Diamond Sky Trilogy Box Set: Books 1-3

by David Clarkson

  She flicked her bedside lamp back on, then slid off her bed and hurried across the room and into the hallway. Once there, she switched the hall light on before returning to bed in a more composed manner.

  Normality was restored. She felt safe again. The monsters had all been banished.

  A moment later, the hall light went back out.

  This time she decided she would just have to try and sleep with her bedside lamp on, as distracting as that may be. Within a minute, her grandfather was in her room. He was agitated; his impatience growing by the second.

  ‘Just what do you think you are doing, young lady? Did I not tell you to turn out your light?’

  ‘Can’t we leave it on for a short while longer?’ she pleaded. ‘At least until I fall asleep.’

  ‘No, we cannot.’

  He reached over and turned off her lamp. After wheeling his way out, the hall light was once again extinguished, making the darkness absolute.

  Emmy tried to be rational. Monsters did not exist. She knew this. There was nothing in the darkness that could hurt her. No demons, ghouls or bogeymen. All she had to do was close her eyes and go to sleep. It was no different to what she did every other night. Except this was not like any other night. The blissful ignorance of innocence had been lost. Her imagination had become polluted, corrupted - dangerous. The monsters were not in the darkness but in her mind. They had infiltrated the one place where she could not hide.

  Each time she closed her eyes the sense of foreboding overwhelmed her. Every creak of a floorboard became the approaching footsteps of a killer. Every whistle on the wind was the high pitched squeal of a wild animal. The air felt heavy, pushing against her skin like the pungent breath of the demons that stalked her darkest nightmares.

  She opened her eyes

  Nothing had changed. Darkness still obscured her vision, convincing her that she was not alone - that there was something hiding in the shadows.

  Watching her.

  Waiting for its chance to strike.

  ‘Who’s there?’

  There was no reply. All she heard was the quickening rhythm of her beating heart. She reached out for the switch to her bedside lamp, but when she pressed it nothing happened.

  She took a deep breath and repeated the action.

  Still nothing.

  Unwilling to wait another moment in the darkness, she leapt from her bed and ran across the room. When she reached the far wall, she felt around in the dark until she found the door. Once outside, she knew where to find the light switch.

  Click.

  There was no change within the blacked out hallway. Unable to contain her panic, Emmy placed one hand on the wall and moved as fast as she could down the corridor.

  It was after her. She did not know what. She did not know why. The only certainty was that it would not relent until it had her. She had to get away.

  ‘Stop!’

  At first she did not recognise the voice. It was louder, deeper than what she was used to hearing and her fearful imagination was projecting all manner of hideous faces onto it. Then, at last, a light appeared. It started low and was projected upwards, illuminating the face of Jackson Fox, her grandfather. He did not have the friendliest visage at the best of times and the torchlight made him look like an ogre; shadows nesting in the deep recesses of his sunken eyes like crows. His wheelchair lowered him so that his line of sight was not much higher than his granddaughter’s.

  ‘Why are you not in bed, child?’ he asked.

  ‘Something turned out the lights,’ she replied. ‘I knew we weren’t alone. It has cut the power. We have to do something.’

  Her grandfather rolled his eyes. He did not empathise with her behaviour and nor did he find it cute or endearing. Such childish nonsense would never be tolerated in his household.

  ‘Rubbish!’ he said. ‘There is nobody here except you and me. It was I who cut the power. Given your appalling behaviour, I had no choice. Fear is not a habit that we want you to fall into.’

  ‘If you leave a light on, I won’t be afraid, will I?’ she said, not defiantly, but merely applying the logic of a child, albeit a child far advanced for her age.

  ‘Nice try, Emmy, but you are not getting off that easily. Now go back to bed. When you wake up tomorrow morning and the sun comes up just as it always does, you will understand how ridiculous you have acted tonight.’

  This time she did as he asked of her. As she lay on the hard mattress, the sheets pulled all the way up to her chin, she heard one last click. It was harder, more forceful than the sound elicited by the light switches. It was the bolt on the outside of her door.

  Moments later, the feeling returned. She was caught in the grip of the inescapable and ominous sensation that she was not alone.

  A little over twenty years passed and she once more found herself in that darkened, locked room of her childhood.

  She tried to recall what had brought her there.

  Death; death is what had brought her to this place. Or at least it was an approximation of death. Her body was still alive and well in a laboratory hidden deep in the Australian outback.

  She was astral travelling.

  On this particular trip she had travelled farther than ever before. A great deal farther. She had to consider the possibility that she had traversed dimensions as well as space and/or time.

  During her childhood, when placed in this situation, she had called out his name. He had been her guardian. He was her family. The one person she had trusted more than any other. Of course, that was now in the past. In the present he was her betrayer - her tormentor. She could no longer even bring herself to say his name. Her grandfather was a killer and never again would she ask for his help. There was, however, another she could turn to.

  ‘Jimmy?’

