire

  Sands of Destiny

  The Scarlet Thread

  Once Upon Forever

  Summer Lightning

  Silver Tears

  Tainted Lilies

  Almost Heaven

  Whispers in Time

  Sweet Forever

  Rapture’s Slave

  Gypsy Moon

  Hot Winds from Bombay

  The Thistle and the Rose

  Forever, For Love

  To my sister, Sara, who, after all these years, is still the only other member of the Bacardi Club. Enough said!

  Author's Note

  VANISHED!

  Although Whispers in Time is wholly a work of fiction, the fabric of this story is based on the eerie and inexplicable fact that people vanish off the face of the earth every day, never to be seen or heard from again. What happens to these mysteriously missing beings?

  A four-year-old boy, separated from his mother at a busy mall, disappears without a trace. Kidnap­ping? An elderly couple on vacation stops at a motel for the night and are never seen again. Murder? A Navy pilot on a routine mission flies into the Ber­muda Triangle, but not out of it. Plane crash? A farmer walks into his field, but fails to come home to supper. Abduction by a UFO?

  What really happened to these people? Can we account for their disappearances logically or did they all simply vanish into thin air, perhaps into an­ other time?

  Vanishings, a volume of Time-Life Books Library of Curious and Unusual Facts, has this to say on the subject: “The possibility of being made to vanish, to lose one’s very self, taps such deep human fears that, in ages past, people blamed the devil or other dark forces for unexplained disappearances … In the United States alone, about one million people are added to the missing persons rolls each year … Their disappearances often occur without visible motive, defy every rational explanation, and thwart even the most diligent investigator.”

  In his fascinating work, Great Southern Mysteries, E. Randall Floyd writes: “Each year, thousands of Americans vanish into oblivion without a trace … Of the estimated ten million Americans who are reported missing each year, about 95 percent even­tually return or are accounted for within a few days. Five percent vanish forever.”

  Here are a few among the mysteriously missing:

  Charles and Catherine Romer, on their way home from Miami to New York, vanished along with their car from a motel on Highway 17 in Brunswick, Georgia, on the night of April 8, 1980, leaving all their luggage in their room.

  Orion Williamson, farmer, vanished from his field in full view of his wife, his children, and two neighbors passing in a buggy in Selma, Alabama, July 1854.

  Martha Tuberville, Mistress of Peckatone, van­ished one stormy night in 1788 from a road near her husband’s Virginia plantation, along with her coach, horses, and coachman. Never a trace was found.

  Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett, from the Brazil­ian jungle in 1925.

  Captain Benjamin Briggs, his family, and the crew from the Mary Celeste, in the North Atlantic, December of 1872.

  Socialite Dorothy Arnold, from a busy New York City street on a bright afternoon in December 1910.

  D. B. Cooper, airline pirate, from a Boeing 727 over Oregon, November 1971.

  Judge Joseph Force Crater, from the theater dis­trict of New York, the evening of August 4, 1930.

  Cadet Richard Cox from the Academy grounds at West Point, January 14, 1950.

  Michael Rockefeller, from the waters off New Guinea, November 1961.

  Paul Redfern, aviator, enroute to South America after taking off from the beach of Sea Island, Geor­gia, on August 25, 1927.

  Soon two others will vanish:

  Detective Captain Frank Longpre, from a street in New Orleans on the evening after Mardi Gras, Wednesday, March 4, 1992.

  Psychic Carol Marlowe of North Carolina, from that same New Orleans street on that same post-Carnival night.

  This pair can be counted among the five percent who vanish forever!

  Becky Lee Weyrich

  Unicorn Dune

  St. Simons Island, Georgia

  July 18, 1992

  Prologue

  A lone egret swooped low over the bayou, a silent ghost sailing through fog as thick as unginned cotton. The shadowy swamp was still—too still—as the wary Cajun fisherman poled his pirogue slowly through icy, death-black waters.

  The solitary figure—swarthy and bewhiskered—shivered inside his down vest from something more than the predawn chill. He squinted an eye under one shaggy brow, trying to pierce the impenetrable curtains of mist that cloaked the Louisiana swamp. He coughed nervously, then muttered encouragement to himself, “Sun, she be up soon, yes.”

  But he wasn’t so sure. Years he’d spent in these parts. He knew the twisting waterways back to front. Yet, the eerie silence this morning, the dark cypresses like bearded skeletons closing in on all sides, and the sense of total isolation induced by the muffling fog aroused ingrained superstitions.

  Could be the sun had burned out during the night and would never rise again. Or perhaps he had lost his way in the tortured maze of bayous. Had he poled his pirogue to that haunted region where hapless fishermen vanished into oblivion? Gooseflesh pimpled his thick arms at the thought, and a chill iced the length of his spine.

  Far off on a fog-shrouded mountaintop in North Carolina, the sweet-sad strains of harp music faded from Carol Marlowe’s dreams. With no advance warning, her deep sleep turned shallow and restless. A vague feeling of dread filled her. The unsettling sensations had nothing to do with any danger threatening her snug mountain cabin. The peril instead sought her out from far away. So often her psychic visions began this way…

  She twisted about and pulled her granny’s old Victorian crazy quilt over her face. The riot of brown curls that clung damply to her forehead seemed almost a part of the haphazard pattern of fancy stitching across the bright satin and velvet.

