A Mass Murderer - Coffin for the living (ADDITIONAL BOOK INCLUDED ) (3 page)

Klyne didn’t have time to notice the damage to the harmonium. He was already moving. The Reverend would be expecting Bates move to be a decoy to the left. Which would mean that Klyne was going to come in at him from the right. That’s the way he would be looking.

And that was where the movement came.

Laughing at the simplicity of his enemies, Smith blasted off his other barrel at the noise. Hitting the object that made the noise.

But it was only a large and well-padded hassock that Klyne had thrown out of the blackness. Klyne himself didn’t go right or left. He just came in straight over the top, gun ready in his fist, looming over the covering figure of the Reverend.

The Reverend realized that he had been tricked and was frantically trying to reload the gun, fumbling with a handful of cartridges. Moaning to himself.

“Drop the gun, Reverend. Come on out, Bill. It’s nearly over.”

The flames were beginning to roar, devouring the wood, biting at the front of the pews, getting near the alter. The white pages of the open Bible began to rear and flutter in the scorching heat, as though phantom fingers were feebly trying to turn them.

“Please. I beg you. I’m a man of the cloth, and I have my flock…..”

“Right Reverend. And your sheep are going to have to get along without a shepherd for a little time now.” Klyne said with disgust.

Bates appeared, running his hand along the damaged front of the harmonium, grinning satanically at the yellow flames as they billowed higher. “Make a nice funeral pyre for you Reverend.”

The Reverend used that momentary interruption to make a last desperate bit for his life; pushing clumsily at Klyne, trying to get through the flames to the small back door.

He didn’t make it.

Not by a long way. Klyne and Bates pumped four bullets into the minister’s back, seeing the body jerk forward as each shot hit home at point-blank range. Darker patches of blood appeared on the back of the immaculate suit, and Reverend Smit spun round, etes staring with pain and shock, blood also pouring from his chest where the heavy caliber bullets had exited.

Without a backward glance Klyne and Bates left the flaming church. They knew the building was completely doomed. On the way out Klyne paused for a second, looking down at the body of the minister, smoldering in the fierce heat.

He still clutched a page of the Bible, stained with blood in his hand. On impulse Klyne bent down to see what it was.

The page was darkening with the fire but he could just read the top of it. A single verse. It simply said:
“The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.”

THE END

FREE BOOK

ROMANCE

Begin Again

Kayla Anderson has only one wish and that is to find out what happened to her and her husband. They were happy once, but then suddenly things changed and not for the better. She believed that it was because she was working all the time. With her friends help, she is going to embark on a journey back to a time when things were better. Her hope is that she will be able to mend the rift, before it becomes a matter of divorce. Sometimes what you wish for is not exactly what you really want.

Chapter one

“I don’t understand how all of this is happening without me. All of you have found a man and my sister has had two romances in one. One was ill fated to begin with, but then she found a man that she had lost contact with all these years. I’ve been busy with fighting my divorce and hoping that we could end things amicably that that doesn’t seem to be the way that this is going. There has been things said that can’t be taken back. The only thing I really want from all of this is a chance to see what happened to make it all go to hell.” I saw my sister shaking her head and the others didn’t exactly seemed pleased by the idea that I wanted to mess with the natural order of things.

“Kayla, you are my sister and I appreciate the fact that you’ve gone through your own form of hell. I don’t know if you’re going to find what you’re looking for, but I’m willing to look past the fact that you want to play god. We’ve all had that chance, but thankfully we decided against screwing with the timeline. There was one and I will keep her name out of it.” Everybody knew that the person that she was talking about was one of the five that had gotten together to make this experiment into something that we could hold with high esteem.

“I’m glad that all of you have found some semblance of a life. I thought that I had the best of both worlds, but then that world began to tear apart. He became more distant, didn’t talk much and tried to stay out, as late as possible. Stupid me, I thought that he was just overworked and stressed beyond his limits. I had the foresight to look into a couple of vacations for the both of us. I wanted both of us to have that time to recharge and rekindle the romance that we lost. I thought it was just misplaced and not replaced with animosity. We had this one big blowout fight that ended with the both of us thinking that it was time to move on.”

