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When marine buddy, Gulfport, Mississippi Sheriff asks Craige Ingram for help, Ingram and Buckingham Parish patrolman ‘Badger’ Thomas Boback find themselves in the summertime dogdays of the humid Gulf Coast. With crowded beaches and an undermanned staff, a routine investigation soon becomes anything but routine when indescribable body parts start showing up along the surf, in beachfront cabins, half-buried in bayou wetlands, stashed under freeway bridges, and across county lines. Craige’s search for answers to identifying victims and killer among the crowds of tourists and skin-and-sun partygoers soon makes it obvious the victims have no connection with one another—until conflicting DNA results and haunting premonitions resembling the warnings Craige’s grannie often had become part of the investigation. The jigsaw of abandoned cross-kin offspring begin a horrifying Gordian Knot tangle that threatens anyone who approaches the shadowy ancient wreck of an old mansion - an asylum from a lost time.
Read an Excerpt
During the long haint-ridden nights the craving had become scalding, nearly uncontrollable. The green-yellow eyes withdrew into darker corners of windowless rooms, as flickers of Cajun Grandmère Nana’s weathered face swirled in the mist. Everybody around knew ageless Kreyòl Cajun Grandmère Nana. Some of them truly were believers. They knew what they had seen with their own eyes, and no one was going to convince them otherwise. They’d call to her by her dead half-sister’s spook-name, Momby Bocor. In the shadows of full-moon nights, they’d mumble in a breathless cadence, “Momby Bocor. Momby Bocor. Momby Bocor,” that became more chant than phantom witch-worker. Nana’s soft Acadia dialect in her New Orleans patois gave a pleasing lilt to the dapples of moonlight, her outline sauntering the back yard beneath the sprawling sheen of the swamp magnolia’s thick leaves. Not a hair was out of place in the golden red crown circled atop her head. Her frayed sweet gum twig swizzled back and forth in toothless twitches. Time-wrinkled eyes looked, mesmerized, toward the full silvery orb. She could almost see ancient Luna rising out of the gentle watery laps of the Gulf, reflected in the ripples and washing the sandy beaches. Nana often warned her gran’chil’ Ramona about the waxing madness that came from the blinding dazzle of the full moon. Lots of folks shrugged her off as a tiddly old crone passing her unnumbered days and nights inside her own world. Yet Nana’s houseplants never got frost burned, and her early flower beds and vegetable gardens were never planted before the last freeze. Ramona didn’t shrug off her Gran’mere Nana who was sharpened by the clean brisk air spilling among the haints and steamy haunts of bayous that would stay warm until spring. Then would come the days of warm Gulf air piling into big dark thunderheads, and the offshore waters would froth into elegant capped grey plumes. He could hardly wait. Sharp mangled grubby teeth chewed the lower lip pulling it raw. Blood oozed. The wet tongue did a quick taste, fed the perpetual lust. The craving hunger was always there. With the cloudy moon it would make for a cozy night to roam so long as Richard didn’t find out. It would make for good hunting.
About the Author:
Hawk MacKinney has authored several award-winning works of fiction that include THE MOCCASIN HOLLOW MYSTERY SERIES and THE CAIRNS OF SAINCTUARIE SCIENCE FICTION SERIES. His historical romance MOCCASIN TRACE was nominated for the prestigious Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction and the Writers Notes Book Award.
Cross-genre character-driven plots reflect Hawk MacKinney’s southwest upbringing along the Texas and Oklahoma borders. With postgraduate faculty positions in several medical universities, Hawk MacKinney has taught graduate courses in both the United States and Jerusalem.
Website: http://www.hawkmackinneyauthor.com
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