Judas betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. Most of that silver has been melted down and parts are in many objects throughout the world. Two groups are trying to accumulate all the silver.
Kim has been having a recurring nightmare in which she see's someone being hanged in an old western town. She tries to ignore the dream, but soon finds herself entangled with a buddhist monk trying to stop the wrong people from helping the man in her dream.
She has a few problems. Her cat Jingles hates the monk. Her best friend has been kidnapped by vampires. And she doesn't know the silver necklace she found has her smack in the middle of a dispute that's been going on for hundreds of years.
Excerpt
PROLOGUE
"You will all regret this..." The man's beard was long and matted, so dirty it was impossible to know the true color. His wool pants may have been a confederate grey at one time, but now were so full of mud and dirt that they looked as if they had been stolen from a buried corpse. A tattered linen shirt that could never be clean again hung from his shoulders in defeat. It was difficult to imagine the shirt had ever been a crisp red, especially when looking at the torn sleeves where his dirty hands were tied together poking out behind his back, their nails long and yellow, scratching uselessly at a heavy metal chain that held them. A thick long rope was wrapped around the tree branch above his head; the other end rested patiently in a circle around his neck. "...especially you." He stared directly at Kim.
"Every witness here, as well as your offspring and their offspring will suffer. I promise this." The man continued talking, but Kim could only see his lips moving, the audio feature of her dream seemed to suddenly be on "mute". She tried to move and view the scene from a different perspective and found herself above the crowd, as if looking from a hot air balloon that was still tethered to the ground.
There were about one hundred people. Women, children, and men stood together dressed in clothing that appeared to be old western. The few darker-skinned men and women, perhaps Mexican or natives stood behind the rest of the crowd in a tightly-knitted group. Unlike the white people, they had no children or food with them.
Kim knew that a hanging in the old west was regarded for many of the time as entertainment, with the women bringing along picnic baskets and vendors selling items such as rosaries. She saw the baskets of food, but the onlookers didn't appear to be as festive. No one was speaking, either to the man or to each other.
Her feet were suddenly planted on the ground at her original vantage point and the volume instantly turned back on. Kim heard seagulls in the background, but could not make out what the condemned man was saying, an occasional word burst like a bubble in front of her, but made no sense, "...malkuth...yod eh..."
She felt someone brush aside her as he hurried up to the front. "Don't let him finish!" The panicked man grabbed the reins of the large bay horse attached to the wagon the prisoner was standing on and smacked them furiously against the huge beast's flank. The horse startled and jumped forward, dragging the wagon quickly out from under the feet of the condemned man.
Kim watched in horror as the man swung back and forth. The horror was shared by others in the crowd as the realization began to spread that the criminal's neck had not broken. He was still choking out words as his face turned purple with his eyes bulging out. The man who had startled the horse gaped in frustration. He turned to Kim and spoke to her directly, "Who are you?"
The atmosphere wavered around her like the heat from a car engine that had just been turned off. The scene didn't gradually fade, it instantly ceased to be.
Kim rolled over and sighed in her sleep, unaware that her cat Jingles was curled up around her pillow, staring into the space above her head.
Raised on Black and White TV is Carol Denise Mitchell’s intimate, unflinching memoir of growing up in a world where television became both a refuge and a mirror. Through the glow of classic black‑and‑white programs, she learned about fami
