Shadows of Reality (The Catharsis Awakening Book 1) Read online

  SHADOWS OF REALITY

  THE CATHARSIS AWAKENING: BOOK ONE

  CHRISTIAN MARTIN JR.

  This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, organizations, locales, and events portrayed in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Shadows of Reality: The Catharsis Awakening - Book One

  Copyright © 2017 by Christian Martin Jr.

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 978-0-9991695-0-6 — eBook

  ISBN: 978-0-9991695-1-3 — Soft cover print

  first edition 2017

  To contact the author:

  www.christianmartinjr.com

  www.thecatharsisawakening.com

  To All Law Enforcement and Emergency Dispatchers…and their families!

  You do so much that goes unnoticed.

  You do so much that is wearing and tearing at the very fabric of your soul.

  You do so much during times when most others are sleeping, playing, and loving.

  You do so much that is too much for too long.

  You bare the scars physically, emotionally, spiritually, and mentally.

  May you find rest, peace, sleep, play, and love.

  Thank you for everything.

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  Pronunciation Key

  Title

  Prologue

  1. Of Good -n- Evil

  2. S.S.D.D

  3. Black Vett

  4. Dysfunctional

  5. The Run

  6. Skirmish

  7. Distracted

  8. Intoxicated Senses

  9. A Silhouette

  10. The Catharsis

  11. A Spiral Notebook

  12. The Upper Chamber

  13. Speechless

  14. Gold Button

  15. The Land of Oneiron

  16. The Banquet Hall

  17. Burnt Aftertaste

  18. Fiery Visage

  19. Face to Face

  20. The Sighting

  21. Knight Within

  22. Implications

  23. Icu

  24. Of Matthew: Room 412

  25. Of Matthew: Paper to Steel

  26. Of Alie: Room 412

  27. Of Alie: Jake

  28. Of Yeor: Land Between Realms

  29. A Green Bead

  30. The Plan

  From the Author

  I want to thank the following people that provided inspiration and encouragement along the way, without whom this book would never have been published.

  Kim Savage - For your encouragement in the beginning stages of this book.

  Donna Marie & Marvin Schutzius - Your love, patience, and kindness in the darkest of times will never be forgotten. Donna, your insight throughout this project was invaluable.

  Kristen St.Jean - Your loving support and encouragement, especially during the times when I felt like giving up.

  Emerald Editing - For providing developmental editing and coaching.

  Ben Way - For editing, your patience, and the extra you did.

  Laurie Goralka Casselberry - Art work and cover design.

  Beta Readers - Taking the time out of your busy schedule to read this in its various forms and providing feedback to make this what it is.

  PRONUNCIATION KEY

  Cherem — khe-rem, khey-ruhm. English phonetically as Chair-um.

  Oneiron — On sounds like Own, ei sounds like ei in forfeit, ron sounds like rin or rĕn; hence - Own-eh-rĕn

  Xenonysis — Zĕnŏn-ĭsĭs

  Yeor — Y is hard as in yes, e is silent, ōr; hence - Yore

  Shadows

  of

  Reality

  The Catharsis Awakening: Book One

  by

  CHRISTIAN MARTIN JR.

  PROLOGUE

  Have you ever dreamt of falling? Through space, from off a cliff, off a building…hurtling through a wild blur. It’s only a dream, yet the sensation of gravity pulling you downward to an unseen bottom—the fear, the terror, and the sheer panic that binds you to your pillow—is all absolutely real.

  It has been said that if you strike the bottom in your dream, you would…actually…physically…die in reality.

  The dread. The elevated pulse. The increased breathing. The cold sweat. It’s all very real when you awake; the quickly rising bottom, once again, avoided when your eyes pop open. What’s down there anyway? Have you ever caught a glimpse…of the bottom?

  The fear and the confusion are real as you lie in bed, trying desperately to shake off the panic. Ah, the glow of the clock: the digits that illuminate the time that pierces a frightful darkness. It reassures you that you are still alive. The mind kicks in and performs a quick calculation of how much longer you have until it’s time to get up. Small relief ripples through your system that all…is okay.

  Okay, to lay there a little longer, before you have to get up and rejoin the human race. Yet, in the still of the night, the elevated pulse and the mild accelerated rhythm of your breathing remains from the dread you just experienced, in your dream.

  But what if you didn’t wake up in time? What if your senses pull you down to the unseen bottom, and that pull was stronger than the tug of desperation to wake you from the horror of falling. What if you awoke after hitting the bottom?

