Requiem for a Dream: The Complete Book

By Eve Hathaway

From the Publisher that brought you popular short story series Witching Call, Hostile Hearts, Earthbound Angels, The January Morrison Files Psychic Series, Ralph's Gift, Song of Teeth, Children of Time, Chains of Darkness, Tropical Storms, Friend Zone, The Magaram Legends, The Night Sculptor Series, and now, Requiem for a Dream...

"...no doubt you think me mad or even worse—a liar. I can say with complete confidence that not a word I have written was a lie to me."

IS IT REAL OR JUST A NIGHTMARE?

On the day 16 year old Judas Stoker III loses his mother to a car accident he finds his reality splintered to the core. Having inner struggles troubling him even from a young age and no immediate family, he is committed to a psychiatric hospital. But the arrival of a mysterious stranger seems to be his salvation as he sent him to live with his estranged great grandfather in upstate New York.

Haunted by his mother’s disembodied spirit, Judas arrives at the manor. But there is no sign whatsoever of his missing relative. With the aid of Dolores Humbert and pure desperation on his part, he ventures deep into the manor to answer his own questions, find his great grandfather and escape from the big house with his mind still intact.

Because there is danger lurking inside the manor and he is unfortunately trapped. As he desperately holds on to his reality, he realizes that manor is a labyrinth that leads to an absolute horror and evil that never even graced his dreams.

With the manor making him wonder what is real and what is not and madness slowly seeping into his consciousness, will he be able to awaken from this nightmare? Will he be able to save his mind and soul?

Will he be able to survive at all?

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EXCERPT

“You don’t have to run anymore Judas,” Bast’s melodious, tinkling voice floated through my head and I hazily turned to look at her. She looked once more like a white – clad angel who had kissed me that night in this very courtyard so many weeks ago. Her huge, luminous eyes were shining in the glowing light and I stared at them unabashedly.

“What do you mean?” I whispered.

“I will bring you peace!” She caressed my face exactly how my mother had done when I was a child and I closed my eyes as she pulled me close to her. Her lips found my ear and she spoke to me softly. “You will feel no more hurt, no more sorrow, no more fatigue. It will be as though you lived a long full life of experiences and happiness. Time will have no meaning and you will see everything as you were meant to. You and Dolores, I will start you both off where it should have been. What you will experience is the perfect life. All we ask is that you let go. Surrender, Judas.”

“Surrender...” the word slipped from my numbed lips and I blinked. A hot wetness surged behind my eyes, unmerciful and burning. “Surrender...” The word had a deceptively peaceful sound to it, and I was tired; so very tired. '

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Sandra Ross
• Release date: Nov 10, 2013
• ISBN: 9781310362231

Book preview

Prologue

THE SALLOW GLOW of the candelabra cast a dim, haunted glow over the sparsely decorated room. The house was quiet now, quieter than it had been for many, many weeks. The servants had been dismissed by the master in a fit of hopeless fury and they fled, leaving behind the monstrous manor and the cloud of death that hovered above.

Yes, death walked the hallways of this place, leaving traces of his breathless caress on every aspect of the property. He had been a visitor here for the past several months, reducing the mansion's ruler from a tall, powerfully built former general to a withered husk of burgeoning humanity.

Now his large hands had shriveled into brittle twigs and his once tanned skin was almost translucent, revealing a network of blue veins and splotches all across the balding skull. So crumbled was the once great man.

He was dying. Oh yes, the shadow of death moved closer and closer every night. He could see the black feathers as they reached out to brush him softly across the face. All his wealth, his power, and his connections -- everything was worthless now. He had nothing left that could save him from this creeping specter.

He reached out a frail hand and seized up a bowl of cold soup that had been rotting by his bedside for several days and threw it with all his might at the encroaching spirit. However, the dish just passed right through it and shattered on the opposite wall, leaving the remains of his final meal to decorate the floor.

Be gone, Demon! Leave me in peace! His voice had once been powerful, thundering over the heads of troops without the aid of a microphone, but now it emanated in a faint, croaking rasp. The shadow was silent.

