by Jack Castle
The King’s First Officer, a bloated corpse, swollen with seawater barely encapsulated by liquefying flesh, barked abruptly, “I thought it was on account you are a light to the world.” As he said this, he painted the air with his palms and the motley crew erupted in voracious laughter. Other zombie-pirates joined in. One of the more decayed zombie-pirates, one-covered in faded tattoos, laughed so hard his lower jaw fell off, which of course only caused more bellowing of amusement. The zombie-pirate, minus-jaw, was so irritated by his crewmates that he promptly withdrew the musket tucked in his sash and shot the nearest pirate. His target, an emaciated corpse smoking an opium pipe, flipped over the barrel he was sitting on and landed on the other side with his legs splayed up in the air. This of course only caused more mirth, which in-turn only led to more fighting.
The Zombie-Pirate King ignored all of this and continued to stare at the prisoner who merely waited for the revelry to pass by taking in the rotten souls around him, each festooned with all manner of rusty weaponry and black powder weapons. And the King thought: It’s almost as though the imp is sizing us up. The audacity! As though he might actually have a chance taking them all on, and bound no less!
“Be silent, you scurvy dogs!” the Zombie-Pirate King roared, and the laughter stopped as abruptly as a screaming man beneath a guillotine.
What happened next, was impossible. Even for here.
The Lamppost Man stood up in the most unnatural way. His crumpled form unfolded as though an unseen cameraman had played the entire scene in reverse. Now standing on his feet he then lifted his hands up as high as his chains would allow, and like a Vegas Magician performing a neat magic trick, he brought his hands swiftly down and all of his metal bounds clattered to the deck boards.
Silence.
“Seize him!” the Pirate King thundered.
His loyal crew uttered a battle cry and attacked in unison. Before the zombie-pirates could reach the Lamppost Man, an umbrella appeared in his hands (seemingly from nowhere) and he brought the tip of it swiftly down upon the ground.
The shockwave blew each member of the crew backwards to the farthest part of the cabin. Only the Zombie-Pirate King remained standing, as though the Lamppost Man had intended it that way all along, out of some small semblance of respect.
The King, never one to back down from a fight, stepped down from his throne, his peg leg ker-thumping on the deck boards. Unsheathing his cutlass, he spat, “If it’s a fight you want Lampy, it’s a fight you will get. On that I guarantee.”
More zombie-pirates flooded into the room and those that had been stunned were already staggering to their feet the way zombies often do, slow but assured.
The Lamppost Man held up his umbrella in one hand as though it were a pin-less grenade that would go off the moment he dropped it.
This gave the pirates pause and none dared move forward.
Dragging out the silence the Lampost Man said, “The reason they call me Lamppost Man, the real reason, is because, like the vast number of lampposts of this world, I am many.” He allowed this to sink in before continuing. “Kill me, and I will only send three more. Kill those, and I will send hundreds. And after that, thousands. For hundreds of years I will never stop. Never. For time is nothing more than a luxury I have faithfully endured.”
The first of the crew took a step forward but the Zombie-Pirate King held a hand up stopping him.
The room remained frozen.
The Zombie-Pirate King frowned, sheathed his cutlass and in a cold voice asked, “What is it you want demon?”
The Lamppost Man’s eyes brightened and his shark-toothed smile widened exponentially (far more than any mortal was ever capable of doing). He then clasped his white-gloved hands together, held them in prayer before his lips before answering…
“You see? There you go. That’s all I wanted. Is to state a simple request.”
“Then get on with it!” the Zombie-Pirate King snarled, sheathing his sword and retaking his throne.
The Lamppost Man, still smiling broadly, raised his eyebrows a bit and said, “Quite right. Well then, I’m looking for a girl.”
A grin flashed across the grossly fat First officer but the Zombie-Pirate king shot him a look of annoyance and the officer held his tongue. And the King thought furiously: That one has long outlived his usefulness, and then a sadder, more sobering thought, as have we all.
