Chasing Prophecy by James Moser
Publication date: January 2nd 2014
Genres: Paranormal, Thriller,
Publication date: January 2nd 2014
Genres: Paranormal, Thriller,
Synopsis:
Mo is a shy teen just trying to survive high school. He has secretly fallen in love with a girl named Prophecy. Some people call her family a harmless hippie community. Others call them a cult. Desperate to keep their land, Prophecy’s family turns to the drug trade and tricks Mo into smuggling. Prophecy flees the compound. She agrees to testify but disappears. Mo is devastated. When he is called to trial, the Family threatens to reveal his own drug trafficking. Mo commits to speaking out, though doing so will destroy his future. Prophecy returns to help Mo kill the monster that her family has become.
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Excerpt:
Max
leaned over and whispered, “They don’t have any gear.”
I
looked at their packs. He was right. No rolled-up tents,
sleeping bags or cookware dangled from any of the straps or hooks.
Just bulging backpacks. Their empty sports-drink bottles were
the only clue that they’d known they were about to hike straight up
a mountain.
I
remember thinking how weird it was that they carried so much weight
uphill and none of that weight was soap, clean clothes, or sleeping
bags.
Max
peeked inside one of their packs. He undid the top pull-cord
and pulled out a giant freezer-bag of red crystals. I undid the
top drawstring of one of the other backpacks. More bags of the
same stuff. I held one up. A bright flash startled us,
made us step back. After blinking away the spots, I saw Clean
with one arm extended, centering us in another picture he was taking
on his phone.
“What’s
this?” I asked, holding up a bag of what looked like raspberry
Sno-Kone.
“Drugs,”
Max said softly.
“It
is not ‘drugs,’” said Clean. “It is the salvation of
our family. It is the sword we will use to fight off Big
Brother, to beat him back from our land, to cut off his hand as it
reaches for what is ours. Now put those bags of salvation back,
please. I’m sending word of our salvation to my father.”
He held the Blackberry closer to his face and I knew he was
forwarding the picture to Able back at the ranch.
Big
buckets of reality crashed down on me head. Huge bags of drugs
brought in from Canada. Hiked over the border in the dense
woodsy areas where the Mount Baker National Forest drops to the
Canadian Border.
These
guys are criminals, I
thought.
Clean
waved at our tents, sleeping bags, and the rest of the food. He
said, “You guys should just chill for a day, catch your breath,
eat, drink, and sleep. No fires. We’re way off the
trail and we’re nowhere near the spot where people hang-glide,
base-jump or wall-climb. I put all the dehydrated food pouches
in the blue backpack—soups and chili and fruit. A whole
bottle of water purifying tablets. It’s not tons but it’ll
keep you fueled til you’re back home. Thanks to you, the hard
work is done.”
“Thanks,
bruh,” said the leader of the other team. The three of them
were leaning into the rock and leaning into each other. They
must have done that on the way up, at night, to stay warm.
Clean
motioned us to the other end of the rock. He said, “We leave
in half an hour. Drink all the water you can, then fill up one
small water bottle each. Remember to add an iodine tablet.
No one can get sick on the way down. And,” he said, pausing
to reach into his pack. “We wear these on the way down.”
He pulled out green and tan camouflage floppy hats and t-shirts that
matched the backpacks our visitors had carried.
“What
about . . .” I started to say.
Max
took a deep breath, dropped his chin and stared at the ground.
He understood before I did that the Vision-Quest was over. We’d
come to exactly this spot because this was the mission Able and Clean
had planned for us all along.
Clean
said, “We’re carrying it back down to the trailhead. We’re
taking no food. We ate less than 24 hours ago and will be able
to eat again before we go to sleep, after we get home. We have
water. It’s downhill for us so we should make the car before
dark. I have a small thing of sunscreen. Other than that,
all we need is some guts.”
Max’s
face was angry. I was just plain numb. There was nothing
else to say.
Half
an hour later, Clean hugged his three companions goodbye. We
stayed on the southern end of the ledge, teetering under the heavy
packs, just nodding politely to the other crew. We started down
and did not talk. The backpacks carried the same weight but
since I’m smaller than Clean and Max, I struggled more. I
panted and stumbled a few times. We reached the tree-line in a
couple hours.