  The bottom is real. The glow of the digits from your clock is no longer seen in the darkness. Trying to discern a sense of what is real, versus what is a dream, only increases the panic—waking from one dream to another, and the lines of reality have become distorted…

  1

  OF GOOD -N- EVIL

  Hovering a few feet above a two-lane road, his body glided over the double yellow lines by an unseen force. Meandering through the blackness of the night and somehow able to see enough of the centerline to stay above it through the curves, upslopes, and dales of the mountainous roadway. After traveling an unknown distance on this route, the centerlines became entangled as he approached a familiar sound; faint at first but it grew louder. The two center lines looked as if someone had grabbed each one, tied them into knots, and then crossed them this way and that.

  He floated over the tangled lines for a moment, confused at the sight. He looked up and peered into the dark—and listened. He looked down again and discovered that just past the entanglement of yellow, the lines regained their proper position side-by-side and continued along the blacktop as normal. He tracked the yellow lines with his eyes as they traveled down the blacktop and found that a few yards later, they suddenly shot out from one another, seemingly propelled by a mysterious influence to the opposite edges of the roadway that disappeared into the night.

  Fog began to swirl about him. Without any effort of his own, his weightless body began to drift slowly to the road’s edge. The cool mist created a slight shiver within him as he drifted beyond the edge of the pavement. Then, the familiar sound came closer, a sound he knew all to well, someone struggling against another. His gaze fixed into the dark void before him, but he could see nothing—only the sound of gravel being tossed, shoes scraping, heavy breathing, and then…

  “Let…me…go!” screamed a man’s voice.

  Suddenly, he was face to face with a man. His bloodshot eyes glared with hate and murder; in spite of the darkness, his pupils were even darker than the night. The fog thickened and he felt the strain in his arms and hands as he found himself attempting to restrain this man whose sole intent was to kill.

  He felt his leg slip on the gravel that he now found himself standing upon—no longer hovering in midair. The graveled shoulder of the road fe
ll away behind him as it sloped slightly down and into the blackness. Suddenly, red and blue reflections oscillated wildly inside the fog; the flashing lights came from behind, along with a white beam that appeared to engulf him and the man he was attempting to restrain.

  The mist grew and he shivered once more. The lights diffused into the night like pixels in a cheap video game, one disappearing into another, and then vanishing at the edges into the dark. He slipped and fell to his knees, and so did the other man.

  “I hate you,” the man growled, squinting at him with his blood-filled eyes.

  After a push off the man’s chest, he found himself several paces from the bloodshot eyes, standing upright, and as clear as if it were day; he saw the man now holding a large, black handgun. The shiver turned to goosebumps in a sudden dump of adrenalin that flooded his system. Like a drug, it surged through his blood vessels, pumping it into his entire body as his breathing and heart rate skyrocketed. With a short and panicked breath, he closed his eyes.

  The thin steel crescent edge was cold against his index finger as he squeezed—no noise, only the flip in his wrist from the recoil. He had no idea how he got to his gun, nor any recollection of even having a gun with him. When he opened his eyes, he held his duty weapon out in front of him and the man he had attempted to restrain lay motionless on the ground in a pool of blood; the fog began to swirl and the figure of the man became an obscured silhouette on the gravel.

  The fog ceased to spin as it dissipated into the darkness. The blackness only increased his anxiety while the adrenalin continued to flow. A sudden flash, and he was no longer standing on the side of the road; instead, he found himself turning around only to see a brilliant white light in every direction, which had no discernible depth.

  Another flash engulfed him, such that he had to squint and shield his eyes from its brightness. The light seeped into his being and created a stir of emotions: guilt, remorse, and reproach.

  “Why did you kill him?” boomed a voice from deep inside himself.

  He began to feel a sensation of someone looking at him, disapproving of his actions, his life, and of who he is. An overwhelming desire to offer an explanation was quickly squashed when he realized he could not speak.

  Attempting to motion with his hands that he could no longer talk brought a new wave of panic: his arms were immobile. Unable to speak and with his arms paralyzed, another surge of adrenalin flooded his veins. Anxiety raced through him as he tried to speak, to move, and the more he tried, the higher his heart rate climbed.

  Another wave of panic crashed down upon him when he attempted to run: his feet unable to move, fixed in place, they had become one with the surface beneath him. Eyes wide, mouth agape in terror, a muffled scream in his throat, and his heart rate rose to the point that it caused him to pass out.

  “No!” Matt bolted upright in bed. He shivered, just as he did in his dream—not from the mist and fog, but from the sweat beading across his back. He tried to focus on where the bedroom door should have been, but only blackness from a dark, moonless night. Not even ambient light from the mercury vapor street lamp in the neighbor’s driveway snuck in due to the fitted shade cloth he had fastened to the window to help him sleep after the sun broke over the horizon.

  Confused, his eyes darted around for something, anything familiar. Breathing heavily and his heart still pulsating, he reached to his left—the space where his wife Trishia, or Trish as every one knew her as, should be sleeping—and found it empty. Okay, at least that’s normal, he thought, trying to comfort himself.

