The Prof Croft Series: Books 0-4 (Prof Croft Box Sets Book 1) by Brad Magnarella (best business books of all time txt) 📕

sides looked the same, their trunks mottled with black mushrooms. I had been here before. I couldn’t remember when, but it was familiar enough that I knew no matter where I ran, I would only end up more lost.

A chill wracked my five-year-old body as I stopped and tilted my head back. The gray sky through the branches was dimming with the coming night. When darkness fell, the creatures would emerge.

Horrid creatures.

I broke into another blind run. “Mom!” I shouted.

I had no memory of my mother. I knew her only as a framed photograph in the living room of Grandpa and Nana’s house: a young woman looking out a large window, half her face in light, the other in shadow, one hand resting over the pregnant swell of her stomach. Even so, I sensed in my gut that she was the only one who could help me out of this place.

“Mom!” I called again.

Someone, or something, answered, a whisper that slithered from the trees to my right: “Everson.”

The alien voice was familiar to me in the same way the forest was. The voice would chase me and eventually catch me. I veered away from it, heart slamming. The voice echoed from all sides now.

“Everson … verson … son.”

I pumped my arms and legs as hard as I could. Around me the forest darkened. The mushrooms on the trees clotted into thick, dripping tumors. When I tried to shout for help, the spores that swept through the air closed my throat. Only a gasping whine squeezed out.

“Everson,” the voice whispered again, seeming to reach for me. “Join us.”

I arched my back, breaking through fresh whirlwinds of spores and into a deepening gloom. Wet leaves squished underfoot, and the air stunk of rot. Sinister shadows moved among the trees.

“Everson … verson … son.”

“Stay away,” I gasped, batting through the crowding branches.

The forest pressed in until I had to slow down to pick my way through. I climbed between a pair of trees, the toadstools on their trunks bursting like pustules, and became stuck. I grunted and squirmed, but the space between the trees narrowed further, holding me fast.

No! I thought desperately.

But this was what always happened, wasn’t it?

“Join us,” the voice whispered behind me. “Join the cluster.”

I peeked back. The forest shimmered in an insane dance of colors. Below, something wet was climbing my legs, but the colors around me, dazzling shades of pink, orange, and emerald, were too intense. I couldn’t stop looking at them. In hungry squelches, the wetness inched up my stomach. When it reached my shoulders, I could see it in my peripheral vision: a gelatinous black fungus. I went to wipe it away, but I couldn’t move my arms.

“Join the cluster, Everson,” the voice whispered. “Become one.”

The fungus squelched up my neck and spread over my jaw like a beard.

In revulsion, I tore my gaze from the shimmering colors. “Mother!” I shouted.

The word tapped into an undercurrent of power. Crackling energy broke from the sound, radiating out in all directions. The fungus blew from my body. The trees that held me parted.

I stumbled backward and fell into a quiet clearing.

“Everson,” someone said—but not the whispering voice this time.

I turned and rose. At the center of the clearing stood my mother. A sob of relief hiccupped from my chest, and I ran toward her. Except for her lean stomach, she looked identical to the woman in the picture: half in shadow, hair brushed over one shoulder. But she wasn’t smiling in the same faint way. Not like in the framed photo. Not like in the other…

Dreams, I thought suddenly. I’m inside a recurring dream.

I peered around, expecting the dreamscape to dissolve away, but the clearing only became more vivid. A scattering of stately trees creaked and rustled in a light breeze. Birds chirped in their branches. I looked back at my mother, a sea of emotions roiling inside me. I’d never known her, and yet she’d become a powerful force in my imagination.

By the time I arrived in front of her, I was a grown man—which had never happened before. No, the dream-child me would typically hug her leg and tell her I was lost. She would say that she’d found me, that she would always find me. She would then point the way from the forest, but tell me I had to make the journey on my own. She always said this with a smile.

Now, concern lines creased her young face. Before I could ask what was wrong, she embraced me firmly and stood back.

“Everson, there isn’t much time. The Whisperer is coming through.”

“The Whisperer,” I echoed, remembering what Chicory had told me. An ancient entity older than the First Saints and Demons, the Whisperer had corrupted the youngest of Saint Michael’s nine children. It had turned Lich against his siblings. In a one-man rebellion, Lich had nearly overthrown the Order. He was eventually defeated, the fissure to the Whisperer sealed. But centuries later, Marlow, a man the Order believed to be my father, discovered Lich’s book. He replicated the spells, reopening the fissure to the ancient being.

“How do we stop it?” I asked.

My mother’s eyes hardened as she looked past me. “Run,” she said, but not in answer to my question.

I turned and realized we were no longer in a clearing, but a large stone room, the trees becoming pillars. Familiar-looking figures in black robes strode toward us, all chanting a single word.

“Traitor … traitor … traitor.”

Backing in front of my mother, I groped for my cane, my amulet, my revolver, but I wasn’t carrying any of them. I had witnessed this scene before, in Lady Bastet’s scrying globe: the scene of my mother’s execution.

“Leave her alone!” I shouted.

My mother spoke near my ear. “Don’t let him know about you.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Did you really think you could keep up this shameful duplicity without me finding out?” A tall figure emerged through the others, the face beneath his hood an ornate gold mask. The mouth frowned in