Necropolis: Book 4: Hybrids

By Michel Weatherall

Woven throughout this book are the stories of characters forgotten about from the original novella, The Symbiot.
It has been a decade since The Hunt and the Gibbons' children are humanity's last hope! This story picks up where The Hunt: Symbiosys left off.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michel Weatherall
• Release date: Apr 2, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310712500

Michel Weatherall

Michel Weatherall is a native of Ottawa, has lived in Europe and Germany and travelled extensively. With over 30 years in the print/publishing industry, self-publishing was a natural step to his company, Broken Keys Publishing. He has published 6 novels and 2 collections of poetry. Other work include Sun & Moon, Purgation, This Burden I Bear, Eleven's Silent Promise, Rupture and the essays The Doctrine of Fear and Ebook Revolution? all appearing in Ariel Chart's online journey as well as a theological essay (“The Voice of Sophia”) in American theologian Thomas Jay Oord's "The Uncontrolling Love of God: An Open and Relational Account of Providence" (2015) Weatherall's current books in print are, The Symbiot 30th Anniversary, The Nadia Edition,  Necropolis,  The Refuse Chronicles,  Symphonies of Horror: Inspirational Tales by H.P. Lovecraft: The Symbiot Appendum, Ngaro's Sojourney,  A Dark Corner of My Soul (poetry), Sun & Moon (poetry), His publishing company, Broken Keys Publishing has 2 anthologies: Thin Places: The Ottawan Anthology, & Love & Catastrophē Poetrē. Honours and Awards include Winner of the 2020 - 2021 Faces of Ottawa Awards for Best Author Finalist of the 2022 Faces of Ottawa Awards for Best Author Winner of the 2020-2022 Faces of Ottawa Awards for Best Publisher 2021Best of the Net Award Nominee (for Poetry: Purgation) 2020-21 Parliamentary Poet Laureate Nominee 2020 Best of the Net Award Nominee (Poetry: This Burden I Bear) 2019 Pushcart Prize Nominee (for Poetry) 2019 FEBE Award Nominee for Creative Arts Finalist for the Faces of Ottawa Award for Best Author 2019  2019 CPACT Awards Nominee for Entertainment Excellence (Arts) 2019 CPACT Awards Nominee for Small Business Excellence (Broken Keys Publishing) Finalist for the Faces of Ottawa Award for Best Author 2018

Book preview

Necropolis: Hybrids

Book 4

by Michel Weatherall

Credit Page

Necropolis: Book 4: Hybrids© Michel Weatherall 2016

All rights reserved

Title font (xxii Arabian Onenightstand) provided with permission and courtesy of Lecter Johnson

www.dafont.com/doubletwo-studios.d1527

Cover for Book 4: Hybrid: Montreal's Skyline

No part of this book may be used or reproduced, scanned, distributed in any printed or electronic form in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

Published by Broken Keys Publishing

[e-mail]

Published 2016

First Printing

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the writer's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

ISBN: 978-0-9948189-4-2 (print)

ISBN 978-0-9948189-9-7 (digital)

Printed and bound in Canada

Dedication Page

Dedicated to

my son, Drew.

You're stronger than destiny.

You can change the world.

Also available

by Michel Weatherall

A Dark Corner of My Soul

Mother-Machine

The Symbiot (I)

The Hunt: Symbiosys (II)

Chapter 1: Marie

November, 1994

(10 ½ years ago)

The female soldier pulled the trigger as she spoke the words, Drop the baby.

The symbiot-facet in Marie's multimind attempted to defend herself, but its reaction wasn't quick enough. Blood and brains exploded from the back of her head, as she slumped down to the ground, her last conscious effort to protect Tamara from falling.

Tamara!

It was the last coherent thought to have gone through Marie's mind before she fell through the Gateway into Nyarlathotep's Prison-Universe; that broken disjointed shadow-realm.

She was no longer physical. That much she recognized, and as she felt her life-force want to leak away into death, she felt another stronger quasi-sentient force holding them together.

Whereas the Symbiot-facet could not exist within our universe without a host to hold them together, now, incorporeal, the symbiot's relationship became reversed. Now joined as a multimind, the Symbiot-facet maintained Marie and Shantigra's cogency. Some sort of strange ghost-like matrix.

Marie remembered this place. She had been lost here before... before her husband Lorne has found her. How long had she been here?

She knew it was the wrong question. There was no Time in this broken universe. Time was disjointed – it didn't flow like our universe did. If Time could be said to exist at all, it was in isolated clumps. She was no longer restrained by the confines of Time.

Memory was a difficult thing in this place. She was more of a memory herself; a half-remembered echo of someone she used to be. Her self-awareness – her identity – was in constant flux. Language became impossible – just a flow of images, emotions, blended identities.

She was vaguely aware that she would drift eternally. She knew and believed this was the beginning of Forever...

She allowed the shadows to wrap and caress her. She just needed to stop thinking and be absorbed into this great Nothingness...

Chapter 2: Tamara

Tokyo, Japan, May 29th, 2005

(4 days ago)

Tamara bolted upright in her bed, her forehead drenched in sweat. Her brown Asian eyes were wide with panic.

"Otouchan Hiro!" Her voice was high and shrill and fearful.

"... otouchan Hiro..." this time she whispered as she took a deep breath.

It was dark. It was the dead of night. It was just a bad dream. She didn't want to wake Hiromitsu. It was only a bad dream, she tried to convince herself.

Her mind was running amok, remembering and imagining all the details of her nightmare.

The City was crooked! It was broken and bent – warped – and somehow, had no horizon, no skyline! Like it was insanely curled up upon itself! But that couldn't be. That was impossible!

Although Tamara had visited it a thousand times in her recurrent dreams she never felt at home here; it was anything but familiar or welcoming.

Alien, ancient beyond imagining, but stranger still were its occupants. She couldn't see them, but she could feel them. They were aware. They were reaching out to her. She could feel their cold ghost-like fingertips brush against her as she wandered through the Cyclopean city. And they were ghost-like, for they were – somehow – dead yet dreaming. Silently waiting.

It was a paradox. This crooked city wasn't home to a populace. It was a morgue, a crypt, a sepulchral city. It was a giant twisted and bent tomb. It was a Necropolis.

If she allowed herself to remain long enough, she would begin hearing It. The Crooked City's one undreaming occupant. Krulgh. She had heard Its mad whispering call often enough to know its name.

But no! She was dwelling on her bad dream. She needed to control this; she needed to stop it! She needed Clear Mind.

She got out of her bed and took her meditation seiza bench from beneath and left her bedroom. She turned no lights on as she walked down the darkened hallway.

Tamara was tiny, even for a 10-year old Japanese girl. Her tiny feet padded silently on the carpeted hallway as she entered another dark room.

She sat upon her mediation bench and started with her breathing exercises, her hands lying limp upon her lap, her back and head upright, her eyes closed.

Slowly, eventually, her breath became calm and steadier. She visualized a cup of loose-leaf tea, its tea leaves spinning chaotically... then – slowly – settling to the bottom of the cup – calm – still. Like her mind; calm – still.

Her breathing became deeper still. She could no longer remember the dream. All there was now was peace and calm.

An older Japanese man silently entered the dark room.