Shell Shock-Another Sample

Here are 1,200 words I wrote tonight, fresh of the press. Totally unedited, so please don't mind whatever mistakes there might be.

A cannon sounded from somewhere far behind the German lines, the start of a bombardment to weaken the Allied lines. Soon a hundred other cannons echoed the first. And before the last was done the first was firing again. The bombardment would last an undetermined amount of time, a day or more. A sleepless twenty-four hour time where there was nothing to be done but endure.

It was a prelude to an attack. The goal was to soften them up, to destroy every bit of them they could, to blow up the barbed wire and machine gun posts that would hold up and cut down any charge. The bombing continued drowning out any other noise. There was nothing to do but listen to the explosions as they blasted earth that had already been blasted many times before, to pray if one could still believe in a God that listened to the prayers of soldiers.

Steve crawled into a small hole dug into the side of the trench, large enough only for one man. Each of them would be on his own now. There was nothing any of them could do to help another, save tend to their wounds should a shell fall too close.

It was times like this Steve prayed for courage. But his fear distanced him from any chance at real communion with either his own thoughts or feelings or some sense of an outer divinity. But he knew his prayers were merely a way to distract his thoughts from the reality around him. They were no different than the babbling of an inmate in an asylum, the repetition of empty phrases that were nevertheless useful in soothing his neuroses.

His prayers went absent-mindedly on as his mind disconnected from his surroundings. He was losing himself, cutting off the outside world in order to protect his mind from the fear that sought to overwhelm him. The bombs continued to fall but never did they establish any kind of rhythm, never did they fall when expected nor cease from falling when he felt he could take no more. Sometimes, as he sat in his dugout clutching his knees to his chest, he tried to will the bombs not to fall, as if he merely thought hard enough he could have some control over the world in which he was forced to live. He would pray and try to will away the destruction that always threatened horrors still worse than those he was living through.

But prayers and mental distractions could never keep away the dark thoughts for long.

He had seen bodies, too many to count, that had been near the spot where a shell came to earth. He had seen men, some he knew, lying lifeless, their bodies in contorted positions that might have been humorous had it not been so real. He had seen bits and pieces of men lying all about and it all seemed so arbitrary. How does a man’s arm get torn from his body and still look to be in good shape?

Other times a man could be killed by the mere force of a blast, so that he looks perfectly okay and yet something vital deep within has been stopped.

The thing was, the first time he had seen a man torn apart by an explosion it affected him viscerally. But now he had seen it so many times, it was only some new spin upon the standard death by explosion could make him react in the same way, and there were only so many different ways a man could be scattered by the force of an explosion or by shrapnel. The others, those who died in ways similar to those he had seen before, well their deaths just seemed to accumulate in his subconscious, never bothering to register in his conscious mind.

It was only in his dreams that he became aware of the dead he had no time to notice in his waking moments. In his sleep they were given his full attention. They haunted him, though he did not know why. He had not killed them, did not wish them ill. Perhaps it was that they were jealous that they had been taken while he yet lived. Perhaps, being dead, they knew things he did not know. Maybe they stayed with him because they knew he was destined to join them.

In calm moments, on leave away from the front, he knew such thoughts were nonsensical. But here at the front, there was no sense, there was only madness. The laws of the other world, the one he had known his entire life, did not apply here. And the world he learned of here was encroaching more and more upon that other life, making it less real. The two worlds could not both exist. There could not be a world of forests when his eyes stared at the cratered wasteland that separated the warring parties. He no longer remembered what a tree looked like with leaves on it, could only visualize charred stubs that reminded him of the blasted men who had passed through this way.

It would only be two days before he rotated out of the front lines, but it was quite realistic that he would not live that long. And so his entire world was a hole in the ground and the raining missiles that were sent to destroy and kill.

It just started. It only just started. It would go on even when the sun had set, would perhaps continue until the sun rose again. And then the soldiers would come, hoping to sweep away all that opposed them.

The whistling of a shell brought his mind out of his dark thoughts and into his dismal present. It was close. But not close enough to be a danger, he decided after a moment. The anxiety that had risen in him began to recede somewhat. He heard it fall to earth and explode with a violence that raked his nerves even though he knew he was physically safe. Each bomb that fell added to the anxiety that never left him, just as each bomb did some damage to the Allied lines, their ability to defend themselves when the attack began.

Hours into the bombardment, he began to feel a degree of numbness. It was the most he could hope for, that the terror eventually surrendered to a certain emptiness within him. He felt a great weariness, as though he might be unable to stand up should the need arise. The intensity was too much for a human to endure for long, so that the body began to shut down. It was only the missile that seemed to approach too closely that snapped him from his torpor.

The earth shook when a shell hit nearby. It was at such times that the dead earth seemed the victim of the living, that all it wanted to do was lie peacefully but was tortured by the living. It almost seemed a cosmic dance, wherein the living allowed the dead no peace, while the dead claimed more than its share of those who sought to disturb them. It was hard to choose a side, hard to know whether it was life or death who was the enemy. It was getting hard to know what side he was on, which he was fighting for.

Shell Shock Update

I've crossed the 90,000 mark on my newest novel, and while I'm not finished yet, I'm getting there. Here's a sample of what I've written today, with no real editing done to it yet.

Rothary climbed up on the fire step and with little thought or hesitation crawled out of the trench. Not far from him he saw the hole created by the mortar that had recently exploded, the crater still smoking. It seemed to be in the same direction of the wounded German, and so he made his way to it. Crawling the twenty or so yards, the occasional rifle fire sounding from both trenches, he rolled into the crater. Just in time, as he heard the sound of a flare being sent up. In a moment the sky was as bright as day. He clung to what shadows he could find in the depth of the pit dug by the mortar, the heat of the rocks and the earth making breath difficult.

The brief light faltered, making the night even darker than it had been. As soon as his eyes adjusted somewhat, he made his way towards the sound that had come to dominate his thoughts, fearful that another flair might expose him to the enemy.

The way was filled with corpses. Corpses and mere parts of corpses, so that he had to crawl his way over them to make his way forward. There was no path around them, it was a maze that must be crawled over rather than walked through.

