Sleeping Souls: Part One: Rousting

By Adam Malawista

As the newly appointed groundskeeper at Junction Lake, a picturesque, family-owned amusement park in southern New Hampshire, the last thing Duncan Waynewright needs is a slew of involuntary, supernatural experiences that afford him glimpses of alternate realities and otherworldly beings.

Duncan's wife, Mia, thinks he's losing his mind until Wade, their five-and-a-half-year-old son, begins displaying similarly odd behavior—appearing to be prescient and talking about his own encounters with strange entities. Mia struggles to protect her children and her own sanity as Duncan's dream job becomes ground zero for a series of paranormal occurrences. The family's veil of reality continues to be pulled away, rousting them all from their proverbial sleep and pointing them towards previously unimaginable states of mind and soul.

After a literal and figurative roller coaster ride into the depths of numinous mystery, Duncan develops an inimitable bond with cowboy wannabe and bawdy wisecracker Jared Wilson, the amusement park's chief ride engineer. Much welcomed answers come in the form of an exotic and bizarre being who reveals herself to both Duncan and Wade in their dreams. Jared solves a few riddles himself, uncovering some rather peculiar facts about Walter Davies, the owner of Junction Lake. Jared and Duncan uneasily begin to question their boss's true identity. When events culminate at, on, in, and above the lake one night, Duncan is led to a psycho-spiritual crossroads. He decides to take the plunge and forge ahead into uncharted territory, both physical and metaphysical.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 21, 2016
• ISBN: 9780996826808

Book preview

Viss

CHAPTER ONE

The Shaiboo

The first time I saw the Shaiboo was on the night of the day Sabrina was born. Mia and I felt so blessed as we took turns holding our little girl. Her two brothers would surely get a kick out of her chubby little cheeks. They were at our home with their aunt Sara, Mia’s sister, probably driving her crazy insisting they didn’t want to go to bed. I planned on leaving to go home around ten o’clock. Mia felt pretty drowsy at eight-thirty so she buzzed for a nurse to come get Sabrina and bring her to the nursery. A smiling RN named Marie promptly arrived and wheeled Sabrina out of the room as she slept cozily in her see-through, newborn baby crib-cart, still wearing that cute little knit, pink baby hat that the hospital provides for all newborns—although boys obviously got blue ones.

We turned off all the lights in the room—the television cast the only glow. As I relaxed in a big chair next to the bed, I started to feel the excited energy of the day taper off. Mia fell asleep and I settled down for a quick nap.

At some point I was awakened by a low humming sound. I thought someone was using one of those floor waxing machines outside of our room. The door was directly across from where I was sitting. Through a large glass windowpane comprising most of the door, I could see that the hallway leading away from our room was now dimly lit. The only sources of illumination were the lights from a nurse’s station, which was along the left wall, and a faint glow coming from the right through a long bank of windows that lined the baby nursery. It appeared as though nobody was at the desk or in the hall.

As the humming sound grew louder I wondered why anyone would be making so much noise while exhausted mothers and newborn babies were trying to sleep. That they would be cleaning in a dimly lit hallway also seemed rather odd. Someone must have been cleaning the floor in a nearby room, unaware of how much and how far the sound traveled. I glanced at Mia as she lay sleeping. She seemed to be completely unaffected by the noise, the noise that I could now actually feel through the soles of my sneakers.

As I turned back, looking again through the glass panel in the door, I saw some movement in the center of the hallway. I tried to focus my eyes on what appeared to be a small person wearing a dark robe and a glowing mask. It had to be someone’s kid wearing a costume. The mask had an eerie quality to it—its color seemed to fluctuate from a fluorescent light blue-green to a deep purple or magenta. The eyes were large like those of an insect, causing the mask to resemble some kind of creepy-looking humanoid skull. Illuminated by a myriad of ever-changing colors, the eyes phased from deep blue to light blue, then between a brilliant red and orange as they pulsed and danced around the color spectrum, blending hues in ways that seemed completely foreign. They then flashed a glaring white which faded to black before the sequence of color and light repeated itself. It was completely hypnotizing to stare into the eyes of the mask, even from that distance. Then, as I sat motionless in my chair, the cloaked figure appeared to glide along the floor. I continued trying to make sense of what I was seeing but any rational explanation soon proved impossible. The cloaked figure was now floating into the air.

