Andre's Extra-Sensational Adventure

By Kari Kilgore

A Multi-Dimensional Crossover

Andre Telkin loves cat sitting for his best friend Dana.
Spoiling them rotten and teaching them his special flair.
Enjoying the peace and quiet of the old tree-lined neighborhood.
Except when he hears a sound beyond explanation. Too strange and disturbing to ignore.
What will Andre discover when he leaves his reality behind?

Also available in the collection Facing Down Extraordinary

 

An excerpt from Andre's Extra-Sensational Adventure:

Something Truly Strange Lurking in the Night

 

When he closed the screen door behind him and stepped out into the night, that bizarre churning noise caught Andre's attention once again.

It wasn't louder, exactly, and it didn't sound any closer. Partly because he was having trouble pinning down what direction it came from.

But it did sound more discordant somehow to his highly sensitive and well-trained ear. Like the noise had turned up the volume, or the speed, only emphasizing whatever was unnatural and out of balance in the first place.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Spiral Publishing, Ltd
• Release date: Jun 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393425052

Kari Kilgore

Kari Kilgore started her first published novel Until Death in Transylvania, Romania, and finished it in Room 217 at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, where Stephen King got the idea for The Shining. That’s just one example of how real world inspiration drives her fiction. Kari’s first published novel Until Death was included on the Preliminary Ballot for the Bram Stoker Award for Outstanding Achievement in a First Novel in 2016. It was also a finalist for the Golden Stake Award at the Vampire Arts Festival in 2018. Recent professional short story sales include three to Fiction River anthology magazine, with the first due out in the September issue. Kari also has two stories in a holiday-themed anthology project with Kristine Kathryn Rusch due out over the holidays in 2019. Kari writes fantasy, science fiction, horror, and contemporary fiction, and she’s happiest when she surprises herself. She lives at the end of a long dirt road in the middle of the woods with her husband Jason Adams, various house critters, and wildlife they’re better off not knowing more about. Kari’s novels, novellas, and short stories are available at www.spiralpublishing.net, which also publishes books by Frank Kilgore and Jason Adams. For more information about Kari, upcoming publications, her travels and adventures, and random cool things that catch her attention, visit www.karikilgore.com.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Andre Telkin adored the groovy old neighborhoods on the east side of Atlanta, any time of day or night, and pretty much every day of the year.

Wide graceful streets, with huge oak and pine and maple trees everywhere. Even after dark and early in Georgia’s blink-and-you-miss-it springtime, the massive tree trunks in yards and along sidewalks added a solid sense of an established home. All that green kept the air smelling fresh and clean rather than choked up with the stink of too many people, not to mention the few gas-burners still roaming the highways.

Some of the streets were even divided by a strip of grass, flowers, and trees down the middle. All those miniature gardens were tastefully decorated and maintained, of course, with the whole community pitching in. Most of them featured a few patches of early vegetables and herbs for everyone to share.

Something no one would ever see in the cookie-cutter, soulless hell of subdivisions north of the city.

The other thing that couldn’t be more different from the distant suburbs was the houses themselves. Nothing modern or predictable here, and certainly not identical to the point of requiring a trail of breadcrumbs to find your way around.

These houses were well over a hundred years old, built long before the days of swarms of cute little e-cars and the growing CommuShare system that linked more and more of the sprawling city together. Mostly adorable Craftsman bungalows, made of wood or brick, and just bursting with style and character that certain areas of newer Atlanta were in desperate need of.

Original wavy glass windows, and broad porches out front for sitting pretty or keeping an eye out for good neighborhood gossip. Classic lap-board siding on the wood ones that looked fabulous in about every paint shade under the sun.

Andre stepped out of his own fierce little e-car, brilliant purple with flawless copper upholstery. When he needed a can’t-miss mood boost, he dressed himself to match, right down to the swoops and whorls he kept trimmed into his close-cut, tightly curled black hair.

Those copper highlights worked beautifully with his dark skin, which he was never afraid to play up to its fullest.

One thing he had been afraid to play up not all that long ago rested right behind his left ear, and tonight it gave him yet another reason to love this old neighborhood. His cochlear implant was only about the size of a pea, and it had been simple for him to grow his hair long enough to keep it covered for years.

But now he trimmed his hair up above it on purpose, and he’d even built up quite a collection of sparkly covers to work with his every outfit, whim, and mood.

A change he credited his best friend Dana for, no matter how hard she fussed and tried to deflect when he brought it up.

He’d helped Dana solve a tricky fraud case a while back, mainly through the bionic-level hearing his implant provided. That and the protection it provided from a nasty subliminal message that convinced a bunch of people to off themselves.

He’d never been a huge fan of typical self-improvement guru