Revenant: Black Rose Files Book 2 (The Black Rose Files) Read online

  This book is dedicated to my ever patient and supportive wife, Jolene.

  Without you, nothing I do is worthwhile.

  Copyright © 2019 by Ira Robinson

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  without the express written permission of the publisher

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  OTHER BOOKS IN THE BLACK ROSE FILES SERIES

  Black Rose Files | Book 1 – SLIPPED

  Black Rose Files | Book 3 – INNOCENCE - RELEASES 02-06-19

  Chapter 1

  Samantha eased into her chair, her eyes locked on the painting resting on the easel.

  She rubbed her fingers absently. The tackiness of drying paint forced them to mesh together, giving her distraction enough to look away from the canvas. A glance confirmed her own hands made the picture.

  She remembered none of it.

  It drew her eyes back again, with its strange mixes of green, red, black, and white. Most of the strokes were large; wide swaths of color cut across a deeper background behind them.

  When Samantha squinted, it was clear the central focus of the stabs and whorls was a figure - pale, with long limbs and a bizarre face.

  The brushes she usually painted with rested in their jar, the brackish water embracing them keeping them moist for when they would be picked up. None of them were used.

  She barely remembered sitting down in front of the blank white material. She woke in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and the next thing connected in her memory was mere moments ago.

  Instead of the myriad of brushes she had available, Samantha dove in with her fingers, using them to paint the canvas. The results were unpleasant to look at.

  She glanced at the corner of the room where a few of her previous paintings stacked together against the wall. They were not great, and she might never be called a master of the craft, but the landscapes she was accustomed to making were a vast difference compared to what she came up with in the night.

  It disturbed her to look at; she bit her lip a little as she tried to discern the full pattern of the paint. It glistened in the soft morning light coming from her window across the room, still wet in most places. As thick as it was, drying completely would take time.

  The centerpiece, the figure splayed across what was likely the ground, felt wrong, disconnected from the rest. If she did not know any better, she might have been on some kind of acid trip when she sat before the blank canvas.

  She peeled her eyes away and grabbed one of the many scrap rags in the room and wiped some of the paint from her fingers. It would take a bit to work off, but she did not want to use any turpentine yet. The stuff always made her feel ill, and she wanted to get as much off as she could before resorting to that.

  Samantha's eyes kept being grabbed by the painting, though, and each time she looked at it, a slight wave of dizziness phased through her. Had she been the one to make it? The evidence remained on her fingers, but she could not remember doing even a small bit.

  Was it an animal? If so, Sam was not aware of what it would be, being unlike anything she encountered before. It was nothing she ever imagined and a nightmare would have a hard time competing with what the thing seemed like.

  She tossed the rag down on the end table she used to hold her paint tools. It was not large, but she found it cheap at the antique shop, and thought, when she bought the table, it would be 'inspirational' to have around.

  The old wood floor creaked beneath her feet as she crossed, going into the hallway, but the carpet muffled some of the sound of the floorboards below. The unmade bed in her room confirmed she had slept some before getting up to paint, but she could not remember the time. Not long after she went to sleep, at least from how tired she felt.

  She used her elbow to turn the knob in the bathtub and waited until the water warmed up before dousing her hands. Some paint came off right away, but she had to work until her fingers hurt to get the majority to fade. Soap helped a little more, but she sighed when she pulled back from the tub and realized how much more there was to go.

  She had a paper mask on her face and a rag in her hand when she stepped outside with the turpentine, using it on the rest. Even then, the skin was stained, and would be for a while.

  What a mess, Sam thought, hoping the smell of the liquid would not hang out too long.

  Sam plopped on the bottom step of the small flight of stairs leading to her porch. She closed her lids, letting the sounds of birds and distant cars relax her, while the remnants of fluid dried in the cool air.

  She let a deep breath pass through her lungs as her eyes opened once more. The quiet street she lived on was empty as it almost always was at this time of the morning. Hers was the only house occupied in the tiny cul-de-sac, in an already dinky town.

  It was only different during the summer, when the children of the surrounding neighborhood would come out and play, riding their bikes and shouting at each other. Even then, her place stayed relatively still, and she liked it that way. Sam had been alone since she moved away from the home her parents passed down, and she did not see it changing soon.

  The phone was on its fourth ring by the time she made it into the house and picked up the receiver. She knew who it would be, and, after the morning she had to deal with already, she was in no rush to answer.

