The Third Eye of Leah Leeds Read online

  The Third Eye of Leah Leeds

  The Paranormal Investigator #3

  by Christopher Carrolli

  Published by

  Melange Books, LLC

  White Bear Lake, MN 55110

  www.melange-books.com

  The Third Eye of Leah Leeds, Copyright 2013 by Christopher Carrolli

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should go to melange-books.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

  ISBN: 978-1-61235-771-3

  Names, characters, and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published in the United States of America.

  Cover Design by Caroline Andrus

  THE THIRD EYE OF LEAH LEEDS

  by Christopher Carrolli

  Leah Leeds continues to be tormented by the recurring dream of her haunted childhood in Cedar Manor. The dream, filled with images that leave her sleepless, contains a message, as though the house itself is coaxing her to return.

  Then, three teenagers experience tragedy at Cedar Manor. They lay blame to a ghostly culprit, furthering Leah’s determination to enter the house for the first time since childhood.

  Now, the Native American seer that once diagnosed Leah has come to aid her. Together, they face the evil in Cedar Manor as it seeks to steal the third eye of Leah Leeds.

  As always, this book is dedicated to my Mother, Gladys Carrolli (1937-2011), and also to my lifelong friend of thirty-five years, Tara Manon (1970-2013), who took the picture in this book. RIP Mom and Tara, with love always.

  I would also like to thank my Dad, Joe. Thanks, Dad.

  And special thanks to Aunt Lucy (1928-2013) and Uncle Dom (1930-2013), who waited anxiously for Book Three

  Table of Contents

  "The Third Eye of Leah Leeds"

  Prologue

  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 Twenty-One

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Previews

  Prologue

  The dream of Cedar Manor continued to invade her slumber like a brazen army barraging a silent, sleeping fortress. And quietly, across town, Cedar Manor masqueraded as such—a silent, sleeping fortress. But inside the dreams of Leah Leeds it remained awake, alive, and thriving with a malignant pulse that only the dead could conjure.

  Two months had passed since the dream first began, right around Halloween, after they’d rescued Ryan Quinn from the clutches of Roman Hadley and brought him home. Now, while she slept face-up in the plush comfort of her bed, the dream played on of the mystery it portrayed: the sight and sound of the grandfather clock ticking away with its second hand, her mother’s body swinging from the noose, the face of a dead woman murdered by Agnes’s son, the clock, her father carrying her and rushing from the house, the clock, Agnes smiling in the rocker, a spool of yarn unwinding on its own down the hallway, and then the clock again.

  As always, the images pass and she stares at the face of the clock. She can almost hear the ticking in real time.

  Tick, tock, tick, tock...

  And then the breathing begins—louder and louder, faster and faster, until it forces her to run in its direction...toward the mirror.

  Finally, she stands before the large, oval glass, a Victorian masterpiece captured and crowned within a grand and majestic gilt-edged framework. She stares into it, seemingly unaware of her own reflection and knowing by now what is about to occur. The breathing becomes louder, closer. She gazes into the mirror, waiting.

  It leaps out of its hiding place, its breath gasping faster and wheezing harsher as it replaces her reflection and faces her from the other side of the mirror. The long mane of hair is dead like straw and rotten like the putrid flesh she can almost smell. Its face is deformed, unidentifiable, except for one dead and discolored eye that stares and beckons her to acknowledge. Whatever it is dead, but undead, not at rest.

  Now that the dream is one she knows well, each time it continues on a little further than before. What she now recognizes as a corpse throws its hands around the framework of the mirror, shaking and rocking it back and forth in a fitful rage. It’s calling out to her; it’s asking her to remember, to identify.

  Strange...the thing in the mirror strikes a chord familiar...

  Then suddenly the sight of it is interrupted by the flashing vision of the grandfather clock. It ticks away with its second hand.

  Tick, tock, tick, tock...

  She sees the corpse again, gripping the sides of the mirror harder and shaking it like a cage, faster now with a fury. Then, she sees the clock again....

  Tick, tock, tick, tock...

  The livid corpse continues to shake the mirror violently; it’s about to shatter.

  Tick, tock, tick, tock...

  The next thing she sees is the shattered shards of glass that spray into a million slivered pieces through the air. Leah’s sleeping intuition knows that the dead have broken free.

  * * * *

  She woke with a start, throwing herself upward in bed as she’d done every time. Though this time, something about the dream was different. A strange notion tugged inside of her upon waking. The corpse had a long mane of hair with an odd, discolored eye set apart from where the eyes should be. Was it an opposite reflection in the mirror? Could the dream be an omen?

  Was I the corpse in the mirror?

