Midnight's Park

By Brandon Spacey

On a beautiful October day in 2005, over two hundred thousand people vanish from the face of the earth. Daniel Brandt is skeptical of the news – until his girlfriend disappears from the passenger seat of his car.

The world finds its own way to deal with the losses, and the dust of the previous weeks seems to be settling. That is, until Amalie London – a supposed employee of Royal Research Corporation – comes out of nowhere and points the finger at Daniel.

Amalie convinces Daniel to help her retrieve a quantum computer from Royal, claiming it’s their only chance to bring back the “ghosters”. But it turns out not to be that simple.

After a series of dangerous and illegal stints, Daniel finally comes to learn the truth about the ghosters – they will have to travel back in time to bring them back. And the repercussions of time travel have consequences on his present he couldn’t possibly have imagined.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brandon Spacey
• Release date: Nov 30, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466065581

Brandon Spacey

Brandon was born and raised in suburban Dallas. He spent four years serving in the Air Force, and after an honorable discharge, began a career in Internet Systems. He now works from home and spends a lot of time with his wife and children. His hobbies include playing and writing music, reading and writing. You can check out his website at spacebrew.com.

Book preview

Midnight’s Park

Midnight’s Park

by brandon spacey

Copyright © 2013 by brandon spacey

and SpaceBrew Publishing.

All Rights Reserved.

publishing.spacebrew.com

Cover art by brandon spacey.

Midnight’s Park is a work of fiction. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Third Edition

This is for my dad, Paul,

who is the biggest fan of this book.

Midnight's Park

"At once I saw her calling out,

and fear within her eyes.

Upon her legends coming clear,

she'd whispered her goodbyes.

"I came upon a winter's ground,

in search of my love true.

For she led me to eternal dream,

but my love had just passed through.

"I sang and cried my life away,

but had gotten there too late.

Amidst my passion complacent me,

I'd fallen for my fate.

"I searched for years and found my love,

interred within her hunger.

I wept for though the time had passed,

my love had grown much younger.

"But deep within the walls of time,

and void with perfect dark,

I woke to find my dreams were real,

at home in Midnight's Park."

PRELUDE

Intrusion

S

he sat hunched over the keyboard, scratching her head with one hand and pounding the enter key with the other.  The terminal was lagging, and her commands were processing in slow motion.  Someone was here – interfering.  She could feel it.  It was not possible, they had said.  These computers and this network were impenetrable from the outside world.  But what else could be causing this lag?

The small room was dark – a darkness so complete she could not see anything beyond the screen of her laptop computer.  Her fingers rested on the keys as her eyes focused on the LCD screen.  The computer’s processor grinded and the hard drive clicked madly as it tried to handle all the data flowing across the screen.  The four gigabytes of memory within could not curtail the lethargy that came with processing this much data.  She would simply have to be patient.

After several minutes of grinding, she finally noticed some improvement with the performance of the machine, and then it happened.

An alert box popped up in the corner of the screen.  It read INTRUSION ALERT.

She froze, her eyes wide with fear, and her fingers trembling above the keyboard.  The application in which she worked was proprietary, and top-secret.  Whoever was in her system had access to directories, files, and power they could not begin to comprehend.  She tried to exit the application, the only way to keep the intruder from getting his hands on the company’s most important asset.  The program was hard-locked and spiking the CPU, relentlessly grasping for processing power it did not have available.

Dialog boxes popped up in rapid succession, asking her if she wanted to proceed with the actions she was commanding.  She kept hitting the enter key – answering yes, that she was sure of her intentions.  She had been schooled by the best, and had worked with the most advanced technology available.  She did not need some software application second-guessing her every command – but still, it persisted.

When some memory finally became available, she hit the exit button again, and saw a whole batch of data turn dark blue.  A portion of the data string she had open within the application was now highlighted.  The intruder was trying to copy that data.  She hit the escape key.  Nothing happened.  She hit it again several more times, all to no avail.  Then slowly, the data started disappearing.  It shifted up and to the left, as the data after the highlighted area moved to fill in where the missing bits had been.  And she couldn’t stop it.