I was kicking myself every day for the fact that I had let the best thing in my life slip through my fingers. I’d done so, because I thought that we were doing each other more harm than good. The only way that we could rectify the situation was to breakaway and look for something else that would complete us. “I know that this can’t be easy for you and we’ve all had particular things that we wanted to accomplish with this experiment. I know that it’s not easy, but we need to talk about it. Messing with the timeline will change things. Whether it’s for the better or the worst is something that will show itself after you get back from your ill fated journey.

“Hope, I understand all of that and I’m sorry that I wasn’t here for most of these briefings. I was dealing with something a little bit more important, or at least it was in my mind. I didn’t want to believe that things were getting to the point of backstabbing. When we ended this thing, we decided right then and there that we would walk away with what we had in our possession. It started off with a need to hold onto a piece of the relationship. From there, it escalated to lawyers and their way of fighting was to put us in front of the courtroom to air our dirty laundry.” My Sister Caroline had been front and center in the court most of the time.

“I think that everybody here can agree that we all have the right to speak our mind openly. There are no secrets between the five of us. I think that we’ve done something here that is miraculous and that no man has ever been able to accomplish in their lifetime. It remains to be seen what we’re going to do with the device, especially since we’re not able to use it again. That doesn’t mean that we can’t let others use it, but do we take the risk of trusting someone that has only bad intentions.” Caroline was only saying what was on everybody’s mind. We didn’t want to admit it, but the only people that we could truly trust were those in this room.

“My sister has a point. I don’t think that we can even take it on face value that our benefactor will not want to benefit in some way through this device. We still don’t know where the power source came from, but I have a feeling that it was a benefactor that had decided to stick his nose where it doesn’t belong. I know that he has a lot invested in this, but that doesn’t mean that he can play with our lives.” I was dressed and ready to go, wearing a very old piece of clothing that I had stuck in the closet years ago. It was a blue dress with white trim and a plunging neckline.

“I think it’s safe to say that everybody here can leave. Let my sister Kayla and I to decide on what’s best for us.” Hope, Samantha and even Kate decided to throw their hands up in the air in self defeat. There were no more words spoken and the briefing had come to its inevitable end. I’ve done my hair up in exactly the same way that it would be when I arrived back in the time, before my marriage began to fall apart. I had done the necessary steps, including meditation and yoga, which was really something that didn’t understand. I did feel more centered and my breathing was level.

They all left and I could tell that they were not very happy. It didn’t matter to me. Like everybody that had gone before me, we all had our own agendas and nothing was going to deviate us from that course of action. This was after all my life and if I wanted to find out what the true reason behind my marriage crumbling, then I had the right to do that. They all spoke a good game, but none of them really paid attention to what could possibly be a catastrophic event. They could make their sermons, but to leave by them was another matter.

“Kayla, you really have to see it from their point of view. You and I both know that your marriage was not all that it was cracked up to be in the first place. You hardly ever smiled and I don’t think that it was a huge secret that you began to drink in the afternoon. That was well before you lost sight of what was truly important in your life. Just remember that, when you decide on what you’re really trying to accomplish. You never know, your wish may be something entirely different and you don’t even know it.” I listened to her and I wanted to say that I would give it some thought, but the only thing that was on my mind was finding my husband and shaking him back to reality.

“I never thought that this day would finally come. You told me that we had made the breakthrough, but I truly didn’t believe. Even after everything that I heard, I still couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that this was even possible. We talked about it, we worked on it together and we thought that we were getting close. This is the kind of breakthrough that makes or breaks a career. We’re not even sure if we’re going to share this with the public. To give a person that one time to go back and change something or even witness something in history is mind blowing.” I wanted to scream it to the world, but this secret had to remain between the five us and our benefactor.

The guy that did most of our mathematical equations was getting suspicious. He was sending emails to find out if his calculations were correct. What he had done was put us on the right path, but it was the rest of us that it finally made the discovery. The first time that George went back was something that I would always remember. The monkey was never the same. His journey had changed him into a more docile and compassionate animal. He was no longer wild and untamed. It was like something happened to him that gave him a perspective that he didn’t have before.

“I know what I said to the others, but I still want to stress to you that it’s very important that you don’t step on any butterflies. I know that you’re planning on something on a grander scale, but do take into consideration that it’s not just your life that you’re messing with. There will be a chain reaction unlike anything that you’ve seen in your life.” My Sister Caroline was worrying needlessly. My only main objective was to be a fly on the wall. I didn’t have any designs on making things right, but I could say that now and that could change when I finally came face to face with the problem.

