The email arrived on a Tuesday, nestled amongst press releases about a new city ordinance and a celebrity chef opening a pop-up restaurant. Its subject line, “Assignment: Blackwood Creek Disappearances,” was bland enough to be ignorable, but Clara’s editor, a man who subsisted on a diet of caffeine and sensationalism, had flagged it with a rare “URGENT” and a single, emphatic exclamation mark. Just another ghost story peddled by a town desperate for attention, or perhaps a clever cover for something far more mundane, yet equally grim, like serial killings or human trafficking… #Horror #Readers #KU #DellSweet #Thriller #Mystery #Kindle
The engine coughed, sputtered, and then died with a pathetic wheeze, leaving them stranded in an oppressive silence that felt heavier than the humid night air. The last vestiges of their carefree laughter evaporated, replaced by a chilling stillness that pressed in on them from the suffocating darkness of the surrounding woods. Their joyride, a reckless escape from the mundane anxieties of teenage life, had abruptly ended at Witches’ Bend – a name whispered in hushed tones by the locals, a name that now held a terrifying weight.
Liam, the driver, slammed the steering wheel in frustration, his youthful bravado dissolving into a palpable fear. “Great,” he muttered, his voice tight with anxiety, “Just great. Stuck in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but creepy trees and even creepier legends.”
Sarah, ever the pragmatist, reached for her phone. No signal. A wave of icy dread washed over her; the comforting hum of technology, their lifeline to the outside world, had been severed. They were truly isolated, utterly alone in the heart of this forsaken place.
The others – Maya, the quiet observer; Jake, the perpetually sarcastic jokester; Chloe, the fiercely independent one; Ben, the nervous wreck; and Emily, the ever-optimistic – shared the same sense of growing unease. The air crackled with an unseen energy, a palpable sense of dread that seeped into their bones, clinging to them like the clinging mist that hung heavy in the air. Witches’ Bend wasn’t just a location; it felt like an entity, a malevolent presence that had chosen them as its prey.
Seven friends break down on Witches Bend. An area spoke of in whispers because of the horrors that are believed to be there. But horror cannot touch you if you don’t believe in it… True? Maybe not in this horror thriller that celebrates all of the horror genre. The car is dead. As of now, they are not. But the coming hours may change that completely. It may, in fact change that forever…
The newfound resources provided a small measure of comfort, but the shadow of suspicion and mistrust lingered, a constant threat to their already precarious existence. They had survived the attack, but the war within Rapid City had only just begun, a war fought not with guns and blades, but with suspicion, betrayal, and the relentless erosion of trust. #Dystopian #Apocalyptic #Zombie #KU #Audio #Readers #Listeners #DellSweet
The Earth’s Survivors books follow survivors as they awaken to the destruction of the Earth and begin to pick up what is left of their lives… #ApocalypticFiction #Readers #Books #BookLovers #WGSweet #EarthsSurvivors
Los Angeles in the midst of the largest extinction event in thousands of years. Billions worldwide will die. Millions will die in North American. #ApocalypticFiction #Readers #Books #BookLovers #WGSweet #EarthsSurvivors
Earth’s Survivors: Los Angeles Los Angeles in the midst of the largest extinction event in thousands of years. Billions worldwide will die. Millions will die in North American. #ApocalypticFiction #Readers #Books #BookLovers #WGSweet #EarthsSurvivors
The nightmare would begin insidiously, with the faintest whisper of a sound, a familiar vibration that would build, slowly at first, then with terrifying speed. It was the hum of the engine, the low thrum of the car carrying them towards an unseen precipice. He would feel the familiar press of the seat beneath him, the faint scent of Ann’s perfume, a scent that would soon be overwhelmed by the acrid stench of burnt rubber and fear. Then, the unmistakable sound, the prelude to chaos: the high-pitched shriek of tires desperately seeking purchase on asphalt, a sound that ripped through the fabric of the night and into the very marrow of his bones. #Horror #SciFi #Epic #Thriller #Drama #Kindle #Audible
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The first quake had been minor, the last few had not. The big one was coming. The satellite links were down, but Doctor Alan Weber didn’t need to have a satellite link up to know that. He touched one hand to his head, the fingertips came away bloody. In any other circumstances he would be hurrying to get his head wound taken care of, but these were not just any circumstances. The entire world was ending and it was a miracle to him that he had made it through the complex above and down into the control room of the facility before it had been supposed to automatically lock down. His office was a shamble, but his secretary had met him in the hallway having ridden out the quakes in the supply room, between the tall rows of steel cabinets: Together they had made their way to the office.
