Spider Web Dance E-Book

Ville Tammi

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 84

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

What would you do when facing Evil? Would you do everything to not surrender to its power? In the grip of his deadly addiction, when all chips are down, Jack has to face a twisted and sadistic man from his troubled past to gain a second chance in life. Where it will lead him, nobody knows...

Leseprobe

Spider Web Dance

NimiösivuCHAPTER 1CHAPTER 2CHAPTER 3CHAPTER 4CHAPTER 5CHAPTER 6CHAPTER 7CHAPTER 8CHAPTER 9CHAPTER 10Copyright

What would you do when facing Evil?

Would you do everything to not surrender to its power?

In the grip of his deadly addiction, when all chips are down, Jack has to face a twisted and sadistic man from his troubled past to gain a second chance in life.

Where it will lead him, nobody knows...

CHAPTER 1

As Friday evening progressed, Dennis Wilkinson became more and more elevated. He typed the last word to the current chapter in his new novel, and when he gazed out at the outside world, he saw that snow had started floating peacefully in the clearing of spruces that covered the lodge in all directions.

He had bought this cottage, twenty miles south from Bangor, with the money he had made from that successfulFiery Vision, his last year’s Top Ten Best Seller Horror.

Logs blazed in the fireplace, loosening his strings. Dennis was struck by déjà vu. He recollected the beginning of his first sober day, five years ago exactly. Back then, he had lived in his brother’s confined garage on the other side of the country. On that taxing night, when the third hour after midnight

was showing in that oil-smeared radio clock, he had felt the presence of something indescribable. It was as if power had manifested itself within him and Dennis was suddenly tuned into the most melodic harmony ever within his suffering—a suffering that he had known as his life up to that point.

This feeling had been a lovely prequel, and as his recovery lengthened, so did the depth of that same truth inside of his cocaine- and heroin-ravaged body and spirit. After many years of discovering how deep the rabbit hole actually went, he had found himself in a well that reached all the way down to the Source.

His own tears unveiled his soul, which had been re-forged in the flames of his addiction

—a complex, deadly disease that followed any addict to his or her grave. However, it was possible to live a clean, fulfilled, and happy life. This new way of living meant surrendering completely and receiving help. Then there were new healthy tools to be learned, such as being honest and open in every aspect possible. Next in line was clearing the chaos of the past and getting to know oneself in a process called Step Work.

So you only had to change…everything. A high task for anyone, especially for people who had fucked up their lives profoundly by years of drug abuse. But like writing a book, you couldn’t make it happen if you never started.

Dennis was a fine example that a better life could be achieved, one day at a time. The first three months of sobriety had been a living nightmare as the enslaving power of opiates had ever so slowly evaporated from his receptor’s memory, while at the same time the absolute strongest force of his addiction had loosened its hold of his worn psyche.

His thoughts were interrupted by a sweet and tempting voice.

“Come to bed, Dennis.”

His misty eyes made the owner of the voice, in that stunningly beautiful, white satin, full-body pajama, look like some ancient royal figure carved out of ice. The most magical movie in little Dennis’s world had beenSnow Queen, and now he was married to her. All the China White couldn’t compare with her purity and zest for life, and only during one of his pinnacle points in recovery had Dennis realized those to be the exact things he had always craved from drugs.

As he left the MacBook, his not-so-secret mistress, unattended and walked toward their queen-size bed, he felt like a true king: righteous and valiant.

The next morning, Teresa Wilkinson—up until around two years ago known as Teresa Wafford—smelled the rich aroma of freshly ground beans, which invited her to start another day.

After their delicious breakfast consisting of coffee, toast with cream cheese, OJ, and boiled eggs, and before she tackled whatever was coming her way, she and Dennis embarked on a walk.

As they walked out of their elaborate, owl-ornate, cedar door—which was not reinforced in any way and would have been a sign that said “burglars welcome” in any half-grown city—they saw a fox startle from his breakfast, an unlucky squirrel, and run for the cover of the wood.

Last night had witnessed an ever-increasing fall. An almost three-inch blanket of snow covered theirs and the Heineman’s property. Justin and Virginia were their only neighbors. Justin worked as an electrical engineer in Bangor’s Power and Gas, and his better half was a part-time teacher at St. George Art College.

“That’s weird. Shouldn’t he be at work?” Teresa said, pointing at the fudge-pearl Dodge Ram in their friend’s yard.

“Maybe they chose to have little bit of hanky-panky. Let’s leave them be, it’s too early to pay a visit.”