  "You're late." She heard the man's voice on the other side, and rolled her eyes a little.

  "I can see that. I know. I'll be there soon."

  She hung up before he could say much more, cutting off the snark reply he would inevitably make.

  She changed out of her clothing from the night before, replacing it with the uniform she wore nearly every day.

  The first time she put the badge on, Sam was excited. Being a cop was not the only job she had held, but was what she was proudest of. It was almost guaranteed she would one day do it, since it was her family profession, but it made her happy to make a difference for people.

  Few could say the same, after all.

  Her badge took its familiar place on her chest, to the left of her heart. The weight of the gun at her hip when she slipped her belt on was just as comforting.

  She put her wallet in her back pocket and grabbed the keys to her small car as she walked through the door. Even though the city allowed her to take home one of the official cars the department had on hand, she did not like to do it. It was not out of shame being a police officer, but more that she needed a frame of independence, something to show herself, and anyone who cared to look, that she was not just the job. She was her own person, too.

  That same sense of self got her painting to begin with. When she was young, she had no interest in such things, but, as she grew to her mid-twenties and discovered the pressures life brought with it, she tried after watching some guy on the public access channel they could get in Tanglewood.

  He made beautiful pictures with just simple strokes of the brush, tying it all together unexpectedly when the canvas was blank.

  By the time he finished, and the half-hour show passed by, he would create something she could not stop staring at.

  Not long after, she bought her first paint supplies and dove in, finding ways of her own to forge a pretty thing, even if it was as amateur as it could get.

  I
t was an accomplishment she alone had full control over, unlike so many other things in her life. If no one else ever saw the paintings she made, they were there, and that was enough.

  She backed out of her driveway and started the short ride to the police station, the only one in their small town.

  Though she lived on the outskirts, it did not take more than a few minutes to get to work. There were only about five thousand people living in Tanglewood at any given time, and most who worked in the tiny downtown area were already there when she pulled into the parking lot.

  There were a few other cars there, of course. Not only the three police cars and the truck with the word "SHERIFF" blazoned across the side, there were also cars for those visiting the city building which sat next to the department. There were always at least a few people coming and going from there.

  I hope Bart's not pissed, she thought. Her brother could be a heel when upset.

  The building was one of the older ones in town, made mostly from stone. Large pieces were still rough-hewn from the quarry not far outside of town, brought to the center of Tanglewood to pile atop each other and held solid by the mortar between them. The city fathers decided long ago to let the swaths remain rugged, which lent the edifice an imposing air, even if it were only two stories tall.

  As she shut the car off, she saw a figure, tall and dark through the window, staring out into the parking lot, presumably at her. She sighed, knowing the figure too well.

  As he turned away, she hoped Bart would not start in on her for being late again. This was the fourth time in the past month, and he made it obvious he was not happy about it.

  But how could she explain why it was happening if she did not know herself? Her mind just did not seem 'with it' recently, constantly distracted by... what? By a sense she was missing something?

  It was not any one thing; that was part of the problem. She was not an unhappy person. Most of the time, when things were not going her way, she rolled with it all, letting them slide as she could. And it was not anything physical, that she could tell. She felt healthy and, aside from eating a little too much fat food, she could think of nothing she needed to change in her diet.

  It was like the back of her mind was egging her on, trying to push her to do something, even though she did not know what that thing would be.

  Now, waking up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and finding her time taken by what she did not remember? How would she ever be able to explain that to her brother, especially when he was such a pragmatist.

  He would probably tell her she needed to take more vitamins and to not be late again. That was the last thing she really wanted to deal with.

  She got out of the car and adjusted her uniform, smoothing out as many of the wrinkles as she could. She had forgotten to iron it again.

  The warm air met her when she walked through the door, hearing the familiar ding as it opened. It closed behind her as she took the few steps needed to reach the desk she always occupied.

  "Morning, Sam," she heard Noah say. She glanced over and nodded, then scanned the rest of the room for Bart. He had probably gone back to his office when he saw her.

  "What happened this time?" Noah asked, and she glared at him, making him smile more. "Lemme guess, you had a busy night?" His accent, southern at the core, was stronger than most, even with their town so deep in the heart of it.

  "What's that supposed to mean?" she asked, her stomach jumping a bit at his question. It came out before she had a chance to stop it.

  "Hey, sorry, just askin'." He turned away and went back to reading the paper before him.