All main-line Comm links were down, probably because of the loss of the satellite systems. Underground back-up cable Comm: Down. The facility was in bad shape, and he was not kidding himself, there was no help on the way. No hope of reaching the surface and the worst was not yet here. He was probably lucky to have made it down the six floors to his office from where he had been. There was an automatic lock-down program that would shut down the entire facility within seconds of an attack or catastrophic event, it had failed somehow.
He laughed to himself, he had, had to lock it down manually once he had made his way in or else it would still be open to the world. He had blown up the two main entrances to the facility, sealing his own fate as he sealed it off from the world above.
He had spent the last several years here in the Canadian wilderness running the chemical countermeasure unit at the base. He had worked on a top secret virus designed to prolong human life in cases of extreme deprivation: Nuclear attack, war and other unlikely scenarios. He had spent the last two weeks working up to this event from his subterranean office complex. All wreckage now. Still, he had sent operatives out from here three days ago to do what they could to seed the virus: Following his final orders sent down through some now probably non-existent chain of command. He had heard absolutely nothing since, and believed that was because there was no one left in command any longer.
The virus was so secretive that no one beyond the base knew the true nature of it. Even the politicians that passed bills for funding while looking the other way had not truly known what they were funding. A couple of well placed dollars in the pocket could buy a great deal of silence.
Several Army bases had secretly been infected and studied. The commanders of the armed forces had, had no idea that anything was being tested on their men. The troops had done well, surviving their training with little food and water much better than they usually did, but over the next week nearly every bird in the area had died. Some side effect they had not been able to ferret out.
That virus build had also been crippled. It had a built in self destruct mechanism to kill the virus after a short amount of time. In fact that same version had been kept as an antidote for the newest version which had no such mechanism and would go on reinfecting indefinitely.
The entire virus design and its capabilities were top secret. Top secret. And usually Top Secret meant dozens of people knew, but this time it had meant that it really had been Top Secret. Withheld from the public, and even those in charge for years had known nothing of the true nature of the virus.
Last week had changed it all. Last week the news had come down from the finest scientific minds that an extinction event was about to take place. Up to ninety percent of the world population would likely be killed off as events unfolded. It was not a maybe, it was an absolute.
The public knew that there was a meteor on a near collision course with the Earth. They had paid off the best scientists to assure the public it would miss by several thousand miles. A lie, but they had found that even scientists were willing to look past facts if their own personal spin put a better story in the mix. A survivable story, and so some had spun their own stories without prodding. From there the internet had picked it up and run with it. From there the conspiracy theorists, and by the end of the week the meteor was survivable. The story that the meteor would destroy the planet was now a lie made up by commanders of the rebel alliance in the Middle East to take the focus off their actions, the public believed what it wanted to believe.
The truth was that the meteor might miss, barely, a near miss, but it wouldn’t matter because it would contribute to a natural chain of events that would make a meteor impact look like small change.
The big deal, the bigger than a meteor deal, was the earthquakes that had already started and would probably continue until most of the civilized world was dead or dying. Crumbled into ruin from super earthquakes and volcanic activity that had never been seen by modern civilization. And it had been predicted several times over by more than one group and hushed up quickly when it was uncovered. The governments had known. The conspiracy theorists had known. The public should have known, but they were too caught up in world events that seemed to be dragging them ever closer to a third world war to pay attention to a few voices crying in the wilderness. The public was happier watching television series about conspiracies rather than looking at the day to day truths about real conspiracies. The fact was that this was a natural course of events. It had happened before and it would happen again in some distant future.
In the end it hadn’t mattered. In the end the factual side of the event had begun to happen. The reality, Alan Weber liked to think of it. And fact was fact. You couldn’t dispute fact. You could spin it, and that was the way of the old world, spinning it, but the bare facts were just that: The bare facts.
The bare facts were that the Yellowstone Caldera had erupted just a few hours before. The bare facts were that the earth quakes had begun all around the world, and although they were not so bad here at the northern tip of Canada, in other areas of the world, in the lower states, in foreign countries, third world countries, the bare facts of what was occurring were devastating: Millions dead, millions more would die before it was over, and this was nothing new. The government had evidence that this same event had happened many times in Earth’s history. This was nothing new at all, not even new to the human race. A similar event had killed off most of the human race some seventy-five thousand years before. The space race had been all about this knowledge. A rush to get off the planet and settle elsewhere on an older, more sedate planet before something that had already happened time and again happened once more.
The virus was an answer, help, solution, but Alan Weber was unsure how well the solution would work. It was, like everything else, a stop gap measure, and probably too little too late. And it was definitely flawed, but he had temporarily pushed that knowledge away in his mind. Even now as he sat and waited for the end, which would surely come, out in the world operatives were disbursing the virus that could save humanity.
