Shadows and Realms: Dark Journeys Series

By Charles Justus Garard

Harper Paget and his brother Sean Paget have both been in search of the entities that put a curse on the Paget family centuries ago. . . and they have been on the run for their lives. Harper spent many years in China and Indonesia trying to learn whether or not the ancient lamiae could, in fact, transform into other frightening creatures, such as the kuntilanak from Indonesia or the aswang from the Philippines. He finds that this is indeed the case and ends up killing one of them, with the help of a love Christabel, before leaving China for the last time. In the struggle, one of Harper's eyes is badly injured, and Christabel vanishes as if she is not human.

    One event in the history of their family was the execution of Jaquema Paget centuries before who was identified as being a witch. Harper suspects that her death was carried out by, or influenced by, a clan of the lamiae. Harper also learns more about the family history from his beloved grandmother who read cards on an ouija board.

    Shortly after returning from China, Harper's eye injury and his troubled psyche convince him to check into the Bethany Forest Clinic in Atlanta, GA, for observation and consultation. This results in his undergoing different types of physical and mental tests.  His brother undergoes even more serious problems and accidents where he lives in North Florida. They keep in touch by email and SMSs, as does their sister Sheila who does not accept Harper's realm of the supernatural and entirely opposed to his belief in the Paget curse.

    In the clinic, Harper meets the Nurse Practioner Yanti Ilyas who happens to be from Indonesia. She learns about his history with Christabel and the lamiae. They become more that NP and patient, and this puts Yanti and other nurses in danger. The creatures can, after all, reach him and the others -- including his brother Sean -- by striking from the shadows. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charles Justus Garard
• Release date: Sep 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9781386988618

Book preview

Chapter One

~

I can’t just keep it in here? Harper Paget referred to the Sony VOR Microcassette-recorder in his hand.

Well. Clinic policy is.... Yanti paused.  Anyway. Okay. Keep it in here. But don’t flash it around for all of the nurses to see when they come to administer tests or bring food.

It had taken some time for her to refer to him by his name rather than as ‘Sir.’

Yanti Ilyas, his Nurse Practioner Yanti, was from Java—not far, she had told him, from Surabaya. The smile on her Indonesian face, he had told himself, reminded him of the frequent expression on the face of Lina Wibosono who had been born and raised in Surabaya. Both were Chinese Indonesian. Both had the slanted Asian eyes that he loved. Lina, as he had told Yanti only once, was now an instructor at a university back in Illinois.

All patients don’t have easy access to their phones or tape recorders?

Correct.

Why don’t they? Are they afraid we are going to swallow them?

A faint smile manifested on her lips. Not exactly. We don’t want to be responsible if private property is stolen.

So, you don’t trust your own nurses and nurse assistants.

Yanti remained mute.

Harper remembered his first experience with a nurse’s assistant. You know, when I was first admitted here and was still being monitored, the worst deprivation was needing to defecate. A nurse’s assistant would come in, disconnect some of my wires and I would trudge across the room, bare-assed, rolling one of Liberace’s candelabras beside me. When I reached the water closet – a term that the Chinese still use – the rolling candelabra stood right in the middle of the doorway and the nice lady stayed busy plumping pillows, checking the water pitcher, etc. The door had to remain open because it was blocked. Imagine sitting on a stage trying to take a dump. When I left that room to come here, I was so constipated that I practically needed a fire hose enema to set things right.

Very funny, Harper.

*

Harper, said the voice. I’m here. Waiting for you out here.

Out where?

Here. The hallway, Harper. Come to me.

Harper sat up in the bed, still clutching one of the pillows. He always kept four pillows on the bed and pressed his head against one which he held flat while he draped his arm over another as if it were cuddling a female companion.

Why should I?

You need me.

Whose voice? His mind screamed at him.

He swung his bare legs around to touch the floor. I need who?

Silence.

He remembered: he had felt a slight pressure on his chest while in bed, he had felt a hand and arm touch him in his half-waking state that caused him to cry out, and he had seen the shadows at the edge of his vision as he sat at the computer. These, at least, were not only dream encounters.

You were here, Harper said aloud. I saw you, Christabel.

*

Christabel? Yanti asked, her face tightening as she looked at his cellphone screen before returning it to him. Is that who you’re going to try to call her over there?

In China? No. I was going to call my brother in Florida.

Oh?

He paused and blinked. Christabel is between worlds. He made a flat, waving motion with his hand. "She’s a ghost memory, like a face you see on a passing MARTA train. In the famous Coleridge poem, she is attacked by a lamia or serpent."

A ghost what?

A ghost memory. Harper felt awkward and listless since he had been in bed beyond twelve noon. He was accustomed to working at night on his writing, particularly now that he was no longer needed in any classroom, but that only meant sleeping late in the mornings. But she was more than that when we were in bed together, of course.

She laughed. Your face looks red. She shifted on the cushioned chair that she had positioned next to his bed. Anyway, you told me that you had to swallow a mini-camera when you were in China. What did they find?

Harper shifted toward the desk-side table and yanked open the wooden drawer. My Canadian friend Brady had to help them translate it for me. I don’t know if he spelled everything correctly. ‘Multiple biopsies,’ he read from a dog-eared spiral notebook. In my esophagus, a ‘hiatus hernia.’ Let’s see. ‘Gastritis’ in the antrum and body of my stomach. But two good things: ‘normal pylorus,’ whatever that is, and ‘normal duodenum.’

Yanti stared at him for a long moment; then she turned her shoulder toward the door of his quarters. Good grief, Harper.

He loved the way she said’ good grief,’ an idiom she had picked up from the American staff members. "But that’s not why I first came here."

Okay....

One night, I went to a China Buffet over in Decatur managed by an Asian friend. I used to tutor her daughter in English. She saw me walking from the buffet table to my booth and to the men’s room. She later said that I looked ‘weak.’

