In Store Price: $AU32.95 
Online Price:   $AU31.95

ISBN: 978-1-921118-98-2
Format: A5 Paperback
Number of pages: 401
Genre:  Supernatural Fantasy Fiction
 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Daniel Edward graduated from secondary school at the end of 1997. Over the proceeding three years, Daniel studied a Bachelor of Human Services at QUT whilst working in the welfare and disability sectors. Daniel later went back to university to complete a Bachelor in Secondary Education at QUT, and began formally teaching English and Social Science in mid-2002.  

In 2003, Daniel moved to Far North Queensland where he worked as a Learning Support Teacher. It was here that Daniel began his first novel, ‘Profound in Light’. Due to his interest in writing, Daniel began a Masters in Writing at Swinburne University , completing it at the end of 2005 with a GPA of 6.2.  

Upon returning to Brisbane in 2005, Daniel subsequently began and finished a second novel, ‘Better of the Two’, and is currently completing a third titled, ‘Undertaking Terror’. Daniel now lives and teaches in Brisbane with his wife and family.  

Apart from writing and teaching, Daniel enjoys playing the guitar as well as watching and playing football (soccer).

PART I    

Chapter one      

Exciting. It must be exciting.’

Iordane viciously slammed the door of the viewing room behind him. His unkempt dark hair flicked through the air sharply as he reached forward, pulling open the tatty blind that had blocked his and Ayatun’s vision.

Amidst the chill, Ayatun entered the viewing room just seconds after his elder brother. As the door closed behind him, Ayatun was distracted by a moist metallic sensation that seemed to adulterate the air. It produced an overpowering smell and, in a peculiar way, an acrid taste. The metallic impression reminded Ayatun of the unpleasant tingling, almost gritty, sensation that had run down his back as a child when, for no particular reason, he placed his tongue on a nine volt battery.

Ayatun blinked, the sound of the blind startling him. And looking ahead, the metallic undercurrent seemed inconsequential.

‘Something’s closing in,’ Ayatun said, disbelief filling his eyes.

A mysterious haze hovered in the distance. From where Ayatun stood the haze looked almost like figures; but figures of what, he could not ascertain.

‘Yes,’ said Iordane, smirking.

‘What is it?’ Ayatun enquired.

‘You’ll see,’ Iordane replied, deviously. ‘We’ll deal with them soon.’

Iordane looked at Ayatun, scanning his younger brother up and down for what seemed like the hundredth time that day.

Temporarily forgetting the distant scene, Ayatun readjusted his coat, uneasily. He was growing annoyed by Iordane’s incessant gawking. After all, he couldn’t possibly look half as unkempt as his brother: Iordane’s white shirt was splotched, his faded jeans unusually ragged and his full-length black jacket, that he usually covered it with, was gone.

Throughout Ayatun’s life, his elder brother had never shown great interest in him. They were different: Ayatun was kind; Iordane was comparatively savage. Recently, however, Iordane had regularly sought Ayatun’s company. And although Iordane had persuaded Ayatun to come to this place, inwardly Ayatun had wanted to go. There was something about his elder brother that Ayatun strangely admired – for all the wrong reasons.

‘Too soon for me,’ Ayatun commented hesitantly, brushing himself down.

Earlier that day, Iordane had promised Ayatun that he would see something ‘special’. However, now that he stood in this viewing room, Ayatun was beginning to have reservations.

Originally a platform used to observe Utry Mountain , the viewing room had a terrifyingly eerie feel: it was so insipid, so abandoned, so fragile.

Perfectly cubic (about two by two metres squared), the four walls of the room were made of a soft tin-like metal. They weren’t thick walls. Anyone paying attention outside the room could easily hear the conversation inside. Through these tin-like walls, rivets were affixed all over the place. And surrounding the hundreds of rivets were dark-brown eyelets of rust formed as water seeped through tiny gaps between the rivets and walls. It was an inanimate, alienating environment. And now the nebulous figures crowding Ayatun’s field of vision weren’t adding any warmth. Ayatun felt uncomfortable.

‘What?’ Iordane said, uncaringly.

‘I said, too soon for me,’ repeated Ayatun, insecurely.

‘Yes,’ replied Iordane absently, ‘yes … soon.’

Ayatun felt a chill run down his spine. He couldn’t explain it but everything about this viewing room made him feel uncertain … naked. Everything felt like the centre was not holding and things were falling apart, not least him. And the more Ayatun scanned his surrounds, the more this feeling oppressed him.

‘I’m not sure about this, Iordane.’

