The Dark Entity

Copyright © 2015 by Mary Burton King.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Rev. date: 10/12/2015

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Contents

Prologue

Chapter One The Metamorphosis

Chapter Two Mommy Dearest

Chapter Three Blood Relatives

Chapter Four Almost Sisters

Chapter Five A Taste of Hell

Chapter Six The Three Amigos

Chapter Seven Mad Dogs

Chapter Eight Truth & Consequences

Chapter Nine Loose Ends

Chapter Ten The Legacy

Epilogue

About the Author

Also by Mary Burton King

THE REBECCA NOVELS

FOOL ME ONCE . . .

FOOL ME ONCE . . . FINAL RESOLUTION

AND

THE BEST-SELLING THRILLER

BEATRICE BELLADONNA’S BLACK MAGIC WEB

NONFICTION

NO POT, NO WINDOW: A MEMOIR

THIS NOVEL IS DEDICATED TO THE COUNTLESS VICTIMS OF HUMAN TRAFFICKING, PAST AND PRESENT.

PROLOGUE

ON THE TWENTY-FIFTH of November, at approximately three o’clock in the morning, the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Department 911 dispatchers began receiving a surge of emergency telephone calls from citizens living in the vicinity of the Federal Medical Center, Carswell (FMC Carswell), a prison located on the outskirts of Dallas, Texas. With a panic in their voice, the callers reported they saw an extremely bright, almost blinding, yellow light being emitted from the prison grounds and were absolutely positive it was coming from the prison’s cemetery.

The sheriff’s department immediately dispatched a patrol unit to the prison to investigate the alleged sightings. However, after an intense investigation, the deputies reported back to dispatch that all was well at the prison, and the reports of a bright yellow light must have been a laser, a ruse, or maybe even a low-flying, small-engine airplane. The two deputies had no other plausible explanation.

That reported extremely bright yellow light was sixty-one-year-old Beatrice Belladonna Harlow’s spirit departing her body at the precise time of her physical death. Beatrice, a death row inmate, was murdered in her cell at FMC Carswell while awaiting execution and then secretly buried in the prison cemetery.

At that exact moment in time, Lola Marie, Beatrice’s thirty-three-year-old adopted daughter who resided in Mexico City, Mexico, was awakened from a deep sleep by the very same bright yellow light floating over her bed. Then, with sheer and utter horror, she watched the bright yellow light, her mother’s spirit, enter her body. The two beings became one entity.

CHAPTER ONE

The Metamorphosis

SCARED AND CONFUSED, Lola Marie jumped out of bed, flipped on the lamp sitting on the night table next to her bed, and sleepily looked around. After finding nothing amiss, she wondered, What the hell was that bright yellow light? And then she thought, was she dreaming, or did that strange bright light just mysteriously enter her body near her heart?

She suddenly became aware of the fact that the lower portion of her right arm was itching and stinging as if something had stung her or bitten her. Lola Marie looked down at her arm and that is when she noticed it—the tattoo on her lower right arm. It said BELLADONNA and was identical to the tattoo her mother had inscribed on her lower right arm.

She ran to the bathroom, frantically turned on the overhead light, and took a good long look in the mirror. The reflection Lola Marie saw staring back at her was not hers. It was that of her deceased adoptive mother, Beatrice, when she was much younger, thirty years younger. She couldn’t believe her eyes! Lola Marie realized that she now looked exactly like Beatrice when she was her age, thirty-three!

She screamed in horror and yelled, Oh my god, what has happened to me? The image in the mirror is not me! She now had chestnut hair and eyes instead of dark brown, her skin color was much lighter, and her lips were thicker and fuller. Lola Marie became aware of the fact that even her height and weight had changed. She was now about two inches shorter, five feet five, and was at least twenty pounds heavier, 140 pounds.

Horrified, Lola Marie realized that she had undergone a metamorphosis. She had somehow changed from a beautiful Mexican young woman into her mother—not her biological mother, but the woman who had adopted her when she was eight years old, Beatrice Belladonna Joyce Harlow. And her adoptive mother was half-American and half-Haitian, not Mexican! But what was the reason for the metamorphosis? The last she knew, Beatrice was alive and well on death row in Texas, and her scheduled execution date, April 16, was still five months in the future.

