The DARK Trilogy: Titan's Song Chronicles Volume 1 (Books 1 - 3) Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  BOOK ONE - DARK GIFTS

  Chapter 1 - The Pyramid

  Chapter 2 - Myra

  Chapter 3 - Assignment

  Chapter 4 - Off Day

  Chapter 5 - Abandon

  Chapter 6 - Encounters

  Chapter 7 - The Hand of Fate

  Chapter 8 - Down Deep

  Chapter 9 - Reflex

  BOOK TWO - DARK FIRES

  Chapter 1 - Smoke

  Chapter 2 - Before You Go

  Chapter 3 - Mixed Messages

  Chapter 4 - Reaching

  Chapter 5 - The Witch Sleeps

  Chapter 6 - The Witch Wakes

  Chapter 7 - The Big Reveal

  Chapter 8 - Chained

  Chapter 9 - In The Flesh

  BOOK THREE - DARK VOICES

  Chapter 1 - Best Laid Plans

  Chapter 2 - Transgressions

  Chapter 3 - Just Another Dead Guy

  Chapter 4 - Judgment

  Chapter 5 - Tripping

  Chapter 6 - The Stack

  Chapter 7 - The Great and The Terrible

  BONUS MATERIAL

  IN THE SHADE - A HORROR NOVELETTE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  The

  DARK

  Trilogy

  Titan’s Song Chronicles

  Volume One

  By Jacob Stanley

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the express written permission of the author.

  This is purely a work of fiction. Any names, characters, events, places, or businesses are totally fictitious, and any resemblance to real life names, characters, events, places, or businesses is entirely coincidental.

  V. 3.1

  BOOK ONE - DARK GIFTS

  Chapter 1 - The Pyramid

  It was full dark.

  The red car bounced over a rough dirt track in an area dominated by thick, old forest land. Occasionally houses appeared on one side of the road or the other, and there were stretches of pasture from time to time, but mostly it was just woods.

  The road went on and on.

  Finally, the car slowed and the driver turned left into the front yard of an old house where a worn patch of gravel strewn ground served as a makeshift driveway.

  Simone Copeland sat in the driver’s seat, hands resting on the steering wheel, the engine still running.

  She was 23 years old, and taller than average, with light brown skin, long black hair, and big dark eyes that tilted slightly at the corners. She wore a tie-dyed Pink Floyd T-shirt that she’d bought at a thrift store five years ago, and some old blue jeans that were a little too big for her.

  Tonight, her body language revealed certain subtle signs of discomfort—tense shoulders, a tightness around her mouth, a slight furrowing of her brow.

  The beams of her headlights stretched across the lawn towards her house, bouncing off the aged yellow paint, throwing weird shadows all over the wide front porch. An old Motley Crue song—Smoking in the Boy’s Room—played on the radio.

  She tried to tell herself she was just waiting for the song to end, but she knew better. Her body was warning her in all the usual ways—a familiar flutter in her stomach, tiny lances of agony that throbbed rhythmically behind her eyes.

  Simone didn’t always feel the pains before her hallucinations, but when she did, it usually meant a bad one was coming.

  She reached towards the radio, fumbled in the dark till she found the volume knob, and turned the song up loud enough to vibrate her seat. Then she focused on the music, tried to let it transport her, tried to ignore what she felt.

  Denial wouldn’t help anything, of course, but there was no point in fretting either.

  She thought about closing her eyes while she waited, but knew it would probably make things worse in the end. The pains didn’t usually go away when she did that—they just got sharper, and sharper, until eventually it was like knives stabbing into her forehead, and she couldn’t stand it anymore.

  Most times the best approach was to surrender; just keep her eyes open and let her fucked up mind show her whatever weird image it wanted her to see.

  After that the pain would end almost immediately.

  Usually.

  So she sat there, waiting, trying to keep her fear under control as the pain increased.

  The song was almost finished when she finally noticed a small, furtive movement coming from the far corner of the front porch. It was in a shadowy area just outside the bounds of the headlight beam. The shape was human enough, but that didn’t comfort her much—there were plenty of ways human-shaped things could be terrifying.

  As she watched, her heart began to race; the things she saw always scared her more when she was alone.

  Just let it happen, remind yourself that it’s not real, and stay calm.

  The figure stood there in the dark for a few seconds, fidgeting in a lazy sort of way. Then it started walking: slow steps, easy, confident, carefree, moving gradually into the illumination of the headlights.

  It was a little girl, long and skinny, wearing Reebok sneakers, a pair of faded jeans, and a sweater with rainbow and glitter patterns. The girl’s black hair hung in long braids, and she wore a serious expression. She was chewing gum, and she carried herself as though waiting for someone.

  It took Simone a second to realize she was seeing an image of herself at about the age of 10 or 11.

  She let her breath out, relieved. This wasn’t so bad. It happened occasionally.

