Doug Dillon's Blog, page 160

Chapter 7 – Sliding Beneath the Surface

The St. Augustine Trilogy: Book I

Young adult, paranormal/historical

7
Worlds-within-Worlds-within-Worlds

 

“No trick, really,” Carla said with this super serious face. When she spoke, her voice came out almost in a whisper.

Oh man, that did it. I mean Carla doesn’t lie, stretch the truth, or anything like that. “Remember when I told you about Lobo helping me to control my unconscious ability to move things without touching them?” she asked, her voice a little stronger

“Uh, sure.” I sat there looking at her in awe.

“You see, Lobo … well, has also been educating me so that I can now touch things with my conscious mind—to do so by thinking about it. An aluminum can is light and soft, so we use them in my training.”

“Do we have your full attention now?” Lobo asked, as I struggled to accept Carla’s explanation.

“Oh yeah,” I said, stressing each word in order to leave no doubt in the man’s mind. Even so, I still couldn’t get over Carla having such an amazing ability. As I wondered how she could do something like that, I put the crumpled aluminum on the coffee table in front of me.

“Good,” Lobo replied. “Now we can proceed.” After getting out of his chair, he grabbed the carved white ball sitting on the coffee table, and suddenly tossed it in my direction—underhanded and high in the air. Without thinking, I grabbed the thing as it came down with both hands, and was surprised it felt so light. When the ball hit my hands, there was a clicking sound.

“Have you ever seen anything like that?” Lobo asked after sitting back down.

“Yeah, I just remembered. There’s one like it at the Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum.” I held it in one hand and brushed my other hand over the intricate designs and holes carved into the surface. Gradually it became clear to me that the ridges under my fingers tips were actually dragons curling around the openings. “What’s it made of?”

“Mammoth ivory,” Carla replied. “Lobo has it shipped in and then he does carvings.”

“A piece of mammoth tusk?” I said in wonder, studying it even more intently. Inside all the holes cut out of the surface, I could see another, completely movable, but smaller ball. Carved into it were odd shaped stars and more holes leading to yet another ball farther down. Beyond that, another ball, and so on. All of the balls I could see or touch with my index finger moved. That’s why the thing was so light, it had been carved out on the inside, layer-by-layer.

“How many balls are in there all together?” Lobo asked, not answering my question.

“Um, looks like five or six maybe.”

“Not even close.” He reached into a drawer in the side of the coffee table, pulled out a slender, brass letter opener, and handed it to me. Feeling the thing in my hand made me think of the bayonet over in the display case, even though it was a different in color. “Use the sharp end as your probe to see how many you can find.”

“What’s this all about?” As beautifully intricate as the man’s ball was, I didn’t understand how it related to my dream, or much of anything else for that matter.

“Just do it,” he ordered, “and you’ll find out.”

“OK, OK, don’t get all bent out of shape.” I did as he asked until I had trouble putting the blade into the twelfth hole. That meant there were at least eleven balls inside the big one. I found it hard to believe Lobo or anybody could get tools in there so deep and do all that tiny carving. When I got ready to tell the man how many balls I found, something happened. It was so quick I was sure it had to be my imagination, but my whole body jerked. As I released the letter opener and left it sticking in the ball, I saw that both of my hands were shaking.

“Explain what you just experienced,” Lobo said.

“I … don’t … know. I’m not sure.”

“Don’t be so certain. Look at your hands again. Your body is telling you something. Give yourself a chance and then tell us what you can remember.”

My hands still shook, but not quite as much as before. As I stared at them, bits and pieces of memory floated into my brain. Slowly, I pieced together what I could of my experience and explained it to Lobo and Carla. “When I finished counting the balls … it was as if I sort of … well … dived into all those holes and into the central part of all the balls. At first, I thought it was interesting—seeing the edge of each ball’s holes as I flew by. But when I got to that last ball, it wasn’t … ivory. Instead, I entered a … thick … blackness. That’s it.” I shrugged, not understanding what my memory was telling me.

“Put the ball back on its stand,” the man directed, “and leave the opener sticking inside.”

When I did as he asked, Lobo got up from his chair, walked over to the display case where the bayonet hung and stared at it for a while. After a short pause, he turned around to face me, his eyes glittering.

“People call things like that one on my coffee table, Chinese Puzzle Balls,” he said. “Carla calls it my ‘Ball of Realities.’ I realize that doesn’t have a lot of meaning for you yet, but you had better hope it will, and soon. Think of all those separate yet connected spheres as the different levels of awareness and existence.”

My face must have shown that I had no idea what he was talking about, because he put one big hand palm outward in my direction as if he was asking me to forget my confusion for a minute.

“Get up, reach over and touch the surface of the ball one more time,” he asked.

I wasn’t sure I really wanted to, but after looking at Carla and seeing her nod, I did what Lobo wanted and sat back down.

“What you just touched is like the surface part of life everybody generally agrees upon—things like people, animals, stars, air, dirt and the wood we use in the construction of our homes.” As he said the word, “homes,” he slapped the mantelpiece over his fireplace loudly with the flat of his hand. Carla, Spock and I all jumped at the same time.