More than one of the bodies he made his way around or over still had life in it. One breathed, quietly, as if sleeping. Another whimpered like a child with a fever. None of them mattered. It was the one he had shot that was the problem. It was he who had taken over Rothary’s mind, had replaced the fear with feelings stranger still. He called him on, beckoned him to see what he had done, promising to show him what he had become. They were connected. Whatever happened to the one affected the other. Whatever Rothary would do to the German would have repercussions that would be with him his whole life.

He crept along the battlefield—a man on a pilgrimage—in search of revelation. In the distance was heard some new bombardment beginning, a part of the larger war he was part of. But he was alone, now, just the German and he.

He located by his sound the man he sought. He was just one body in a sea of others, but his labored breath gave him away. Occasional gurgling sounds coming from fluid that was filling his lungs punctuated his breathing. He was nearing the end, but his body’s struggle against the inevitable stretched out the ending like a badly written play.

Rothary crawled alongside him, placing the man’s body as a barrier against any fire that should come from the enemy trenches. He looked into the man’s face, but like Cavanaugh’s, could only make out the barest of features in the dark night. Rothary’s sight only provided a framework for his mind to impress upon its own ideas of the man.

Just pain. That was all Rothary could see in the other. Whatever he had been in life had contracted into something so small as to be unworthy of being called human. Whatever he had been—husband, son, father—had drained from him with his lifeblood. This man who lay on a battlefield hundreds of miles from home was no longer any of that. If others in Germany believed he was, it was only in their imaginations. He was merely a dying man, an embodiment of the darker realities of life. He was not German or English, he was just flesh in its death throws.

And it was up to him to put an end to that pain that spread to all those in hearing range. Whatever regret he felt in shooting the man in the first place, he felt his duty now was to end the suffering. It was his duty as a soldier, as well as his duty as the one who had caused it in the first place.

He pulled out his pistol, placed its nozzle (?) pointing at the head of the other. He wanted to kill him, and he was still not sure why. Pity welled in him, but so did a hatred that may have been illogical but nevertheless was. War caused such feelings and he was not responsible for the war. Duty too spoke to him, about the need to do the job. He wanted to know, wanted to give this man’s death some meaning so that perhaps someday he could forgive himself, make sense of his life and move on when the war was nothing but a memory and a scar carved across the face of Europe. But more than anything he wanted to put an end to the horrible, gasping sound the other made. That was paramount in his mind. Rationalizations could be found later.

He stared at the other, his proximity that of a lover. He wanted to see, wanted to know, what it was he was killing. But the darkness kept the other in shadow, a mystery except for his agony: that, he understood too well.

This was not a stranger but someone he felt he knew intimately. He understood his fear, his hopes, his disgust with what he had seen. He was Rothary, he was no different than him. He was still asking questions as his finger tightened on the trigger, still hoping for answers. But as the violence erupted from the barrel of the gun into the other’s skull, he realized he had no answers. Nor did he understand why he had killed the other. He had no idea whether he had acted in fear or in hate, in pity or in despair. The gun fell from his hands as tears began to fall from his eyes. The breathing stopped but the horror it had induced did not stop. Nor would it ever. He would hear the sound of the other’s breathing as long as life remained in him. Each breath he took the other would be taking with him. Each breath he took would be torturous, would fill him with the loathing he had felt that day.

Another Snippet From My New Novel, 7 Stones

A little sample from my forthcoming novel, 7 Stones. I'll try my hardest have it out in fall:

Ashavan was attempting to use his senses to bridge the gap, now, speaking softly in his deep resonant voice in order to tease out some kind of response from the seemingly comatose man lying on the bed in front of him.

“You have stared into the darkness, Douglas Slattery, and it has overwhelmed you. You have, as Freidrich Nietzche said, stared into the abyss, and the abyss has stared back into you. But what would happen, Doug, if while gazing into the emptiness we did not lose faith? What if, while traveling in the darkness that it so happened that we were the light we needed? The abyss exists, there is no denying, but so do we. That also is indisputable. We may be tiny, but as Tennyson said, ‘what we are, we are.’ It is perhaps the era we are now living in that has forgotten this. We are the first generation to have left the land and gone to live in cities of man’s creation, and so we have forgotten that we are still a part of all creation. Science has caused us to look at the world as outside observers, we see everything as scientific phenomena, but we have forgotten ‘self’.

He spoke on, in some way hoping the words might bridge the gap between himself and Doug. “I met a man aboard the ship we were on, a wonderfully intelligent physicist, Max Planck. One seldom gets the opportunity to come across a mind like his, even for one as well travelled as I. He told me that science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature, and that is because we are part of the mystery we are trying to solve.”

Ashavan looked down at Doug, hoping for signs of some kind of recognition. “Don’t you see, Doug, in the final analysis, it is up to you. And I. The abyss, the nothingness, it’s an empty stage for us to perform upon, an blank page waiting for you to write your story on it, a silence awaiting a song. Nothing doesn’t matter. You do, we all do. And it’s up to you, there is nothing that nothing can do to you. It is your choice to come back. You can be part of the nothing if you wish. But it is a choice. It is your story, Doug, you who write it.”

First Words Of A New Novel

The beginning of a new novel. Feedback is welcome:

     She walked the dirt road toward the cemetery, carrying a shovel and a machete. Although the sun was near to setting, the earth still contained enough of its heat to burn the bottoms of her bare feet. Sweat stained the simple white working shirt she wore, sleaked the ebon skin that was made even darker by years of labor in the hot Southern sun. But the steadiness of her step betrayed no weariness or hesitation.

     It was a long walk to the cemetery, but it no longer felt enough of a distance to those who lived in the workers’ houses on the plantation. There was a new fear now, even greater than the fear their master provoked. The master’s cruelty had stretched beyond what they were forced to endure in the fields. His reach had gone beyond punishment, beyond even the taking of his workers’ lives. There was hope once that whatever laws governed this country might come down upon Mr. Delavois, that such cruelty would be noticed even when so much cruelty was permitted or ignored. But Mr. Delavois could not be tried for murder: they had tried him once and he walked away a free man. They found him innocent even when seven people had testified to the beating he had given Old Man Jackson. They found him innocent even though the jurors could sense the evil he radiated.

     It is difficult but not impossible to convict a man of murder when the body is never found. But a jury simply cannot convict a man of murder when the body still walks the earth. When old man Jackson shambled through the courtroom doors, they had to let Delavois go, even though Jackson’s whole family had seen him buried in the ground. Delavois could murder with impunity because he had the ability to bring his victims back to life.