Take me now then, the old man hissed. Dispense with your waiting game and take me now! I won't tolerate this cankerous weakness any longer! Curse you, curse you! Curse everything you stand for! Take my soul if you must have it, what would I not give to be rid you?

Spittle and blood sprayed from the dying man's cracked lips as he screamed obscenities at his haunter, at God, and at the Universe. Bloodshot eyes rolled madly in their sockets and the old man fell panting backwards on the bed in exhaustion from his wild outburst.

When he opened his eyes, the dark shadow had vanished. The room was as empty as it had been in the days of his health. The old man blinked his rheumy eyes in disbelief and squinted for a better look, for he suddenly realized that while death's shadow was certainly no longer there, something had indeed replaced it.

Three somethings. Three disembodied shapes, as they appeared to his failing vision, encroached upon him.

Who are you? He demanded, the fear sickeningly obvious in his voice. What do you want? Speak up!

Why boy, is that any way to talk to your associates? I was under the impression that you had something to offer.

The voice was cream and iron, honeyed steel, smooth but powerful and disembodied, belonging to no man who walked the earth. It struck a cold blade of fear into what was left of the old man, numbing him as if he'd been touched by poison. No longer did he feel any physical discomfort.

Now, the voice continued, What you have to offer is, I'm afraid, hardly worth our time. The question is, how much are you willing to give up?

Anything! Everything! The old man rasped in desperation. I will give you anything you ask! I am the master of my bloodline, every drop is yours! Only stave off the demon!

A terrible, booming laugh echoed through every corner of the mansion. Never had the man heard such an awful sound in his life. It struck horror into his very soul and he drew away, every nerve in his body trembling.

You misunderstand, the voice chided with amusement, "it is the Angel of Mercy whom I stave, I shall pin her wings to the wall. We, we are saviors of your mortal soul. We are much more worthy of the name Demon."

Whatever you are, the man replied, angels, devils, whatever. I ask that you protect me from the netherworld and deliver me from death. My bounties, bodily and otherwise, are forever yours. Grant me the immortality I seek and even my descendants will repay you. My bloodline is yours. Take what you will.

The light of the candles flickered with a phantom wind. A pair of smoldering eyes materialized over the elderly man's bed, and he suddenly felt cold, as though he had been doused in icy water. When he opened his eyes, the three shapes had faded away, leaving behind only a lingering whisper.

If that is your wish.

THEY TOLD ME I was special.

They assured me I was about to change my life.

But where I used to dream of the world and all its strangeness and splendor, I now only see oiled darkness and gnashing teeth when I close my eyes. They're eating me alive.

Tell me...what day is it?

Chapter One

I AM GOING mad.

Even as I speak, the words are twisting away from me, writhing like living creatures to whisper horrible things. They mock me, push me, tempt me to obey their lewd commands, and it is all I can do to resist them.

Nevertheless, I know that I must be heard, I must communicate my hell to the world so it can know what I know. So it can be warned. I have seen evil. Actual, true evil and I have looked it in the eye. Seeing something like that fractures the soul, and mine has been ground to powder.

The darkness is coming. Now my mind is clouding and the veil smothers me, but while I still have the strength to speak, I will tell my story until the last rattling breath escapes my broken esophagus.

Time has no place in this god-forsaken place, whether I have been here for a hundred years or a few hours, it is impossible to tell for sure. I only know that I can see the end to my hourglass. I am going to die. Death for me holds no fear but, but being forgotten...the thought terrifies me. I need to tell you who I am.

I was born Judas Stoker III, on January first in Albany, New York, to my mother, Ella Stoker. My father had long since faded from the picture and I neither knew nor cared to know his name.

My mother raised me by herself in a little apartment in the city, both of us perfectly content with each other's company. I remember we had a fat white cat named Moses who used to sit on my mother's violet beds and drove her crazy. Those memories are almost evanescent now.

The one constant blight to our peaceful lives, however, was my constant hallucinogenic nightmares. The darkness blurred the lines between reality and fantasy for me, and I became catatonic at times in my terror.

