The Reaping Season (The Reaper Chronicles Book 3) Read online

  The Reaping Season

  The Reaper Chronicles #3

  By Apryl Baker

  The Reaping Season

  Copyright © 2021 by Apryl Baker.

  All rights reserved.

  First Print Edition: November 2021

  Limitless Publishing, LLC

  Kailua, HI 96734

  www.limitlesspublishing.com

  Formatting: Book Pages By Design

  Cover Design: Deranged Doctor Design

  ISBN-13: 978-1-64034-623-9

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  Dedication

  For all those who remember one scary moment from your childhood that stays with you forever.

  Table Of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter One

  Shane Roberts

  Day 1

  11:45 p.m.

  Shane Roberts curses and fights to keep from driving straight into a ditch. He’d been going over eighty when his inherited 1972 Camaro decided it didn’t want to go any farther. It was all he could do to maintain control of the car. He lets out a string of curses and pops the hood once it finally coasted to a stop along the empty stretch of highway. He grabs the flashlight he keeps in the glovebox and gets out to inspect the damage.

  There isn’t anything visibly wrong, but the car refuses to start, which leads him to believe it’s the starter. He’d replaced it last month with a used part, but he is going to have to bite the bullet and get a new one. No help for it. He’d live off bologna sandwiches for the next month to pay for the new starter.

  Town is about two miles down the road, but if he cuts through the woods, Shane is less than ten minutes from his girlfriend’s house. He can call Jimmy’s wrecker service to pick up the car. Jimmy owes him a favor.

  So, which way? He swings his light down the highway and then back into the woods.

  There is no moon out tonight, making it darker than usual. Storm clouds are rolling in, and he can smell the rain in the air. The woods are the obvious choice. He knows his way through them, having played there when he was a child and then hunting with his brothers and his dad when he got older. He knows them as well as he does any back road in and out of town.

  Then why is he hesitating?

  He puts down the hood of the car and then locks it. If he walks back to campus, he’ll be walking a while. He takes a step toward the woods and stops, shining his flashlight into them. The darkness is so deep, it devours any light that tries to breach it. He looks back down the highway.

  Which way?

  A drop of rain splatters across his face as a wave of thunder rolls through. Shane shivers. There is no way he’s walking back to campus in a rainstorm when he can be at Lisa’s in less than ten minutes. Mind made up, he starts walking toward the woods.

  Once he breaks the trees, the rain all but stops. The canopy of branches overhead is so thick, the rain has a hard time seeping through. It also makes it darker.

  He shivers and pulls his jacket tighter. The dark feels heavy, oppressive. It wraps around him, a soft caress tinged with danger. Shane glances around and tries to shake off the feeling of unease, but he can’t. Nothing but the dark and the vague outline of trees are all around him. He hasn’t felt this creeped out in a long time. The place has a bad vibe tonight.

  Then it strikes him. It isn’t just the dark, it’s the silence. There is a total absence of sound; not even a chirp of a cricket can be heard. It’s as if all the animals have gone, leaving him alone in the dark with…something.

  Why had he let Lisa talk him into watching a horror movie tonight? He’d spent two hours watching a homicidal maniac chase people through the woods. It’s no wonder his imagination is hopped up on steroids right now, feeding off the memory of the movie. There isn’t any reason to be afraid of the dark.

  Or so he tries to tell himself, but there is a deep and innate fear of the dark that lives in every single human being. It is an instinct as old as time itself, and one that never goes away, even if it is buried in the most primal part of the brain. It’s that instinct reminding Shane of the last time he’d been scared in these woods.

  At ten, he’d thought he was brave, but he’d been wrong. He and his friends had been laughing at something they’d learned in church. The Bible taught that they wouldn’t go out into the dark if they actually knew what was in the dark. The three of them had laughed, thinking they were invincible. They’d snuck out of the house and gone to spend the night in the woods.

  Shane had never been able to shake that night. Something really had chased them through the woods. His dad told him they’d probably spooked a bear or some other wild animal, but Shane didn’t think so. He thought he’d heard a laugh, and that laugh still haunts his dreams. That laugh is the reason he finds himself picking up the pace.

  The silence starts to eat away at his nerves, the darkness only getting blacker the deeper he travels into the heart of the woods. They’d all been warned to stay out of this area of the woods when they were kids. None of the parents had ever really said why, only that they couldn’t play here. Even though it hadn’t made sense, he didn’t know anyone who ever disobeyed that one request. So why is he now?

  Because he isn’t a little kid anymore. He’s a grownup, and the dark doesn’t terrify him. His subconscious laughs as the suffocating darkness clings to him.

  A twig snaps.

  Shane swings his flashlight in the direction of the noise, but he doesn’t see anything. His measly beam of light doesn’t even cut through the thick blanket of inky darkness surrounding him.