  “You’re not real little Simone,” she whispered. “You’re just a dream. Go away.”

  Little Simone didn’t seem to be aware of grownup Simone—her hallucinations usually weren’t, which was a mercy. On the rare occasions when they did become aware, things could get very uncomfortable.

  The imaginary Simone took a few more steps, running her hand along the porch rail as she went, looking off in the direction of the darkened woods on the left side of the house.

  Then, abruptly, she winked out of existence.

  It was the second time she’d seen something today. The first had happened at work with no warning pains at all. She’d spotted a large black cat walking between the video aisles.

  She thought it was real at first, that a cat had slipped into the video store, but after searching every corner of the place and failing to find it, she decided it had probably never existed.

  It was rare for her to have two episodes in one week, much less one day, but it happened. Sometimes she had clusters with dozens of incidents over a short time period. Hopefully she wasn’t gearing up for one of those.

  Already the pain in her head was fading. That would probably be the end of it.

  She sat there for a moment longer, letting her nerves settle, then turned off the car.

  The music and the engine both quieted abruptly, creating a sudden vacuum of silence.

  She grabbed her purse, unfastened her seat belt, reached for the door handle.

  A voice behind her spoke softly: “The fox is in the box.”

  She screamed, wheeled around.

  The back seat was so dark she couldn’t tell if anything was there or not.

  With hands trembling so bad they barely worked, she finally managed to grip the door handle and pull. She shoved i
t wide open, scrambled out as fast as she could, slammed it behind her, and kept backing away till she gained enough distance to feel safe.

  She ventured a glance into the back seat.

  In the lingering glow of the courtesy light she could see it was empty.

  She stood for a moment, waiting for her heart to slow down.

  I’m still hallucinating, that’s all. Just need to chill the fuck out and keep it together.

  She forced herself to breathe slower, tried to think about boring, ordinary things like math and baseball.

  When she felt steady again she put her purse up on her shoulder and started for the house.

  Blades of high grass brushed up against her shins as she went, reminding her of another safe, ordinary subject—lawn maintenance.

  The yard needed mowing in a big way and if she didn’t take care of it pretty soon, she’d be wading in grass up to her hips, and she’d have to carry an ax with her to kill all the snakes.

  It was the sort of thing her mother would’ve taken care of weeks ago if she were here. Simone didn’t even know the name of the lawn mower man, much less his phone number.

  Need to call Mom tomorrow and ask about some of this stuff. If I don’t get on top of things soon, the place will be a fucking wreck, and she’ll be madder than hell when she gets back.

  Simone crossed the remaining stretch of yard in a little bit of a hurry—just in case there really were snakes lurking out there somewhere—then walked up the porch steps and into the shadows under the overhanging roof.

  Her foot hit something and she stumbled forward, putting one hand against the door-frame to catch her balance.

  She looked down for the cause and saw a cardboard box, about 10 inches square, with a UPS shipping label on it.

  The fox is in the box, she thought, and her whole body broke out in goosebumps.

  After a moment’s hesitation she picked up the box, and was surprised by the heft—there was something solid in there, five pounds at least.

  She tried to read the writing on the label to find out who sent it, but the darkness made it impossible to see anything but the big UPS logo.

  Need to get a new porch light, she thought. It had burned out two weeks ago, and she never could remember to put a new one in before she left for work.

  She put the package under her arm, unlocked the door, and went inside, flicking up the switch on the wall by the doorframe to turn on the overhead bulb in the center of the living room.

  Like a lot of old houses the place was gloomy at night, with dark wood paneled walls and old wood floors that seemed to suck all the light away. Most of the furniture had been there since Simone was a kid. A lot of it was in rather poor shape, and none of it matched—her mother thought matching furniture was tacky—but it was all very colorful. Almost enough so to combat the house’s general brownness, but not quite.

  Her mother’s big silver cat, Melvin, ran up and started winding around her legs, almost tripping her as she carried the box into the dining room and placed it on the table.

  “Relax Mel,” she said “I’ll feed you in a sec.”

  The label on the package said it was from someone named Miranda Copeland. The address was a place called Mill’s Lane Road in Collinwood Alabama.

  Miranda Copeland…

  Presumably some relative on her father’s side, and she didn’t know any of those people very well. It might even be one of her aunts—there were four of them and she never could remember all their names.

  She walked the short distance to the kitchen and grabbed a knife, then cut the tape across the top of the box, and opened it up.

  Inside, she found an envelope with “Hello from Alabama” written on it in flowery red script. It sat atop something shrouded in bubble wrap.

  She put the envelope aside on the table for the moment, and dug into the bubble-wrap till she uncovered the object within.

  It was black and shiny like obsidian, shaped like a pyramid, about seven inches across at the base, and five inches tall. Small engravings covered the surface: squares, triangles, circles, odd collections of dots and dashes, stick figures fashioned after humans and animals. The engravings were very neatly executed but there was enough imperfection to suggest they’d been done by hand.

