The Harbor Pointe Inn has loomed on California’s cliffs for generations of Hawthornes. For some, it’s been a blessing. For others, a curse. Travel through two centuries of stories to discover the old inn’s secrets.

In 1858, a ship carrying ice from Alaska wrecked off the coast of California, and little does Taliah Keldan realize how that tragedy will impact her life in 1972.

When Tali decides to quit college and become a civil rights activist, her disappointed parents encourage her to think it over. What better spot for contemplation than at her aunt and uncle’s Harbor Pointe Inn, a charming seaside getaway with its own lighthouse? The place is under renovation and empty of guests. All she’ll have to deal with is the construction crew.

But the inn is far from peaceful.

Tali discovers an old Bible hidden in the lighthouse keeper’s cottage. Strange prayers angle down the margins, all but one ruined by the sea. When she deciphers the crude writing, a dark portal gapes open to a pre-civil war night when an escaped slave in a foundering ship prayed to his voodoo God. A winged creature emerges from the watery void, and her stay transforms into a nightmare.

With the aid of the construction foreman, Tali is determined to send the beast back through time, a choice that will risk their lives, test her convictions, and change her future.

Order your Amazon adventure here: The Seas of Time

Chapter One

1858

The deck pitched to starboard on a rogue wave. Samuel heaved on a sheet, drawing the square-rigged sails taut while the captain bellowed a heading into the brisk April wind. Four years on the Zenobia—five since his escape from a sweltering Louisiana cotton field—had sculpted the muscles across Samuel’s shoulders and corded his scarred arms. Sea spray battered his face and trickled down his collar. He licked the cold salt from his lips, and when the ship settled into a close haul, he secured the line to a cleat.

A gray scratch of foggy Oregon coast lapsed in and out of view, its barren sea stacks rising from a froth of breakers like Africa’s bull elephants. The triple-masted barque, one hundred forty-four feet from stem to stern, hauled 800 tons of ice from Alaska, destined for San Francisco. She could handle the rough seas with a skilled crew, and on their fifteenth voyage, Samuel gave the captain no reason for complaint.

Ben, the ship’s carpenter, a wiry Alaskan with a shell-pink face and red beard, strode Samuel’s way and staggered as the ship plunged over the crest of a swell. “We’re running a steady course, Sam. Quartermaster said get yourself a meal.”

With a nod, Samuel ducked through a companionway and scrambled down the ladder, eager for some hot food. The low beams of the crew’s quarters and galley menaced the taller men, and he hunched, shaking off droplets of seawater along with the spring chill.

Nearly half of the crew sat on benches affixed to the deck, wolfing down a stew of brined beef and peas, their conversation shouted over the creaking of the hull. At the sight of him, they frowned into their bowls, mouths sealed and spines rigid.

The hair on the back of Samuel’s neck bristled at the stony silence. Cobbs, a blond-headed tar from Virginia, rose from his seat, a wooden belay pin dangling at his side and tapping his knee like a baton. Morrison and Shaw, graybeards wrinkled by years of sun and wind, flanked him. Samuel stilled, one hand on the ladder’s rail. His stomach clenched, not from the ship’s roll beneath his feet, but from piled-up memories of beatings and the lash of a whip, humiliations he’d endured without raising a fist.

Morrison, a giant with a pistol slung at his hip, wiped his thick hands on his shirt and drawled, “We’re thinking yer a runaway, Sam.”

“Government man in Anchorage said there’s a law.” Cobbs slapped his makeshift cudgel on his thigh. “We’re most certain that means a reward for turning you in come Frisco.”

Samuel’s shoulders tensed as he braced himself. “California is a free territory.”

“True.” Cobbs grinned. “But the law applies, regardless. And there’s a thousand-dollar fine for helping a slave. That don’t give us much of a choice, now do it? We turn you in, or we turn in the captain.”

Morrison chortled. “We got a duty as law-abiding Americans.”

A head taller and half again as wide as Cobbs, Samuel didn’t doubt the outcome of a fair fight. But a black man who used his fists might pay for his anger with his life, even in California. He’d seen men hanged for less.

