I Am Chosen

Haley Manor

J.D. finished drying the breakfast dishes, went into the living room, settled onto the couch and clicked on the TV. He caught the tail end of the morning news. Captain Bryce of the PHPD was giving a press conference. It only lasted a few minutes and by the time it was over he had ended up saying a whole lot without saying much of anything: the investigation was ongoing, the officer who had been attacked suffered no permanent injury, and a connection between the attack and the Chosen Killings had not yet been confirmed.

As he shut off the TV, he thought of last night. Mainly he thought of the parting words he had spoken to Kacey: "You can mail me a check." It had been a reckless thing to say. Sometimes he did that-said things and then thought later about how his words may have been received.

When he watched last night's news and learned of the hospital attack, he had immediately thought of those words. His first concern was that Kacey had been hurt. His next concern was that she had hurt someone. So far, neither seemed to be the case, since there had been no mention of his sister at all.

That did little to ease J.D.'s guilt.

What on earth had she gotten herself into anyway?

His mind drifted to Tom Haley...

It had taken every trick J.D. knew, along with pulling a few favors, to track down the Winchester Model 1920. His research had led him to Haley Manor, a large estate at the end of a dirt road, sitting far back on a property that fronted Whatcom Lake. There he had spent nearly an hour speaking with Tom Haley's son, Martin.

Tom Haley had been an entrepreneur, philanthropist, history enthusiast, and by all known accounts, an eccentric recluse- information that J.D. had already uncovered during his investigations. What he learned from Tom's son Martin, however, was that following a hiking accident when Tom was in his fifties, after he had lapsed into and then awoken from a coma, Tom's behavior and demeanor had taken a turn that could be termed "strange" in only the gentlest sense of the word.

Tom had sworn that during his coma his soul had crossed into a kind of shadow-world where a malign presence reigned; a timeless intelligence that had long ago manifested in the material plane but had been banished to slumber beneath the earth, where it slept and dreamed and sought to subvert the minds of mortal men and women. Tom believed that only by the grace of some higher power had his soul been liberated from the shadow realm, and his physical body roused from its comatose state.

That had not been the end, however; Tom had come away with the deep conviction that the evil presence he had encountered still endeavored to reach him through the veil of its dimensional oblivion. Tom had claimed he heard whispers behind the walls, saw shadows flickering about the manor, pale faces staring in at him from its night-darkened windows... and so Tom had used his considerable wealth and influence to procure the Winchester Rifle, for he had believed that the rifle was capable of dispatching the agents sent by the malevolent, otherworldly force. It was shortly after Tom's purchase of the gun that Martin had decided to move back in to help watch over his father. For several weeks Tom had locked himself in the manor's inner sanctum, refusing to speak to anyone, not changing his clothes and reportedly not sleeping for days at a time. Once, just past midnight, Martin and the staff were awoken by blood-chilling screams. When they entered Tom's living quarters, he pointed the Winchester at them, cursing and spitting.

The following morning, Martin had called for a professional psychiatrist. Before the doctor could arrive, Tom was found dead, his jaws locked open, his eyes nearly bulging out of his skull, the Winchester still clutched in an iron grip, finger extended toward the trigger.

The official cause of death was ruled a heart attack.

When J.D. had contacted Martin Haley, Tom had been dead for less than three weeks. The son felt sure that his father had entered into a state of dementia in his final days, but he had confided to J.D., as they sat talking about the Winchester rifle, that he wondered just what his father might have seen in his last moments of life that might have caused him to perish with such an agonized expression on his face.

It was, of course, a crazy story.

But what was more puzzling, was the absolute certainty that Kacey had spoken with when she had implored J.D. to find the gun, because, in her words, it would be capable of saving lives. In the end, it had been that firm assuredness that had convinced J.D. to even look into the Winchester's whereabouts at all.

So now he sat, wondering just what to make of it all. Most especially, however, he found himself hoping that no harm had come to his sister.

He glanced over to the sofa end table, where a functional antique telephone sat, and he considered giving her a call. Tossing the remote aside, he stood up and stepped over to the phone. His open palm hovered just above the handset. What would he say to her? What could he say, after the way he had left things? He wasn't one to apologize. Never had been. His palm continued hovering as he looked over at a grandfather clock on the near wall. It was just about time to open the shop downstairs.

J.D. pulled in a deep breath, let it out, closed his hand and walked toward the staircase.

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Once I introduced the Winchester rifle, I felt the need to address the question of how J.D. got ahold of it. That also happened to be a good opportunity to get us inside J.D.'s head. Hope you enjoyed!