  “Hello?” he calls.

  Silence.

  He takes a deep breath, telling himself it’s just an animal. There isn’t anything to be afraid of. He starts walking again, his pace faster, more determined to break free of the woods. He is about five minutes from Lisa’s house. He just has to stay focused and not let his nerves get the best of him.

  He feels the rush of wind brush against him, and he stops walking, frozen. The tree branches aren’t moving. They are as still as death. Where had the wind come from? He turns in a circle, his flashlight skimming the very edges of the dark.

  Nothing.

  There isn’t anything lurking in the woods. Why had he watched that stupid horror movie tonight? It is getting the best of him. He forces one foot in front of the other and takes off jogging. The faster he gets to Lisa’s, the better.

  Another twig snaps to his left.

  “Who’s there?” Shane shouts, his feet refusing to move.

  Again, only silence greets him.

  His nostril
s flare as panic begins to set in. There is something out here with him. Every instinct he has affirms this and tells him to run. It sounds like a good idea to him, and he takes off running.

  Lights shine like a beacon ahead of him. He can make out the outline of Lisa’s house. Relief sweeps through him. He made it.

  A laugh floats through the air, full of menace.

  Shane stops running. The sound of that laugh tears through him, paralyzing him. He knows that laugh. It still haunts his dreams.

  He turns in a circle, casting the light as he goes. He sees nothing, but the panic hits him full-force. Fear curls in the pit of his stomach as he tries to find the source of that laugh.

  “Who is it?” he calls. “Who’s there?”

  More laugher echoes in his ears, and real fear strikes him for the first time in twelve years. He doesn’t wait any longer but turns and runs straight for the house.

  “Shane.”

  His eyes widen. It knows his name? Oh, God, don’t think about it. Just run.

  Footsteps pound the ground as it pursues him, and Shane hits a flat-out run. Something brushes his arm, and he veers to the left, away from the house. Its touch sends a cold dread through him, and all he wants is to get away from it.

  Laughter follows him, and he blinks, realizing what he’s done. Before he can turn back, fingertips stroke his cheek, and he cries out, afraid. He twists again and runs in the opposite direction.

  He hears it following him, and he pushes himself faster, the primal flight or fight taking over. His brain screams “flight,” and he goes as fast as he possibly can. A rush of wind speeds past him, and he shies away from it, turning to the right.

  Shane trips over an exposed tree root, falling hard. He ignores the pain, pushes himself up, and takes off. He glances over his shoulder and nearly screams when he sees the thing following him.

  Sheer force of will pushes him on, demanding his legs work. He turns his attention back to the path in front of him and barrels straight into the outstretched arms of the thing waiting for him.

  A scream bursts out of his mouth as he looks up into the red eyes of the monster holding him like a cherished child. It’s the last thing he sees as he dies, his screams echoing through the woods.

  Chapter Two

  Ella

  Day Two

  7 a.m.

  “Mom, did you find my favorite fuzzy socks?” Cecily yells down the stairs. “I’ve looked everywhere for them, and they’re nowhere to be found!”

  “I put them in the wash,” Mom whispers to me as she hands me a stack of pancakes. “They were ripe.”

  They were pretty stinky. I caught a whiff of them last night when we were both sitting on the front porch swing watching all the little kids enjoy their last night of freedom before school starts today.

  Cecily is dreading today. Everyone knows she was kidnapped a few weeks ago, and they’ll probably whisper behind her back. Cec is the sweetest, kindest person, and she’s overly sensitive about people’s opinion of her. I’ve had to stand up to a few bullies on her behalf over the years, and I’ll do it now if I have to. I hope that people are kind to her today, but I’m not holding my breath. I’ve learned that people disappoint you more than anything else.

  I’m nervous myself. I only attended half a day of classes last term, having been the victim of a hit and run that landed me in the hospital. I ended up dying for a few seconds, long enough to awaken my dormant reaping abilities. Now I’m what’s called a living reaper, stuck seeing ghosts and trying to talk them into moving on to the other side, whatever that means. I’m still learning, and that’s one thing my teacher hasn’t told me. Selena says I don’t need to know that yet, but I disagree. How can I convince ghosts to move on if I don’t even know what they’re moving on to? The devil is in the details, or so Grandma Pierce always says.

  But I’m getting off topic, even in my own head. So, school. I’m not big on the whole aspect of going. People know I’m a reaper, but that’s not the bad part. They accept that since we live in a town of Supernatural creatures. No, what I’m dreading is the welcome we’re going to get because our dad is Major Henry Banks, head of the Supernatural Containment Unit. Yup, that’s the name of his department. His job is to kidnap the people of this town and deliver them to the Army for experimentation.

