One in the Same: Journey from Mortal to Sorcerer

By Douglas A. Breeden

High school senior Michael Siversten has never felt very powerful. Hes a high school senior with a scraggly beard. He has something called Aspergers, which he researched relentlessly. He knows he says awkward things sometimes, and he needs a helper to get him through schoolbut he likes people, and people like Michael.

One night, hes troubled by a dream in which his old assistant and mentor, Alexander Davidson, exclaims Michael will soon be one and the same. The vivid dream is a bit of a puzzle, so Michael seeks Alexander out. What he learns is nothing short of shocking. Apparently, Michael is a sorcerer, and life is about to get a lot more complicated.

He must soon start a journey that will take him from the depths of Hell to the heights of Heaven. Michael will be introduced to the supernatural world of Palm Beachwhich some call the Carpathians of North America. Follow Michael and his journey through many trials and tribulations as he fights to become the powerful sorcerer he was born to be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Apr 12, 2017
• ISBN: 9781480844650

Douglas A. Breeden

Douglas Breeden is a retired teacher’s assistant who worked with special needs and Asperger’s students. He holds three degrees: a bachelor’s in education and history, an associate’s in funeral service, and a master’s in history. He is the author of a collection of short stories about the residents of Palm Beach and a collection of essays on history. He lives in Palm Beach County.

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Copyright © 2017 Douglas A. Breeden.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

How the Gord Stole Hunting – Gordon Goldhaber

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ISBN: 978-1-4808-4466-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-4467-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-4465-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017905212

Archway Publishing rev. date: 04/11/2017

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

The Storyteller

Michael Silversten

Alexander Davidson

Michael

Alexander

Michael

Alexander

Michael

Alexander

Michael

Alexander

Michael

Alexander

Michael

Alexander

Michael

Alexander

Michael

Nan

Michael

Alexander

Michael

Alexander

Michael

About the Author

To my aunt Dallas, my aunt Peg, and my mom, Grace—sisters and mentors—the three ladies who have had the greatest effect on my life. I miss them so much.

Acknowledgments

I wish to acknowledge the people who inspired and helped me to write this book. First, there were the three ladies to whom I dedicated the book: my aunt Dallas, who showed me the love of reading; my aunt Peg, who taught me to persevere through much; and finally, my mom, who was the inspiration of my life and helped me through many dark periods.

I also wish to acknowledge Dr. Ben Lowe at Florida Atlantic University. He helped me achieve my master’s degree and finally learn to write. He inspired in me a greater sense of history and showed me how to research and engage the people of the past. Finally, I wish to thank Gordon, the young man I worked with at Wellington High School. Helping him to grow into an independent young man and achieve his goals allowed me to conquer many of my demons and finally get myself to a place of peace.

One in the Same

We are a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with and fall into mutual weirdness and call it love.

—Dr. Seuss

What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.

—Napoleon

The two most important days of your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why.

—Mark Twain

There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.

—Mark Twain

When you believe in a thing, believe in it all the way, implicitly and unquestionably.

—Walt Disney

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.

—Abraham Lincoln

Homo hominis lupus

Each man is the wolf of his neighbor.

—Thomas Hobbs

The world was to me a secret which I desired to divine.

—Mary Shelly

The desire to write today grows with writing.

—Desiderius Erasmus

I’d rather regret the things I’ve done than regret the things I haven’t done.

—Lucille Ball

Despite everything, no one can dictate who you are to other people.

—Prince

The Storyteller

S taring into the darkness of night or the light of a misty morning, pondering the sunset or sunrise, one can think of many things and of nothing; great thoughts or small thoughts; deep, philosophical things or totally mundane things. One can ponder Shakespeare, Pythagoras, or the latest dystopian teen novel. It’s a pattern of thought that first began with the savage scavenger, our ancestor, who gained the glimmer of eternity, given to a select group of creatures who are usually described by other intelligent creatures as those that stood up, unlike the vast multitude of creatures who were denied this power on Earth and other planets and thus did not move beyond instinct. Through this, which some call a blessing but most call a curse, intelligence led to consciousness, the ability to think and wonder about all that is around oneself. A creature stood up and wondered just what the heck was going on, instead of only feeling a pang of hunger and going out to find whatever it was that satisfied such pangs. Standing and wondering, wondering just what it was all about.

