Cure for a Nightmare

By Joseph Van Landschoot

Living does not guarantee feeling alive. The King Emperor Finnian receives word of his sister's murder, so he travels over ocean to investigate. Once he arrives in the land of Hane things quickly go awry with his life put at risk. A rare poison begins its course in the king's veins, forcing his people's party to desperately trek the strange lands of Noor for a cure. As time runs out, Finn must question if suffering simply to exist is really worth it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joseph Van Landschoot
• Release date: Jan 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463073032

Joseph Van Landschoot

My name is Joseph Van Landschoot and I find stories incredible. At a young age I would make up wild tales about heroes and far off worlds full of adventure, in which people battled monsters and good always prevailed. My name fit me well growing up as I didn't rise to anything exceptional, but the idea of experiences being told in extravagant and fantastical ways always burned a fire in my soul. By the second year out of high school, just before entering college, I found myself working a summer job where I groomed trees. I left my power zone to clip a high branch and to no great joy, slipped a disc. Now it's been several years from that incident and I've written four books, working on the fifth, and plan to write the sixth to culminate this grand tale. I am no literary savant, but more and more, words find a way to fascinate me. The characters of people I meet, and how they came to be who they are, inspire me. The never ending story of life surrounds us and our addition to it make for great things if we so choose. That is at least the summary of what I believe, and what I leave with you.

Book preview

221

To Samantha

For loving me through my creative process.

The

True

Volition

Hexalogy

Part Four:

Cure for a Nightmare

**

You are not the author of your mind.

*

The musical piece: Te Deum, written and composed by Krzysztof Penderecki in the years nineteen-seventy-nine and nineteen-eighty was inspired through the anointing of the first pope from Poland in nineteen-seventy-eight. Pope John Paul the second came from Poland when it was still a communist country, and Catholicism was suppressed. Based on the then developments in Poland, Te Deum was expected to be an exuberant festive work, but that was not the case. It is a thoughtful work and almost a lament. It is known today as music accompanying the feeling of dread, fear and others in the close spectrum, none of which however take away from its beauty.

Reality is subjective, however, it is suggested by philosophers, such as Immanuel Kant, that we all live in the real world: the world of the noumenon yet it is forever clouded by our perceptions given to us by our senses. Without our senses we would have no way of experiencing reality at all thus making it essentially impossible to experience the real world, only the world of the phenomenal. Imagine however for a moment if a human baby were to be born with the natural ability of thought and yet had no sense of sight, sound, taste, touch, smell, proprioception, balance and every other of the multitude of senses we have at our disposal. The child would never learn anything and most likely be euthanized, but in its short existence it would have the ability to dream. What kind of dreams would it have without any knowledge of sounds and shapes? Or another matter: what happens to us when we all die? We will lose our sensory abilities because they are given to us by our bodies, so what happens? There are many ideas but there will never be any absolute answers.

*

PART X

Contiguous

(Imminence)

~Prologue: Wanderlost~

The void; that which is not. Darkness, or blackness, a lack of, or oblivion. It is a concept seemingly impossible to comprehend. This nothingness was all that was before time and now sits, seeded and threaded between every atom until the end of matter.

In the beginning, there was nothing, voiced a woman from silence. Her words rang true in her heart and in her mind. And then God said, ‘let there be light.’

Her listener saw from perfect darkness violent swirling light, as her perspective left the eye of the storm. The light seemed trapped in a shaking vortex. A violent inward force with a current unmatched pulled the light into the void and then nowhere. The image zoomed out astronomically, and to the viewer it appeared evident that the void had no top and no bottom. In the three dimensions of spacetime and, at such an astonishing size, the image should have been impossible. Scaling ‘north’ and ‘south’ for infinity, or to the edges of the red shifting universe, it was the pillar of the void of everything: an end of all. Every form of energy was helpless to escape the tremendous force it had. All matter and light and gravitons and the other unknown forces of the universe were seemingly disappearing out of existence. The show went on, and as it did a choir sang out loud in a low pitch,

-YAHHHHHHH-

-YAHHHHHHH-

Repeatedly they sang. Then came more voices to the choir, overlapping the low pitches with high,

-AHHHHHHHH-

-AHHHHHHHH-

A third group of voices joined the choir at a terrifyingly high pitch.

