The Awakened

by Julian Cheek

  The Awakened

  Book One of the Ethereal Series

  Julian Cheek

  To the one who saw me and always believes in me, my lovely lady, Mitch. To my grounded and wonderful children, Amelia and Sebastian, and to Becky and Georgia who have always made me feel welcome and loved, and to those who continued to encourage, a little idea can sometimes go a long way. This story started a long time ago in the mist, and I trust you, the reader, will travel with me through this tumultuous experience, and be with me at the end, seeing yourself.

  To Sam, David, the Ethereals and all the others who occupy my mind and heart, enjoy the telling and remember the dreaming.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Rain

  The Ethereals – The first time

  Mother

  A flickering in Rudhjanda

  Sick

  Tangaroa (God of the sea, rivers and lakes)

  Sweat

  The Gathering

  The radiator

  Ōmakere, the place of abandonment

  Rain on the windows

  Ngaire, “Silver Fern”

  “Hot Dog and Chips with Plenty of Tommy Sauce”

  The grinding of the rocks

  David

  The storm begins

  Channel 5 News

  Pania

  The Awakening

  The Turangai revolt

  To enter is to perish!

  Paris, around 10am

  England, 11am. Morning news.

  “The Padme have fallen!”

  Meltdown

  The jigsaw is complete.

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Rain

  It was the rain that woke him up. Rain, lashing against his bedroom window as if tapping out a code only he could understand. His bleary eyes looked groggily through the mist as he tried to gather some semblance of where he was. He noticed it was still dark and a low groan escaped his lips, summoned from deep within, as if to curse those who had sent the clouds scudding across the earth to pour their wrath on him that night.

  “That night”. The night, looking back now, where the first infinitesimal chink in his tightly woven armour had ruptured, and his destiny had begun.

  Sam burrowed deeper into his quilt trying to find the last bit of sleep, but it evaded him and despite his tossing and turning and protestation, he eventually gave in, snaking a hand feebly out from beneath the covers to fumble for the light switch. The clock shone its cool amber glow into his mind.

  4:30.

  4:30! Another 3 hours before I need to get up, but now, wide awake and a prisoner, Sam thought. Can’t get up because that will wake mum up, which will wake dad up, which is just another great start to a typical day. No music, for the same reason. And definitely no sleep! Frustrated already, he sensed his stress levels start to awaken, so, to counter this, he allowed his eyes to roam around the cluttered room.

  There was his wooden window, the culprit for today. A few pictures in dusty frames resting against each other on the cill, looking for comfort. Bedside table. Half-eaten peanut butter sandwich and crumbs marking a trail from bed to table. Bumpy old sofa, bedroom cupboard – open. Bedroom door – very closed! Mirror, “whatever”, work table with depressing clutter and unfinished homework. Xbox, bookcase, old, dusty, not used anymore. Actually, never touched since… No! Don’t go there. Not today. But it held his eyes locked into traversing the room any further, as if beckoning him.

  He roamed its shelves. Numerous books lay jostled together, angled like buttresses, supporting each other. Some his, some… David’s.

  A deep, unbidden shock of emotion sprang up from the pit of his stomach, causing him to gasp, eyes welling up in an instant. At this hour, his now long tried and well tested ability to protect his emotional state was weak, and the impact of that innocent glance caused his world to rock, bringing back emotions forbidden normally to emerge.

  David. His glue in this shattered household. His strength and companion in a world gone mad, and his brother, gone forever, cruelly taken away by a shitty, unseen, unloving, unmerciful, unkind, un-asked-for… He couldn’t go on. What was the point? Ultimately it always came back to one truth. He, Sam, was to blame, obviously. They had made it very clear, from very early days, that he was to blame. For everything! So why stop at death? No doubt, somewhere in that short six week period of hell, he did something to shut David’s lights out.

  He stretched his hand out slowly and pulled one of the books belonging to David from off the shelf and scanned its cove. The Power of One stared back at him. A small smile folded itself onto Sam’s face as he remembered this one. One of David’s favourites. Science fantasy, lots of explosions, magic… Yes, right up David’s street.

  Sam aimlessly turned the pages, not looking, not concentrating, just thinking, remembering, as if trying to communicate again with his brother somehow through the pages. And as he delved deeper into the book, each page felt through finger and thumb, Sam started to weep. Tears flowing down his etched face as his mind sent out a message to his brother.

  I am sorry, David, Sam thought, Sorry I couldn’t do what I should have done so that you could still be here. Sorry for all the shitty stuff that made your life rubbish. That mum and dad lost you, rather than me… His fingers rested on a paragraph on a page and he started to aimlessly read.

  “… He summoned all his strength and willed his mind and breath to be calm, focussing energy into his fingers. With crackling intensity, bolts of lightning flew from his hands, blasting the rock face into a million shards, leaving the sunlight to once more, filter into the cave.”

  Wouldn’t that be good? he thought, summoning power and blasting stuff away. Sleep took him from reading further.

  The Ethereals – The first time

  Mist.

