How Real Is Reality Anyway?

Trevor Prout

Description

If Joe thought battling a demon and rescuing a 'damsel in distress' in another reality was a sobering enough exploit, he discovered that playing 'knight in shining armour' in further realities was enough to keep him on the wagon forever. Realities with huge toads that would make a shoal of piranha look like goldfish. Realities with massive spiders, more bad-tempered crows like those he had met in Reality 3, giant rats and mice. Realities with worms with appetites that would rival a starving Komodo dragon. All this because he sought to use the expertise of an unusual detective as an easier way, than reality hopping, to find his birth mother. A detective who tried several times in ingenious ways to have him killed, a detective who turned out to be a shape-shifting demon.

Sujets

• Fantasy (canción de Mariah Carey)
• Fantasy

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Date de parution: 31 janvier 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528956413
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

How Real Is Reality Anyway?
Trevor Prout
Austin Macauley Publishers
2020-01-31
How Real Is Reality Anyway? About the Author Copyright Information © Acknowledgement The Story So Far Chapter 1 Coming Chapter 2 Prelude Chapter 3 Second Thoughts Chapter 4 Trusts and Other Funds Chapter 5 Private Investigators Chapter 6 House Hunting Chapter 7 An Offer of a Fair Trade Chapter 8 New Friend Chapter 9 Goodbye, My Friend Chapter 10 Unwanted Interest Chapter 11 Twice Is Coincidence Chapter 12 Disturbing Thoughts Chapter 13 Property Tycoon Chapter 14 Enemy Action Chapter 15 Cote d’Azur Chapter 16 Shopping and Beach Chapter 17 Proposal Number One Chapter 18 Own Time Chapter 19 Time Does Fly Chapter 20 Proposal Number Two Chapter 21 Maseratis, Motorbikes and Fast Trains Chapter 22 Paris Chapter 23 Home Chapter 24 Enough Is Enough Chapter 25 Satanists? Chapter 26 Maze Chapter 27 Arroyos Chapter 28 Not-So-Grand Canyon Chapter 29 Mother Chapter 30 Stonehenge Chapter 31 Hamburgers, Cokes and Home Chapter 32 Annie Oakley Chapter 33 Wrong Place, Wrong Time Chapter 34 One Step Too Far Chapter 35 Reconnoitre Chapter 36 Retribution Chapter 37 Threat!
About the Author
The author was born in Exeter, England. In the mid-1960s, when he was 12, the family emigrated to South Africa. His love of reading took flight when he found a James Bond book, Goldfinger , on the airplane and he was lost in fantasy land. Occasionally, he finds his way back, mostly to earn money. Thirty years later, he immigrated to New Zealand with his family. He is now retired and is trying his hand at entertaining people as he himself has been so richly entertained.
Copyright Information ©
Trevor Prout (2020)
The right of Trevor Prout to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781788789325 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781528956413 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2020)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
Acknowledgement
Past, present and future authors—whoever and wherever you are, thank you for the 55 years of magic (so far)! Thanks to the Austin Macauley crew for their invaluable assistance in making this book a reality.
The Story So Far
Joseph Williams, a recently divorced, struggling would-be author, rented a cottage in a remote location in South Africa’s Limpopo province, near the Kruger Park, in the hope of finding the peace and quiet to write ‘the’ novel that would make him famous.
At the same time he was supposed to start working on the book, he started working on a hard drinking, big game hunter author image, like Ernest Hemmingway. All he managed to accomplish was the hard drinking part.
One morning, shortly before his liver was finally about to give up the unequal battle, he had a strange awakening.
He woke to a massive hangover and a telephone ringing incessantly from the bedroom next door. What made the morning peculiar was not the massive hangover, which was commonplace these days. It was the phone he didn’t have ringing in a room he didn’t have either. The cottage had only one bedroom when he made it to bed the night before.
Finally, he plucked up the courage, or stupidity more likely, to answer the phone, more to shut the bloody thing up than anything else. Complicating matters was that the landline was not plugged in, there was nowhere to plug it, one of the attractions of the remote cottage!
Adding to these complications was the view of a rocky shore and an incoming thunderstorm off the sea, seen through the bedroom window of the new room; features not normally found on the African veldt.
The young, female voice on the unplugged phone insisted repeatedly “Help me! You must help me!”
Not knowing whether he was going insane or the booze had finally addled the last few working brain cells that remained, he enlisted the aid of a blind Zulu Sangoma, a witchdoctor, to help solve the problem.
With the Sangoma waiting in the impossible bedroom, Joe reconnoitred the reality he found outside by climbing through the window. There he met, and barely managed to escape from, a demon carelessly released after thousands of years in a burial mound.
Back in his own reality, Joe recruited the help of a clandestine arms dealer This dubious arms dealer, Jan Steenkamp, agreed to sell a pouch of fabulous diamonds Joe had been given by an archaeology professor who had inadvertently released the demon. With the anticipated proceeds from the sale of the diamonds the arms dealer agreed to supply Joe with weapons, as well as sliver and iron ammunition, despite thinking him insane. Ammunition suitable for destroying demons.
While travelling around Limpopo province (Northern Transvaal in the old days) equipping himself for a further sortie into the alternative reality, he stopped a runaway petrol tanker in a steep pass saving the life of the tanker’s driver. In doing so he met a family whose daughter would later play a huge role in his life.
Armed and ready, well, armed anyway, in the world of the second reality, Joe cornered the demon within a burial mound, a Demon Doorman (Doordemon for the politically correct?), and eventually destroyed it. Concealed in the burial mound, he found yet another portal—this one leading to a different, third reality.
Finding his way into a nearby town in Reality 3, in the heart of the Confederate States of America, he survived an argument with some extremely large, aggressive crows. In this divergent reality this third reality (R3), he discovered that the Confederate States had won the 1861 War of independence and was steadily being overrun by demons and their human collaborators.
In the priory of a ruined church, he found and rescued the woman he had heard pleading on the other end of the telephone. At the same time, he managed rescued a number of children, all of whom were to be sacrificed to a major demon, ‘liberating’ more diamonds in the process.
To allow the woman and the children to escape back to, then through, the portal in the burial mound, Joe created a diversion which resulted in him burning down the church, and almost himself as well, after killing a lesser demon and a number of its human collaborators.
During the fight in the church, Joe used holy water, his silver and iron bullets and Molotov cocktails he had had manufactured. Slowing and incapacitating a major demon, which brought a huge wooden statue in the church to life, enough, he escaped as well.
Once back through the burial mound to reach Reality 2, Joe had the mound dynamited before the injured and, understandably, supremely annoyed demon could pass through the portal.
Arranging to have the demolished mound covered in plants that, like silver, iron and holy water, were a torment to demons and their like, Joe accompanied the woman and children to the commune from which the woman had been kidnapped.
Before parting with the woman and children he had rescued and returning to his own reality, Joe discovered the woman would eventually become the mother of the Joseph Williams who would exist in Reality 2.
Now read on!
Chapter 1

