Whesra

By L. E. Thissell

Enter a world where nothing is as it seems. One night, a young woman and her daughter disappear and find themselves trapped in a void. Laura and Shaleen learn that they have complete control to create a new reality, and yet are powerless to return to their home. Their intense emotional turmoil, loss and love for John pass through a thousand generations, and bring about a final climatic confrontation that threatens to destroy their world...

• Language: English
• Publisher: L. E. Thissell
• Release date: Dec 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223664697

Book preview

I fell in love on a cold snowy night.

Heavy snowflakes were falling, floating slowly through the light from the few night-lamps, gathering on her long thick black hair as we walked hand-in-hand.  We talked about the most important things, things that no lovers had ever spoken before, and there was no-one in the world but us.  We walked to a small park, the snow as fresh as life itself, and stood sheltered as the words ran out and we stared into each other’s eyes.  Behind a park shed, hidden from view of the few cars driving by at that late hour, we kissed and my world was never the same.

Laura had no family, didn’t remember anything from before her sixth birthday.  My family accepted her, and her them, as if she were a missing part that had been found after believing it lost forever.  Her essence wrapped itself around and through me, until we found it impossible to tell where one stopped and the other began.  We were each other’s creation.

Dreams

Chapter One

Iawoke suddenly, aware that Laura wasn’t by my side.  Some small sound had brought me out of a strange, twisted dream, a dream full of hideous shapes and unseen presences.  I sat up, the sudden sharp tang of fear on my tongue, my stomach quickened by anxiety.

Laura?

I looked around the dark room, a faint wash of moonlight coming through the window.  The bathroom door was open, as was the door to the hallway leading to our living room.  No lights were on anywhere in the house.  I thought I detected the whisper of a smell foreign to me.  It disappeared as I came fully awake.

I stretched my eyes wide to clear the remnants of the dreaming and sleep from my mind, then rose to look for her.  My first thought was that she had heard something from Shaleen’s room and had gone to check our daughter, whose second birthday was only three days away.  But when I entered the room, I could see in the moonlight that Laura wasn’t there, and neither was Shaleen.

Instead of vague dream unease I had a sudden pang of real fear.  I hurried back to the bedroom and pulled on my robe.  I quickly walked through the house and the garage, turning on lights and calling for Laura and Shaleen.  After less than two minutes I knew that both were gone.  For the first time since we had married nearly four years before, Laura’s presence, her feel, was gone.

Even quicker than donning the robe, I dressed to go out into the frigid winter night.  I stepped through the porch out onto the veranda and noticed that both vehicles were parked in the driveway, and that there were no fresh tracks in the new snow.  I turned on the outside lights but the sight remained the same; no tire tracks, no footprints.  The snow had stopped falling before we had gone to bed, hours before.

I ran through the house and through the back porch.  It was the same; fresh snow, no tracks.  I stood in dazed shock, trying to reconcile the fact that they were gone and the fact that they hadn’t walked away from the house.  I turned and ran through the house, looking in places they couldn’t possibly be hiding, from the nooks of the attic to the recesses of the cellar, even peering up the fireplace chimney with a flashlight.  After several minutes I stumbled back to the kitchen and collapsed onto a chair, head spinning.

A minute passed, maybe two, until my mind began to clear.  My first coherent thought was to call the police.  I grabbed the phone and dialed 911.  My mind was clearing rapidly; I had always had the gift of mental agility and the capability of keeping calm in a panic-inducing situation.  By the time a dispatcher received my call, I was able to narrate the events in a clear manner, even to the details of the fresh snow and no tracks.

At first, hearing that this was merely a missing-persons case, and not even of more than five hours, the dispatcher was hesitant to send an officer to my house; she finally relented to the extent of relaying my call to the State Police duty officer, Sergeant Faulek.  He had me narrate my story several times, asking questions, probing my mental state.

At first Sergeant Faulek tried to convince me to accept an officer first thing in the morning.  I eventually, using every persuasive tactic I possessed and becoming quite—almost abusively—insistent, I coerced him into sending an officer immediately.  He asked me to maintain the connection while he sent a car to my house.  In the interim fifteen minutes I retold the events since I had awoken, at least five times.

When I heard the car turn from the gravel road, nearly 200 yards away, into my driveway, I told Sergeant Faulek that I was going to meet the officer, but that I could remain in contact through the cordless phone.  I continued, under the sergeant’s direction, to explain my every move as I walked onto the porch and out into the driveway, meeting the police car about 40 yards from the house.

The officer, Corporal Whiman, was in radio contact with Sergeant Faulek as he stopped.  The sergeant told me that I could end the conversation now, and he would receive the officer’s report when he returned.  I thanked him and turned off the phone.

Good evening, sir, spoke the corporal as he stepped from the car, his breath-fog billowing.  What is the problem here?