Suddenly it all became crystal clear. Beatrice, a voodoo priestess and convicted serial killer, had most likely died unexpectedly and passed her legacy, her evil legacy, on to her, the adopted daughter. A legacy she did not want and one that most assuredly involved murder and black magic voodoo! Now, she was, by no choice of her own, her mother’s puppet—her evil, murdering puppet.

She knew she had to go to the prison in Texas and find out what had happened to her adoptive mother. That was what a not-so-silent voice in her head was telling her to do. It was saying, Pack your suitcases and get on a flight to Dallas, Texas, today. You need to go to the prison at once!

That annoying voice was Beatrice’s spirit, and it was attempting to take control of Lola Marie’s mind and body. Even though Lola Marie was a licensed psychologist, she was virtually powerless against her mother’s black magic commands.

Lola Marie did not adhere to Beatrice’s demands right away. She did not want to travel to Texas, nor did she have any desire to make an unnecessary visit to the prison that housed her sociopathic, evil mother. Therefore, instead of packing her suitcases as she was instructed, she telephoned the prison and spoke directly to Warden Sizemore, who assured her that her mother, inmate Beatrice Harlow, was well and making the best of the last months of her life. Reassured, Lola Marie resumed her life in Mexico City.

That was until the end of the first week of January.

That was when the BELLADONNA tattoo on her right arm swelled up, turned bloodred, started oozing a thick green liquid, and then began itching and throbbing like a hundred bees had stung her. Lola Marie knew she could no longer ignore her mother’s persistent demand. It was time for her to make the dreaded trip to FMC Carswell, Texas, and find out what her mother wanted of her.

CHAPTER TWO

Mommy Dearest

EVEN THOUGH INMATE Beatrice Joyce Harlow died two or three days after Thanksgiving, her body was not discovered until early January. Karen Jensen, an A&E Network anchorwoman who interviewed Beatrice at the prison in November, suspected foul play when she was denied a follow-up visit with Beatrice after the holidays. She suspected foul play because during their lengthy interview, Beatrice had relayed to her on camera that two nightshift prison guards had repeatedly raped her in her cell over the course of the last six months. Karen immediately reported Beatrice’s allegations to the prison warden, Warden Sizemore, who assured her that an investigation into Beatrice’s allegations would be conducted and that the two unnamed prison guards would be placed on leave, and if the allegations were proven to be valid, they would be disciplined accordingly.

That did not happen. When Karen returned to FMC Carswell in January to visit Beatrice, she was denied access and escorted off the complex by two irate prison guards. Stunned, Karen telephoned the warden from her car and asked why she was denied access to Inmate Harlow. Warden Sizemore curtly relayed to Karen that Inmate Harlow had died of natural causes the day after Thanksgiving, and since her body had not been claimed, she was buried in an unmarked grave in the prison cemetery on November 25.

Suspecting Beatrice had indeed been murdered and had not died from natural causes as stated by Warden Sizemore, Karen immediately reported Beatrice’s suspicious death as well as her previously reported rape allegations to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Karen asked the FBI to investigate Beatrice’s death and determine the cause and manner of her death. Karen suspected murder.

The FBI investigation team, lead by special agent Mario Gonzales, arrived at the prison that very afternoon with search warrants in hand. They located and subsequently exhumed Beatrice’s body and quickly determined that she had indeed been murdered. An autopsy confirmed that she had been repeatedly raped, strangled to unconsciousness with an electrical cord, and then buried alive. When the FBI investigators opened the pine coffin that held Beatrice’s remains, they discovered her battered, naked body lying face-up in the coffin with the electrical cord still wrapped around her neck. They also discovered scratch marks on the inside of the coffin lid. It was assumed by the investigative team that these marks were made by Beatrice while attempting to dig her way out of the coffin. The Tarrant County coroner stated inmate Beatrice Harlow’s cause of death was suffocation, and the manner of death was murder.