     She continued on, her feet kicking up the dust of an unusually dry and hot summer. The tears in her eyes did not disguise the determination in her stare.

     The master had killed her husband, it had been no accident. Nor was he murdered for some misdeed or crime. He was murdered because the master needed fresh servant to do the deeds that the living could not be persuaded to do. The dead did not last forever. They decayed as the dead do. And the stench they emitted after a while was worse than that of a normal corpse.

      Delavois had killed her husband, but she would make sure the crime ended there. She would strike out against his unnatural power with all that was human in her and it would be enough. She would climb the summit of what a human was able of in order to do what must be done.

     Simple white crosses marked the graves of her husband and everyone in that area with a similar skin color. When she reached her husband’s plot—the ground still mounded on the fresh grave—she through the machete to the ground, took the shovel from off her shoulder. She was no less weary than usual. True, she had been given the day off to attend Jobah’s funeral, but her emotional state lefter her worse off than a full day’s work would have. But she would do what must be done, would dig up her husband before her master got him, made him one of his unholy servants.

     The first thrust of the shovel into the dry earth told her how difficult a task it would be. Although it was freshly laid earth that distanced her husband from her, it was rocky and dry. She would spend the better part of the night at her task of freeing her husband from the fate worse than death, ridding her fellow man of an abomination of Delavois’ creation.

     She would have to mutilate the corpse. She never allowed the thought to fully enter her thoughts but it was there, it was the driving force of her actions. She would have to so badly butcher the flesh of her husband that he would be of no use to her master. Only in this way could she insure that her husband might achieve some rest in death as recompense for his life of unceasing toil.

     And when she was done with the digging and the butchering, shoe would have to return to the plantation and give a full day’s toil so that her master would not know what she had been up to. But she would not be beaten, would not give in to this monster that thought himself above the rules of both and God. Nature itself would soon have to rise up against this affront to its laws, and she would be an agent of that uprising. She was of the earth, never felt so much so before now. She was but a small aspect of it, like a blade of grass in the wind. But she would make things right.

     Somebody had to make things right. Someone had to bring the natural world back into balance.

Her body was used to work, but the motions of digging were new to her, worked different part of her body than the ones she had built up. Physical pain began to make itself known amidst the emotional anguish that blanketed her being. It all built up into one big wall of agony that sealed her off from any chance of really living again. Her whole body felt like one big cauterized wound.

     She achieved a rhythm that set itself above any physical desire to stop. It was only when she needed to halt to wipe the sweat from her brow or change her grip that the desire to cease overwhelmed her. At such moments she rested shortly, wiped the horror from her mind, and set herself back to work. Work was something dug deeply into her spirit. There was a certain freedom to be found in slavery, a certain amount of dignity to be found amongst oppression. It was something deep inside a person that no outside force could entirely destroy. It was perhaps the last bit of her soul that was left.

     She was lucky they didn’t dig him deep. If it was colored folk they would have been certain to dig him as deep as they could, knowing he might come back. But colored people didn’t come here any more, not unless they had to. Delavois knew that, that’s why he had white people digging graves nowadays. Whites didn’t know anything about voodoo. Whites didn’t have to be afraid.

     She hit the wood of the coffin with the shovel. There was no relief in the reaching it, she knew the hardest work was yet to come. It still took a good deal of work to clear the lid of all the dirt on top of it. When that was done, she rested a moment, braced herself for the hardest thing she’d ever have to do.

She dug the shovel into the slim gap between the lid and the casket, increased the gap to nearly an inch. Then she dug her fingers into the gap, pulled away the lid as gently as she could.

     Darkness saved her from seeing her husband’s face with any degree of clarity. But she’d have to do her work soon before the sunrise. Nevertheless, she gave herself a moment to rest, a moment to gather what strength she had left. She stood outside the grave and contemplated a hatred that she had no time for, the grabbed the machete and jumped inside. She stood inside the coffin, the only place she could stand and deliver the necessary blows with sufficient force. She swung a blow at her husband’s neck. Crrrtch. Then another. With a fury that was misdirected hatred, she swung with all the force within her. The space was cramped and the work was long. Before long her mind detached from her actions until she scarcely noticed what she was doing.

     When she severed the head, she lifted it and sat it on the pile of dirt to give her more room to work. Next she went for the left arm, which was easier for her to reach. The pain in her arm and back pleaded with her to stop, but she knew that any respite would give her time to reflect on what she was doing. She switched the machete to her other hand and continued.

     Her first attempt to hack into the leg went askew, digging into his abdomen. The machete had hit the same spot as the wound that had taken his life. His insides burst open, and with it came a stench like the blossoming of a rotten flower.

The Amazing Morse Is Free As An E-Book

I have decided to set the price for my debut novel, The Amazing Morse, at $0. The reason for it is to introduce myself to readers who may like it enough to pick up the second in the series, Perchance To Dream. The third book, called The Association, will be released in September.

I'm hoping also that by giving my book away, I may garner some positive reviews. This can prove risky because people tend not to value that which they get for free. So far I have acquired two negative reviews, but neither of them had anything of substance to say. Nobody has been able to pick on any specific shortcomings. I do have positive and honest reviews from strangers, which makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Reviews are for writers what tips are to waitstaff: we would not be able to survive without them. But more than that, they truly do make a writer's day. To know that one's hard work has been well received makes it all worth while. Never think that your acts of kindness are for naught.

And speaking of reviews, this is the most recent one I received for The Amazing Morse:

Evelyn visits her spiritualist. She knows Evelyn's future and the future of her other clients. Evelyn is bursting with joy, but the spiritualist knows there is only destruction in her clients' futures.

We first meet Daivd Morse sitting in his cubicle at work contemplating freedom and imprisionment, both of the mind and the body. As readers, we begin to see into his mind. Then, we learn of the horrible nightmares. Are they only dreams or are they replays of reality or are they forewarnings? Is he the monster of his nightmares? Certain words come to mind in describing this novel: demon, monster, surreal, evil, introspective journey, unsettling, horror; and above the rest: entertaining. This is a trip into darkness.

This is a somewhat different novel of psychological terror and horror. It is an enjoyable read.

