Dorian Gray

John Garavaglia

Description

Trust fund baby.  Playboy.  High school student. Now Dorian Gray can add monster hunter to the list. The burden of taking up the family business is a daunting task, with the only silver lining is Dorian’s budding new romance with rising ballet star Sybil Vane.  But when an old enemy of the Gray family resurfaces, Dorian must steel his nerves and turn to an unlikely ally in order to protect the ones he loves.

Sujets

• Fantastique
• Romance fantastique
• Bit-Lit
• Vampires
• Romance
• Fiction
• Paranormal

Informations

• Publié par: Markosia Enterprises Ltd
• Date de parution: 24 juin 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781912700387
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

DORIAN GRAY
BENEATH THE CANVAS
An original novel by John Garavaglia
Adapted from the graphic novel series by
Darren G. Davis, Scott Davis, Federico De Luca, and John Garavaglia
Based on characters created by
Oscar Wilde
Dorian Gray: Beneath the Canvas © 2019 Darren G. Davis & Markosia Enterprises, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction of any part of this work by any means without the written permission of the publisher is expressly forbidden. All names, characters and events in this publication are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. Published by Markosia Enterprises, PO BOX 3477, Barnet, Hertfordshire, EN5 9HN.
FIRST PRINTING, June 2019.
Harry Markos, Director.
Paperback: ISBN 978-1-912700-37-0
eBook: ISBN 978-1-912700-38-7
Book design by: Ian Sharman
Cover photography by: Stephanie Swartz
Cover model: JC Mason
www.markosia.com
First Edition
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
There’s a lot of people who I want to thank for making this possible. First I want to thank my editor Darren G. Davis for pretty much letting me do whatever I wanted when writing this book and the story arc for the graphic novel. It’s an honour and a pleasure to work with someone who loves what he does for a living. I also want to thank his brother Scott for reinventing a literary classic for this generation. I’m grateful for Darren for letting me continue Dorian’s journey into mystery. We’re barely scratching the surface and I’m very excited for where we go from here.
I would like to express thanks to my two biggest fans — my mom and grandma — whose support and patience I couldn’t do without. And gratitude to my Wolf Pack for keeping me grounded.
John Garavaglia
May 2019
ALSO PUBLISHED BY
MARKOSIA & WRITTEN BY
JOHN GARAVAGLIA
DORIAN GRAY
SINBAD: ROGUE OF MARS
INSANE JANE
ALSO PUBLISHED BY
MARKOSIA
THE THRONE ETERNAL
ZAK RAVEN: CODE ALPHA
SWANSONG
WORDS ON A WALL
STORIES FROM THE CHICKEN SHED HOUSE
PROLOGUE
LONDON, ENGLAND
NOVEMBER 7, 1908
Once again his mind exploded with such searing pain. A floodgate of memories burst wide. Yet it is the boy’s face that kept haunting him.
Always that young face.
Basil Hallward didn’t know what he was getting into when he granted the stranger’s permission to use him as his host. In return the person promised him anything he’d desired, and the only thing Basil ever wanted was the reciprocated affection of his young muse Dorian Gray. And when Basil said yes to the voice that haunted his latest masterpiece, he signed on for a lot more than he ever bargained for.
Basil was a talented, though somewhat conventionally minded painter. His love for Dorian changed the way he saw art; indeed, it defined a new school of expression for him. Basil’s portrait of Dorian marked a new phrase of his career. Before he created this masterwork, he spent his time painting Dorian in the veils of antiquity—dressed as an ancient soldier or as various romantic figures from mythology. Once he painted Dorian as he truly was, however, he feared that he had put too much of himself into the work. He worried that his love, which he himself described as “idolatry,” was too apparent, and that it betrayed too much of himself. Though he later changed his mind to believe that art was always more abstract than one would think and that the painting thus betrayed nothing except form and colour, his emotional investment in Dorian remained constant. He sought to protect Dorian, voicing his objection to Lord Henry’s injurious influence over Dorian and defending him even after their relationship had clearly dissolved.
With friends like Lord Henry Wotton, who needed enemies? This hedonistic, selfish aristocrat had the whole world at his fingertips, and rather doing something good for humanity, he simply went about his business in a totally self-indulgent manner. Nothing seemed to have any meaning for Lord Henry except his own pleasure. Even his “friends” didn’t really matter to him once he was tired of them. That’s how Lord Henry viewed life. People, money, objects, art—everything was just a tool of pleasure to him. Once any given thing stopped being fun, he was not interested anymore. The one possible exception to this was Dorian himself. Lord Henry felt as though he had created the ideal human being. He admired the young man profoundly, but more importantly, he admired himself for grooming Dorian in his own image.
