Pearlized (eBook)

B.K. Sweeting (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2021 | 1. Auflage
306 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-0983-9781-4 (ISBN)

Infos

'Pearlized' is a must-read masterpiece of fiction that is character-driven, full of mystery and thrills. As a boy, Oisín Murphy discovers a shiny pearl in a pool of blood beside the numeral twelve on the frozen bay behind his home. Breaking the ice, Oisín finds himself drowning in the freezing darkness below. This harrowing experience also falls on the day of his mother's unsolved disappearance. For a long time, Oisín has believed that the Pearl Point Murderer killed his mother. Despite his claims, both the authorities and his peers refuse to accept what he witnessed as a child. Almost two decades later, as the world faces a pandemic, Oisín's inner demons resurface because of his isolated routine. The past catches up with him on October 13th as a sinister birthday card summons him to confront the terrifying day on the bay. He weighs his passion for justice for his mother against his pursuit of a meaningful life and love. An ominous twist of events that covers both the east and west coast ensnares Oisín's closest friends, leading to a climax that you won't see coming.

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"e;Pearlized"e; is a must-read masterpiece of fiction that is character-driven, full of mystery and thrills. As a boy, Oisin Murphy discovers a shiny pearl in a pool of blood beside the numeral twelve on the frozen bay behind his home. Breaking the ice, Oisin finds himself drowning in the freezing darkness below. This harrowing experience also falls on the day of his mother's unsolved disappearance. For a long time, Oisin has believed that the Pearl Point Murderer killed his mother. Despite his claims, both the authorities and his peers refuse to accept what he witnessed as a child. Almost two decades later, as the world faces a pandemic, Oisn's inner demons resurface because of his isolated routine. The past catches up with him on October 13th as a sinister birthday card summons him to confront the terrifying day on the bay. He weighs his passion for justice for his mother against his pursuit of a meaningful life and love. An ominous twist of events that covers both the east and west coast ensnares Oisn's closest friends, leading to a climax that you won't see coming.

Textauszug

Ice Screams

December 12th, 2002

A black and yellow bus made its last stop of the day, rounding a neighborhood that had a one-lane, dead end road trailing from it. A 12-year-old boy hopped off the bottom step of the bus, into grimy black slush, and began walking down the middle of Silver Beach road. Past a line up of Red Maple trees that fenced the front of his neighbor’s homes, to his right. To his left was the woods, where he frequently played in with his best friends. The last house before a dead-end, a weathered red brick ranch-style home, with a matching brick chimney, white wrap-around porch, and a cherry red door. Snow trickled off branches as he passed them. The movement released the fresh scent of earth and a hint of dust. A familiar and comforting aroma to him. The smell of home.

Glittered flakes funneled upwards after each of Oisín’s boot prints in the snow. A five-minute walk in negative six degrees Celsius with a lake effect breeze would make anyone shiver. Not Oisín, though, not today. He could see the snowman that he built the previous day, standing at a little under five feet, just like Oisín. His ears stung upon the sight of his lime-green earmuffs he forgot about on the compact round snow head. He picked up the pace. His soft and mousey brown hair, shaped into a bowl haircut, flowed in the wind. The boy possessed a lingering weight of exciting news to announce, news that he clung to with both of his mitts, a school talent show flyer.

Butterflies soared in his little belly as he entered his home, fully decorated for the holidays.

“Mom, I’m home!” he yelled out.

Oisín threw his blue and yellow canvas backpack over the couch with his mitts, kicked off his saturated boots, and hung up his red, white, and blue New York Rangers coat on the hook bar.

“MOM! We picked out a song for the talent show!” he shouted, louder than the first announcement.

He rounded the floral sofa couch that separated the foyer and living room. The middle schooler set the talent flyer on his piano music rest, between one brown bear Beanie Baby wearing a Santa’s hat and a tuxedo penguin Beanie Baby.

“Mom?” Oisín inquired.

The boy exited the family room to the kitchen. Where wood-panels befriended eggshell painted walls and where coconut carpeting met geometric solid wood. Oisín’s blue and brown eyes practically popped outside of his head when he saw the newspaper Toys ‘R’ Us catalog sitting on the kitchen table. As he approached the magazine, he wondered what pages his mom bent over and how many more minutes alone that he had to figure out what he was going to get for Christmas.

“Ugh, what is this?” he griped. He lifted his foot up off the dark parquet flooring to observe his oversized white holey socks and recognized that it was just water. Well, cold water, that was inconveniently forming mini puddles from the back French doors to the carpet he just left.

Oisín grew impatient. His mom, Claire, always greeted him when he came home from school. Their weekly routine involved playing the piano together and chatting until his dad got home. After that, the boy did homework with his dad, Aidan, while Claire fixed up dinner for the three of them. Claire spent her weekdays developing specialty pastry recipes for her second edition cookbook. The lack of sweet-smelling and yeasty aromas showed Oisín that she had not baked today. After the boy took his past-their-prime socks off, he made his way down the hall.