I stood there looking at this device and for some reason I began to envision some kind of science fiction movie. I was always a big believer that technology was taking leaps and bounds in the right direction. Things that were not automated were now becoming more technologically sound. Over the years, things had changed. I’m not sure that I can say that they were for the betterment of mankind.

I stood on the device, my black heels clicking together, mimicking what Dorothy must’ve done when she was taken from her home by a tornado. This was my way of experiencing what she did in that story, but on a different level altogether. Caroline pressed the buttons and I waited, until finally it felt like I was upside down. My whole perspective had changed and everything was spinning in a clockwise formation. There were no lights and it was more of a blur of my own fingers stretching out against the unraveling of time itself.

Chapter two

I felt something smacking against my face. I opened up my eyes to see that it was a newspaper. I grabbed it instinctively, turning the pages, until I saw the date and the year in question. It was two years before my marriage exploded and I didn’t mean to go back that far, but this device was unpredictable at the best of times. I got up and dusted myself off, walking out of the alley to see a familiar sight. The doughnut shop that my husband and I went to almost every day was right across from me. I looked at my watch, but it was shattered. I’d forgotten that we were not supposed to bring anything with us besides our own body and clothes.

It was like time had stopped altogether, but it was just my perception of things, considering that my watch was no longer a viable source of information. I watched to make sure that the coast was clear, before crossing the street. I was almost hit by an overanxious older man in a silver lexis. He was busy on the phone, talking to who ever it was. It had distracted him from driving. It was the reason why driving and talking on the phone had become illegal. It’s wasn’t right now, but I could see the reason it would be.

I went into the doughnut shop, and was immediately accosted by the fragrance of fresh pastries being made in the morning. The owner one Gerald Reiner was busy behind the counter with a smattering of flour on his face. He looked like he was enjoying himself, immersing into his passion for pastries and making a real name of himself.

“Kayla, I’m a little surprised to see you here without…” I put up my finger and I pointed to the one pastry that had always made me aware of my waist size. “I know exactly what you’re looking for. Wait, weren’t you supposed to be in some kind of scientific conference for the next two weeks?” I really didn’t know for sure. I tried to prepare myself for any eventuality. “You said that you were going to be away for two weeks and that it involved a bunch of scientists that were getting together to talk about experiments and such.” It started to dawn on me that my appearance here was only going to confuse things. My husband didn’t even know that I was back. In reality, my other self was still enjoying the aftermath of skiing and then sitting by the fire with colleagues. We had some heated debates the lasted into the wee hours of the morning. I was never much for cold, but skiing had changed my mind in ways that I didn’t think was possible.

“I had to come back early and take care of a few things. I plan to go right back to it, but not, until I deal with a couple matters” I bit into the chocolate éclair and it was almost better than sex. If I were to be eating one of these and having sex with the man that I love, then that orgasmic high would have been something to feel for sure. I don’t know why I never tried it and every time that I bit into one of these things, it would always come to mind. I never did put it into action, which is one of my regrets that I was hoping that I could rectify.

“That is precisely the reason why I do what I do every morning. The look on your face makes it all worthwhile. I have to tell you that you really do help my business. I know that you’ve been talking me up and I don’t know how I can pay you back.” I had invested a bit of money into his success. I was happy to do it. Once I got a taste for his culinary favorites, I was hooked and ready to sign on the dotted line. I didn’t have much, but it did afford me the opportunity to eat here for free and to share in 5% of the profits.

“I take these home every day and I share them with my husband. I’ve even given them to neighbors and they rave about them like they can’t believe that your shop exists. I tell them where they can find you and I think that’s the reason why you find yourself with a lot of clients. I see the love that you put into your food and it translates into the taste that I didn’t think that was possible, but you make me a believer.” I was never one to give high praise to anyone, but for him I would make the exception.

“You are making me blush, Kayla. Your sister Caroline has been coming around and I think that I have you to thank for that. She has been spreading the word herself, but she has no idea that you and I are in business together” He took my hand and kissed it. I thought it was platonic, but now I was beginning to see that maybe there was more to his interest than just a business partnership. He was of Greek descent and he was showing that he was not above using his manly charms to woo me into a state of indecision.