The Third Eye of Leah Leeds Read online

  He’d recognized Leah Leeds—who wouldn’t? They’d graduated together from the same class at the university. He’d also noticed a quick shot of Dylan Rasche, the investigative team’s leader. So, what was the paranormal team doing there? Maybe the underground mines are haunted. Cory had laughed at the thought.

  It was the next day when he’d realized a cover-up had been uniquely put into place. The information given to the press was that the identity of the man killed in the explosion was that of Mark Steven Banner, and a small obituary had been placed in that day’s edition.

  So, if Mark Banner had died in the explosion, then who the hell was Roman Hadley?

  There had been only one way to make any sense of it, and that was to attend the funeral service for Mark Banner. Surely, it would be a closed casket service, but there would have to be some hint, some clue as to what this man looked like. The service had been the following day; he’d made his attendance there inconspicuous.

  And that had been difficult to do. The paranormal team had been there, and he’d kept turning his head in the opposite direction whenever the gaze of Leah Leeds fell upon him. Thankfully, he’d worn his shades to hide some significant portion of his face. They knew each other by sight, but not more than that. But, he’d been unwilling to risk her being able to identify him, not that she would still remember him.

  As he’d guessed, the casket had been closed, and quickly he’d mingled in with a small group of people unknown to him. He’d noticed a small collage of pictures not far from the casket and walked over to it. Only a few pictures made up the collage, and what little there were, were dated, all them at least by forty years.

  One had been of the man standing on the street with a beautiful blonde woman, posed in an embrace toward the camera, but he couldn’t make out the man’s face well enough. But, the bigger picture in the middle of the collage had been a clue staring back at him. The photo was of the man as a young soldier, taken approximately late nineteen-sixties, if Cory had to guess. He had stared at the face, at the eyes, and arrived at the unmistakable conclusion that the face was the same as the man in the driver’s license photo, Roman Hadley. This meant only one thing; Roman Hadley and Mark S. Banner were one and the same.

  In his mind was a quick flash of photographic memory: the white business card reading MSB Enterprises, the one he’d taken. MSB, he’d thought, of course. MSB, Mark S. Banner. All the proof he needed was a matter of connect-the-dots.

  When he’d turned his head to the left, he’d noticed that Leah Leeds had gone off with the fat guy somewhere, leaving the blonde woman with Dylan Rasche and the world’s youngest hippie. The blonde woman had obviously been connected to the dead man; she’d shown herself well as a mourner. He’d walked up to her and shook her hand.

  “I’m so sorry for your loss,” he’d said.

  “Thank you, Mister...?”

  “Smith,” he’d said.

  Extending his condolences in order to get a quick glance at her face was a gesture short and sweet, but all the time he had needed to realize that this woman was the same as the one in the picture with the man. He’d discovered her identity the following day when the university had made a public announcement: Dr. Susan Logan, Psychiatrist at University Hospital, and Parapsychologist, had been deemed the Director of Operations of the university’s Paranormal Research and Investigative Society, replacing Mr. Roman Hadley of Annapolis, Maryland. The short item, written by an intern, had contained her picture.

  The pieces of the mystery had formed a foundation.

  * * * *

  And now, here in his hand was evidence of yet another mystery surrounding this enigmatic group of people. It seemed like it was starting all over again just as it had the last time, a police report, but not actually a police report because it lacked the most essential factor—information.

  On Halloween night, the very night of the explosion, lights were seen to go on and off at various times inside Cedar Manor. The Police had suspected teenagers partying in the house that night, but found it empty and undisturbed. It was the house once owned by the Leeds family, where Leah Leeds was rumored to have been subjected to serious trauma as a child. He never learned the full story, but her mother killed herself, and her father spent time in an institution.

  So, fast forward a month and a half—three teenagers go ghost-hunting in that house and one dies trying to climb up to the roof of the entrance. Alcohol was slightly involved, and it was an accident, according to police, nothing more. Then, who happens to show up at Cedar Manor after just mysteriously being in the neighborhood? Cory couldn’t have written it if he’d tried—the ever present, Dr. Susan Logan.

