Dreamcast 2, p.1
Dreamcast 2, page 1
Dreamcast 2
by Paul Telegdi
Four cases of paranormal crime fiction
Copyright © 2011 by Paul Telegdi
Published by Paul Telegdi on Smashwords
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This book is a work of fiction in its entirety for adults.
*****
Dedicated to my wife, Melanie Telegdi.
whose tireless help and encouragement
has made this book possible
Dreamcast Series
Dreamcast...
Dreamcast 2
Dreamcast 3
Dreamcast 4
To enjoy other books by Paul Telegdi please search on Smashwords.com or go to http://www.seeWordFactory.com
*****
Contents
CASE 3: A Different Animal ... chapters 1-3
CASE 4: In Time ... chapters 4-9
CASE 5: The Assignment ... chapters 10-11
CASE 6: Fault Lines ... chapters 12-21
Foreword
Here are four more cases for your consideration. Please be warned that I don’t revisit the past documented in Dreamcast, so if you haven’t read the first book, you might find the events described here puzzling.
In Dreamcast, I described how I became aware of my psychic talents, how difficult it was to accept them and what insights and techniques I had learned in their use. Each case stretched me farther, and I discovered new things about myself and the world around me.
Regarding myself, I found I was able to sense people’s emotions but not their actual thoughts. I could touch minds, read isolated feelings and in times of crisis even convey vital information. Most surprising was the out-of-body experience that allowed me to project into an awareness of my surroundings. I call it flying for it resembles soaring over a psychic landscape that overlays the physical world. Unbelievable? Yeah, crazy. I certainly can’t explain it and have the further worry of not knowing what else I’m capable of.
In hindsight, I consider my “gift” more of a curse because it puts me on a collision course with the most evil, the most depraved situations that the rest of the world is blissfully unaware of. Like a magnet, trouble finds me. And I, sensing what I sense, because of the responsibility it evokes, can’t avoid the impact.
However, I’m fortunate that I met my opponents in ascending order of power. Max was thankfully less than Tex, who was definitely inferior to Rex and so on. I would not have survived these encounters in the reverse order and these books would never have been written.
So dear Reader, if you have not read my first book, beg, borrow or steal it (might consider buying a copy) to get the most out of Dreamcast 2.
Travis James Howard
Case 3: A Different Animal
Chapter 1
“Maclure?” I asked the phone, not sure if I would get him in the middle of the two-week long Mardi Gras festivities.
“Travis, my boy. Good to hear your voice.” He sounded glad, but immediately his tone changed. “It’s 8:11Sunday morning, so I take it this is not a social call?”
“No, it’s not. I’m not sure how to put this. Last night I felt a disturbance...”
“A disturbance in the Force?” Maclure chuckled. Funny.
“Something like that. I’m calling to see if you have anything on record for last night around 10:30.”
“There’s nothing significant in the duty log. The usual drunkenness, disorderly conduct and public mischief. To be expected in the middle of Mardi Gras. What’s it all about?”
“I had a strange experience last night. Something hit me. Hard enough to throw me to the floor.”
“Um... like a psychic something?” To his credit there was not a trace of skepticism in his voice. After two cases he was a confirmed believer in my abilities.
“Very much a psychic thing. But nothing that I ever felt before. It was hard and powerful, paralyzing me for half an hour.”
“What do you think could have caused it?”
“I don’t know. I hope it’s not another murder. Could be an accident. Had to be something critical to produce such a powerful effect.”
“To my knowledge, nothing noteworthy turned up last night. Hold the line Travis, I’ll ask the duty desk.” The line went dead and I listened impatiently to the buzz of electronic silence. That’s what was wrong with police procedure: if they had no record of it, it didn’t happen. After several minutes the connection came back on.
“Travis. Nothing came in last night. Just the usual stuff that goes with Mardi Gras. The jail is full of drunks. There was a house fire on Colter Avenue, but it was quickly contained and nobody was hurt. There were a few fender benders on the main drag, but again nothing serious.”
“OK. I guess that’s good. At least I hope so.” I paused, allowing myself to be convinced. “Still, if you come across something to the northwest, let me know.”
“Northwest? How far?”
“I didn’t get a good read on the distance. The whole thing caught me by surprise, no warning, no build up, just a jolt. Left me numb and nearly senseless. Afterward I could find nothing to account for it. But it had to be something.”
“OK. I’ll keep an eye out for it.”
I felt a little guilty, not having called him for two months. We try to keep in touch, the three of us: Maclure, Smythe and I. “Well, how are you then?” I tried to fill the hole belatedly.
“Good. Good. I’m getting married again.”
“No!? To anyone I know?”
“Actually yes. Toma Sedora Henricks.”