Why does life exist, and what is the purpose of it? Or is there a purpose? Might it all be some random thing of molecules crashing and compounds forming into a meaningless existence? Do we eat to live or live to eat? Do we live a doomed life that ends in death and nothing else? Are we alone in a vast, random universe of no meaning and only randomness? Is death the end? Do we just slip away into nothingness or into another world that is more than we can ever imagine? Or is there more than we can see, hear, smell, or taste? Are we alone or part of a great cosmic brotherhood of creatures inhabiting a world designed by a being greater than we can imagine? We strain to look into the past, covered with the white mist of time, or peer forward into the blackness of the future, not understanding what was before and unable to know what is to be, trapped in the fleeting and ephemeral present.

Since we only see and experience what is in the dimension where we exist, to look into eternity is the same as looking through a clouded glass: we are unable to see clearly what lies beyond the boundary of the glass. Hints are all around, but the creatures of this dimension are unable to put them together. In the great book of Moses, it is said that the world was created in seven days, and humans just assumed that it meant seven twenty-four-hour days, but it did not. Time in the universe is much more than hours and minutes. It is the movement from one thing to another in an immeasurable event that is called time. There are many descriptions to note the passage of this river of sand, wind, and water. In Moses’s great book, it only says the morning and the evening of each day, for time, as we know it, was invented by the intelligent creatures later—as they saw the need for it. For the vast majority of creation, time has no meaning; it is just the passage of it. The light is day, the dark is night, and nothing is divided more than that. For almost all living things, time has no meaning, and for them, that is why they never conceive of or consider this question. Life is what it is, and one does what one does to satisfy the needs and urges of the natural world. One does what one needs to do to survive from one sunrise to the other. But for the creatures who stood, they were cursed with a vision of eternity and the eternal questions that accompany that condition.

Much more happened in the first verses of that great book of Moses than was recorded or known by many of the creatures of this dimension. A great war occurred in the heavens while many things came to be in the world during the period usually referred to as the time before time. It was a time when animals spoke as humans do and the boundaries between the spirit world and the mortal world were fluid. It was a time when life first began and many creatures held dominance over the land and sea. Fish, amphibians, and then the mighty dinosaurs each took their turn at ruling the lands and the sea. Dogs howled at the moon for the first time to remind the mistress of that orb to take care of two young friends. He Who Is Who He Is rubbed the essence of several past creatures together to create the ones that stood up and thought the thoughts of the intelligent. Then the Great One decided to place this creation above those created in the spirit world, or of the air, as they describe themselves, which led to the great revolt of the heavens, led by the most beautiful and proudest of all the spirit-world creatures. She took a third of the heavens and led them against He Who Is Who He Is. In the mighty and terrible war that followed, the heavens were ripped apart and the dimensions were divided. When the war ended and the leader of the revolt fell to the heavenly force, she was condemned to a fiery place of punishment to rethink her position and follow the command of the One Who Is. She has spent many millennia trying to convince her master that He needs to change His mind and place these mortal creatures in their rightful place, below the creatures of the air.

Thus, the world was divided between the spirit world, the creatures of the night, and the mortal world, the creatures of the day. For most of the creatures, a boundary was placed between the dimensions and the worlds; they could no longer move between the worlds. Yet a few were permitted to progress between the dimensions and walk in all of the worlds. For the vast majority, it meant that they now were trapped in the dimension chosen for them and they lost the ability to know what was in the dimensions that they no longer could enter. But they could know all the things of their dimension, and the intelligent creatures especially were connected to all the creatures and spirits of their worlds. For many years, they were in sync with all the creatures of the night and day and knew the land and sea intimately.

