EXCERPT

"What is it?" Skyler asked but the others ignored her, instead concentrating on their equipment and calling out readings that made no sense to the reporter. Skyler snapped at Scott and Alex, directing them to their cameras.
"Temperature variance on the second and third floors," Evans called out over the general din. "Negative twenty from the mean!" The tension in the man was clearly visible as he moved in rapid, jerky movements. He snarled at Scott when the cameraman got in his way.
"Are we recording?" Jason shouted, watching the oscilloscope dance up and down the scale with dizzying speed. He grabbed an equipment belt, strapped it on, and scanned the other monitors.
Shade felt a familiar tinge along her nerves – a feather light touch that set her hair bristling and her heart pounding. Struggling to her feet, she saw the crows on the far wall and remembered the stream of black that tore past her in Seattle.
Omens, she thought bitterly. Damn it! From deep beneath them, she sensed something rising rapidly upward, surging like a tide from the dark heart of the earth. The impression was immense, sinister, and very, very powerful.
"Electro-magnetic fields are going crazy!" Richard cried, tossing Jason a two-way radio. "Motion sensors are going off as well… It’s sporadic. I – I can’t localize anything!"
"What’s the Gauss reading?" Catching the radio in one hand, he fastened a monitor in one ear.
"It’s coming fast!" Shade cried, her eyes wild and chest suddenly heaving. A harsh cry was torn from her just as all hell broke loose around them "Now!".
A blast of air charged through the building, bursting open doors, toppling vases, and knocking over chairs. The floor beneath seemed to buckle and heave. Chandeliers swayed and danced as light bulbs exploded, sending out fierce showers of sparks. Slamming people to the floor, the force sped heedlessly throughout the rooms. All around, people struggled to their feet. Their cries filled the air as they began wildly searching the room for an exit.
"Earthquake!"
"Impossible – get me readings!"
"Run!"
"In Oklahoma?!"
A powerful onslaught of images shot through Shade like blooming starbursts in her head. She recoiled, staggering as they pounded her physically. She felt her neck jerk painfully and her back arch, as if something had her in its grasp.
Mountains grew and fell and then rose once more. Fiery stars fell from the sky. She raced through a primal forest, a spear held tight in her fist. She was being hunted – someone was being hunted, anyway – and she shared their fear and tasted their blood as they darted through the forests in the dead of night.
She suddenly saw a man raise a small pot etched with spirals high above his head, chanting … "hilka, hilka…"
The colors flashed and swirled… she was standing in stark daylight in a field of carnage like the one in the dream in Las Vegas… she wanted to vomit at the sight of the crows tugging at long blackened tendrils of flesh… again the flood of hectic movement and spiraling colors… crows, flocking in the thousands, sweeping across the sky turning day to deepest night… an avalanche of baleful images plowed through in mere seconds leaving her quivering and weak. She felt detached, unreal.
A woman ran with long powerful strides, her cry of grief echoing harshly. She raised the sword in her hand to destroy. The crows and shadows struggled to take shape, gathering together to lash out at the woman, to pummel her into the hard ground even as the earth shook ferociously. There seemed to be copies of her; woman after woman after woman stretched back through every age and form into infinity. She felt something crawling beneath her skin, sinking deep into flesh, into the marrow of her bones…
In her mind, Shade now saw the woman lift high a vessel… No, not the woman – a man. In fact, a very real man in the here and now. Shade could see the ancient vessel trembling within weathered hands, adorned by a Timex watch.
She could hear the strange words he spoke, "hilka, hilka…"
But as the man spoke, a savage hum began building, ready to crush life from him.
"The basement!" Shade screamed. Her unconscious form crumpled to the floor, as silence once more descended upon the hotel. Matt and Jason both reached her as she fell. Placing her on the floor, the men searched her for injuries.
All around them was pandemonium as Cookie began shrieking in terror, a wordless keening that grew louder with each passing second.

TULSA TV REPORTER WRITES CONTROVERSIAL BOOK

By Emily Laurel, Staff Writer Tulsa World

Emmy-nominated KCFB Channel 6 reporter, Skyler Dunworth-Michaels, has stirred up a mound of controversy with her book, Murder at the Mound, due out later this month. The work chronicles Dunworth-Michael’s sojourn through the now-infamous events that took place at the Montford Arms Hotel in the sleepy Oklahoma hamlet of Corvus Mound.

The work, however, is not without its critics. Matt Wolf, President of Renovations Inc., the Chicago-based firm contracted to renovate the hotel, has already filed an injunction, alleging misrepresentation. The millionaire, Richard Donaldson, Jr., has also told Hollywood Reporters that he, too, is considering a libel suit based upon his portrayal by Dunworth-Michaels. Jason Williams, of the Lousiana State Police, has also filed charges against the reporter for false representation and intent to defraud. "I was there," Williams told this reporter, "[Dunworth-Michaels] paints herself in a very favorable light and the rest of us look like idiots. I can’t let her get away with that."

Dunworth-Michaels alleges that those injured during the incident were intentionally and callously placed in harm's way to help the fading careers of noted Television psychic, Cookie Daniels, and to protect the financial interests of both Renovations, Inc. and Richard Donaldson. Dunworth-Michaels intimates that it was Donaldson's paranoid use of impregnable glass and unproven automated security locks that trapped them inside and led to several deaths.