“The problem is, there’s more to it than that. Beneath the surface of life that most of us agree upon lies so much more. Carla showed this to you when she changed the molecular structure of your Coke can with her mind. Magic didn’t lift and smash the can, but Carla’s mental and spiritual connection to other worlds beyond our own did.

“Scientists see into some of these worlds as they probe into the very essence of the universe. People who believe in a spiritual world beyond this one connect with it through prayer and meditation. Most of all, people like the three of us, understand this because we experience it as you have here today, and as you did when you saw yourself after your accident. Your separation from your body, my ability to see into your mind, and Carla’s power to affect things at a distance are all examples of what lies beneath the surface of all our lives.”

The more the man talked, the more I felt like I was getting lost in some kind of weird Star Trek episode.

“My Ball of Realities there on the table, is a symbolic way to show there are unseen worlds-within-worlds-within-worlds. They are all around and even within us. The opener sticking through all those holes shows you how we as human beings connect to all those worlds even when we don’t consciously know it is happening. People like you, Carla and me happen to be able to perceive those connections more than most.”

“Wait. Wait just a freakin’ minute. What do you mean people like you, me and Carla? You keep saying that.”

“And you don’t listen, because you don’t want to accept the reality of who you are down deep. Moments ago you were sliding beneath the surface of many realities. A deeper portion of yourself showed you those multiple levels. Carla and I both have similar abilities.

“Unfortunately, the blackness you found at the end is the danger I sensed before. Make no mistake, your inner self gave you very clear evidence of what I’m saying. When your body jumped, it was the wordless realization of what you had discovered.”

I sort of understood what he meant, but it was too much to take in all at once, especially with that headache of mine. I definitely remember saying to myself I needed time to think it all over.

Right as that thought entered my mind though, Lobo looked at me hard and said, “You don’t have time to think it over.”

What he meant by that, I had no idea, but it certainly didn’t sound good. Before I could ask him about it, he turned his attention to Carla.

“Tell your friend here about my cat.” Without waiting for her to respond, he got up and walked out of the room again. The guy sure seemed to make a lot of rapid exits and entrances.

“OK, what about the cat?” I asked.

Carla didn’t answer right away. “I’m not sure how to tell you this,” she said, “but what you evidently saw was Lobo’s calico, Seloy.”

“I kinda got that figured out already.”

“Kinda is right. Seloy died over a year ago. She’s buried behind Lobo’s workshop.”

###

For a brief description of The St. Augustine Trilogy, click here.

For Sliding Beneath the Surface on Amazon.com, click here

For reviews of this book, author interviews and blog tours, click here.

For the Official St. Augustine Trilogy Facebook Page, click here.

 

© 2011 by Doug Dillon. All rights reserved.

Ghost Hunt- Miss Caroline’s Guest House # 1

Mary Jo Fister

Paranormal St. Augustine, Florida

The First Visit

A guest post by Mary Jo Fister and Greg Bush from Offthetrails Paranormal investigations.

Welcome to Miss Caroline’s, a historic home built between 1865 and 1885 by Miss Lucy Abbott and listed in the National Register of Historic Places in St. Augustine, Florida! Miss Caroline’s’ is now a restaurant and 3 room one bath

Greg Bush

guest house. Many, many people have experienced the paranormal here. The Captain is a main spirit, as is Rose. We spent the night here, in The Captain’s Room, hoping to meet the captain. While we had no personal experiences, we did catch an intriguing EVP while we were out of the room. There is a groan, slamming doors, and footsteps. No one was in the second floor at that time that we know about. Other spirits are a little girl and a woman named Rose. While in the ancient city, we also stopped at the Huguenot Cemetery, the fort Castillo de San Marcos, and the Catholic Mission Nombre de Dios to investigate. We have orbs in pictures at all three sites and an unexplained shadow in the cemetery.

Notes:

1. See the following blog post on the second visit to Miss Caroline’s

2. Miss Caroline’s is no longer a guest house.

Click here to see the first investigation video of Miss Caroline’s.

Click here to visit Offthetrails Paranormal Investigations

Click here to see information on one of my upcoming events where Mary Jo and Greg will be co-presenters with me at the Orlando Public Library.

Endless Universe: Beyond the Big Bang-Rewriting Cosmic History

A Book Review

Authors – Dr. Paul J. Steinhardt and Dr. Neil Turok

Paul Steinhardt

Steinhardt – Albert Einstein Professor in Science at Princeton, University

Neil Turok

Chair of Mathematical Physics in the Department of Applied Mathematics at Cambridge University

Broadway Books 284 p.

When the authors titled their book Endless Universe, they meant just that–ENDLESS. And in the subtitle, they reinforce their thesis by using the words, Beyond the Big Bang. What they are proposing that there are multiple, and even parallel universes to be exact, that collide periodically, thus creating “endless” numbers of Big Bangs and “endless” new universes out of all that destruction.

This really is a new theory about our cosmic origins based upon particle physics, superstrings and astronomy. But don’t worry, the authors not only explain all this in clear terms, they have also included a number of graphic examples that makes things less complicated. An excellent glossary is available as well as a solid list of books For Further Reading. A detailed index helps make finding things much easier.

