Shoalwater Voices - Shoalwater Book Two - Softcover

Perry P. Perkins

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1595940952 ISBN 13: 9781595940957

Publisher: Wingspan Pr, 2006

Synopsis

Four years have passed and Cassie Belanger is plagued with nightmares, ghostly voices from the past, and a compulsion to return to the sleepy fishing town of Oysterville, Washington. There, she meets two strangers who have followed the same mysterious obsession. Cassie and her new friends must race against time to solve the mysteries of cryptic letters, terrifying dreams, and a shadowy figure bent on finding a long forgotten treasure before they do, and more than willing to murder anyone in his way. Danger, mystery, love, and fortune await Cassie as she finds her way back to Oysterville once more.

About this title

About the Author:

Perry P. Perkins was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. Majoring in English at Clackamas College, Perry received his ministry license from LIFE Bible College, and lived as a missionary in Jos, Nigeria. His writing includes Just Past Oysterville: Shoalwater Book One, Shoalwater Voices: Shoalwater Book Two, The Light At The End Of The Tunnel, Church Kids, and Catching The Vision.

Perry is a student of Jerry B. Jenkins Christian Writer's Guild, and has published scripts, drama collections, and outdoor sports articles in numerous national magazines. He is also a frequent contributor to the Chicken Soup for the Soul anthologies.

Perry and his wife Victoria reside in northern Oregon, where they live a quiet life of servitude to their basset hound Phlash.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Cassie stood looking out at the point, the Honda some miles behind her at the trailhead leading into Leadbetter Park.

The beach was a wide, white highway, glistening at low tide and slipping beneath the foamy lip of the gunmetal surf.

She was completely alone, two hundred yards to the tree line at her back and miles of sandy shoreline slipping into the hazy distance southward, without another soul in sight.

Under any other circumstances, being alone on the beach would have filled Cassie with peace, the steady crash of breakers lulling and relaxing her. Now though, as she pulled up the collar on her jacket to cut the winter wind from her bare neck, she shivered, and not entirely from cold. Beneath the roar of the surf, the cries of circling gulls, and the low whistle of the wind over the sand, Cassie could hear the faintest whisper of the girl's voice. The choppy, foreign melody of the song rose and fell in mournful cadence.

Nesika papa klasksta mitlite kopa saghalie, kloshe kopa nesika...

Tumtum mika nem; kloshe mika tyee kopa konaway tilikum...

Far out towards the darkening horizon, the fog was thick and rising. In it, Cassie thought she could make out the shadowy, indistinct shape of a ship, like cloud-shapes in the summer sky, morphing and coalescing, becoming and unbecoming at the whim of the imagination.

The image in the fog, however, did not shape-change but seemed to grow more distinct by the moment, tall masts rising into the deepening dusk as the ship hovered within a thick, cloudy veil.

She's out there, Cassie thought suddenly, looking out into the endless melancholy of the Pacific.

Whoever she is, whatever she's singing about, it's coming from out there. I don't want to be here alone. Cassie felt her palms grow sweaty despite the chill wind. I need to go, just turn around, walk back to the car, and drive back into town. Drive all the way back to Portland if I have to, surround myself with the living.

Oh Lord, I need to get out of here...

Instead, Cassie's feet carried her forward, unbidden and unhurried, to the very edge of the surf. She watched as the outgoing wave reversed and the thin, rushing lip of the ocean hurried toward her.

The shallow surf reached her, slipping around the toes of her sneakers like tiny breakers, the sound of gulls and the soft wind were drowned out. As she slipped, unmoving from land to sea, Cassie's ears filled with the shriek and roar of an ocean storm; the boom of the rising sea, like cannon fire, reverberated through her. Over the deafening squall, her mind was filled with the unmistakable sounds of splintering timbers, gunshots and screams of pain and terror.

Somebody was crying out in a foreign tongue, and though she couldn't understand most of the words, she knew it was a desperate, terrified prayer, tumbling from a woman's lips in a rush of panic.

Cassie stood frozen, alone at the tide line looking out past the wide mouth of Willapa Bay, her eyes unseeing. Blackness surrounded her; she could feel the frigid tide rising around her, to her ankles, her knees.

The muscles of her stomach contracted painfully as the numbing water rose above her waist.

The woman in the darkness with her was shrieking now, the words of her prayers running together in mindless terror, punctuated by great heaving sobs. The kindling-like snapping of wood was much louder, surrounding her on all sides, as did blackness so thick that she couldn't be sure if her eyes were open or shut.

Over all of this, the girl was singing, the pitch of her words rising in fear with the level of the icy sea. Cassie felt the floor tilt beneath her, her feet slipping on the sodden boards, as a wave of water coursed over her back and shoulders driving her forward into the darkness.

As the frigid waters closed over her head, the deafening sounds of destruction and despair faded, and the shrieking prayer ended abruptly. She struggled, flailing.

Which way was up? Her lungs began to burn for air, her throat constricting, her body trying desperately not to succumb to the temptation to breathe. Her hands touched wood above her as she reached the ceiling and the tiny pocket of air that was trapped there. She screamed in terror and beat her fists on the hard, unyielding wood; the sounds of her drumming were thick and muffled.

The sounds of storm and sea and panic were gone, replaced with tomblike silence broken only by the creak of the timbers and her own hoarse cries.

Something soft and heavy bumped against her legs, the shape yielding bonelessly for a moment before drifting away. Cassie beat the planks with her fists until the aching cold crept into her flesh and her muscles began to cramp. As her head slipped beneath the water, her body numb and unmoving below her, the song filled her ears.

A second later the thin lip of tide pulled back, slipping away with the rolling sand and Cassie's eyes snapped open, her tortured lungs opening to a huge, shuddering gasp of air. Pinpricks of light swirled in her vision and she swayed, sure for a moment that she was going to fall face-first into the sand.

What saved her was the thought of the next wave, already moving forward and the cold, questing touch of the surf, swirling around her and drawing her back to the place of darkness and terror. Cassie stumbled backwards, away from the tide with a breathless cry. Suddenly she broke, her feet slipping and scrambling for purchase in the soft sand, and running blindly towards the tree line, the air whistling in her throat as she fought not to scream. Behind her, the wavering outline of the ship slipped back into the fog and was gone.

The song, however, followed her into the darkness of the forest.

About this edition

• Publisher: Wingspan Pr
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1595940952
• ISBN 13: 9781595940957
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400