Parallel. Book One of The Kasdtien Cycle

By Christopher Kneipp

Mark awakes from a dream into a nightmare. Everything he thought he knew has been a lie. He is not who he thought he was, his parents are not his parents, and the Earth is not his home.With his new found Psychic abilities, and the help of a strange girl from a Parallel world called Quell, he discovers the truth. With the help of friends, and the danger growing by the day, Mark must flee the only home he's ever known and find his way back to his true home and the war that's brewing there. Standing in his way is his Parallel, Tyrren, who seeks to kill Mark and obtain immortality.
But even on Quell, Mark will find that a world away is not far enough.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christopher Kneipp
• Release date: Dec 8, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465776754

Christopher Kneipp

Part time author and full time lunatic. I’m a married dad with two grown boys and a daytime job. Born in Sydney, the year the Beatles came to Australia, I’ve been living in Brisbane for the last 20 years My Contemporary Paranormal Fantasy is called The Kasdtien Cycle. Book one, PARALLEL is available now as an Ebook from Smashwords and all good Ebook retailers. Book two THE IMMORTAL DARKNESS is also out now at a very reasonable price. Book three ONE is due out later this year.

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PARALLEL

By Christopher Kneipp

Published by Christopher Kneipp

Smashwords Edition 2

Copyright 2011 Christopher Kneipp

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Dedication

For Julie Kneipp,

Without whom there would be no words,

No love and no light.

And for Andrew and Anthony

Who inspire me daily to be all that I can be.

Map of Quell

Prologue

The office had once been a picture of order. Its wood panelled walls, soft lighting and fine furniture, testified to its opulence, but no glory remained. The room’s interior was shattered, destroyed by something sudden and violent that had swept in and left a blanket of silence over the broken pieces.

Unevenly distributed across the faded walls were darker rectangles. Once there had been framed boasts of high achievement and honour, but all were now gone. Someone's life had ended in that place and even if they had survived the disaster, their life was over.

The rest of the office had been visited by the same chaotic force, its mark left on everything.

A large filing cabinet lay across the door. Broken shards of glass were strewn everywhere, with paper and debris covering every square inch of the floor. The disorder and silence filled the room, creating a tangible tension, like the hours after an earthquake waiting for a tsunami.

There at his desk was the room's occupant, dishevelled and dull-eyed. Doctor Martin Francis Laynor, M.D.; obstetrician and murderer. He sat corpse-like in his chair, staring at a space neither in nor out of the room. Only a dim light of life remained in his eyes, like a cooling ember not quite dead.

The doctor's appearance was a desperate cry for help, with his face unshaven, his grey whiskers matched his wild grey hair. Sprayed across his shirt, face and hands was what looked like drying blood.

In his mind Laynor still argued with himself "Murderer / Healer / Murderer / Healer."

The two concepts tumbled together struggling violently for his sanity.

"Healer/murderer/healer."

Laynor's mind was a blur of nightmarish images with no order or resolution.

The hospital nursery with many cribs and the peace of the sleeping new-borns.

The images were all mixed up in his head, coming in powerful waves, bitter and sweet, one after another.

The delivery of a child. The nurses, the midwife and the hysterical mother. All of them came into his memory as the conflicting thoughts continued to wrestle.

"Murderer/healer/murderer/healer."

He'd attempted to write the report several times, but how could he explain the mother's death? How would he explain the cold fire only he saw, leaping from the child and destroying her? He could not believe the cold callousness of the child's eyes nor the growing fear within himself. It was like bile in his throat, a silent dread had been rising ever since seeing that child.

Laynor wrote, The child already appears to be able to focus on objects, and is highly responsive to external stimuli. Pupil response is unusually advanced. Something is... he could not bring himself to write the words. There was something deeply sinister, fearful and terrible about the child, like malice personified.

Laynor remembered the eyes of the child. He could picture them, dark, almost black, and filled with a terrible knowing. The iris was indistinguishable from the pupil and he relived the nightmare of having looked into them. The child had been in his hands for only a moment, but that moment was burned into his mind's eye.