  Sucks to be his kids who have to go to school and face the people he’s hurting, and there’s nothing we can do to stop him. I don’t know what to say to them. I can’t make what he’s doing right or come to terms with it. It’ll never be right, and every day I’m in this house, knowing what he’s out there doing, it eats away at me. I don’t just hate his job. I’m starting to hate him, and that’s killing me. I don’t want to hate my daddy. I love him. He was my biggest hero, and now he’s the villain in my story.

  “Ella Grace, did you hear me?”

  My attention snaps to my mom. “Sorry, I was lost in my head for a minute. What did you say?”

  “I asked if you have everything you need.”

  “Yeah.” I go to the fridge and pull out the carton of orange juice and a carton of apple juice. I’m the only one who drinks apple juice in the house. Orange juice gives me heartburn so bad, it’s like I’m breathing fire all day, so I drink apple juice instead. Just another weird quirk of mine.

  “It’s going to fine, sweetheart.” Mom snags me as I go past her and hugs me. “Don’t worry.”

  My mother knows how nervous we both are about school today. She and Cecily have this ability to compartmentalize all the bad things Daddy does. They don’t think about it, and therefore it doesn’t exist. I wish I could do that sometimes, and then I’m glad I can’t. I don’t want to be someone who brushes horrible things under the rug and acts like it’s all okay. I don’t want to be the person who looks away when bad things happen.

  Since I don’t want to argue with my mother this morning, I bite my tongue and swallow back all the things I want to say to her about how it’s not going to be all right because of Daddy. She’ll just defend him, and it’ll lead to another big blow-up. And there are cameras in the house watching us, too. We found them over the summer. Dad’s bosses suspect something about me, and we can’t give them any reason to look further into it. They’d take me in a heartbeat.

  “Are Cecily’s socks dry?”

  “No, they’re washing now. She’s going to have to make do with any of the other hundred pairs of socks she owns.”

  Those socks in the washing machine are part of Cecily’s coping mechanism, though. They’re the pair I took her after she complained at the hospital of her feet being cold. I’m not sure why she’s so attached to them, but if she needs them, I’m more than happy to not judge her wearing them twenty-four-seven.

  “Let me go help her pick out a pair.” I put the juice on the table and trudge upstairs. Cecily’s room is right across from mine, and her door is open, revealing a mess. There are clothes strewn everywhere, her bed isn’t made, and shoes are lined up like little soldiers ready for battle. Her hair is a mess, not even combed yet. She’s still wearing her pajamas, and not a stitch of makeup adorns her face.

  She’s stressed.

  “You good?”

  “Don’t you mean ‘you straight’?” She smiles halfheartedly when she says it. Both Eli and Jordan ask us that instead of the normal “are you okay” or “are you good.”

  I shrug and move some clothes out of my way so I can sit on the bed.

  “No, I’m not good. I can’t find my socks.”

  “Mom’s washing them since they stink so bad.”

  “They don’t stink.”

  “They really do. I almost gagged last night.”

  She blushes, but it doesn’t erase the lost look on her face. “Why don’t you borrow a pair of my fuzzy socks for today?”

  “It’s not the same.”

  “Have I ever let someone hurt you, Cec? Be mean to you?”

  “No, never.” Her blue eyes widen at the thought. “You’ve always protected m
e.”

  “Then wear my socks, and that way I’ll be with you all day, right there to give you strength if you need it. A little piece of me inside your shoe.”

  “Eww…you’ll be subjected to stinky feet all day.”

  I laugh and am extremely grateful for the relief plastered on her face. Cecily may be as tall as an Amazon warrior, and I’m as tiny as Tinkerbell, but I’ll fight for my baby sister to my last breath. I’ll protect her with everything I have. This is something simple, but it’s just as fierce as me throwing a punch. Her emotional health is as important to me as her physical health. She suffered a horrible, traumatic event, and that takes time to heal from. Mom wants to forget it happened, and Dad won’t talk about it. I do, though. I made sure Mom got her into counseling, and I check on her all day.

  “You gonna comb your hair today?”

  She makes a face. “I don’t want to go.”

  “I don’t either.” My voice softens. “But we have to. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger and all that rot.”

  “What if they stare and whisper and laugh?” She sinks down on the bed beside me. “I don’t know if I can handle that, Ella.”

  “Then you text me, and I’ll come lay the smackdown on them all.”

  “I’d laugh if I thought you were joking.”

  “You know I’ll do it.” I’ve done it before, against people three times my size.

  “I hate this.” She falls backward on the bed and stares at the ceiling.

  “Me too.” I mimic her position. “But we have to get through it.”

  Her hand finds mine and squeezes like I’m the last raft in a sea of sharks. “I don’t know if I can.”

  “All I’m asking is for you to try. If it’s too hard after about an hour, I’ll drive you home myself, but you have to try, Cec. Even your therapist agrees.”