Coming
Joe sat bolt upright in bed. “Oh shit!” he groaned. Baphomet wasn’t dead, was only badly injured and badly scarred, but had not died from the injuries he had inflicted on it. Scars and injuries that would take time, plenty of time to heal, but time was something that Baphomet had, being immensely long-lived, if not immortal.
What he was, was annoyed, extremely annoyed. One could say he, with an erection like that, it had to be male, was totally pissed off with Joe, and Joe could sense that Baphomet was determined to get even. Get even with him and, probably, the whole world.
Joe could also sense that he was coming, that he was searching for a door between his plane of existence and Joe’s, or door to doors that would eventually lead to Joe’s world and Joe himself.
“Shit,” he muttered again, vehemently. Perhaps it was time to track down his mother and to go to talk to Philemon again!
Chapter 2

Prelude
“Can you imagine that?” he asked Philemon incredulously. “I rescued my mother, from a demon!”
Joe had tossed his kitbag through the window, first alerting Philemon, who was camping out in the living room, waiting for his return, hoping to prevent the man from dying from a heart attack.
Scrambling after his kitbag, over the window ledge, he flopped to the floor in weariness, caused almost as much as the decrease in tension as the unusual expenditure in energy.
“Someone up there must love you,” remarked the old Sangoma, Philemon, having negotiated the stairs and entering the bedroom. “In all truthfulness, I did not think you would return. I was almost certain the task would prove too much for you and I am more than happily surprised at your return.”
“Let’s adjourn to the lounge and I’ll explain the last few hours,” Joe suggested.
“A good idea,” Philemon agreed. “I could use a stiff drink and I do not think this place will endure for long now the need for it no longer exists.”
This was something that had not crossed Joe’s mind and he glanced around the room, half expecting it to blink out of existence before they could leave.
With a last look around the room, to see if they had left anything of his there, he firmly closed the door, hoping, praying, it would be for the last time.
“That thing in the barrow was guarding another portal,” Joe began his explanation after tracking dow