Covenant by John Everson Read Free Book Online Page A

interesting Halloween snuff: After a child uncovered a dismembered hand while building a sand castle, the rest of an unidentified Caucasian male was discovered floating in various parts of the bay. Police reports indicated that a stick of dynamite had been tied to the boy’s midsection and lit just before he was pushed over the edge of the cliff. A gruesome bicentennial bit of fireworks.
    In 1954, the half-eaten body of a baby girl was discovered washed up on the beach on November 5. She’d been dead nearly a week, the obituary estimated. In subsequent reports, Joe found that police were unable to discover the child’s parentage.
    In 1948, the grisly remains of a black woman were discovered by two grade school children playing by the beach. Joe had to laugh at the paper’s instant discriminatory supposition.
    Police officials have been unable to establish the identity of the woman, however they theorize that she may have been on the run.
    “A lot of these kinds of people steal the silverwareand other valuables in the night and then head up the coast, looking for someone who will agree to turn their stolen bounty into greenbacks,” said Police Chief Billy Bob Grunson. “Why else would somebody from out of town have been up there after dark? She may have been so weighed down by whatever she was carrying that she fell right over the side of the cliff in the dark.”
    Case closed . Joe smirked.
    In 1935, the Times reported the death of a local man. But this account was not as abbreviated as those in following years.
    Arnold Harver, 54, passed on after venturing too close to the deadly edge of Terrel’s Peak on October 31. Harver was among the earliest inhabitants of Terrel, having come here with his father, Arthur Harver, in 1910. Harver often visited the old lighthouse on his nightly walks. He had said that his strolls near the lighthouse brought him closer to the spirits of the past. Unfortunately, as many who failed to heed the warnings about the cliff have learned, those spirits have too often felt and slaked their desire for blood.
    Joe shut the old newspaper binder with a thud. Bits of musty yellow newspaper fluttered to the floor. He didn’t know what to think. At first he had assumed there was some kind of serial killer at work here, something that the Terrel cops just didn’t know how to handle, and didn’t want to talk about with a relative stranger.
    But if he believed what he was reading here, this was not about serial killing. Not unless the entire town was in on it.
    This was something much more deadly than some guy with some rope and a thirst for hearing screams from flailing people on the way down.
    This was about cults…or ghosts.
    Terrel’s Peak, Joe decided, was haunted.
    Except Joe didn’t believe in ghosts.
    He reminded himself of this fact and stilled a shiver. He suddenly felt as if the shadows of the damp room were moving behind him.
    After looking around at the piles of books and newspapers in the room, Joe began to hurriedly stuff the binders back on the shelves in the empty holes he’d left for them.
    The lighting in this basement was not helping his nerves any.
    There was a cold sweat starting beneath his arms, and gooseflesh rippling on top of them. Grabbing his notebook, now rife with the names of long-dead people, both strangers and natives of Terrel, he vaulted up the stairs.
    He had done enough studying for one day.

CHAPTER NINE
    Her breath was coming in heaving gasps by the time Cindy reached the top of the cliff. It was a long climb from town without a car. The sweat rolled down her back, but a brisk wind from the bay kept her from overheating.
    “You would have thought all the walking to classes at school would have put me in shape for this,” she said to the wind.
    She picked her way through brambles and tangles of ketch vine and spiny grass to the hard rocky face of the peak. Here, very little vegetation survived the harsh sun and scouring winds and rain. But the view was