And?

"That was the one word that hit home. ‘Anomic’, even ‘disheartened,’ maybe. But lack of strength, I don’t know. I do keep some stretch cords in my bedroom for strengthening arms and shoulders. My brother thinks I look tormented."

Tormented? Wow.

Since I came back from China.

Do you drink Decaf tea?

Earl Grey is decaffeinated.

I guess it is.

I also drink the cold brew tea, the kind that brews in the fridge.

Check the boxes for contents. They should list how much caffeine they contain.

Bring me the boxes and I will. Nurses bring me the mixed tea from the fridge down the hall.

Yanti nodded. I know. We will check it out. Have you heard of hypothyroidism?

Huh? No.

Might be the problem. There’s a thyroid hormone called Levothyroxine.

The clinic wants me to go back there before my next scheduled visit with them, but I don’t really want to.

Yanti stared at him for a moment. That’s why you’re here, not just because of your China experiences.

Chinese doctors found stuff that they didn’t understand.

She frowned. And that was....

Something was messing with my brain, something that the Chinese doctors had supposedly never encountered before. Nausea. Dizziness. Brady said it had happened to diplomats from Canada visiting China, as well as when they were in Cuba. No one knew the source... unless they were flat-out lying.

I see. She gave him a blank look. Did you get along with the doctors over there?

Pretty much. One female doctor sort of flirted.

Really....

True story. But it wasn’t the doctors I had problems with but strangers who would walk into the room where I was being examined just to be nosy. I commented on this to the young translator from our university, but he told me not to worry about it.

I see. Well, we’ll see what else we discover here. In the meantime, here’s your cellphone.

Thanks.

She pointed up at the television monitor mounted in a leaning position on the wall. Do you ever turn that on?

To watch what? HGTV? People looking at homes and talking incessantly.

She grinned.

He nodded. That seems to be what they mostly show in places like this.

You sure you’re okay?

Harper’s neck felt tight as he strained to look at her. Relatively. Why?

She again sat next to him on the bed. Just the look on your face.

Sorry. I was time-tripping. He showed her the Microcassette-recorder that he again held in his hand.

Do you live in your past a lot?

He nodded at her. Too much, I’m told.

Yanti’s mouth made strange movements as if she were trying to decide something – like whether to ask him about his conversation. Then she lifted her hand and touched his bare arm. Told that by your brother?

He nodded again. And by my sister.

Harper saw her cheeks heat up as she held onto, and then released, his arm. She looked toward the small window in the door as if she feared one of the RN’s might happen to peek in.

Anything else from your brother? she asked him.

You should know. You talked to him on my phone.

*

Text messages:

~

Sean: For many reasons, I’m glad that I’m driving up to Georgia.

Yanti: Is that a long trip?

Sean: I live in northern Florida, so it’s not so bad. I want to stop and collect our cousin Brandon Gellner along the way. He lives in south Atlanta.

Yanti: "Gellner. Harper mentioned something about the Gellner’s, but not in a very favorable way."

Sean: That’s our mother’s side of the family. To them, he’s from another planet. And none of them are on his Christmas card list either.

Yanti: I’m glad that you’re coming. Your brother speaks of things that make little sense to me. But I’m an NP, not an expert in metaphysics.

Sean: My brother has spent too much of his life in this realm of his. If he mentions these entities to people like our sister, they’ll think he sounds mentally ill.

Yanti: Not to me.

Sean: "I not only want him to stay alive; I want him to stay out of the sanatorium. Clinic. Whatever."

Yanti: It’s called Bethany Forest Institute.

Sean: I know what those are like. I’ve had my own problems.

Yanti: He told me that you were very intelligent.

Sean: I try. I research a lot. But, so does he.

Yanti: "Harper met a kuntilanak in China. Did he tell you?"

Sean: A night-shape who comes from Indonesia? Yes.

Yanti: "But he didn’t mention a manananggal?"

Sean: No.

Yanti: Maybe not yet. He writes to a friend in China named Marilyn, and she supposedly told him.

Sean: Could be. Do you know a of a girl or woman named Christabel?

Yanti: Yes. He’s mentioned her. It’s not a Chinese name.

Sean: Harper’s voice sounds strange when he talks about her.

Yanti: I noticed.

Sean: Then there’s one who corresponds with my cousin Brandon. Her name is Alicia.

Yanti: Now that’s a Filipino name.

Sean: I guessed that. Are there many women from the Philippines in your country?

Yanti: Some.

Sean: "Would they know about the manananggal?"

Yanti: I don’t know. Maybe. Most of them don’t go anywhere at night, and not just because of the virus.

Sean: I see.

Yanti: I read that the virus is profoundly serious in Florida.

Sean: Yes. Increasing figures every day.

Yanti: Our Atlanta mayor wants to make masks mandatory, but our governor sued her over that.

Sean: Christ! Our governor is just as bad, firing an employee who warned our state that the virus was growing worse.

Yanti: What’s with them these days?

Sean: Did Harper mention his Canadian friend Brady?

Yanti: Yes. He either fell down a flight of stairs in the faculty dorm or something else ... I don’t know.

Sean: Something else...killed him.

Yanti: Yes. But he didn’t say what exactly.

Sean: He didn’t tell me either. I don’t think he knows.

Yanti: He thinks that someone has visited him here... in the night.

Sean: Someone? Who? One of the nurses?

Yanti: Someone or... something.

Sean: Not that again.

Yanti: Like you mentioned. Christabel.

*

Chapter Two

~

Harper lay sideways on the bed, his legs covered by the blanket folded lengthwise and his head positioned so that his right cheek pressed against the pillow. This was his favorite position, and finding a comfortable position was not always easy