Ethereality

By Daniel McMillan and Kennedy Hargrave

A high-tension horror thriller in the tradition of Poltergeist and The Orphanage, Ethereality will leave you questioning every piece of antique furniture you have in your home.

 

After a difficult adoption, a young couple is drawn to and then purchases a 17th Century armoire meant to be a comforting reminder of their troubled new son's homeland.

 

Upon bringing it home, however, the article's spine-chilling history begins to spill over into its modern day context. Soon, the family finds themselves forced to fight against the terrible evil they unwittingly introduced to their home.

 

Their sanity - and their very lives - are on the line as they discover that things are not always what they appear to be...

 

Sometimes they're much worse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vector11Studio
• Release date: Oct 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393664659

Daniel McMillan

Daniel McMillan is the author of several Science Fiction novels and collaborative titles in other genres, many of which have become Amazon Bestsellers. He is a prolific writer and avid self-motivator.  Daniel doesn’t do things in small measure: he speaks multiple languages, plays several instruments and expresses his creativity through drawing, painting, sculpture and music. He started studying science - focusing on physics - and spirituality at age 11 and was curious about the overlap in these disparate areas of study. Sci-Fi is his go-to, but he isn’t one to limit himself and enjoys exploring writing in multiple genres. Dan is married to Tahera Yeasmin, inarguably one of his greatest accomplishments to date. Visit https://books2read.com/rl/danielmcmillan/  to learn more.

Book preview

The Happy Family

CANADA, SEPTEMBER 2012

Nicolas had some serious issues. The ten-year-old boy sat between his adoptive parents, Carol and Douglas Hoffman, in the office of Dr Amelia Hall. The space was over-decorated and underlit and generally not inviting. Dr Hall had been recommended by a friend of Carol’s whose own family had consulted the doctor for counseling after an unfortunate accident had caused the death of their youngest daughter. The Hoffmans had been regular clients of Dr Hall since shortly after Nicolas had joined the family.

Since his adoption four years ago, Nicolas had been dissociative and indifferent towards his new family.. Carol and Doug - whom he was supposed to call Mom and Dad even though they weren’t - had been delighted to bring him into their household. Carol had suffered a uterine infection that left the Hoffmans unable to have children of their own. They had tirelessly navigated the adoption system to have Nick brought into their family from Romania. They were loving people who provided a pleasant enough home and a caring atmosphere, but Nick wasn’t convinced that they thought of him as a son. How could they? He wasn’t of their blood.

He preferred to be called Nicolas, which was how he had always been addressed throughout his short life in his homeland. His parents had died in a car accident when he was three, and subsequently he’d spent three years in an orphanage being cared for by the facility staff. There were very few blood relatives left, and those who remained were either too old and sick to be effective parents or simply didn’t want or need the extra mouth to feed.

He didn’t remember much about living in Romania. It had been an existence devoid of  love or excitement; he didn’t feel much different in the Hoffmans’ Victorian home in the Muskoka region of Northern Ontario. They tried to make him feel welcome and at home, but he just could not internalize it. He still felt like a guest there, despite their best efforts.

Right from the first night in the new home, things hadn’t gone as his new parents had planned. There was a beautiful claw-foot tub in the main bathroom, and Nicolas remembered Carol drawing him a hot bath. He had cried when she asked him to get in. She tried to coax him into the soothing water, even introducing a few toys to play with, but relented when he refused. It was more than a week before he bathed the first time.

He took far longer than anyone had anticipated to get settled after he arrived in Canada. Everything in the foreign home made him uncomfortable, and he in particular didn't like Doug and Carol’s beagle, Max. He cried relentlessly every night and was torn between keeping the door to his bedroom open for security and closing it to keep the dratted dog out. A nightlight and baby monitor set up so he could hear the adults in the house with the door closed - both suggestions from Dr Hall - helped him to feel better while alone in his room without being aggravated by the smelly housemate who would otherwise insist on sleeping at the end of his bed.

His english was gradually improving as the days wore on, but he still spoke with a thick accent and sometimes experienced difficulty choosing the word he wanted to say. It bothered him that people, including his new family, felt the need to ask him to repeat himself or sometimes gave him responses that did not seem to connect with what he had meant to say. These instances often shook his confidence, but he did his best to hide that fact.

Since then, he had slowly adjusted to life in cottage country, and he attended  family functions with no complaints. He tolerated the over-enthusiastic attention from Grandma Hoffman and his aunts and uncles, but endured it all without fully taking part in it. Nick appreciated it when, after they had been visiting long enough, the focus would shift away from him. The adults began talking among themselves, and the other kids, if there were any, became occupied with each other and ignored him. He was more comfortable when he was on his own.

The same thing applied to school. He could barely stand going there. Nicolas was enthusiastic about learning, and he was always reading National Geographic For Kids or watching nature shows on TV, but he didn’t like the structure and expectations of the western education system he’d been exposed to so far. The only thing he disliked more than his classroom was recess, when he had to avoid the attention of the three hundred and fifty kids who attended his small public school. Getting on the bus in the morning was arduous and nearly painful, but boarding it after school was the last step toward going home for the evening or weekend. Given a choice, he supposed he’d rather be at the Hoffman residence sequestered in his room, where there was way less stimuli and no chance of being bullied.

A year or so ago, he had heard Doug and Carol discussing the fact that he might have a mild cognitive disability. It was determined later that he was actually brilliant, bordering on genius-levels. Nicolas had discovered what the term that had been applied to him meant when he heard an Educational Assistant at his school use it when referring to a visibly handicapped student she was always with. He still harbored resentment that the Hoffmans and Dr Hall had ever thought that of him. Some of what they said about him was true, but he was much brighter than most of the kids in his class; he just found school boring.

So, how have we been doing this week? You just went back to school, right? Grade five now, right? How’s that going? Dr Hall asked in a softer tone than she used