Excerpt of For Rent: Dangerous Paradise by Eric James Miller

~ Prologue ~

During a long, lustrous summer centuries before any European dared name the place Santa Monica Bay, two rivals searched for completely different prey along the virgin coastal marshland.

Vantu closed in on a musky smelling mule deer he had spent the last hour tracking through the lush green reeds. His smooth bronze skin glistened under the baking sun as the rutting beast finally stopped at a small watering hole. The proud warrior hunter from the inland Tongva tribe silently raised his best, sturdiest flint spear for the kill. Behind him, bees and several other large flying insects swarmed around the twisted, pock marked face of Tohi.

As Vantu readied his aim, so too did Tohi.

A sudden chill swept off the ocean. It carried a warning whisper throughout the marsh. Too late, it shuddered, then stalled over the plain of tall grass and stubby trees.

Vantu's body splashed into the black, oily soil. The startled mule deer fled the scene traumatized but unscathed—bolting north towards a scenic haven centuries later called Malibu.

Tohi, the smug, self-entitled, heir apparent grandchild of a local Chumash chieftain, lorded over his victim's body. In the language of his people, a language lost in the tumultuous human struggles that would eventually obliterate his tribe, he muttered, "Now Kriti will be mine. Mine alone!"

Pulling his axe free from flesh and bone, he watched Vantu's body sink slowly into the muck. He marked the grave with only dry spit. Two years later, he returned desperate to break the curse the object of his affection had put on him. The powerful shaman apprentice knew what he had done, only her proof was missing. He tried to kill her. But failed and was banished from his tribe instead. Disfigured from a near fatal bear attack and dying from exposure, Tohi tried to make peace with the ghost of his rival. He failed again. He took his last mortal breath less than fifty feet from Vantu's body and his loveless soul seeped into the moist earth alongside other nasty dead things.

Kriti's curse took root. It slowly poisoned the soil above both graves as centuries swept by like gusts of wind.

Vantu's death remained unforgiven and Tohi's death remained incomplete. The invisible, unmarked sinkholes of anger, regret and longing grew wild, and stronger.

Spanish and Portuguese explorers in ravenous wooden ships began to appear in the bay. They were followed by stern missionaries from the south who built forts and allowed the worship of only one god. They were followed by an endless tide of new, pale-skinned people who migrated into the area not from the sea, or from the south, but out of the vast emptiness to the east. The native people were swallowed up and when there was no one left to remember, the legend of Kriti, Vantu and Tohi was forgotten.

The new people drained the marshes and built rickety wooden homes along closely-knit streets. One of them named the place Venice and built canals like those in its faraway namesake city. The least fortunate of these newcomers unknowingly built above Vantu's petrified heart and Tohi's hollow, watchful eyes.

Jealousy, greed, rage and vengeance simmered, brewed and turned murderous time and time again. Over the years, countless forgotten souls succumbed to a shadowy, festering madness.

Only the worst tragedies were documented. A tenement fire that claimed the lives of a pair of unfaithful lovers, as well as a dozen innocent children, was the very first headline for a startup newspaper. Unfortunately, the fact that the poorly constructed three-story building was built directly over Vantu's unmarked grave was not included in the report. A shootout between bootleggers and law enforcement during the Prohibition years claimed five more lives over Tohi's tormented resting place. But that story too was only partially reported.

During the scrap metal years of the Thirties and Forties, black gold was found in the area and new oil derricks sprang up everywhere. Most of the canals were filled in. Streets were named, paved and put on maps. The growth was violent. Especially around the area of Broadway and Electric. When beach living in southern California became a worldwide brand for having fun during the bobby socks optimism of the Fifties, that corner in the neighborhood remained mired in a silent, sour dystopia.

In 1958, Vantu's and Tohi's graves were finally united within the same property line by a low rent, two-story apartment building located three blocks from the infamous white sands of Venice Beach. To mention the construction problems is unnecessary.

As much of the old started being replaced with new and Jim Morrison's wild child Sixties bled into the me-first Seventies and Eighties, lives continued to collide to ill avail at 399 Broadway. But in the Nineties, a calming influence moved into the building. The violence mysteriously subsided and hope started to flower.

Unfortunately, everything soured again in the first decade of the 21st century, when that calming influence moved away. Bad luck, gang rivalries and drugs were often blamed for the premature deaths in and around the humble apartment building. But Tohi and Vantu were usually the real culprits. Over and over, they used the living in one macabre chess game after another.

Though Vantu's vengeful spirit always intended to target the morally despicable, his bitter, never-ending quest for retribution more often than not caused innocent collateral damage. Tohi fed upon any and all the misery as he grew desperate to find someone with the power to release him from Kriti's curse. Not long ago, he thought he finally found that special person he was looking for.

Unfortunately, she spurned him.

Now, he thinks he has found another. But, if she discovers the real truth, she may refuse to accept his plea for forgiveness and once again Tohi's wrath will know no bounds....