  A deep, clawing, impenetrable mist hung around him. Stillness and isolation, its companions, attacking his senses, and, for a short while, he was at a loss as to where or what he was. Looking down, he could see his feet on a grassed area, trailing away in all directions before disappearing into the still greyness. Despite the loss of most of his senses, he did feel as if he belonged. But the mist. This was strange. He sensed that the ground on which he stood dropped away slightly to his left, so he turned in that direction and started to tentatively walk.

  The sound of the damp grass being flattened beneath his feet touched his ears and this encouraged him to explore further. Step by slow step, he walked “down” the field, ears pricking for any sound beyond this ooze, but there was none. It was no use looking around to get his bearings, as the mist effectively shut out all around him.

  Well. Not quite. As he did a 360-degree turn, he noticed that a clear path now existed trailing back from where this journey started. As if a hedge trimmer had come along and neatly cut a swathe through this cloaking greyness, enabling him to see. He could see now that his path had taken him down what appeared to be a large field. Damp grass and small vegetation visible, and his wet footsteps disappearing back to his starting point.

  On a whim, he turned 90 degrees to the left, walked 20 steps and quickly turned and looked back. Again his path in front of him was lost in the bleakness, but behind, the path was clear, the mist seemingly held back by some invisible power so that his passing was not disturbed.

  Cooool, he thought. Concocting a hasty plan, he again turned 90 degrees to the left, feeling now that he was walking “uphill”, counted off 20 steps and turned left again.

  So, he thought. If my idea is correct, in a few short steps I should… And there it was. A clearing in front of him, now disappearing both to the left and the right, but as clear as day. He smiled and did a jig, complimenting himself on his own brilliance.
In this place, wherever that was, his route remained open, but his forward exploration remained closed by greyness and silence.

  For the first time, it dawned on him that he could see colour and feel the light on his face, and looking up, and up and up, he saw that this “hedge trimmer” had also cleared a path up into the sky so that he could see the blueness above him, some clouds above, now disappearing overhead as they were lost beyond the mist beyond where he stood. It looked like it was in the middle of the day, but what a strange place. What a strange experience. He backtracked now, just testing his theory, and after three right-hand turns on his now well-defined route, he ended up at the foot of his initial track, noticing his newly formed “entrance” into his original path, further up.

  For the next thirty minutes, Sam proceeded to run up and down his self-created quadrangle, slowly revealing more of the space, until all the mist within had been burned away and a large-ish square landscape emerged.

  Now he could get a better sense of where he was. It looked like he was in a small copse, surrounded by medium height trees, within which this small clearing sat. The clouds drifted lazily across the sky until they, once again, were lost beyond the film of mist, now visible beyond the tree line. Looking up into the skies, he tried to get his bearing as to where north was, but there was too much interference from the mist banks surrounding him to warrant any fixed decision of where “north” was.

  And still, the silence surrounded him, now starting to take on a sinister air, as if something or someone lay just beyond his field of vision, waiting for him.

  There was no need to explore further really. There was enough around to occupy him, but that background, nagging prickle refused to go away. A prickle, prompting him to step outside this comfort zone and venture, once again, into the unknown. A prickle that got bigger and more uncomfortable until he decided enough was enough and that he needed to explore this new place. Until this time, he still did not question why he was there, or how he got there. It was as if he knew that this place, strange and mysterious though it was, was part of him, in some way. Part of his life. He no more questioned his disposition than he would question why he breathed. It is as if, he thought, the mist represents my life outside of the here and now, and that anything else is still “out there”, to be discovered, or not.

  The still woodland beyond held his gaze, calling him, so he decided to continue his exploration, resolving in himself that if the worst came to the worst, he could just carry out a 360 degree “bubble” again, as at the beginning, thus revealing more of the “here and now”.

  Stepping forward, he moved off into the tree line, brushing the branches away and disappearing into the gloom until his space lay quiet, empty, yet expectant, awaiting his return.

  As before, the mist eased away from him as he ventured further and, reassuring though that was, he did feel a sense of frustration at not being able to see, instantly, what lay beyond. As he traversed carefully through the foliage, brushing around and under the branches, his ears slowly picked up the sound of water running ahead of him, bubbling over rocks and sending out that calming noise, streams are best placed to do. The noise of it increased slowly and he walked towards it, ducking beneath the branch line and stepping over tufts of grasses as he maneuvered himself through the undergrowth sensing that he was indeed getting closer to what he could only imagine, was a small stream working its way through this wooded area.

  After a short while, he pushed past the last of the branches and came across the source of the noise. A pond lay in front of him, surrounded by moss-covered, shiny stones and pebbles, haphazardly strewn around and disappearing into the water. A small waterfall bounced over the rocks above him, landing into the pond in front, casting ripples into the mirror of the water, reflecting its surroundings. He felt the soft spray on his face and hands as it glistened in the air around him, slowly painting him in a sheen to match the surrounding area.

