Chapter Excerpt

Washington State 1998

Charlie lay awake, watching rain drops pelt the floor-to-ceiling bedroom window. The rain's voice mingled with the surge of waves crashing across Puget Sound. They rolled toward the rocky shore where Theibes House perched on the hilltop. The magnificent Victorian mansion had sat this way for over one hundred years.

Moonlight broke through a rift in the swollen clouds. The pale illumination glistened against the glass window panes near Charlie's bed, turning black shadows into fluttering apparitions. The last four nights, he had not fallen asleep until the early hours of the morning.

He rolled over and stared up at the ceiling toward a brown stain created from dripping rainwater, in the shape of a smirking imp, obscured the once pristine paint on the ceiling. He grimaced at the worrisome discoloration not only because of the ugly shape it had chosen to take, but because of what it represented holes in the roof, equating to "shelling out" money that his family no longer had. This was what happened to the descendants of a dynasty when the family business failed, and funds ran low. So far, he'd managed to patch the holes here and there so no one got their heads wet, but it was really nothing more than bandage work. All the shingles on the roof needed replacing.

Charlie pulled the covers up to his chin and rolled on to his side. He tried, once again, to sleep, but the unnamed restlessness kept his eyes wide open...

End Chapter Excerpt

When a renowned archaeologist begs Charlie to come to the rain forest, where deep in the African Congo the tip of a giant, black obelisk is "growing up" out of the jungle floor, Charlie is intrigue. Especially since his nightmares are about a phenomenon such as this occurring in this exact same place. But what are the glyphs that swarm like insects around the dark column and why does the obelisk feel "alive" to the touch?

A dark secret, traced back to antiquity, may have the answers to stop the terrors that haunt Charlie awake and asleep It may also hold the key to keeping an unimaginable horror from ripping apart the very fabric of the world.

In Book One of the epic adventure, Keepers of the Ancient Tomes, Black Obelisk will have you turning pages and breathless until the last word.