Dark Twilight: Dark Journeys Series

By Charles Justus Garard

Dr. Harper Paget returns to China with the ashes of a lady-friend who died in the USA and resumes teaching in universities as he did before. He meets new friends and new students, including Dr. Brady Simon, a media professor from Canada. He also encounters Christabel, an unusual lady who gave him up for a French colleague before but who wants to keep in contact with him. In fact, she does visit him once in his campus apartment.

SMSs turn out to be not only a method for Harper to communicate with Christabel or with his new love interest, Anjani; Brady also communicates with women in the Philippines who tell him about a creature called an Aswak. Harper knows that the Kuntilanak from Indonesia haunted China before and can certainly do so again. An SMS, for one thing, can produce more deadly results than before.

This time he is attacked by a Kuntilanak in the dark, but he still does not know who she is. She may be Xue, a Chinese lady who works in the Foreign Affairs Office but who disappears from the campus. She may be Marilyn, a student from a former university who wants to visit him here, She may even be Anjani, his Indonesian love interest who tells him stories about human tragedies in her own country. Across the courtyard from his dorm building is a tall dorm building for female students. At night, from his wheelchair, he watches them and they watch him. Are they a formidable threat or not?. 

Who is it? You are the target, Harper. You had better find out the real identity of the creature or you will soon be dead.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charles Justus Garard
• Release date: Dec 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9781684541829

Book preview

Chapter One

~

Harper knew that he was being watched.

The shadowy figure stood watching him from across the narrow channel of the river.

Harper Paget stood alone on the shore of the river, staring at the sky, feeling the dull pain that continued to plague his right shoulder. That he was being watched didn’t surprise him; this was China and being stared at by Chinese citizens was a familiar experience.

However, this dark form might not belong to a human.

It had started raining that afternoon while Harper was still teaching class and had continued for nearly an hour. When he returned to the river near the edge of the campus that evening, he was almost startled to see a glasslike smoothness that one might see only on a still lake.

This narrow river, however, provided a visual treat like nothing he had yet seen in China. Even though he had, admittedly, photographic memories of orange and pink sunsets over the Mississippi River, and even though he had, filled away in the back of his brain, an evening vision of the Gulf of Mexico seen from the Florida shore, this moment standing on the wharf overlooking the river here in Jilin on a windless night could probably never, he believed, be equaled.

The shadowy form, just as he expected, was gone when he looked up again.

He had wondered for so long how he would feel at this moment when the news finally came, wherever he happened to be, that they were again watching him.

Again, in China.

He had brought Geraldine’s ashes back to China. He had known the risks, but he had promised her that he would bring her back to her own country.

But. Time to go in.

*

Harper wanted to feel on his forehead the breeze from the open window that the inexpensive fan he had purchased at one of the shops across the street from the campus was supposed to be assisting. That was why he had moved it from its position next to his bed and taped it to the window ledge just beyond his desk. The air conditioning unit high on the wall was sending out a feeble stream of air, but its efforts were pretty much useless – like the air conditioner in the living room that had never worked and never been repaired since his arrival. The Chinese workers for the dormitory building had just looked at it, declared it broken, and never replaced it.

Usually with the window open, he could hear students giggling and chattering as they walked along the diagonal path of closely fitted stones that cut across the yard from the front entrance of the campus hotel where his apartment was located, past the rear of the kitchen area and delivery ramp, to connect with the walkway that would take them alongside the open stadium on their way to their own dormitory buildings.

He had walked that path to the stadium many times, and many times he had accompanied one or more of his female students to their dorms in the dark. He had told a couple of them that he was alarmed for their safety if they walked alone, considering how poorly lit it was at night. When some girls argued that they were safe on this campus out here away from the city, he had insisted that no place was safe and told them about how some girls had been raped in their dorms by laborers doing construction work on the campus. The university had tried to keep this information quiet, but negative news frequently reached the ears of faculty members.

At this hour of the morning, the path was untraveled, and Harper could only hear the droning of the fan.

He tossed around, trying to make the damp pillow feel comfortable. After several minutes, he realized that this wouldn’t help. He still felt the tightness in his chest, probably related to the gas pains that he had been experiencing earlier that day. He inhaled the warm air. Then expelled it.

Harper swung his legs off the bed. It was useless to try to sleep. He had taken a nap earlier and now was alert – not weary enough to sleep. He walked to the fridge and extracted a plastic bottle of Diet Coke. It was only semi-cool since only the freezer compartment of the unit that had been new when placed in this fourth- floor hotel suite last August was working at full capacity. He opened it and turned back toward the desk. Waiting on the desk was the MacBook Pro, its lid open.

Was it too late to contact Anjani in Indonesia?

While in China, Anjani lived in a dorm on the campus of the Fenghuang Teacher’s College and University. Enrolled in the graduate program, she even taken a media class from his Canadian colleague Brady Simon.

Harper thought of his friend Brady who had recommended that Harper relocate from Jilin Jiaoyu to Fenghunag.

