Shadowcaster

By Morgen M. Wodarczyk

The author has contrived a brilliant medley into the explanation of the reasons for bad dreams and nightmares that balance our lives between good and evil. The fears we all must face and the fact that once we face those fears, we are free to truly live. We are given insight into an ethereal world, one we feel but cannot see, to know there are Angels among us, and why it is written, they come in our hour of need.

Peggy Glatz

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 23, 2014
• ISBN: 9781304960078

Book preview

Shadowcaster

Shadowcaster

By Morgen M. Wodarczyk

ISBN 978-1-304-96007-8

©2014 Morgen Mary Wodarczyk

I must thank those that made Shadowcaster possible. My daughter, Codi, my rock;  for always playing what if with me; my friends, most especially Peggy Glatz, for having so much patience with me during the time it took to write this novel, and bringing me back to earth, gently, the many times I was lost in the zone. Peggy also proofread the book for me. I must thank my friend Rebecca for believing in me, and in the book. I thank Lisa Gunter-Anderson too, for being there for me, and for listening. I also must thank Camille Vaugn and Don Beatty, who taught me to live one day at a time, and sometimes one page at a time; and Carol Vaugn, who came to love me despite herself, and taught me that I mattered in the scheme of things. She also taught me that life is precious, and should never be taken for granted. I love and miss you, my life Guides. I thank my Grandpa Rocky, my GaGa, for loving me so much and for being my Guardian Angel, and being there, unseen, to pull me back from the brink...I can never thank you enough. Thank you to my Mom, and my two Dads. Thank you to Diana and Ron, also for Guiding me in this turbulent life. I thank my husband Tom for putting up with me and my manic excitement as I wrote. Olive, baby. Robin Gruenger, I still miss you so very much, but I hope Nevada is good to you. Chris, Thank you for keeping me trudging along the road to happy destiny. Jim and Ralph, too. There are others who played a part; you know who you are. Most importantly, I have to thank Zeke, my very first Shadowcaster, who came to me in 1987, and stuck with me all these years, until I was ready, willing and able to tell his tales. This book is dedicated to you all, with love. Thank you.

Mo.

Contents

Chapters

Chapter  1

Chapter 2

Chapter  3

Chapter  4

Chapter  5

Chapter  6

Chapter  7

Chapter  8

Chapter  9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

Chapter 84

Chapter 85

Chapter 86

Chapter 87

Chapter 88

Chapter 89

Chapter 90

Chapter 91

Chapter 92

Chapter 93

Chapter 94

Chapter 95

Chapter 96

Chapter 97

Chapter 98

Chapter 99

Chapter 100

Chapter 101

Chapter 102

Chapter 103

Chapter 104

Chapter 105

Chapter 106

Chapter 107

Chapter 108

Chapter 109

Chapter 110

Chapter 111

Chapter 112

Chapter 113

Chapter 114

Chapter 115

Chapter 116

Chapter 117

The author has contrived a brilliant medley into the explanation of the reasons for bad dreams and nightmares that balance our lives between good and evil, light and darkness. The fears we all must face and the fact that once we face those fears, we are free to truly live. We are given insight into an ethereal world, one we all sense but cannot see, to know there are Angels among us, and why it is written, they come in our hour of need.

Peggy Glatz

Chapter 1

Shadowcaster slid along intimately within the darkest shadows of the frigid winter night. He was searching.

He'd been relaxing after feeding on the pure, sweet fear of a child; the absentee junkie parents leaving her alone and vulnerable to him, when the sudden shrill screaming began in his head. He knew exactly who it was.

It was her. The woman.

He sped up, racing past streets, trees, and houses. Her cries were everywhere, and yet he could not locate her. He reached out with his mind as he whipped past houses bearing oblivious, sleeping people, and the occasional night owl, hunting, but for naught.

Shadowcaster was not nobly searching for this woman to save her; far from it. But something was making her incredulously afraid, and it was not him. This is what bothered him.

She had bested him once before, as he had attempted to feed on her sweet, untapped fear. All that he had fed her, the nightmares, the horrors, were nothing compared to a strong, determined woman with an unseen hat pin...he would have to remember that. This time would be different.

This time, he would prevail.

Her guttural cries were growing stronger in his ears as he flew westward, and to any casual observer he would appear as a spark along electrical lines, or a brief, fleeting shadow, there, then gone again in a flash.

