Redacted passages from the final version of Body Parts…

The photos of the journal pages had been acquired by a fluke of opportunity.  It had been a young man’s prank when her father had just finished college.  His friends had dared him to find a way inside the Ransom estate and bring back pictures to prove he had done so.  Surprisingly, he had returned with more than he could have ever guessed.  It was from that young man’s dare that his hunger for more knowledge about the Ransom experiments had grown.

On that long ago night when he had first shown her the yellow envelope Korrie hadn’t understood the fierce, haunted expression on his face.  But a year later, when she sat before that fire and read the journal entries for the first time, that same burning desire had begun to build inside her as well.  And now she was the only one left to make her father’s deepest desire come true.

He said on that night when he’d entered the empty house, not long after the fire that had claimed the Ransoms’ lives, he’d had an eerie feeling, as though he was being watched.  To his way of thinking the journal had been revealed to him for a reason.  He hadn’t dared try to take the journal with him, fearing he would be caught red-handed, but he’d wanted to return because he knew there had to be more.  And there were ghosts in the house, he was certain of it and it was they who had led him to discovery of the private journal.  Would they have done so, he reasoned, if they hadn’t wanted the secrets of the estate to be revealed?

Somehow, along the way, as happens with life, he’d been sidetracked, but he’d never forgotten.  And neither would Korrie.

 

Read excerpts from Dr. Sheba Ransom’s journal at my website: http://www.adriannadane.com/body-parts.html

 

Images adapted/revised from www.pixabay.com