The Looming Giants

By Papa

The Proctor mansion was haunted but by a single ghost. And that wasn't even the strangest thing inhabiting the hundred-room mansion. Dangerous mysteries awaited behind every door. Beasts and monsters, dreamed up by the warped mind of its owner, lurked in nearly every room, waiting to attack,. Hungry things that needed to be fed.
And with their Mom and Dad trapped somewhere behind the impenetrable walls of the mansion, Lyse, Bell, Ben and Carson needed to get inside the old mansion. To save them, they first had to find a way a past the small being guarding the front door. Then get out alive.
However, the things waiting in the garden had other plans.
Join me for an exciting time, full of mystery, danger, adventure and most of all, fun as the Wildermuss children wend their way through a house so dangerous even its residents fear it at times, as we begin the first story in the Wildermuss family chronicles.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Papa
• Release date: Jan 10, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310753213

Book preview

Chapter 1

The End

Her whole world changed the moment Rosalind Proctor died. No longer restrained, she became unencumbered of this temporal world, and until that moment, she had never realized the burden living placed on her.

Rosalind didn’t remember much. She remembered awaking in bed, feeling an excruciating pain in her chest for about ten seconds, and then of feeling lighter than helium, as if the molecules of her entire being suddenly loosened and the body she left behind had somehow phase shifted from solid to gas. Other than that, there was no transition between this world and the next. She crossed no veil, or passed through any barrier that she felt. It was as if like Rosalind had always imagined death being, a permeation into another plane.

Though nothing violent, her death was like easing out of her lab coat at the end of the day. As if a part of her became no longer essential, Rosalind Proctor slipped out of this material world and floated into another with no more effort than an exhale of a sigh.

She recalled seeing her body as that cast-off part of her (This part of her now.) floated over it for a moment or two. She remembered thinking that this would ruin some experiments she had going, but with no alarm. Apparently, Rosalind Proctor was through with being alarmed by the world.

The only thing that stayed with Rosalind was her worry over Hector--that stuck with her. Thoughts of Hector, her little boy, now a grown man, surprised Rosalind--she suddenly knew how he felt all these years. And the pain inside him drew his mother back from her destination, a tether on her heart.

A moment of floating and then, Rosalind stood on the floor of her bedroom. Only a slight pressure where her feet touched the ground--although touched might be the wrong word for that--told her this.

She looked around, realizing that the color of everything had waned, not as in a sepia tone but something had washed out the light spectrum. Blue wasn’t so blue and red wasn’t so red. Perhaps some barrier did exist between her and the world she left? Unsure, as a scientist, Rosalind began devising ways to test this theory, not fully realizing yet that she could not affect it.

Already morning, the light coming through the sheer curtains lit up the room like diminished angel fire, Walter walking in, as was customary, and finding her sloughed-off remainder resting peacefully in bed.

With a breakfast tray in hand, Walter immediately understood what had happened, in Walter’s own peculiar way of knowing.

His response, however, surprised Rosalind. Walter slowly sat the tray loaded with coffee, (Just seeing the coffee, a drink she’d always loved, made Rosalind’s mouth want to water, though it didn’t.) crescents, cream cheese, and orange juice in front of her body, as if he was about to feed her.

Usually at this point, Walter turned and left Rosalind to her own devices. She had always thought this was because Walter cared nothing for her. She found out that this was not the case.

Walter, bless his heart, knelt beside her bed and cried in that way that Neanderthals mourned: he howled like banshee.

Moved by his remorse, Rosalind stepped closer. She placed her hand on Walter’s shoulder in an attempt to comfort him in his grief. Walter’s head shot up and he looked around, wary, alert, and somehow knowing that she hovered nearby. Rosalind realized as she stood at Walter's side that Walter sensed her.

At Walter’s wail, Monty arrived seconds later, agitated by the look of him, and then as Walter explained, a feral kind of fear appeared in Monty’s eyes. The fear Rosalind saw in his furry face also surprised her. For a moment, she believed Monty might revert to his baser, more animalistic ways, but he held firm. As if realizing most of our preconceptions of gorillas, Monty’s strong true heart prevailed over his much greater fear through a tremendous struggle of will.

It is amazing how pain seems to focus your attention. The body commands you, forces you to deal with the problem at hand. And to a lesser extent, that’s what Rosalind’s sensing of Walter’s and Monty’s pain did to her now.

The contingencies flowered before her like a morning glory awaking and they were catastrophic in their significance.

Then like a distant calling, Rosalind felt Hector’s pain. Oh, my goodness, Hector was in for a monumental break down!

But the pain before her pulled Rosalind back to the moment, as again she sensed Walter, who worried about what happened to his home now. His main question was would he be able to continue to live here? Walter loved this old house, loved it with the passion one has for some integral part of his being, which it was, since Walter’s genes were made here, his surrogate mother lived here, and Walter was born here. It was touching.

Monty, on the other hand, worried what happened to him. Monty’s fears--and Rosalind had never considered Monty as anything but satisfied with his life--were of the most immediate variety and his logic--another surprise--was faultless. If only I could have solved the language barrier, Rosalind thought, only now realizing the greatness that lay in Monty. But she didn’t fault Monty for her failures.

Rosalind marveled for a second at the success Monty had achieved; he had surpassed all her expectations. Walter was good at math and reading, since Neanderthal’s have a brain larger than a human's but the great apes lack our propensity for cunning, or so Rosalind had believed, and Monty’s almost childlike lack of guile, Rosalind had also believed, left him without the ability to follow the subtleties of planning. She was wrong on that point.

Monty’s fear was a strange dichotomy. He hoped that maybe this would be his chance to return to his home in that far off jungle he was stolen from as a child, and yet, he worried that if the authorities--nebulous in his thoughts--discovered him, he wouldn’t be deported back to Africa but placed in a more immediate and convenient place like the Nashville zoo.

That was his greater fear.

Rosalind now recalled the first time she had discussed the zoo with Monty. He was only a young gorilla then--back when he still called her Mama--and had somehow read a description of the zoo from some book he had pilfered from the library. He didn’t realize for several years that Rosalind knew he was sneaking out books to read. She found Monty’s thefts amusing, proud of him, and told him so when he realized she knew.

Later, he came to her, his huge shoulders slumped in remorse, begging for forgiveness in that way that gorillas asked for forgiveness, and when Monty asked for forgiveness, it broke Rosalind’s heart. She could never punish him for anything.

He found her in the library and approached submissively; his eyes cast downwards, he laid his head in her lap. I am a thief, he signed.

Rosalind just stroked his soft fur and told him, Oh, Monty, you never disappoint me. You make me happy with everything you do.

Then you won’t send me to the zoo, Mama? he signed.

And this hurt even more; that he thought she could do such a thing, but Rosalind said instead, What do you know of zoos, Monty?

They are places where they keep animals in pens, he’d signed. Like prisoners, held against their will.

All Rosalind could do was nod sadly and tell him, Yes, like prisoners.

But isn’t this wrong?

In some peoples reasoning it’s not. Apparently, Monty confused our penal system with zoos, and believed Rosalind might send him to one for stealing the books. But she never anticipated the turn the conversation would take.

Then I am less than a thief, he signed.

It was at that moment that Monty realized that humans considered him lesser than other humans, although he believed, believed himself to be one of us. No heartbreak is as severe as the one that destroys your belief in a just world, and threatens to make you into something you are definitely not--an outsider.

"Monty, I