Never given a second thought.

But she, for the second time, was attracting him like a moth to a flame. He had no plans to burn up, though. This time she would feed the creature that he had become, so many years, so many lost eons, ago. Her fear would fuel his fire.

He smiled a little at the thought.

At that moment she wailed loudly and he grimaced, his head pounding with the reverberating echoes of it. He had to find her, and soon. He didn't think he could take much more. At least he was at full charge from the earlier feeding. He had energy to burn.

Whatever was pursuing her would have company very soon, like it or not.

Suddenly, as he inhaled, he smelled her. There!

He turned onto a side street just north of Main Street, and here her smell, the very essence of her fear, itself, was intoxicating and full.

He joined the shadows of the houses there, searching with his clever, inhuman mind.

He had found her.

Yet, just as suddenly as he had found her, her scent disappeared. Vanished. Completely and utterly.

Shadowcaster was taken aback. He didn't understand.

He was far from stupid, had the wisdom of eons of years of life and lessons and knowledge to draw upon, but he was stumped.

His irritation grew.

If she had been awakened, , freed from her nightmarish slumber, there should still be some fear residue, something, nearby.

The fear could take on a physical appearance oft times, the glowing fingers stretching out plasma like from the prey. Sometimes it could form a cloud, a fog, near the site of a feed.

Search as he might, his ice blue eyes piercing the blackest night, he saw no traces of her sweet fear. Her fear was so strong, so pungent. It tickled the tiny hairs within his nose when it was active, making him feel as if he had to sneeze but just couldn't. As much as he hated that feeling, there was still something magical about her fear.

He had tasted her fear; tasted her, that once. He had been inside her mind, journeyed through the thin layers of memory, very much like an onion, peeling away the years, the fears, searching for what really frightened her.

If a feed was to be long enough to properly fuel him, this was very necessary.

He had thrown her into a marvelous nightmare, unseeingly directing her, oh, so gently as he fed upon her fear. He thought he understood what made her tick, what she had experienced in her short life, what she feared most in life.

But this woman was different. Even as he peeled away those precious layers of her mind, baring her unconscious to him, even as he directed her nightmares and fed upon her lovely, teal hued fear, he could feel her resistance.

How she could resist him, when she would never know he had been there, deep inside her mind? This was new to Shadowcaster.

No mortal ever touched by him had any memory of him. It was part of the nature of what he was, since he left his humanity behind long ago. He was one with the darkness. His hair and eyebrows had gone pitch black, he had become  his own shadow; only his ice blue, piercing eyes remained in color, often appearing grey, he knew. Just after he had crossed over, he had looked into  standing water, and the reflection he saw within was of a man's face. The blue eyes shone then, but the nose and mouth were hairless, smooth; and yet heavily shadowed. His hair was long and lank.

He had not looked into water, nor at his reflection, in a long time.

He didn't have to. He knew. He knew his eyes took on a hellish, demonic red glow when he fed. Which was appropriate, really. He was so old he could not remember relinquishing his humanity...he had no memory of the why or how he became...this. Just the memory of  incredible pain. And waking,  looking into the water, to see himself, to see a face he almost did not recognize.

He had become Shadowcaster. He was pitch black. He was the night, and indeed every horror imaginable.

He had transitioned, crossed over, he had become. He quickly learned his newfound purpose in his new  life.

Feed.

Feed, find fear, foster fear, create fear. Feed on that fear, and every fear he could. In return his power to create fear grew, his dark life extended. His mastery of nightmares, of peeling back those precious layers of mind, of memory, grew into a talent unforeseen by any.

He was very much a Shadowcaster.

Even the alone, the perpetual solitary existence, wasn't so bad. He thought there must be others out there like him, but he had not sought them out. Just the knowledge of them was enough. He had never had quarrel with another Caster, never had reason enough to seek them out.

Until now.

After a thorough search of the area in which he last felt her delicious fear, Shadowcaster made mental note of the location, then, finally, moved on.

He knew she would dream again, and he'd spent so long there, searching for her, that he could see the first twinges of sunrise in the eastern sky. Daylight was no good for him, indeed, it was perilous. Daylight permitted few shadows, and shadows were his domain. He had to go.

Chapter 2

The next few nights, Shadowcaster broke with his own routine, and returned to the street where he had felt the woman's fear. His reasoning was simple; in his existence as Shadowcaster, hers was the only fear that drew him in, that tasted so sweet, so pure...and yet so challenging. Her fear made him tremble in his darkened cloak, and excited him as no other mortal ever had. He knew not why, but he wanted to know. Badly.