  She received no answer. The young psychic, who had helped her to cross over to wherever she now found herself, was no longer with her. Though they had made this leap together, he really was dead. He had died because of her carelessness. If she had done things differently they would both be alive. They would both be safe. They would be home.

  She sat up. Her legs hung over the edge of the bed. When she was a child, her feet had not even touched the floor. Now she could firmly plant her soles onto the hard wood flooring with ease. (There were no carpets anywhere in the complex. The building was located in the middle of a desert and soft fibres would prove too tempting a prospect for the local wildlife; particularly snakes.)

  Click.

  As it was twenty years earlier, the lamp did not work.

  No change there, she thought. She really was reliving that long tumultuous night from her youth. At least this time she knew beyond doubt there was nothing that could harm her. There was no demon with a vendetta against her family. No monsters hiding in the darkness. All that existed was that which her imagination projected.

  She crossed the short distance to the door. Even in complete darkness she found it easy to navigate the room as its layout was so clear in her memory. Unsurprisingly, the bolt was still in place. Without being too vigorous, she pulled on the handle in order to test the firmness of the lock. There was very little give, if any at all.

  Undeterred, she increased her effort. When the door still did not budge, she tried to shake it but to no avail. The lock held firm.

  ‘A little help, perhaps?’

  She thought back to weeks earlier when she had spent time in Tibet. That was when she had become aware of the latent powers that sporadically manifested ever since the destruction of Jackson’s Hill. The town had been engulfed in a dense mist of psychic radiation, which drove everyone it infected insane whilst at the same time endowing them with seemingly impossible powers. The ability to read minds and to see the future became commonplace. She had been one of the few exceptions. Her unnatural abilities did not come directly from the radiation.

  The night her home town had been destroyed was also the night that she died. Well, considering her current predicament, it
was, technically, the first time she had died. For reasons she had never fully come to terms with, she had been given a second chance. Her spirit had been on a precipice before making a u-turn, returning life to her body. After that, things became very different. First subconsciously, and then consciously, she had developed the ability to create a tulpa - a metaphysical being born of the imagination, which possessed real substance within the material world. It was this being she now called upon.

  Her mental efforts received no response. Something was different. Something was wrong. She could no longer sense any change taking place when she concentrated her thoughts. Numbness replaced the vast source of power she had previously called upon. The ability to divide her consciousness now deserted her.

  ‘What am I supposed to do?’ she asked, but there was nobody, either real or imagined, on hand to provide an answer.

  All she could do was to think back to the first time she had lived this night. Back then, her desire to leave the room had been just as strong and her prospects of actually doing so, perhaps even more limiting. In the end, she had taken the only option open to her. She had returned to her bed, curled into a tight, compact ball and tried her very best not to fall asleep. An action she now found herself repeating.

  ***

  ‘What do you mean – you’ve lost her?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘I don’t know,’ replied the lab technician, a twenty three year old PhD student named Marie. ‘She just vanished. One minute I had her location pinned down about 200km from here and then – nothing.’

  ‘Is the computer tracking her new location?’

  ‘There is no new location. Like I said – she just vanished.’

  ‘That’s impossible. You aren’t reading it right.’

  Charlie pushed his assistant aside and sat down at the workstation. The information they were able to extrapolate from an astral mission was greatly limited, but so long as Emmy remained terrestrial, the computer should have been able to pinpoint her location down to within a cat’s whisker.

  ‘I’m going to see if I can recalibrate the monitors,’ said Charlie. ‘If we can’t get a fix on her, we may still be able to trace the trajectory of her cord. At least that way we will know what direction she last headed in.’

  The scientist deftly worked the keyboard, effortlessly tapping out line upon line of complex code as if he was simply flexing his fingers. His assistant watched on, impressed by her mentor’s physical dexterity, aroused by his mental agility.

  ‘Got it,’ he said, ‘but it makes no sense.’

  Astral beings are tethered to their bodies by a process known as quantum entanglement. This metaphysical link is affectionately known to the scientists as the silver cord. Emmy’s cord was still broadcasting, but it appeared to come to a stop just a few miles outside of the Earth’s atmosphere without the traveller on the end of it. This contradicted everything Charlie understood about the process. If there was any break in the quantum connection the cord should instantly vanish. It was simply not possible for it to remain in place in the event Emmy’s consciousness had become disentangled.

  ‘How are her vitals holding up?’ he asked.

  ‘Stable,’ replied Marie.

  ‘That means we haven’t lost her yet,’ said Charlie. ‘If that were the case, she would have flat-lined. There’s only one other possibility left.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘She’s entered a wormhole.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘How could she have encountered a wormhole so close to home?’

  ‘You’re familiar with Dr Constance Stark’s work conducted on post mortality astral physics, aren’t you?’ replied Charlie.

  ‘I read the file. The results were...inconclusive.’

  ‘Well, maybe we’re about to get a conclusion. If my hunch is correct, she’s punched through. Emmy has crossed over to whatever constitutes as the afterlife.’

  ‘So what do we do?’

