Looking for the Sandman

By Greg Sedlacek

Sociology professor Jill Duncan was living “The Dream.” Besides having a fast-track career she was married to a successful psychiatrist Ted and had two beautiful children.
To Jill, the war in Iraq was something she heard news about seemingly everyday yet it seemed to be something far off and unthreatening. Jill’s false sense of security comes unraveled quickly when three members of her wedding party from ten years ago succumb to mysterious deaths by unspecified causes in little over six week’s time.
Unknown at first to her is that a mysterious rogue figure nicknamed “The Captain” just back from Iraq is the mastermind behind this bloodbath.
The Captain, along with Jimmy Larson, a battle weary underling from the war and a film-making guru has been sending grizzly email attachments with videos to Jill’s friends. When viewed the videos trigger time delayed hellish nightmares in the victims causing them to die in their sleep.
Eventually Jill and the remaining living members of her wedding party hatch a plan to have one of their husbands watch the mesmerizing videos but to be awakened midstream. The newest version of the video is peppered with clues that Larson has purposely placed there because he no longer wants to go along with the Captain’s murderous scheme.
Armed with these clues, Jill hires a private investigator named Frank Hillary to hunt down her tormentors. Hillary is a highly regarded street smart P.I. who had cracked numerous landmark cases but even he is in for the ride of his life as he ponders whether he is the hunter or the hunted.
This is a story which shows that not all the casualties of war are found on the battlefield.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Greg Sedlacek
• Release date: Apr 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301682782

Greg Sedlacek

Greg Sedlacek is a former reporter for the Daily Home News in New Brunswick, NJ, and former gossip columnist for New Jersey Monthly Magazine. He has also appeared as a contributor network writer on Yahoo.

Book preview

LOOKING FOR THE SANDMAN

Greg Sedlacek

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2008 Greg Sedlacek

Published By Greg Sedlacek at Smashwords

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.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to thank the people whose help was invaluable in the completion of this book.

Thanks to my daughters Nina and Natasha who challenged me to work harder at bringing characters to life. To Joe Izzo, for his ingenious recovery of 110 pages of manuscript that suddenly disappeared from my flash drive, the backup flash drive and the computer monitor back in 2008 when the book was still a work in progress. To my friend Connie Feeney for reminding me to never give up. To Irene Abbassi for much of the same, plus for imparting to me ways of staying optimistic as revealed to her from the DVD entitled The Secret.

Also thanks go out to Malaysian Airlines Pilot Shaffie Roos, for his spellbinding revelations regarding the Jinn and other planes of existence. Thanks to my parents Arlene and Dick, my wife Farrah and my sister Pam as well as the rest of my family both here and in Malaysia for their never ending encouragement. Thanks to my formatter Lucinda Campbell and my cover designer Donna Casey.

PRELUDE

In some Asian cultures, there is a story (perhaps mythical,) about a man whose curiosity knew no bounds. From the time he was a young man, his parents and various other relatives had told him that there exists a spirit world inhabited by what the Asians, particularly Muslim Asians refer to as jinn. The jinn are spirits made of light. There are jinn both good and evil and as you read these words, the Muslims will tell you, chances are there’s one or more jinn right in the same room with you.

So getting back to the inquisitive man, he was once visited by God who being all knowing, already knew what this man would ask of him if offered one wish. God offered the man his one wish and the man asked to have the curtain lifted. The curtain this man was referring to is the partition that separates us from the other world inhabited by the jinn. For this man, it was a matter of seeing is believing. He wasn’t content to take his elders’ word for the existence of the jinn.

It is said that God asked the man one final time if he was really sure that this was what he wanted. The man’s answer was an emphatic yes. The man was absolutely fixated on seeing the jinn and their domain for himself.

With that, for this man only, God lifted the curtain. With that done, the legend has it that the man stepped out of his home and onto the road. People were passing by, rather oblivious to this nondescript older man. Almost instantaneously, the man was aghast at the sights and sounds that assaulted his senses.

Hideous looking dwarfish trolls, with sagging faces and gaunt bodies abounded in the surrounding environment. Some clung to the shoulders and backs of the human passers by. Other jinn, even more aggressive, wrapped their emaciated figures around the necks of the unsuspecting people. Some of the jinn wore expressions of sadness, while others were gleeful, seemingly taunting and mocking this man for having had the audacity to enter their realm. These jinn, the exuberant ones, laughed sardonically at the pathetic human.