  Another vague, non-existent police report, another person somehow connected to this team of investigators turns up dead, and another round of questions remain unanswered. His intuition told him that something was going on, or something was about to. This time, he was going to expose them and unravel their mysteries once and for all.

  There was only one way he was going to get in on this story, and that would be by confronting them, or at least Dr. Logan, with what he knew so far. If the scoop on Roman Hadley was still classified FBI information, then there may not be much he could go to print with, but a tell-all book certainly wasn’t out of the question. He sat back and thought of how he would approach the situation.

  Chapter Five

  Paul Leeds sat quietly in his kitchen, reading the newspaper and watching the snow blanket the budding blue morning that remained dark and unenlightened by a hidden December sun. The snow had continued to fall overnight, accumulating another three inches across the low-lying valleys, and another three were expected by noon. He enjoyed these quiet morning interludes, especially in the winter; he found them to be relaxing. But the peaceful hush and tranquil bliss of this morning’s reverie was blatantly interrupted when he became distracted by a headline...

  ‘Local Teen Dies from Fatal Fall’

  It wasn’t so much the headline that gripped him; it was the two words in the article’s sidebar that jumped out from the page—Cedar Manor. His heart began to pound, and his eyes felt paralyzed, frozen to the words on the page. He just kept staring at those two words over and over, examining them, making sure he was really reading them.

  He moved his eyes to the picture, and there it was, lurking and silent with its mystery and captured in the image that dwarfed the top half of the front page. How can this be? No one’s been there in years.

  His thoughts and memories, which were numbered in multitudes, assembled in chaotic disorder and ran rampant though his mind. The dancing parade of memories fueled an inner nervous frenzy, causing his forehead to sweat and his respiration to falter. His breathing came in gasps as he began reading the article. He would look for his inhaler when he was finished.

  He read how a trio of teens had tried to enter Cedar Manor, and how one of them, a young man, had fallen to his death trying to climb to the top of the entranceway. Police suspected an accident since a ‘small amount’ of alcohol was discovered in the boy’s possession. Paul battled to believe that as the truth, but deep inside, he knew otherwise.

  Did Leah know about this? His daughter had sounded distant lately, not as conversational as usual, as though she were hiding something. Whenever he asked her, she said it was nothing, that she was fine, and not to worry.

  Susan was now the Director of the Paranormal Research and Investigative Society; surely she’d seen Leah. Paul’s next thought was to call Susan and ask about his daughter, and as the thought churned inside his head, the phone rang. At this time in the morning, a ringing phone was a rare occurrence.

  He felt the hands of irony and fate working together as he stared at the caller ID. The caller was Susan Logan, as though summoned by some dormant telepathy. He began to calm himself and his breathing as he picked up the phone.

  “Susan?” His straight-to-the-point response was quicker than “Hello.”

  “Paul?” she asked.

  “It is,�
� he said. “Susan, where’s my daughter?”

  “She’s home, Paul. She’s fine; I spoke with her about an hour ago.”

  “Has she seen the headline, this morning?”

  “She already knows, Paul.”

  Susan told him everything, starting with the visions and dreams that Leah had been having for months, followed by the desperate phone call she’d received in the middle of the night when Leah had dreamed exactly what had been taking place at Cedar Manor.

  “She saw everything, Paul,” she said. “Even while she sleeps, her third eye is awake. She saw it as it happened.” Susan explained the story of Snake, Hollywood, and Jimmy Nort.

  “So, my daughter’s memories of that place have been tormenting her, and you didn’t call me? Why didn’t you tell me any of this?” The tone of his voice revealed feelings of being shut-out, excluded, even being tiptoed around, as though he were some fragile glass that would shatter at the slightest tension.