I quickly ran through the entire story yet one more time, as he played the beam from his flashlight around the surrounding area, the snow and frost glistening in the bright light.  I have to concede that this officer was very sharp, very logical.  He took his time, patiently and methodically searching the entire area around the house, slowly circling in until we were standing on the veranda.  By this time almost two hours had elapsed since I had first awoken, and the tension was beginning to tell on me.

We entered the welcome warmth of the house.  I re-enacted for Corporal Whiman the exact sequence of events that had occurred from the moment I had been jarred awake.  Afterward I went to make coffee as he searched the house.

Eventually we sat at the kitchen table, drinking coffee.  He studied the most recent pictures of my wife and daughter, asked an endless array of questions covering the time from when he had arrived to the last thing I remembered from the night before.  By dawn he had as thorough a knowledge of Laura and Shaleen as anyone who had never met them possibly could.  He left, a combined look of concern and skepticism on his face, as the sun glittered its way into the sky.

I sat in the jungle room, as we called it, plants covering the walls and shelves and window sill.  The sunlight shone in, the vivid colors in riotous profusion throughout the room.  This had been Laura’s creative masterpiece, and Shaleen’s favorite place to go from the time that she could crawl, her private little world to gaze at the sunshine.  I could see the shine of her black hair, so like Laura’s, and the quiet in her dark eyes.

I sat there for almost an hour.

For the next couple of hours I called everyone I knew, hoping that somehow, someone somewhere had some inkling of knowledge about what might have happened, searching for some slight clue to ease my puzzled and increasingly painful thoughts.  The reality of their absence was beginning to settle harsh and heavy, the mystery intensifying the loss.  My imagination had begun to supply bizarre motives and explanations.

By mid-morning my family and many of our friends had gathered, the word now wide-spread of Laura’s and Shaleen’s disappearance.  With their gathering, I began to succumb to the numbing shock, welcome for its distancing from the pain, and frustration for the lack of any possible action.

That whole day passed in a blur, the house finally clearing out by that evening.  Two detectives interviewed me and the others for several hours in the afternoon, leaving with the same look that Corporal Whiman had had that morning.  My sister, June, offered to stay the night but I declined, dreading to be alone yet needing the solitude as surely as my next breath.

I went to the jungle room, and sat in a patch of moonlight.  As I sat there, the memory of the strange smell returned, forgotten until that moment.  As I reflected on the memory, I realized that it had indeed been a real sensation, not the dregs of the strange dream that had un-nerved me so.  I went to the bedroom and studied the bed.  I could still see where Laura had laid, the small indent on her pillow, a strand of long black hair streaking the white pillowcase.  I bent over and smelled where her head had been, and again caught the faintest wisp of that elusive, unknown odor.

It was a musty, peculiarly tangy smell, with undertones of a metallic bite.  And even as I describe it, it is still on the edge of my perception, as it was then.  That smell hasn’t left me since and I now know it never will.

The last memory of that long horrid day is of kneeling on Laura’s side of the cold bed, head on outstretched arms, silent tears running down my face as I cried myself to sleep.

Chapter Two

Ifelt the beautiful warmth of sunshine on my face, and heard the low rustling of summer-breeze-washed trees, as consciousness edged up from as deep a slumber as I have ever experienced.  I smelled a strange odor...

I came awake with a painful rush, all of the preceding day’s events crashing into focus.  My eyes flew open and I gasped as I thrust myself into a sitting position.  I have to admit that panic was very near as I stared around at a completely impossible scene.

I was in a small round meadow, perhaps forty yards in diameter, with four slender trees in the center.  Around the meadow was a circle of larger trees, which abruptly terminated about twenty yards from the edge of the meadow.

These larger trees curved inward over the meadow, following a clear wall of some sort, whether glass or force field I couldn’t say.  As my gaze followed upward I could see the faint shimmer of the wall until it met at the top, at least 150 yards above me.  At that apex was a dark, round object.  I could see two large chains stretching upward and outward from opposite sides of that dark object, from which the entire structure that I was standing in was suspended.  The trees and grass were of a strange bluish coloration, which barely impinged upon my senses, merely adding to the bizarreness of the situation.

The view outside of the wall was staggering; I was looking into a room of impossible proportions.  In many ways it was basically a normal-looking room; four walls, a floor and a ceiling.  There were three windows, one of which I was suspended in front of, and a large skylight in the ceiling far overhead.  Despite the sunshine and warmth of my meadow, I could see that outside of those windows it was night, with stars twinkling in the darkness.

The room stretched an unimaginable distance, further than I should have been able to see, yet it and everything in it were in plain detail.  At the far wall a large fire burned in an open hearth.  The inrush of strangeness overwhelmed me, and I squeezed my eyes shut tightly until pinwheels of light began to explode behind my eyelids.  I opened them and, as the darkness cleared, the same overpowering view came into focus.