He thought for a moment, “Or destroy humanity,” he added aloud.
There were no guarantees, and there was strong evidence to suggest the designer virus did its job a little too well. Designed to help prolong life, there were rumors that it could raise the dead. Some scientists who had worked with the virus in the now destroyed facility had nicknamed it Lazarus.
Alan had seen evidence to support the rumors that it could raise the dead, or the near dead for that matter. He had been present when a test subject that had been pronounced dead had come back. Weak, half crazy, but alive again.
As the hours and then days passed the subject had become stronger, seemed to be learning from the situation it was in. The decision had been made to kill it: Even that had been difficult to do. Even so, he knew that it was the only hope for society. There was nothing else. The military machine was dead. The American government was dead. The president, from reports he had read, assassinated by her own guards.
While most of America had tracked the meteorite that was supposed to miss earth from their living rooms, and had been side tracked by all the trouble in the Middle East, he had kept track of the real events that had even then been building beneath the Yellowstone caldera and many other places worldwide.
Yesterday the end had begun, and the end had come quickly. Satellites off line. Phone networks down. Power grids failed. Governments incommunicado or just gone. The Internet, down. The Meteorite had not missed Earth by much after all, and the gravitational pull from its mass had simply accelerated an already bad situation.
Dams burst. River flows reversed. Waters rising or dropping suddenly in many places. Huge tidal waves. Fires out of control. Whole cities suddenly gone. A river of lava flowing from Yellowstone. Civilization was not dead; not yet wiped out, but her back was broken.
In the small military base of Ostega that had rested above the defense facility near the shore of a former lake, the river waters that fed it had begun to rise: The chemical countermeasure unit, several levels below the base in the limestone cave structures that honeycombed the entire area, had begun to succumb to the rising river waters. By the time the surviving soldiers from above had splashed through the tunnels and into the underground facility, they had been walking through better than two feet of cold and muddy water. Shortly after that the pressure from the water had begun to collapse small sections of caves and tunnels below the base that fed the unit: That damage had been helped along by small after-shocks.
Alan Weber watched his monitor as a wall gave way and the main tunnel began to flood. It was only a matter of an hour at the most before the water found its way to him. He sighed and then relaxed back into his chair, reached down and pulled the lower file drawer open, and lifted out a partial bottle of scotch. He leaned forward and Bobbi Trevers cleared her throat in the silent observation room. Weber smiled and turned toward her.
“I suppose you have been watching, Bobbi?”
She only nodded.
He nodded back. “Share a drink with me?” He turned away, not waiting for her words of agreement. He heard her settle into a chair next to him as he pulled two plastic cups from the sleeve in the bottom drawer, left over from the Christmas party last year, and began to pour.
“I don’t usually agree to drinking on the job, but this is a different set of circumstances, isn’t it?” His eyes met her own as she nodded weakly.
“It’s almost over, isn’t it Doctor Weber?”
“I’m afraid so… Call me Alan, Bobbi… Is it okay that I call you Bobbi?” He finished pouring the scotch into the plastic cup. He had stopped at just an inch in the bottom, wondered why and then filled the cup half way instead.
North America
Far above the Earth, satellites continued to orbit importantly.
The north American continent lay sleeping far below. A wide inland sea had formed in the middle, fed by a huge river that stretched from the former Hudson bay to the middle of the continent. Small in places and easily crossed, no more than a river: Wide in other places as if it truly were a sea.
The state of Alabama had been divided in two along with most of the lower half of the former state of Florida. What resulted was the loss of the lower, southern half of the state. What remained now sat nearly forty miles out in a shallow bay that was quickly turning to sea: An island, the water surrounding it growing deeper as time moved on and the gulf reclaimed the land.
The upper north eastern section of the continent had already pulled apart and begun to drift. Although it was imperceptible, the two land masses were inching away from one another, and ultimately would be separated by a new ocean. And become separate, smaller continents.
The eastern end of the former United States, was also drifting away from the northern section of Canada. The massive earthquakes had also severed the state of Michigan, turning it into a virtual island.
Toward what had been the north, the St. Lawrence river basin had widened, pushing the land masses further apart. The Thousand Islands bridge spans had toppled, and slipped into the cold waters. The other bridges that had once spanned the mighty river had also succumbed as the river basin had split and pulled apart.
The new continent had severed her ties from Nova Scotia, as she had been pulled south and slightly east, to begin her journey. Only the province of New Brunswick, and a small portion of Quebec remained with the continent. The rest of Canada was severed from them by the wide and deep river, more like a huge lake in places, that surged from ocean to ocean.
