Song of Immaru (eBook)
522 Seiten
Ballast Books (Verlag)
978-1-962202-61-9 (ISBN)
PJ Dudek has lived in Northeast Ohio his whole life. Despite being a major fan of the state, he is also inspired by the beauty of the larger world beyond the Ohio River and Great Lakes. Writing provides him a way to share his appreciation for these settings within his favorite literary genres-sci-fi and fantasy. He currently lives with his wife and three children surrounded by woods and farmland not far from where he grew up.
"e;But in some way, my goal is the same as your goal. Noble-and eternal. What you must understand is that without the darkness"e;-he began to lift his phial, and a fiery tumult swirled inside-"e;there . . . is . . . no . . . light."e;The vast plains of South Dakota offer Tarin solace from both his dreams of an unknown past and the rumblings of a new global war while a mysterious AI oversees society. Yet a haunting melody plays over the stillness of the grasslands, a melody he cannot escape one that seems hungry to force him to . . . remember. When a stranger dressed like a medieval traveler enters town, the already nervous community responds with alarm. Is this man there to cause trouble like the other newcomers those who claim to be part of a government organization observing a new illness in the area? And how does this man know Tarin when Tarin has no recollection of him?As the threat of war draws closer and strange sightings appear in the sky, Tarin begins to discover that all on the planet is not what it seems. What have his dreams been telling him? Is there more to the universe to reality than he could have ever imagined?Breakout author PJ Dudek has written a captivating story that integrates a modern sci-fi flair into the classic good vs. evil stories of Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Ted Dekker, and Terry Brooks that will leave readers sixteen through ninety tearing through the pages. Winner of Literary Titan Gold Book Award: Fiction 2024 and FAPA President's Silver Book Award: Sci-Fi 2024
Tarin sprung from his bed with a scream. The haunting melody still swirled between his ears, even as the vision of the four necks within four nooses started to fade. Usually, he managed at least a few nights’ gap between these awful dreams. But now they were plaguing him with far more regularity.
He stumbled into his trailer’s tiny bathroom. A trash bin next to the sink sat full of empty amber bottles. Tarin splashed water on his face and looked into the dusty mirror. His sandy brown hair lay matted onto his pale forehead. Maybe a drink would help. Sure, it was early, but his heart was still beating fast, and he needed to calm down.
“What’s the time?” he murmured to the mirror.
Four three-dimensional digits appeared near the top of the glass, revealing it was already ten in the morning. Tarin cursed. He needed to be at the ranch in fifteen minutes to feed the horses and lead them out to pasture. Howard would be angry if he was late again, and he couldn’t afford to get fired.
He groaned and splashed more water on his face. After grabbing his coat, he headed out into the chilly November air for the twenty-minute walk—or today, ten-minute jog—to the ranch.
An hour later, he was leading the final horse from the barn toward a fenced enclosure set upon the gently rolling hills of western South Dakota when the horse whinnied and lurched its head back. “Shhh, girl,” Tarin said, “what’s wrong?”
The horse’s wild eyes stared into the sky. He held tightly to the lead line to steady the animal, then winced. The texture of the rope on the palm of his hand brought him back to his dream—to the nooses.
To the poor family about to be killed.
He clenched his eyes shut. “Why do I always run when I hear the music? Why don’t I help them?”
Because you’re a coward.
The inner voice that answered was not his own. It seemed to be made from the dream’s familiar and haunting melody. He tried to think of something else, but the sound refused to relent. It joined with the voices of a battalion of what appeared to be medieval soldiers, always echoing the accusation as he fled an apparent battle. He was this battalion’s leader, though he had no idea why. He appeared to be only eleven or twelve years old.
He focused on this detail and allowed its absurdity to bring him comfort. He knew the dream was just a manifestation of some trauma he must have experienced as a child, something he’d repressed. That’s why he didn’t remember anything from before he was twelve. It was the time after that that gave him pause. The voices and images reminded him of something he’d run from, something far more real than that battle. As he focused on that memory, the dreadful music quieted, but not the ache in his heart.
He managed to steady the horse and led it back out to pasture. As he let it go, a cold wind blew across his face, chilling him. The scent of the oncoming winter reminded him of the day he’d left Ohio on a similarly cold night years ago.
“Mom,” he found himself whispering. He choked back tears. But there was nothing he could have done. It was too late. He just had to get out of there, away from the chaos, away from his father.
The wind blew faster, colder.
There was nothing I could have done.
The music was back. Coward, it sang.
A humming, like that of a transformer, buzzed somewhere in the distance. The horses whinnied, then started a frantic gallop across the field. Tarin searched for the source of the sound. He’d not heard anything like it before at the ranch. There were no power lines nearby, and the fence was wooden, not electric. Was it coming from the sky?
He looked up, and in the corner of his eye, he thought he saw something dart behind a cloud, something oblong and dark. A bird, perhaps? But that would have been a massive bird. He squinted, and the humming went away. The horses, too, stopped their charge and returned to looking for any lingering green grass in the otherwise brown fields.