Beyond seeing the jinn themselves, the ignorant man was privy to other sights and sounds of the jinn world. For God had totally immersed this man in the jinn’s environs. The air was foul smelling, musty and had a drab green aura to it. The jinn did not consume food and water as we do. Rather, they consumed smoke and fire. Some of the jinn even sang, but what they called music, most of us would dismiss as deeply disturbing, ear piercing noises.

Eventually, the man was visited by his ultimate dread. Some of the evil jinn began accosting him. Initially, they drew themselves up to his legs and did some sort of a victory dance. Then, one by one, they began slithering up his legs, then his hips and up his chest. Although the jinn have no weight whatsoever, the man’s breathing became laborious as he was struck by the illusion of their engulfing bodies having mass and density. The man was completely mortified and could no longer endure the spectacle unfolding before him.

He shouted out for God and God being good heeded the man’s cry for help. Please God, close the curtain, pleaded the man. Now God had only offered the man one wish which had already been granted. Had God been spiteful, he might have left the man to survive with his own guile. However, God pitied the man and obliged, closing the curtain and forever ending this man’s desire to see the jinn.

For the duration of his life the man always regretted having ever asked God to usher him into the jinn’s world. It had served as his worst nightmare.

What about the rest of us? When we sleep at night and we dream, don’t we often dream horrible things? Aren’t there times, in our dream world where the dead come back to life? We see the image of a person clearly. One part of our consciousness tells us this person is dead. Yet, there they stand in living color, talking to us. Caressing us. Convincing us that they are still real. In a sense, when we dream, hasn’t a curtain been lifted as well? Sometimes, when we dream of the dead, we find ourselves wondering if we too have not already died. How else, could we be seeing the dead with such high definition and clarity?

All of this leads us to some other questions. How many times in our lives have we heard of someone’s passing away in their sleep? The bereaved relatives will placate themselves by announcing so and so died of natural causes. He died peacefully in his sleep.

Yet, how can these people be sure of the exact nature of their loved ones’ deaths? Is death by natural causes any less painful than any other death? And as for peaceful, there is nothing peaceful about the ultimate life experience.

Finally, we come to the ultimate questions regarding dying in one’s sleep. By its nature, sleep is seen as a deep, relaxed state. The heart beats slower. Breathing, too is slower and calmer. Sleeping is generally viewed as a completely tranquil state. So why do people die in this state, when in essence it would seem like an extremely healthy state to be in?

Could it be that in sleep, a curtain gets lifted and the sleeping person dreams something so horrible as to be scared to death?

Sweet dreams!

CHAPTER 1

Becky Moran was a control freak who seemingly had it all. She and her husband Jack already owned a palatial home in Florida’s Lauderdale-by-the-Sea with no mortgage. The home overlooked one of the area’s priciest marinas where $10-20 million yachts were the rule rather than the exception. Both of them were on a steady career track, she as a physical therapist with her own practice and he as a real estate/bankruptcy attorney. With the depressed housing market in Florida, Jack’s business was booming.

Becky was a beautiful, radiant brunette with a curvy figure that belied her early-thirties’ age. Both she and Jack came from large and financially well-heeled families. Realizing that they lived charmed lives Becky and Jack were quite philanthropic. Their favorite charity was donating to the organizations that helped locate missing or exploited children. However they had a smattering of other causes that they gave generously to as well.

Money was no object for them and as if all this good fortune wasn’t enough for the couple to have been bestowed with, Becky had found out two months ago that she was definitely expecting the couple’s first child. Jack and she had both been ecstatic upon hearing the news.

It was a weeknight and as was usually the case at about eleven o’clock, Becky was winding down her day by checking through her emails which she had no time to read during her frenzied work hours at the PT clinic. Jack was working in the spacious kitchen which was separated from the home’s office where Becky was seated by a cozy dining room.

Becky had always been a very open person and as such, many of the emails she received were spam items from parasitic marketing companies who had obtained her phone and email from any of the many stores she shopped in and never hesitated to impart with her personal contact information.