On more than a few occasions, I would wake up after an episode to find myself surrounded by four white walls with my wrists secured to a bed and my mother white-faced and large-eyed at my side.

Oh Judas! she would let out a shaky sigh and embrace me, her cheek, wet and salty against mine. You're safe, baby, you're safe.

I remember looking down to see long, red scratches snaking up my arms and my fingernails reduced to bloodied stubs. These hospital visits would end in a long, boring session with my psychologist, who always concluded that a new brand of medication was in order.

Needless to say, my education suffered drastically and I spent more of the school year at home than in a classroom. Still, my mother did her best to teach me herself and thanks to her, I made it into high school with the rest of my class.

But I digressed. All of that is meaningless now. The happy, smiling faces of my schoolmates are a thing of the past. I doubt I shall ever see a single one of them ever again. I need to tell about The Night. The Night! The Night! The cold, thundering, September night when my mother left for work and never came home.

Chapter Two

I CAN REMEMBER every fraction of every second of that night with crystal clarity. I remember being curled up on the sofa staring blankly at the flickering TV screen while my ears strained against the rhythmic drumming of the storm outside.

Each time there came the familiar swoosh of a car pulling in from the street, my heart leaped and I'd peer fruitlessly out to the window, only to be disappointed.

As the hands of the clock dragged themselves agonizingly across its face, I became more and more uneasy. Midnight was approaching and my mother hadn't yet come home. Worse, her cell phone seemed to be off, and no matter how many times I dialed and redialed her number, I was greeted with only her voicemail.

I felt like an animal in a cage as I paced around our apartment in agitation, always returning to the window to gaze out in the bleak night with no new results. In my core, I knew something was wrong.

The jangling of the cordless phone startled me out of my own head and shattered the remainder of my nerves. I jumped in fright and only after the third ring did I violently snatch it up.

Hello? Mom? I demanded breathlessly.

Mr. Stoker? The voice on the other line was cracked and muffled, and I could barely make out the words. All I could tell was that it was female. Mr. Judas Stoker?

Who is this? I shouted, unsure if she could hear me or not.

This is Lana Christopher from St. Stephen's Hospital. May I speak to Joshua Stoker?

My heart contracted in my chest with such force that for a moment I found myself temporarily robbed of breath. Y-yes, this is he, I managed to push out.

Mr. Stoker, is there someone you can call who can bring you here to the hospital? The voice sounded clearer now, more business-like. I'm afraid there's been an accident.

An accident? I repeated stupidly. What accident? Who?

There was an excruciating pause.

A Ms. Ella Stoker, car accident. She is currently under intensive care, so if you could come down here and fill out some paperwork for us...

The rest of Lana Christopher's sentence went unheard. The cordless slipped from my paralyzed fingers and hit the floor with a crash, spinning out of sight beneath the bookcase. Horrible images played through my mind as I imagined my mother's car crushed beneath the wheels of some metal monstrosity. Miniscule droplets of cold sweat beaded on my neck and forehead as I remained frozen in my horrified trance.

No, no, no. This couldn't be happening. My mother could not be hurt. She was invincible, all-knowing, and all-seeing. She could not be brought down by anything. My mother was God.

And yet...

Forcing my mind to stay shut, I grabbed the emergency cash from the jar on the fridge and fled from the apartment to hail a cab. We had no relatives to help us, no friend willing to risk their own safety to drive the troubled boy in apartment 21B to the hospital to find his mother.

My mother and I were all we had, and I couldn't let anything change that.

The following events passed in a haze of webbed misery. I can't recall the drive to the hospital or even talking to the front desk, trying to make them understand that my mother was there somewhere. They looked at me with pitying eyes and told me to wait until a broad, male nurse came to escort me to the room where they were working on my mother.

The male nurse would not let me through the doors, but I could see through the square windows the huddle of masked faces, each one with hands painted red. The body on the table, obscured by the gargantuan bodies around her, was too small to be my mother.

My mother was tall, like a runway model. She could not possibly be that small, sad, crumpled thing on the metal table. Someone