The attorney representing Mr. Wolf stated, "She is free to make all the allegations she wants, but she will have to back up those claims. I feel confident that it is her own fading career, and now her book sales, that are at the root of these stories."

Dunworth-Michaels will be in Tulsa later this summer to sign copies of her book.

Chapter Excerpt

Shade awoke, struggling frantically to free herself from what she soon realized was merely a tangle of damp bed sheets. As the silence of night huddled once more around her, she grew aware that her fists were still clutching the crumpled bedding with a fearful grip.

God, What a dream! Even now it seemed the reek of the creature lingered in the airless room. Shade slowly released her death-grip on the sheets. Taking deep, slow breaths, she focused on the familiar landscape of her room. Her eyes followed the large Edward Gorey mural as it wrapped around past candelabras, velvet drapes, and her shelf full of voodoo dolls resembling various stars of reality TV. Nothing seemed out of place, yet she had trouble shaking the feeling that something was amiss.

In fact, were it not for the lingering pall of fear and the sweat that now drenched her body, this night would have been like any other. Her legs felt damp, and she had a foolish thought that, had she switched on the light, she would have found them drenched in mud and gore. Craning her neck toward the nightstand, Shade read the glowing red numbers on the alarm clock: just a little after three in the morning.

With a strange mixture of exhaustion and anxiety, the young woman reluctantly pushed the blankets aside, crawled from bed, and slipped inside a pair of novelty slippers resembling large, hairy spiders. As she tightened her robe against the chill, Shade suddenly tensed.

The early morning stillness had been broken by a sudden scraping sound, which she sought desperately to identify. As the long, still moments passed, she was amazed at the sudden clarity of her perceptions. Like the figure in the dream, she stood poised for whatever waited in the night.

Shade moved cautiously toward the front rooms of the house. Moving slowly and daring not to breathe, she crept over the hardwood floors. Then she heard the noise again: a rapping, followed by a screeching-scraping sound. Realizing what it was, Shade shook her head ruefully.

That damn pine! She glanced out the bank of windows, which wrapped around the front corner of her house, to the wind-gnarled pine scraping against the glass with each gentle gust of wind. She was paying for her procrastination and first thing on Saturday she would get rid of it - even if she had to gnaw through it with her teeth. That sound probably set the stage for that nightmare in first place .

To be safe, Shade checked the lock on the French doors. It was solid. This knowledge, however, did not quell her unease. She peered into the damp morning, her eyes following the mist-clung hillsides as they tumbled to the water below. The familiar lights of Seattle blushed a peculiar green in the miasma shrouding Puget Sound.

Strange color, she thought with an uneasy sense of portent. Tugging the robe’s belt tighter, she winced in sudden pain. Slashed across the back of her hand, which still clutched the old green terrycloth belt, were a series of raw abrasions exactly where the creature had slashed at her in the dream.

IT'S COMING...

New Talent Sends Local Firm to New Heights

Chicago Business Daily

March 21, 2005

"Renovations Inc., a Chicago based firm specializing in historic restorations, announces that Matt Wolf will be joining the firm with the New Year. Wolf, winner of Restored Magazine's prestigious Silver Award for creative use of original materials has been a junior architect with New Orleans-based Walton, Smith & Donatti for the last five years. Prior to that, Wolf had been working with the Portal Foundation in New York where he quickly gained a name for himself with innovative plans that turned once derelict office buildings into economical apartments. Nancy Rand, Renovations Inc's well known CEO, indicated that gaining the award-winning young architect has already brought dividends with the offer of restoring a multi-story bank in New York...."

Corvus Mound Library Annual Report

"...as noted in earlier reports the arrangements to combine the library, now housed in the old office building at Elm and 3rd Streets, with the new state sponsored museum are progressing nicely. The old bank building has been chosen as a possible site. The building is historic with its copper detailing and imported marble and will provide ample space for both the library and the museum to function. There is good parking and it is more centrally located. As development continues, especially the talk of the old hotel being rennovated, the possibilities are truly exciting. Mable Stewart is already making plans to attend the Oklahoma University's continuing education program to earn a museum degree..."

DISCOVER DELIGHTFUL CORVUS MOUND

Oklahoma Tourism Agency (2006) -- Corvus Mound is another historic gem hidden among the rolling hills of Eastern Oklahoma. A booming mining town before statehood, Corvus Mound all but shut down when tragic events closed down the largest operation, O'Malley Mining. However, the reopening of the Montford Arms hotel aims to jumpstart the local economy once more. After being closed for 20 years, the hotel has reinvented itself as a high-end retreat and condominium. The nearby Corvus Mounds, ancient native earthworks for which the community is named, have become an important historical site and tourist destination thanks to the University of Oklahoma's Dr. Karen Houston. Houston has spent the past few years turning this sleepy archaeological site into a first-rate scientific center. The Corvus Mound Archaeological Center boasts a museum chronicling the history of Eastern Oklahoma as well as historical and genealogical libraries.