The Sleep of Reason Chapter 5

Chapter 5 of my work in progress. I might have a rework or two to do on this yet, but I'm getting close to what I want:

Chapter 5

 

The door opened to reveal a dusty wooden floor that led into darkness. An objective eye would not have seen anything out of the ordinary with the picture, but fear twisted angles out of their ordinary proportions, shredding perspective. Dave tried to remain objective, and realized what an absurd notion that seemed to be. For all the glory of science, it failed to account for the observer or the participant of an event. Science was the act of looking in from the outside and he was very up close and personal with what he was encountering. Perhaps it was not something supernatural but only fear he experienced. But fear was enough. Fear was more than enough. Still, Dave knew it wasn’t the only thing he was experiencing. The cold that whispered from the darkness of the room was more than a result of the season. It wasn’t caused by his fear but rather the reason for it. He wasn’t sure which sense it played upon, whether it were light drafts of air upon his skin or subtle whispers that found their way into his ears.

Johnny took a few steps inside and Dave followed, his hands involuntarily groping in the cold darkness. The light bulb had been blown out by the Wilsing’s last encounter with whatever it was that inhabited the attic and had not been replaced. Johnny’s flashlight illuminated their path but it only showed what was in front of them and it was the shadows that frightened Dave. Fear always waited in the shadows. Dave’s foot touched the wooden flooring, found it less sturdy than he would have liked. Perhaps it was only his fear, but the mere act of walking seemed treacherous to him.

What a moment ago felt cold now gave way to a warm dampness, the moisture in the air hinting at coolness while the warmth seemed to make the air feel heavy. Dave wanted to keep Johnny in his sight, know that his protector was there for him. But his eyes followed the beam of the flashlight instead, searching for whatever danger may await them. The light did not travel as far as he would have wanted, did not touch the wall on the further ends, though it illuminated the beams of the roof above. “It’s just an attic, damn it,” thought Dave. “Pull yourself together.” But it seemed to stretch further than the size of the house should permit, the way something from one’s childhood can seem bigger in memory than it is in reality. Fear and reality were tugging at his perception, distorting and stretching it in waves that confused his vision.

He felt like a child again, confronting the fear that walled off his safe little world like an electric fence. And while he was fighting against his inner weaknesses, he felt a smooth presence brush up against him like a sentient waft of air. It felt like a large crawling thing gently feeling out its prey before coiling about it. He looked at Johnny, who appeared to be readying himself for contact. Dave didn’t know if Johnny felt what he was feeling. Fear spiked in him. The thought of running leapt in his mind and he couldn’t find a rational reason to oppose it. But his body was not responding, as though he was frightened of calling attention to himself. For good or ill, he was rooted to the spot.

“I can feel it,” said Dave in a whisper.

“Shh,” said Johnny. “Allow it to make contact.”

Dave willed himself to be quiet despite the desire to scream. He still felt what seemed to be a sentient draft brushing up against him, as though it were insisting on intimacy. There was a certain smell that seemed to accompany it that Dave found familiar but could not quite place. The whispering that Dave had earlier witnessed seemed like snakes writhing on the floor around him.

Dave felt a sudden jolt, as if time itself were being wrenched and he were alternating between two moments that should have been separated by decades. Light flashed like a strobe, providing glimpses of an occurrence from long ago interlaced with the present darkness. He saw a thin man in a white shirt and tie with his head cast downward. Each glimpse the light provided was accompanied by a feeling that built flash by flash within Dave, a despair the likes of which he had never felt. The whispers became more insidious, and the occasional word could be distinguished from the general murmur. Love. Betrayal. Death.

The bulb in Johnny’s flashlight burst, making the contrast between visions of the past and present more extreme. Behind him, he heard the door they had left open slam shut. Fear and despair alternated within Dave as he seemed to switch back in forth in time, each of them equally debilitating to his emotional state. The smell became more noticeable, but he was still could not remember what it reminded him of. Burnt rubber perhaps, but there was more to it than that. If he could just place where he had smelled that smell before, he might be able to deal with the fear a little better, if not the despair.

The man Dave had seen in the relative light of the flickering image raised its head now, and suddenly the look of despair merged with a hatred that seemed to burn its gaze right through Dave. The image was visible now in both the light and the darkness. Despair and fear still alternated within Dave, threatening to tear him apart from either side. Edwin Gauthier opened his mouth to speak, and it was a voice of hatred not despair that sounded.

“You shall die,” came a voice that sounded like a thousand whispers woven into a single scream. The thousand whispers that had writhed around them were summoned by that voice and came together to speak Edwin Gauthier’s message. The voice did not seem to be aimed at them, but Dave knew the hatred would not refuse any target it chanced upon.

And suddenly Dave recognized the smell around him, the smell of burnt rubber and blood, the smell he would always associate with a moment of his childhood when Gordon could not run fast enough to save his life. And it felt to Dave that death and hatred and fear were all the same thing, aspects of the darkness that always surrounded life even on the brightest of days. The look of hatred upon Edwin’s face seemed the same look Dave saw on the grille of that car that took his friends life. He remembered staring at it after the accident, stared at it because he could not bring himself to look at his friend’s body lying on the ground. He didn’t know if his friend was still alive, did not want to know. As much as he feared that he was dead, the thought of him being alive and experiencing the horror seemed to Dave to be worse. So he just stared at the car that was now stopped on the busy street, the grille of it like a grinning entity of malice and hatred. Like the embodiment of all that was evil, it did not care who or what it killed, the killing was all. It would eat its fill of children and mothers and puppies and anything that chanced in its path. It was this look he now saw upon the face in front of him, and the flashing of the light did nothing to deaden its intensity.

“Well hello to you, too.” The voice was Johnny’s, and the tone was a jarring contrast to everything that was going on inside Dave.

“You have betrayed me. I trusted you and you betrayed me!”

“I’m afraid you have us confused with someone else,” said Johnny, as though he were impervious to the hate and despair. Johnny’s voice expressed concern, but he maintained a certain authority, as though making sure that the world in which they both existed was Johnny’s world, subject to the laws of the living.

“Those who betrayed me will die. Those who stand between me and my revenge will also die.”

“Oh, believe me, I’m not standing in the way of your revenge,” there was sympathy in Johnny’s voice, replacing for a moment the authority he felt the need to convey. “That was a horrible thing they did to you, there’s no excuse for it. But they’re dead.”

The presence that had earlier seemed to rub up against them now seemed to smash into them from in front, as though confronting the source of its frustration. Long stagnant dust shook free from the overhead beams, falling upon them as the house itself seemed to shake. It seemed to be a physical projection of the image they saw. But Johnny and Dave were able to withstand the shock of the onslaught as one might stand against a bitter cold wave.