Most of the north American continent was now in a sub-tropical climate as well. The poles had been displaced by the huge force of the multiple earthquakes and volcanic blasts which were still ongoing. The old polar caps were melting, and it would be thousands of years before they would once again re-form in their new locations.
The run-off from the melting ice would eventually reach the oceans and even more land mass would be sacrificed to the waves before the polar caps would be re-formed.
There were only thirteen full states left on the small continent. The two former provinces of Canada, one of which was only a small fragment. And parts of five former states, the largest being Florida.
Before the dawn, fires could be seen burning unchecked in many major cities, pushed with the help of freak winds the flames continued in all directions, occasionally fueled by chemical, and oil facilities, as well as numerous other flammable sources they encountered. The world began its fall.
New York
Johnny: October 29th
I am here in this farm house that Lana and I found a few weeks back. By myself. Lana is gone. I sat down here to write this story out before I am gone too. Maybe that sounds melodramatic, but it isn’t. I know exactly what my situation is.
We have been to Manhattan, outside of it, you can’t go in any longer, and we came from Los Angeles, so we know: It’s all gone, destroyed, there’s nothing left. Time to hold on to what is left for you. I had Lana… That was my something that was still left to me, but she’s gone now…
Lana… I knew they’d find out, Hell, they probably knew immediately in that slow purposeful way that things come to them. I can hear them out there ripping and tearing… They know. Yeah, they know, I know it as well as I know my name, John, Johnny Mother used to say. I… I get so goddamned distracted…. It’s working at me…
Bastards! If, only I could have… But it’s no good crying about it or wishing I had done this thing or that thing. I didn’t. I didn’t and I can’t go back and undo any of this, let alone the parts I did.
In August when the sun was so hot and the birds suddenly disappeared, and Lana came around for what was nearly the last time I hadn’t known a thing about this. Nothing. It’s late fall now and I know too much. Enough to wish it were August once again and I was living in ignorant bliss once more.
Lana: I didn’t want to do it. I told myself I would not do it and then I did it. Not bury her, that had to be done; I mean kill her. I told myself I wouldn’t kill her, and that’s a joke really. Really it is, because how do you kill something that is already dead? No, I told myself that I wouldn’t cut her head off, put her in the ground upside down, drive a stake through her dead heart. Those are the things I told myself I wouldn’t do, couldn’t do, but I did them as best I could. I pushed the other things I thought; felt compelled to do, aside and did what I could for her.
The trouble is, did I do it right? It’s not like I have a goddamn manual to tell me how to do it. Does anybody? I doubt it, but I would say that it’s a safe bet that there are dozens of people in the world right now, people who have managed to stay alive, that could write that manual. I just don’t know them… I wish I did. And it won’t matter to me anyway. It’s a little too late, but I’ll write this anyway and maybe it can be a manual for someone else… You…
The United States of America are no more. The people left to fend for themselves with no governments, cites, electricity, grocery stores, medicines… It’s all gone. In face most of the people are gone with it and those that are left are unsure of strangers. Untrusting of anyone. There are rumors of dead coming to life again. There are rumors of some of the larger cities surviving only to be taken over and run by gangs now. Follow a group who come together and then make their way across part of what is left of the country. They are only looking to survive what is left of the world they used to know, but their chances are very slim…
An apocalyptic event has destroyed the world all of us grew up depending on. Police… Order… Governments… Water… Food… All gone…
A look at the town of Glennville. Bobby, Moon and Lois are the central points of this book, but they will also introduce you to their parents, the Sheriff Kyle Stevens and some of the other town locals that make Glennville, Glennville. They are trying to spend the summer enjoying the beauty of the upstate New York town, camping, adventures, all the things three eleven year old kids could do for a summer in 1969. However, Glennville is no ordinary town and there is always something else going on… #Summer #Glennville #Adventure #1969 #DellSweet #Readers #KU
The email arrived on a Tuesday, nestled amongst press releases about a new city ordinance and a celebrity chef opening a pop-up restaurant. Its subject line, “Assignment: Blackwood Creek Disappearances,” was bland enough to be ignorable, but Clara’s editor, a man who subsisted on a diet of caffeine and sensationalism, had flagged it with a rare “URGENT” and a single, emphatic exclamation mark. Just another ghost story peddled by a town desperate for attention, or perhaps a clever cover for something far more mundane, yet equally grim, like serial killings or human trafficking… #Horror #Readers #KU #DellSweet #Thriller #Mystery #Kindle
Check out this free read of Dreamer’s Worlds and then scroll to the bottom to check out the book links…
ONE
In The Moonlight:
Joe Miller
“Easy… Easy, Boy.” I lowered my hand to the dog’s head and patted affectionately, trying to calm him. He whined low in his throat and looked around at the darkness that closed in on us.