Odd, he thought. He scanned the sky for another moment, shrugged, and headed back to the barn to start cleaning the stalls. Howard also wanted him to fix any broken fence railings before winter fully set in. There were many, so that would take the rest of the day. As he worked, he tried to force his mind from his dream and from Ohio, but both continued to taunt him. He decided that after work, he’d have to get some liquid help.
As the sun set, he approached Old Cotton’s bar. It stood alongside the dimly lit main roadway in the small South Dakotan town of Philip, about one hour’s drive east of Rapid City and even less from Badlands National Park. Tarin sat inside, idly listening to the conversation of three townsfolk whispering about the war in Europe as they smoked. He didn’t care much about the war, at least not right now. He just cared about . . . forgetting. And hopefully getting a good night’s sleep.
He brought his third beer in less than an hour to his lips and peered past his wiry arms at the two empty glasses on the table. If he drank too much more—and he intended to—it might get hard to walk straight. He was glad that his trailer was just outside town and that all of Philip was within walking distance, barely a mile in diameter—a tiny island within an ocean of prairie.
“Seeing a lot more bad news about the war,” one of the smokers said. He was a grizzled man with a brown beard, and he took a long swallow of his beer after he spoke, as if he needed it even more, given the news.
Tarin continued to listen in. He doubted he’d hear anything new, but at least it was a distraction.
“Looking more likely the Alliance might use nukes to gain more territory,” the man continued.
“Glad I finally got my bomb shelter finished,” another man at the same table said. He blew some smoke out of his mouth. “Also got three months of food stocked away, just in case.”
The first man laughed. “You think three months is enough! If the war spreads out of Europe, or even if just a few Alliance nukes land nearby, then it’s going to take years before there’s uncontaminated food again.”
The second man puffed harder on his cigarette. “Well, it’ll at least be enough for me and the family to hide out until the fallout isn’t as bad. I don’t want to start glowing or anything,” he said with a nervous chuckle.
Tarin rubbed a hand through his hair and groaned. He hadn’t come here to drink away worries about the war. But the men were right. Things seemed to be getting worse. Maybe that was at least one good thing about his dreams. They kept him distracted from the mess the rest of the world was in.
The door to the bar opened, pulling him from his ominous musings. A careworn woman entered. She appeared to be in her late forties. Blue nurse’s scrubs hung from her slim build. She glanced briefly at Tarin, then sat at a barstool near the smokers. The bartender walked over.
“Haven’t seen you here in a while, Samantha,” he said. “What’ll it be?”
“Need something a bit stronger than the usual,” she said. Her voice sounded tired. “Abigail passed last night. I thought she still had a few more weeks. It took me a bit by surprise.” She paused, staring down at her feet. “I really wanted more time to have a chance to say goodbye properly.” She sighed and then looked back up at the bartender. “That’s what you get when you allow yourself to become friends with hospice patients, I guess.”
Abigail? Tarin didn’t recall the name, which surprised him given the town’s small size. He continued to eavesdrop, though he kept his eyes focused on his beer.
The bartender filled a glass and handed it to Samantha. “Sorry to hear that. I know she was pretty young. No family, from what I recall?”
Samantha took a sip of her beer. “Nope, no family nearby. She grew up Amish, then moved to Pittsburgh after leaving the community during her Rumspringa, you know, the time when Amish youth have a chance to try the real world. After tasting the big city, she decided she preferred the ‘English’ way. But after a couple of years, her life didn’t go as she’d hoped. So she came here to try the small-town life again as a non-Amish.” She smiled. “Said she hoped to find a nice man. She was a fan of those silly romance books—you know, the ones that are more like fairy tales than reality, where the city girl falls in love with the country guy, then they get married and live happily ever after. Nice kid, but so naive.”
“Not a bad thing to have a dream, I suppose,” the bartender said.
“Yeah,” Samantha agreed, “but the dream didn’t come true for her, just like most folks, myself included.” She took a full sip of beer and then set her glass down. “I’m so sad for her. I wish things could have been different. But at least she didn’t end up in a bad divorce like I did. The only positive I can see in passing so young is you’re less likely to see your dreams die first.”
Samantha’s somber gaze moved toward Tarin. He’d barely noticed his eyes had drifted upward and now stared directly at her. A name entered his mind. Chelsy.
Samantha’s face seemed to morph into that of a young woman, one he used...
| Erscheint lt. Verlag | 29.10.2024 |
|---|---|
| Sprache | englisch |
| Themenwelt | Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Science Fiction |
| Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen | |
| ISBN-10 | 1-962202-61-5 / 1962202615 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1-962202-61-9 / 9781962202619 |
| Informationen gemäß Produktsicherheitsverordnung (GPSR) | |
| Haben Sie eine Frage zum Produkt? |
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