Risen (Haunted Series Book 22)

straighten them.  She hadn’t seen the woman in a while.  She must have been taken off the ship by the Coast Guard, which left Mr. Martin on his own.
The sitting room was clean with the exception that someone had spilled a lot of salt.  Daphne walked out and returned with a small vacuum and cleaned the mess up.  If she was going to seduce Theodore Martin, she was going to do it in a clean stateroom.
No longer trapped by the salt, Murphy moved quickly out of the stateroom to the outer deck.  He saw the inflatable boat overloaded with people.  The crewman steered the boat on a direct course for the Azure.  Because of this, the boat was jostled by the existing waves.  Murphy moved out over the water to the boat, conscious that the seawater leeched some of his energy away.
Mia was not on the boat.  Besides Bob, it carried Ted, a large blonde man, and Whit and his men.  Murphy needed to check the island before the yacht moved too far for Murphy to return to it safely.  He moved into the veil and then over the water.  He stepped out of the dimension and onto the beach.  He followed a trail from the beach and paused at the black plastic box labeled with “Caution: Explosives” stickers on it.  This must have been the C4 the captain ordered off the ship.  According to Burt, C4 needs a great shock or friction to cause it to explode.  Still, the captain had the right to demand it be taken off the boat.  It was setting atop a volcanic shelf.  They must have figured out that it would be safe here until it could be collected.
“If I were Mia, where would I go to perform the Pit of Despair ritual?” he asked himself.  The rain-soaked ground answered him.  “Inside.”
Murphy moved at ghost speed.  He found a vent that led downwards.  Rushing through it, he all but tumbled into a large cavern.  Most of the place looked like a sluice full of disgusting, decomposing biological parts.  Mia would have looked for higher ground to perform the ritual.  He moved to the high ledges, searching them for a place that would not only hold the chalk, but would be large enough to open the trap to Hell.
There were ghosts drifting around.  They moved like lobotomy patients in a black and white movie.  Murphy was careful to not make eye contact with any of them.  It was cruel, but his time was short.  Moments later, he found what was left of the rectangle.  He could see where Mia had smudged the side to close it after her.  She wasn’t looking to come back this way.  He worried that she wasn’t thinking that she was coming back at all, but he pushed that from his mind.
The cavern shuddered.  He saw the ghost population move to the center.  They seemed to line the body of water in the middle of the place.  Rocks tumbled off the walls and rolled through the spirits into the water.  Something was happening above him.  He had a bad feeling it was the beast.
Whit helped Bob stow the boat.  The others went down below to find dry clothing.  Wet sand in the creases did things to a man that ought not be done.  The captain started the engines.  He ran through the check lists with his first mate.  The main objective on the yacht was escaping over the reef.  No one saw the beach explode upwards and fifty tentacles move out from under the rising beast and move into the water.
The twin motors howled, but the boat wasn’t moving.  Smoke rose from the engines.  The captain turned the wheel, but the yacht didn’t respond.  It was stuck in one place as if somehow they found themselves in solid concrete.
“What’s going on?”
The horizon changed slightly.  The first mate ran to the side just as the boat lifted out of the water.
The captain cut the engines as soon as he heard the whine of the propellers now free of the water.
Whit pulled Bob away from the side of the yacht as a tentacle moved over the edge where he had been hanging on.
Kevin and Fergus moved up from the hold where Kevin had sought refuge from the storm.  Fergus pulled his knife and stabbed the tentacle.  They were all surprised by the howl of pain from the island.
“That blade barely made a dent,” Kevin observed.  “It must be because it’s spectral.”  He pulled out his flask, walked over and slapped it against the next tentacle that moved across the open deck.
Another howl of pain.
“Where’s my son with that bloody axe?  He could do some proper damage,” Kevin said.  “STEPHEN!”
Captain Billard assessed the present situation, and even though a few of the invading tentacles were retreating, he didn’t see a way in which the yacht was going to survive.  “Put out an abandon ship order,” he told his first mate.
“We only have the one boat,” the mate reminded him.
“We’re not going to have time for the boat.  We have to leave now!  That beast isn’t just coming after us.  It’s pulling us in towards the island.”
Murphy climbed out of the cavern.  He thought he heard his father calling him.  He shot upwards above the trees to see what was happening.  The beast had a firm hold on the island with half her tentacles.  The other half had ahold of the Azure, and it was bringing it towards the shore.
“STEPHEN!” Kevin called.  “Use your axe!”
Murphy moved along the beach and chopped at one of the arms pulling the boat in.  The axe severed it from the beast.  The beast screamed in pain.  He took aim and chopped off another one.
Meanwhile, on the yacht, Kevin and Fergus were moving back and forth, tormenting the tentacles that crept along the surface of the