Yes, this is an even stranger outlook than quantum physics itself but one that “strangely” seems to make sense.

Click here to find this book online.

 

“Awesome!” Young adult, paranormal & historical

Sliding Beneath the Surface

The St. Augustine Trilogy: Book I

A review placed on Amazon.com by Stephanie from Kentucky.

“Let me start off by saying that this book grasped my attention in a way that caught me off guard. While I have read a few historical fiction, this was in a league of it’s own. It wasn’t a historical fiction at all. What I mean is it had loads of history packed in the pages.

“I learned a great deal about the Dade battle that I didn’t know anything about before. I knew going in that St. Augustine was the first American city, but other than that I didn’t know a lot else. Didn’t know about the battle that went on and all the lives lost. I loved the way that it was brought about too. It meshed well with the story without feeling like I was reading straight from a history text book.

“I really enjoyed the whole concept of worlds within worlds. What I couldn’t seem to enjoy was the main character, Jeff Golden. I thought maybe at first I couldn’t get into him because I read more books with female protagonists but for some reason I couldn’t wait til there was someone else there besides him. I did appreciate that it read like an actual teenage boy would have wrote it.

“I LOVED Lobo. Like almost have an infatuation with him. I dig Native America studies and especially the fact of him being a shaman. Not to mention his no nonsense attitude on everything, I swear if it hadn’t been for him Jeff wouldn’t have made it. Same goes for Carla I really enjoyed her character and how she carried herself. I think she can do better than Jeff, but that’s solely my opinion. There wasn’t much of a romance aspect here anyway which was nicer than I thought. Jeff and Carla care deeply for each other but their ‘love’ didn’t take up the whole story like with a lot of YA books.

“I also love how Jeff never looks at Carla or Lobo because of their different races. Although it was a factor in the battle that is talked about, it, to me, shows how far we have come as a country and the equality there is now that was nonexistent in the early 1800′s.

To see the complete review, click here.

Awakening the Buddha Within: Tibetan Wisdom for the Western World

A Book Review

Author – Lama Surya Das

Creator of the Dzogchen Foundation
He leads Buddhist meditation retreats worldwide

Broadway Books, 414 p.

Written by an American who became a Tibetan Lama, this book gives readers a solid course in Buddhist concepts. Giving clear step-by-step explanations, the author uses an engaging and even humorous tone that makes him as much of a friend as he is an expert in this field. His stories are wonderful and very instructive.

The steps mentioned above are actually the Buddhist Eightfold Noble Path to enlightenment but greatly expanded upon. Lama Surya Das continues to enlarge his explanations with the following 3 important sections that are valuable “how to” guides:

Wisdom Training
Ethics Training
Meditation Training

These chapter titles are examples of how the author continually points out to the reader that they already have the knowledge he is telling them about: “Seeing Things as They Are”, “Plumbing Your Wise Buddha-Nature”, and “Keeping Your Eyes Open”. Surya Das is, he says, simply helping people to unveil the “Buddha within.”

Click here to find this book online.

Chapter 6 – Sliding Beneath the Surface

The St. Augustine Trilogy: Book I

Young adult, paranormal/historical

6
Cat Got Your Tongue?

“Wait … waaaait just one minute,” I said. “You can’t be serious. How could you not see it? That thing sat right next to you!” I know my voice must have sounded beyond nervous. That stupid headache again hammered away at my temples and behind my eyes, not helping the situation at all.

“For real? You saw a cat?”

It was obvious Carla hadn’t seen anything, so I didn’t reply at first. I was beginning to wonder if maybe I had been hallucinating or something. Down the hall, I could hear a toilet flush.

“I’m not crazy!” I took a deep breath and sat on the edge of my chair.

“I didn’t say you were but—”

“Lover’s quarrel?” Lobo walked back into the room and once more took his seat.

That question of his made me want to sink through the floor and out of sight.

“Lobo!” Carla screeched. “Cut it out. We’re just friends.”

Without saying it, I applauded Carla challenging the man, but part of me felt a little disappointed. Her statement about us being “just friends” came out a little too strong. Not what I wanted to hear.

“My, my, my.” Lobo looked at us both. “Aren’t we sensitive. Well it’s time to get over it. So tell me. What’s this disagreement I heard coming up the hall?”

Carla sat there with folded arms staring at Lobo like she wanted to wring his neck. As unhappy with the man as I was, I really wanted to find out about the cat. “Look, Lobo,” I said, “ah, when you were in here before, I saw a cat, but Carla thinks I was seeing things.”

“That’s not what I said,” Carla interrupted. “You’re twisting my words.”

“Well, that’s what it sounded like. You don’t understand, I also watched Lobo and Spock look at that cat. I wasn’t the only one watching it.”

“Did you see this little feline creature or not?” Lobo asked Carla in an even voice.

“No. There was definitely no cat in here unless it was behind me, but that’s not what Jeff is saying.”

“Well now!” Lobo said to her, his voice a rising rumble. “How wonderfully interesting. Discrepancies in perception. In this case, however, your friend Carla over there is right.”

“What?”

“He did indeed see a cat, as did I and Spock.”