The Zombie-Pirate dropped into his seat, threw his good leg over the armrest of his throne and sighed. “Yes, we know all about the bounty on the girl. You and everyone else in the Twelve Kingdoms is looking for the little brat.”
The Lamppost took in a quick breath and smiled patiently. “Oh. No, no, no, no. It’s not the girl I’m searching for.”
“Spit it out then, you demon, I command you!” the Zombie-Pirate King roared.
The Lamppost Man stared at him with that smug smile of his.
“It’s not the girl I’m looking for. It’s her mother, Tessa.”
Chapter 1
SEAT 19A
FASTEN SEAT BELT WHILE SEATED
These were the words George Stapleton first saw when he opened his eyes.
As he climbed the stairs of consciousness, and the insanely loud buzzing noises in his ears finally stopped, he felt a cool breeze flow across his stiff, inert body. Sitting up, albeit it slowly, George found himself slumped against the window of a comfy passenger chair of a commercial jet.
Body still not quite responsive, his arms feeling as though they were attached to oars paddling a thick ocean, he pulled his elbows toward him. Propping himself up a bit, which was all he could manage, he peered over the passenger seats in front of him. From his current vantage point, all he could see was a sea of empty seats in front of him. Although it was possible that the other passengers were slumped down in their seats as he was. By his rough guess-timation, he was sitting in middle class, port-side, in the cabin of a commercial flight.
I’m on a plane? How’d I get on a plane?
By the looks of the interior it had to be at least a 747 double decker. His elbow popped painfully as he extended his arm to pull out the plastic card in the pocket attached to the seat in front of him. According to the laminated cardstock he was aboard a 380 Airbus that seated over eight hundred passengers.
Wow, this is a crazy big plane.
As he attentively returned the cardstock he drunkenly became aware of his own attire. He was dressed in his civvies, (khaki pants, hiking boots and a t-shirt) and he had been sleeping on his thick maroon overshirt wrapped up in a ball and serving as a comfy pillow. That was the moment he realized… It had all been a stupid dream. His thoughts swirled about in his head like a Kansas tornado in Wizard of Oz. The Lamppost Man, Lady Wellington, the hover barge, hologram Leftenant, and that idiot Barnaby had all been a part of some elaborate nightmare. Maddie, his daughter, who hadn’t really been his daughter, but in the end she had become some sort of super biological weapon and died saving his sorry butt. All of it; -had been nothing more than a stupid dream.
Maddie wasn’t dead.
She was home with her mom getting ready to celebrate her ninth birthday. Just to make sure he turned his head to the side. The pain in his neck was excruciating. He stared at the empty seat beside him. Regardless of these comforting thoughts, the absence of Maddie sitting next to him was still as solemn as any grave.
Head still turned to the side, and firmly stuck there for the moment, across the aisle George could see an overweight man with a walrus mustache who was slumbering soundlessly. Barnaby!
Or was it? Steadying himself on the armrest George blinked several times and Barnaby was replaced by just another slumbering passenger; this one wearing a bowler hat down over his scrunched eyes, a green plaid suit, and round-rimmed glasses. A black umbrella and brown leather attaché case that had seen better days lay in the seat beside him.
Despite the odd appearance of a man George would quantify as an English Gentleman, the dozing passenger allayed his fears som
ewhat. A dream. One mother of a dream to end all dreams, sure, but a dream nonetheless.
But where am I headed? A plane this large has to be a transatlantic flight. In the center of the tornado his mind began to grasp tidbits of reality. I’m going home, from the war; which means Maddie isn’t dead and I didn’t miss her ninth birthday after all. As he thought of Tessa baking one of her famous themed birthday cakes (this year’s theme was going to be Alice in Wonderland), he was beginning to feel like Jimmy Stewart when he woke up at the end of “It’s a Wonderful Life”. What was Jimmy’s character’s name again? Oh yeah, George Bailey. Huh, what a happy co-inky-dink.