Ignoring the haze as best he could, Ayatun looked around, uneasily. Above the viewing glass hung the fully retracted roller blind. Frayed and soiled, the material spiralled around the roller like a soaked roll of toilet paper. Ayatun scanned downwards. Below the viewing window was a drastically faded forwarding dash that once detailed ‘Interesting Facts’ about Mount Utry . Directly opposite the dash was an old chipboard door swollen at the top, where it had absorbed rain. The door was severely flaked on the lower left hand corner, a result of scraping the ground with incessant uneven opening and closing. The floor was equally flimsy. Covered in muck and made of cast iron, which had evidently suffered from years of neglect, if several people jumped the floor would surely cave in. The little grooves covering the iron, designed to impede loss of footing, only managed to accentuate the dilapidated feel of the place.

Everything was going to fall apart. And the claustrophobically dismal air around him left Ayatun’s mind overcast with fear.

‘Ha, don’t be stupid.’ taunted Iordane, unsympathetically. ‘You wanted this … remember?

Ayatun no longer agreed.

Swallowing, he looked ahead at the viewing window. Being late afternoon, he could make out his reflection in the glass in front of him. As he examined himself, his hard, unshaven jaw shivered in discreet cowardice. He was scared.

Feeling little comfort in his reflection, Ayatun focused his attention beyond, once more. Through the window his eyes again met the mysterious view. The viewing room’s original purpose was gone; it no longer simply overlooked Mount Utry . Any lushness visible from this vantage point was lost behind a foreground spectre of haze-like figments. Apparently smoky and more striking than when he first saw them, the figures glided above the valley trees below, floating with grace and intrigue. Without clear shape or design, they progressed toward the viewing room. Whatever these figures were was far more imposing than the scenic alternative.

Was this the ‘special’ Iordane had promised?

‘But I … ah …’ Ayatun retorted, with little effect.

‘You will want this,’ Iordane snapped back, sadistically.

Suddenly, as if in a heartbeat, the distant figures bounded forward. Having seemed hundreds of metres away, they were now only half a football field from Iordane and Ayatun. So slow moving, yet so startlingly progressive. But despite how they advanced, Ayatun could still not describe what the figures looked like; they were like nothing he’d ever seen, or – as it was turning out – experienced before. Nonetheless, he endeavoured to understand them, if not their intentions, at least their appearance.

‘I-I s-see them,’ Ayatun stammered in bewilderment.

The closer the figures encroached, the more ghost-like they became. They were see-through, hovered, or drifted, without touching either the depths of the valley ground below or even the treetops that lay just beneath their smoky tails. They were living, and yet, at the same time, were intriguingly lifeless. And although they indeed could be likened to smoke (being quite hazy and oddly grey), astonishingly, the appearance of the beings seemed to assume different forms many times over. Whatever ‘they’ or ‘it’ was seemed to be shifting, varying, deforming and bending in the light in a most peculiar way. And, as perplexing as it seemed, Ayatun thought this, inexplicably, made the figures strangely beautiful, perhaps even radiant.

Despite the anomaly of their appearance, the closer they came the more uneasy Ayatun felt. It was as though the figures somehow personified something that was honest and trustworthy, but paradoxically perverse, warped and manipulative. It was like he needed, even wanted to trust them, but knew he should not. This unknowing made Ayatun feel even more uncomfortable … exposed.

‘Intense. Yes – it must be intense,’ proclaimed Iordane, ignoring Ayatun’s comment.

Iordane leant against the forwarding glass in an almost too expectant way. The chill pierced Ayatun again. He hugged his coat around himself.

‘What do you mean … intense?’ Ayatun questioned, reservedly.

Everything, especially the figures, unsettled him. Ayatun grated his tongue back and forth against his teeth, the metallic residue filling his mouth.

‘Intense. It must be that way. It will be that way – you’ll see.’

‘Okay … intense, excitement …’

‘No!’ Iordane spat. ‘Intense … Soon you’ll learn, soon you will see. They are magnificent, and what yours lacks, yours will soon gain. Wait and see.’

As Iordane once again scanned his brother up and down, Ayatun, with little result, fumbled with what his elder brother’s comment meant.

What yours lacks, yours will soon gain?

Again, the figures instantly drew closer. As they dramatically shifted forward, Ayatun felt dazed; he felt as though the beings were penetrating his mind. But just as he shook this impression from him, the figures hovered onward once more. And with this last sudden transient shift, he felt the effect of their presence multiply. With their every movement Ayatun’s surroundings grew strangely different … altered.

Dazed, he scanned the small room where he stood. Everything around him was shifting and gently contorting. It was as though nothing felt concrete, everything was abstract … even himself. Ayatun felt like an outline, like a distant shape that could only be described in black, white and subtle greys. Even the moist metallic residue no longer tinged his senses.

That ‘special’ Iordane had promised now presented itself.