It's stupidity to be frightened of a child. It's just a child, he rebuked himself.

"An evil child," came the mental reply.

Get a hold of yourself, Laynor. It's just a child, he said.

Yet even as Laynor was reproaching himself, a chilling thought was crawling into his mind. It forced its way into his personal hell, and would not leave. A resolve too grotesque to be given voice.

"If you don't do it now, you'll never have the chance again."

Attempting to contain the quaver in his voice, Laynor had handed the child to the midwife and muttered the usual instructions, before departing the birthing suite, barely containing the urge to run.

Then the images of the birth lost their hold on him and the psychic storm returned once more, tearing at his fragile mind.

"Murderer/Healer/Murderer/Healer." The accusations were more powerful now, obscuring all other thoughts.

Pain and confusion filled the doctor's mind and something more; something disturbing. At first he thought it was just the madness, but slowly it had grown in strength and malice.

Laynor began smashing his office. He tore the useless pieces of paper from the wall and smashed their frames, pushing the filing cabinet across the door to prevent anyone from entering his world of pain and madness. Finally spent he had grabbed his finest scotch and collapsed in his chair. The child would come for him now.

It would have been incomprehensible to him only a day before but now he sat and drank 12-year-old Malt Scotch from the bottle. He tried to drown the quarrelling thoughts that filled his mind, to drive the suspicion of what he might have done from his head. Less than a day was all it had taken for the child to destroy his life. As he lifted his hand to take another swill from the bottle, the crimson-brown spray confirmed his madness.

"Murderer/Healer/Murderer/Healer/Murderer/healer/MURDERER!" the wicked thoughts screamed.

Dark images came at him like shadows cast over his mind and it was more than he could bear. The implication of what he had done returned. All the while he obsessed over the child.

"Only a child/evil//Child/Evil Child," the accusation consumed him.

"The child is evil/Evil Child." Slowly the appalling resolve had taken hold of his mind.

The wicked voice had waited for the perfect moment and uttered a single command.

"Kill the evil child."

"I can't."

"Can."

"No. Please, not that. I can't."

"Can/WILL!"

The pain, the madness and the wicked voice were overpowering and all Laynor's defences crumbled.

The words had taken control holding Laynor like a puppet and there was nothing he could do.

Half-formed images flooded Laynor's damaged mind. The nursery with many cribs. The peace of the sleeping newborns. The scalpel in his hand. The scream, high pitched, like fingernails on a blackboard.

Laynor recalled feeling no emotion as he turned and lunged at the duty nurse. Blood sprayed from a red line across her throat, spraying him and the sleeping infants. Laynor's memory was filled with the sight of the nurse's blood. So much blood and he had felt nothing.

"Evil Child/Find/Kill." Once more, the wicked voice spoke and Laynor obeyed.

The cause of his pain was the child and only in its death was peace to be found. There was no logic in the knowledge, just an inarguable instinct that drove him on towards that act of malevolence.

There were so many clear plastic cribs and they all looked alike. He'd thought blandly how he needed his glasses as he moved from one to another seeking that tiny monster. There were so many cribs and so many children and all of them identical.

Finally, he saw the deception.

"Hiding/Same/all/all the same," the thought's roiled. Kill/KILL THEM ALL!

He watched himself raise the blade again, the image clear and undeniable but then, darkness filled his mind, and the events that followed were lost. Try as he might, he could not recall what had next taken place.

He had found himself back in his office, alone with the hole in his memory, and the unbearable madness. The mess, the fear, none of it caused him the anguish of the unanswered questions. Questions raised by the sprayed accusation of blood that marked him.

Laynor considered his options. He was certain of his guilt. The pain had passed now, leaving only numbness in the place where it had been. He was exhausted. What was needed was a sacrifice as atonement for his sins.

Taking a large swig from the bottle Laynor began rifling through his drawers. Pills and vials chosen and stacked in a growing pyramid on the desk or discarded onto the floor as he rummaged for his exit. Blades he laid out in a line on the desk, along with syringes and assorted potential tools of self-destruction.