I tried to stand up but I couldn’t. I felt as though some force was keeping me from moving. I could no longer even turn my head. Instead of fear, though, an otherworldly calmness came over me as I watched the impossible unfold.

The figure began to rotate in place as it floated and I could now see that its cloak had a tattered look to it. Actually, it was not a conventional cloak at all, but what looked like...a rip in reality. I could see stars in the center of this deep black form, this very strange little being. It was almost like a lens of some sort that allowed me to peer out into deep space.

As the being moved, an iridescent shimmering covered the surface of its star-filled cloak. It looked as though I could just walk right through this creature and be transported instantly out into space. There were no visible arms or legs, just a glowing head atop a piece of starry space that flowed like a veil when the being moved.

I tried to convince myself that I was dreaming, but I had full awareness and I felt completely conscious. More than that, I just knew that I was awake but perhaps in some altered state, somewhere between dreaming and reality—or maybe beyond both of them. I still couldn’t move so I continued to watch this waking dream from my immobilized state. My mind was unable to recognize the terror of being unable to move anything but my eyes—I was not afraid.

As the being continued to rotate in place, I began to hear strange music-like sounds above the low humming noise. It sounded like wind chimes but as if the chimes were rhythmic, electronic blips and squeaks accompanied by bizarre little notes and scales fading in and out like the wind. The sounds were haunting yet soothing and felt as though they emanated from inside my head and yet were external at the same time. The otherworldly music seemed to permeate every aspect of my being.

Then the high strangeness that I was witnessing got even stranger. The little being began to project streams of ghostly silvery light from between its eyes. Each stream of light projected about five feet away and seemed to end abruptly in what looked like a little hologram of a tiny spider-like creature. The cloaked being projected one stream of light at a time which traveled in a clockwise direction. When the tiny spider-like creature appeared, the beam collapsed, leaving just the little transparent spiderling hanging in space. Then, like the arm of a clock, the being’s head clicked into the next position and it projected another stream with another tiny spider at the end of it. This continued until an illuminated dotted outline of a perfect circle had materialized. There were eleven spiderlings around the circle just hanging in the air, each moving rapidly in place, like a movie on fast forward. The cloaked being, which was positioned in the center of the circle, also began to move in place rather rapidly. The chaotic movement continued. It was like watching an animation with many missing frames. I could clearly see the head looking around at all the little spiderlings, but I could not actually see it move from one position to the next. The movement was instantaneous to me, the head freezing in one direction and then literally blinking into the next position. A wet clicking noise accompanied the movements.

The spiderlings then abruptly ceased their dance and their tiny legs began to lengthen, sprouting tentacles which flowed outward like those of a squid. The creatures now resembled jellyfish with tiny heads. Their many tentacles were self-illuminated like those of bioluminescent sea creatures and waved back and forth as if invisible water or wind flowed through them as they kept expanding.

Once the tentacles of one came into contact with those of another, they instantly became articulated and the creatures resembled spiders again— but with extremely long and jointed legs. Once all of the tentacles had transformed into articulated legs, the creatures began a coordinated movement as if they were all weaving an invisible web together. Their strange, instant movements continued—the faster they worked, the faster the cloaked being in the center seemed to move, rotating instantly left and right and exhibiting a slight up and down movement that looked like it was climbing the rungs of an invisible ladder or steps on a staircase.

As the spiders worked, they began to slowly grow in size. As this occurred, to my continuing amazement, I began to realize that they were the same type of creature as the cloaked being in the center. As they grew, the movements of their legs continued to be instantaneous to my perception, each one a cloaked little creature but with translucent spidery legs projecting out of their starry cloak-bodies.

Then, one by one, the growing little beings froze in position. When all had become absolutely still, the being in the center faced forward and froze in position as well. I gazed at their display, frozen in space for what felt like about thirty seconds. I was as motionless as they were.