She pounded the keys furiously, cursing under her breath and biting the inside of her lip.  Nothing was working.  Since this was an impenetrable network, the company had no intrusion tracing software loaded.  Intrusion detection was built into the platform, but she had no way of immediately knowing who had hacked in.  With no power over the hacker, she could not exit the program, or deselect anything he had highlighted to copy.  Her only solid choice of action was to shut off the computer.  So that’s what she did.

It was suddenly bright in the room again.  She leaned back in her seat and ran her hands through her hair.  She sighed heavily, shaking her head.  This was not supposed to happen.  Now they had lost a ton of data.  This was bad.  This was grave.  The magnitude of the repercussions they would face could be inexplicable.  This was beyond grave; this was catastrophic.  And now she would have to wait years to see what had really happened.

CHAPTER ONE

Evanescence

T

he wheels of the shopping cart squeaked loudly and objected to any kind of physical control Daniel tried to administer on it.  Daniel, frustrated and tired, leaned on the handle while Anna read the sides of boxes, looking for the perfect combination of ingredients.  Daniel’s sighs were growing a little more pronounced, and Anna was beginning to get jittery.  It has to be right, Dan.  My world-famous banana pudding only works with the perfect ingredients.

It’s pudding, Anna.  No one cares what brand of flour you use.

Flour? she said.  She stared at him, dumbfounded.

Look, will you just hurry up so we can get this over with?

You really don’t want to go, do you? Anna asked.  She finally dropped the pudding mix into the basket and ran her hair back behind her ears.

You know I don’t want to go.  It’s always pins and needles when I’m over there.  Your dad won’t even talk to me.

Daniel, he doesn’t talk to anyone.

Yeah, you know how uncomfortable that is for me?  He just sits there glued to his TV.  Any comments I make are answered with blank looks and scoffs.

I told you, just give it time, baby.  He’ll come around.  She walked around and put her arms around his neck from behind him, leaning in to get close to his ear.  I’ll make it worth your while, she said.

Daniel smirked and stood up straight, turning to look at her.  Hmm.  What does that mean?

You’ll just have to wait and find out.  That is, of course, assuming you don’t drink too many beers tonight.

I’m not drinking at all tonight.  I’m on-call.

Well good then.  There shouldn’t be a problem, should there? she said, taking him by the chin like a child.  She stood up on her tiptoes and kissed him on the lips.

Yeah, I just hope I don’t get called in tonight.  Being a systems engineer for his company, he was almost always on-call, and got work-related pages almost constantly.  And secretly, he hoped he would get called in tonight.  Anything to escape spending time with her parents.

After checking out and loading up the groceries, Daniel took his place in the driver’s seat of the Jeep Wrangler and backed out of the parking spot.  He was trying to get in a better mood about going to her folks’ house.  Ever since their first date, he had felt resistance from her father.  Daniel had had to pick her up from her parents’ house, and her father had answered the door.  The dislike had been almost instant.

Cheer up, Dan.  We don’t have to stay long!

Any amount of time at your parents’ house is a beating for me.

Thanks.  Anna pulled her seatbelt, then sighed again, crossing her hands in her lap, flicking the grocery list she had been checking off in the store.

Hey, I only go because of you.  You know I can’t get enough of you, baby, Daniel said, leaning in to kiss her cheek.  She half-heartedly reached up and tousled his hair with a half-smile.

You know when we get married, you’re marrying my family, too, she said.

Daniel made a face and nodded.  Yeah.  I know.  Why do you think it keeps getting postponed?  Anna stuck her tongue out at him.

She shrugged and dropped the outdated grocery list in the cup holder.  Well, my parents haven’t seen us in two weeks.  So thank you for ‘enduring’ it for me, she said, making quotes in the air.

Daniel pulled out of the parking lot and into the busy street that would take them across town to the highway. Anna tightened her ponytail and rolled up her window.