  She had not meant for it to come out as rough as it had, but after the morning she had so far, it snapped out. She resisted the impulse to apologize though; Sam did not want to open the door for him to ask even more.

  She flipped the switch on the computer sitting on her desk. It was ancient and not useful, much like the other two housed in the police department. It scarcely connected to anything resembling the Internet through a satellite dish on top of the building, used for little more than getting information from the world at large.

  Most of it barely applied to their sleepy burg. Usually, what happened away from Tanglewood had little to no impact on their insular experience, nestled within the deep forest and miles away from anything else reminiscent of civilization. The citizens in the town kept to themselves and out of each other's business, let alone getting involved with whatever might happen outside these city streets.

  Most born in Tanglewood stayed there for their whole lives, eking out their existence in the best way they could. A lot of that was by working at the mill or the mine, both major parts of the money flowing through the town.

  Neither of those ever interested Sam, and, in some ways, working for the police department did not, either. It was "good enough" and that attitude prevailed with most of those she called neighbors and friends.

  Was that what was going on with her of late? Was the sense of urgency, the pressure of doing something, a dissatisfaction at being there?

  Possibly. But Tanglewood was the only thing she experienced.

  There was nothing new for her to access on the computer files, no arrest reports for her to distract herself with. Even if there had, either Noah or Bart would have blurted it out right away. Noah, himself, was a gossip and loved to talk about news, although he knew he shouldn't.

  Even on days they would consider busy, they would only get five or six calls; she was the one who answered the incoming lines, most often. It was how she started at the department to begin with, eight years ago. Bart offered her the job when she turned twenty, in the hope it would get her involved in doing something their family had done for the town for the past five generations.

  It was easy for her to slip into it all, shifting from answering the calls which came in to becoming deputized. Bart smiled and told her it would happen eventually, the day she said she wanted to do it all the way.

  It did not take long for her to get used to it all. Samantha was a quick learner, and most of what she had to focus on were things she already knew. Bart was a deputy, himself, when their mother passed away. Their father died before she was born, and Bart took it upon himself to take Samantha under his wing until she turned eighteen and moved out on her own.

  Even those few years gave her enough exposure to the way things worked with the Sheriff of Tanglewood for her to be aware of at least the basics.

  What little happened in town was handled, for the most part, by Bart, himself. Sometimes Sam wondered if she was just for show. The other officers working there, especially the night shift, left a lot of the work for the daytime crew, unless it was something easy to handle.

  She disliked it, wishing she could do more, but it was the status quo. Being the sister of the Sheriff did not give her any special influence over the decisions made, and being the only woman in a small southern town police department did not help, either.

  The old food left in the trash beside her desk stank, remains from the guys during the night, which did nothing to help her already distracted nerves. The impetus to take the bag out and put in a new one was strong, but she resisted. She was not the only person; why should she be the one to change it?

  "Sam? Can you come here for a minute?" Bart's voice carried across the short span of the unconfined room. Sam turned her head and saw Bart going back into his office, leaving the door gape behind him.

  A small laugh escaped from Noah's lips as he looked at her, but her gaze forced him to bite it down and resume reading without a word.

  She passed the few other desks in the main room and walked into the office.

  "Close it," Bart said, as he put his hands together in front of him on his own wooden desk.

  The door closed with a soft click, cutting off the low hum of static from the radio along the back wall. She sat in the small chair before the desk, surrounded by the home-away-from-home Bart created for himself, the most prominent being the trophie
s and awards he received playing sports in high school.

  "What happened this time?"

  "My alarm didn't go off," she fibbed, glancing away from his eyes peering at her from beneath the Stratton hat he always wore. The thing was old and reminded Samantha of a cowboy hat. Bart had worn it so long and so often Sam could remember only a few times he was without it. It had been passed on to him after their father died, and when he became Sheriff,, he thought of it as a crown of honor.

  He rolled his eyes, disbelieving her excuse. "That's been happening a lot lately. Maybe you need to get a new clock."

  She crossed her arms in front of her chest. "What do you want from me, Bart? I'm sorry I was late. It happens." She took a deep breath, her nerves on edge. "It's not like anything ever really goes on around here."

  "That's not the point, is it?" He sat back in the chair, the creaking of the old wood and metal squeaking. "I need you here because you're supposed to be here. What if something were to happen? You've got responsibilities here, Sam."