Next, I sensed and then heard and then felt what sounded like an enormously large and heavy door slowly opening. It reminded me of one of those movies where an ancient tomb is discovered and you hear the heavy stone door scraping on the floor, walls, and ceiling as it’s slowly pushed open. It was that sound...and it magnified until it vibrated every bone in my body.

Then, as the overwhelming sound ceased, the creatures around the perimeter of the circle blinked out and were gone, leaving only the original being still in position. Then, after a brief pause, the remaining, original, cloaked being began floating forward, followed by a procession of beings, all in single file and all looking identical to the original. They seemed to originate from some invisible portal. They floated above the hallway floor as if on an unseen conveyor belt with their star-filled cloaks ever so slightly flowing in some cosmic breeze. Then, in single file formation, they turned like train cars following their engine and floated through the windowed wall and into the baby nursery.

The next thing I remember is hearing the ringtone of Mia’s phone. She was still completely passed out so I grabbed the phone, not even realizing that I could move again. I saw that it was Sara so I answered the call.

Hello? I mumbled into the phone.

Hey!

My mind was still processing what had just happened and I could not formulate my thoughts or get a word out. I just went silent.

Everything alright? Sara asked.

Um...I think so, I stammered.

What’s wrong? You sound weird, Sara said, a bit of nervousness in her voice.

No, nothing...um, we’re okay...everything’s good. I just had a really, really strange dream or something, I offered.

"What do you mean...or something?"

I don’t know...I...I don’t know, I can’t explain it. It was the weirdest, most freaky dream I’ve ever had. It seemed so real.

What did you dream about? she asked in her usual curious way. Tell me, tell me.

There was...I mean...I saw... I hesitated, ...these creatures.

"Creatures? What do you mean...creatures?" Sara suppressed a slight chuckle which I chose to ignore.

I don’t know...I don’t know, I nervously responded while repeatedly shaking my head no.

Duncan...are you sure you’re okay? She sounded more concerned than amused now.

I let out a deep breath into the phone. Yeah...yeah...just an extremely crazy dream. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you out. There was an uncomfortable silence. What time is it? I asked her. In my confused state I didn’t even consider looking at my watch or the clock on the wall or even the phone. I know I was supposed to leave here around ten-ish so you could get home. That dream...I fell into such a deep sleep. I’m so sorry. I know you need to get home. I—

Relax, Sara interrupted, it’s only nine-fifteen.

What?! I blurted out. I...I don’t get it, I stuttered. It had to be much later.

Get what? she asked me, becoming confused and slightly annoyed by our conversation.

No...nothing. It’s just been a long day I guess. Just feeling a little crazy at the moment. I must just be exhausted, I said. I’m gonna leave soon. Mia’s sleeping anyway.

Are you sure you’re okay? Sara asked again. Sabrina’s good? Mia’s good?

Yes. Everyone is good, I assured her, I’ll see you soon. Thanks, Sara.

Alrighty, she said, clearly unsure what to make of our conversation. Bye.

Bye, she continued, with a singsongy inflection.

After we hung up, I just stood there completely bewildered. I’d had weird dreams before, but none of them could even come close to what I’d just experienced. Usually, upon waking from any dream, the images and feelings started to fade instantly, leaving only snapshots of what had transpired. This was so completely different—it was shocking and as real as any waking experience I’d ever had. The entire episode was so vividly burned into my consciousness that I could not possibly dismiss it as a mere dream. I felt like I had glimpsed another reality.

As I replayed the events in my mind, I tried to find an answer or some sort of textbook explanation for what I had witnessed. My surroundings seemed to not exist as the potent imagery from the event projected itself into an ever-repeating daydream. Then I remembered the creepiest part, the last thing I remembered seeing—the procession of cloaked beings passing through a wall and into the baby nursery. What on Earth was going on?! I hurried into the hallway to check on Sabrina.

The hallway looked exactly like it did before anything strange had transpired. The overhead florescent lights were off and the only light was coming from the nurses’ station to the left. The dim glow from the nursery to the right hardly illuminated the scene. The only difference in the hallway now was that one of the maternity ward nurses was at the long desk of the nurses’ station. She was staring down into an open folder and appeared to be transferring data into a computer.