On this particular evening there were ten new emails and eight of those were spam. Mechanically, Becky checked off each one of the eight and then clicked on the delete button. Next she came to an email from hers and Jack’s financial planning adviser.

Becky: As we agreed to, today I purchased 1,000 shares of Conoco Oil at $21.25 per share as instructed. Removed $22,000 from the annuity to cover. Ciao! Carl.

Becky instantly plugged this data into a stock tracking program she had which would enable her to check on the stock’s pricing at any time with just several clicks of the mouse.

She shouted in to Jack. Carl purchased a thousand shares of Conoco Oil today. I forgot to tell you that he was doing this but he said it’s been trading at well-below value.

Jack sounded miffed. Why didn’t you ask me first? Call him back tomorrow. Tell him to dump those shares. I recently read that Conoco was just added to the EPA’s list of environmentally unfriendly companies. They’ve had two oil spills which they tried to claim they weren’t responsible for. Don’t you read the news when you’re surfing the net? asked Jack sounding displeased.

I didn’t know, replied Becky sheepishly. I’ll take care of it. I’m sorry.

I just thought you should know, exclaimed Jack from the other room almost apologetically. He had realized that he may have come off as sounding rather condescending.

Becky returned her attention to the computer. The last email she had to open came from a sender named Jill D. The subject read A Blast from the Past. Becky perked up at the sight of this message for in these times where everyone was always on the move it was a welcome sight to get an email from someone from the gang. She smiled cheerfully at the sight of this email and whispered to herself, Jill Duncan. Well I’ll be damned. Becky and Jill went back as far as sixth grade.

Becky clicked on the email. Curiously, the opening message was quite brief. It simply read Becky: Have been thinking of you and thought you might be interested in the below attachment. Please click on it and enjoy. Jill.

For all of her education, both formal and that gleaned from being a successful business women, Becky had a weak spot. She loved sitting in front of a computer screen. Just as some people she knew got off on watching hours on end of television, Becky never tired of peering at her flat screened monitor. She was a young adult in the burgeoning age of the internet and as Jack had often chided her about she seemed to take everything she got off of the net as gospel truth.

Naively, Becky downloaded the attachment and opened it. It mattered little that what appeared on the screen was rather curious. It was on the screen, that’s all that mattered to Becky and she wanted to see the attachment in its entirety. The opening graphic was that which appeared to be a square shaped tunnel of infinite length. Special effects created the illusion that the person looking at the tunnel was gradually moving into the tunnel. The computer’s speakers dinned with white noise. It was uncomfortably loud at first but as Becky was drawn into the hypnotic vacuum of the tunnel, the noise became less and less irksome.

In the other room, Jack heard the white noise and assumed that Becky had forgotten to turn off a television. He was preoccupied whipping up two portions of making Baked Alaska and chose to let the noise play out. He figured that perhaps his wife had made a quick trip to the bathroom and that she would no doubt turn off the irritating sound in several moments.

After about ten seconds of viewing he tunnel, Becky began to observe a quick staccato-like succession of flashing images. Each image passed by in a split-second subliminal fashion. The entire digitally mastered film had been expertly constructed into a matrix which when watched bypassed the viewer’s conscious mind and buried itself below, awaiting activation at the onset of the unwitting victim’s falling asleep. Each frame burned itself into the young yuppie’s subconscious, even though they remained imperceptible to her conscious mind. At first, the images were spaced apart by a second or two so of time. However, the pace quickly accelerated and soon, Becky was bombarded by a barrage of the images. Unknown to Becky was the reality that she was being hypnotized by the computer. So enticing and spellbinding was the entire effect that Becky’s eyes had actually stopped blinking!

Psychosis had set in.

Five minutes had passed yet it seemed like five seconds. Finally a voice broke in over the computer’s speakers. The voice was far too subdued for Jack to hear in the other room.

It was a man’s voice which had apparently been synthesized. The pitch and inflections of the voice did not sound like anyone’s natural tone. It almost sounded like the voice one heard from a person who had throat cancer and had his voice amplified through a squawk box, only with much more base.

The next time you fall asleep you will die. How long do you think you can remain awake? One? Two? Maybe three days? Eventually sleep will overtake you. Then you will be mine. Pleasant dreams.

