The Voices Are Alive

By Louis Bruno

Brad Rosenthal can’t talk about his life. He has a nice life, friends with celebrity writers, married to his beautiful wife, Rosa, and he’s successful. He’s escaped his fate and beat the odds, but he can’t return to America. Until his mothers death brings him back to North Carolina, where everyone knows him, and a secret cult is willing to hurt Brad to make him and his family bleed. Journey into hell as Louis Bruno can only tell it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jun 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9781387910977

Book preview

The Voices Are Alive

Louis Bruno

ISBN: 978-1-4583-1731-5

Digital ISBN: 978-1-387-91097-7

Copyright 2022 Louis Bruno

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in an entirely fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Books by Louis Bruno

The Disintegrating Bloodline

The Disintegrating Bloodline Part 2: Chaos

The Data Chase

The Disintegrating Bloodline part 3: Solvè

Apocalypse Soldier

Selection: The First Book of the Life and Death Saga

Blinking Eyes: The Second Book of the Life and Death Saga

To the Moon and Back

The Michael Project

The Lost Children of Eve: The Michael Project: Book 2

The Disintegrating Bloodline: The Original Text

The Villain Lives

The God of Curiosity

The Villain Lives: Book 2: A Divided Pinpoint

The Dreamers Fury

Thy Kingdom Come

Come Home, Young One

City of Sand: Book 1: The Terror King

The Voices Are Alive

Poetry

Hierarchy of Dwindling Sheep

Praise for Louis Bruno

Hierarchy of Dwindling Sheep

"I have been considerably inspired by the various poems of this book. Some of the poems are very educative and some have great moral lessons. It has been established in one of the poems that the abundance of money does not provide happiness and peace. It is also not sensible to do an arduous task to the detriment of your health. It is equally unwise to be deprived of your social life due to the love of money. People always crave for jobs with higher salary with the view of making money, but they end up causing more harm to themselves. It is, therefore, necessary to be cautious of employers who exploit you mercilessly and kill your dreams.

[Louis] has demonstrated his awesome skills in the world of poetry with the use of excellent literary devices."

-Kwame1977-Online bookclub.org

[Louis] covers everything from fairy tales to algorithms. He has a strong voice that carries through the entire collection, with active language, the darkness of the narrator’s experience of our times coming through loud and clear. And, let’s just say, by two poems in, you won’t ever think about Snow White quite the same way again.

Axie Barclay -San Fran Sisco Book Review

Praise for Selection: The First Book of the Life and Death Saga

"[Mr.] Bruno has certainly

created a frightening world full of bleakness, despair, and a great deal of ash."

-Kirkus Review

Praise for The Michael Project

The character development proves that the writer is talented. He managed to create several characters and all of them were unique and different.

Sen_Suzumiya Online Book Club.org

"THROUGH ME THE WAY TO THE CITY OF WOE,

THROUGH ME THE WAY TO THE ETERNAL PAIN,

THROUGH ME THE WAY TO THE LOST.

JUSTICE MOVED MY MAKER ON HIGH.

DIVINE POWER MADE ME,

WISDOM SUPREME, AND PRIMAL LOVE.

BEFORE ME NOTHING WAS BUT THINGS ETERNAL,

AND I ENDURE ETERNALLY.

ABANDON ALL HOPE, YOU WHO ENTER HERE."

Dante Alighieri The Inferno Inferno 3 Verses 1-9

Well, here he was. They could save each other, the way the poets promised lovers should. He was a mystery, he was the darkness, he was all she dreamed of. And if she would only free him he would service her—oh yes—until her pleasure reached that threshold that, like all thresholds, was a place where the strong grew stronger, and the weak perished.

Clive Barker The Hellbound Heart

Take No Part in the Untruthful works of darkness, but instead expose them.

Ephesians 5:11

Prologue

A Ritualistic Suicide

In North Carolina, Buddy Holiday sat at in the corner of the Roanoke Area library, mumbling words that no one bothered to question until they found his dead body in the library. Buddy Holiday was a white male in his mid 50’s, who refused to accept medication for his emotional disorders, but Buddy was focused on researching on the occult in the daytime while he worked as a janitor at the Roanoke Area library in North Carolina. No one who worked at the library knew Buddy Holiday’s name because he talked to no one, and no one dared to approach Buddy when they were shelving books, a job he envied because he would have been seen as important people and be busy at the same time. Now, Buddy Holiday was not the type to sleep, so this was the perfect job for a night owl, such as himself. Buddy Holiday’s only co-workers were with a bunch of Mexican Americans, and 1 Native American, named Proudfeet, who refused to acknowledge his Native American background, while in turn drowning his sorrows in his alcoholism by going to AA meetings in town, and opening up his feelings, pitifully.  The native American, Proudfeet—who viewed himself as a conundrum in itself—but it was  Buddy Holidays secret that he refused to share with his co-workers, but the only form of communication he shared with them was a nod to say hello or goodbye or a smile that said he was okay. Buddy was a white male who hated everyone, especially lazy people, but he had been without work for the past ten years so he had to be humble and ingratiate himself to a lower paying job. Buddy had traveled down every rat hole in Vietnam to know that every hole was approached with caution, he felt extremely depressed and came to the library to relax and research every porn site available to just pass the time 15 minutes before 9:00 PM when work started for them. Buddy stayed away from video sites, like daredorm.com, which required a camera for him to communicate with, and stayed away from sites that could cause the computer viruses to form. But he was a high functioning pervert who didn’t masturbate in public. Although he wasn’t smart enough to leave a virus trail, but that wouldn’t bother him tonight.