  The vision of the clock kept interrupting the dream. Was it another message of time? As an investigator, she’d seen messages regarding time over and over again, although she was certain what this one meant. She’d wanted to go back into that house months ago, but both Dylan and Susan said it was too soon. Susan had been distraught over Mark, (who Leah had known as Roman Hadley) and Sidney hadn’t been well enough to make the excursion. And she wasn’t going anywhere without Sidney.

  But now as she stared out of her bedroom window and watched the December snow descend upon the wintery Pennsylvania setting, she felt it was now or never. She had to go back into Cedar Manor once and for all; her sanity, and possibly her life, depended on it.

  She glanced at her alarm clock; the neon green numbers told her that it was 2:15 AM. Susan said to call anytime day or night, but wasn’t that what all shrinks said? She would wait until morning. But for now, she’d watch from the window as millions of snowflakes fell and blanketed the frozen ground.

  She lounged peacefully in her chair by the window, and as soon as her eyes closed,
she drifted off to sleep, again. But while Leah Leeds slept soundly in the armchair of her dimly lit bedroom, a clandestine scene unfolded across town on the long, two-mile stretch known as Cedar Drive.

  Chapter One

  Snake Stone slithered down the shabby, makeshift trellis that he’d designed from rope and fastened from his bedroom window to the ground. He’d made it specifically for this occasion, and it worked, just as he knew it would. He leered back at his house one last time to make sure the crunch of the snow under his shoes when he’d dropped the last two feet to the ground hadn’t been heard—it hadn’t.

  He and his mother, Alice, lived on Cedar Drive. Alice was a single Mom who tired from the two jobs she kept to keep her and her only son in the stylish, but quaint, two-story house at the end of the vast rural avenue. Granted, it wasn’t one of the nicer ones like the haunted one at the other end of Cedar Drive, but both of Alice’s jobs (one at the bank, and the other at the convenience store) paid the property taxes on the inherited abode left to her by her father.

  Cedar Drive wound and unwound across a span of two miles through the remote, rural back roads of town. It was one long hoof to the other end, but he would meet up with Hollywood and Jimmy somewhere along the way. The three of them had a mission tonight—they were going into that haunted dig on the other end, the one some people called ‘the Leeds house.’

  They’d originally planned their excursion for Halloween. What an awesome trip it would have been to enter Cedar Manor on Halloween, find out what the big deal about that place was, especially if everything they’d heard had been true. But some crazy shit happened around this town in or around Halloween, and their plans had been axed by the constant patrol of police and strange attention the house seemed to be getting at that time.

  Up ahead he noticed a figure appear from the part of the road that had been hidden by the brush; it was Hollywood. She’d earned the nickname from the fact that she always wore shades, even in winter, and tonight she wore them clasped to her upper coat pocket. She walked toward him through the dark December night, which was softly illuminated by the snow that mingled with the silver-blue moonlight. He saw her constant laughing smile as she neared him.

  They high-fived each other as they met in the middle of Cedar Drive.

  “We’re going in—tonight!” Hollywood said. Her laugh was contagious, but they kept their voices down.

  “It’s about time, too,” Snake said, taking a Pall Mall from his pack and catching a chicken light from her already lit cigarette.

  “Yeah, last time we had everything planned and had to bum out. Man, we got screwed!”

  “Yeah,” he said. “We’ll never be paranormal investigators at this rate.”

  They laughed and walked, an odd and unlikely pair: Snake with his heavy, black-leather, biker jacket covering a mere mesh shirt he wore fearlessly against the cold, and Hollywood with an equally heavy, khaki winter-coat that cloaked layers of flannel shirts underneath. They were oddly different, yet strangely alike, young, platonic friends strolling through the history of teenage mischief.

  “Let’s hope Jimmy’s ready, or doesn’t back out on us,” she said.

  Jimmy Nort, Snake, and Hollywood had been friends since elementary school, and now their freshman years had led them to engage in the temptations of all that was forbidden throughout their childhoods. They’d already gone to the cemetery, the one where “Night of the Living Dead” was filmed. They’d spent the night with less than engaging results, discovering that those who thought it haunted were sadly mistaken. So, now they’d picked another favorite pursuit, one that sat another mile ahead of them, asleep under the watchful moonlight.

  They’d awaited the arrival of this night for months now. It was a late Friday night and a newborn Saturday morning when all were asleep and only dim lights could be seen from inside the quiet houses. A few outdoor Christmas lights were kept on all night. It had to be tonight because Snake’s mother would be asleep, Hollywood’s father was working the night shift, and Jimmy’s parents were away for the weekend before Christmas.

  The snow continued to fall, landing with a soft, pit-pat, pelting sound, and creating the crunch under their feet. They marveled at how the snow shined a near neon blue under the bright, three-quarter moon.

