Free Falling into Forever by Tammy Turner Page A

raged. Alexandra looked closer, holding the screen close to her eyes. She wiped a raindrop from the plastic screen and stared harder. She knew that what she was seeing was a trick of the moonlight and sparks, but the sight of a man’s figure standing in the middle of the flames sent a shiver down her back.
    Raindrops started falling fast and furious on her head. “Come on, Alex!” Taylor yelled at her from across the sand, as the storm began to blow in from the sea. The sudden squall made short work of what had promised initially to be a fun evening. The girls headed back to Peyton Manor, hoping that it would clear by morning.
    But even by late the next morning, the soggy sky refused to relent and drowned their hopes of spending the day on the beach. So they packed their bags and dragged them to the front door, ready to depart for Atlanta.
    Granny June pondered over the gray clouds from her front porch. “The weather lady on Channel Two says this is from a hurricane churning in the Caribbean. It’s only going to get worse the next few days, I’m afraid.”
    â€œIt’s okay, Granny,” Alexandra said, wrapping her arms around her grandmother. “We’ll be back soon. I mean it,” she said, smiling.
    Granny June walked the girls to their car.
    â€œThank you for putting up with us,” Taylor said, tossing the bags into her trunk.
    â€œBe careful,” Granny June whispered to her granddaughter and squeezed her hand.
    Alexandra got in and closed the passenger door. Taylor drove slowly down the gravel path. As the car pulled away, Alexandra watched her grandmother disappear around the curve in the driveway. When they reached the gate at the end of the driveway, Alexandra checked inside her handbag, which was resting at her feet on the floorboard.
    â€œMaybe you should take that back to the footlocker,” Taylor said.
    Not much gets by Taylor, Alexandra thought. She shoved her Uncle Joseph’s journal back inside of the handbag and threw the purse back on the floorboard. She pulled her red sunglasses over her eyes, even though the day was dark.
    â€œNo,” Alexandra replied, ignoring Taylor’s warning. She twisted the leather strap of her necklace between her fingers. “I don’t like secrets, and I know she’s hiding something from me.”
    The roar of the Mercedes’s engine echoed through the woods, past the rundown shack buried among the ancient, moss-covered oaks. The Gullah woman inside smiled to herself. She walked to the doorway of the shack, holding a glass jar in her hands.
    â€œYou hear dat, Cyrus?” she snorted aloud, laughing. “Dey goin now.” The barefoot woman stepped from the doorway and stared into the woods.
    â€œDat Alex tink she can run, Cyrus,” the woman called out to the trees, sneering. “But dat girl cain’t hite from Jasmine. She got dat book wit her, and dat book gots the devil in it.”
    A brown wolf with black eyes padded toward the shack from behind a wide tree trunk.
    â€œDat a good boy,” the woman said to the wolf, rubbing his back as he sat obediently at her feet. “Eat now,” she said, opening the glass jar in her hands.
    The putrid stench of decay stung her eyes, but a cackle escaped her lips. “I know my Cyrus like da heart da most,” she said, pouring the slimy contents of the jar on the ground in front of the animal. “You goin need strength, Cyrus, to follow dat little girl home. Dat girl got what we need, and you goin to take it back.”
    The wolf swallowed the treat and licked a puddle of dark blood from the dirt. Raising his head to the sky, he howled through the treetops.
    â€œEternity with me, if you obey. Go now, Cyrus,” she ordered him. “Bring it to Jasmine. After you bring it to me, then you can have dat girl.”

6

Restless
    The evening before her first day back at school, Alexandra had tried to take Jack, her bulldog, for