He searched cupboards, cabinets and drawers, all the while stockpiling his armoury. As he reached the bottom draw he stopped, sighting the shiny edge of a well oiled cedar box; a memento of his time at the hospital. He pulled it out of the drawer and placed it on the edge of the desk. It was not very large, with a silver plate engraved on the lid. Lifting the lid revealed the contents which taunted him. The black starting pistol was awarded to the department that won the hospital charity games. Obstetrics had won it for the last three years running. A tear came into his eye.

In the soft light of his office the pistol looked real enough but fired only blanks. It's impotence teasing him like an empty promise and without thinking he pulled the trigger. The replica exploded into life and the gunshot reverberated through the confines of the office.

Great, deaf and crazy, he said and then laughed. Taking another swig from the bottle he considered the mountain of options spread out before him.

Outside his office he heard scurrying feet and muffled voices, the sounds of panic were growing. Someone knocked on his door and he screamed obscenities finishing with a stern, I'm busy.

He began sorting through his collection of drugs and tools, weighing up his options carefully, writing notes on a pad. For a while he wrote notes for his treatment until he heard another knock at the door.

Doctor Laynor, this is the police. We've got a few people worried about you, do you want to open the door and tell us what's going on. The voice seemed reasonable, almost pleasant.

Go away, Laynor shouted. He turned his back on the door and returned to the desk, his notes and the pistol.

Was it his thought or the child playing with him still, he had no way of knowing but either way he needed an exit and he saw how the pistol could release him.

Opening the barrel he removed the spent cartridge and replaced it. He had two shots and if his plan was going to work he would have to be convincing. He smiled as he remembered his university days, doing amateur theatre. He could be quite convincing.

I've got a gun, get away from the door or I'll shoot. He felt a strange exultation as he said his line and punctuated it with another gunshot. His ears ringing, he laughed at the thought of the headlines; remembered as the Medical Maniac who killed a bunch of newborns.

Suddenly the door heaved under the weight of the police as they rammed it. The lock splintered its housing with a terrible crack and the two policemen burst through.

Laynor prepared himself, calmly raising the pistol and pointing it at the shattering door. Wait for your cue, he joked wryly.

The tactical response police slammed against the door one more time, pushing the filing cabinet away and exposing them both to the barrel of Laynor's harmless pistol. Laynor pulled his trigger again and the police revolvers echoed his shot.

Down in the nursery the babies lay without making a sound, all united by their bloody christening. All bound to the dark eyed child, Tyrren.

Chapter One: Fog and Shadows

The shadows danced across the ceiling like dark creatures, while Mark Tandell was a motionless wave in the covers of his bed, silent but for his gentle breath. Outside the winter wind blew hard and loud, its wailing cry rising and falling in pitch. Through it all he slept, unaware of the importance of that moment.

In appearance, he was unremarkable, just another teenager from suburban Sydney. Nearing his sixteenth birthday, his messy, shoulder-length hair was in need of a cut. Lately, his fringe had been flopping over his eyes. Only a barely perceptible flicker of his eyelids betrayed the fact his mind was alert. Something new and extraordinary was happening to him.

For the first time in his life, Mark was dreaming.

"Rane Fax, the Worlds' Hope,

Answer the call.

Power thy child,

Power thy thrall.

Rane Fax, oh Worlds' Hope,

Answer the call."

The soft melody drifted through Mark's mind, cool and vaporous.

The singer spoke, his voice that of a young boy.

"I will show you your enemy. He bends the will of those around him, and few may resist. Prepare child, for the days of your childhood are over."

The darkness of the dream gave way to a blinding light and a deep sense of terror.

* * * * *

Mark sat bolt upright in his bed, mouth dry and ears ringing. For a moment he was caught in the halfway world between sleep and awake. He knew he had been dreaming, but about what, he could not recall. Whatever it had been, it terrified him and his heart still pounded.

Soaked in icy sweat, he sat alert in the dark of his bedroom, shivering at the cold and trying to remember the dream. Only snatches remained, vague feelings of horror and images that were fading as he calmed himself. There had been something, like a song or a voice calling and he strained to listen. Only the wind and the gum tree branches scraping against the corrugated iron roof answered his pricked ears.

