Alex Payne would do anything to bring his wife back from the depths of her watery grave. But when a voodoo mambo offers her help, he soon realizes that turning back the tides of life comes not without repercussions. Somewhere between the living and the dead there lies a murky middle. Can he walk the tightrope between the two and bring her back, or will he lose everything, including his own life, trying?
Genre: FICTION / Occult & SupernaturalI am an indie author with 15 books available on Amazon, Apple iBookstore, Barns & Noble and other ebook retail outlets. Sales were strong during the initial emergence and popularity of ebooks until the indie market became saturated with tens of thousands of free ebooks from first time authors hoping to break into the business. I am looking to recapture market share for my books in other languages not flooded by neophytes giving their work away free.
The unglamorous side of a town’s underbelly shows more keenly once the sun goes down. And for every hour thereafter, another of the city’s morally degraded malcontents trades in his anonymous existence for a shot at utopia by maintaining a perpetual high at the cost of some foolish lamb, devoid of the good sense to come in out of the dark. What passes as a pleasant square, teaming with the colors of life by day, seems all but condemned in shadows of gray, having surrendered itself to the night. Such was the gloom that matched my disposition on the eve of my eternity.
I left the car on Vega Street, three blocks up from where the stars all meet at water’s edge. Despite the image one may conjure musing over such an evocative location, there were no points of light at that intersection to validate a claim of any sort.
I had worn my black jacket for the three-block walk; my collar turned to a western chill blowing in off the Lincoln River. My shoes were hard-toed, good for street fighting if the odds were not too unfairly stacked against me. A ball cap shadowed my eyes from both the waxing moon and a stubborn neon light that sputtered in fits as I walked past the last bar opened for business.
I stopped at the curb on the four corners and spied a little shop opposite the bar. No electric lamps burned inside, but I could clearly see the flickering of candlelight and the silhouette of a woman hunched over, peering out the window. A sign over the door read: JUJU BEADS & KWI SUPPLIES. I didn’t need my Met Tet to tell me that I had found what I was looking for.
After a minute or two of building up the nerve, I crossed the street and went inside. A bell over the door jingled as I entered, and a scratchy little voice asked me, “What took you?”