The sheer magnitude of the weirdness of it all brought me to my feet.  I spun around in a circle, but then couldn’t decide what to do, and ended up standing frozen, staring once again into the room.  At that point my mind began to clear, began to cope with the perceived reality of where I was.

As I regained mastery of my wits, my first thought was of the room’s owner.  I scanned the vast space but could see that it was empty of anyone other than myself.  I then began exploring this meadow, whether prison or sanctuary I left for later to discover.

I walked to the four trees in the center of the meadow.  They were similar to aspens, but had alternating bands of smooth and rough bark.  These bands spiraled in unbroken lines around the slender trunks from the ground to the tips, twenty or twenty-five feet above my head.  They were light grayish-green in the smooth bands and dark bluish-green in the rough.

The trees were planted in a square, each tree ten feet apart from the others.  One pair of opposite-cornered trees had a spiral design in a clockwise fashion, while the other pair had a counterclockwise swirl.  The lowermost branches of all four were at eye level and extended almost to the center of the enclosed area, leaving a small open spot four or five feet across.  The leaves were very thin and triangular, bright blue-green with pulsing light-blue veins running through them.

I stooped under the branches and walked into the center of the small copse, onto a soft, lichenish ground covering that was similar in color to the veins in the leaves.  Once inside, I felt a refreshing coolness wash over me.  The thirst I had noticed disappeared, and I felt as physically rested and as full of calm energy as at any time in my life.  I studied the lichen and trees for several minutes, but could discern no further details of importance.

I left the grove and wandered around the meadow, the grass a uniform height of about three inches, very thick and soft.  When I noticed the luxurious feel against the soles of my feet, I noticed with a start that I was completely naked.  That realization was quickly replaced by growing wonder as I continued my exploration.

The grass was also blue-green and of a triangular shape, the blades with miniscule pinkish-red veins at their centers and a faint reddish tinge along the outer edges.  I wandered around the meadow several times, circling outward from the inner grove, fruitlessly inspecting the ground until I neared the ring of outer, larger trees.

These trees had more the look of coniferous trees, no spirals on their bark.  Instead they had large scales, overlapping from top to bottom.  The bottom scales were nearly a foot wide, the scales becoming progressively smaller as they neared the treetips, until it appeared that they blended into a smooth surface.

These trees were a darker gray, with only an indistinct blue coloration around the edges of their scales.  The lowest branches were at least ten feet over my head, with long sharp leaves that looked more like thorns or cactus spikes than evergreen needles.  The trunks of these broody looking trees were all about four feet in diameter and rose at least 120 feet into the air, where they curved back over the meadow.  They were spaced widely apart, with a carpet of fallen thorns littering the bare ground below them.  I could easily see past the trunks into the room beyond the wall.

I knelt and tested the feel of this carpeting with my left hand, quickly recoiling from the sudden sting of several sharp pricks on my palm.  I now knew that I would not be able to walk into that narrow ring of forest.  Tiny drops of blood welled from the pinpricks.

I wandered back into the meadow and stood near where I had first awoke.  I mulled over what I had found so far, and decided to test an idea.  I walked back to the center of the grove and immediately was refreshed.  The stinging of my left palm ceased and, when I looked, the pinpricks and blood droplets were gone.  I re-entered the meadow and sat.  I began to inspect the room outside the walls.

The room was dark, lit only by the flames from the fireplace, which was of a wide, triangular shape.  The red light flickered and waved, bringing objects into sharp perspective and then shrouding them in dimness.  The walls were made of either rough brick or of even stone, of an indiscriminate dark shade.  The floor was of a light brown wood.  The ceiling was lost in the shadows.

In front of the hearth was a low table, made of some clear substance that allowed the firelight to shine through without distortion.  A small rug with a strange design was on the floor in front of it.  On that table were four seemingly empty containers; on the left were two short round red bowls, on the right side a tall square green vase and in the middle a wide triangular black tray.  Between the red bowls and the tray were scattered several items that appeared to be variously-sized sticks.  Between the green vase and the tray was a stack of what appeared to be a sheaf of stiff paper.

To the left was a triangular, raised portion of the floor surfaced with triangular black-, green- and red-colored tiles placed in seemingly random combinations.  As the firelight danced, occasionally I thought I could detect an indistinct blue shimmer above the tiled area.

Further to the left, in the next wall, was a closed door, made of heavy wood and barred with a stout beam of shining black material.  It’s hinges were of the same black substance.  The door had a runish design on it, centered on the upper half, that seemed to twist and change while always staying the same.  I stared at the design for several minutes, but could never get a clear grasp of it.  Like everything else, the door and the glyph were of triangular design.

To the right of the fireplace was a counter built onto two thick wooden beams jutting out from the wall.  The countertop was dull white, with many small items scattered across it.  I couldn’t see what they were.  The countertop, rectangular, was one of the few objects in the room with more than three sides.  After the counter was an empty corner.