Can you grab my smokes from the glove box please?

Without looking at him, she fetched the cigarettes and tossed them toward him.  They sailed right past him and out the open window.  Daniel sat staring at her for a moment before she finally turned and looked at him wide-eyed.  A mischievous mouth completed the picture.  Oops! it said, but did not betray even the slightest amount of guilt.

Her smile finally broke, then she reached in and grabbed another pack from the glove box and did the same thing.  He snagged them out of the air this time, giving her a fierce look.  Bitch, you keep tossing my smokes out the window, I’ll push you out the doe.

Anna wrinkled her nose and punched him hard in the ribs.  He shouted out in pain, laughing as he tried to recover the wheel, having almost lost control of it.  You so violent, tiny gangsta! he said.  He opened the fresh pack and threw the plastic at her, then pulled out a cigarette.  Anna sat staring out the side window, hand on her chin, and ignored it.  It finally blew out the opposite window.

The sun was on its way down, casting a funeral of shadows on the road, and a dazzling array of blue and purple spots on the windshield.  Daniel cupped his hand over the cigarette and touched the car lighter to it.  Mmm, don’t you love the smell of a fresh lit cigarette?

God, are you kidding? she said, screwing up her face again.  It’s disgusting Daniel!

Well just those first few seconds when a cigarette is lit in a car.  I love that smell.  You don’t think it smells good?  He tapped the lighter on the ashtray before pushing it back into its socket.  You gotta admit, he looked back at her.  And with no sign or warning, she disappeared.

Oh my God! he shouted.  Daniel slammed on his brakes and swerved onto the shoulder of the narrow road.  The mini-van behind him slammed into his back bumper.  Holy shit!  Anna! Daniel screamed.  The Jeep lurched forward as he lost the clutch, and died.

Quickly, he unbuckled his seatbelt and twisted wildly, in search of the woman who had been sitting in his passenger seat just seconds before.  She was gone.  Daniel was immediately trembling and white with fear.  Anna!  Anna!

Finally, Daniel popped his door open and stepped out onto the street.  Just ahead of him, another car slammed into a speed limit sign and spun out, coming to rest in the grass, smoking and leaking radiator fluid.  His eyes were wide with fear, and his heart was slamming in his chest.  There was no driver in the other car.

Daniel stood on the street by the Jeep, hands in his hair, shaking his head, staring dumbly at the chaos around him.  What in the hell.  What in the hell is going on? he kept saying.  But no one would answer.  No one was there to answer.  And his girlfriend was nowhere to be found.

After the police officer had taken Daniel’s statement, he had returned to the cruiser to run his license.  Daniel waited patiently beside the Jeep, still trembling and perplexed.  After several long minutes, he had finally looked back to the cruiser to discover the officer was no longer there either.

Daniel approached the cruiser carefully, and looked in the windows.  There was no one there.  The radio handset lay in the driver’s seat next to Daniel’s driver license.  Daniel’s stomach sank even further.  He feared he was about to hyperventilate.  Having no other immediately visible option, he pulled the door of the squad car open and retrieved his license, then returned to his Jeep, hurriedly pulling away from the scene.

His hands trembled badly as he drove home, and he chain-smoked all the way.

Daniel sat staring dejectedly at the television, hoping for some kind of explanation.  The news crews, and everyone to whom they spoke, were just as lost as he was though.

This inexplicable phenomenon has baffled scientists and clergymen alike.  No one can explain away the sudden disappearances.

The news reporter looked scared and unsure of herself as she tried to maintain composure in front of the camera.

We have talked to several people who have been affected by this – well, incredible occurrence.  We spoke to Nick Riggola earlier, a 757 pilot.  He said, About forty minutes outside of Dallas, my copilot just vanished, clothing and all.  I damn near crashed the plane trying to land.

Another man said his two children and wife vanished directly before his eyes in a shopping center.  He said, I was tying little Steve’s shoe and he just disappeared.  I turned and my wife and daughter were gone as well.  Even the shoe was gone.