We were in a garage, that much I could tell. Just a nondescript, average run-of-the-mill garage.
The dog lived here. Not the garage specifically. Specifically he lived with, or was owned by, the people that lived on the ground floor of the nearby house. I knew that was true because I lived on the top floor of that same house, even though I had only ever set foot there once or twice, and then only in dreams. I still knew the place. It looked the same. Familiar. The dog, Bear, slept in the garage.
The dog squirmed under my calming hand, whined once again, and then darted out of the garage toward the lower floor of the house. Maybe the first floor. Maybe the basement if he had or could find a way into it. Either way, he was safe now. A kind of exit stage left. Still, I waited a few long minutes to see if he might return, when he didn’t I turned my attention back to the grocery cart I had just pushed for the last few miles to reach the garage.
It wasn’t mine. Well, technically it wasn’t mine, but everything in this world was mine if you came right down to it. I had entered what looked to be an abandoned house and found the cart, already loaded, sitting in an attached garage just off the ground floor apartment. I remember thinking… “So… This is how it begins…
It always begins some way and I suppose that sometimes the ends justify the means, and here was the end… I mean to say that I took the cart, loaded as it was, no more thought involved, pushed it out of the garage at a run and went blindly down the rain-slicked dirt road in front of me.
There was one bad part when I nearly got stuck, but I saw the problem from a long way off, put on a burst of speed and made it through the mud hole and out the other side. It was only a matter of minutes later that I had come in sight of the house and knew what the deal was. I had been contemplating the cart and it’s contents, feeling ears of corn through the side of a large sack, about to check some other stuff, when the dog had appeared.
When the dog came, memories came with him: The house; The people that owned the dog… Returning from work… or? I don’t know. Work or something else. Daily? Was it before things got bad? If so it had to be work: There was nothing else but work before. So work, or something like work… Coming home… The people downstairs… The family upstairs that I knew so intimately, but had never actually seen… Other memories… Leaving to go and get the cart… Knowing it would be there somehow… Getting there… Looping back to here and the present time…
The dog didn’t come back. I stood, the moonlight washing over me: This was critical, all that I had to do was stay there. There meaning upstairs. Stay there. I would be home. I was home. All I had to do was stay. But it never worked out that way. Even as I was thinking about climbing those stairs, checking on the kids, climbing quietly into bed beside my wife, something else was pulling at me, and as I looked around, the big van was parked in the driveway. Almost talking to me. Had it been there a few moments before? A few seconds ago? Surely not. I’d just pushed that cart up that driveway. There had been nothing in it… And that was… Today…? Tonight…? Just a short time ago…? Sure it was.
I let my eyes move around the garage, sweeping over the cart and its load of bundles and packages… Junk too… I hadn’t seen that before… Computer parts? … Maybe… Food and machines. That was ironic. But my mind was not satisfied. The van was there and if the van was there… … I felt in my pockets… … Keys… … And absolutely those keys hadn’t been there a few seconds ago. I could feel their scratchy press against my thigh. Irritating yet comforting… My eyes turned up to the van.
The van was the way out. It could be anyway, if I could simply stay with it… But there was no time to think. Certainly no time to be thinking like that.
More memories came. Memories of always taking the van; always, and… And I couldn’t make the rest of that ghost of a memory come, whatever it was, it was lost to me. … The city… Being lost in the city… Something…. It wouldn’t come, but, well I couldn’t stay here could I?
I glanced towards the house again, expecting the dog to come back… No dog… He had played his part and… And… I looked up at the full, bloated moon. When had I left the garage? I was standing next to the van… Looking in through the drivers window. The keys out of my pocket and into my hand. I could feel their cold, metal weight… Dawn was not far away, if I was going… That was it. The thought just echoed in my head… If I was going I better get going? … If I was going I better get to it? … I better throw away the keys and go in the house? … I better… But I stopped those thoughts. I knew where I better lead to, it lead to, ‘The time is short!’ Once dawn moves in you’ll be stuck! Whatever I had to do in the city with the van had to be done now: Before dawn, or not at all. There was no time to think about it… There never was… I looked down and sucked in a sharp breath.
