An excerpt from the novel
It was then that Cecily sensed a slight movement in a tree near the back of the empty lot. She strained her eyes to get a better look. What she saw made her shudder. The eyes were bright, shining like a cat watching its prey.
She walked farther into the lot, moving toward the tree. You don’t become an FBI agent by being a scaredy cat. Agent Frampton did tell me to leave, but I didn’t fly all the way here to sit in a haunted hotel room and do nothing.
Her eyes stayed fixed on the figure. Suddenly, it moved down the tree at lightning speed. As she approached, she could no longer see the eyes. There was nothing there—just a sprawling oak tree dripping with Spanish moss that appeared to be perspiring.
Cecily walked around the oak, using the light on her phone. It was pitch-black. Then something happened that scared her so badly she almost dropped it.
The cicadas stopped their chorus-like drone. In the dead silence, a woman’s voice spoke from very close by. It was raspy, with a hillbilly patois. Each word came slowly, as if it were a sentence of its own.
“What. Are. You. Doing. Here?”