Carla looked at him like he had to be kidding, but he continued talking, this time, to me.

“So, explain to the young lady, if you will, what this cat looked like and what it did.”

For a few seconds, I didn’t know what to say. Surprisingly, old Lobo appeared to be agreeing with me. I mean the guy had told Carla and me I wasn’t hallucinating. Man, what a relief! But how she didn’t see what Lobo, Spock, and I did, flat didn’t make sense.

Doing as I was asked, I slumped back into my chair and explained to Carla all about my cat sighting. As I talked, she had a squinty-eyed look, the one that says people aren’t believing a word of what you’re saying. But when I described the cat’s orange, black and white coloring, her eyes widened and to Lobo, she asked a one-word question. “Seloy?”

“Seloy it was,” Lobo agreed, and Carla’s mouth dropped open.

“What’s going on?” I asked. My head continued to ache, but I didn’t want to ask Lobo if he had anything for the pain.

“My cat Seloy,” Lobo replied. “You, Spock and I saw my cute little kitty, so why on earth didn’t Carla see her?”

“Why are you asking me?” I replied. “That’s what I want to know.”

“OK, Mr. Golden, it’s time for you to put your big boy pants on and really pay attention here. By now, it’s clear to you I have the ability to find things out about people in ways you don’t understand, right?”

I couldn’t argue with the guy on that point. By then, for some reason, even the “big boy pants” comment didn’t bother me very much. I needed to find out what was going on.

“You’ve seen for yourself,” he explained, “that there are people in the world who definitely have extremely unusual sensitivities and even abilities of various kinds. The child in the crowd of people around your body when you had the bike wreck for instance. She looked up and saw you hovering overhead when no one else did. That child is such a person, a person very much like you.”

“Me? Come on Lobo,” I said, starting to get extremely uncomfortable, and my shaky voice showed exactly that.

“For a smart kid, you really don’t get it do you? You obviously have the ability to see something Carla could not, don’t you?”

Lobo asked the question, but he went on talking. “Your dream is an example of what I’m saying. A bayonet actually did come up through your mattress in a manner of speaking, but only you could see it. In ways you do not yet comprehend, it was as real as the one you held in here just a while ago. And when my bayonet got so hot in your hand, that meant you had somehow touched on a part of the truth—the truth about what’s happening to you.”

I knew the man couldn’t possibly believe what he said, but my insides still felt like they had turned over somehow. I didn’t understand how the conversation had gone so far away from seeing that stupid cat to talking about me having unusual sensitivities, abilities, or whatever.

“Down deep inside,” Lobo said, speaking to my unsaid thoughts, “you actually do understand. It’s your conscious mind that continues to block that awareness. We need to do something to help break through your mental barrier.”

Rapidly switching his attention from me to Carla, he said, “In this case, when I say ‘we,’ I mean you as well.”

“Me?” She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind.

“Don’t let her kid you,” Lobo said to me while still looking at Carla. “She knows a lot more than you think. Miss Carla here has her own, well, shall we say, special talents.”

“Lobo, come on. I don’t want to go there,” Carla pleaded.

“I’ve got to use you as an example. This boy is in danger.”

“Danger?” Carla and I both said at the same time. Again, my insides did a little dance.

“I didn’t see it clearly at first,” Lobo replied, “but now, as your puzzle begins to fit together, some dangerous patterns are definitely emerging.”

Again, Carla and I spoke at once, peppering the man with all kinds of questions. Finally, he stood up and bellowed, “Now you two hold it!” Man, the volume of the guy’s voice was not what my headache needed. In the silence, Lobo looked back and forth between us to see if he had made his point. Satisfied we would wait for him to explain, he said, “To figure out exactly what’s going on, we need to start with some basic education here.” To Carla, he then spoke in a very soothing voice I didn’t know he had. “Carla, I need you to give a little demonstration.”

“Oh no. No way, Lobo! I won’t do it.” Saying she looked upset barely describes the emotions I saw flowing across her face. “Besides, what does that have to do with Jeff being in danger?”

“To get at the danger, this boy needs a crash course in believing what’s happening to him. A little help from you will truly begin that process.”

Carla held his gaze for a few seconds, looked over at me and closed her eyes. “OK,” she said nodding after a few seconds, “OK.”

“Good. Now, finish your drink,” Lobo said, nailing me with those laser-like eyes.

“Finish my drink?” I asked, looking at the Coke can in my hand.

“Did I not speak clearly? Or perhaps you simply don’t know what the words ‘finish your drink’ mean when put together in a sentence?”

Smartass. I didn’t care if he could truly read my thoughts or not. Glaring at the man, I chugged the last few swallows of my Coke, and shook the can from side to side to show it was empty.

“Now,” Lobo ordered, “hold out one hand, palm up, and stand the can on it, bottom down.”I did exactly as he asked.

“Carla,” he ordered looking at the can as if she would know what to do.

Poor Carla seemed even more uncomfortable than before. She shifted her position on the couch. He eyes darted all around for a few seconds but eventually came to rest on the can. After focusing on it for a few seconds, she took a couple of deep breaths and closed her eyes. Nothing happened for maybe ten or fifteen seconds until … well … the damn can slowly lifted off my palm without anybody touching it. I’m not kidding. The thing moved straight up about three inches and just sat there in mid air.