His grip tightened on the rail, knuckles bloodless and tendons strung like rigging under a heavy strain. He spun and charged up two steps before someone grasped the collar of his woolen coat. Cobbs’ makeshift club bashed his skull. Lightning flickered through his vision as his assailants dragged him backward. Off balance, he slammed to the deck. Shaw kicked him in the ribs, and Cobbs clubbed him until Samuel seized the wooden pin and landed a punch on the blond man’s jaw.

Cobbs pitched sideways into a table, raising a chorus of oaths as cups tottered and spilled the day’s ration of rum. A burly Frenchman swatted the blond sailor in the mouth and bloodied his teeth, while Shaw and Morrison took over Samuel’s trouncing, any dreams of a government reward surrendered to a murderous rage.

Samuel curled into a ball like the ship’s cat, protecting his skull with his forearms. Fists hammered on his exposed limbs. A boot caught him in the face and smashed his nose.

Cobb’s shrill voice rose above the grunts of his companions, the Frenchman’s tirade, and the sea’s roar. “Don’t kill him, you idiots. He ain’t worth nothing dead.”

The beating ceased, and the panting men retreated. “Where do we stow him?”

“In the lazaret.” Cobbs spat a wad of blood. “If the boatswain needs his supplies, he’ll figure it out. Then we’ll tell the captain before Ben starts griping or does something stupid. They won’t like it, but they won’t risk a fine neither.”

**

Samuel slumped in the dark, and cradling his throbbing head in his hands, he prayed to the Christian Jesus. The storage locker lay in the stern, in the belly of the hull, cramped with spare lines, sails, and equipment for repairs. With a tonnage of ice stowed beyond the bulkhead, the space chilled him, as frigid as the Alaskan winter.

The iron hands of oppression bore down on his shoulders, heavier than the black wings of death. He couldn’t return to Louisiana and a life of subjugation. He couldn’t bear the beatings, the rape of women and children, the breeding and shredding of another family. Another branding. Another hanging. The endless despair and grief gnawed on his bones with the ferocity of the master’s hounds. He spoke his prayers until his voice grew hoarse with thirst.

Time passed without reference. His hand drifted to the pocket of his coat and his mother Phibe’s Bible, the leather-bound book she’d told him to hide when the overseer sold her. He’d wrapped it in waxed cloth and taken it with him when he’d fled. The words eluded him, but he knew its contents, many of the Christian passages as well as the scratched writings in the margins, the secret creole devotions to the powerful Iwa of Haiti and Africa, and the serpent god Damballah.

He had no offerings for the slit-eyed creator, no eggs or milk or white flowers. The Iwa did not care about the matters of trivial men, but he was generous to those who were desperate, and Samuel was desperate.

“Damballah, mon cher,” he whispered into the blackness. “I am here, Sky Father who created the stars, shaped the hills, and set the waters flowing on the earth. Do you see me on your wide sea? Within the hold, it is cold and black. My fears and troubles drown me. My enemies will send me again to toil as a slave, but I am a man. Free me from this fate. Deliver me to your warm shores, and let me serve you the rest of my days. I will prove my faithfulness. Cast these demons to your storm, condemn their ship to the deep with your mighty waves, and never bring it ashore. Merci, for my salvation and your vengeance.”

The lazaret turned glacial, a promise of death engulfing him in the icy gust of a rising gale. Beneath the crash of the ship and sea, Damballah hissed, a sound of dragged lines or canvas, of a leak sprung through the hull’s seams. Soft, windy whistles stirred the air. Samuel held his breath as an invisible weight squeezed his chest. The Iwa’s viperous head rose from a black void of slithering scales. Two slanted silver eyes glinted with unearthly light.

“Damballah, save me.”

The serpentine gaze blinked and vanished. The weight lifted, and the Zenobia leaned hard to port. Equipment strained against its lashings. Thunder rattled through the barque’s timbers as if she were a chac-chac in the god’s hand. Without warning, the lazaret deck heaved up and plummeted.

Samuel scrambled into a squat, one hand pressed on the hull for balance as the ship ascended the sea’s peaks and plunged into its watery canyons. The turbulent pitch flipped his stomach. He stood and gritted his teeth as he pounded on the overhead hatch with the heel of his hand. Locked tight. Trapped in the belly of the ship, he howled to the crew for release, but no one came to his rescue. Did Ben know what had happened? Could anyone hear his shouts through the war waged between the ship and the sea?