  He knelt down, reaching his hands out into the water, sensing its coldness as his fingers dipped into the liquid. And cupping his hands, he drew a few eager mouthfuls into his mouth. The silence of the surroundings now eased by the subtle sounds of the falling water and droplets from the surrounding fronds falling into the water’s edge.

  As he was drinking, he sensed, rather than heard, a subtle disturbance in his immediate environment. For some reason he felt the hairs on the back of his neck start to lift and a feeling of danger began to weave itself into his mind. There were no apparent changes to the noises around him, no shadows casting strange shapes into his field of view, but something was not right. Something was here, he was sure of it. And that “something” was not wanting to announce itself!

  He slowly lifted his gaze up from the water’s edge, scanning the surroundings, searching for a clue to his sense of danger, but nothing was there. The branches of the trees still bent down to touch the water’s edge, the moss and ferns lay quiet opposite him, the water still bubbled down the rock face above him, landing into the water. There was nothing obvious about his surroundings that advertised danger.

  I must be imagining things, Sam thought. The quietness is starting to get to me. His gaze fell back to the reflections on the water, seeing the tree line, the pebbles just below the surface. But something didn’t gel, and his brain made his eyes focus on the surface. Focus on the surface of the water just in front of him. Focus on the reflections on the water just in front of him. And looking back, coming into view, now that his brain, like a radar, had picked up its target, was the shape of an animal. Small, furry, sleek bodied, a long sweeping tail brushing the grasses, talons gripping the rock face. Large eyes, looking straight down at him.

  Straight down at me!… With a shock, Sam sprang back defensively as he realised that this creature had crept up behind him and was even now above him on the rock face of the mini waterfall, intent on getting closer without him knowing.

  “Aaaaarrggghhhh!!!”

  His world exploded as a scream powered out of his mouth, and instinctively he jumped up, grasping a rock in his hands, and throwing it in the direction of where he thought the animal was, all the while screaming out in shock, hoping to scare this “thing” as far away as possible. Arms flailing and legs kicking out instinctively, Sam shouted and cursed in pure, adrenaline-induced terror.

  Nothing!

  No noise, no scrabbling, no whimpering. Nothing. Whatever it was, Sam thought, had been scared away by his antics and probably long since disappeared down the hole it had scraped itself out of in the first place. His breathing calmed down a notch and he allowed himself a brief grin, thinking he had scared off whatever terror that “thing” was. He cracked out the tension from his shoulders, which had been building up whilst at the pool, and again turned towards the water, as if to seek some release there.

  On the opposite side of the pond, sitting calmly and serenely on its haunches, and not more than two metres from him, the “creature from hell” gazed across as if, for all the world, this screaming banshee, that had been Sam, was a common occurrence here. Its eyes were intelligently gauging Sam’s next movements. A thin tongue snaked out, licking its ears, and those big eyes fixed Sam with steely gaze… and then it smiled!

  By smiling, its mouth opened, and the most lethal looking row of sharpened, death-dealing fangs shone out from the dark pit of its mouth.

  That was it! Sam, casting any sense of brevity to the four corners, sprang up and dived off into the undergrowth from where he had first arrived, screaming in terror, not caring where he went, just wanting to get away from that “thing”. Crashing through the undergrowth, any stealth tactics he thought he might have, were tossed into the wind and disappeared in an instance of pure speed and lack of care for where he was going. Branches reached out to swat him soundly across the face. Roots seemed to ease out on purpose to trip him up, and the foliage grew close around him, trying, it seemed, to disorientate him and lose him in the maelstrom in which he suddenly found himself. But Sam was blind to everything. His
terror took over, propelling his legs through the woods and downwards to who knows where. At any moment, his imagination was reaching back to see where this creature was, expecting at any second to see this thing appear next to him about to sink its fangs into his neck.

  Eventually, his lack of stamina caused his legs to slow and his breath came through in huge drawing gasps and he came to a stop next to a large tree, its base hidden by autumn leaves. He looked back and scanned his route urgently, carefully, but there was nothing there. His mind also did not register at this stage that his route behind him was perfectly clear and he could look back discerning the forms of the trees, the path he had forged, and the slope he had run down. Trying to hold his breath for a few short seconds, he listened out intently to hear if there was any breaking of twigs in the undergrowth, or strange noises that shouldn’t have been there, but the woodland had returned to its original serene self and there was nothing other than the sighing of the wind through the trees

  “Stuff that!” Sam said, ribs expanding and contracting quickly, trying to catch up with his fears. “No more forests. No more dark places, my friend,” he said to no-one in particular. “I want to get out of here…”

  For the first time since “arriving”, the words he had just uttered by accident sprang out and hit him. Hit him hard! “Where is “here”?” he asked himself. “And how on earth did I get here? Please, please be a dream…” With that final request uttered, he again looked up and out, trying to fathom where next he should go. Backtracking right now was simply not an option, so he resolved to carry on down the slight slope. Gathering his wits to him, he let go of the bark of the tree and stumbled down into the mist, still straining for any sound out of the ordinary.