Yeah, yeah I know how that sounds, but believe me it happened. Before I could react, I heard this crackling sound, and watched as the can started crumpling. No lie! The can sort of … imploded, slowly at first and then with a snap, it completely flattened as if somebody had stomped the thing—but in mid air. God it was eerie. The smashed can slowly floated back onto the palm of my hand.

“Holy crap,” I whispered, staring at the red, white and aluminum colored mess. My mind whirled, trying to figure out how Carla had crushed it, but no answers popped into my head. When she finally opened her eyes, she looked at me kind of apologetically. In return, I stared at her in astonishment. Sure she had told me about her unconscious ability to move things. That was hard enough to swallow, but to actually see her levitate my Coke can and crush it?

“What’s the matter,” Lobo asked me, “cat got your tongue?”

Real funny, old man. Grasping the crushed can with my other hand, I looked at it, for a few seconds. “No way,” I said, shaking my head and finding it impossible to believe what I had just seen. “It’s a magic trick,” I said with a halfhearted laugh. “Yeah, that’s it, magic.” Even as I spoke, I didn’t fully believe my own words. I think I wanted to believe the two of them had pulled a smoke and mirrors type thing on me, because to consider anything else was way too wild.

Without saying another word, Carla and Lobo stared at me, causing another chill to race its way up and down my spine. In that moment, it was as if I was looking at the two of them from across a very deep, dark canyon only they understood and knew how to cross.

 ###

For a brief description of The St. Augustine Trilogy, click here.

For Sliding Beneath the Surface on Amazon.com, click here

For reviews of this book, author interviews and blog tours, click here.

For the Official St. Augustine Trilogy Facebook Page, click here.

 

© 2011 by Doug Dillon. All rights reserved.

 

Chapter 5 – Sliding Beneath the Surface

The St.Augustine Trilogy: Book I

Young adult, paranormal/historical

5

28

 

With her friend gone, Carla came over to where I sat, squatted next to my chair and put her hand on my arm. “I guess this wasn’t a very good idea,” she said softly. “Lobo can be rough, but I’ve never seen him like this before. Sure you don’t want to get out of here?”

“You warned me about him.” I chugged some Coke, blinking my watery eyes rapidly. The last thing I needed was for Carla to see how deeply Lobo had gotten to me.

“What Lobo said to you about your dad, it—”

“Yeah, well … my dad … my dad did kill himself like Lobo said. He deliberately drove his car into an overpass on I-4 near Orlando.” I thought it would be hard to say those words, but for whatever reason they just tumbled out of my mouth and I kept on going. Instead of keeping eye contact with Carla while I continued speaking, I kept scanning the Tiffany lamp sitting on an end table next to the couch on my left. I didn’t want to look into Carla’s eyes when I explained everything. Old fashioned or not, that lamp seemed a little prettier the more I looked at it. With an upside-down bowl made up of light blue pieces of glass, it looked a little like flowing water. At the edge of the bowl, dragonflies with yellow bodies and blue-green wings pointed their heads downward. Bright blue eyes seemed to stare all around searching for a way out of the room. Sort of like how I felt, in a way.

“That argument Lobo talked about? It was all over $20 I caught my father stealing out of my dresser. You see, Dad … well … he pretty much wiped out our family finances because of his gambling addiction. He always needed money. Even though he left a note apologizing for what he was going to do because of being in so much debt, I blamed myself for his death because of that fight we had. Guess I still do to some degree. That incident in my room was the last time I saw him alive.”

Carla was silent for a few seconds and then said, “I am so sorry. I had no idea.”

“No … of course not. It’s not something I talk about.” My mind kept going back to Lobo’s knowledge about so much of my past. “How did he do that, pick up on so much information about me?” Not giving Carla time to answer, I fired another question at her. “And how could he possibly know what my dad was planning?”

Looking uncomfortable, Carla shrugged her shoulders. “Ah, well, you see,” she began, but then hesitated.

A split second later, Lobo appeared in the arched doorway without making a sound. In his hand was a fresh bottle of water. “How I know what I know isn’t important right now.”

I wondered if the man heard what I said, or had possibly tuned in to my thoughts. My head still ached, but I somehow felt more relaxed than I had in a long time. Carla looked up at me, smiled, rubbed my arm for a few seconds and went back to her seat on the couch. I was sorry to see her go.

“So tell me about this dream,” Lobo said to me in his rumbling voice as he sat back down in his chair.

“Dream?” Neither Carla nor I had mentioned my dream yet. If anybody else had brought me there besides Carla, I would have sworn that person had already talked to Lobo about my problem.

“Am I not speaking clearly enough for you?” The man replied with this sour look on his face. “Yes, your dream.”

