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

  A glance down revealed the reason why he felt a weight in his right arm: he was clutching a sword.

  6

  SKIRMISH

  Twenty enemy swiftly approached. Beings that were as curious to look at as they were menacing.

  “Creatures? What the hell?” whispered Matt to himself as he tilted his head to the right in disbelief. His right arm trembled, and with his left he wiped the sweat out of his eyes.

  The creatures’ skin flickered with different shades of dark gray in the sunlight. They wore only earthen-brown breeches that were fastened just below the knees. Their eyes were black as charcoal set in gray orbs with a flicker of green in the center where the pupil should have been.

  They advanced with great speed and swept up the hillside from the trees below at a steady pace in a skirmish line that gave them the appearance of gliding across the tufts of grass. Their faces and swords caught Matt’s attention as they neared. He squinted at the creatures and realized that there were no discernible facial features at all. Their heads were gray elongated orbs; no ears or nose, and a thin dark gray membrane of skin heaved back and forth where their mouth should have been.

  Their swords were corroded yet bright along a sharpened edge, long and with a distinct backward arch.

  “Scimitars?” Matt questioned himself. He didn’t have time to notice anything else: they were upon him.

  Instinctively, Matt raised his right arm with such force that it startled him. His arm became one with the blade he carried as it instantly clashed with an enemy’s scimitar coming down hard on him. He met the creature’s blade stroke for stroke—holding the hilt of his sword with both hands now, Matt made a slicing movement, swinging in an arc from underneath his right side. The blade caught the creature in the lower chest and it let out a loud, piercing scream as it toppled over backward. Matt’s blade continued upward only to be met by the blade of another creature.

  He sliced through this enemy, only to have another take its place. Other warriors near him fought and yelled. Matt swung his sword to the left at an advancing creature and saw a flash of steel near his right temple: a warrior’s sword—it came from behind and struck another advancing creature in the neck as it held its scimitar high to cut Matt in half.

  As quickly as the battle started, it ended. The enemy lay strewn about on the hill: several on their sides, on top of each other, a few on their backs—but not one warrior lost. The sun was bright, and the sweat on the men glistened in the rays that beat down upon them. Each nodded toward one another. Matt felt a kindred spirit among them. Their faces looked familiar but he couldn’t remember where he had seen them before. They were oddly dressed: thick leather sleeveless tunics, dark tan breeches that were tucked into their knee-high boots that resembled moccasins more than boots.

  Matt looked down at the fallen creatures that lay on the slope. He gaped in astonishment as their bodies vanished before his eyes, leaving only their breeches. He kicked at a pair of breeches nearest him to confirm that it truly was empty. No sword, no body; only the breeches. Matt turned to face a warrior next to him who simply acknowledged the fact with a nod.

  As Matt looked upon the field of battle, he heard the people behind him cheering. Their shouts faded when he noticed blood running down from a laceration on his right forearm. As he stood staring at the blood trail oozing down his arm, a tall, lean warrior patted him on the back and said something. Matt looked at the warrior; he gave Matt a grin, a nod, and another slap on his shoulder. Matt staggered to the side.

  The hills blurred, the clouds hurried by with increasing speed, and he felt a foreboding deep inside. To help keep the world from spinning, he tried in vain to look to the tree line, but now the trees appeared to whirl too. Matt reverted his gaze back down at the gash in his forearm to help steady himself. He watched as the blood trickled to his hand and the sword he carried began to melt away.

  “Matt!” Trish yelled.

  Like someone who just had a glass of water thrown in his face, Matt quickly turned toward Trish with a bewildered look.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Yeah…yeah, I’m…fine,” Matt answered.

  “You’ve been out here on the driveway for like ten minutes. I thought you were looking across the valley or something.” She switched her handbag to the other arm. “I come out here to go to work…” fumbling with her car keys, ”said goodbye several times, and you just kept staring at your arm…” Trish pointed to his arm. “How’d that happen?”

  The rawness from their argument was still fresh and the anxiety began to rise within him. How do I explain what just happened? How to reveal anything to her other than “it’s all good”?

  “Dunno. Probably got too close to a tree limb while running,“ Matt finally replied calmly, still in a state of bewilderment.

  “Okay, well, make sure you get that cleaned out.”

  “Yep, will do…I’m on it,” Matt said with a nod.

  “Well, I gotta get to work.” Trish gave him a perfunctory peck on the cheek. “Have a good shift tonight.”

  “Yep, you too,” Matt replied.

  He stood in the driveway watching the woman he used to love leave for work. He considered the many years that had passed since they had stopped loving each other. The thought of working on their relationship and the ugly past always clouded his mind—the lack of communication, the lack of interest, lack of any emotional connection or chemistry between them. They had grown so far apart, it was as if she was standing on one side of the Grand Canyon and he on the other.

  As he thought about the great chasm between them, he began to feel the pain in his forearm; now fatigued and sore in every joint, especially his back. Everything felt like he had been jostled about.