Daniel shook his head again.  This was beginning to look like something out of one of his science fiction books.  His phone buzzed again.  He cleared the page and dropped it on the messy coffee table among overflowing ashtrays and computer components.  His entire living room was overwhelmed with computer equipment, laptops grinding away, circuit boards collecting dust and monitors running cheap screen savers.  It was a typical hacker’s pad, complete with empty pizza boxes and half-empty soda bottles – cigarette butts floating in the flat leftover syrup within.

His phone rang, startling him.  It was his ex-girlfriend, Priscilla.

You seeing this shit? she said.

Daniel could barely answer.  Yeah, I’m seeing it.

Where are you? Priscilla asked.  Her voice shook with fear.

I’m at home.  I just got back.

Want me to come over? she said.

No.  Don’t leave your house, Pris.  It’s effing mad out there.

I know.  I’m scared, Daniel!  I don’t want to be alone.  Can I come hang out with y’all?

Daniel breathed in sharply. He considered very briefly letting her know Anna was gone, but decided he wasn’t ready to get into it. I don’t think it’s safe, Pris.

Yeah, well, okay.

Daniel was beginning to feel sick at his stomach again.  This is like some bad novel.

You know what it looks like to me? Priscilla said.  It’s like the rapture.

Uh huh.  I don’t much buy into that whole rapture bit.

Why not, Daniel? she said.  After a long pause, she said, You know I read that rapture series by those two guys, and it was much like this.

People have been disappearing since early this morning.  A map of the United States appeared on the screen, with red spots over the affected areas.  There were red spots in almost every state, and very heavy in a lot of them.  The red spots on the map indicate the areas affected based on phone calls to police and news stations.

It just sounds too hokey to me, that’s all, he said.  Daniel leaned back and sunk down into the couch again.  I can’t see a bunch of people just ‘blinking out of existence’.  And that’s what the whole rapture thing is about.  A whole series of people just disappearing.

Look at the telly, dumbo!  That’s what happened! Priscilla said.  It sounded a lot more like sarcasm than it did joking.

Daniel sat in silence again for a few long moments.  Every time his mind went back to Anna, his stomach would sink again.  He tried to push it out of his head.  He was afraid the fear was very close to consuming him.  And he did not know how he would handle that.  But it was pretty evident that it was imminent.

Isn’t the rapture supposed to happen in one fell swoop?  Because this has been happening sporadically.  Throughout the day.  Somehow, Daniel thought that if he gave her a logical explanation, it would make his point true.  Subconsciously, maybe he even believed that he could make it all disappear in a puff of logic.

I don’t know, Priscilla said after another long silence.  Her voice was almost inaudible now.  I’m scared to death though, Daniel.

Yeah, me too.

The news reporter continued, Our rough estimate is somewhere close to fifty thousand at present, and seems to be climbing by the moment.  The reporter was trembling visibly.  The camera panned around to capture the damage, and two people on the side of the screen vanished.  Oh my God!  Two people just disappeared right over there…

Holy shit!  Did you see that? he cried.  Every time he thought he was beginning to get used to the idea that people had just vanished, he found himself surprised again, and that familiar ball of dread would reappear in his stomach.

Priscilla just kept saying, Oh my God, quietly.

Rapture or not, if Daniel could not explain it, he did not believe it.  Admittedly, it did sound like a rapturous event, and he was forced by reason to consider it now.  Was this what it was all about?  Surely, there would be more than fifty thousand people gone.  Whatever it was, it was happening right now, and apparently all over the world.  He had always been a ‘see-it-to-believe-it’ guy, but now he thought he’d have to reconsider.  He had seen it.  But he still didn’t believe it.

Daniel’s eyes returned to the television, which was replaying the disappearance in slow motion. The effect was like a cheap movie.  The people were there in one frame, and gone completely in the next.  There was no transparence or fading, they were just very simply gone.  Over and over it was played, as a commentator pointed out things like passing leaves in the breeze, and people in the vicinity of those who had disappeared.  The leaves were blowing toward the people, and then went right through the spot where they had been, with no visible skip or flaw.  The couple behind those who disappeared visibly flinched when it happened.