  “Go away!” she mumbled in her sleep. “Leave me alone… I don’t want…”

  Her troubled words trailed off. She felt like she was smothering in thick, cottony fog. She gasped for breath while goose pimples roughened the smooth, warm flesh of her bare arms. Dark skeletons danced through her mind and a winged ghost swooped down out of the vast, white nothingness. The vision mesmerized her, terrified her, entrapped her.

  Far away in Louisiana, the fisherman pushed on slowly, slicing through the heavy layer of duckweed that carpeted the surface of the still, dark water like green velvet. At every sound, he tensed. The bellow of a bull ’gator off in the distance became a prehistoric scream. The twitter of birds, anticipating the coming of the sun, seemed to his nervous mind the whispers of spirits rising from their watery graves. And the co
ld wind sighing through the swamp sounded like eerie music from some ghostly harp.

  When the bow of his dugout bumped a cypress knee, he all but jumped out of his skin, sure it was some unseen and unspeakably evil hand.

  Cursing his own foolishness, he pulled a plug of Red Man out of his patched jeans’ pocket and tore off a chaw with his yellowed teeth. Just as the bitter tobacco juice tingled over his tongue, he caught sight of the first ray of sunlight penetrating the fog. He laughed aloud at his fear of moments before. “No more craziness now,” he said. “The sun, she up.”

  His relief was short-lived. Even as he stood watching the sunrise, his pirogue went crazy, twisting and jerking beneath him, throwing him off balance.

  “Damn whirlpool!” he yelped, stumbling in the boat and fighting with his pole to pull himself free from the muddy, swirling water.

  His struggle was brief but desperate. When he pulled free from the sucking waters, the fisherman sank down in the boat and wiped the sweat from his broad, leathery brow. Reluctantly, he reminded himself that his wife had warned him this was no fit day to go out alone. “The signs tell it so,” she had declared. He’d laughed at her—“crazy woman,” he’d called her. Then, before leaving in spite of her fears, he’d kissed her roughly, fondled her big cushiony breasts, and given her a love whack on the wide rump.

  As much as he enjoyed poking fun, his Maria’s chicken bones, tea leaves, and Tarot cards—he reminded himself now—told the truth more often than they lied. Still breathing hard, he stared at the treacherous whirlpool, crossed himself, and muttered a quick prayer of thanks for his salvation.

  As he continued watching the rampant water, a large, unidentifiable object shot to the surface, spinning crazily in the dark vortex. At first, he thought it was only a log, but then his eye caught the glint of gold. He squinted and leaned closer, recalling tales of pirates’ treasure buried deep in the bayous long ago. Quickly, he made a loop and tossed a rope out into the water. Snagging the thing on his first try, he dragged it toward the pirogue. He secured the end of his lasso under one boot heel, then leaned far over the bow to pull his prize up to the boat. Straining and cursing, he finally got a grip on it. The heavy object—still hidden from view under the dark surface—felt slippery, slimy to the touch, but he refused to give up his hold. His chest ached with his effort but soon he had it ready to heave over the side. With a mighty groan, he put all his strength to the task.

  The next instant, as the thing flopped into the bottom of the pirogue, egrets took flight with shrieks of alarm that almost, but not quite, matched the fisherman’s scream of terror.

  The astonished Cajun fell back in horror, scrambling to the far end of the boat. Eyes wide with fear, he clutched his heart and uttered another hurried prayer—this time an urgent plea for his deliverance from the horrid thing. He wanted it gone. Now! But there was no way he could bring himself to touch it again to toss it back overboard.

  Shaking with fear and revulsion, he threw a tarp over the floater, then turned and headed at top poling speed toward New Orleans.

  Maria and her signs had not lied.

  In the quiet mist of the North Carolina morning Carol Marlowe cried out in alarm. Her fingers dug into the sheets and mattress as her bed seemed to dance and spin about the room. Breathing heavily, she clung to her pillow as if it were a life jacket. She saw a rush of black water, smelled the rank odors of rotting vegetation and stagnant pools.

  A moment later, the dizzying whirlpool-motion stopped. She slept on, but fitfully. And soon the vision returned.

  Carol’s scream this time was so loud that the frosty windowpanes rattled. She balled up her fists and jammed them into her closed eyes as if she could shut out the hideous sight. But it was no use. The thing remained in her mind—dead eyes staring, mouth agape, long hair streaming with wet weeds and slime.

  She shot up in bed, wide awake after her nightmare vision—the same one she’d had every night since shortly after Christmas. She was shaking all over. Her face felt hot, her hands and feet cold. The smell of rot lingered in her nostrils. The harp music was back, disturbing, but far better than her recurring, grisly dream.