“Uh … OK. My dream. Well, for the past three nights I’ve been waking up with a horrible pain in my chest like something has stuck me hard while I’m sleeping. When I sit up and look down, my bed is glowing and there’s something long and pointy coming up out of the mattress trying to get me. Blood is everywhere, all over my chest, my stomach, my sheets and on the pointy thing. It’s all so real, like it’s actually happening. Then when I jump out of bed and turn the ceiling light on, it all goes away, but my chest still hurts. I still feel like I’ve just been stabbed. I’m telling you, it scares the crap out of me.” I hadn’t planned on saying that last part. It just popped out.

Lobo grunted and looked all around me in his weird way, his unblinking gaze all fiery.

Everybody blinks, right? Not him. I’m telling you, it felt really odd to be talking to somebody who keeps his eyes constantly open. Shifting his attention away from me, he put his water bottle down on the coffee table, got up and went to the display case I had touched earlier, the one with all the weapons. As I watched him, for the first time I noticed the circular display case over the fireplace held a huge collection of arrowheads, spearheads and stone knives. I wondered if they were Seminole. “Come over here,” he said, his words a rumbling command. I could feel my stomach twist the way it does when adults try to boss me around, but I resisted the temptation to say something back.

When I got to the case, he asked, “That something sharp coming out of your mattress look like any of the objects in here?” He squinted as if he somehow wanted to see the answer within me as much as hear it. I guess by then I was a little paranoid about the possibility of him being able to get inside my head. After what I had experienced while standing there before, I wasn’t sure I wanted to look, but I did. As I searched, my headache intensified, making me wince, but even so, my eyes stayed glued to this one item.

Without saying another word, Lobo unhooked the door, opened it up, pulled out the bayonet I still stared at and handed it to me. Somehow, the guy knew exactly which thing to grab.

The weapon I held felt really cold and heavy. Again, an intense chill radiated across my body. This time though, I chalked up the sensation to having touched something with a much lower temperature than mine. The base of the thing was round and hollow with a cut out space I figured had to be where it attached to the end of a rifle or musket. Man, that blade! So slender and skinny sharp at the end. It was triangular in shape and about a foot and a half long. I always thought for some reason bayonets were flat, like a sword, but not the one in my hands. I’m telling you, after running my thumb over the stabbing end of the thing, I could sure see how it might do some serious damage. I didn’t want to imagine what it felt like going through the insides of a person, but I did wonder if that particular bayonet had ever killed anyone.

I shuddered as I imagined it coming up through my mattress and sheet. A dull ache in my chest accompanied the throbbing in my head.

“That’s the one,” I told Lobo. As I started to give the man back his bayonet, it started warming up and then quickly got so hot I couldn’t keep hold. It slipped from my fingers and clattered on the cement floor, barely missing Lobo’s feet and mine. The old guy didn’t flinch, move, or of course, blink—at least from what I could see. Me, I jumped out of the way.

“Your friend is dangerous,” Lobo said, looking at Carla and shaking his head.

“It, ah, got too hot to handle,” I explained. How the thing could heat up like that, I had no idea. Only then did I realize the pain in my chest was gone.

“Hot, eh?” Lobo asked, his voice full of curiosity. He bent down, scooped the bayonet up in one hand, and held it for a few seconds before putting it back into the case. “It’s not hot now.”

“It was,” I said. “Really.”

Lobo didn’t reply at first. Instead, he walked back to his chair and sat down, leaving me standing near the display case. “There’s something more going on here than just a dream,” he said, again squinting like he had done before. “Think about it, carefully. What else in your life seems odd besides your dream and what happened seconds ago with the bayonet?”

I knew the guy had asked me a question, but I kept thinking about the bayonet’s change in temperature and how holding it seemed to make my chest feel all tight for a second, almost like I couldn’t breathe.

“What about it?” Lobo demanded.

I tried to think. “Well, there’s this one, really dumb kind of thing I’ve noticed.” I hesitated, unsure if it was what he wanted.

“Spit it out!” he ordered. “We’ll be here all night at the rate you’re going.”

You turd! The man’s pushy attitude was really starting to irritate me, but I didn’t call him on it out loud.

“Mind your thoughts and anger young man,” Lobo growled.

His statement stopped me cold. Had he actually seen those words flickering through my brain, or did he simply know how to read expressions? When I stole a quick glance at Carla, she looked down as if she knew exactly what had happened, and it had embarrassed her.

“Now,” Lobo asked in an unusually even voice, “what’s this one, ‘really dumb thing’ that’s been going on with you?”

Instead of answering him right away, I walked slowly back to my chair and sat down. It gave me time to think, organize my swirling thoughts and memories. Taking a deep breath, I said, “It’s probably nothing, but everywhere I go these days, I run into the number twenty-eight.”

“Twenty-eight?” Carla asked as I sat down, again facing Lobo. I knew she couldn’t keep out of the conversation for very long. “What do you mean?” Lobo didn’t object to her question.

That was cool. I could talk to her instead of directly to Lobo. “Well, when I turn on the TV or radio, it seems like somebody is always mentioning number twenty-eight. Mom left me food money for the week this morning and it was $28. I don’t remember her ever doing that before. There are also these kids who have been writing on the sidewalk with chalk near my house. Yesterday they wrote twenty-eights everywhere. And car license plates—so many I see have twenty-eights as part of their numbers.”

Carla stared at me like I had lost my mind.