Fifty thousand people? Daniel said, shaking his head.  Son of a bitch.  This is bad, Pris.

This is bad, Daniel.  Then his phone went dead.

Priscilla?  He pulled the phone away from his face, fresh fear filling his veins again.  What the hell?  His phone had no signal.  Had Priscilla disappeared too?  Now he could not be sure.

*        *        *

Two days later, Daniel was beginning to feel human again.  He had not learned to manage the grief to a tolerable level, but its visitation had become less frequent.  Had his experience been unique, he would surely have thought he was crazy, but the disappearances had been worldwide.  They had labeled those who disappeared as ‘ghosters’.  Investigations were ongoing, but unproductive.  For one, nobody knew where to start.  Daniel often found himself glued to the television watching the news in hopes of some explanation, one that never came.  An emptiness had filled his chest, as he had no opportunity for closure of any kind with his missing girlfriend.

His only consolation was that only about two hundred thousand people worldwide had disappeared, and most of the clergy who had taken interviews on television had dismissed the plausibility of a rapture, saying there would have been millions gone.  Furthermore, they had all seemed to say, it would have all happened at once.  The disappearances all happened on the same day, but at different periods throughout the day – and inconsistent with any explanation rendered by time zone separations.  Some had gone early in the morning, while others went late on into the night.  But by midnight that night, the disappearances ceased, just as mysteriously as they had begun.

Mysterious they were, though, and every instance seemed set apart from the rest by its own distinctive properties.  Many people had claimed to lose someone to the evanescence as a means of swindling money.  Insurance companies investigating claims had no leads or proof whether or not someone had disappeared, or if they had just taken a vacation.  There were no policy clauses for rapturous events.  There would be though.

A man in Dayton, Ohio had filed a missing person’s report in addition to his insurance claim.  He had been boating with his wife when she had suddenly disappeared from the boat.  His insurance company had suspended all payouts pending resolution to the global phenomenon, but they had conducted their investigations nonetheless.  This man’s case had not taken long to track, as they found record of a credit card transaction where he had purchased a single one-way plane ticket to Miami, Florida, and another transaction for hotel accommodations.  His wife was down living the good life until he collected the cool four-hundred-thousand-dollar settlement, whereupon he would move down there with her and they would drink martinis on the beach for the rest of their lives.  He was disappointed to find they did not serve martinis in prison.

There were many who tried to pull off such scandals, trying to cash in on huge fortunes, but with little success.  Most people were just so stupid about the way they arranged their claims that most were dismissed within a few hours.  One man in Los Angeles had locked his entire family in the cellar in the backyard, and claimed they had disappeared.  When the insurance adjustor had come to conduct the interview and investigation, he heard muffled screaming coming from the back yard.  It turned out a rat in the cellar had scared the children into screaming, and muffed the man’s plans for sudden wealth.

Then there were those legitimate claims, from people who had really been affected by the disappearances, and most of those cases involved people just looking for answers.  Most of them were genuinely concerned for the welfare of their loved ones, and had no interest in the money.  Women calling in saying they had lost their husbands, and how could they survive now, taking care of three kids as a stay-at-home mom?  Elderly people who had lost their entire family to disappearance, who were too old to take care of themselves, stepchildren who had lost both parents, and classrooms full of kids who’d lost their teachers.  First instinct for some was to call 911.  The phones were ringing steadily, the calls and reports flooding every official desk in the nation as people tried to deal with the mass disappearance.  In some way, it affected nearly everyone.

Police officers were finding abandoned homes and cars, people wandering the streets absent of thought and cognition – as if they had lost their very minds with the disappearances.  Thus, there was looting of stores for food.  And on the tail of the tragedy, there was the looting of stores for televisions and electronics and computers and appliances.

