News &
Reviews		 Preview
Artwork		 Sample
Chapter		 Back Cover Future
Books		 Action-
opolis		 Order
Info


PARANORMAL INVESTIGATOR  

This is Chapter One from HENRIETTA HEX, PARANORMAL INVESTIGATOR.  It does NOT have the accompanying illustrations by Christopher Jones (Batman Strikes!, Justice League Adventures) that will appear in the book.

CHAPTER ONE

Henrietta Heckes felt the needle on her boredom meter spike into the red.

It was bad enough that Henrietta was caged in the same car with her mother on a hot August morning.  Bad enough that she was forced to listen to stories about how Grace Heckes, formerly detective sergeant with the Boston Police Department, grew up in the seaport of Spouke's Hollow, Maine.  What was worse was that Grace was moving Henrietta to Spouke's Hollow.  Forever.  Or until Henrietta went to college.  Whichever came first.  

"Over there, Ren!"  Grace took one hand off the steering wheel long enough to point at something.  "That's what's left of the Tarrantine Dam.  Look!"  

Henrietta obeyed with a sigh.  Then, without meaning to, she gasped.

Down in a shallow vale was a marsh that stretched to the horizon.  A muddy river, the Passamaquoddy, roamed through the marsh while several rivulets slithered around fields and trails overgrown with sand-colored sedge-grass, brown stunted shrubbery, and the occasional copse of green and sturdy pine trees.

Henrietta, a city girl, had never seen anyplace so isolated or primeval.  "I...uh...I don't see any dam, Mom."

"Look northeast, where that rivulet narrows."

Henrietta spotted some stripped tree trunks lashed together and planted in the thinnest part of one rivulet.  "That's a dam?"

"Yes, Ren."  Grace had told Henrietta earlier about how the Tarrantine Lumber Company built the dam in 1897, to divert the rivulet down a canal that led to its mill on the outskirts of Spouke's Hollow.  In 1929, part of the dam collapsed without warning and inundated half the town.

"Maybe they should have built it with concrete," Henrietta suggested.

"Was that nice?"  Grace sounded a little disappointed in her daughter,  "Besides, there are still timber dams all over Maine that were built before the Spanish-American War."

"Okay.  Sorry," Henrietta sulked as she pondered, When did the pod-people steal my mom?  Henrietta was twelve years old, and before today she could recall her mother mentioning Spouke's Hollow maybe five times; now, in the past four hours, her mother (or pod clone) had morphed into a Discovery Channel documentary about the town.  "Why'd it collapse?"  

"Nobody knows.  It shouldn't have.  Chalk it up as one more mystery for...hey!  We're on Phillips Street!  We're home!"

Henrietta looked out the windshield.

At the crest of a hill the road transformed into a concrete main street veined with a lacework of tar patches.  The street descended like a roller coaster, giving the Heckes an unobstructed bird's-eye-view of Spouke's Hollow.

Henrietta's first impression of the old seaport was a jumble of roofs and gables tossed helter-skelter over a towering semi-circle of hills overlooking Penobscot Bay.  Higher up on the hills, narrow side streets branched off from the main street to create a labyrinth of tree-lined residential neighborhoods.  The houses closer to the bottom of the hills were simple clapboard huts, but further up were homes with hipped roofs, cupolas, and widow's walks.  Bunched between the hills and the waterfront was a business district where solemn old buildings and churches jostled for shoulder room along gaunt cobblestone streets and bridges.

"That's where you grew up?"  Henrietta's voice cracked with disbelief.

"Yes, Ren." Grace Heckes smiled nostalgically.

Henrietta grunted through her nose.  "It looks like someplace out of an old horror movie."

"It does not!"  Grace feigned umbrage, but Henrietta saw the smirk.

"Does, too!  Jeez, Mom, who was your mayor growing up?  Vincent Price?"

Grace laughed.

"Look over there!" Henrietta went on.  "You've even got a creepy graveyard!"

"There's nothing creepy about graveyards.  Every town needs one.  That's the Legendre Burying Ground."

"Oh, wow!  That doesn't sound creepy at all!  I suppose..."  Henrietta stopped.

The silence was so abrupt that Grace pulled the car to the curb.  "Ren?"

"What’s that...thing...way over there?"  Henrietta pointed out the driver side window. 

Grace looked.  She saw nothing except the burying ground on top of a distant hill.  "What thing?"

"That thing in the graveyard.  It's got wings like a big raven."

Now Grace knew what Henrietta meant.  "That's the Black Angel."

"What's the Black Angel?"

"Just a statue.  Why did you get so quiet?"

I...I..."  Henrietta did't know why.  "I guess I couldn't figure out what it was from here.  It kind of spooked me.  That’s all."  

"Oh.  Well, really, it's no scarier than the Make Way For Duckling Statues in the Public Garden in Boston.”"  Grace paused.  "C'mon.  We'd better hurry if we're going to beat the movers to the new house."

"Yeah.  Sure, Mom."

Grace steered the car back onto Phillips Street while Henrietta kept her eyes on the distant statue.