He had schooled himself in the mortals ways, his own long gone. He had to, to understand them, he was to educate himself on how to approach them, steal his way inside their homes, enter their minds, and bring their fears bubbling to the surface where he could feed.

Without the feeding he would cease to exist, he would die; his own place in things simply replaced by another.  He supposed it was the way of things, ordained by a higher power than he.

He remembered none of his mortal life. Try as he might, his mortal past was shrouded from him, hidden in a blank darkness.

He only knew, somehow, that he had been given a choice; die, or continue on. A great strange feeling had overwhelmed him then, and he knew he had chosen to continue. Then the pain.

Pain so huge and complete had overwhelmed him, every molecule of his being felt as though it was wrenching itself free from his physical body. He had screamed under the onslaught, unable to bear it, doubling over where he lay upon the ground. He had the fleeting thought that death, oblivion, would have been a better choice. It lasted for years; so it felt to him. Just when he had thought he could bear no more.. the pain simply stopped.

Just like that.

After a moment, he dared to unfold himself and open his eyes cautiously. It was night time.

He was alone.

He still existed.

He had survived.

He had picked himself up then, and even with the muscle pain in his wrenched limbs, made his way over to the small stream that wound through the wooded forest he was in. He leaned over, cupping his hands and dipping them into the water, then bringing them to his warm face. He drank, relishing the cool, clean taste, then repeated until his thirst was satiated. But his belly felt too full. He could almost feel the water inside him sloshing as he stood.

Then, suddenly he was doubling over, hurling, until every drop of the water he'd ingested was out of him. He dropped to his knees and wiped his face on his sleeve. Only it wasn't his sleeve. This sleeve was silky, long and soft, and ended in fringed, snarled tatters.

He had stopped, felt from the tattered ends upward towards his body, only to feel the same material across his arms, shoulders and chest. He cautiously stood again, and saw that the silky black material flowed down onto his legs to ankle length, where the silky material tattered once more. It opened down the front, and he saw he wore black trousers, and a simple black shirt. He didn't understand.

In his confusion, an idea occurred to him then. He reached behind his head, his neck, and found a tattered cowl of sorts; a roughly tattered, silky hood. Of course.

He staggered over to the stream again, dropping to his knees, and dared to look for his reflection. In the moonlight he saw what he had become. As the water played ripples over his reflection, he stared. And stared.

His eyes were ice blue orbs within a face lost to darkness. He could only see his  fiery eyes. He blinked, and the orbs flickered. He reached up to touch his face, which felt normal to him, bone and skin, though strangely smooth, devoid of hair or beard. It was there; yet he could not see it. Feeling it was almost reassuring.

Almost.

His eyes had flickered again, then, and suddenly began to lose their burning intensity. Curious, he was unconsciously calming down, and that was bringing his eyes under control. He made a mental note to remember. Emotion = intensity. He watched as his eye color slowly diminished, until he saw only the ice blue eyes he remembered. The rest of his face and body was shrouded in blackness, pitch black.

He stood, then, and struggled to throw off the darkness, the silky black, tattered cloak he bore, to no avail. Try as he may, he could not free himself.

The irony of that did not manifest itself in his mind at that point.

He could not throw off the cloak, indeed, it seemed to be becoming part of his being. As he stopped struggling, realizing it was pointless, and gazed down upon his feet, he saw only darkness there, too. It felt as though his feet were protected, covered. But he saw only pitch black.

He had changed, become something else entirely, than a mortal being.

He absently wondered if that was good or bad.

He was nothing but a Shadow.

Suddenly that thought was followed by a cruel, piercing pain in his stomach. It felt as though his stomach was wrenching itself into a violent ball of pain. A thought suddenly occurred to him, unbidden; feed.

Feed.

But on what?? The water he had regurgitated. If he couldn't keep water down, what could he feed upon??

And then, as if in a dream, he felt the answer rising up within him, and the horrid pain in his stomach became a hollow hunger pain.

Fear.

He must find fear and feed.

He knew nothing of how he knew this; perhaps it was some strange instinct he now carried within him. Whatever it was, he physically hurt, and he understood that feeding would abate that hunger, that pain.

He left the stream and forest behind then, knowing that he