As the door to our room slowly shut behind me, she glanced up and acknowledged me with a slight smile. I nodded back at her and she went back to what she was doing. I no longer heard any humming sound—a somewhat relaxed atmosphere prevailed in the hallway. I turned and gazed into the nursery windows. I could see Sabrina and all the newborns safe and sound, wrapped up in their blankies—girls wearing pink night hats and boys sporting blue ones.

I looked down the long hallway and I glanced at the ceiling and floor where I had seen the event take place. As ridiculous as it seemed to me, I felt confusion instead of some kind of relief that there was no evidence of what I’d seen. I could not accept that I had imagined the whole thing or dreamed it—although I found some peace in the fact that my daughter and the other newborns were safe and sound in the nursery.

I sort of lost myself as I inspected the hallway in the proximity of the event and I didn’t realize that if someone were to see me at that moment, frantically stooping over and inspecting the floor, they would probably think I was, well, very strange. And that’s exactly what happened. I glanced up and saw the nurse at the station looking at me, peering over the top of her glasses with her mouth slightly open. She then very hesitantly said, Can I...help you with something? Are you okay, sir?

I felt my eyes darting back and forth as I searched for something to say that would explain my odd behavior. Was someone cleaning the floor with a machine before? I asked.

Nnn-no? she replied, sustaining her answer to the point that it sounded like a question.

I...I could have sworn I heard noises before.

Um...what kind of noises were they? She squinted her eyes at me.

A very low-pitched humming sound, I told her. I could feel the floor vibrating.

Well, it’s been a very quiet night here in the old maternity ward, she smiled and reassured me. Maybe the noise was coming from above or below your room, from another floor, she speculated. I didn’t hear anything, though, she reiterated. I just stood there like an idiot, prompting the nurse to continue with her monologue. I can ask some of the other night nurses if they heard anything if you would like. I wouldn’t worry about it, though— there can be all sorts of noises here sometimes. We even have helicopters landing in the middle of the night on occasion. But I don’t recall hearing one coming in this evening.

Eh, I finally uttered, I think I’m just in much need of a good night sleep. I should get home.

Your first child? she asked in a friendly manner.

Nope. Third. First girl, though, I said, with a proud daddy smirk on my face.

Now doesn’t that just explain everything? she reassuringly nodded. You’re being an overprotective daddy to your brand new baby girl. You just wanted to make sure your little princess got her beauty sleep after such a big day. We see a lot of daddies here adjusting to the worries of having a daughter and protecting them in different ways. It’s all very natural—you’ll be just fine. Plus, she’s got two big brothers to make sure she dates the right guy when she gets older. Enjoy this time—the teenage years are the hardest, you know.

Thank you. I think I feel better now, I told her, offering a smile. She did actually manage to take my mind off the whole event for a few moments.

Don’t you worry, we’ll take good care of her, she assured me, the look on her face indicating that she was pleased with our little impromptu therapy session.

Thank you, I’d better get going, I told her. Goodnight.

Goodnight to you too. And God bless you and your family, she said with an honest and caring smile.

When I returned to the room, I woke Mia up to tell her I was leaving. Her voice was groggy but she sounded so cute to me—I wanted to climb in bed next to her and hold her tightly. Her pale skin made her appear as if she was glowing in the dim light. I could not believe that we’d just had our third child—it seemed so surreal. We kissed goodnight and she made me promise her that I would call when I got home. I didn’t say a word about my freaky dream or whatever it was that I’d encountered—I would save the story for another day.

As I walked to my car in the parking garage I felt different. Not different like I felt when my boys were born—that intangible feeling only a parent can experience when they meet their child for the first time. That feeling was present too but it was overshadowed by the high strangeness of my whole experience. The more I told myself it was all just a dream, the more I knew deep down inside that there was much more to it.

As I drove down the long wooded road leading away from the hospital, I played with the radio. I was trying to find something to take my mind off of the possibility that I was going insane. The entire experience was still crystal clear and just thinking about it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I was officially creeped out. I pressed the presets on the radio but nothing grabbed me. I pushed the button to engage the CD player, hoping to find something loud and heavy in the disc changer. One of Mia’s CDs came on instead, one that she always played for the kids when they were in the car. The song was Row, Row, Row Your Boat. I laughed to myself and left it on. I even blasted it and focused on the lyrics.

