Read an #excerpt from Black Water Tales: The Secret Keepers by @JeanNicole19
Black Water Tales
The Secret Keepers
Follow @JeanNicole19
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It’s midnight when Regina Dean she receives a harrowing phone call. On the other end of the line a scratchy voice whispers, “They found her, Regina…they found her.” Over the phone Regina learns that the corpse of her best friend, Lola Rusher, has been found and she must return to her, Godforsaken, hometown of Black Water for the funeral of the beloved girl who disappeared when they were both only sixteen years old.
Regina returns to Black Water and is reunited with a cast of old friends. Soon Regina realizes that the details revealed with the discovery of Lola’s corpse do not make sense, especially the fact that Lola’s body was dug up on the land of their childhood piano teacher.
Determined to lay Lola to rest, Regina launches her own investigation, but someone in Black Water warns Regina to STOP DIGGING. She is thrown into a race to solve the mystery before she loses her mind or meets Lola’s fate.
Though Regina’s hometown is a fun house of disturbing characters and distorted images, the truth about what happened to Lola Rusher will be revealed along with a most unexpected and perverse secret that threatens to expose everyone in Black Water.
Everyone knows something, but no one knows everything…
Excerpt
Opening its mouth wide as the young woman pushed through the oversized swinging doors, the lonely room swallowed her whole. Her body felt weighted; 130 pounds of flesh and bones and two tons of guilt dropped heavily into a rigid metal chair. Above her head, the incessant buzzing of a bulky rectangular light drew her red eyes before they fell to the clean, white tiles that covered every inch of the floor. Attesting to its age and disrepair, the dying light flickered spontaneously, barely managing the dim illumination of the uncaring room. Successive spurts of obscure light, then darkness over the dull gray walls gave the space a glum greenish hue that Regina had not noticed on this night because her eyes were buried deep in the palms of her blood-splattered hands. Blood painted her forearms and left some spatter on her neck. Desperately, Regina fought for a moment of clarity, a second of peace from the drone of the light that now harmonized with the ultra maddening ticking of the clock, which on any other night would have been barely audible, but this night sounded like a battering ram repeatedly threatening to cave the wall. Noise clamored inside her head and it filled like air into a balloon, growing larger; the symphony of sound fast driving her to the edge of what little sanity remained.
SWOOSH
The double doors drove open once again and Regina lifted her head to see her boss standing over her.
“We can’t save them all, Regina.” Dr. Younghill snapped while popping cheese squares into his mouth. The young doctor lowered himself into one of the cold chairs and pulled one of his legs up over the other. By now the ER was so second nature to him that after a patient he could easily, wash up, change scrubs, and grab a snack all while on his way to give his star nurse a pep talk in a matter of ten minutes. Regina eyed the character with one eyebrow raised, then pressed her palms against one another, forming a steeple on which she rested her lips and stared into the empty wall. Regina positioned her lips to speak, but stopped herself.
Don’t you care? She wanted to ask, but dared not, especially since she already knew the answer. Dr. Younghill was one of the best, which is why at the precious age of thirty-two he was the head emergency room doctor at one of the city’s most prominent hospitals.
“Wash your hands, Regina,” he told her. Offering no hesitation, she lifted herself from the chair and made her way to the sink. The doctor was always playful with his staff, but she was certain by the deepening in his voice that he was now giving her a direct order. First making sure that the water was as hot as possible, she then pumped countless gushes of pink foam into her palm, and for several agonizing minutes, she stood there washing away the blood of the child. When she turned to face Dr. Younghill again he was brushing his hands against one another, orange crumbs littering the sterile floor.
“You win some, you lose some,” he said. Regina had no response to such perversely logical reasoning.
“I learned that in my medical ethics class,” he added. Regina smiled.
“I know, Doctor. I just didn’t want to lose this one.”
“You don’t make those kinds of decisions; they pay someone named God for that.”
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