“In fact, everyone you know is dead,” Johnny continued, his tone of voice at absolute odds with everything Dave was experiencing. Johnny was talking as a mother explaining something to her child. “You’ve been hanging on quite a long time. Not to say I blame you. You must have been awfully hurt. But you see, the reason for all of your hatred is gone. You’re just a bit of emotion that has outlived its usefulness. The only people you can still affect are the current inhabitants of the house, and from what I know of them they seem like pretty decent people. They’ve never done you any harm and—to be honest—you’re creeping them out.”

The presence that a moment ago was in front of them now swirled around them. The cold seemed to intensify as the emotion grew. It was no longer a brooding hatred but an active malevolence, searching for a target. Why it did not strike them where they stood, Dave did not know.

“I live for vengeance!” The voice had lost none of its ability to strike fear in Dave’s heart.

“Uh, no you don’t,” said Johnny. His voice was compassionate but firm. “You’re not actually alive, I hate to say. And since there’s nobody living to exact your vengeance on, there’s really no reason for you to be here anymore.”

The rage in the voice woven from malignant whispers intensified, but it seemed to be coming from a greater distance. It felt to Dave like a hurricane that had passed by in its ferocity but did not touch down.

“I will kill those who have betrayed me.” The voice was desperate now, each utterance scraping Dave’s nerves like razor blades on violin strings.

“They’re already dead,” said Johnny, using a calm but firm voice to dissipate the violence. “Whatever judgment they receive is in God’s hands now.”

The presence before them had been flickering like a candle in the wind. At last, in a wavering motion upwards, it faded before them as if caught by a gust of air that blew it away. Dave and even Johnny let loose with sighs of relief as they felt the thing that was Edwin Gauthier’s grief-fed rage fade away.

“And so the life that Edwin tried to take from himself is finally ended,” said Johnny.

But even as they let down their guards, the presence seemed to blast from the floor, radiating a heat that made Dave close his eyes. But closed eyes did not prevent Dave from receiving a clear vision of the ghost in front of him. Gone was whatever despair had emanated from it, replaced with an intensity that demanded response. This was not a spirit that would abide Johnny’s paternal attitude.

The spirit spoke, its voice one of authority rather than fear and hatred. No longer did Dave see the vision of a man with hunched shoulders and broken spirit. “Mine was no act of suicide,” he said, and as he spoke, his image became part of a scene that acted out once again the events of nearly a century ago. In a bluish light, Edwin Gauthier could be seen with eyes staring at a figure that slowly entered the limited stage upon which the drama was being played for Dave and Johnny. “It was not me but my wife’s lover who took my life. They murdered me in order to live together in unholy union.”

Dave was silent and still, watching the scene of murder play out in front of him, Edwin confronting the other man, the other man striking Edwin, knocking him unconscious. Like an old film poorly shot, Dave witnessed as one man dragged the other up the stairs to the attic, threw a rope across a supporting joist and tied it to Edwin’s neck. As the man drew the other up, he saw the betrayed husband regain his consciousness as the noose tightened about his neck. Panic raised in his features as his eyes began to bulge. His gaze was unfocused as he struggled for breath. But as he came to accept the reality of his situation, his gazed fixed upon the man who was the cause of all his pain. There was calm in his stare, a cold calm that promised revenge despite his inability to achieve it. Edwin’s desire for vengeance would outlast his earthly existence, regardless of whatever physical laws he would have to break to attain it.

The scene in front of Dave and Johnny slowly faded, leaving at last only the bluish stare of those intense eyes, burning their conviction into the fabric of the material world. Turning away from the glare, Dave turned to look at Johnny, who seemed to get a glimmer of understanding in his eyes.

“I see,” he said. “You want not only vengeance but the truth to be told.”

“The truth will be my vengeance,” said the voice, no longer the slithery voice of fear and hatred but an ardent appeal for justice.

“I will let your story be known,” said Johnny solemnly. “The world will know that Edwin Gauthier did not die by his own hand. They will know the truth of your betrayal and death.”

The intensity in the air seemed to slowly dissipate as the eyes that were all that remained of the vision of Edwin Gauthier faded. So too did the presence that had seemed to crave physical contact with them vanish like dust in a breeze. This time, Dave felt as though it were really over, felt a normalcy beginning to creep back into his jangled nerves.

“What the hell was that?” asked Dave. “Were there two ghosts, or what?”

“An intense experience such as Mr. Gauthier evidently felt can bring about some strong emotions. I would guess that in this case, there were two separate strong emotions that survived Edwin’s existence: grief and a desire for vengeance.”

“You guess? You seem to trust a lot to guesses.”

“You could say I’m learning on the job. What a rush though, eh?”

“I don’t think it’s my thing.”

“But you saw it thought, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, I saw it. I saw it and heard it. And I felt it. With every nerve in my body.”

“That’s pretty good. Come to think of it, I don’t think I saw anything on my first encounter. The first time, it was just all purple, and then the second time, it was like the purple separated and it was red and blue.” There seemed to be excitement in his voice, as though he were a surfer talking about a wave he had ridden.

“That’s all very good, but can we get out of this attic now?”

“Yeah, I think our work here’s done.”

Dave stared into the darkness. “Any idea where the door is?”

Groping around, they eventually found the door that led them back downstairs.

The Sleep of Reason Chapter 4

Wherein our hero meets the owner of a house she insists is haunted:

Chapter 4

 

Dave and Johnny got out of the van to introduce themselves to Lynn Wilsing, a woman who appeared to be approaching middle age without much care. She was in the process of exiting her car when she was momentarily startled by Johnny’s well-inked face staring into her window. She allowed herself to relax a little when Johnny explained that they had been sent by Doug to deal with her “situation”, but not entirely.

“We’ve been living at my mother-in-law’s house lately,” she said when they were inside and she took their coats. Considering it was her own house, she seemed less than comfortable being there. As they seated themselves in the living room, Mrs. Wilsing, who was a moment ago frightened by Johnny’s appearance, was now talking tattoos with him. Dave was left alone temporarily with his thoughts and the anxiety he was feeling at what he was about to encounter. Johnny had explained that the majority of such cases turned out to be nothing more than the over-active imaginations on the part of those who reported the incidents, but he also expressed his belief that this was likely to be the real thing. It was apparent to Mrs. Wilsing which of the two scenarios was the correct one.