About ten thousand years ago, earlier on some other planets and later on others, a great event occurred, one that changed the intelligent creatures forever. It was then that they learned to plant for themselves and no longer only hunted and gathered, as they had done for all of time. They invented writing, freeing themselves from failing memory. They were able to do this because they gained wisdom, given to them first by He Who Is Who He Is. With this wisdom came other things—envy, pride, jealously, greed, and an urge for power—as they wanted to be like He Who Is Who He Is. It was as if these were the fruits of a tree and the leader of the revolt used them to corrupt all that was. She convinced the mortals they could now be just like the Great One and all the spirits of the air and thus could do without anything except themselves. She believed that this would cause them to reject the Great One and bring Him to see that she was right. For many, she was right, but there were always just enough who would resist this temptation to prove He Who Is Who He Is was correct in placing them where He had.

The many stories of this time and others were recorded and told by a group of people called storytellers. These people passed the tales of old to the young, first by spoken word and later by the written word. Writing further moved the creatures from the spirit world, as it could record the mind of one for all time, ending the need of a special soul who could relate these tales by memory and knowledge of the world alone. They had many names. Some we might recognize, such as Dickens, Shakespeare, or Melville, and others were lost in the mist of history. They told the tales of all the happenings, myths, legends, or stories of their time and ones for all time. A few even had the power to move through all of the dimensions and walk with all the creatures of the night or day.

Here we will relate a story that is happening now, one that takes us to a special place in the world where the dimensions have come together and gates exist to gain access to all of them. There are several of these on all planets, and on Earth, they exist usually in high mountains or deep forests. Once, there were many more. The one in Britain covered the whole land. The Druids were the gatekeepers there until Rome defeated them and the portals retreated to the northern moors. In so many of these places, the portals retreated from civilization.

Except for one. One does exist near a place of great cities, a place that refused to retreat from the thing called civilization. This came by chance, as a once faraway place was made accessible by our modern world. As humans moved into cities, they stopped using the skills of communicating with the spirits and animals and thus lost their skills of communicating and relating with the other worlds around them. As skills fell into disuse, they began to fade. Fading created a false sense of security for the city dwellers, and their pride told them they could do all with their reason. It made them feel that they did not need any help from the creatures or spirits. It was a grave mistake on their part, as the world was more interconnected than they knew. The leader of the revolt exulted with this new view of the humans and used their newfound denial of Him many times in her ongoing debate with the One Who Is Who He Is.

Along what is called the Treasure Coast, named because many Spanish silver ships met their demise in the waters of the Atlantic bordering this area, lies one of these great portals in a place once made inaccessible by heat and swamp mud and the undergrowth of palmettos. It is a land ruled by alligators, cougars, and snakes, all seeking relief from a thousand insects that buzzed during the humid night and the oppressive heat of the day. It is a land of mystery and legend, a land that once held all in fear, a land where the dimensions meet and the great portals to other worlds open. On the equinox of summer and winter, fall, and spring, one can see, if one believes, the great Stairway to Heaven and the Portal to Hell in the land called the Everglades and the great River of Grass.

In the time the city dwellers called 1893, one of them, a man named Henry Flagler, called this place a paradise and built the city of Palm Beach on the ocean so the breezes would cool the wealthy during the heat of the day. Built as an escape from cold northern winters, it was to be a paradise for the rich and powerful away from the bothersome things of their northern homes. Across a lagoon, he built the city for his servants, bordering the great swamp and separate from the city of the wealthy by water. The servant city was built across the water because it was believed that spirits could not cross water. Thus, the wealthy would be safe from these creatures and the creatures could satisfy their hungers with those Flagler saw as beneath him and thus expendable. As the years passed, the cities grew and the River of Grass was pushed back, which only made contact with the spirit world more common. The authorities, wishing to protect their pot of gold, covered up much of this, but every now and then, some things would leak out. It is at times called the Carpathians of North America, a land of mystery where many just accept unusual occurrences and disappearances.

It was more than a land of supernatural creatures; it had otherworldly ones as well. The creatures who had achieved interstellar flight moved about in this area as well, checking not only on the mortal population but the immortal ones too. Led by a race of intelligent creatures descended from cats, dogs, and dolphins, they roamed all over this world but seemed to favor this place more than others. They came to study the creatures descended from the apes and took some as pets as well, but that is another story for another time. These forces combined to make this a land of many mysteries and legends. People sometimes just disappeared, and death seemed to move about freely, sometimes leaving a lot of evidence of its passing and sometimes leaving none.