I let the breath out slowly as my hand fitted the key into the ignition. When had I opened the door? ‘For that matter,’ my mind started, but I shut the door on those thoughts as the van roared to life. I dropped the lever into reverse and for some reason I looked up at the top floor of the house as I did. The lights popped on… A shadow moved behind the curtains of one window… ‘Better go if you’re going,’ my mind whispered. ‘You could stay,’ another voice inside my head countered. ‘Just walk up those stairs…’ the curtain moved in that upstairs window and I quickly turned my eyes aside… I couldn’t see that…. I always turned away: Always…
The van bounced and then lurched out into the street. Gears clashing, transmission whining. The tires chirped as I braked too hard and then slammed the gear shift into drive. The outline of the city glowed in soft yellow light before me. The moonlight bathed the road behind me bright and familiar. After all, how many times had I driven this road? … I sighed, slipped my foot off the brake pedal and let it fall heavily onto the gas. The tires chirped once more as I moved off down the road, snapping the headlights on as an afterthought. Behind me, in the back of the van, the dog whined. I lowered one hand and his head slipped underneath that hand.
“Easy… Easy, Boy,” I said.
In The Moonlight:
Laura Kast
“Easy… Easy, girl, I wont hurt you.” I lowered my hand slowly to let the dog get my scent as I approached the van… Boy, my mind corrected… Boy, Laura…
“Boy,” I said aloud and laughed. But the dog looked like he knew what I had said, cocking his head from one side to the other. His upper lip curled away from his teeth, but he was no longer snarling or growling deep in his chest. “Easy, Boy. Easy, Boy… It’s me, Laura… Easy.” I reached down and he allowed me to rest one hand on his head. I ruffled the thick fur there.
This was new. Did the dog know me? Did I know the dog? I thought about it and realized that at the very least I knew the dog. That didn’t mean the dog knew me. And the dog was definitely not letting anyone near the van. Guarding it. He seemed to consider me on a deeper level, his eyes locked with mine. When had I looked back at him? I couldn’t answer the question. With the dog looking at me like that the question didn’t seen important at all. Wasn’t, important at all, I corrected myself… The dog corrected…?
“You do know me… Don’t you? …Bear?” The dog, who was not a dog, cocked his head to one side and seemed to smile at me. … “Your name is, Bear? … Good, Boy… You’re… Joe’s dog… Bear. Good boy, Bear… Is he here… In the van?” I eased closer as I talked.
Bear watched me, but no longer growled at all. Even the stiff posture he had assumed had changed. His tail dropped and moved slightly. It may have been the beginning of a wag. He whined low in his throat. His eyes reflecting green iridescence in the blue of the moon light. He whined again and then came closer to me, easing his head back under my hand so carefully it seemed as though it had always been there. I rubbed his head once more and then my hand slipped under his jaw, scratching, my head lowered at the same time. Bear whined again and then licked my face.
Laura, you take too many chances, I told myself. Too many. But my hand continued to rub Bear’s head and scratch under his jaw, allowing my racing heart to slow. Catching my breath. Wondering what came next. I was new to this. I had never been this far before. I didn’t know what came next.
“You get in the van,” Joe said from the open window above me.
A small, sharp scream slipped from my throat before I could stop it; sounding like someone was strangling me as I tried to suppress it.
“Jesus… Jesus, Joe… Jesus!”… I managed to get myself back under control after a few seconds. I sucked air back into my lungs. Bear whined and looked up at me. My heart slammed against my rib cage.
“No… Not, Jesus. Thank God it’s not that time,” he said.
I met his eyes, but there was no smile in them. “You scared me,” I said defensively, still breathing hard, chest heaving, heart slamming against my ribs.
“No shit. You think I wasn’t scared too? You’re not supposed to be here … You never have been.” He finished quietly after starting in a loud, strained whisper. His eyes remained on mine. The wind picked up moving the limbs in a huge Elm that stood nearby. Its winter-dead limbs clicking and clacking as they came together. The heavy branches groaning and creaking as the wind momentarily gusted.
The wind continued to build for a few more seconds. Our eyes still locked on one another. Then the wind died down with an audible sigh and I shuddered involuntarily and shifted my eyes away.
“I know… I know,” I started. I moved my eyes back to his, but he just stared at me.
“I do know,” I started again. “I’m not even sure how… How I got here,” I finished quietly.
Bear pushed past me, tail wagging, and jumped up into the van as Joe opened the door.
“That’s how it happens,” he said every bit as quietly as I had started. His eyes that had wandered up to the night darkened sky were back on my own now. Staring at me out of the open door. Bear’s head popped up, looking at me from between the seats.
“Well,” Joe asked?
“What,” I asked? I cocked my head in an unconscious imitation of the way Bear was looking at me.
“Shouldn’t you get in,” he asked? … “Or don’t you want to?”
And that was the question, wasn’t it? Here I was, where I was not supposed to be, where I was not invited to be, where I had never been before and it was time to make the choice.
Bear cocked his head once more as if he were also waiting to hear my answer. The dog that was not a dog at all… a… wolf? Maybe… Maybe more than that too… His green eyes asked the question.