Evenly spaced from the corner, across from the counter, was a round window.  Directly in front of it was suspended, by a single chain from the ceiling, a globe.  The globe appeared to be similarly constructed as the structure I occupied, with similar-appearing trees surrounding a meadow.  The distance made any details indistinct and more to be imagined than seen.  While the globe was lit inside, it shed no light on the wall near it and cast no shadow.  Behind, the star-covered night provided a sharply-contrasting backdrop.

Mounted on the wall, stretching from the window almost to next corner, was an intricate framework.  It appeared to be finely-worked but was too far away and too shrouded in darkness to observe any details about it or its material except that it was divided into three unequal parts.

In the corner of that wall and the wall nearest me, was a wall rack holding a spear, a staff, a quiver with an unstrung bow and arrows, and a scabbarded sword hanging by its belt.  At that sight I decided that my captor, or captors, was at least nominally human or humanoid.

After the corner was another window, square, also with a suspended container in front of it.  This structure was square, with four chains, one from each corner reaching upwards and out of sight.  It also was filled with light and I could see more details within it than the more distant globe.

This container had trees in a square pattern around a square meadow, with a circle of six evenly-spaced smaller trees at the center.  I could barely see through the window, due to the slanted view, but what I could see was star-scattered night-sky.  The color of the trees was difficult to distinguish; they seemed to have a yellowish cast, but that could have been the light from within the square affecting my vision.

Below and between that window and my own was a divan, or a narrow bed of some sort.  There was no covering blanket or spread over it, merely a pair of small, triangular pillows at the far end.

I looked upwards at the skylight far above me.  I could see its vague, three-sided outline, stars twinkling through it.

I walked around the meadow until I was looking out of the window nearest me.  It was, not surprisingly, in the shape of a triangle.  I searched the night sky looking for any familiar group of stars, but to no avail.  None of these constellations had ever been seen in Earth’s skies.

Far away, I could barely perceive a horizon.  It was a darker black with no stars, an uneven break in the profusion of pin-lights in the dark heavens.  I could make out no details, for distance or type of land, except for the outline of a tall, craggy mountain off to the left.  The only thing I was sure of was that the horizon was land and not water.

Below me, almost at the bottom edge of the window, I could see the faintest trace of a blue, wispy line, almost like a vapor trail.  It was curved, disappearing from view at the bottom left and right of the window.  It was barely perceptible, unless I glanced at it from the corners of my eye.

I studied this night view for a long time, for how long I have no idea.  My mind eventually returned to Laura and Shaleen.  I knew that my present situation was somehow tied to their disappearance, because the vague smell from Laura’s pillow was now a constant companion, though at the same barely-sensed level.

I had already lost any feel for the passage of time; the sky remained black and the room empty, despite the feeling that I had been awake and examining my surroundings for at least ten hours.  The fire remained the same, never burning lower or being replenished in any way that I could see.

Suddenly tired, I slowly retraced my steps around the meadow one more time, looking for a clue, one hint to give me an idea of where I was, and why.  Frustrated, I finally returned to the center grove.  As soon as I entered all my bodily urges disappeared and I was once again refreshed and full of calm energy.

I moved out into the meadow and sat.

Chapter Three

Icompleted this cycle twenty or more times, an unknown amount of time.  I was studying the stars, grouping them into constellations and naming them.  I had noticed that they never moved, but stayed static.  Several theories presented themselves for this phenomenon, but I had no indication of which to prefer.

I was pondering one star group when a movement caught my eye from inside the room.  I whirled and stared at the tiled platform, as the blue shimmer became a twisted coil of blue light that soon split into three coils.

The coils emanated from each corner of the platform, meeting high above it.  As they merged, they formed a twisting funnel of blue light; the coils pressed tightly against each other but still separate.  The coils pulsed as they took on the appearance of a cone, the apex where the coils joined and the base where they flowed from the tiles below.

A figure began to form inside the cone, becoming more solid as the coils faded away.  Soon a woman was standing in the slight blue shimmer of the tiles.  She stepped from the platform and shrugged a leathery, dark-brown cape from her shoulders, tossing it onto the divan below me.

She was beautiful, fire and ice.  She had the look of burning passion, fierce and strong, coupled with frigid disregard for anything or anyone else except her own selfish desires.  I later learned just how apt was this first impression.

She had black hair and black eyes, with light-brown skin.  She wore a thin, woven-silver tiara with a blood-red pendant hanging down onto her forehead.  Her hair was in a thick braid, wrapped around her throat and hanging between her breasts almost to her waist.  Her lips were full and red, her teeth a brilliant white behind them.  I was mesmerized when I noticed that her features reminded me of Laura, and Laura’s genetic influence on Shaleen.

She wore a mail shirt of