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Back again with one last excerpt in connection with this Valentine’s Day Sale, which ends today. This one was a little bit harder to choose, as I couldn’t find a good scene that wasn’t way too long. But maybe the one I decided on will work to give you a feel for who Rabbit is. Hope you enjoy meeting the little boy who took over an entire series. Happy Reading!

The extraordinary little boy called Rabbit has the power light up the darkness, and the resourcefulness to save himself from the one person his grandparents had hoped would never find him.

EXCERPT from Sarah’s POV, during their first breakfast with a goggle-eyed Rabbit, following his long journey through the wilderness:

If there was one thing this little boy was more interested in than the wonders of electricity and running water, it was my husband. He could barely keep his eyes off Mac, sneaking peeks every time he thought he could get away with it. It was time to find out why.

Last night, he had been so overwhelmed with the experience of being inside “Angel House,” we hadn’t spent much time asking him more about his life before reaching Wake-Robin Ridge. I thought maybe we’d sprinkle our questions in among other topics, so he wouldn’t feel like he was being interrogated. He was pretty talkative, if you approached it right.

“Rabbit, when you saw Mac yesterday, you said something about your gran, and about Mac having hair like a crow, is that right?”

He glanced at Mac, who was studying his own breakfast as though he’d never seen eggs and toast before, then he looked back at me and nodded.

“Can you tell me what you meant?”

His voice was sad and soft when he talked about his gran. I could tell he missed her very much. “My gran told me I had to find him. She said she seen me with a man with eyes like winter skies an’ hair like a crow’s wing. She said it was important for me to find him, because that’s where I belonged.”

Mac stopped eating, fork midway to his mouth, and eyes still glued to his plate.

“What do you mean, she saw him? Where would she have seen you with him?”

Rabbit’s face was solemn, indigo eyes round and serious. “My gran … she had dreams sometimes. Seein’ Dreams, she called ‘em. I never did have no dreams that came true, an’ my grampa said he never did, neither. But my gran did. She dreamed ‘bout the weather gettin’ cold when there wasn’t no reason to think it was gonna. An’ where to find ripe blackberries, when we thought they was all gone for the year. An’ ‘bout stuff that was gonna happen to Grampa when he went to get supplies. They always come true, her Seein’ Dreams.”

“And your gran dreamed about you with Mac?”

Rabbit aimed those adoring eyes at Mac, but Mac stuck to his pretense of eating his breakfast, as though he couldn’t hear this little boy telling his remarkable tale.

Turning back to me, Rabbit continued. “She was dyin’, you see. She was tellin’ me stuff I needed to know so’s I’d be okay by myself. She couldn’t hardly talk, her breathin’ was so bad, an’ Grampa hadn’t come back with medicine for her cough.”

His eyes filled with tears, and he was silent for a minute, but I stayed where I was, and let him tell me at his own pace. With a little shuddery gulp, he tried again. “My grampa, he’d never left us alone at night. No matter what, he was always back before dark. Only this time, he didn’t come all day, nor all night. And Gran and I, we knew somethin’ bad had happened. Maybe if he had gotten back to us, the medicine would have helped. I been thinkin’ ‘bout that for a long time. But she were bad sick. Never seen her coughin’ so much before.”

His voice dropped to a faint whisper. “There was blood.”

He stared down at the countertop, swinging his foot back and forth as he gathered his thoughts. “Gran, she held my hand real tight, an’ she told me what I had to do. She said I had to find my new people. I didn’t never know I’d have to do somethin’ like that someday. Grampa, he never would take me where there was other folks, ‘cause he said people was bad. He said they lied, an’ cheated, an’ couldn’t be trusted, an’ we was better off by ourselves. But my gran told me that some people was like what he said, an’ some people wasn’t. She said there was Good People in the world, too, an’ I had to leave the mountain an’ find them. An’ then she told me she seen me with a man with eyes like winter skies an’ hair like a crow’s wing, an’ that was where I belonged. The last thing she said to me was to find that man.”

He paused and looked straight at Mac, a profound longing shining from his eyes. “I promised her. An’ I found him.” His voice was so soft, I could barely hear him.

From the way Mac’s mouth tightened, though, I knew that he had heard, loud and clear. Without a word, he pushed his stool back from the island, put his plate in the sink, and walked out the back door.

Rabbit looked at me with a sad little smile. “He don’t like me much yet. But Gran weren’t never wrong. I can wait.”