“I get in the Van,” I said quietly.
Joe looked away and then turned quickly back. “Yeah. Yeah. You get in the van and we… We go… It’s nearly dawn… There isn’t much time and we have to get as far as we can before the sun comes up.”
He stretched one hand across the seat, held out to me and I could hear the engine running… When had he started it? … I couldn’t remember. My tongue poked out and licked at my dry lips. Bear seemed to grin. No. Not just a wolf either… One side of his upper lip curled over his teeth.
I found my feet stepping up into the passenger area and I followed…
In The Moonlight:
On The Road With Bear
Joe
I rolled to a stop at the intersection. The city was ahead, the house behind, I had never turned left or right so I had no idea what might be in those directions. Were those two roads, one to the left, one to the right, winding away into the distance, just conceptions? One of those photo realistic things that made you look twice, maybe even more? I looked again.
The roads were night dark, the moon playing hide and seek, gliding in and out of the heavy black clouds. The falling rain distorted both the near road and the distant road. How long had it been raining, I wondered, once the rain finally registered. Big, fat drops formed and rolled off down the slope of the windshield. I reached for the wiper switch but found nothing.
I took my eyes from the windshield and looked, supposing I had put my hand in the wrong place, but I had not. There was simply nothing but a gray, formless mass that slightly resembled the lower half of a dashboard. I blinked and when I opened my eyes once more the wiper switch was there. Exactly where it had not been. Exactly where it should be.
Tired I thought.
Bullshit was my second thought.
I blinked again, but the wiper switch remained. I flicked it on half suspecting that it wouldn’t work. That the wipers, if there were any real wipers, would remain frozen to the glass, refuse to move, but they swept up and pushed the beaded drops of rain from the glass nearly silently. Bear whined and pushed his nose under my hand.
“Alright, Buddy,” I told him. I stroked his head and then looked back out at the road. Left, right, straight, I asked myself.
There was a mystery to the city. Sometimes it went bad for me and sometimes it simply frustrated me.
… Running down the clock… One thing was sure, I had never come back out of the city in the many times that I had driven down into it.
… Left, right, straight, I asked myself again.
I pulled a small wire bound notebook and a pen from my shirt pocket and thumbed it open. Pages and pages of notes on the many times I had gone, but none of them amounted to anything except four entries:
The first entry, page twenty-Six, an address, 52715 Randolph Circle. I had never found Randolph Circle in all of my trips, let alone 52715. I had no memory of ever being there. Of any trip to the city when I may have gone there. I did not remember marking the address into the book. Nothing. A total blank.
The second entry, page twenty-five, read; Be careful of Locust street. Big bold letters. And I remembered being there. I had barely got away with my life.
The third entry, page twenty-seven said; ‘West End Docks.’
I knew that place. I remembered being there, the first time and several other times. But the details weren’t there. I couldn’t see them. Why had I been there? I couldn’t see it. Put my finger on it. There was a long, low building that fronted the docks. A house across the street. An old run down neighborhood. A low, curving concrete wall where I had sat and watched people come and go several times. And more. The feeling that I had been there other times that I could not yet remember. I say yet because I had the feeling that I would remember it. But page twenty-six? Nothing. Nothing at all. Not even a ghost of a memory.
A map would be useful, but there were no maps. It had taken a dozen times or more before I could count on the wire bound note book being in my pocket. Bigger things, like the van, had taken even longer. Before that I had had to walk or steal a car and that was always risky. But there was hope for a map. Someday, just not this day. At least I didn’t think so.
A quick check of the glove box and the engine cover storage area proved that to be true. Nothing useful. And why was it so much useless stuff was there? A spare pen cap… A broken transistor radio, the van had a radio of its own… Sometimes anyway, but there were no stations on the dial, or at least not yet there weren’t. That was another maybe, but it was there, so what good was a broken transistor radio?
Two paperclips. An insurance card, made out to me… For what? A fuzzy life saver, it looked like lime, my least favorite flavor. A flashlight with no batteries, and a dog biscuit. That was new. There had never been a dog biscuit before. Bear whined and gave a little woof in his throat.
I laughed, “It’s yours, Buddy.” He took it gently from my hand. The dry scrape of the Windshield wipers dragged my attention to the windshield. No rain. No rain on the road either. I reached down and flicked off the wipers. At least the switch was still there.
Straight, my mind finally decided. Better the evil that you know. Left and right could wait for another night. I eased off the brake as Bear jumped up onto the passenger seat, rested his paws on the dashboard and watched the countryside pass us by as we made our way into the city.