Beatrice Belladonna had been raped, strangled with an electrical cord, and then buried alive! The two night shift prison guards who raped and strangled her had assumed she was dead when they placed her battered, naked body into a pine coffin, nailed it shut, and buried it in an unmarked grave in the prison cemetery the day after Thanksgiving. But she wasn’t! Beatrice Belladonna had tried to claw her way out of that pine box, but she was just too weak, therefore her efforts proved futile. She ultimately died from suffocation two or three days later.

It was the second week of January before Lola Marie actually arrived at FMC Carswell and learned of her mother’s death. When she checked in at the prison gate and requested to visit inmate Beatrice Harlow, the guard on duty looked puzzled, asked her name and relationship to the inmate, and then stated that she needed to contact special agent Mario Gonzales with the FBI. The guard quickly wrote down Agent Gonzales’s office phone number on a piece of paper and handed it to her.

Special agent Mario Gonzales had been attempting to contact Lola Marie in Mexico for the last week and a half. Unfortunately, the only telephone number on file at the prison was her office number, and she had not been into her office for over a week because the BELLADONNA tattoo on her arm was causing her too much pain, and it looked hideous, like leprosy. Presently, the pulsating tattoo was covered with gauze and she was wearing a long-sleeved sweater to conceal her affliction. She truly wished she could rid herself of this damn tattoo but knew that short of amputating the lower half of her right arm, she was stuck with it. It was her mother’s evil legacy.

Lola Marie dialed Agent Gonzales’s telephone number on her cell phone, and he immediately picked up. He said he was currently at the prison, completing his investigation, and would meet her at the main entrance to the prison in fifteen minutes. When he arrived at the gate, he motioned for her to follow him to his government vehicle where they could talk in private.

Once inside his vehicle, Agent Gonzales relayed to Lola Marie that her mother, inmate Beatrice Harlow, was deceased—in fact, she had been murdered by two prison guards a few days after Thanksgiving and buried in the prison cemetery. He continued by saying that his team had located and exhumed her remains. A subsequent autopsy had determined that her mother had actually died from suffocation, that she had been buried alive by her murderers. Agent Gonzales then told Lola Marie all the details of how he had dug up Beatrice’s pine coffin and had found an electrical cord tied around her neck and claw marks on the inside of the coffin’s lid.

Lola Marie was mortified by what she was hearing, and all she could utter was Why? None of this was logical since Beatrice was scheduled for execution in less than five months. Agent Gonzales promptly answered her question by telling her that during an on-camera interview with an anchorwoman from the A&E Network, her mother accused two night guards of repeatedly raping her. Therefore, in retaliation, the two guards allegedly murdered her shortly after Thanksgiving, and Warden Sizemore attempted to conceal her murder by forging a death certificate that indicated that Inmate Harlow had died of natural causes.

Then Gonzales added, "If it wasn’t for the A&E Network anchorwoman’s suspicions, no one would have been the wiser.

By the way, the anchorwoman’s name is Karen Jensen, and the recorded interview with your mother is scheduled to air nationally this summer. I have her telephone number if you decide you would like to contact her.

Lola Marie squinted her eyes at Agent Gonzales and simply replied, Of course, but first I would like a copy of your investigative report at your earliest convenience and the deposition of the two guards and the warden. I presume they are in custody, correct?

Gonzales hesitantly said he would provide her with a copy of his report by week’s end and then added, The two prison guards and the warden are currently being housed at the Tarrant County Jail. All three suspects plead guilty to an array of felonies which includes murder and/or conspiracy to commit murder in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table as well as placing them in protective custody while incarcerated. All three are presently awaiting formal sentencing which is currently scheduled for May 4.

Lola Marie thanked Agent Gonzales for locating the remains of her mother and, more importantly, for arresting the three people who murdered her. Then she gave him one of her business cards, which listed her cell phone number and asked him to please call her when his investigative report was available. With those last comments, she exited his vehicle and began walking toward hers. She already had a foolproof plan in place,