  Looking back down at the gash in his arm, he thought of the sword he just wielded: magnificent and a wonder to behold—a tightly bound leather grip that encapsulated a ruby in the pommel; a cross-guard made of brass or perhaps gold, with an intricate pattern carved into it; and the blade, long, almost mirror-like in appearance with etched patterns that he didn’t have time to study during the attack.

  Thinking of the events that had just occurred, he walked into the house to tend to his arm. It all reminded him of the dreams of late: sore, exhausted, and occasionally waking up with bruises on his chest and arms that he had dismissed as being work-related. But now…I wonder if…

  7

  DISTRACTED

  Winter crept into the Rockies like a cat stalking its prey. Slowly, methodically, and with purposeful intent, the days got shorter, the nights got colder, and the aspens discarded their foliage. What once was green was now a dormant brown. The sun trekked further south and made the midday feel cool and brisk. Recent storms had powdered the hills with fresh snow, and life in the mountains seemed to go into hibernation.

  It also meant a slower time for the office. Fewer calls for service during this time of year, but that didn’t mean the internal workings of the office slowed down. Matt was more busy with administrative duties during this time of year than he would like. He often thought of the days of just being a patrolman—driving through neighborhoods, checking on businesses, and talking to folks that he came across in the community. Much more appealing than patrolling his desk and shuffling a stack of papers from one pile to another.

  Reading a memo he held from the district attorney’s office—disseminated in the form of an actual piece of paper instead of an email—caused Matt to focus on the fresh scar on his arm. As he held the memo, he stared at the meaty portion of his right forearm, a few inches below the elbow; there lay the scar from the scimitar.

  It had been almost a month since his vision, delusion, daydream, or whatever it was. He reflected back on that day as if it were yesterday: the reverberation through his body from an enemy’s blade clashing with his own, a warrior’s sword sweeping near his head to save his life, and the dead creatures vanishing before him.

  Matt attempted to understand it all…again. Why i
t happened. What it all meant. Telling all who asked that the cut on his arm was from brushing up against some wayward tree limb sticking out too far while on a run. But even in the process of filing the unexplainable events away into some neat folder in his mind, he couldn’t escape the fact that everything that happened was as real as anything he’d ever experienced.

  He put the memo on his desk and stared at his computer screen. Matt searched within himself to find any spark of motivation to continue on with his work, or at least to figure out what to tackle next. He had plenty to do: reports to approve, evaluations on team members to complete, and legal updates to review. He positioned his fingers over the keyboard but felt somewhat hopeless in finding the energy to begin.

  He slowly looked to the memo, then back to his arm. He reflected on the men who stood with him on the grassy slope after the battle, and the sense of brotherhood he’d felt. He knew these men, but at the same time he didn’t. For a month now, he had glimpses of their faces, their movements, and their stature in his dreams. He attempted to recall the nightly dreams of the past six months in which he believed he had seen these men before, but as dreams do, much is forgotten by morning.

  Staring off into far regions beyond, he no longer took notice of the memo, nor did he notice Alie walk into his office. She walked up alongside him and lightly touched his shoulder.

  “Matt, you okay?” She asked softly.

  Matt flinched, looked up, and turned toward her, “Oh, Alie, hi…yeah…yeah, I’m okay. I’m just in the zone here. Got lots of paper to deal with, that’s all.” He noticed her soft touch and the tenderness in her voice, which caused him to smile. He didn’t remember how long it’d been since he had experienced anything that pleasant. “How are you?” he asked.

  Alie tucked a few strands of hair behind her ear, “I’m fine. I brought you something.” She laid a dark chocolate bar on his desk between his outstretched arms.

  “Oh wow! Thank you,” Matt gratefully replied with another smile.

  “Well, I think…” she said, as she nudged him slightly, “you were more like zoning out, than in the zone,” she finished her observation with a slight grin.

  “Ha, maybe,” he replied, and looked down at the chocolate bar. “Thanks, Alie, it’s my favorite.”

  “I know,” she said, smiling. Slightly turning her shoulders toward him she added, “Not much going on out there.”

  “Yeah, well, we are starting into winter. I’m thankful that it slows down, but it sure makes for some long shifts, especially for you gals.”

  “Yepper, you got that right,” Alie replied. “I better get back over there, but just wanted to drop this off. Thinkin’ of you.”

  “Thanks again.”

  “Come by later and say hi before I go home,” She practically whispered as she left Matt’s office.

  “Will do,” Matt said as he continued to smile and watch her walk out of his office.

  She left to return to the dispatch center—the communication hub for the entire county, housed in the same building as the sheriff’s office. It was normal for dispatchers to wander into the patrol division to escape the confines of computer screens and the never-ending radio traffic. A break from waiting for the next horrible call to come in on a 9-1-1 line, and the relentless data entry. Aletha Starling—Alie, as she preferred everyone to call her—had been a dispatcher for the county for several years now.

  Matt noticed that she strolled through the patrol division at about the same time every day for the past month, usually about the time he arrived at the office. A smile, a simple hello, then with a tuck of her hair behind an ear she would make small talk for a few minutes. When she left to go back to her dispatch duties, she would give a quick glance back toward him and say goodbye with a finger wave from her waist.

