~ Dark Echo ~

by

Sharleen Johnson

Prologue

April 13, 1952

Oxford, Mississippi

Even with his back to her, he could feel the heated anger boiling from his wife as she stood in the doorway of their tiny kitchen.

“Salvatore? I found these cuttings from the newspapers in your underwear drawer. What’s the meaning?” She spoke in English but with a heavy lyrical accent.

“Nothing you would understand, woman,” he responded without looking at her. “Put my things back where you found them.”

“I’ll do nothing of the sort. I want an explanation. You have every article on all those poor little children who were murdered. Why?”

Salvatore Varossa erupted from the kitchen chair so swiftly it tipped over backwards with a loud clatter against the linoleum floor. One large bony hand clamped cruelly around his wife’s neck, while the other tightened into a menacing fist held aloft. Shocked by his outburst, she dropped all the papers and began clawing at his painful grip.

“Why? Why you ask?” He lapsed into his native Italian tongue, his voice low and gravely. “Ester, it’s something you could never understand. It’s a chore I must do. The voice of God is loud, strong and very clear. I must obey His will.” His chin trembled as he experienced a fleeting moment of weakness, but it quickly firmed again. “And... it’s because a man likes to keep trophies of his exploits, that’s why.”

When he released his handhold on her neck, she fell to the floor sobbing. “You? You killed all those innocent little children?”

“There is no innocence in this world. Evil begets evil.”

From the corner of one eye, he could see his ten-year-old daughter, Catherine, dart behind the sofa. That his streak of violence had recently grown more pronounced was known by every member of his family, even the cat. Catherine was a simple-minded child probably born of someone else’s weak seed, certainly not his own. All the children Ester had borne for him had died in their infancy... except this one.

While his wife huddled in the corner, Salvatore kneeled onto the floor and painstakingly, almost lovingly, picked up each of the newspaper articles, read them aloud, one-by-one, then folded them and placed them in an envelope. But, it was the report in today’s paper that upset him more than his wife’s untimely discovery. He ransacked the kitchen drawers to find the scissors and carefully cut the item from the newspaper and reread it several times, once out loud.

“Desperate to find the killer, it was announced today by the City Police of Oxford that they have sought the advice of a self-professed psychic, Rainy Skies, Native-American wife of noted cotton exporter Jonathan Wingate. Rainy Skies, descendant of several generations of Chickasaw tribal shaman, is said to have the unique power to see faces and feel emotions when touching objects that have belonged to or been touched by the killer or his victims. Pressed by angry citizens, local police have reached a point where they are willing to try anything, even the supernatural, to bring this heinous killer to justice. Mrs. Rainy Skies Wingate, who spoke from her home at 703 Azalea Lane, has graciously accepted the invitation to meet with the detectives tomorrow morning.”

Salvatore carefully folded the item and placed it in the envelope. He tucked in his shirttail, spit on his fingers and slicked his thick black hair away from his face. His mind raced at a furious pace searching for a solution. There seemed to be only one. He climbed the narrow stairs to the bedroom he shared with his wife and opened the top drawer of his dresser. First, he hid the envelope beneath his socks, then found his prized hunting knife, kept safely stowed in its scabbard. He removed the blade from its sheath. Little beads of blood sprang from his thumb as he tested the sharpness. Buono.

He whistled softly as he strolled out of the house and down the street. It was almost too warm for a light jacket, but the breast pocket was the perfect hiding place. The fingers of his right hand traced the pattern of his weapon concealed beneath the fabric. Empowerment calmed him and tamped down his rage into a manageable emotion.

One

August, 2005

Memphis, Tennessee

The black cast iron skillet slipped from her hand and crashed to the floor, spilling the yellow crumbles of scrambled eggs across the red brick-patterned linoleum floor. The blinding pain in her chest was overwhelming, sucking the breath from her lungs as the burning sensations spiked down her left arm. Bathed in suffocating terror, she folded to the floor, hit her knees, then pitched forward onto her face. She was afraid of dying, and yet somehow managed to yank on the phone cord and drag the instrument within reach. Nine-one-one. The frightening wait for help. Lights, voices, oxygen, needles. The rocky ride in the ambulance. Sirens. White-coated people rushed around, barking harsh commands, asking stupid questions, but they couldn’t halt the excruciating pain, or stop her from dying, from slipping away from this world into another without the solace of a comforting hand. Her whispered call for help emerged as a piercing scream--