Finding the switch on his bedside lamp, he flicked it on, filling that corner of his room with bright light. He squinted in the brightness.

Weird, he whispered hoarsely.

He had never dreamed before, not that he could recall anyway, and the few images that remained in his head were fragmented.

Too disturbed to sleep any more, Mark slid out of bed and crossed the room, peering out the door. From his parents’ room down the hall, he could hear his father. Perhaps it was the way his mother would raise an eyebrow whenever his father denied he snored, but the sound always made Mark smile.

Shutting the bedroom door, he turned on the overhead light and sat down at his desk.

In front of him, leaning against the wall, was the canvas he had been working on for Art; or more to the point, not working on. It was little more than a primed canvas, covered in nonsensical lines and graphite smudges, no closer to being finished than it had been at the start of the week. He had only taken the subject to avoid doing Ancient History.

He thought twenty to three in the morning was probably not a good time to be creative, but his nerves were still on edge. Trying to go back to sleep seemed pointless.

He positioned the canvas on the desk in front of him, opened the box of acrylics, laid out his brushes and waited for a flash of inspiration to come.

It didn't.

He rubbed his eyes, trying to grind the sand from them. Holding the canvas by its edges, he shifted in his seat and concentrated on the grubby pencil marks.

Still nothing happened.

He leant back and looked over his shoulder at the bedside clock. The digital display read two forty seven AM. Seven minutes he had sat there. He grumbled inwardly.

For a moment, the illuminated display of the clock seemed to mesmerise him and he felt a wave of nausea surge in his stomach. As the unpleasant sensation passed, his lamp went out startling him and he nearly toppled backwards. The clock's display changed to the next minute but instead of two forty eight, the clock read five fifty seven.

Spinning his chair around he reached for the clock to see what was wrong with it, but the sight of paint spattered on his hand caught his eye and he froze.

Paint was smeared across his fingers, swiped and flecked across his wrist, dabs of different colours and mostly dry.

The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end and he did not want to look at the canvas, afraid of what he would see. Confusion and fear filled him, freezing him like a statue for a time.

Though dawn was still a way off, the sky outside his window was beginning to lighten.

Slowly, his curiosity overcame his apprehension and he turned back to face the painting that had been created. It was flawless. He hoped he had done it in his sleep, not wanting to consider the alternatives. It had to be more than somnambulism that produced such a painting. It was a work of art and he knew he was no artist.

The subject of the painting had a dream-like quality that was difficult to define. A strange landscape filled the canvas, weaving together the familiar and the bizarre, as though he had taken a dream and placed it directly onto the canvas.

Plains of green grass flowed into the depths of the scene where they met a purple-blue mountain range on the distant horizon. He could see the texture of the grasses, intricate in their detail. In the foreground, a bare and dirty little hillock rose from the plains like a boil. A large granite block with roughly hewn sides and a smooth top crowned the knoll. Large enough for a man to lie on, it looked like an altar.

There were many figures surrounding the knoll, perhaps hundreds. Kneeling bodies, with their faces to the ground and their arms stretched out before them towards the stone, like worshippers. Only three figures in the painting did not prostrate themselves before the altar. A woman, a man and an infant child.

The woman was translucent, the detail of the mountains showing through her misty shape. Mark was certain he had seen her before but could not quite place where. She stood like a ghost with the crowd around her feet, looking to the altar with a deep sadness in her eyes. Something about her nearly moved him to tears, though he could not think why.

Then there was the man wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Whilst all the other figures were wearing robes, or similar period dress, he was incongruously dressed as though he had just walked off the streets of Sydney. In his hands, he held a long stick, which he brandished above the altar preparing to strike.

Mark's eyes then came to the centre of the painting and onto its subject. Lying on the granite altar was a child. Only a baby, it lifted its frightened little hands, as though they could protect it. A column of orange light rose to the edge of the canvas surrounded the child and most of the altar block.