Sale ends today, so don’t miss out!
Download A Boy Named Rabbit for just $.99 HERE

Hope you enjoyed this excerpt from the second Wake-Robin Ridge novel!
And my heartfelt thanks goes out to each of you for reading along, and for helping me get the word out about this Valentine’s Day Sale!
You guys are the BEST!

Just a reminder that there are only ten days left for my Happy Valentine’s Day $.99 Sale. ALL my books are on sale until February 14, so I hope you’ll take take advantage of this low price to check one or two of them out. And please, by all means feel free to spread the word, anywhere you’d like. Some of you might want to consider donning a sandwich board and taking to the sidewalks. Okay. Maybe not. But I do hope you’ll share the news with your friends and neighbors and anyone else you can accost without being arrested. 😂 As for me, I’ll be busy sharing excerpts from several of my books now and then, just to whet your appetites.

Today’s excerpt comes from the book that started it all, Wake-Robin Ridge Book 1, and is one of the creepier moments in the story. (It can’t ALL be flowers and romance, after all. At least not in this book.😁 )

EXCERPT FROM WAKE-ROBIN RIDGE

SUNDAY, JANUARY 24, 1965
WAKE-ROBIN RIDGE, NC

AT EXACTLY 2:00 A.M., Ruth’s eyes flew open and she sat up with a gasp, momentarily confused at finding herself on the couch with General Penny snuggled against her. Shivering, she noticed the dying embers glowing faintly from the cooling hearth, but the only sound she heard was the thudding of her own heartbeat. She wondered what had awakened her, but a glance at Penny showed the little dog was still sound asleep, so she told herself one of her bad dreams must have roused her, and nothing more.

Huddled under the afghan, she was trying to muster the energy to grab Penny and head upstairs to her bedroom, when a wash of light spread over the back wall of the living room. For a split second, she thought it might be from Frank’s headlights, but she discounted that idea, knowing Frank would never come up here, unannounced, in the middle of the night. She stared in growing horror and shock as the light began a slow crawl around the room, sliding in oily silence from wall to wall. Hand at her throat, Ruth rose from the couch to watch the pale, greasy-looking light disappear toward the back of the cabin, then reappear on the other side of the room seconds later.

I’m still dreamin’. This isn’t real. It isn’t real. It can’t be!

She watched, dry-mouthed and trembling as the light came to a stop. It remained smeared on the back wall in a nasty, sickly stain, only vaguely resembling the clean, sharp gleam of real headlights.

The faint rumble of an engine insinuated its way into the quiet of the night, a low throb, barely loud enough to be heard. She spun to face the front door, eyes wide with disbelief. Growing in volume, the sound projected a sense of bone-chilling menace that brought Penny scrambling to his feet, growling in fear. Ruth stood frozen, unable to make sense of what she was hearing, but too afraid to look out the window. The muted snick of a car door opening sent Penny into a frenzy of shrill barking, yet Ruth stood in the center of the room, paralyzed, fear rising thick and clotted within her.

The rumbling vibration of the engine faded away, and was replaced by another noise coming from right outside the living room window. Creak-creak. Pause. Creak-creak. Pause.

Ruth gasped. It was unmistakably the sound of the porch swing moving back and forth in a deliberate, steady rhythm, slowly and softly at first, then growing louder and faster.

Creak-creak. Pause. Creak-creak. Pause. Creak-creak. Creak-Creak. Creak-Creak-Creak-Creak-Creak.

Louder and louder, the harsh sound of metal grating on metal grew more shrill and horrifying every second, until it became a mind-shattering shriek that rent the night. Penny’s barking took on an insane pitch, and Ruth clapped her hands over her ears, screaming in mindless terror.

And then—nothing. Silence, complete and absolute. A dead hush settled over the room, muting even the sounds of Penny’s miserable whimpers and Ruth’s ragged breathing.

Shaking from head to toe, and filled with a nauseating horror she’d never imagined existed, Ruth wanted to believe whatever had just happened was finished. The sickly, greenish light began to fade from her wall, and she whispered a frantic prayer. “Oh dear God, please let it be over! Please, please let it be over, let it be over.” She choked back a sob as she turned to comfort Penny, and then she heard it—an answering whisper as cold and evil as damnation itself.

“Ruuuthie … I’m hoo-oome”.

Ruth Winn dropped to the floor in a dead faint.

BUY WAKE-ROBIN RIDGE HERE

I hope this sparks your interest in checking out WRR, if you haven’t already done so. And thanks so much for stopping by today and for all your support!