Brady had told him about what he had been doing that week. It was complicated; however, it did not, Brady felt, show himself in a good light.

~

Samsung Android SMS:

~

I finally responded to a post that I was getting on my computer, Harper read Brady’s text on his Android, an online dating site with women overseas. This site introduced us to women from Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, and, of course, here in China.

Indonesia was Anjani’s country of origin, like that of Lina Wibisona, and the original land of the kuntilanak. Lina was still working at a university in the States.

It turned out to be a scam and forced me to dispute credit card charges. In fact, I had to be issued a new Chase card.

~

OMG, Harper had typed in return.

~

Most of these women are from the Philippines, and some are from Indonesia. Many are from here in China, and most of those are drop dead beautiful. Most look much younger than their ages and are highly educated. Some are looking for a lifetime commitment, but not all of them say that. As you know, after Mari died, Chinese women began letting me know that they were available.

Harper knew that Brady’s Filipina wife, Mari Cruz Simon, had been killed by a Chinese motorist who had ignored a recently installed traffic light in front of the campus.  While Brady was reeling from his loss, Harper had been furious that the news had been left out of the local city press. Apparently, the motorist had had some connections with the right leaders, just like the young driver who had hit students on campus and had yelled that he was son of a local police official when other students had stopped his car.

Brady told Harper that he wanted to continue learning what he had already learned about the Philippines. Less obvious to most people who knew him was the fact that he was now seeking a kind of relationship that would not require a close-up involvement.

Harper jumped in with his own text message. Some of these countries are very poor, Brady, like Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. And some of them are known for their scams. It seems to me that you are searching for a distant friendship to cover the pain you have been feeling. This may sound facile, but it sounds like you are also looking for reasons to beat yourself up. What you are doing is perfectly legal.

Brady: Glad to know that part, Harper, although being illegal was not one aspect that I had considered.

Harper: You have probably thought of these things yourself, but I’ll mention them briefly. The first thing that comes to mind is continued hazard to credit card security. I am very risk averse when it comes to internet security. I’m not casting aspersions on the sites(s) you are now visiting, but the internet is full of dark and dangerous alleys. Since Chase reversed those previous charges, what happens if further problems occur against your new card? Just wondering.

An icon of a downturned face was inserted after the last word.

Brady: Me too. That’s why I am more impressed than before with major credit cards. If a large charge appears, they call me to verify it. If I spot it first, I call them to dispute it. The dispute system has worked so far.

Harper locked his apartment door and started down the corridor to the stairwell.

Harper: Are you aware of malware, Canuck? It is just one type of malicious software that can take up residence and relay critical information to harvesters who will try to use information for nefarious purposes. Those bots ride in through website visits and email attachments on your computer. Do you have security software like Norton and McAfee installed on your PC?

Brady: Yes, I do, Yank. And I know there are risks involved with cell phone messages.

Harper halted when he reached the stairwell. Didn’t want to trip and fall while looking at his phone. Good, he typed with the slender phone pen. You should have fun with that distraction. Be wary, however, of taking photos at face value (I know, bad joke). Photos of beautiful babes might be false cover for other correspondents.

Brady: "What? Do you mean people from somewhere else?"

~

People or beings? Harper thought.

~

Harper: They call that cat-phishing.

Brady: Some of them expressed dreams and plans on a corresponding that seemed site far from realistic. Even some as young as twenty-two had given their age preferences for the males to contact them as being between fifty and eighty. I asked a couple of them what they would do with a man of such an advanced age. Were they looking for a father figure or a sugar daddy? I couldn’t think of an explanation for the term ‘sugar daddy,’ so I described the arrangement as best as he could. Letters from some Filipina ladies informed me that they had been treated badly by unfaithful boyfriends in their own country, so they searched for older men who were more mature and usually more caring.

Harper: I see. Might be true. Don’t know much about the men there.

Brady: One dating site included warnings and tips about what not to do with the overseas pen pals. One repeated warning was that we should not send money to women that we met online.

Harper: Looks like you didn’t take their advice.

Brady: The last girl was snotty about it, saying that I had not given her money for a new phone, even though she had not asked for it. Then she directly asked me for money to help her pay for a future trip to Canada.

Harper: Even though you are now here in China?

Brady: I don’t know about rules in China regarding immigrants. I don’t know if they could come here by marrying a Chinese man or not.

Harper: It’s a big scam that happens a lot in the US. People from Ghana, for example, say they are going to deposit money into your account as a way of your keeping it secure for them. When you give them your account number, they drain it. Other scams tell you that you have won a contest in Spain or elsewhere and that if you pay them a fee, they will send the supposedly vast reward to you.

Brady: Yeah. Sure.

Harper: People fall for this, Brady.

Brady told him that one young lady – Isabella – had taken umbrage after one of his earlier emails that had cast aspersions on all Filipina ladies, ignoring the fact the American tourists had often taken advantage of her inexperienced friends. Some of the girls had been left with HUB – she had called the virus.

Brady had written back. "I’m sure there are American and European males who come to your country and give women the HIV