When Zelda Hawkins agrees to take a high paying inventory job working nights alone in the old downtown museum basement, she never imagines danger lurking on those artifact shelves.
She’s there to finish a job begun by a girl named Ashley, a girl who vanished without explanation one night, never seen leaving the museum.
Did Ashley flake out on the job or did she suffer a fate Zelda seems to be suffering after finding a strange misplaced Fertility Idol?
A storm is building in the cold October night sky outside, but the real action takes place somewhere different… in a place Zelda Hawkins never intended to go, but found herself helplessly heading after becoming IDOLized.
A storm is arriving in the cold dark of the night, and Zelda Hawkins is arriving for her first night working nights at the old downtown museum. It’s a three week job that promises a very big payday, easily three months at her regular librarian job. But is this a job as unpredictably deadly as the lightning in the night sky?
Zelda Hawkins always liked the methodical quite work of a librarian, a woman since college who liked the solitary lifestyle, alone with her thoughts. The one thing she despised was the men who came in and saw an attractive librarian and thought she must be hiding some secret naughty side. And at the museum she’ll never have to worry about that since she’ll work nights alone down on the multiple floors of the basement, completing an all-important inventory by the end of October.
This inventory simply involves step by step checking of the items stored in the basement, items like ancient pots, statues, weathered maps, and documents. She’s to make a note when one isn’t properly tagged or in the correct location. It’s a very simple an exceptionally high paying job, and the pay is largely due to the museum being desperate since the girl who originally was performing the job vanished one night without a trace.
Ashley had been a younger girl, probably less responsible, more impulsive, but even Zelda can’t imagine why anyone would just run off during her work shift, leaving behind her car and all her possessions. There’d never been a sign of any foul play, nothing serious, and certainly nothing involving the museum.
But it was hard to completely ignore the rumors and stories that naturally seemed spooky with Halloween approaching. Some said Ashley had been caught on cameras in the museum, but had stepped from one camera simply into oblivion, vanishing. Others said her notepad was found freshly smelling of her perfume as though she’d dropped it right before they found it. And still others claimed the museum was haunted or that Ashley disturbed some demon trapped within a relic there.
For Zelda Hawkins none of that matters, a logical woman, a confident one, and mostly one just ready for her night of work. However when Zelda is checking off the inventory notes, she quickly happens upon an oddly placed little statue that doesn’t seem to be in its correct place.
The oddly top heavy statue of a woman’s form isn’t labeled, but scribbled in pencil on the shelf beside where she found it are the words Fertility Idol. It’s surprisingly warm, and carved on the side, nearly unnoticed, is what appears to be double letter Fs.
As the storm builds outside, Zelda will soon discover her own grasp or reality might be just as chaotic when she looks down and discovers that somehow just her brief time with this bizarre little statue has made her a bit more top heavy just like the figure.
A logical minded woman, naturally panicked, of course she should leave… but just what is it about the labyrinth-like museum basement that seems to be changing around her? Why does she somehow keep ending up right back at that little idol? And is Zelda Hawkins following in her predecessors footsteps, solving the spooky mystery of whatever happened to Ashley by having the same happen to her?
Halloween with the Kreme brings readers right back onto the road to mystery, to suspense, into the unknown, and into… Fertile Fields once again. Get ready to be IDOLized.
Next in Halloween with the Kreme 2019…. Days later it’s still a blank…
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