“If you could explain what unusual events you’ve experienced, starting at the beginning, please.”

“Well,” she began hesitantly, apparently uncomfortable sharing the information even with people who took her situation seriously, “I don’t know if it was actually an event, but the first time I felt something was wrong was while I was lying in bed one night. I awoke from a sound sleep with just a really unsettling feeling, an unnamed dread. The more I tried to think about what it was that could be frightening me, the more the fear increased.” Dave noticed the anxiety level rising in her as she recalled the experience. Her skin seemed loose, as though she had recently lost weight through worry. “I wanted to call out to my husband, to reach over just to touch him and know he was there, but I was frozen. I was all alone, staring into some nameless fear. Or…or some nameless fear was staring into me.” She was caught in an imaginary shudder.

“Anyway, that’s all it was…the first time. But it happened again a few nights later, and again. Like the first time, it was just an unameable fear, but it was a fear of something, like something too horrible for my eyes to even perceive, as though they wouldn’t permit me to see what was there. After the third time, I began researching the matter online. I learned about night terrors, did you ever hear of those?”

 “Pavor nocturnus,” said Dave, recalling the research he had done when his own nightmares had first started. At the time, he had felt as if he were going crazy. He had no idea he was developing an ability to see things in his dreams. “Feelings of intense fear while being in non-REM sleep. That doesn’t sound like what you described. If you weren’t able to move, it sounds more like sleep paralysis, a condition where one awakens from REM sleep while still subjected to the paralysis that keeps us from acting out physically in our dreams.”

Both Mrs. Wilsing and Johnny looked at Dave with an appreciation he was not used to.

“But there’s more to the story, isn’t there, Mrs. Wilsing?” Dave asked, wanting to remove the attention from himself.

“Yes. At first I tried to look for the most obvious solutions, bad dreams or some kind of sleep disorder. But then I began to hear noises even when I knew I wasn’t sleeping. And…and my husband wouldn’t hear it. We’d be in the living room together, reading quietly, and I would hear a voice whispering, and I’d look at my husband and he wouldn’t notice anything. And he has better hearing than me, he makes fun of me because I always mishear what he tells me.”

“That’s not unusual, Mrs. Wilsing,” said Johnny. “Some people are just more receptive to such things than others.”

“I didn’t know that. For a while, I thought I was losing my mind. I mean, I couldn’t ignore it, couldn’t pretend I wasn’t hearing things, experiencing things. I even began to suspect that it might somehow be my husband’s doing, that he was trying to drive me crazy. Then, one night, I heard something up in the attic, like a buzzing or many different voices whispering. I looked at my husband, challenged him to deny that he heard anything. He tried to soothe my concerns. He wanted to go up there, but I wouldn’t let him. Finally, he pushed past me, walked up the stairs. I was too afraid to follow. It was like he was walking into a meat locker, it felt that cold. And it was summer! I could sense the courage drain out of him, thought he wouldn’t admit anything was wrong.”

She ceased speaking, waited for some kind of feedback from her listeners, as though she were looking for confirmation that what she was saying didn’t make her seem crazy.

“An experience like that can make you thing you’re losing your mind,” said Dave, picking up on her anxiety. He too had a similar experience. When he had first begun to have his revelatory dreams, he had never felt so frightened, never felt so isolated. He prayed he would never feel that way again. And yet here he was, perhaps about to plunge himself into someone else’s experiences. He looked over at Johnny, was amazed that his friend did not appear concerned, seemed almost anxious for such an encounter.

“Your husband’s reaction isn’t unusual,” said Johnny. “People do not believe in such things, do not wish to believe in such things, and so they prefer to pretend they did not feel what they felt, did not see what they saw. Please, continue.”

“Well, as he walked up the stairs, I could hear the buzzing getting louder, more intense. They, it, whatever was up there, was aware of us. I’d done some reading by this point, I knew some ghosts just go about their business without paying any attention to those who live in the house they share. But this one knew we were there, seemed angry at our intrusion. I tried to call to my husband, make him come back downstairs. But I couldn’t. It was like fear gripped me by the throat, and it was stronger than any will that I had.”

“And then…? Prompted Johnny. It seemed like she needed constant encouragement in order to continue her story. Even though she was convinced they would believe her, she was still not comfortable sharing the information, perhaps not comfortable remembering it.

“And then…when my husband reached the top of the stairs, I could tell that all of his courage went out of him. I could see it in his posture. He knew there was something up there. But he wasn’t about to let me know it. He walked to the right, out of my sight. And then, the light bulbs just exploded. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to run and get a flashlight, I wanted to shout to him, make sure he was okay. But I couldn’t do any of that. I could only stare into the darkness, too frightened to do anything.” There something in her voice that made Dave feel as though a cold breeze had suddenly swept through the house. “I could still hear the whispering, no louder, but busier, more menacing. I just stood and waited for my husband to walk out of the darkness. And after a time that seemed forever, after I had time to imagine a thousand horrible things occurring to him, he walked back down the stairs and out of the darkness. But part of the darkness stayed with him. He had seen something in the attic, but he still won’t tell me what it was. Not that I’ve pushed him too hard to tell me. I’m not sure I want to know. But he believed me after that He knew there was something living in the house.”

“We left the house soon after that,” she continued. “When things started getting broken, we knew we were putting our lives in danger if we stayed another night. Of course, we couldn’t tell anyone why we left. Who would have believed us if we told them the truth? We…we told them we had to bug-bomb the house,” The embarrassment was evident in her mannerism.

“It’s true,” said Dave to Johnny. “This sort of thing really alienates you from others just when you need them the most.”

“At any rate,” she went on, “that’s when I started talking to others online. I was amazed at how many groups are out there that discuss such matters.”

“And that’s when Doug found you,” said Johnny.

“Yes.”

“We’ll take a look, Mrs. Wilsing, and see what we can do. I’d like it if you and your husband were gone while we deal with this. The only real danger is in your own reactions, but I’d hate to have it said that anyone was injured while I was doing my job.”

What about me? thought Dave. If Johnny was worried about the Wilsings getting hurt, might Dave and Johnny not be in danger as well?

“My husband’s already at his mom’s. To tell you the truth, I don’t like being here right now. I’ll join him and make sure we stay away until you give us the all clear.”