Max
and I kept trading WTF looks.
I
thought, What
is Kazzy doing right now? Does she have backpack of drugs,
too? Did she know about this? Of course she didn’t
know. The day before she looked so lost and confused. As
lost and confused as anyone in the dining hall. If she had
drugs on her back, she was as surprised as we were.
God,
I wanted to hold her and I wanted her to hold me back. I’ve
never wanted to hold someone so much. I thought of the squeeze
she’d given me as she left the school bus.
The
school bus. Right. They’d chosen a special ed. school
bus to bring us in and out because it would hide in plain sight.
No cop would pull us over for a small reason.
Max
suddenly said, “Shit.” He kicked a tree, nearly fell from
being off-balance under the heavy pack, steadied himself, unstrapped,
and dropped his pack on the ground. He looked at me, then at
Clean. “This is illegal. It’s not what you said we’d
be doing.”
Clean
moved quickly toward Max. I dropped my pack to the ground and
took a long step toward them--to break up the fight before it got
started. Clean’s eyes darted to mine. He put his finger
to his lips.
Max
put up his fists but Clean was already past him.
Clean
took two long steps down the path, to the bend in the next
switchback. He looked back at us—eyes on fire. He
pointed sharply at us and then up into the woods.
We
pulled on our packs and labored up the rocky hillside, grabbing at
pine trees and brush. Glancing to our right, I saw Clean doing
the same. We reached a spot thirty feet off the trail, level
and dense with ferns. From the trail we heard a rustling and
the unmistakable clip-clopping of horseshoes. We dropped down
in the ferns, shimmied out of our backpacks and kneeled down in the
dense mossy soil.
A
forest ranger on horseback came into view. As he brought the
horse to a stop, it sniffed at the air, looked our way and froze.
I knew it had smelled us. We turned to Clean. He put one
finger to his lips and stared daggers at us.
The
ranger wore an olive green, short-sleeved shirt and cargo shorts.
He had a walkie talkie clipped to his belt and a satellite phone in
his hand. The saddle held a canteen, knapsack, and a long
leather sleeve with a shotgun handle sticking out. As he turned
around, I saw a handgun holstered at his side. The guy looked
straight ahead, spoke into his satellite phone, dismounted, whispered
softly to the horse, and stroked its mane.
I
looked back at Clean and what I saw told me that the Bethlehem family
had changed forever. The fingers of one hand were spread toward
us, commanding we remain still and silent. His other hand held
a gun. The lines on his face were calm. He was not
afraid.
The
ranger turned his back to us, lowered his hands, undid his belt
buckle, moved his legs apart, looked to the sky, began to whistle.
Clean gently clicked off the safety. The horse heard it,
darting its eyes in our direction, snuffled, pawed at the ground
restlessly. The man turned back to the horse, whispered, went
back to whistling.
After
the ranger and horse were safely out of earshot, we stepped over to
Clean.
Max
said, “What are you doing with a GUN???”
I
added, “Yeah, and what were you gonna do if he saw us?”
Clean
looked calmly at me, snapped the safety back on, and returned the gun
to the waist-band against his lower back. He clicked on his
walkie talkie, adjusted the volume and channel, and said, “Redemption
Team One to Redemption Team Two. Redemption Team One to
Redemption Team Two. Anyone out there chillin’? Over.”
A
long pause, and then the crackling response, “Chillin’ like Bob
Dylan. Thought you guys were gone. Over.”
Clean
said, “We just ran into Steve’s Big Brother. You remember
Rick, right? Over.”
A
longer, crackling pause.
“Copy
that. Long time since we’ve seen Rick. He by himself?
Over”
“Affirmative.
Over.”
And
the longest, crackling pause yet.
“How
long til Rick arrives for dinner? Over.”
“He’s
probably not coming to your house, but if he does go that way, it’ll
be at least an hour. No more than two. Over.”
“Copy
that. If you seen him again, tell him sorry we missed him and
we’ll catch him next time. We’re running late and we’ll
be gone in ten minutes. Over.”