“But I thought you didn’t...” I nearly blurted out.
“Like her? Well, yes, initially I didn’t. But she grew on me. She’s an up-front, honest gal. She lets me know where I stand with her. Not like my first wife, who was a doormat, would never tell me what she really thought and felt about things. Then, out of the blue, she wants a divorce. Well she got it. But that’s all in the past now and time for me to start a new life.”
“Well congratulations to you. Toma is a fun person.”
“She likes what I like.”
We talked a few more minutes. He reported on Smythe, who got some time off to take his kids to the ongoing festivities. To children’s events, the parade, the Midway amusements, not the drunken thing it became later on in the night. I told Maclure that Amanda and I were doing great and thinking about getting married and having kids.
“No kidding! Well that’s great.” Then he chuckled. “Kinda hard to see you changing diapers and breast feeding babies.”
“Hilarious...” We ended the conversation on that note and I resumed my pacing of the kitchen floor. Up and down. Amanda had nicknamed it Travis Boulevard. She considered me a chronic worrier.
Well, nothing then. Was that good or bad news? The thing, however, had to be a real event. It was too powerful, too distinct to be a random, unassociated occurrence. It just hadn’t been discovered yet. I got out the county map and tracked to the northwest, through the city core, the commercial district, the older subdivision of Wexworth, the new gated community of Maxfield Park, the golf course, the marshland of the conservation area and the countryside beyond. Something had taken place in that direction.
Last night I had taken flight along that route, projected myself into the psychic landscape that defined my out-of-body experience, but noted nothing peculiar. The usual flickers, ups and downs of mood swings, a few minor flare ups that briefly lit up the psychic world that overlaid the actual geography. My body was safely in bed while my awareness was soaring over the emotional flux of the surrounding country. To the northwest things were rather static; the festivities were more to the south, on Ramsgate and Riverside, overflowing the pubs and bistros as boisterous crowds looked for entertainment.
Every year around this time I was highly irritable. The town was jumping, full of tourists, revelers bent on having a good time. There were just too many people in town, allowing themselves excesses not usually indulged in and never done at home. There was an overflow of emotions that invaded my personal space, got into my head and I had to make a conscious effort to keep them out. Most years I escaped into the wild, into the quiet back country, but this year my agent convinced me to stay to promote my art exhibition. I had 30 paintings hanging in the gallery, some of which I hoped to sell. It was important to mix with the customers, give them the added experience of communing with the artist and bonding to their purchases. Ms. Weston said that she could charge 15 percent more when I was on hand to enhance the sale. But it was often boring to be forced to talk amicably to people who knew little of art and even less about creativity. “Are you well-known?” was the most frequent question asked. But I needed the money. As a teaching assistant at college I was not earning much, so anything I could sell was more than welcome. Amanda’s psychology practice was carrying the lion’s share of our expenses. So I swallowed my irritation and put on a congenial face as I talked with prospective customers. After all, I, too, was looking for good homes for my paintings and often had visions of my work brightening a living or a family room.
With my emotional sensitivity so dampened, it was doubly shocking to be hit by the full force of whatever it
Before I had become aware of my paranormal talents, I believed my extreme distractibility was because I was too influenced by my surroundings. In time I learned to tune out the interference, but it took concentration and energy that wore me down. There was a constant buzz in my head as impressions intruded that deadened rather than enhanced my senses.
You’d think that with my abilities I’d know everything, read people’s minds, and gain an unfair advantage over everyone else. But nothing could be further from the truth. Before I knew about my abilities, ESP was a distraction. I was never sure what was what, where some thoughts came from or what to make of them. The uncertainty often robbed me of initiative. My ESP did not come with an instruction manual and warranties; it was more often confusing and uncomfortable.
I had not used my psychic abilities much since Tex. The temptation was there, to sample somebody or to take flight, but so was the inhibition that accumulated around it. The irrationality of the paranormal made reality much less real. Not only was there a dislocation in the physical realm that translated into nausea or vertigo, but also an erosion of mental processes, as intuition often collided with the logical. There were two sets of distinct rules and I had difficulty balancing between them.
I spent long hours trying to come to terms with being paranormal. The difficulty was that whenever I flipped into psychic mode, something heavy fell on me and suddenly I was responsible for burdens no normal person ought to bear. Someone’s murder, for example, with all the blood and gore it came with. I was confronted with evil at a scale that was damaging. I still had vestiges of post traumatic stress from prior involvements. Mostly I managed to push Max and Tex into the background, but was haunted by the fear that others like them were around us, hunting and trolling for victims at will. But why was it up to me to deal with such wickedness? To suck out the venom? Why dirty myself and bring that filth back with me?