Whereupon, the voice on the computer instructed Becky to erase the email at once. Becky didn’t need this last instruction. She had been sufficiently spooked. Her female intuition told her to erase the creepy email so no one else, especially Jack would be exposed to it. When she found the Jill D. email, she pointed her cursor to the delete tab and her trembling fingers clicked on the mouse as hard as possible. It was as if Becky thought that by clicking the mouse with rage and anger she could make her problems go away.

A moment later, Jack walked into the adjoining dining room, triumphantly holding a tray containing two scrumptious looking deserts, fresh fruit, and two cups of herbal tea. He placed the tray upon the modern looking glass and stainless steel dining room table and peered into the adjoining space that was his and Becky’s office. Instantly he was hit by a red flag. He could see Becky who was slowly rising to her feet. She wore a quizzical expression and appeared to be looking down at the floor, almost as if she had lost something there.

Jack instantly surmised that his wife was disturbed about something. What’s wrong honey? he asked.

Jack was shocked by his wife’s instantaneous and dramatic answer.‘Whatever you do, don’t let me sleep. I can’t be allowed to fall asleep."

What’s wrong? Why can’t you go to sleep? replied Jack.

I don’t quite know, said Becky blankly, her voice tailing off in an accent that almost sounded British. But if I fall asleep, I’m quite afraid I won’t wake up.

During his entire marriage to Becky, Jack had been forced to endure these types of periodic anxiety attacks suffered by his wife. They had been incited by an episode in which several masked men had broken into then single Becky’s Daytona Beach apartment while Becky was alone. The men had badly ransacked the apartment looking for valuables. Then they had partially raped Becky and the frightened woman had only been saved from complete sexual assault by the fortuitous passing by of two married couples who accosted the masked men and chased them away. Becky had relived that nightmarish ordeal so many times during their marriage that Jack himself was haunted by it. Often he woke up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat after reliving something that had never even happened to him.

Jack excused himself for a moment, leaving the trembling Becky to herself and headed straight upstairs for the bathroom adjoining the master bedroom. Here, he grabbed a valium. He also grabbed a bottle of his wife’s angina medication and hustled downstairs. He held out the bottle of the angina medication as a decoy, for in her present state if Becky knew he was offering her a valium, Jack seriously doubted she would cooperate and take it. He also was quite sure that in her current state of confusion she wouldn’t realize he was giving her the sleeping pill. Becky had sung this song on other occasions. There had been countless incidents in which Becky had said the dreams of that Daytona Beach ordeal were too vivid and that she didn’t want to go to sleep. Jack had always either medicated her or talked her into sleeping, his rationale being that you couldn’t just stay awake forever.

Look Becky. It’s a nitroglycerin tablet.

Becky looked at her husband dubiously. He shook his head forward and backward as if affirming his honesty. Look, here’s the bottle right here. Take this. You’ll feel better.

Finally Becky acquiesced.

Jack didn’t want Becky to realize he was trying to get her to fall asleep, so instead of asking her to lie down in bed, he urged her to recline on the sofa in the living room. He had endured dozens of Becky’s panic attacks over the years and while this one did seem a trifle more extreme than others it was nevertheless a played out scene.

We’ll watch the Tonight Show, he hollowly promised. However, it was not to be. Becky began drifting off to sleep. Several times she muttered something that Jack could just barely make out. Jill. Jill. I’ve got to call Jill." In a scant few moments, Becky had drifted off to sleep.

Jack remained seated by her side until he was sure she was sleeping quite soundly. Then, he retired to the upstairs bedroom, under the delusion that he had done the right thing for his wife.

At it’s onset, Becky’s nightmare came about gradually. However, soon, it mushroomed into a ghastly crescendo. What made the dream so absolutely horrible was its complete dissonance. Images of a terrible war with men being decapitated and woman and children suicide bombers blowing themselves up were juxtaposed with those of a surreal figure loosely modeled after the mythical Greek God Proteus. This character that haunted Becky manifested itself in at least a half dozen forms. In his first appearance, this figure resembled a huge balding man who looked like one of those larger than life Buddha representations and was so physically powerful that even ten strong men could not subdue him. This figure was doggedly chasing Becky who was running for her life. Becky saw herself scramble into an elevator and when the bulky monstrous looking figure could not fit between the doors of the elevator, it instantly transformed itself into much smaller sized jagged metal spear. This spear streaked into the elevator and began slashing at Becky the elevator ascended to a higher floor.