  Matt looked to his right and as soon as his eyes caught the red glow from his clock, the panic began to ease. He smiled to himself—comforted by another familiarity and the fleeting thought of how he recently swore to himself to replace the accursed thing due to the finicky buttons on top.

  Another shiver ran through his body as the chill clung to him from the sweat that was now all over his neck and shoulders. He slumped onto his right elbow as his pulse slowed in his temples.

  “Hmph,” he groaned after his elbow landed on the cold sweat-infused contour sheet.

  He stared at the digits on his clock: the red glow of 04:17 mocked him. His mind kicked into high gear, trying to work out how long he had been asleep, but his thoughts swirled from the confusion that lingered from yet another dream about work. With a heavy breath, he leaned back slightly; the digits came into focus.

  “Shhh…it,” he grumbled. He finally came to the conclusion that by the time he got off duty, minus the time it took to unwind, shed his uniform, get to bed, fall asleep, until now; maybe, he had been asleep for an hour and a half…just maybe.

  With slight vertigo setting in, a mildly soured stomach, and the beginnings of a pulsating headache, Matt flopped backward onto his bed and stretched out the arm he was propped up on—now stiff and sore.

  “This is killing me,” he told himself.

  He let out a shallow groan as he began to flex his arm back and forth to work out the stiffness. He rubbed his arm and shoulder with his other hand, and as the soreness subsided, he began to reflect on the terrible dream that woke him.

  Matt quickly glanced at his clock once more, and then nestled back into his pillow to stare up at the ceiling—a pale red glow reflected back down on him.

  “Dammit, why can’t I sleep?” he complained out loud.

  His mind raced to and fro—information collected over time through seminars, classes, and reading various articles on the stress of law enforcement. Perhaps that was it. Maybe all the years were finally catching up to him.

  Matt calculated the time segments of his career at the sheriff’s office: time spent working the jail, patrol, investigations, and now as the shift supervisor.

  Good Lord, 15? No…16 years now.

  His arm lay across his chest as he continued to rub it—he took a deep breath as his mind raced, turning over the disjointed pieces of his dream. Then other dreams: reoccurring dreams—none of which were work-related, nor coincided with his current home life—details of which were just beyond the reach of his memory.

  As he strained to grasp at these buried impressions, his eyelids fluttered and his arm twitched, causing him to shift slightly to the side, and then…he drifted back into an unsettled sleep.

  Matthew Jameison slowly opened his eyes just shy of eight o’clock. Lying on his side, and thus on the arm that was already stiff and sore from earlier, he blinked several times while trying to focus on his clock again.

  “Crap,” he breathed and gingerly sat up and slouched on the edge of the bed.

  His fingers began to tingle as the blood began to circulate again while he slowly opened and closed his fist. Just as every morning, Matt rubbed his temples due to the throb behind his eyes with each heartbeat—accompanied by a vertigo that he concluded would almost always go away by the time he hit the bathroom—a soured stomach, and that freakish sensation of his guts quivering, at least until he made it to the kitchen.

  “Is this really worth it?” He asked himself. He wasn’t sure who he said it to, himself or God or both, but it was his mantra of late. The sleep deprivation and the dreams were taking their toll and he knew it. He could feel it: mentally and physically.

  Once his arm was functioning again, Matt huffed when he pushed off the bed to stand up—he remained motionless for a few moments until the vertigo subsided to a manageable stagger to the bathroom. After his pit stop, he moved into the kitchen to start his morning ritual: start the coffee pot, followed by his morning quiet time.

  Matt considered his latest endeavor: quiet time—or, as his wife of 25 years termed it once, his devotional time—was the thing that helped him through seeing the worst of human nature. In spite of how he felt this morning, which was no different from any other morning of late, he sat down in a corner of the living room to pray.

  Matt sighed heavily and closed his eyes. His head relaxed; his shoulders slowly fell forward, and with a twitch in his arm he drifted into an uneasy slumber—n
ot quite fully asleep; but a place where one has dreams, in this case, a flashback…

  “You’re not doing enough to save my baby!” the boy’s mother screamed as she beat his back with her fists.

  Matt was the first deputy to arrive at the home of a family who called 9-1-1. A ten-year-old boy, lying on his back, eyes open but not blinking with blood spots in the whites of his eyes. While doing CPR, Matt felt the boy was staring right at him.

  There was no recall of the quick interview he had with the boy’s father who found his son’s suicide; a belt around his throat with the end fastened to the upper post of the boy’s bunk bed; freeing his son from the belt; and carrying his boy to the living room. Matt only had fleeting images of doing CPR on the boy, the screams of the mother, the father silently kneeling while watching him do everything possible to save their boy; the smell of the house, the image of scattered baggies containing illicit drugs and paraphernalia laying on top of a coffee table…