  Charlie took a moment to consider the options. So far as he was concerned, they only had one. There were forces that he simply did not wish to interfere with.

  ‘We pull her out.’

  The console was fitted with an abort switch. It was a big red button that constantly insinuated its presence. This was arguably the most important component of the entire machine. Without waiting a moment longer, Charlie slammed his hand down onto it.

  Nothing happened.

  He tried again.

  Still nothing.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘We’re going to need another plan. How do you feel about working a little overtime tonight?’

  The assistant shrugged.

  ‘Good,’ said Charlie,’ because if we don’t get Emmy back, this will probably be your final shift.’

  Chapter 2

  She woke with the sunrise. Its light shining through the curtains was a welcome contrast to the darkness of the night before. What had been a prison the previous evening had returned to its more usual status of a safe haven within her otherwise disciplined home. There was no demon in the closet. No monster under the bed. Nothing whatsoever that could harm her.

  The book at the centre of her anxiety rested on the bedside cabinet where she had left it. She picked it up and briefly leafed through the pages. It was nothing but words. None of it was real. Without dwelling a second longer than necessary, she opened up a drawer of the cabinet and placed the offending tome inside. She then slid off the bed and into her slippers before crossing the room and making her way to the door.

  As she rose up on her tiptoes to reach the handle, a half formed thought pushed itself out from the back of her mind. Though it made no sense whatsoever, she was sure that the previous night the handle had been positioned lower down the frame.

  Or had she been taller?

  Such stupid thoughts. She decided to pay them no more heed and turned the handle. The exterior lock was no longer in place, allowing the door to open out onto the artificially lit corridor (all doors within the complex opened both ways to make it easier for her grandfather to access them in his wheelchair). She found Pops waiting for her in the kitchen.

  His head was buried in one of the many science journals he had delivered to the observatory each morning. As he read, a half smoked cigarette was nestled between his fingers and a fresh butt sat in the ashtray on the table. It lent the air a toxic, uncomfortable heaviness, which she always hated having to endure at the start of every day.

  ‘Good morning, Emmy,’ he said as she took a seat opposite him at the table. ‘I trust you slept well.’

  He had not even offered her a sideways glance as he posed the question, giving her the impression he was not really interested in her response at all.

  ‘Yes, Pops,’ she replied. ‘The monsters gave up in the end. I think they don’t like the dark either.’

  Her response did just enough to have him rotate his eyeballs in her direction.

  ‘In that case, you shall be pleased to know that from now on I will be turning out all of the lights every night.’

  She shrugged. After all, the darkness seemed like it belonged to a different world at seven o’clock in the morning. Any threat had departed with the dawn, leaving her a full day to come up with a suitable plan for the following night. Her grandfather kept an extensive library and she had already identified one book that may be of service in this regard.

  After breakfast, her nanny, Rose, came by to look after her whilst the professor worked in his study. Emmy often wondered what he did in there. Even at her young age it had been explained to her that his legs were beyond repair and that he would never walk again. Her theories were that he was either trying to invent a way to build a new body or that he was looking for a way to exist without a body at all – like a hologram. The young Emmy Rayne’s head was filled with many fanciful ideas.

  Without any friends her own age, she had no peer group to influence her. Whereas most four year olds would have the alphabet posted on their bedroom wall, she had the periodic t
able. In place of dolls and toys, she played with science kits targeted at children four times her age. Suffice to say, she was no typical four year old.

  Emmy was particularly fond of Rose, or Mrs Duggan, when Pops was around. Her grandfather did not approve of her addressing adults by their first name. The fact that the nanny encouraged Emmy to disregard this rule was just one of many things that made her so endearing to the youngster. Rose had a sister, Valerie, who worked at the local police station in town. Sometimes she took Emmy when she visited. This day turned out to be one of those days.

  Whilst Rose chatted with her sibling, she left Emmy in the main office where she was met by a most unorthodox deputy sitting behind the chief of police’s desk. He wore no uniform and when standing, he measured a full inch below the minimum height requirement for the force.

  ‘Do you carry a gun?’ she asked him.

  ‘Why would I carry a gun?’ he replied.

  ‘You’re a cop. Cops carry guns. How else would you shoot the bad guys?’

  ‘I’m fifteen years old. That’s a bit young to be shooting anyone – even bad guys.’

  ‘Why?’

  He had no reply. Though he knew the answer should be glaringly obvious, he was at a loss as to how he could explain it. Val had told him that this girl was Jackson Fox’s granddaughter. Rumour was that like her grandfather, Emmy was a genius in the making. Albeit, a genius at the very beginning of her inevitably groundbreaking career.

  ‘My dad is the police chief in this town,’ he eventually told her. ‘He is the one who carries a gun, not me.’

  ‘So who are you?’

  ‘I am...’ again he struggled to find adequate words. This kid had a directness and determination that was at once unsettling, but also endearing. ‘I am Lucas,’ he told her, deciding to change tack. ‘One day this desk will be mine, but for the moment I just help out dad where he needs it. When I’m not at school, that is.’