  “I’m sorry, Paul,” she said. “I’m bound by doctor-patient confidentiality, just as I was to you. However, I’ve been encouraging her to tell you, and she won’t, so I thought it was time.”

  “So, you’re breaking that confidentiality, now?”

  “I feel I must, Paul,” she said. He waited for her to speak, as there was a lingering silence between them. “When we interviewed the two remaining teenagers, they were adamant that some sinister black shape appeared atop the canopy and was responsible for their friend’s fall.”

  The silence that first lingered now stretched into infinity. Finally, she related the details of the apparition the teens had described. When she’d finished, she paused before continuing.

  “Paul, she’s decided that she’s going back into that house.”

  The silence on his end remained unbroken.

  “Paul, are you still there?”

  He slowly slouched back into the kitchen chair, holding the phone in his hand. He spoke the only words that entered his mind.

  “Like hell she is,” he said.

  “I’m afraid there’s not much you can do to stop her,” she said. “The past couple of months have been horrendous for her, and the visions and dreams are getting worse. They’re becoming longer, stranger, and more frightening. It’s reached the point where she can’t concentrate or focus on anything else. Paul, confronting that house may be exactly what Leah needs to put this horrible history behind her, once and for all.”

  “That house will destroy her, the same way it did me!”

  “Paul, you had a chance to confront that house and chose otherwise. I’ve always felt that you made the wrong decision. Leah was just a child, which means her memories are not as vivid as yours. She can, and she will, overcome that house. I know her!”

  “Do have any idea what kind of evil dwells behind the doors of that house?” His voice became mocking, exposing her lack of forethought or knowledge. “That house is the sanctuary of evil. Did you believe anything that I told you during our sessions? One thing’s for sure; she’s not going into that house without me!”

  “I was hoping you’d say that,” she said, quickly injecting her defense and sounding unexpectedly relieved. “I think you both need to do this together, and Paul, we’re all going to be there together—the entire team. We are not going to let anything happen to her.”

  They discussed the tentative plans the team had regarding Cedar Manor, and then Susan mentioned something of which he’d almost long forgotten.

  “Paul, do you remember Tahoe Manoa?”

  The name awakened an old memory of the Arizona desert, and he said nothing as that moment replayed in his mind. Susan continued speaking.

  “We’re searching for him, right now. Leah has always felt that he would be instrumental in helping her, but she’s searched and could never find him.”

  “He may not even be alive anymore.” Paul expressed his skepticism, searching for any reason to call off the impending escapade.

  “He’s not dead, Paul; he’s only in his late-seventies.” Paul said nothing, so Susan continued. “Paul, Leah seems to think that you brought her to him for a specific reason. You know that; she wrote it in her memoir. She thinks that something prompted you to take her to him. Is she right?”

  Paul thought back to his bubbly, blonde-haired little girl with sky-blue eyes and the face of an angel; how she’d laughed and giggled and pointed and mentioned people that weren’t there. At first he’d thought it was only the imaginations of a child, but then one day, months before moving to Cedar Manor, his little girl had said something both perturbing and haunting.

  “One day she walked up to me and asked me why Grandpa slept in a box. I had no idea what she was talking about. It was a strange thing for her to say, and kids say strange things all the time, but it kept nagging and gnawing at me. It was two days later that I found my father at home, dead of a heart attack.

  “It was at his funeral viewing, when I realized the casket was what she’d meant—the box. I knew she’d seen it. My wife continued to ignore it all, content with the child imagination theory, but I wasn’t. Yet, there were other instances as well.

  “So, I searched out someone who could tell me. I’d learned of Tahoe Manoa from a mutual friend who’d mentioned him, and then I sought him out. I arranged a trip to Arizona because Janet’s parents lived there, and I took Leah into the desert to meet him, just like she tells it in her memoir. That’s when he told me that my little girl had a very powerful third eye. I knew what he meant, but had never heard the phrase before.