“OK, remember when we were standing at Lobo’s gate a while ago,” I asked her. “A pickup truck went by pulling a race car? It had a twenty-eight on the door.”

This time, Carla’s eyes widened in surprise. “You’re right. It did.”

“Got any change on you?” Lobo asked, boring holes in me with his eyes.

I reached in my jeans pocket and pulled out a quarter and three pennies. That about blew me away. Carla arched both eyebrows and old Lobo nodded like the twenty-eight cents in my pocket was the most natural thing in the world.

“Now we’re getting someplace.” After he spoke, Lobo rapidly scanned the air all around me. “The Jeff Golden puzzle is starting to take shape. There are still a lot of missing pieces, but Carla is one of them. Not just a missing piece, an important one.” Here he looked long and hard at her for a few seconds before turning his attention back to me.“Something happened when you and Carla were together that you’ve never told anybody, even her. What is it? Start from the beginning and leave nothing out.”

Carla? Then it hit me. The accident. My bike accident. I never had told Carla what I saw on that day. While I worked on putting the pieces of that event together in my mind, a cat silently jumped onto the back of the couch where Carla sat. A pretty thing I guess, if you like cats—an orange color with patches of black, and some white here and there. Carla didn’t seem to notice as the thing stared at me with its yellow eyes, but I watched Lobo glance in that direction.

From his place at Carla’s feet, Spock looked up. Both animals stared at each other for a few seconds and then they both looked away. Lobo continued to watch as the cat silently walked across the back of the couch behind Carla’s head and then jump down onto the cushion next to her. Still without Carla noticing, the thing curled up and went to sleep

“Pay attention to the conversation,” Lobo said to me, jerking my thoughts back to the accident. To be honest, I didn’t want to talk about it. What happened was so embarrassing and weird that I had tried to forget the whole thing, but I couldn’t get out of describing it. Then again, I figured, I had been embarrassed so much already, I could handle a little more.

“OK, OK,” I said to Lobo, but I actually spoke to Carla. “You remember when we first met?”

“Remember?” she said with a little laugh. “You really made quite an unusual impression.”

Just hearing her talk and laugh made trying to explain what I had never shared with anyone before a lot easier. “When I first met Carla,” I said, without looking at Lobo, “we were both in the parking lot of the county library. We, well, started talking to each other, you know?”

“No I don’t know,” Lobo grumbled. “If I did know, you wouldn’t have to explain anything. Regardless of my ability to perceive things you think I shouldn’t be able to, you do need to fill in blanks. Besides, using the words ‘you know’ is a lazy speaking pattern and tiresome for the listener.”

Oh man, talk about tiresome. The guy was worse than a whole bunch of my teachers put together. But he had admitted, in a way, that he could sense at least a part of what I was thinking. Trying hard to ignore the idea of Lobo’s mind probing into my brain, I went on with my story, this time looking directly at the old guy. “As I was saying about the library. When Carla’s grandma arrived to pick her up, well … I decided to see if I could impress her, Carla I mean, not her grandma. So, as they were leaving the parking lot, I raced ahead of them and tried to do a really simple bike trick. Problem was I hit sand, went over backwards and cracked my head open.”

“Oh did you ever,” Carla groaned. To Lobo she said, “He knocked himself out for a minute or two and there was a pool of blood on the driveway under his head. Scared Grandma and me to death. The paramedics came and carted him off to the hospital. It turned out he only had a little concussion, but that’s how we met.”

“A few days after I got out of the hospital, I ran into Carla here in the neighborhood and figured out we lived down the street from each other. That’s how we became friends.”

“And,” Lobo questioned, “what is it you haven’t told us?”

“Ah, yeah, that. It’s … hard to explain. “You see, at the same time I was knocked out … I could … well … see myself.”

“See yourself?” Carla asked. “You were out cold. You couldn’t have seen anything.

“That’s the thing. I was awake somehow, really wide awake, but looking down at my body lying there in the blood. Carla, as crazy as it sounds, there was two of me, one on the ground and one looking down from maybe ten feet above. I watched you and your grandma jump out of the car and rush over to me, my body that is. Other people came around too. I remember seeing a little girl, a toddler, looking up at me floating there in the air and waving while everybody else looked at, well, my body. Then you yelled for someone to contact 911 and a redheaded woman opened her purse, pulled out her phone and made the call. None of what happened upset me. I just … watched.”

Carla sat there with her eyebrows raised and her mouth hanging slightly open.

“After that lady made the call, I wondered how I could be in two places at one time, and as I did, I … started rising into the air even more. You, your grandma, my body, the crowd of people and the library kept getting smaller and smaller. Pretty soon, I could see all of St. Augustine below me. I remember thinking how weird it looked to see the Castillo from so far up. Its design from that high up looked like a huge star. And Matanzas Bay out there,” I pointed to the water beyond Lobo’s window, “looked so sparkly and beautiful in the sun, like, like a million little mirrors were flashing up at me. After that, it’s real blurry except for waking up in the hospital.”

“Hmmm,” Lobo said. “There’s even more to your experience than what you’ve told us, but right now, I have an appointment in the bathroom.” Without any more conversation, he exited the room and headed down the hall.