Becky saw herself helplessly thrashing about the elevator until the doors opened and she was able to scurry out. She saw herself duck down a small brilliantly lit corridor. In hot pursuit, the Protean spear, now transformed itself into a two headed ape that was able to use its two heads to look left and right simultaneously.

Then somehow, unbeknownst to her, Becky saw herself escape into a beachfront amusement park which caused her to breathe a sigh of relief. For a moment the scene she saw was quite pleasing, children running every which way with smiles on their faces. However, Becky’s feeling of security was to be short-lived. This amusement park was unlike any she had ever seen. Each and every ride was constructed with the intention of instilling complete terror into its user. As she entered the house of mirrors, the confusing labyrinths became filled with scorching flames. Becky saw the red hot plexi glass panes melting in every direction around as well as her own reflection as it became distorted in the molten mess. She managed to navigate her way out of this spectacle and onto a roller coaster.

The roller coater slowly but surely climbed to its highest point. Then it began its sheer drop. It streaked downward and Becky felt her stomach knot up tightly. It rounded a banked curve, went up a smaller hill then descended again. It careened down a short straightaway before jumping its tracks and plunging into the churning ocean below!

Somehow, Becky was thrown from the roller coaster car just before its destruction. Once again, she had but a second or two to relish the fact that she had escaped alive before she found herself on another ride.

Now she found herself on a log-flume water ride. Suddenly she experienced the sensation of being thrown from the hollow log she was riding in and landing in the liquid on which the log floated. However, instead of finding herself floating in water, she was immersed in a sea of blood! In the dream, she actually felt as if she had swallowed some of the plasma and could feel the sticky substance as it made its way down her throat.

Still sprawled out on the couch, Becky was drenched in sweat. Her chest heave- hoed as her traumatic dream experience unfolded.

Next, Becky found herself back in the war scenario. By this time it became evident to her that she was dreaming of the Iraq War. She saw the charred remains of a road sign that read something in Arabic atop the word Fallujah. As roadside bombs exploded soldiers and civilians alike were thrown asunder. Arms and legs were ripped off people and thrown into the ashen air above. Becky saw in 3-D what it was like to have a bullet whiz right by her ear. A small child, his arms extended outwards offered her an apple. A second later the apple exploded and all that remained of the boy was a mangled and badly burned pair of sandals.

Cut to a tall building. Becky saw a solitary man looking out a window at a point about midway up the building. While she could not actually see the man’s facial features, her subconscious mind told her that this man was her father. Suddenly the building imploded and she gasped as she saw the man swallowed up by the thunderous mass as it plummeted to the ground.

Quickly this image gave way to that of a large tsunami. Becky felt herself running over an expansive bridge that crossed over a spacious bay. The tsunami was roaring toward the bay from the Oceanside. Becky felt herself running. Sprinting. Clawing at the air in front of her as if she thought she could somehow make herself fly.

And then she was back in Iraq again. She found herself still very much alive but precariously so. Strapped to her body was a bulky vest packed with explosives. Time was ticking by and she knew she needed to get out of the vest. Other well-meaning people were trying to help her. However, it seemed that the more they struggled, the tighter the vest’s straps became. Just at the time, it seemed she was about to be freed of this encumbrance, there was a blinding flash and a thunderous roar and all went black. Becky had dreamed her own death.

The entire dream was a stomach-wrenching, sadistically orchestrated hodgepodge of visceral imagery that could have only one desired effect -the instilling of complete fear in its victim.

Jack Moran awoke the next morning, shut off the alarm clock and instinctively reached to his left side to feel the warmth of his wife. Then it occurred to him that he had left her sleeping in the living room.

He threw on an expensive looking terry bathrobe and slippers. He ambled down the first six steps, paused at the landing trotted down the last six steps feeling well rested and happy to be alive. Then Jack walked into the living room. Very quickly he was consumed by the sickening stomach wrenching realization that giving Becky the valium last night would turn out to be the biggest mistake in his young life. Becky’s eyes were wide open but motionless. Her mouth was agape and twisted at both ends with rigor mortis. Becky’s left arm hung listlessly off the side of the couch. Yet this all paled in comparison to the last thing Jack noticed.