  It was a nice break to chat with her. Her visits soothed something deep inside that he couldn’t quite explain. Each visit felt like a cool breeze on a hot summer’s day. He held his attention on Alie after she left his office, scanning his feelings as he mindlessly toyed with the chocolate bar. His mind careened through the avenues of feelings he experienced after she left to the minuscule memories left behind of recent dreams and back to how quickly he dropped his guard with her.

  His thoughts paused and his office door transfigured into a wall: an old wall—built without modern machinery with large river rock, enormous blocks of granite, and smoothed with mortar; the wall of a fortress and somehow, it was familiar. Perhaps from a dream, perhaps from a movie he once saw—he couldn’t remember where, but he knew he’d seen it before…somewhere.

  Behind the fortress, in the middle of a courtyard, his heart lay exposed; beating rhythmically, strong and full of life—protected by the walls of this fortress. Walls built high and solid to keep invaders out, to keep out those who rejected such glimpses of such a precious thing. Warriors stood guard around his heart: the same men he fought with a month ago. The image slowly faded back to the doorway Alie had just left through.

  With a heavy sigh, Matt shook his head and looked over to a mound of paperwork next to the chocolate bar.

  As promised, Matt visited dispatch a few hours later to say goodbye to Alie before she ended her shift.

  “Hi!” Alie exclaimed with brows quickly raised as he walked through the second security door.

  “Hi,” Matt returned with equal enthusiasm.

  “Yay for me. It’s my weekend!”

  “I know. What are you doing on your days off?”

  “Get out with my sister, and go shopping…I think.” Alie tilted her head slightly to one side and smiled, her full attention now on Matt. “Not much after that. No life outside of here,” she said with a shrug.

  “I hear ya. Well, I hope you have a great time with your sissy,” Matt replied.

  “Oh, I’m sure we will; we usually do,” she said. “Did you look outside when you came over? Already dark out there?”

  “Yes, unfortunately. Curse of winter time, sun goes down way too early.”

  Jimmy, Alie’s relief, sat down behind her at the console and had just put on his headset when a phone call came in on the non-emergency line. He spoke into his boom-mic while he typed something on the dispatch computer.

  “Matt,” Jimmy said loud enough to override their chitchat.

  “Yeah?”

  “State patrol’s dispatch is on the phone; they lost contact with their trooper on a traffic stop,” Jimmy said, and then gave him the details of where the trooper was last heard from.

  “Be safe, Matt,” Alie told him, as she gave him a quick hug.

  “I will. Thanks again for the chocolate, and have a great weekend.” Her hug, and her touch earlier, seemed to be more soft and caring than he had remembered before, but he wasn’t sure. Maybe the feeling of some sort of a connection with her was a dream too.

  Matt drove into the area where the trooper was last heard from. He couldn’t help but think of how jumbled everything was in his head lately. “How can one think of Alie, Trish, sword play in dreams, and…keep plugged into all of this?” Matt asked himself. “I’m losing my mind!”

  At that moment, the face of a warrior who had stood and fought with him on the hill a month ago flashed through his mind—it infused him with a sense of clarity when he rounded a bend on the highway.

  Matt grabbed the mic and keyed up, “104…we’ve got a trooper on the ground fighting with a suspect. We need emergent cover cars,” he deadpanned.

  The trooper was desperately trying to restrain a man who had an out of state warrant for his arrest. Matt’s reflexes snapped into action like a trap that had been sprung on an unsuspecting mouse—without thinking, he flung himself out of his patrol truck after slamming the gear shifter into park.

  The preoccupied suspect never once looked over at the charging sergeant. Matt saw the man swing his leg over the trooper, who now was squirming on his side to keep from being flopped over onto his back. Matt came in full-speed and noticed that the suspect had one of the troop
er’s hands pinned with his foot; with the other leg stretched over the trooper, he began beating him on the side of the neck with his forearm.

  Matt lowered his shoulder and smashed into the suspect full force in the exposed rib cage as he reared back to swing at the trooper again. The man’s chest collapsed as he let out a loud gasp. The sensation of rolling onto the gravel caused Matt to instinctively tuck his head into the armpit of the man to avoid hitting his own skull.

  When they came to rest, Matt threw the man onto his stomach while shouting, “Stop fighting! Sheriff’s office, stop fighting now!”

  Matt secured the suspect’s left arm behind his back—he could get the unruliest of men to comply with this trick: pinned ninety-degrees in the upper part of the back, fastened with his own arm. He applied pressure with his bicep against the suspect’s elbow and hand and wrenched on it in the direction of the same elbow.

  After a few breaths, the suspect regained his senses, “Let…me…go!” he screamed. “You broke my arm!”

  “Your arm’s not broke,” Matt growled into his ear, “but if you keep fighting me, it will get a lot worse.”

  Matt motioned to the trooper, Dan, now back on his feet and quickly approaching to handcuff the suspect. He noticed Dan’s hands were shaking while fumbling with his cuffs.

  “Give the trooper your other hand,” demanded Matt. “And you better loosen up on your shoulders, or I’m thinking your gonna fight me again.”