But something called to him. From the deep bowels of forgotten woes. A sinful lust that only came out at night. Speaking to him. Understanding his pity, and warping it. Buddy wanted to know what this Mad Arab was telling him to do. The library was silent, but Buddy was laughing, too.

Paint. The Mad Arab told him.

Paint what? Buddy said, and then felt his eyes seeing the image appear before his eyes, which was a bright red Pentagram with a goat’s head in the middle of the star with all the points connecting together. Alien tentacles moved around the pentagram, and eyes appeared. Usually a broken Pentagram star meant that none of the evil spirits could enter the library, but they were all connected, and the voice commanded Buddy to paint. Buddy did as he was told, but in that instance he saw the painting appear to him. Now, he had completed the pentagram. The 9th entrance of the Necronomicon was realized, and now, Cthulu will enter their world of 2011.

Now, sacrifice yourself.  The voice whispered.

But when Buddy looked down, he saw that his stomach had been pierced, and his work shirt was covered with his own blood. Buddy didn’t know how much blood he had lost but for some reason, which was strange because he hadn’t felt his own hand puncture his stomach. But today, Buddy was not going to obey God or be apart of God’s Clock any longer. He fell, and screamed, Brad! I will kill you, and consume your very soul! 

Chapter 1

Brad’s Ascent

1

Brad Rosenthal, who was born, raised, and had worked at the same area Roanoke area library in Roanoke, North Carolina, that gave jobs to middle of the road scholars and blue collar citizens who weren’t important or recognize their own importance. After Brad signed a deal with his literary agent, Ed Castle, in New York City, he left North Carolina and got rid of his southern accent, and many other mythos and lore about the south that people failed to realize was bullshit. People were nice: horseshit. North Carolina was a nice and quaint place: this was a fact, because ultimately nothing happened on the weekends that doesn’t require money or allows homeless people to attend and encroach on our days off in the parks (but that’s everywhere). Brad didn’t despise the south because he was fine with the people, but it was due to limited publishing houses that would help his craft reach a massive audience, and the Roanoke Area Library in North Carolina (and his father) refused to help him out as well.   

Brad Rosenthal knew that in order for his writing to survive, he needed to leave, and after he was signed to a 10-book deal contract. He had to write something that spoke to him but could also appeal to a massive audience. He was mostly concerned with writing, and he was entering into an extinct area that was on the verge of being threatened by digital books, video games, and taking books off the shelves because of prude ideologs who can’t read into subtext. But why did Brad Rosenthal believe in writing? What made him want to be a writer when everyone his age was more interested in writing for television, video games, and movies?

Brad felt that he couldn’t stay in the south and his craft would survive in a 9 to 5 job that he didn’t want only for health insurance that discouraged him from accomplishing his true goals, which was to be an established writer in the publishing industry and respected by his peers. He wanted to have fun and work as diligently and hard on a novel, just as much as people work in 9 to 5 jobs to support their families. Brad wanted to give his readers, not only an entertaining book, but a book that makes the audience think while it moves them on a profound level, emotionally.

Brad Rosenthal had won over Ed Castle with a manuscript that led to a multi-million dollar fiction trilogy that was controversial for very good reason. It was about the Dewey Decimal System and God. Nothing seemed as over-rated to talk about, because there was God and Mathematics, God and Science, but Brad found very interesting to discuss because his father had been a librarian and had no interest in God. Even though his family was Catholic, and Italian—Brad’s father was a convert from a strict Baptist— certainly had no interest in God. Maybe it was because he considered himself so educated that he had a natural aversion to all things mystical, and only could buy into the surface of things? Brad commented to his father, long before they stopped speaking to each other, was If you’re an atheist, just say it. I won’t give you a hard time. Brad was not an atheist, which was an ideology that he didn’t invest in.

On the state of his relationship with Brad’s family, had been rocky ever since his childhood. He had went through a flux of hating his father and being nice to him—while in turn hurting himself by being nice to people that kept treating him bad—and then finally erupted at the funeral of Brad’s grandmother’s funeral. Plus the unidentifiable line of rage that he had for a cousin who spoke openly in the press about influencing a Greek mythology story that Brad later responded to in the press as That story {The Minotaur’s Heel} that is out now has no word that my cousin {Sean Lightie} has written or would even take the time to comprehend a word that I have written. And as far as money, he {Sean Lightie} knows that he won’t see a dime of it, because he gave no critical advice on how to craft the story. Thanks but no thanks. 

But that was long ago, and he cut off all communication with his father, his cousin in 5 years since he had gone to publish his trilogy. The critics, when they were relevant, seemed to crowd around the idea of an intelligent thriller, while all Brad claimed was to bring his love of the library into an emotional thriller, which was his intention. Brad liked the slow, languid pace of a novel because he wanted, as John Irving would always say, the passage of time was very important to him and Brad agreed on this whole heartedly while he employed his own modern intentions into the novel as well, and his intentions were to deliver something perfect on every level.

Brad Rosenthal could naturally say his arrogance had gotten him into trouble, but in his case, keeping to himself was his downfall. Upon hearing about the paperback rights for his trilogy, and the Minotaur’s Heel rights for the Young Adult crowd, the $500,000 advance of the Minotaur’s Heel and the money his trilogy was doubling in foreign sales, Brad could live in a cardboard box and super models would flock around him and give up there penthouses to become as a beggar’s wife. Brad commented in the press that To write was a true talent, but to be popular was like living on Mount Olympus while being worshipped and prayed to like a God or Deity for a new book to speak to them. Brad knew fame was a rollercoaster for the first 2 to 3 years while he