The fourth entry was on page fifty-eight. A series of numbers. 2757326901. All strung together, followed by a name Laura K. Whole first name, initial only for the last: Like I knew her maybe? I didn’t though. I must have at the time I wrote the number down, but I didn’t now. Who was Laura? Were the numbers a telephone number? Code talk? It bothered me that I had written the entry and yet had no recollection of doing it. Same as Page twenty-six.
I passed the City Limits sign as I wondered. Regular street lights. No traffic. Sometimes there was traffic, sometimes there wasn’t.
The rain began to fall all at once. One second no rain, the next everything was drenched as though it had rained forever: Always; would never stop. I fumbled for the windshield wiper switch once more, but by the time I turned it back on the windshield was clear. No more rain. The road looked as though it had never seen rain, as if it had never been there at all.
I glanced at the speedometer and then lowered my speed. I didn’t need to attract attention. There were cops here and they had no problem putting me in jail. It didn’t seem to matter to them that I was no more real to them than they were to me, off to jail they took me. And before that was all said and done I spent ten days in that jail. Eating Bologna sandwiches, smelling that moldy-pissy jail smell and trying to convince my court appointed lawyer that neither of us were really there. Jail was no good. I had no intention of going back there. I looked once more at the speedometer, backed off a little more, and then passed the sign announcing the city limits.
The city was early morning dead. It wasn’t dawn. If it were I would not have been there, but dawn was close. There was a glow above the city skyline. Faint… Pink… Growing as I sat idling at the intersection waiting for the light to change.
I noticed the rain was falling once more and I had either never turned on the wipers the last time it had rained, or I had turned them off after it had rained. I reached down to flip the switch on and that was when I heard the sound of a heavy engine screaming. Gears clashing. Bear voiced a warning just as my eyes cleared the dashboard and tried to make sense of the scene before them.
There wasn’t much time to absorb it. A garbage truck just feet away from the driver’s door and closing fast. Sirens screaming. Red and blue lights pulsing. Chasing the garbage truck, I wondered? That was nearly the only thought I had time for.
Bear barked again. My eyes focused on the truck only inches away from me, and slowly rose to the driver. A woman… Laura? … Her eyes focused on my own for the split second before the Garbage truck hit the van’s driver door full blast.
Pain exploded inside of me. Faintly, far away, I heard Bear howl in either anger or pain. Then that sound, all sound, was quickly cut off, replaced with a low snapping sound that quickly turned into a heavy crackling sound. The smell of Ozone filled my nose, but something else quickly began to replace that smell. Gasoline. Gasoline and something else… Diesel? And then, with a low wham, the heat came. I struggled to free myself, but it was no use. I had time for one more quick thought … Laura … Laura … Why …? And then the explosion came and the pain flared, then ended almost as fast as it had come and I found myself flying through the blackness of the void… Flying…. Falling… Panic building… Lungs trying to pull a breath… Voice trying to scream… Nothing coming out… Then sight returning in a rush… The street racing up to meet me… The remains of the Van and the Garbage truck burning far below me…. Red and blue lights pulsing… Cars parked aslant in the street where they had skidded to a stop… Cops behind open doors… Crouched to fire… Their guns pointing… Rain falling… The pavement coming closer… So close I could see the individual pebbles of the surface embedded in the asphalt mix…
The impact came with no pain. The remaining air crushed from my lungs… I tried once more to scream, but it was no use… I hit hard, bounced, came down once more and my eyes flew open wide as I impacted the second time…
Gray half-light… The buzzing of the alarm clock… My own sheets tangled around me… Damp with sweat. The red numerals on the clock read 6:47 A.M. I sucked air greedily, like I had never been among the living at all. Never known how to breath. Just returned from the dead. I released my breath in a long, shaky shudder, found myself half sitting up in the bed and fell back to the mattress urging my racing heart to slow… Calming myself… Morning had come.
I reached over, shut off the alarm clock and silence descended on the room. I could hear my heart beating in that silence. Rapidly slamming against the inside of my ribs. Hard. Heavy. Loose and wet. Hear my labored breathing. I lay still for a few minutes watching more color seep into the sky, then got up and made my way to the shower…
Get the books below…
Dreamer’s Worlds: The Dreamer’s Worlds
Laura and Joe are dreamers. When they close their eyes they dream travel through space and time, to other worlds with little more than a thought… #Mythology #Fantasy #Readers #DreamTravel #Kindle
Dreamer’s Worlds: Sparrow Spirit
Book 2 of 2: Dreamer’s Worlds: As Joe and Laura fall deeper into the Dreamer’s Worlds they search to learn more about the legend of Sparrow Spirit… #Mythology #Fantasy #Readers #DreamTravel #Kindle