He’d begged Damballah to condemn the vessel and its men to a murky grave, to save him from a life in chains. But he hadn’t expected his deliverance to come in the company of death. Had the god refused him, enraged and vengeful because Samuel had no gifts to offer, nothing of value beyond his service? Was his devotion so worthless?

He cursed the Iwa’s name.

A deafening roar ripped through the hold. Planking shattered as the ship lurched, flinging Samuel into the bulkhead separating the lazaret from the ice. The wooden barrier cracked beneath the force of his body. He kicked blindly at the broken boards, pried them loose, and squeezed through the gap.

The Zenobia canted, casting him into the ice-packed hold. Freezing water engulfed him, stung his face like shards of glass, and stole his breath. He scrabbled to his feet in utter darkness.

The craft groaned and splintered against whatever had punched through her hull. Arms outstretched, he waded between blocks of ice, his soaked clothes frigid against his skin. The sea pounded and churned, the water rising to his waist. He fell blindly against the ladder’s treads, uttered a cry, and climbed.

The crews’ quarters and galley were empty of men. A single lantern swung on a nail hammered into a beam. He sprang up the companionway to the main deck to find it abandoned, the lifeboats gone.

Ebony clouds twisted in a slate sky, and rain pelted his face. A feverish wind whipped the sails and rattled the blocks and tackle. Rollers overwhelmed the listing ship. She’d struck underwater rocks, and there was no saving her. She’d go down, and he with her.

He clambered up to the quarterdeck, pulled a cork life-saver from behind the helm, and jumped into the sea. Waves crashed over his head. He gasped for breath as he bobbed to the surface, so cold he struggled to think. Phantom cliffs hovered in the distance, grayed by a spectral fog. Bone-shattering breakers assaulted the scattered boulders at their base and shot silver froth up the sheer walls.

Samuel clung to the cork ring and kicked for shore until the sea engulfed and tumbled him, bruising his body on the jagged bottom. He rolled in the surf and scrambled onto a narrow shelf of rocks, coughing brine as he rose into a crouch. Water pummeled him, sending him to his knees. A swamped lifeboat smashed on the rocks behind him and exploded into kindling. Wheezing, he lunged for a footpath traversing the rough wall.

Lightning fractured the sky, splinters of steel revealing Damballah’s soaring rage. Samuel cried for mercy. He hadn’t meant to curse the Iwa. “I bow to your will, Creator. Forgive my anger, for I should have known only white men are devils.”  

The serpent offered no reprieve.

Free of the sea’s clutch, Samuel climbed the dirt path, clinging to sharp rocks and tufts of reedy grass and crawling when his soles slid from beneath him. At the bluff’s height, a barren land breached the forest with patches of wild roses and spring scrub battered by the rain. A metal firebox that once might have warned sailors from the rocky hazards perched on the cliff’s edge. A solitary stone hut stood nearby, its door hanging from one hinge, the gloom within as thick as wool.

Farther down the shore, a white-washed building, three stories high with a steep dormered roof, both beckoned and threatened. Samuel wavered, shivering, lured by the warmth of a kitchen fire and the golden glow of lamplight, but fearful of capture. He ducked behind the hut’s broken door.

Cast-off furniture and equipment loomed in the hut’s corners like underworld skeletons, and April rain beat on the roof with the rapid pulse of sticks on a goat-skin drum. Damballah slithered and hissed along the walls. A narrow wooden stair climbed to a dark loft, offering a place to hide until the storm passed and daylight returned.

Halfway up, a tread wobbled beneath his foot. He halted at the sound of voices drifting in the wind. His breath came fast, teeth grinding as his options collapsed around him.

He had reached the end of freedom’s journey and his right to choose his future. His hands shook from the cold as he withdrew Phibe’s Bible from his pocket and unwrapped the waxed handkerchief. Water had soaked the pages and smeared the ink. He hated to part with his mother’s devotions, but when the men captured him, they would destroy it. Praying for forgiveness, he pried off the loose tread, folded the cloth over the book, and placed it in the gap.

With the wood wedged back into place, he climbed into the loft. A harsh fate unfurled before him with no way of escape. On his knees, he uttered one more desperate plea to the Iwa. The hut’s door crashed to the floor. The ancient serpent’s scales slithered across his skin and coiled around him. He screamed as it wrenched him into the void.