-AAAAAAHH!-

-AAAAAAHH!-

The last light of existence grew brighter as it surrounded the pillar. The light reached an intensity that was utterly blinding, and then it was gone. The pillar succeeded to nothingness. The line itself was then no more through its own work. There was nothing. The void in its unstoppable surge had collapsed everything into it, but without condensing. No singularity was to come of it, and therefore no big bang to succeed it. The endless line erased the universe completely, making nothing forever.

The woman continued, BANG! The Big Bang was the beginning. In every direction a flash came, so bright and loud and quick that it almost didn’t happen, but it most surely did… and here we sit today, finished the woman.

Her arms were wrapped around her six-year-old daughter. She rocked her daughter back and forth between her legs. The two sat, backs leaning against the hillside, looking down at the vast valley below. The horizon before them disappeared in a haze of deep blue before bending in the wrong direction. The daughter blinked several times until she blinked away her daydream. Her vision of the pillar was a complete contradiction to the story her mother just told her.

The last six years had gone by slowly. The mother, Vivian, wasn’t a survivalist. She wasn’t much of a planner at that. Her own pregnancy wasn’t planned, but Nathan was so kind and loving that the thought of whether to keep the baby or not never crossed her mind. The baby was meant to be. It was only a few short weeks after she told him of the pregnancy that Nathan had disappeared, and Vivian feared the worst. He told her of visions that had come to him in his sleep. She believed that his visions of Canada on fire were true, and apparently so did the C.I.A. When Nathan didn’t return from his excursion south to Mount Shasta, V turned to their roommate Alex for help. He was seasoned in staying off the radar. With Nathan presumed black-bagged and time running out before his visions became a reality, Vivian and Alex fled to Nathan’s last known location.

The media was in a blitz. People were scared. Mass immigration to America led to chaos; riots, looting, rapes and murder. Alex and Vivian intended to move south to get away from the danger, but the C.I.A. had made shop on Mount Shasta too. Hiding on the mountainside was their only option. Despite Alex’s help, V had begun to lose hope, and then like a dream Nathan found them. It was undeniable though that he was different. He led them to the C.I.A. location where they found everyone there, dead. Leaving Alex behind, Nate took V into a cave that had been previously safeguarded. They descended until gravity shifted. Then Nathan left to finish what he started, but he never came back. No one else came through either. She was left in her third trimester, alone, climbing out of the cave to find herself looking out on another world; an inverted world.

Alone, she gave birth. Alone, she fed and cared for her baby. Alone, she learned how to provide. Twigs were the only things on mother and daughter aside from the clothes off Vivian’s back. When her baby reached a certain size, she ripped her undershirt and put two holes in the bottom half, along with vine string to keep it from falling off her daughter. She was lucky in that she wore larger underwear and not tight lace when Nathan left her, because it was now being used as child’s clothing. The two used her sweater as a shared blanket and Nathan’s heavy leather jacket as a travel bag for their tent.

Sooo, a big bang happened and now we’re here. But, why, mama? the little girl with tangled hair asked.

Why what? V asked as her eyes rested. Light was dimming from bright yellow to red. The grass around their bare feet was topped with dew.

Why did everything come from nothing instead of something?

Well not nothing, Alanna. God made the big bang.

But then who made God?

He was never made. He lives outside of time so there’s no beginning or end with him. V was falling asleep fast as the light shifted to blue. Alanna was still clearly awake with intrigue.

But why is God a he and not a she? Why is God a person?

God isn’t a person… V thought for a moment before continuing. He is more of an idea. That’s why God can be a male. Or if you want, God can be a female. Back in the old world there were people called scientists. Scientists were very smart, you see. They used math and experimentation to discover things; facts about the world around us. When we had big questions like: where do we come from? They answered. And when we had big questions the scientists couldn’t answer, we would turn to God. What caused the big bang? We don’t know, so God must have done it. Get it?

Alanna scrunched her nose as she thought about it. Kind of. But why couldn’t the scientists find out the big answers?

V answered with closed eyes. Well they were people sweetie, just like you and me. Some things are just unanswerable.

Like why we’re here?

Mm-hmm, V nodded.

You said it was ‘cause daddy left us here. We were outside and now we’re inside.

Mm-hmm.

Where is he now?

…I don’t know; all I know is that he must be doing something very important.

But he’ll be back?