The picture was beautiful, though Mark couldn't escape the disturbing question of its creation.

A signature was scratched into the wet paint in the bottom right-hand corner.

Rane Fax.

The name resounded in Mark's ears as he whispered it, like an echo of something very important he should have known. The whole scene seemed incredibly familiar and he felt he should have known. Where had he seen the ghost or heard that name? Why did he feel he should know?

He continued to wrestle with the riddles the painting represented, until the alarm jolted him from his seat before he slammed it into silence. Six a.m. It reminded him he was to meet up with his best friend Matthew at Warrimoo Oval around seven o'clock.

He went to the bathroom and scrubbed the paint off his hands. Returning to his room, he changed into his drab, grey uniform and prepared for school. Seeing the painting again, he tried to rationalise it but try as he might to remain calm, his anxiety grew.

* * * * *

Sitting under the change-rooms' awning at the edge of the oval, Mark stamped his feet on the concrete, trying to return circulation to his toes. His shoes were soaked through from the frosty grass and the cold made his toes ache. The winter sun was still to rise, but the lights of the shelter had already gone out. The grey, pre-dawn light fought through the thick fog, giving a strange half-light to the whole area.

Picking off some dried paint he had missed in the shower, he glanced at his wristwatch. Ten minutes past seven; Matthew was late, as always. If Matt’s foster parents had caught him sneaking out early in the morning, he'd have to talk his way out of it. Matt could talk his way out of anything. He had a knack for straddling the line between what he could do and what he should do and he’d get away with it.

It made Mark a little envious at times, wishing he had that kind of confidence.

Leaning forward, Mark looked left and right, but the thick fog obscured just about everything beyond the awning. Even the white picket fence that bordered the oval was just a vague shadow in the fog. As the memory of the dream and the painting began to trouble him again, he felt very alone.

At last he saw a figure moving through the haze towards him, seeming to materialise from the very vapour. Standing, Mark spoke in a loud and impatient tone, About bloody time you got here!

Instead of moving from the haze, the figure stopped, standing still for a moment just beyond the point of clear visibility, before vanishing back towards the street and into the fog.

At first Mark was simply annoyed, Come on Matt. Quit stuffing around. He shouldered his backpack and walked in the direction the shadow had gone. Reaching the bus shelter on the street he found Matthew was not there and he slammed his pack down on the bench seat with a thud.

Even as he stood there fuming, there came a scratching noise from behind the shelter, like someone scraping their fingernails down the plywood backing.

Stop it, Matt. I'm serious. This is no time to muck around. Mark's voice was beginning to sound edgy, as the certainty his friend was the prankster faded. He moved cautiously around the back of the shelter. The scratching continued, though there was no one to be seen.

His spine tingled and he shivered as fear and the chill morning air mingled. Backing away from the shelter, towards Matthew's street, he kept his eyes on the bus stop as the fog swallowed it. The sound was becoming louder, as the scratching of fingernails was replaced with frantic rasping that continued for another minute.

He was still debating whether to flee or wait for Matthew’s arrival when the sound ceased abruptly, replaced by a penetrating silence. No birds carolled, nor could he hear the distant drone of morning traffic. He was no longer breathing and his ears filled with the pounding of his heart.

Appearing in the fog, the shadow from the oval materialised from the dull outline of the bus shelter. A second shadow joined the first and spoke.

Hey little boy, come out to play.

Mark’s choices were simplified as panic took hold of him and, turning on his heels, he sprinted towards Matthew's house, leaving his bag behind. With adrenaline driving him forward, he fled into the mist and away from the menacing voice in the fog.

He ran with every grain of strength, certain he could feel his tormentors only a few steps behind him. Disregarding the slickness of the ground, he raced across the wet grass, frantically glancing over his shoulder. He saw nothing except the fog swirled behind him.

Turning back to where he was going, his foot slipped, his legs crumpled beneath him and he fell hard. There was a loud crack from his left ankle as he tumbled to the ground, face first and spread-eagled, sliding through the mud and soaked grass, powerless to stop himself.

He tried to regain his feet even