“Something isn’t right. I can’t help it. Please, let’s check that everything is cool.”

“If it makes you happy. You do the honors.”

They walked to the front lawn, and she knocked on the door multiple times in vain. As they started to leave, Teresa decided to try and open their door.

To her surprise, it opened smoothly.

She was about to holler at them, but she choked on her words as she saw the Heineman couple lying naked and dead on the living room’s expensive bear rug, their throats slit.

But what finally released Teresa’s scream from its fleshy prison—a scream that echoed also from her husband’s throat and made that fox seek solace from a deeper part of the forest—was the sight of the areas where both of the victim’s genitals should have been. Now, only two large, hollow sockets remained, like portals to some crimson demonic realm.

Later that day, after the detective had questioned them and left, Dennis set his course to Camden. He rode his blue Bronco under the limit, for the granulated snow made an illusory white layer over the road, making it impossible to detect the truly slippery portions.

He arrived at the corner of 16th Street and Gibraltar Way, where an ethereal building resonated an arabesque-vibe, its facade re-painted a soft violet hue and the name THE GOOD LORD’S MEADOW engraved on its faux-bronze door. It was clearly a place with an origin rooted in a different era. The facility was founded by three ministries from the Methodist Church in the early 70s, and back then it had been known simply as either the detox center or “The Graveyard.”

Nowadays, this non-profit facility was run by volunteers, and it welcomed addicts and chronic alcoholics when they wanted a breathing period between their benders. On release day, usually after three to four weeks from signing in when the patients felt slightly better—meaning that their legs could hold their full bodyweight without caving in—what stole the majority of the discharged patients’ attention was the sight of Danny’s Liquor. It stood directly across the street on Calvington with a yellowed sign on the door that bargained two quarts of spirits of your choice for the price of one.

Dennis no longer had the urge or need to drown his sorrows, but he had come for a Twelve-Step meeting that took place in the facility every Tuesday and Saturday. When he entered, the vast contrast was immediately apparent between the soothing flurry of flakes outside and the unsettling choir of pained voices coming from the other end of the first floor. An overall atmosphere of dereliction had settled like permafrost to the bones of this building.

Dennis was shaken by a cold shiver, and it had nothing to do with the freezing temperature outdoors. But when he opened a side door in the hallway and ascended to the staff’s conference room where the meeting would start quite soon, he was grateful for the opportunity to share what had happened to his neighbors, and that surpassed his discomfort. Gratitude had started to open the knot in his heart during the first meeting in which he had taken part five years ago, and ever since, he’d attended them regularly.

As today was Saturday, more addicts would be present than on a weekday. Next Wednesday, Dennis would celebrate his fifth sobriety anniversary in his home meeting. It was a place where you could be at ease, like in your own home—hence the name “home meeting”—and relate to the other members in a way that was difficult in any other meeting.

Jackson Daniels, an old veteran in recovery, greeted him. A bear of a man with a thick, long, white beard, Jackson looked like he could teach a lesson to three lesser men in a bar brawl, which in fact he had done numerous times in his past life.

“Fuck you, Dennis.”

“The same to you, my friend.”

It was an inside joke, the origin of it lost in time. Although neither of them remembered where or why it had started, it always made them smile, and so it had become their insignia. Sometimes people who didn’t know them would become alarmed and ready to witness a beat-down after hearing profanities from the massive and scary-looking guy. And upon seeing them hugging it out immediately afterward, witnesses to this greeting would be perplexed before coming to understand the respect and love between the two men.

It was love of a very unique kind: Jackson had the pleasure and great responsibility of being Dennis’s sponsor. A sponsor was someone who had once known nothing but desperation in the grip of their malady, and who, after rising from the ashes of shame and resentment like a phoenix, now had the understanding and experience to help others like them. It was just what had happened to Dennis. In the turmoil of his early recovery, Dennis had recognized a kindred spirit in Jackson, who had also spiraled far down into insanity and eventually found himself on the doorstep of death.

Jackson’s favorite substance had been Demerol, a highly potent painkiller created to alleviate the atrocities of the Vietnam War, and shooting it up had been the only thing that had helped separate him from that constant, growing emptiness. And then came the time, which he had knowingly dreaded for years, when that hollowness evolved into a void, and it had swallowed Jackson whole. And no human effort would make any difference inside the void.

Absolutely nothing.

Only divine intervention had saved him, that same love of which this meeting place was full.