‘Y-Yes, i-i-intense ...’ Ayatun stuttered, ‘I-I f-feel it n-now.’

Strangely, it was the contradiction of their luminous yet equally dull appearance and now, more so, their immediate presence, that Ayatun began to understand what these entities – these translucent beings – truly represented. Destruction.

And with their flight about the room, Ayatun’s very mind felt exposed … molested by their mere presence.

His uneasiness was complete.

Without knowing what else to say, Ayatun harnessed all his remaining fortitude. Still, he spoke to Iordane in an unsteady voice instead of the gallant, proclamation of intent he would have preferred.

‘I … I’ve had enough … I f-feel it … I s-see it … I-It is special … but now … now I-I’m going.’

Despite how helpless he felt – a point that was also unmistakably evident in his shaky voice – Ayatun forced himself to turn around. In accomplishing this relatively simple feat, Ayatun motioned to open the door behind him that Iordane had only moments ago closed.

Silently yet saliently, the beings meandered about the room, slowly occupying the area around Iordane’s poised head.

‘Don’t move an inch!’

Iordane, in a gentle yet sublimely sinister fashion, reached toward Ayatun and pulled his left arm to himself, slightly twisting it at the wrist. Iordane drew his brother close, glaring sadistically into his deep brown eyes.

‘I don’t want you to feel it … I don’t want you to simply see it … I want you to truly see it.’

Ayatun stared through Iordane’s eyes … a window to the man’s soul …

… Lost.

Ignoring Iordane’s baffling command and breaking their locked gaze, Ayatun reached earnestly for the doorknob using his unrestrained hand. He extended and grasped but, as Ayatun clutched at the handle, to his amazement, nothing happened. Ayatun’s hand dissolved through the object as if it had in some way dematerialised. All his tactile potential had literally withered through his fingers. Touch was gone. Everything around Ayatun felt like he was on some wild acid trip that wasn’t getting any more tangible.

Stuck, and not knowing what else to do, Ayatun turned his eyes to meet Iordane’s again.

‘I-Iordane, I do see it … I saw …’

‘See it!’ came the resounding reply.

Iordane’s voice had grown distant and terrifyingly deep. His voice was compelling and urging, wanting and enticing, unfamiliar, yet so characteristically his.

‘I see it!’ Ayatun shot back.

‘NO, SEE IT!’ Iordane’s voice doubled, almost as though it were two voices in one. Not loud, just penetrating and warped.

Ayatun pleaded. ‘I see it, Iordane! I see them!’

His brother’s breath swallowed the air around.

‘SEE IT, SEEN!’

With this final bellowing statement, Iordane’s face transformed gruesomely. As his eyebrows tightened, the natural contours of his face began to shift erratically. His eyes rolled over on themselves exposing the soft fleshy white tissue; his lips became grey as his face progressively lost all human likeness. Then in an instant his face imploded, turning inside out as if destruction had taken him over. With this implosion came a slow pouring and oozing of his inner recesses like boiled honey. From within, it gurgled and churned and spilled onto Iordane’s faded jeans and the dull, gritty floor on which he stood. Iordane’s grip on Ayatun’s wrist suddenly grew unbearably tight and then, just as suddenly, twitched into a lifeless state.

But despite the gruesome metamorphosis, there was no blood, no mess and no smell. All of it was metaphysical essence, strewn everywhere before Ayatun. And just as quickly as it began, it ended – the only evidence was Iordane’s spirit, once unseen, now clearly seen.

What happened? Ayatun thought, longing to discover a purpose for this indescribable decay before him.

He couldn’t blame his companion; inwardly it was Ayatun who had wanted to come – it was he who wished to see. Yet somehow, despite the depravity of the scene, it was audaciously intoxicating. Something had drawn him, something unseen like a lingering pheromone pulling him closer and kissing him gently on the cheek.

It was contagious.

‘Iordane is dead,’ Ayatun whispered to himself, trying to break free from the mesmerising feelings that drifted around his head. ‘Iordane is dead. Why don’t I care?’

And horrifyingly, the more he thought about it the less he cared.

Ayatun closed his eyes to concentrate and convince himself that his concern about his brother was genuine.

He did care.

At once a response echoed through Ayatun’s head. Why would you care?

Ayatun snapped open his eyes and looked around. The figures were still present. The tin walls contorted gently as they passed near. And then, just as he’d seen with Iordane, the strange figures floated around his own head. And before Ayatun could brace himself, or feel any fear, without warning the figures sharply hovered through, within and out of his mind in a formulaic pattern, like an inspection of his inner being, of his inner thoughts … revealed.

Incapacitating. Confusing. Dazed.

So intoxicating.

Gone.