Mm-hmm sweetie, V said as she kissed Alanna through her hair on the back of her head, and rolled off the rock to cuddle her daughter to sleep. At the dawn of morning light, the two would continue on with their migration; back to the cave of origin.

*

The artificial sun levitated in the middle of the inverted world. It was dimmed down to extinguishment, simulating night like a dial in a baby’s bedroom. Inside the shell that produced the hydrogen was a smaller ball. It produced the look of moonlight to give the whole world the illusion that it was outside. V and Alanna rested next to an unmade tent in Nate’s leather jacket.

I wish we had a puppy, V whispered as she drifted off.

I want a puppy, Alanna mimicked.

You and other little girls from the neighbourhood… playing fetch…

*

A new day began and the two were off, up the hillside and beyond to wildly different landscapes.

I want something new, Alanna complained as she ingested a mouthful of old blueberries.

Oh, me too, V agreed. You have no idea what you’re missing. I never thought I’d say it, but I miss meat more than anything.

What’s meat?

Like a cow, pig, or chicken. Or even seafood. Normally creeks and rivers and lakes have things called fish in them, and you can catch them and eat them.

But are they alive?

Yes sweetie, they’re alive.

But then you eat them? Alanna asked, distressed.

We kill them first, and then, yes, we eat them. It’s all part of the circle of life. Some animals get eaten and others are the ones that eat them. It’s all very natural. It’s this place that’s not.

Alanna paused before changing the subject. Tell me about space again.

*

The two talked for much longer, then slept. They did this day in and day out, ever since Alanna could walk and talk. They migrated across the land; V’s plan to find a way out, or someone else, or food other than berries, fruits, and roots. So far, they had not been lucky with any of her goals. They would walk far in one direction and then come back to the cave. The world of ‘Agartha’ was unknowably vast, so for them to explore every inch of it was simply not an option, but they still tried every day to walk out as far as they could before deciding to trek back. The land really seemed as big as Earth: impossibly big. They had yet to find a body of water endless enough to call an ocean but on many occasions lakes and large rivers hindered their path. The only thing that kept Vivian from despair was her beautiful daughter and her sparkling personality. The thought crossed her mind all too often about how wonderful it would have been to raise Alanna with Nathan on Earth, and every time it did, her chest seized. She would force the feeling down and demand herself to stay strong for her daughter, who only really knew the world of ‘Agartha.’

*

That wasn’t there before, Alanna said while pointing at a small tree that had its roots growing around a boulder. It was the only tree near them beside the creek they were following.

Yeah it was sweetie.

Oh…

They continued their long path back upward and the girl let out a loud sigh. Why do mountains have to go up and down so much!

Well I don’t know about here, but in the real world they do it because they used to be volcanoes!

I think I was just complaining, her daughter said, almost sounding guilty.

Oh...

…What are ‘volcanoes’?

V allowed the smallest smirk to come out of the side of her lip before indulging her daughter. Volcanoes are things made from lava, and lava is rock that’s so hot it actually becomes liquid. So, deep underground on Earth it’s extremely hot where lava lives, and when lava finds a hole it bursts out because of all the pressure, and pools on top of itself. The outside world cools the lava into solid rock and the pile gets higher and higher until the hole gets blocked. Once the hole is blocked it stops being a volcano and becomes a mountain. Time passes and dirt appears, letting things like grass and trees grow and then it looks like what we’re on now.

Woow… Hey you know what mommy?

What sweetie?

You should have been a scientist in the real world.

Vivian laughed humbly at how little her daughter knew. Thank you so much for saying that! But what I know barely scratches the surface of how much scientists know. There’s much more to the scientific method than hearing someone else’s answer to a question. If I wanted to be a scientist, I would have to be able to figure out really complicated things all by myself; using things like math and deductive reasoning.

What’s dedussive reasoning? I know what math is; like plus and minus.

And there’s more to math but you’re right. Deductive reasoning is how people like detectives find things out with little evidence.

I don’t know what that means.

V huffed as she hoisted the jacket-backpack up to better rest on her back, so she could lean over and rub Alanna’s head. That’s okay honey, all you need to remember is that the obvious answer to something mayyy not always be the right one, so always stay curious. I don’t want you to stop asking questions, no matter what.

Oh, I won’t mommy! One day I’m gonna know so much that I’ll be a scientist!

"That sounds like a