At the sound of the bathroom door shutting, Lobo’s cat looked around, stood up and stretched. Taking its time, the thing jumped off the cushion onto the floor next to Spock and scooted out of sight behind the couch with its tail straight up in the air.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me all that?” Carla asked, hurt clearly showing in her voice and on her face.

“It was too wild, Carla,” I explained. “I felt stupid enough after having that accident in front of you and your grandmother, you know?”

“I guess,” she replied, still not very happy. “You’re right about one thing. That was … quite a story.”

“I don’t blame you for not believing me.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Well anyway, now you know. Hey, I thought you said old Edgar the crow was Lobo’s only pet?”

“He is, why?”

“So who owns the cat I saw in here a few seconds ago?”

“Cat? Jeff, what are you talking about? There was no cat in this room.”

###

For a brief description of The St. Augustine Trilogy, click here.

For Sliding Beneath the Surface on Amazon.com, click here

For reviews of this book, author interviews and blog tours, click here.

For the Official St. Augustine Trilogy Facebook Page, click here.

 

© 2011 by Doug Dillon. All rights reserved.

The Time of the Raven – An Excellent King Author Book

A review

 Book I of the King Arthur-Hammer of God Series

Author: Charles R. “Chuck” Dowling

• A former Marine officer and businessman

• Author of the Chosen Few series about the U.S. Marines in the Korean War

Book published by: Double Edge Press

Number of pages: 509

 The Review

If you like King Arthur stories, you’ll love this one. Chuck Dowling has created a fictional masterpiece here about Arthur’s childhood and he has set it in the time soon after the Romans left England.

The book’s title, The Time of the Raven, refers to Merlin, the ever-present, mysterious and dynamic force behind making certain young Arthur becomes the warrior king who will eventually unite the Britons and lead them in conquering the barbaric invaders.

Chuck Dowling

In this brilliant work, Arthur, Merlin, Guinevere, and Lancelot all come vividly to life in a time of incredible chaos, treachery and brutality. These characters and many others stand out in such wonderfully etched forms you would believe Mr. Dowling had known them personally.

The writing in this book flows smoothly and clearly, constantly pulling you headlong onto the next page and into the next chapter. This story is beautifully descriptive, intense, gritty and definitely exciting. But at the same time, it shows a depth of thoughtfulness in the main characters that makes them seem like very real people indeed.

Dowling takes a very complex historical period and somehow manages to not only make it interesting, but he also ends up deftly educating the reader. If you don’t know very much about England just after the Romans left, you will by the time you finish this book. The research that went into this work had to be extensive but the author uses it as a fascinating backdrop that never overwhelms.

When I finished The Time of the Raven, I definitely wanted to read more. It lay such a perfect base for the legendary adult King Arthur that I can’t wait to see how Mr. Dowling puts his unique spin on Book II of the series that is titled, The Time of the Eagle.

To find this book on Amazon.com, click here.

To see the author’s website, click here.

“Overall, a Great Novel…”

Sliding Beneath the Surface

The St. Augustine Trilogy: Book I

Young adult, paranormal & historical

A review placed on Amazon & Goodreads by Memphis-Taylor.

“I loved Carla as a character. She was modern and down to earth, but very old fashioned in the way she spoke and carried herself. And she just didn’t care about what anyone thought as long as they were being good people haha she cracks me up! Very lovable and a relatable character.

“The imagination this author has is outstanding! His use of imagery is unique and inspiring. I loved the bit about the eyes and the window and the Ball of Realities.

“The author also does a phenomenal job of painting out what he wants you to see and boy oh boy does it make an impact! Wonderful! Lobo… gotta love Lobo! What story is complete without a salty-dog type of leader? None, I tell you! Another great character.

“The author is also very good at detailing and scene setting. The war scene was intricate and realistic as well as the description of St. Augustine.

“Overall, a great novel… I would definitely recommend this diamond in the rough to anyone, especially history, supernatural and philosophical buffs.”

To see the full review on Amazon, click here.

 

Spooky Paranormal Florida # 7

2013 public presentation # 7 by Doug Dillon titled:

“Mixing the Paranormal and the Historical in St. Augustine, Florida.”

Part of Viva Florida 500, celebrating 500 years of Florida History

Thursday, May 16 21, 2013 – 2:00 pm

A free presentation of the Cocoa Beach, Florida Public Library, a branch of the Brevard County Library System.

550 N. Brevard Ave., Cocoa Beach, Florida

Program

Come join Orlando area author, Doug Dillon, as he discusses his book series titled, The St. Augustine Trilogy, and the roads he traveled to make it happen. Find out how he used his own experiences and extensive research to create a fictional blend of the paranormal and actual Florida historical events for young adults and adults young at heart. Doug is also the author of the nonfiction book, An Explosion of Being: An American Family’s Journey into the Psychic.

An award winning former educator, Doug has written for Boys’ Life magazine, Prentice Hall, Mitchell Lane Publishers, Harcourt and the Orlando Sentinel.

A book signing will follow the presentation.

Click here to connect with the Port Orange Library.

Click here to learn more about Viva Florida 500