  “Our meeting was cut short, and he told me to visit him again, as I’m sure you know from reading the book, but what you didn’t read was that I went back, without her. He told me that Leah’s third eye saw what human eyes could not. She saw the dead, images of the past, and possibly the future, with an unlimited focus. Tahoe said that such a third eye as my daughter possessed was comparable to his own, something he’d never encountered before.”

  “Tahoe is one of the most gifted psychics on the face of the earth,” Susan said, explaining her previous study of him.

  “I know,” Paul said. “And that means so is my daughter. That house fed off of her ability, and it’s continuing to do so. I will not let that happen again!”

  “That’s why you need to be there, Paul. She’ll be angry that you’re there and equally at me for telling you anything, but I feel it’s absolutely necessary. All of us need to surround her. The greater we are in number, the better the outcome of what we’re about to undertake.”

  “I hope to God you’re right,” he said, and hung up the phone.

  He resumed his practice of staring out at the falling snow, listening to the soft pit-pat sound it made even through closed windows. His eyes gazed through the wintry scene and into the past, where dark memories replayed on a picture screen in his mind. He recalled standing outside of Cedar Manor for the first time. Its dark, colonial structure, somewhat gothic to his perception, had pricked a bad vibe inside of him. Something about its darkness and strange structure with its canopied entranceway, the side by side gable windows, the odd, pointed spire somehow challenging Heaven, had caused him to quiver inside.

  Though he would never tell Janet of his apprehension; her excitement was near ecstasy at the site she’d purchased at a heavily reduced cost. She was a realtor, and after having acquired the house, it not only became her home, but her project. She would restore this house back to its ‘former glory,’ as she put it. The home was built during the Revolutionary War, and what dwelled inside was history, according to Janet. She would soon find out that it was so much more.

  He recalled standing on the walkway while she enraptured herself in front of the house with her arms open wide, embracing and adoring its sleeping magnificence. He had clutched Leah’s hand and noticed that her tiny grip squeezed his a bit harder. He’d turned to his little girl and noticed her big blue eyes grew wider as she stared at the house. She didn’t seem to fear it, but the look on her face seemed cautious
, knowing, but blindly unaware.

  On the second day that they’d been there, the cleaning and moving crews had left for the day, dusk had befallen Cedar Manor, and quiet descended upon the house as the small family lounged in the drawing room, watching TV. Paul remembered it vividly as though only seconds had passed through a space of two decades: the changing color of light from the TV that flashed through the room like a dimly lit disco ball, illuminating shadows and silhouettes upon the walls around them, the clanking sound the furnace sometimes made in this dark and unfamiliar palace, the smell of cleaning chemicals intertwined with freshly applied paint, all of them were memories that hadn’t died to his senses.

  That night as he had carried Leah to bed, up to the floor that housed their bedrooms, they’d passed the rocking chair that had sat for so long, undisturbed and untouched by human hands. It was now a relic, an antique showpiece that remained part of the house’s history. He’d pretended not to see it moving, after all, the movement was only slight; there could’ve been a draft from somewhere. He had ignored what he’d seen from the corner of his eye and moved quickly, so his nearly sleeping daughter could get to bed.

  But as they’d walked past the rocker, her tiny finger had poked out into the air, and the peppy tone of her voice was uncharacteristic of the dozing, sleepy child he’d hoped to be carrying.

  “Daddy? Who’s the lady in the rocking chair?”

  Paul had closed his eyes, feeling a jolt like lightning surge through his body. A momentary lapse of reason made him have to rouse the adult he was back into being.

  “No one, sweetheart,” he’d said, “Close your eyes and go to sleep.”

  She’d closed her eyes again and her hand dropped down, pointing to the floor as he had carried her. He’d tucked her in tightly and cast his eyes around the room in all directions, noticing nothing out of the ordinary. He had looked down at his now sleeping angel. He knew she’d seen someone, but he would keep quiet since Janet became irritated whenever Leah ‘saw’ things.