“We’ll let you know what we find out,” said Johnny. “A ghost is a riddle to be unraveled. They’re not unlike a psychiatric patient that needs to reconcile their strong emotions with reality. First I have to understand what their story is, then I need to help them make peace with whatever is bothering them. Oh, and just to warn you, things may get broken. A ghost is really not much more than a ball of frustrated emotional energy and they do tend to act out, especially as they approach the truth of their existence. If you have anything of great value you might want to take it with you.”

“We’ve already had things broken. Windows, dishes, that sort of thing. The neighbors are beginning to talk. After the front window blew out, my next door neighbor asked me if Ken was becoming violent. I covered, said he was playing around with the nail gun he got for his birthday.”

“So you haven’t told anyone you have a ghost in your house?” Dave questioned her.

“Why would I tell anybody that? Who would believe me? I hardly believe it myself. It’s bad enough having odd sounds in the house, things falling off shelves for no reason. I want to at least try to have a normal life outside of my house. If I started talking about ghosts, who knows what people would think of me?”

“But it’s really happening,” said Dave. At least, there was a good possibility that something was happening.”

“Yes, it’s really happening,” Mrs. Wilsing said, “but I don’t like to think about it. I just want it to go away. I just want my life to be like it was before. Can you help?”

“I hope so, Mrs. Wilsing,” said Johnny. “I can’t make any promises with something like this, but I’ll see what I can do. I have had my successes in matters of this sort before. But tell me, is there a certain time of day when the visitations seem to occur? Any certain event that tends to trigger them?”

She paused for a moment to consider, then said, “It seems to be sometime around eleven in the evening. Now that I think about it, that seems to be when most if not all of them occurred. We’re usually in bed by that time, and the one time I told you about in the attic, it was a Saturday night. We had just finished watching a movie and were about ready to go to bed.”

“That should give us a little time, then.”

Before they left, Lynn, as Mrs. Wilsing insisted they call her, gave them a brief tour of the house. It was the kind of place Dave would have considered a dream home, an older building meticulously updated and restored. Everywhere, the walls were coated with fresh, bright paint, augmenting the original design. High ceilings gave an airiness to the rooms without forsaking quaintness. A bright blue paint covered the living room, a cheerful but elegant flower patterned wallpaper in the dining room. Lynn and her husband must have spent long hours bringing the place up to the condition it was now. Dave couldn’t help thinking how unfair life was, for people to work so hard to make something beautiful only to find some darkness at its core.

From the dining room, Lynn led them to the kitchen. It was a bright white, even with the rays of the setting sun the only illumination. From the kitchen, a second set of stairs ran upward towards the bedrooms above, stairs that had originally been for the use of servants. They led to a bedroom that was once the servants’ quarters, which was also connected to the main upstairs hallway. But the stairs continued upwards beyond the servants’ quarters, as well. Lynn had no need to say anything, Dave knew that those stairs led to the attic. Without saying anything, Lynn led them through the servants’ quarters and out into the main upstairs hall, back down the other set of stairs that led back into the living room. Without further mention of the stairs that led to attic, Lynn grabbed a few items from around the house and left to join her husband. But before leaving, she turned back towards Johnny, apparently feeling the need to share one more piece of the puzzle.

“I wasn’t going to mention this, since I’m not sure it’s related. You must already think me…unusual. But in the interest of being honest, when we first moved into the house, I began to experience a rather intense bout of depression, despite the joy we had at finding this house. I’d had experienced depression before, but nothing like this. I don’t know if it’s related or not, but I thought I should mention it. Maybe it might help convince you it’s not the house but me that has the problem.” She laughed a nervous laugh, and then exited.

Dave and Johnny were left alone in the house, Johnny with a relaxed air, Dave not so much.

“Do you think we’ll encounter anything, Johnny?”

“Quite likely, quite likely. Mrs. Wilsing seemed honest enough. Her story sounds like a few I’ve heard before. The man I was telling you about, Edwin Gauthier, the one that committed suicide. I reckon it’s his ghost that’s causing the trouble. Although it seems odd. If he’s a suicide, he died in despair. That might account for the depression Mrs. Wilsing spoke about, but that doesn’t account for the rest of what they experienced. There seems to be a lot of anger. Angry ghosts instill that kind of fear, not suicides. Well, whatever it is, we’ll likely find out soon enough.”

Dave watched his companion as he talked, amazed at the calmness with which he discussed the impending appointment with a ghost. Johnny must know something Dave didn’t because Dave couldn’t imagine not being afraid. It seemed the Wilsings knew the right way to react a ghost, at least.

Seated on a couch, Johnny was content to stare absent-mindedly out the window. Dave was unsure if he were preparing himself for what was to come, or if he was trying to pick up on subtle emanations of the otherworldly nature. Either way, Dave didn’t want to distract him, so he tried to empty his thoughts, make himself receptive. But it was no good: he could not silence the disquiet that seemed to bubble up from the pit of his stomach. He wondered if this might be a result of some kind of supernatural contact, but decided it was just plain old-fashioned fear. Why was he here at all, and what did Doug think he or anyone else could accomplish against such phenomena? They were not things that humans were meant to deal with, they were all of them out of their depths. And yet they were each of them aware of things that others weren’t. Whether or not they were equipped to deal with such things, they seemed destined to encounter them nevertheless. At least it was better to deal with them as a group, not alone as Dave once had to do.

Alone, thought Dave. I wonder what Mindy’s up to now?

“So how come a ghost tends to show up at a certain time of night?” the question occurred to Dave suddenly.

“It’s probably the moment he died. Or some significant instant.”

“Yeah, but what does time mean to a ghost?”

“Well, it’s kinda…”

“You don’t know, do you?”

“Well, no. But I’ve found it to be true. And I’ve had luck with ghosts, so far.”

“But you’re more or less groping in the dark. That’s just the way Doug described the whole problem. Something works for a while whether or not we really understand the situation. So we just get comfortable with it and trust it’s always going to work. It works until it doesn’t. It works until you encounter something that doesn’t fit your paradigm.”

“That’s life, inn’t? There aint no real answers, just some clues, some inclinations and a bit of faith. Leastways, I guess I know about as much as anyone about ghosts. Anyone living, anyway,” he said, and a smile slid across his face.

“So tell me something about them.”