--a noise so chilling it tore Dannah Wingate from sleep. Gasping for air, she bolted upright and tried to moderate the chaotic thumping of her heart by breathing deeply, slowly. In. Out. Soggy curls clung to her forehead and neck as she tried to shake the nightmarish dream from her sleep-shrouded mind. Convulsive tremors wrenched her slender frame as she crawled from the tangled bed covers and sat on the edge of her bed. The small electric clock glowed a green 11:45 pm. It seemed she had fought the dream throughout the entire night, when in truth, she had only been in bed for thirty minutes.

In spite of the air conditioning, her thin cotton nightgown was plastered damply to her body, portraying a voluptuous image in the remote glow of the August moon spilling through the bedroom window, but there was no one to enjoy the view. Dannah lived alone.

For the past few weeks she had been plagued by unpredictable dreams and random thoughts of death and occasionally violence and the ordeal was both frightening and exhausting. The recurring images sometimes came as night dreams--like tonight--while others came spontaneously, materializing without provocation; but they were so striking, with realism so detailed, they made her feel as though the terrifying events were happening to her. Tonight’s dream was more genuine and more detailed and explicit than any previously experienced. The heat from the stove was still vivid in her mind, the weight of the skillet in her hand, the piercing agony in her chest as well as the sharp pain in her joints when she fell to the floor.

Dannah shuddered as her imagination sent an unpleasant tingle grinding down her spine. She massaged the phantom pain in her knees. Even when she was awake, her thoughts were being monopolized by a strangely persistent pull to do something, to go somewhere, but she didn’t know what or where.

After shuffling barefoot down the carpeted stairs to the fridge and pouring a glass of milk, she sat down at her kitchen table piled high with computer printouts; photocopies of old court documents and penciled sketches of family trees. Tracing her ancestry had been her hobby for many years. In fact, she was often accused of exhibiting obsessive-compulsive behavior on the subject. She had successfully traced her maternal line. Unfortunately, her mother, Della Taylor, had been an only child begotten of an only child, which meant that Dannah had no aunts, uncles or cousins. Other than one paternal aunt she’d never met, Dannah had been unable to locate a single living relative on either side of her genealogical tree, creating an abysmal sense of isolation.

The young woman took another swallow of the cold milk then glanced at the huge twelve month appointment calendar affixed to the fridge door with magnets. She had marked a big red “X” on July tenth. That was the date she had her first dream. It was nearly as frightening as the one which had awakened her tonight. That one also involved her own death, but in a far different scenario. In the July dream, she was lying in bed--her surroundings comfortable and familiar--and died more peacefully and without pain or fear. In fact, she distinctly remembered a woman’s hand reaching out to her from a bright white, but opaque mist. Faces were maddeningly out of sight.

“Foolishness. This is all pure foolishness,” she argued with herself.

She needed to cleanse her mind of these disturbing images so she could concentrate on her writing. In the past, she was doggedly persistent chasing after the truth and exposing local corruption with her own unique brand of “go-get-’em” journalism, but lately, because of too little sleep, she was more consumed by lethargy than dedication. Truthfully, her exhaustion extended bone deep.

The inauspicious creditor-wolf would be banging down the door if her inspirations and creativity dried up. Trying to make a living at freelance writing wasn’t easy. If all else failed, she could always go back to her old job at the newspaper, but punching a time clock would be a last resort. Although she enjoyed the freedom of being self-employed, she honestly missed the camaraderie of her co-workers.

Dannah finished the milk and as she turned off the kitchen light to return to bed, the shrill ring of the phone exploded into the midnight silence. As she placed the receiver to her ear, her hand trembled slightly with the worry over who would call at such a late hour. “Hello?”

“This is St. Francis Hospital. Are you Dannah Wingate?”

“Yes, I am.” Her heart beat stuttered, then escalated.

“Your father, Coleman Wingate, has just been admitted to the Cardiac ICU through the ER. He’s had a heart attack.”

“Oh my God. Is he okay? Is he alive?”

“Yes, he’s in critical, but stable condition. He’s asking for you and we think you should come as soon as possible.”

“I’m on my way.”