The cool air from the vent overhead caused him to shiver. As fast as his stiff muscles would allow he sat up a bit higher in his chair, shook the wrinkles out of his overshirt, and slipped it back on; the thick wool fabric warmed him almost immediately. From this new higher vantage point he could now see other heads slightly above each headrest, about a dozen of them, all scattered about the cabin--all dozing as he had been.
The flight was quiet, and other than the strong hum emanating from the overhead air vents, he didn’t hear any other noise.
Dorothy’s tornado in his mind began to form once more.
George also noted the blinds were closed. All of them.
Why, there’s nothing eerie about that, Georgie-boy, Jimmy Stewart’s calming voice seemed to say. Of course Jimmy was right. It was typical of long flights for everyone to sack out after dinner and the movie. George’s mind wandered listlessly, the stewardesses, er… flight attendants… isn’t that what they’re called now? The year of 2012, when secretaries became administration assistants and janitors became sanitation engineers. Any-who, the stewardesses… flight attendants… darn it!... would turn up the cool air after a heavy meal, dim the lighting, and watch all the passengers drop off to La-La-Land.
So what was bothering him?
Then it hit him. The plane… it wasn’t moving. He would know after all, he was an Air Force Rescue helicopter pilot. Okay, okay, he was only a reservist who was normally a full time history professor but still, he knew enough to know when an aircraft was grounded or not.
Although his body still slow to respond to commands, George found if he concentrated hard enough he could actually move his head from the unoccupied seat next to him to his window. The blind was closed, as were the rest of them.
George focused, lifted his hand and grabbed the lip of the plastic visor covering the window between thumb and forefinger. He hesitated. His inner voice (a.k.a. Jimmy Stewart) started talking to him and said, ‘Hey buddy-ole’-pal, sure you want to do that? Don’t you want to enjoy the bliss of not knowing a little longer? Don’t you want to wallow in sweet ignorance? What’s the rush?’
George did want to wallow in sweet ignorance a little longer. He did want to believe that he didn’t die in a helicopter explosion and was, in fact, on his way home from Afghanistan to his wife and daughter to celebrate Maddie’s ninth birthday in their little seaside cottage on the coast of Florida.
George raised the visor like a curtain to a show.
He’d hoped to see clouds floating languidly by… or maybe the runway of an airport--any airport would do. London, New York, D.C., he didn’t really care, just as long as it was a normal airport, with planes taxiing down runways, luggage cars running to and fro, maybe even a passenger ramp extending toward the plane.
Unfortunately for George, he didn’t get to see any of those things.
The face of a giant, oversized sunflower leered back at him. The flower was so tall its face was level with his window and was the size of one of those plastic kiddie pools.
“Has to be a fake,” he mused aloud, and did not like the sound of his shaky voice.
‘I warned you,’ Jimmy’s voice said as it trailed away.
George peered around the giant sunflower. Hundreds more like it surrounded the wing and beyond, all of them gently swaying in a slight breeze. As disturbing as all that was, the face of the sunflower… well… it had a human face embedded in the face of the flower. One that was contorted in agony; as though some Medusian monster had placed some poor soul there to wilt for all eternity. Presently, Mr. Flower-face’s eyes were firmly closed (in agony) and George was certain that any moment its eyes were going to flash open and stare at him, first with an intense stare, and then a pleading gaze.
Before sunflower face could do exactly that, and without any conscious thought from him, George’s hand quickly reached up and pulled the visor closed.
The familiar nausea in his stomach returned. His head began reeling in Dorothy’s tornado once more. Staring at all the slumped heads on the plane George was now forced to wonder if the other passengers were sleeping… or something else.
He was back.
To stop his head from spinning completely out of control he stared at the dead monitor imbedded in the back of the seat in front of him.
It seemed to help.
As the world finally began to slow down, letters began to appear, one at a time, on the blank monitor in front of him. They were two words that rocked him to the core.