As I continued to drive and think about the night, the most bizarre aspect of the entire evening hit me—a memory long suppressed or forgotten flashed through my mind. I had seen them before. I didn’t remember where or when—I just knew that I had seen them before. I’d experienced déjà vu in my life but this was very different. I could see a face deep inside my mind, a female face that had designs of some sort painted all over it. She looked very beautiful and she seemed so familiar—so vivid. She uttered the word Shaiboo in a powerful whisper that grabbed hold of my entire being. I knew that’s what the cloaked beings were known as. And I knew that this was not the first time I’d ever seen them.

CHAPTER TWO

Flight of the Grackles

Life seemed to be pretty normal for the next several months. It was late spring and aside from the abundance of yard work that I had fallen behind on, everything moved along nicely. We adjusted to having a third child and were immersed in all the things that go with caring for an infant. Sabrina was a delight right from the beginning. She always had a big smile on her face from the second she woke up in the morning and she seemed to think just about everything was funny. She took to sleeping through the night very early on. Her brothers—Wade who was now five and a half and Travis who would soon be four—were making us very proud of them as they constantly wanted to help care for their baby sister. Mia and I felt so amazed every time we watched our children interact. Of course, there was the usual wrestling and instigating that you’d expect to go on between two brothers so close in age. We had grown quite used to that even though the screaming, crying, and occasional tantrums would sometimes leave us a bit rattled.

I somehow managed to push the bizarre events surrounding Sabrina’s birth into the back of my mind, although I still carried around a somewhat disturbing feeling associated with the whole night. It wasn’t like I could just dismiss the whole thing as a dream, but I had no choice but to move on. As much as I didn’t want to admit it, those freakish flashes of repressed memories that took place on that dark road after I left the hospital that night were still getting to me even more so than the event itself. I felt as though some distant memory was always just at the brink of my consciousness—that at any moment I could trigger it. I knew the word the familiar painted face spoke of. I knew of these creatures—I had seen them before. The word Shaiboo was etched into my mind.

I told Mia about the whole thing after she had been home for about a week. I felt rather awkward even speaking about it, but she listened nonjudgmentally to my entire saga and didn’t seem to be worried in any way that I was going insane. She actually put my mind at ease a little when she just passed it off as a stress related event. She even joked about it one night when we heard a weird noise in our house. It was probably just our cat, Rufus—a jumbo Maine coon that had a penchant for watching television—swatting one of the kid’s toys across the floor. Maybe it’s the Shaiboo? Mia said, holding her hands up and wiggling her fingers around ominously. Ooooooh, she continued to mock me in her joking manner.

Her sister Sara, after coaxing and prodding me to tell her about the Shaiboo, also derived much enjoyment poking fun at me about the whole thing. It became a recurring source of enjoyment for Mia and Sara whenever we were all together. I accepted their response to my experience, though, because on some level it just felt good to have been able to talk about it.

I learned to deal with the uneasiness I still felt over the experience and some days it barely entered my mind. Between my job as head groundskeeper at Junction Lake—a wonderful family style amusement park just northeast of our home—and spending time with my family, not to mention the enormous task of tending to my own yard, I was a pretty busy person.

I loved my job, which came to me by chance. We had moved into a brand new development-in-progress whose spacious, well-designed homes with sizeable yards attracted us. Also, being that it was a new neighborhood, we were assured that the kids we planned on having would have lots of friends in their respective age groups. Landscaping soon became an avid hobby of mine and, slowly but surely, over an eight-year period, I transformed our three-acre yard into something of an exotic jungle.

Mia and I moved up to Cheshire County in the Monadnock region of southwestern New Hampshire to the burgeoning yet picturesque city of Eden during the final years of what was once our family business. My father, one of my brothers-in-law, and I owned a manufacturing company. We manufactured electronic test equipment overseas—mainly in Japan, China, and Taiwan—and our sales were worldwide. Once the decision