After watching the object of his affection leave with his best friend on that fateful night, in his desperation Basil turned to someone he didn’t fully understand. The one thing the stranger didn’t tell him was he was actually a demon spawned from the bowels of Hell.
It called itself a Morbus—a special kind of demon that feeds on the seven deadly sins. And Basil’s mortal sin was envy. Driven into a jealous rage when his young friend Dorian Gray had spurned his advances in favour of the company of Basil’s so-called best friend Lord Henry Wotton. He could feel Dorian’s waning presence. So warm, caring, and soothing. But somewhere in his soul he felt empty. The aristocrat took the waif to places he never took Basil because he wouldn’t fare well with the crowd Henry had been associated. Because Basil was raised proper didn’t mean he was a prude. He lived the bohemian lifestyle and spent a lot of time among such roaming free spirits. The Morbus that dwelled inside Basil feasted on his hatred for Henry, and he had plenty of that to spare. It was so hearty that the demon would grow fat.
Basil could still hear its taunting laughter when it hid itself inside Dorian’s painting back in his studio. And the sardonic words that hurt Basil’s ego when he was told he never had any talent and all that artistic brilliance came from the Morbus itself. It caused Basil a lot of pain on realizing he was the butt of some sort of cosmic joke that was in over several thousand years in the making. All this time he was living off of someone else’s prestige. For a time he wondered if he should draw something to prove the demon wrong, and show it he was actually gifted. But he was too afraid to act on his threat in fear on what the Morbus had said was true. It would clearly devastate him. Art was Basil’s purpose for living, and if he learned the horrible truth then it would mean his entire life was a complete waste.
There were many sleepless nights for Basil. When he did manage to get some rest he would always awake with a sudden jolt and his heart racing, with sheen of cold perspiration covering his body. Images of claws and teeth, horns and tusks, blades and blood and clashing armies were vivid in his mind.
Throughout time, the battlefields had changed. But the price had always remained the same: The human soul. That’s what gave the Morbi their power. They craved all the evils of man. They can’t get enough of it. The more time they are latched to their contract, the more powerful they become. After they drain their hosts into withering husks they move on to the next one in line, like parasites.
It was difficult for Basil to get used to being a human duplex. For the last seventeen years he started to question, which thoughts were his and the ones perpetrated by the Morbus. It’s their plan to keep the new recruits confused. Hoping to discourage the hosts of any personal mission. With each new host, there’s always the question: How long, if at all, can they hang on to their humanity? Some last longer than others. For all these years, Basil has been trying to cope with this strange new reality. Or it might have been him gradually accepting the terms of his Faustian deal, or the Morbus eradicating everything that was Basil Hallward and changing it into something abominable.
In all of his time being possessed, Basil had grown such a flowing hatred for Henry on exposing the impressionable Dorian to the seedy parts of London. Taking him to dive bars, opium dens, and brothels. Apparently, all of Henry’s vices rubbed off on the boy, corrupting his innocence and became a heartless cad who engaged on dangerous liaisons. Especially daring each other to perform outlandish things. The last time Basil checked Dorian was way ahead. He was present at a house party a very long time ago. Not only Henry dared Dorian to bed the hostess’ daughter but also her as well. Not an easy task, but Dorian did not disappoint except for Henry, who had lost the wager. Basil was repulsed by this display of vulgarity and that was then he realized that whatever was left of his once shiny star had been tarnished, and there was no way he could ever be redeemed.
If Henry was the Devil’s advocate, then Basil was God’s. Basil believed in the innate goodness of mankind. What he didn’t realize was that he was a good man living in a bad world. He continued to have faith in the possibility of redemption and he was a firm believer in high-minded, pure values like beauty, truth, and love. The problem was he had a tendency to confuse those things; because Dorian continued to be beautiful, while Basil optimally thought that he also continued to be truthful and loving. Basil refused to believe that his supposed friends, Henry and Dorian, could be really bad.
As Henry and Dorian drifted further and further away from him, Basil grew more and more tragic—his truly artistic temperament led him into worshipping beauty where he saw it in the boy, and it clouded his vision. Basil’s true problem was that art was more real to him than life. In an artwork, beauty was always a good thing, but in the real world, it was just not. He didn’t just want life to be like art—he wanted life to be art, and vice versa. He believed that Dorian still had some shred of good in him, if he could continue to look like an angel—and maybe he was right.