Book Debut: Keeper of the Lambs by Dr. Sue Clifton
Back Cover
“Keep an open path and the WAY will
find you.” Once again, the philosophy of Cayce McCallister leads her and sister
Harri Wellington to a ghost-infested location, Bar None, a ghost town high in
the Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho.
The spirits of the wicked madam
Belle, miner Peg Leg Annie, and an evil preacher from the town’s history
linger, playing havoc on the renovation efforts of handsome cowboy construction
boss Hank and his crew. Cayce and Harri are joined by Cayce's artist daughter
Piper and by the endearing Charlie and little ghost girl Sarah in solving the
mysteries of Bar None’s past.
Cayce and Harri also come across
information about three young girls who have disappeared from the area and hope
to find out who murdered Johnny, the boyfriend of one of the missing girls.
The portals open and Cayce revisits
Bar None a hundred years earlier while confronting the malevolent “Keeper of
the Lambs.” And while solving the paranormal mysteries,Cayce and Piper hope to
find love once again.
Excerpt
As Cayce stared into one of the dark
crevices in the otherwise-shiny reflective surface, she sensed movement. The
shadowy cracks undulated like silver and black waves on a shining but turbulent
sea as they transformed into boisterous miners still dirty from a long day in
the diggings. The drunken men grabbed on to tiny, slant-eyed, smile-plastered
figurines that looked like they would crack and disintegrate in the tight
embraces of their crude dance partners as they were jerked around the dance floor.
Blackjack dealers, card sharks, or
cheats in striped or black collarless starched shirts with slicked back hair
and waxed mustaches competed for the attention, or the money, of the miners at
the gambling tables. One he/she thing dressed in baggy men’s pants and an
oversized, dirty coat, dark hair cropped at the ears and covered by a beat-up
man’s felt hat, danced alone, its peg leg resounding like a horse’s hoof on the
wooden dance floor. Every past participant found life again in the silver
tapestry behind the bar.
Cayce stared, trancelike, into the
mirror, not noticing that Hank had moved to the barstool beside her. He sat
quietly as he had promised.
The big, rounded bartender, his dark
handlebar mustache out of place against his shiny, hairless head, slid a
whiskey bottle down the slick bar top. The bottle passed right through Cayce’s
hands, which were propped on the bar, but Cayce did not flinch as it passed
through. The “it,” who Cayce recognized as Peg, grabbed the bottle at the other
end, turned it up, and guzzled it, letting some trickle down her ugly scarred
chin, which was not without a chin hair or two. Peg, with her new dance partner
the whiskey bottle, headed back to the dance floor.
The swinging doors swung wide open,
and two men dressed in black held them there. They stared at the bar crowd from
their posts at the door.
The miners became silent, staring.
Many hid their bottles behind them and pushed away from the petite girls as if
their intentions had been innocent. The piano player stopped abruptly, moving
behind the piano; the moneychangers stepped back from the tables, joining other
groups of terrified onlookers; and the bartender slid down behind the bar, his
bald head reflecting in the bottom of the mirror. Some miners dove through open
windows, and those China figurines that could make it to the stairs fled
upward, holding their frilly gowns high in their hands and scurrying like tiny,
delicate mice racing to their dens.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Foot-pounds? Or has the train left
its phantom track and is hurling out of control into The Nugget?
Cayce glued her gaze to the mirror,
hypnotized, but without the terror of those living the scene.
They act like they know who or what
is coming.
She continued to stare into the
pocked mirror.
What can stop time in its…cracks?
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The two men moved farther inside and
stretched the doors open as wide as possible as the footfalls stopped at the
doors.
The biggest, most burly man Cayce
had ever seen filled the doorway. He looked to be at least seven feet tall with
a bulky body to match, a clean-shaven face offset by dark, disturbed eyes.
He thrust his way into The Nugget,
his piercing gaze darting right, left, and center, capitalizing on the
fear-stricken faces of the onlookers. The man was dressed in black from head to
toe and dragged a heavy wooden cross, the upper end resting on his shoulder
like Jesus at Golgotha. Two more men in black marched behind him and then
hurried to his side, taking the heavy burden from him and holding it against
the wall in the saloon. The cross became a battle flag of what was about to
ensue. In a voice that boomed louder than his footsteps, he released his wrath
on the roomful of sinners.
“No whoremonger nor unclean person
hath any inheritance of God!”
His voice exploded like ignited
dynamite cutting through a mountain. He grabbed a long, black cat-o-nine-tails
that had been tucked in his waistband under his coat and swung it as men and
women screamed, covered their heads, and ducked, many stampeding toward back
exits.
“’Neither fornicators, nor
idolators, nor adulterers, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor
revelers shall inherit the kingdom of God!”
With each sin announced, the man
lashed out with the whip, barely missing some bystanders.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
Again he struck the floor with the
whip, each piece of metal on the end of the nine tails hitting at the same
time, and then he turned it on an empty table.
Pop! Pop!
The table and two chairs
disintegrated, and the crowd shrank farther away; a few risked passing the
giant’s helpers and hunkered down, scurrying through the swinging doors still
propped open by men in black who showed no expression as they allowed the miners
to escape. The burly giant then turned his attention to the card tables and
struck out at them.
Pop! Pop!
Two more tables broke apart, cards
and money flew in every direction, but no one made a move to retrieve any of
it. He stood where one table lay in pieces, his whip and his hands held high as
he raised his eyes to heaven as if he were Jesus among the moneychangers in the
temple at Jerusalem.
“For the love of money is the root
of all evil…” His thunderous base voice halted in mid-verse as his gaze wandered
up the staircase.
Belle, beautiful beyond comparison
with any woman in the establishment, was dressed lavishly in a red silk gown;
her delicate white skin signified false purity under the bright saloon lights.
With her shoulders held proudly back, she teased the supposed man of God with
her cleavage.
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