“Well, for starters, there aint no such thing as an old ghost, at least not what I’ve seen. As far as I know—and like you said, I only see what little I’ve seen—a ghost is a thing formed by the intense passions of a particular event. Like this case here, a man’s wife cheats on him with his best friend. There’s rage for you. Like a child, a ghost is conceived of passion. Like anything that outlives the person who created it, it is conceived of passion.”

Dave was tempted to ask questions, but decided he wasn’t in any hurry to receive the answers. The conversation having come to an end, Johnny pulled an old paperback from his coat pocket that was hanging in the hallway, made himself at home on the couch, and began to read. Dave curled up on the chair he was on and watched the November sun make its early exit. The cold and dark outside should have made him appreciate the comfort of the house, but the thought that they were not alone sucked all comfort from him. Instead, having a few hours to wait until the anticipated encounter, Dave sought some sort of quiet and peaceful place within himself.

Sleep eventually overcame him. In time, dreams emerged from the darkness, though he didn’t recognize them as such. He was lying on a bed, felt himself being brought back from darkness towards the light. Coming back to life, he found himself looking at a man in clerical garb making the sign of the cross over him. The man’s face was filled with compassion, a slight smile on his face somehow connecting with something he himself felt deep within him. Some miracle had just ocurred, whatever had put him in this bed had been driven out by a miraculous power. And it was the man above him who had done the healing, or at least been the conduit for it. There was a bond between the two of them, healer and healed. Becoming more aware of his surroundings, he noticed himself to be in a rudimentary sort of hospital, something closer to a log cabin. There were other occupied beds around him, with other attending men and women dressed in religious garb. There was a warmth that radiated from a wood stove in the middle of a room large enough for perhaps twenty beds, but there seemed to be a different sort of warmth that radiated in the room as well. Without knowing why, he found himself saying, “Thank you Father Oxner.” The man who sat on his bed, a bald man of average build, said nothing but permitted his smile to increase somewhat. It was then that he noticed where the other sense of warmth was coming from. It seemed to radiate from Father Oxner’s smile.

 

“Did you hear that?”

The words brought Dave’s consciousness out of his dream, but it was not yet fully dragged back to the waking world. So deep had he been in his alternate state of consciousness that he did not immediately know where he was or who had spoken. Opening his eyes to see Johnny’s alert face staring at him mad Dave want to retreat back into himself, back into the comfort of his dreams. The contentment he had felt there was not something he wanted to leave. He felt quite at home there, despite the primitiveness of his surroundings. In the end, it was not the creature comforts but the warmth of a smile and caring community that seemed to bring true contentedness. But Johnny spoke again, wrenching Dave from the comfort he longed for. Instead, he stared at the faces tattooed on Johnny’s faces and arms that appeared to him like spirits trapped on flesh. Each of them seemed to share Johnny’s urgency. But the memory of where they were and why sparked a jolt of adrenaline that soon had him fully alert. Caught off guard as he was, he was unable to combat the fear that was growing within him. Between dream and wakefulness lay a darkness that seemed to cling to him. He did not yet have enough pieces of the puzzle of his current predicament to provide him any context. Fear, for the moment, was his surest protector.

“What?” asked Dave.

“There’s a noise upstairs. Not a noise, really, more like a stirring. I’m not sure if I heard something, but I sensed something.”

“So now what?”

“Now we get chummy with it.” Johnny must have noticed Dave’s state, because he said, ”You okay? Don’t worry, stick by me, you’ll be fine. Just listen to me, not it. Never do anything a ghost tells you to, for any reason!”

Dave and Johnny again ascended the stairs that led to the old servants’ bedroom. But this time, they did not stop there but continued towards the attic. There were perhaps fifteen steps, but each of them made an impression on Dave. Each step ramped up the fear within him. What he was about to encounter was a being the likes of which was once capable of causing sleepless nights for him as a child after merely hearing a story told around a campfire. It felt as he were about to cross a threshold, one that had been very well marked in him deep in his DNA. Every instinct he had, every story he had heard, every movie he had ever watched, was telling him to stay away from the door that by now was only a few more steps away. The image of the door was already etched upon his memory forever. This quite ordinary looking old door, painted white, assumed all of the fearful qualities that his imagination could summon. It was scrawled deep into the neural pathways of his mind, like some childhood trauma. His mind rushed back to such memories, his deepest fears realized. He felt himself again locked inside of a trunk, his brother’s cruel laughter drowning out any appeals to a saner world.

He remembered running with other boys through the crosswalk that led from his grade school towards home, remembered one boy who was a few steps behind the rest. He remembered the car they somehow did not see in the bright daylight of a late spring day. He remembered the daring and the feeling of immortality of youth wash away forever as the car pushed the little body of his friend Gordon, who always seemed to be a step slower than he was, into the air. With the sound of shrieking brakes in their ears, they saw Gordon’s body move in a way that did not appear real. But it was real, realer than many of the things he once believed to be real, and there was nothing—ever—that was going to make it not real. It was a stain in his memory, a black spot on the sun that would forever mar the brightness that had been his youthful life.

Feelings he had hoped never to feel again were rising from the dark places where he had stored them, places he had thought gone forever. And being an adult did not make him any more able to cope with such feelings. The fear he experienced now was the same he had felt as a child; nothing he had learned in all those years had given him any defenses against it.

Dave simply stared at the door, wondering how opening it could possibly make him more frightened, having no intentions of finding out. The price of freedom is high, he couldn’t help thinking, the idea of stepping away from the safety of the collective mind approaching insanity, an utter lack of security. Again he was asking himself to take the plunge into an utterly unknown universe, hoping that he could find something to grab onto before he fell into the awaiting abyss.

He noticed Johnny reach out his hand, grab the knob. He wished more than anything that Johnny would not open the door, but felt powerless to prevent it. And yet, while the better part of him wished for a small place to hide—even a jail cell of steel and cement, as long as it kept him safe from the outside world—a small voice inside him seemed to be whispering, even as the door was opening to reveal unnamed and unnatural fears: cool.

 

The Amazing Morse is on sale

I just wanted to alert faithful readers of my blog that my first book, The Amazing Morse, will be on sale for most of the rest of the week on Amazon (e-book format). More information can be found here: http://www.amazon.com/The-Amazing-Morse-ebook/dp/B0099YXY2Y/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1347836505&sr=8-1&keywords=james+rozoff