  Carol’s head cleared after a moment. The phone was ringing. She understood suddenly that she had been expecting this call. Pulling on her robe, she hurried from the bedroom to the kitchen. Her body tense, her nerves raw-edged, she sensed what was to come even before she put the cold receiver to her ear.

  Chapter One

  The ghostly harp music had given Carol Marlowe her first clue that something out of the ordinary was brewing. She’d listened to those ethereal strains inside her head for weeks now—a sure sign that her subconscious and her extrasensory perception were working in tandem, about to spring a surprise. She already had a feel for what was coming. The melancholy melody spoke to her of days gone by, tears of grief, and long-lost love. Actually, she found the mental music damn depressing!

  Taking all this into account, when she picked up the phone in the pullman kitchen of her mountain house that frosty February morning in 1992, she wasn’t surprised to hear the troubled male voice at the other end of the line. She was surprised by her own warm, totally female reaction to that deep, lazy drawl.

  “Miz Marlowe? Sorry to bother you so early.” The stranger sounded almost defensive. “This is Detective Captain Frank Longpre of the N’Awlins Police Department. I’ve put off calling you for a good while, but… well… the point is, I need your help.”

  The instant he said “New Orleans,” a series of visions—like images flashed too quickly on a screen—zapped in and out of Carol’s head. She saw again the heavy fog in some watery, marshy place that had been a part of her dreams these past weeks. With a shudder, she visualized a snake coiled to strike. She glimpsed a man and a woman embracing. And through it all, she heard the harp playing and a child crying pitifully.

  “How can I help you, Captain Longpre?” She guessed that her clairvoyant powers had prompted this call. She knew, too, that she could and would use them to help him.

  The man hesitated as most people did when they were forced to call a psychic detective as a final resort. They never wanted to admit that they believed in such powers.

  “Captain Longpre?” she prompted.

  “Yes, ma’am, I’m still here.” Again, that sexy, deep voice with its distinct Louisiana drawl. “Can I be real honest with you, Miz Marlowe?”

  “Please,” she answered.

  “I don’t see what help anybody can be on this case. I mean, it’s like nothing I’ve ever run up against in all my years on the force. To be right honest with you, ma’am, my boss closed the file on this one last week. But I just can’t get it out of my craw. I’ve got to know what happened.”

  “What do you think happened?”

  “I’m not real sure,” he admitted. “Could be murder, could be not. And even if it was murder, what then? There’d be no one left to try for the crime. You see, ma’am, this woman’s been dead a long time and we don’t even know who she was.”

  “She?” For an instant, the ghastly, staring eyes from Carol’s nightmare returned to haunt her.

  “Yes, ma’am. A fisherman found her body in a bayou a couple of days after Christmas. I reckon she’d been down in the mud for a right good while. Oddest damned thing! The corpse is preserved—mummified—like—as if she died just a few days ago, but that can’t be.”

  Carol frowned and rubbed at her forehead. A headache was starting. His words were like déjà vu. Speeded-up visions came rushing through her mind like a runaway freight train. She was getting a sense of very distant grief, of confusion and hopelessness.

  “Captain, just how long do you think this woman’s been dead? Months, years, decades?”

  He hesitated for several seconds before answering. Finally, Carol heard a long sigh and then, “Ma’am, I’d say generations is more likely. No tellin’ how long she may have been out there in that swamp.”

  Now it was Carol’s turn to take a deep breath an
d let it out slowly. The kaleidoscope of visions in her head made her slightly dizzy. She leaned against the kitchen counter for support, then glanced down at the telephone scratch pad. All the while they’d been talking, Carol had been idly doodling the words, “Elysian Fields.” What on earth did that mean? she wondered.

  “Did you hear me, Miz Marlowe? I said generations!”

  “I heard, Captain. But what would make you think such a thing?”

  “Her clothes, for starters. Now, granted, there were only tatters left. But the boots she was wearing were in pretty fair shape and they go way back. Then there was a necklace still on the corpse that dates to before the war.”

  “The war?” Carol asked, thinking World War II or possibly even I.

  “Yes, ma’am. The War Between the States. Dental work—or lack of it—points to that, too. As for her identity or what happened to her, so far we’ve come up empty on both counts.”

  The War Between the States, indeed! Carol thought. She shook her head and her hazel eyes flashed green—always their predominant color when someone angered her. Who did this guy think he was kidding? More than likely the visions and voices she’d been seeing and hearing had nothing to do with this supposed detective’s supposed case. He was just another early-morning crank caller.

  “Where did you get my number? How did you find out about me?” Carol demanded.

  Always wary of tricksters and people calling simply to poke fun at her, Carol normally asked this question before she went any further. Calls like this were the very reason she had left Cassadaga, Florida, to move to this secluded spot in the mountains of North Carolina. Cassadaga had a reputation as “Clairvoyant City” and fans of the Florida lottery knew it. They had nearly driven her crazy—calling at all hours, offering to split their millions with her if only she’d tell them the lucky numbers in advance. It was impossible to explain to those with avarice in their souls that her precognitive powers could not be used for personal gain. In fact, when she had worked with the police in the past, Carol had refused any payment for her services.