The Penumbra: The Penumbra, #0

By Ben Wari

What Is The Penumbra?

 

The Penumbra is:

 

The very edge of the border between light and shadow.

 

A series of connected, interrelated fictions spanning the supernatural, horror, and science fiction genres, along with their cousins.

 

An homage to anthologies of speculative fiction in TV, comic book, and prose form.

 

Two strangers in different places and circumstances find themselves drawn to each other, and to increasingly world-altering events. What will they find out about The Penumbra? All other stories that follow fan out from this occurrence. 

 

*This is the first story in the sequence, but the rest are largely standalone stories in anthology format.* 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ben Wari
• Release date: Oct 31, 2015
• ISBN: 9798201958107

Book preview

Copyright © 2012-2023 Ben J Wari

Cover Design Copyright © 2021 Ben J Wari

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in reviews and the like.

This is a work of fiction. All persons, personalities, events, institutions, and references are part of the rich, fictional tapestry that authors love to use for ours and others' amusement. Any relation to anything in our reality is entirely coincidental,or perhaps a product of our subconscious.

First Published, 2015

ebook ISBN - 9798201958107

www.thepenumbra.net

-Dedication-

For Ray, Richard, and Rod,

who thought out past here to there.

*

- 1 -

The Penumbra

"Would that I could continue these wonders into a thousand,

thousand worlds, each a different, glimmering facet of the strange

and the improbable that we lend our imaginations to..."

- Charles Gloaming's finale speech, 1973

*

As the shells rained down around him, pelting him with mud and shrapnel, Iverson swore he had seen this before. No, it wasn't simple deja vu or a matter of repetition or a routine done so many times that life became a blur.

He knew with all certainty that he had watched this exact scene play out before, his cowering along with his mates, from somewhere safe and sound and far away from the deteriorating trenches. Or had it happened to someone he knew well? Did he know anyone so old? In this great of detail? The pale light of day hanging over the battlefield was now fading and he had so little time left to think on these curling, threatening ideas.

He had been in the perpetual mist and fog of the trenches for what seemed like weeks, but he could not be sure. He felt as though he were pretending the entire time, that the uniform he wore was only a costume, though his mates around him stared so defiantly, so thoroughly at the tops of the plank walls, that it had to be real.

He didn't remember enlisting, but he remembered scraps of training. The voyage to this muck was indistinct, only glimpses. His name was Alexei Iverson, which was not of The Isles, but forgiven during wartime; as easily glossed over as his aging, stout body, his weakening, dark eyes, his hint of an eastern accent, his lack of quick reflexes. It did not matter at the front. There were many others here that were nearing that old, fearful hill as well, and after a while everyone came to look the same hungry-sick, a matching array.

Every time he moved or spoke or smoked or stared out across no-man's land, any time left to himself to view things from the periphery of his vision, it seemed as if he were someone else entirely. Most of the men mumbled similar thoughts, and he had almost convinced himself that this was something war