A perilous problem confronts the main character in Secret Chambers.

Alan set out to kill one person.

This idea seemed perfectly reasonable, like the only logical thing to do.  It was an immense relief to understand what was logical after such a long time of mental turmoil.  He had no other choices, so he no longer had to agonize about what to do.

He immediately began to act on this sole and sensible op­tion.  He made sure the pistol was loaded, then put it into the pocket of his topcoat.  He left the house, took a horse from the stable and rode south toward the place where he was most likely to find his victim.

As he rode along, the blessed feeling of certainty deserted him.  It came to him that, to solve the problem once and for all, to be confident of protecting the terrible secret, he would have to kill more people than just the one he was riding to find.  He yearned to have the situation under full control, and he now saw that a series of killings by him was the only way to attain such control.  His mental count of victims quickly rose to four, then to seven.

He realized he would need more ammunition than he now car­ried.  He would need extra guns in case one was damaged or lost during any of the killings.  He would have to be highly organized and almost miraculously swift.  He visualized himself galloping from place to place, hurrying to finish off each individual before police intervened.

Unconscious of doing so, he kicked the horse continuously so that, in reality, he was riding at a gallop, just as he rode in his vision. Hurry!  Hurry!  If he failed to find even a single one of his victims quickly, he could be apprehended by police before accomplishing all the killings.  What if his potential victims were somehow warned he was on his way to kill them?  Hurry!  He applied sharp corners of his boot-heels to the horse’s sides as if his only hope resided in the creation of greater speed, and still greater speed.

Then he noticed what he was doing.  He pulled the horse up abruptly.  Utterly exhausted from his brief wild ride and from the thoughts that had him hurrying madly around the city shooting people at point-blank range to be sure of death, he collapsed in the saddle, grabbing the horse’s neck to save himself from fall­ing to the ground.  He clung to the animal’s sweaty neck as though it were the only sanity in all the world.  What in God’s name am I to do?  The horse’s panting would not go on forever—this suspended moment in time would soon end and the dreadful problem would take possession of his mind again.

He closed his eyes tightly and tried to concentrate on the horse’s loud breathing to the exclusion of all other thoughts.  But with his eyes closed he saw the corpse with voodoo hands, the corpse that had been the beginning of this dilemma for which he desperately sought an end.  He opened his eyes—yet he could not escape so easily from the corpse with voodoo hands.

He had first seen it a year earlier, and he remembered every detail of this corpse, which he had come to hate.  This had been a murder from someone else’s life, to which he had attached himself merely as investigator.  But the murder had come to affect him so profoundly that the corpse’s image remained in his mind as symbol of his own personal tragedy—and of his failure, for he still did not know the full explanation of this mystery, nor did he believe he would ever know, no matter how long he struggled to arrive at the truth.

He recalled the exhilaration he had experienced that winter night upon first seeing this corpse, so grotesquely and alluring­ly unlike other bodies he had examined on previous occasions.  He remembered each wound and mutilation as if seeing them for the first time.  He remembered each twist of the corpse that contrib­uted to its contortionist’s pose.  He saw, in his mind, the design made by many tiny pins embedded in dead flesh.

As Alan clung to the horse’s neck, his memory of the corpse was more vivid than any other detail of his life.  With its overpowering vividness, the corpse took from him all other things he had ever known.  It took every joy, every other fear—it even took the solid beast that Alan failed to feel quivering, and shifting its weight, between his own legs and arms.  Because of the corpse, all the rest of his life was like a lost dream.

MURDER is the case…. is LOVE the solution?^TM

Secret Chambers can be purchased by going to amazon.com and searching for Alicia Hayes in Books.

* “My stories are for you.”^TM