H-I D-A-D-D-Y
Thank you for visiting Stranger World!
We hope you enjoyed your visit and come back soon.
If you would like to purchase advance tickets for your next visit, simply follow the link to the author’s web page and you can order the sequel post haste:
www.JackCastlebooks.com
AFTERWORD
For over a quarter of a century I have worked at theme parks all over the world and I have often wondered, What if all of these fantastical lands, and everything in them, what if all of it…was real? What if the characters weren’t costumed characters but living, breathing and evolving things, and worse still, they became our overlords?
A rough outline based on this very premise would sit in my night table drawer for nearly twenty-five years.
Then, one day, my nine-year-old daughter was sick with the worst flu she hadn’t ever gotten in her life. For a week all she could do was little more than sleep. To pass the time I picked up the outline where I had left off and I would write her a chapter a day. And then, each night, I would read her what I had written. This went on for several days, and before long we were so both so invested in the characters, that those characters demanded we finish the story.
Which we did
Now before anyone starts sending hate-mail over how everyone but the Lamppost Man died in Stranger World, I encourage you to read the teaser for the sequel, Stranger Realm (for free) on Amazon. Who am I kidding? I love hate mail. I love when someone is so moved by a character’s death to write me an email. Here it is by the way… [email protected]
Now, normally I don’t write sequels but as you’ve probably discovered by now Stranger World is such a massive place filled with endless possibilities. I felt there is still so much more of this world to explore, so many more interesting characters to meet, and a lot more story to tell. My first clue was when I was trying to insert all the separate scenes I had written over the last two decades into a loose outline and realized that the book would have to be over a thousand pages long. My second clue was when two beta readers read the first draft and they immediately created a 248 page story of fan fiction involving their favorite character (The Leftenant of course).
I have no choice in the matter; I have many more adventures to journal in this world. At last count I am looking at 12 books. I hope you will join me, my daughter, the Leftenant, Cheeves, (spoiler alert: they survived) and the other crew members of the H.M.A.S. Dauntless.
For those of you that do… Welcome Aboard!!!
I’m not sure how far this journey will take us, or even how long we’ll last, but if you’ve got the salt, we’ll take this journey together. Now step aboard H.M.A.S. Dauntless and cast off all moorings.
Our heading?
2nd star to the right, and straight on until morning, of course.
Thanks for reading.
Your pal,
-Jack Castle
PS: And if it’s not too much trouble, please leave a review on Amazon, Goodreads, and anywhere else you like. You wouldn’t believe how much those reviews help budding authors like me.
Other Bestselling Novels
By Jack Castle:
EUROPA JOURNAL
On the ocean floor of Jupiter’s ice moon, a team of astronauts find the body of a missing World War II pilot. And in his hands is a journal detailing how he and his crew were taken to a place with no recognizable stars. As the walls of the ancient, underwater structure collapse around the space explorers, they discover their names are also written within the journal’s pages.
“Where 'Close Encounters' stopped, Jack Castle pulls
out the stops and takes readers into the unknown.”
-Spokesman Review
BEDLAM LOST
A small town Deputy and a New York ballet dancer are both running from brutal pasts. They awaken in a remote Alaskan town with no roads in or out. As supernatural terrors haunt their dreams, and move to their waking hours, they struggle to find a way out.
"A creeeeepy sci-fi thriller that brings back the terror of early Dean Koontz and the mystery of the first season of LOST."
-Joe Butler, Editor for Spokesman Review
WHITE DEATH
An Anthropologist and a team of criminologists race against time to solve gruesome homicides at an isolated research facility in the Arctic, while someone, or something (thought to be extinct) is hunting them.
“Fast paced and frightening.
This one took my breath away!”
-Publisher, Brian Hades
THE REVENANTS
In the Badlands of South Dakota, an eclectic group of weary survivors make a last stand against an unholy destruction in a mysterious rundown motel.
