Cora Frost: The Fasting Spider Read online

  ****

  Cora returned home to Eerie East End's. She still had the piece of thread clutched in her hand. She began to write on a piece of parchment.

  September 21st, 1886

  My experience with Jacob Fancher has rekindled my fight against the Nephilim. He seemed to know a secret that could help me defeat her. I have reanalyzed my notes on the 'fasting girl' cases in the United States. It would seem that the validity of some are still in question. But on further research I have come to a kind of paradox. The more genuine cases seemed to leave the victim's to suffer in a state between life and death. Unlike vampires, zombies and the like they are not truly dead. Death is staved off from them. The undead still indulge in earthly forms of rejuvenation. Vampires need blood to drink, zombies need.... well the flesh of the living. They still need a form of sleep. These other beings, these fasting children, seem to be in an eternal state of fasting. They are not the living dead but rather, the dead living. What frightens me further is that, if I am not careful, I may become one of them.

  Included is an excerpt from Cora's first adventure, Cora Frost.

  Prologue

  1871, Martinique

  Performing a séance had been the easiest con that Alfonse and his young bride, Cora Hayes, had perfected. Grieving people always gave into that glimmer of hope lingering in their mind. A hope of the eternal that masked their more realistic sensibilities. Humanity was now housed in the middle of a doorway. They looked forward. They looked toward the comfort of their machines and the science that drove the monsters away. Yet people still feared the palpable shadow that crowded just behind their neck and shoulders. The couple knew that the value of this trick would dwindle ever closer away as humanity began their journey across the threshold. Now was the time to cash in.

  They had been married and began performing their more unscrupulous craft for two years now. It was Cora's idea to go to Martinique. A lustrous and somewhat frivolous vacation to be true. The séance to contact the recently deceased Droga Bartholemy was how they were going to venture back to London.

  Pure ivory laden accent tables littered the hallway as Franklin escorted the two con artists to the parlor. The ambiance had been set before the couple arrived. A table adorned with a simple ebony cloth sat in the middle of the room. It was large enough to conceal the preliminary tricks that would sell the feigned communication to the other side. A gold chandelier glimmered in the reflection of the daguerreotype of Droga that sat alone atop the tablecloth.

  “Excuse me Franklin, but my wife and I need to make preparations for your visitation with your mother's spirit,” Alfonse said, his voice like a bass note dripped in honey.

  “Would it not be better for me to stay here,” he asked with a flicker of doubt teasing in his breath. “Would my presence not ease her welcome?”

  “Your presence may actually make it more difficult,” Cora interjected without blinking an eye. “It is very important that you speak with your mother. She may find it an unnecessary burden to lay her post earthly troubles on you.”

  “Do you think she,” Franklin said, a quiver in his lip. “Do you think that she is happy where she is? Do you think if we pull her here that she won't be able to find her way back? Can she go back to the fate she has discovered?”

  It was a question they had never been asked before, a question that seemed to disturb Cora ever so slightly. Alfonse had a keen insight into Cora's mind despite their fledgling marriage. He felt the shift in his wife's presence even if it was ever so insignificant. His reaction was just as swift as Cora's apprehension had been.

  “The matter of the séance is not one of tearing her away from her fate,” Alfonse explained with a smooth reassurance in his words meant more for Cora than Franklin. “It is more akin to looking through a window or receiving a message from another room. Connected yet separated.”

  Alfonse's lie seemed to bring some comfort to Franklin, as well as bring Cora back from her near slip. Franklin gave a brief trite smile that peered from beneath his bushy black mustache. Franklin walked out quietly.

  “Is something troubling you my sweet?” Alfonse asked. A true sincerity lingered in his voice and the watery pools of his eyes.

  “I fear that I was delving far too deep into our own fantasy,” she said with a moment of despondency in her voice.

  Her heart buckled as if it had suddenly been lynched upon her ribs. Never before had a mark ever caused her a respite of reproach. It was all fairy tales to explain the darkness away. Alfonse approached her swiftly and gently with a rush that reminded her of a summer breeze. A sudden look of fear took over her continence, an emotion that did not wear well on her youthful face. The monsters she so easily poked and teased at were now hiding just beyond her sight. And their laughter was deafening.

  “Remember that the man is wealthy,” he explained away in a sweet whisper that brought a current of warm damp air brushing against her ear. “He has plenty to share and more than enough to suffice after we're done with him.”

  “The money is not the problem,” she said, a small hiss to drive her husband's lackadaisical reassurance away. “I just feel..... uneasy.”

  “After all of this time are you actually developing a belief in the supernatural?” he asked, his laugh echoing louder than his voice.

  She raised an eyebrow at him that perpetuated a look of disdain that could melt through armor. The near demonic visage held very little effect on Alfonse. Alfonse's grin took over the edges of his face in sarcastic defiance. Though he was ten years her senior his boyish jovial face gave no wrinkle or impression of age.

  “It's as if.....,” she began seeing the bubbling of doubt in her husband's eyes. “It's as if some kind of foul presence permeates the air. I've felt it ever since we arrived in Martinique.”

  “I guess that's what we get for venturing off to a place controlled by the French.”

  “This is not a joke,” she said grabbing the temples of her forehead.

  He chuckled with a deep resounding sound like that of a giant bell that echoed through the empty room. Coming in close, Alfonse began to massage her shoulders. Even with her boiling anger and the presence of fear she found solace in his touch. A warmth encroached through his hands and into her body giving a numbing effect like that of swallowing warm cider.

  “I thought you wanted to go to Martinique?” Alfonse asked, without response as Cora had become all too indulgent in his embrace. “Come now my pet it's time we get started.”