He called out once more for his mother, “Mom! Where are you? And why is the floor all wet?”

Silence.

In fact, more silence than the house has endured in a long time. The Murphy household typically ran a chorus of family sitcoms, piano keys playing, game console sound effects, and chatting amongst the family. The blondish hair on Oisín’s arm pricked up from both the stillness and the chilly air on his naked feet.

He chucked his dirty socks in the corner of his predominantly navy-colored room. His nautical room was a collaborative effort. The family of three wakes up early every weekend to spend half of the day at the local flea market. Oisín scouted out the vintage lighthouse lantern on his desk from an outing a few weeks ago. Aidan helped Oisín build the mini fleet of wooden sailboats on his desk. Claire taught him to organize his belongings at a young age. She showed him how to make a space both functional and fun. They picked out his navy twin sized bedding together. He favored the comforter with white anchors that paired with his orca stuffed plush. Inspired by his favorite movie, Free Willy, he insisted on the nautical theme and vowed to study marine life someday.

Oisín pulled his prized possession out of his jean pocket, an engraved brass compass that read, My Little Deer, May you find yourself on the path to righteousness. Love, Mama. Shadows developed across the walls as the winter sun disappeared. This stressed Oisín’s already unsettled expression. He put the compass on the desk tabletop and turned his lighthouse light on. He put on clean whole socks and layered his favorite ivory Aran sweater over his cartoon graphic tee-shirt. He left his room to seek his mom in the primary bedroom further down the hall.

Still no Claire.

His dad doesn’t come home from work for half an hour. This recognition of this sent the pre-teen sprinting to the garage door to check if his mom’s car was present. It was. Oisín slammed the garage door shut and sprinted back to the breakfast nook, where the wet puddles first assaulted his foot. He grabbed the pale-yellow phone off the plastic wall holster and dialed his mom’s new Nokia cellular phone number. Each unanswered ring sent an unpleasant pressure from his belly up to his chest. He held the phone away from his ear, in efforts to hear a cell tone ring or buzz from inside of the house.

“Hi, you reached Claire Murphy. If you’re calling about a baking and pastry order, please leave your name and a good number to reach you. I will call you right back. Have a beautiful day!” Claire said in a clear, light, and pleasant voice.

Oisín hung up the phone on the wall. A tension in his head developed, resembling a trash compacter, squeezing out the little hope that he had left for a response. He believed for a split second his mom could have gone for a walk. But he recalled the door was unlocked and there were wet spots on the floor. An anxiety developed further, after the thought that maybe there could have been a break-in.

He dialed once more.

“Hello?” Logan answered.

“Can, can, ugh!” Oisín stammered.

“Murphy? Is that you?” Logan asked.

“Hi Lo, Logan. Can you get your dad? I can’t find my mom. I’m not sure if something happened,” Oisín said, trembling.

He slumped forward to glance out the breakfast nook windows, squinting hard as he brought his eyebrows together. He dropped the phone; it recoiled upwards, then down, avoiding the kitchen floor. It swayed leisurely on its cord.

“Hi Oisín, it’s me, Detective Dawson. What’s going on?” a man voiced.

Oisín pressed his hands up against the glass window on the back door. He tried to make out the sizable disruption on the ice, near the snowy shore.

“Mom? MOM!” he squealed.

Like an air-hockey puck, he bounced back and forth between the front and back doors. Carelessly stepping over the puddles in a race for his boots back by the foyer, stumbling to pull them on, he pushed his little feet in and flew back to his kitchen. He threw open the unlocked French double doors that preceded to their wooden conservatory.

BANG! BANG!

Oisín repeated the action with the conservatory set of doors. His knees flew high as he trotted through the foot of powdered snow, scanning the area for any sign of his mom, for anyone. The temperature was dropping. The gust nipped at his lobes, a whirring from the wind scorched his ear canals.

Arriving at the shore; he noticed movement with his peripheral vision, to the right of him. A woman, Oisín’s neighbor, was standing behind a window on the side of her home, about fifty feet away. Her kitchen ran parallel with the Murphy household’s double-sash family room window. Oisín waved his hands at the first glimpse of hope, eager to get his neighbors’ attention. She was expressionless as she glared out the window, moving her arms in a scrubbing motion. In return, Oisín’s brows wrinkled into his little porcelain forehead, and he grit his small, straight teeth together. Little fists formed at the ends of the merino wool sleeves; hands keeping their balled-up shape as he performed a jumping jack motion to get her attention.

“HU, HELP!” Oisín yelled frustratedly at Sandra.

Sandra cocked her head to the side interestedly; short, straw hair met her shoulder as she continued staring. Confused now, but politely, Sandra brought her hand up, waving slowly back at...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 22.12.2021
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror
• ISBN-10: 1-0983-9781-9 / 1098397819
• ISBN-13: 978-1-0983-9781-4 / 9781098397814