The Third Eye of Leah Leeds

The Paranormal Investigator Book 3

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.



Excerpt

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.

"The Third Eye of Leah Leeds" - Christopher Carrolli

Buy

EBOOKS
PDF - Add to Cart
HTML - Add to Cart
EPUB - Add to Cart
Amazon Kindle

PRINT
Support independent publishing: Buy this book on Lulu.

Genres

Paranormal
Series

? Heat Level: 1