  She touched it and noticed that the surface was somewhat colder than she would have expected.

  She picked it up, and from the weight and feel, she thought it must be made of very dense stone, or perhaps glass.

  With her hands wrapped around it, the coldness was even more noticeable.

  Weird…

  Just then, the cat jumped up on the table, and stood on its back legs, putting its paws on her chest, trying to get her attention.

  “Okay, jeez Melvin, I get it.” She placed the pyramid back in the box on its bed of bubble wrap. “Let’s go get you something to eat.”

  Mel was always starving. She had filled his bowl when she left for work, but by now the food would already be long gone.

  He followed her into the kitchen, meowing loudly as if he hadn’t had a bite to eat in a thousand years.

  She found a can in the cabinet and poured the contents into his bowl next to the dining room table.

  He immediately dove for the food with a fury. She left him to it and returned to the package.

  This time she ignored the pyramid and went for the envelope instead.

  As expected, she found a letter inside—two and a half printed pages with the same handwriting as the scrawled greeting on the outside:

  Dear Simone, you probably don’t remember me. I’m Gloria’s daughter Miranda…

  Simone was pretty sure Gloria was the name of one of her aunts.

  So this woman must be my cousin.

  The name was vaguely familiar but she couldn’t put a face to it.

  …It’s been about 20 years since I last saw you, at Grandma’s house during one of our family reunions. I was 10 at the time. I guess you were only about 4 or 5.

  How’s your life been? Hopefully you’re doing well. I had a difficult time finding your address, and had to make a bunch of phone calls before I found someone in the family who knew.

  Anyway, I’m sure you’re wondering what the thing in the box is, and why I sent it to you.

  Actually, it’s a very interesting story.

  I was going through some old things that mother stored in my garage, and I came across the pyramid in a box with a bunch of other old junk. There was canning equipment in there, and rusty old tools, and all sorts of stuff that originally belonged to Grandpa and Grandma.

  I took the box to my Mother—she’s staying with me now—to see if she was sentimental about any of the items or if I should just throw everything away.

  She said most of it was worthless garbage, but her eyes lit up as soon as she saw the pyramid. She said it was Grandpa’s good luck charm. Apparently, he would take it out, hold it, and carry it around with him when he felt like his luck was going bad. Sometimes he even kept it in his car. He really believed in it.

  Mom doesn’t know exactly how Grandpa came to have it because he kept changing his story. Sometimes he said he got it in Europe during the war. Other times he said he got it in New Orleans from a voodoo lady when he was a young man working on a fishing boat. He was probably just making up stories to fascinate the kids. According to mother he was a sly sort of fellow and loved to tell tall tales just to amuse people.

  But anyway, mother said that out of all the kids, your father was always the most interested in Grandpa’s stories, and he was especially interested in the pyramid. Grandpa always said that he wanted your father to have it when he died.

  Of course, with your dad dying so young and everything, that wasn’t possible, so it just ended up in that old box, and might’ve stayed there for another 20 years if I hadn’t started poking around in my garage. Mother told me that since your father wasn’t able to take it, that you oughta have it. She said Grandpa would’ve wanted you to have it if he was still alive.
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  Now, I’m gonna be honest and tell you that the thing seems a little spooky to me, so I didn’t know if you’d really want it. I’m somewhat religious myself, and I’m not so sure how I feel about the thing, especially with the mention of voodoo. But Mother insisted that you should have it, and since nobody has your phone number (I tried the old number you left with Ethel but it was out of service) I decided it was better just to send it in the mail and let you decide for yourself.

  At the bottom, the woman had left a phone number and urged Simone to get in touch if she had any questions or if she just wanted to talk for any reason at all.

  Seems like a nice lady.

  Simone put the letter down on the table and turned her attention back to the pyramid.

  It really was kinda creepy, especially with the voice she’d heard in the car saying stuff about a box.

  Maybe it’s haunted or something.

  The idea amused her.

  She picked the pyramid up, marveling again at the cold feel. It reminded her of touching a soft-drink can that’d been partially chilled in the fridge—not quite icy to the touch, but noticeably colder than room temperature.

  It’ll make a good conversation piece, I guess.

  She carried it up to her room, hoping, in mock-serious fashion, that it really was a good luck charm.

  It wasn’t.

  Chapter 2 - Myra

  In the woods beside Simone’s house a small group of very dangerous people hid and watched.

  There were eight men, all dressed in dark black military-style outfits, all armed with pistols and rifles. They had night vision scopes on their weapons and wore wireless headsets.

  The whole setup was very high tech.

  Their leader, Myra Calanealoo, kept herself a little apart from them.

  She was a black woman whose appearance made her seem about thirty years old, but in reality Myra was much, much older than that.

  She had full red lips and high cheekbones. Her hair was almost long enough to reach her waist, and she had a well proportioned body—curvy in all the right places.