Authorities had questioned several people arrested for looting pawnshops.  Most of them said it just seemed like the thing to do – the perfect time to do it.  The disappearances had not even directly affected them.  They had lost no one.  They just felt it was high time to pick cotton from the neighbors’ patch.

Daniel was sick to death of all of it.  If the world ever did return to some sort of normalcy, he would be full of contempt for those in it; his faith in humanity had plummeted.  He felt this was something people somehow would not get over, though.  At least he knew he certainly would not.  He found himself worrying day-in, day-out, about disappearing himself.  It seemed the constant looming threat that at any time, without warning, more people would disappear.  And who knew, maybe it wouldn’t stop until everyone was gone.  And who knew, maybe he’d be in the next batch.

Daniel had become depressed and lazy.  His Jeep had sat in his driveway ever since Anna's disappearance, and he had taken a leave of absence from work.  They made do without him.  Not that he was not important – in fact, he was vital – but he was able to work from home on a VPN, and his presence at the office was only required to assist colleagues, not customers.

He wanted badly to get back in touch with Priscilla.  She understood him better than anyone else alive, and he knew she would be able to offer him the consolation no one else could right now.  But ever since her line had dropped out, she had been unreachable.  There were certain numbers that still did not work when he dialed them.  Apparently, the catastrophe had brought down a series of cellular networks.  Daniel could not begin to understand the connection.

He and Priscilla had started dating about five years back, and were the hot topic at the time.  One was not seen without the other, and they were treated like deities.  Daniel had never really understood it, but a rise in popularity had been evident at the time of their courtship.  They were like the prom king and queen.  Everyone loved them together.

They had mutually called it quits when she learned she was going to have to move to New York.  They had been together for about three years when it happened, thus in spite of their mutual resolution, they were both badly burned by the breakup.  Now, with Anna in the picture, Priscilla had gladly stepped back and allowed him his space.  She had been happy to call him a friend if ever he needed one.  He had not seen her in several months though, and when he finally picked up the phone to call her, he got a ‘disconnected’ message.

He stood in the doorway of his office, staring at the wreckage his life had become.  The normal chaos littered his office, papers and trash piled high on his desk.  Even his physical appearance had suffered.  Daniel had not shaven in two weeks, and his showers had been rare.  He was the portrait of laziness and depression.

I’ll go back Monday.  Two weeks was pushing the limits, he thought.  Daniel was the only one at his company who had lost a loved one to the worldwide phenomenon, but he was still capable of doing his job.  Occasionally showing up was not a bad idea either.  He would just have to get used to living again.  Somehow, he would have to overcome, to persevere, and to rise above.  And ultimately, that meant going back to work.  He was not excited about going back to work.

*        *        *

The rain was beating heavily down on the hood of a black Mustang, creating a symphony of sound in the interior that mixed with the weather warnings constantly blaring from the radio.  It’s going to be a rainy day.  Flash flood warning.  Stay inside if you can!  The inside of the car was cold as the outside.  The heater had gone out at the end of last winter, and there had been no reason to have it repaired.  Not until now.               

Amalie London was behind the wheel, and was driving a lot faster than the rest of the traffic on the road.  Her need to find Daniel Brandt was exceeded only by her devotion to get to him.  She had not even met him, and was seeking him out like a treasure.  Traffic was sparse on the narrow two-lane road, and only half of those driving had intelligence enough to turn on their headlights.  Thus driving was not only rough, but also dangerous.  She ran her fingers back through her wet hair, fighting to keep it out of her eyes.

The dark clouds hung maddeningly close to the earth and gave the impression that there was no absolute separation between the two.  They were dark, menacing clouds – clouds that looked serious.  An occasional flash would light up behind them as if they were pulsing with anger.  Heat lightning she thought, and smirked at the phrase.

Amalie tapped her gas gauge, hoping it was just stuck – that she really wasn’t almost out of gas.  But she was.  It was right on the E, and there were no gas stations in sight.

The rain was coming down like the wrath of an angry god now, and it finally defeated her.  Heavy rain she could handle, but this stuff was coming down by the