When faced with such things, many just shake their heads and say, It’s Palm Beach, man; it’s Palm Beach.

As our tale opens, we are guided to a school, a high school named for the victor of Waterloo, and the many students moving into it on a March morning. The students and staff form a mass that is much like one at any high school at any time or any place. Some are looking forward to the day, others are not, but most have a tired, bored look on their faces as they shuffle toward their many destinations. One in particular gains our focus, a young man with a troubled look on his face as he hurries inside the school. He is an average kid with a scraggly beard around his neck and chin, which will last until his mother is tired of it. His brown hair is cut short, and he wears a T-shirt with shorts and tennis shoes. The shirt proclaims, Closed on Mondays, a sentiment shared by a great many of the mass of people in this and any school. There is nothing out of the ordinary about him, but he does seem a little different from the other boys, not as confident and seemingly in a nervous hurry.

Michael Silversten

P eople call me Michael, but my first name is Solomon—Solomon Michael Silversten, named for my great-uncle. He was called Sully and was an associate of Meyer Lansky, a fact my family usually choses to forget. I hate the name Solomon and despise Sully, so I use my middle name, Michael. It does not sound so Jewish, which I am, and it is usually shortened to Mike, which I find okay, or Mikey, which I despise.

I have Asperger’s, something I have researched to see just what it is, because of this, I at times will say and do awkward and inappropriate things. I used to be unaware of this—well, to be honest, sometimes intentionally unaware. But over the last couple of years, I have seen this, and when such things occur, I get embarrassed and then angry at myself. I used to blame it on others, but now I see much of it is on me. I am working hard to get a grip on it and make myself a better person. When I was in middle school, I obsessed over what I had and looked all over the Internet to find what I could. The Internet is comforting to me. You don’t have to interact with it; you just explore it. It makes no demands on you and does not hide messages in facial expressions or body movements. I looked Asperger’s up on Google, something I am totally into, and created a file for myself on this thing, this thing that haunts me to the present.

I found a list of things that were called hallmarks, or symptoms, and I studied them as was enduring the dark hell called middle school. I fit almost all of these categories, except that I am not a loner, I like people and like to be around a group. I printed it out several things, and along with the letter that condemned me to having a handler, they all reside in a folder I keep hidden in a box I used to call my treasure box or secrets box in my closet in my room. Also in the box is my collection of dinosaur figures—a T-Rex, diplodocus, triceratops, and an ankylosaur—and two prehistoric mammals, a mammoth and a saber-toothed cat. There is one other dinosaur, a stegosaurus. The guy at the museum that sold them to me was named Billy, and he said the name of the creature was Stevie. He seemed emotional about that. Why I remember that, I don’t know, just that I do. I keep all that stuff in the box. I can’t show it to anyone. I might risk the ridicule I endured in middle school. But, then, I just might not want to. It is hidden in my closet, in the back of it, in that small area behind the door, the place where one keeps clothes hung that are not worn often, like the horrible shirt an aunt bought you that you must wear when such aunt is in residence. Apparently, I do not show much appreciation for such things, like my brother, the Goody Two-shoes, does.

The box sits on the floor, and on top is a collection of movies placed there to keep prying eyes out. It’s only three feet high and wide and fits perfectly in that dark corner. Inside are things I love but can’t allow anyone to see. That would be embarrassing. I mean, well, it is where I keep my Golden Book of Dinosaurs and its companion, The Little Golden Book of Dinosaurs. There are other things in there as well—like my Asperger’s file, which I used to read over and over, but no longer. I feel better about myself now, and no longer have to revisit those dark days. It’s there along with some other things of the past, which I hope no one sees. I love to draw, and I draw pictures of animals and anime characters. I have a folder of them and a gallery online. Those, I keep on my shelf. But in my box, I have a picture where my friend Kelly colored the dinosaurs pink. She did it in a class I had with her, and Mr. D. was there. He watched her color the dinosaurs in one picture pink and then took another, one with a tyrannosaurus and allosaurus in perfect proportion, and not only colored them pink but put flowers in their claws. She then asked if