Title: This
Beautiful World
Author: Elisabeth Jackson
Genre: Romantic
Suspense / Mystery
As children, RaeAnne and her sidekick
King were held captive after they discovered the body of a boy their age in a
crate of apples in their small town’s peculiar orchard. Now RaeAnne is grown
and the mother of a troubled young daughter. After her mother is killed in an
accident, she travels home to her father with her daughter. But RaeAnne finds
that she is not welcomed by everyone, and frightening incidents start to happen
involving her and her family. As RaeAnne unravels the mysteries of her
childhood, including what happened to her older brother, who vanished on the
same night RaeAnne and King found terror in the orchard, she reunites with
King. The boy she knew has grown up to be very handsome and guarded. But can
the two ever be more than old friends who share a terrifying secret?
Chapter
One
My past didn’t just haunt me. It became a part
of me. I’m grown now, with a daughter of my own, but every time I sink my teeth
into an apple’s smooth skin, I think of the orchard. I think of the secret I
became a part of one day when I was twelve. A secret I shared with my friend,
King.
In 1998, King and I searched through the crates
of apples picked earlier in the morning at the Gray orchard to take a few for a
snack. We’d made it all the way to the center of the orchard, where the apple
crates were set out along the trail for the trucks to collect.
A bird screeched and the lanky apple trees,
with branches like a witch’s curved, gnarled fingers, seemed to close in on us,
as though we could become forever lost in this crowded world of trees. If the
Gray family caught us, would anyone be able to hear our cries for help?
King plucked an especially red apple and tossed
it to me.
“Thanks,” I said, catching it in my hand. I
wiped the fruit against my shirt until it shone in the summertime light and bit
through the tender skin, into the crisp white center, the sweet juice filling
my mouth. I glanced up and King was gone.
“Hey,” I said, my voice faint.
He laughed, and his tall frame jumped out from
behind the line of trees, where apples hung in the sunlight like glittering red
jewels.
I dropped my half-eaten apple to the ground as
he walked back to me. “Don’t ever do that again,” I said, facing him, the sun
warming my arms. “I thought you’d left me here.”
“I’d never leave you alone.”
“Promise?”
“Sure,” he said, and I made him shake on it.
A slender bird appeared like a wisp of dark
paper in the pale blue sky, and I watched it glide. King gasped and I turned to
look at him.
“What?” I asked. Then I saw what he saw – a
smooth, white thing protruding out of one of the crates. I craned my neck for a
closer look. It was a limp hand, reaching out to us from below a mass of apples
unlike the kind I’d seen other times at the orchard, the just-picked beauties
with red, dusty skins. The skins on these apples were peeling away from the
browning fruit. There was a sickly sweet smell of cider.
The hand was still attached to an arm somewhere
down below. In its appearance, it wasn’t like mine or Mama’s, and not like
Daddy’s either. Dark, curly hairs were rooted in Daddy’s knuckles like
underwater seagrass. This hand was fresh, like a newborn’s skin.
I touched the skin as fast as running my finger
through a candle flame, and the surface was cold, yet soft. The hand, with
smooth, blood-stained fingernails, grasped toward us from inside an old crate
held together with warped slats punctured by loose nails. I gagged. My next
instinct was to run. Run far away.
Behind me, King approached and I whirled
around, tried to hold him back. He shrugged past me and edged closer to the
waist-high apple crate, looking inside, searching for something more than a
hand. He ran his fingers across the Gray Family Orchard stamp on the side.
“Is he way down in there somewhere?” he asked.
Standing on his toes, he leaned over the high crate’s rim, reached to touch the
inside.
“Don’t touch it,” I said, bringing his arm
down, and it bumped against the rim of the crate.
His
boyish curiosity got the better of him. “What did it feel like?”
Elisabeth
Jackson loves the outdoors and dogs, rescued dogs in particular. This
Beautiful World is her debut novel and blends haunting childhood secrets,
romantic themes, second chances and a mystery in a small town setting, with a
dash of Gothic elements. When she is not writing small town Romances and
Mysteries, she works as a freelance business writer. Her characters are
inspired by the rural towns she has visited and lived in. She welcomes readers
to connect with her at ejacksonbooks.com and Facebook.com/ejacksbooks.
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