  “Wow, this snow is making me snow-blind!” Hollywood detached her shades from her coat pocket, slipped them on her face, and looked at him. They gushed in laughter then shushed each other lest they be noticed.

  They trekked the length of Cedar Drive with perfect timing, yet took the time to notice how the naked branches of winter’s bare trees reached upward, seemingly paying a strange homage to the starless sky above. The falling snow began to build upon the branches, slowly accumulating.

  They walked quickly, but talked softly until Hollywood’s shrieks of laughter broke the night’s silence as Snake slipped on an icy patch hidden by the snow. He danced in a circle before balancing himself.

  He shushed her through the finger he pressed in front of his lips. Hollywood’s laughter quelled into a hissing giggle that made her fight for air. When all was calm, they walked again; they hadn’t much farther to go.

  Ahead, they spotted the last of their trio. Jimmy Nort stepped slowly through the spiraling snow, carrying a large, black duffel bag, and from afar they acknowledged each other’s presence with a nod.

  “There’s Jimmy,” Hollywood said.

  “Yeah, that bag is awfully big, isn’t it? What’s he got in there?”

  “Probably everything we forgot,” Hollywood said, giggling.

  “Like what?”

  “Like a flashlight,” she reminded him, still giggling.

  “Shit! I hope he remembered to bring it.”

  “I’m sure he did.”

  As the snow flew faster, the whispering wind began to howl, and the three of them met where they’d planned; the first phase of their mission had been accomplished. They had mere yards to go before arriving at Cedar Manor. Jimmy’s face was a crimson red from the walk through the night cold.

  “What’s in the bag, bitch?” Snake joked.

  “Did you remember a flashlight?” Hollywood said.

  “I sure did,” Jimmy said, his words gushing out through quick gasps. He unzipped the leather duffel and retrieved a two-foot, police-style special and flicked the blinding light into their eyes. The magnitude of its shine made Snake wince.

  “Ouch, dude, put that thing out!”

  “Yeah, save it,” Hollywood said. “We’re going to need it.”

  Jimmy extinguished the light and shoved it back into the bag.

  “Got something else too,” Jimmy said, revealing to them the inside of the bag.

  “Dude, you brought a six-pack, awesome!” Snake said, approving.

  “Why are there only four?” Hollywood asked.

  “I had a couple,” Jimmy said, flinching from Hollywood’s quick slap on the shoulder. Jimmy was a medium sized young man with a broad chest and shoulders and played on the varsity football team. He hadn’t made quarterback this year, but he was determined to next year. Of the three, he had the shortest of the walk and ironically, the shortest of breath.

  “All right,” Snake said, the snow coating his cropped-at-the-sides black hair like a SNO-CAP. “Let’s roll.”

  They walked together toward their destination that was now drawing them closer. But as it loomed shortly up ahead, a dead silence passed between them. Their steps became slower, three aging children secretly pondering who would go first. And soon, they were unable to turn their eyes away from it. They’d seen it many times throughout their lives as passengers in passing cars, but seeing it now, up close, was as if it displayed itself solely for them, as if it were waiting for them.

  The walkway in front of the house was immense, reminding them of the yellow-brick road, only it wasn’t. It was a long, curved path constructed of dark-tinted limestone that led directly to the house’s entrance. It must have taken two whole minutes to get to the end of
the stone walkway, to where they would face the famous Cedar Manor as it stared them down.

  The sprawling fortress was breathtaking in appearance with its stories of chocolate-colored brick magnificently erected to the very top, where a strange spire crowned the vast roof. Various gables hung in clusters and were framed snugly beneath pointed arches. The amassing snow nearly hid the spreading ivy that haphazardly covered the windows.

  And the entranceway, grand in its structure, looked so much bigger up close. Its canopied archway reached upward to the second story and was constructed of the same brick, giving the Colonial house an almost medieval touch as it stood proudly upon the stone platform that connected with the end of the walkway. Cedar Manor stretched over an unfathomable number of acres, and a single glance from one end of the house to the other was dizzying.

  They stared at it for moments, speechless. Finally, Hollywood broke the silence.

  “So, how are we going to get in there?”

  “We’re going to try the front way first,” Snake said.

  They made it quickly under the canopied arch and straight to the heavy wooden door. Jimmy pushed his way forward, gripped the large, heavy handle, and yanked. Snake pounded on the door in different areas with his fist, searching for the weakest spot in the door, contemplating the craziness of breaking in.

  “Come on, guys. You didn’t really think we were going to get in through the front door, did you?” Hollywood’s question was followed by her contagious giggle that revealed her perfectly rounded face, and the three of them laughed quietly.

  Jimmy was rubbing his hands together, having forgotten his gloves.

  “I was expecting this,” he said. “So, I prepared for it. Let’s go back for a second.”