“Sounds
like a plan. Sorry about the fast turnaround. I know you
guys are tired from the trip. From the long drive all the way
from California, I mean. Over.”
“Copy
that. Catch you guys next time. Over and out.”
“Copy
that. Over and out.”
Clean
switched off his walkie talkie and clipped it onto his belt.
“Look
at me,” he said. “Everyone take a drink of water and pee if
you have to. We are not stopping for a few hours, until we get
to the parking lot. I will walk on point. That means I’ll
be by myself about fifty feet ahead. There will be NO talking,
so I can hear what’s ahead. You watch where you’re walking
and you watch me. I put my hand up, that means stop. I
point, and that means you have five seconds to go wherever I’m
pointing.
“We
run into someone and can’t hide in time, you just do exactly what I
do. We’ll say hello all friendly-like, but you keep
your heads down and you do not slow down no matter what. I will
go first. I’ll pause, I’ll make some small talk for ten
seconds while you pass me, and then I’ll bring up the rear after
the two of you are down the trail a bit. I will catch up on my
own so don’t look back. We don’t look back and we don’t
stop no matter what.”
We
nodded.
“Say
it so I know you understand,” he said.
“Don’t
look back,” Max said.
“Don’t
stop, no matter what,” I said.
Author
Spotlight: James Moser, on Chasing Prophecy
I
have always wanted to build a story around someone or something like
Boo Radley, my all-time favorite literary character. I love how
he dominates that book while remaining largely off-stage.
I looked around the Seattle area and the closest thing I could think
of was our local legend of Bigfoot. Once I had my own
version of Nathan Arthur Radley in place, I started thinking a lot
about monsters, especially monsters we make bigger in our
imagination. I also thought about Boo living in society without
being a part of it, which made me think of different separatist
groups turned into cults. My young characters are based
on bits and pieces of hundreds of former students.
The
setting of Boulder Creek, Washington, like everything else in the
book, is based on bits and pieces of lots of things. There is
no town called that. Boulder Creek is where my wife and I hiked
for our first date, in the foothills of the north Cascade Mountains.
The mountains in my book look like the ones around Darrington, in
Snohomish County. The main street is like Arlington (where I
had my first teaching job). The log bridge is something I
remember from a family trip to Yellowstone National Park, 1,000 miles
away. People who have read Twilight will think Boulder
Creek feels like Forks, which it does, because that’s what every
small town in Washington feels like. The Bethlehem compound is
the Boy Scout camp I attended in northern Idaho, complete with the
same wood carvings on the fireplace.
My
mission in writing this is to entertain adults and inspire young
adults. Teenagers inspire the heck out of me, which is why I’ve
been a high school teacher for so long. I wanted characters who
transform themselves to overcome obstacles, which is what I watch
them do, every day!
----
AUTHOR BIO
The author works with high school students because young adults inspire him. As such, he wanted to write about teenagers transforming themselves to overcome obstacles, which is what he watches them do every day. This book's mission is to entertain adults while inspiring teens. The result is "Chasing Prophecy," a story about love, loss, redemption, and monsters.
Boo Radley is the author's all-time favorite literary character, which is how the Seattle-area legend of Bigfoot entered "Chasing Prophecy".
The author lives in Seattle with his beautiful wife and lively eight year old son. When he's not reading and writing, or talking about reading and writing, he's watching too much television and snacking on frozen treats from Trader Joe's. Man, those things are good.
Boo Radley is the author's all-time favorite literary character, which is how the Seattle-area legend of Bigfoot entered "Chasing Prophecy".
The author lives in Seattle with his beautiful wife and lively eight year old son. When he's not reading and writing, or talking about reading and writing, he's watching too much television and snacking on frozen treats from Trader Joe's. Man, those things are good.
Author links:
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Thanks for hosting my book, "Chasing Prophecy," Amanda! I appreciate the thorough and thoughtful presentation of my work!
ReplyDeleteJim Moser in wet 'n windy Seattle, Washington
Excellent post! I was intrigued by the blurb, hooked by the excerpt and really enjoyed the author spotlight. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteilookfamous@yahoo.com