Yes, I repressed the paranormal so I could live in peace. Only with Amanda did I allow a little of my abilities to shine through, enough to monitor her moods, a little to take into the marriage bed and turn our lovemaking into something special. I confess the last part was addictive, blending our auras, enhancing sensations, reaching emotional heights way beyond the norm.
In my art too, I allowed my psychic abilities a carefully managed peek at the world. Enough to see beneath the surface, but not more for fear of encountering something unwelcome. In a way, I had become a little more conventional in my artistic expression but the new balance was well received and my work was selling better than ever.
On the whole I had been quite successful at keeping a tight rein on the paranormal, and could lull myself into thinking that I was leading an everyday life. Yet, in spite of my vigilance and often in my most unguarded moments, the unreality of it all fell on me. It was unreal that I had these abilities in the first place; unreal that because of them evil invaded my life and compelled me to fight it. Then there was Jenny, my first love, murdered and I was accused of it, forcing me to take Max head on and in the end to kill him in retribution. Then there was fifteen year old Sarah, who was alive only because I was able to kill her abductor Tex. After such experiences how was I to resume my life? I myself was a killer—sure, in the service of justice, but it left me with blood on my hands. That they were guilty and needed killing did not ease my qualms; it now became part of my self-image that I had to carry around daily. How unreal was all that?
Still, not all was bad: there was, of course, Amanda, the real love of my life, who also came with the package. I could thank Max for her entry into my life. Had it not been for him I would never have met her, an instance of good coming with the bad. Even so nothing was quite straightforward. She was ten years older than me, and though I asked her to marry me, she turned me down with the promise that if after a year I still felt the same, she would consider it. I still felt the same and could hardly wait for the year to be up.
Just the other day my mother called, launching into an extended conversation about my parents’ visit to my sister, describing in great detail all of the three grandchildren. She wanted to know how I was doing and when Amanda and I would get married. What could I tell her? Amanda and I were happy and compatible. I wanted her more than ever. I had only a few months to go before I could ask her again to marry me.
Then there was this... this new event... the unexpected again invading my life. What was it? Something I couldn’t turn my back on.
At 9:00 a.m., Amanda came into the kitchen, heading for the coffee pot. She wore a frilly red nightgown that immediately got me on the exit ramp of Travis Boulevard. I started having different thoughts. We’d been together for almost a year and a half and even without ESP she was sensitive to my moods. Let me have my coffee, her posture said. I sat down opposite and regarded her.
“I called Maclure.”
“About last night?”
“Yes. The police have no record of anything significant.”
“Which might not mean a thing.” She arrived at the same conclusion I did, but a lot quicker.
Not for the first time I questioned my abilities. Was I imagining all this? I couldn’t tell. After Tex, I had studied the brain in detail, intrigued by all the different structures and their functions. I pored over textbooks and brainmaps and related them to what I could sense. I found a few places where science was wrong, but no one asked me. Still, knowing the names of things and their functions did not make ESP any clearer and after an initial enthusiasm my interest faded.
It was too bad that I couldn’t look into my own brain. It seemed the psychic eye could not turn around to look at itself. The workings of my own mind remained a mystery.
The day went by smoothly. Midday we dared to take in the activities on Riverside, just drifting along with the crowd, soaking up the sights and sounds of the throng bent on enjoying itself. Of course, our Mardi Gras did not compare with the extravaganza put on by New Orleans before the flooding, but we were a cheaper alternative, attracting the more cost-conscious tourist. The city made a special effort to attract families with good wholesome entertainment, and beside the main parade for adults, there was a separate procession for kids that was the best in the country. We were the English enclave of the state, but for the occasion pretended a French heritage.
We feasted at a buffet loaded with varieties of Cajun cooking and sampled wines of California and New York. We enjoyed the street theater: jugglers and acrobats, fire eaters, and a variety of animal acts. We browsed the vendors, running a gauntlet of their booths, the target of aggressive hawking. I bought some candy floss, which Amanda refused to get for herself, but kept feeding off mine. By the afternoon we drifted into Larmount Park, fed the assorted ducks, geese and the town’s officially sanctioned swans and ended up on the midway set up by the band shell.
Of course we had to go on the Ferris wheel, the Tornado Whip, the Catapult, and the giant roller coaster, advertised as the 3rd largest in the country. I was tired of such childish delights, but I knew Amanda secretly wanted to ride them. Since her family had been too upscale to partake in such thrills, her prejudice was so deeply ingrained that I had to convince her to get on the various rides. She squealed as loudly as anyone else without a Ph.D. and hung onto me for dear life. The upshot was that I got a queasy stomach, but she got all riled up, so much so that we had to go home and get on a much different ride to unwind.
