To Dream the Blackbane

Richard J O'Brien

Description

A cosmic event in 2015 fused earth with the faerie realm. Scientists refer to the event as the Anomaly. A byproduct of the Anomaly was the advent of hybrid beings - people who became mixed with whatever animal or object was nearest them the moment the Anomaly occurred. Humans, or Pedigrees, soon relegated fairy refugees and hybrids into ghetto zones in large cities.



Seventy years later, Wolfgang Rex, a second-generation hybrd - part human, part Rhodesian Ridgeback - is a retired police detective who runs a private investigation business in Chicago's Southside. It's a one-hybrid show: though Rex couldn't survive without his assisstant, the faerie Sally Sandweb.



One evening, two vampires visit Rex and offer him a substantial reward for the recovery of a stolen scroll. Later that evening, Charlotte Sweeney-Jarhadill, a Pedigree woman from Lousiana, visits Rex and hires him to exorcise the headless ghost of a confederate soldier from her home.



To complicate matters, the private detective ends up falling for Charlotte. Meanwhile the vampires demand results in the search for the missing scroll. When Rex's assistant Sally goes missing, he must stay alive long enough to find her. Charlotte and the vampires, however, have other plans for Rex.

Sujets

• Fantastique
• Fantasy urbaine
• Alternative future
• Hardboiled
• Urban fantasy
• Femme fatale
• Dark fantasy
• Vampire

Informations

• Publié par: Between the Lines Publishing
• Date de parution: 29 décembre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781732172333
• Langue: English

Extrait

To Dream the Blackbane:
A Novel of the Anomaly
Between the Lines Publishing
 
Published by Between the Lines Publishing (USA)
410 Caribou Trail, Lutsen, Minnesota 55612, USA
 
www.btwnthelines.com
 
 
Copyright © 2018 Richard J. O’Brien. All Rights Reserved
 
Cover: Cherie Fox
 
 
To Dream the Blackbane: A Novel of the Anomaly
 
ISBN:   978-0-9979395-9-0
 
Also available in ebook ISBN: 978-1-7321723-3-3
 
 
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
 
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopied, recorded or otherwise), without the prior written consent of the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for insertion in a magazine, newspaper, broadcast, website, blog, or other outlet.
 
 
 
 
 
Early Praise for To Dream the Blackbane
 
“A futuristic American Gothic dark fantasy about a gumshoe who can’t say no, even though at times, he ought to. Delightful!” — Chanticleer Review
 
“A compelling, original tale with a strong narrative voice…” —Kirkus Review
 
 
 
 
 
 


Acknowledgments
 
Lyrics from the song "Better off Without a Wife"
Written by: Tom Waits Published by: Fifth Floor Music Inc. (ASCAP), ©1975 Official release: Nighthawks at the Diner, Elektra/Asylum Records, 1975
 
PROLOGUE
One night, the stars went out. When they came back twenty-four hours later, the world witnessed new constellations. The year was 2015. Scientists called the event The Anomaly back then, and the name stuck. Before long, they found out that the new constellations weren't the only product of The Anomaly.
Seventy years later, the debate continues between scholars about whether Earth herself, along with the solar system, remains in the same universe. In addition to the new constellations, one-third of Earth was shaved off—from Mongolia down over Greece and points south—and replaced with new lands. The satellites that once orbited Earth all vanished. Efforts were made in vain to launch new satellites into orbit, but none survived.
In the early days there was no way of knowing whether that chunk of the world had been obliterated, or if the land and its people—and a good chunk of the ocean—had been transported to a non-local plane. That’s what the scientists called it. A non-local plane. It was accepted as fact that the walls between realities had weakened. What no one could prove was how all of this had happened. As for everyone on the missing side, no one ever heard from them again.
In some places around what was left of the world there were holes, gateways leading into different dimensions. Between these new dimensions and the old world lay the borderlands, boundaries separating humanity and post-Anomaly hybrids from the faerie realm. Many humans— pedigrees, as they came to be known, unaffected by The Anomaly—took refuge in these new realms. They believed in a kind of manifest destiny, that those parallel places hospitable to them offered a new way of life—an improvement over the world they had known, given to them through divine providence. Likewise, a great number of inhabitants from the faerie realm came through the borderlands and migrated to the cities as well as the countryside.
In Germany, trolls took back the Black Forest. Throughout the American Southwest, as well as in the Outback of Australia, portals into the Dreamtime remained permanently open. I once read about a guy who had driven to work the day after The Anomaly only to vanish for thirty-five years. The man, having not aged a day, walked out of the woods in Nova Scotia one early morning with an Elf family in tow; he and his family, an elvish wife and three little halflings, settled in Pugwash Junction and bought a farm with gold.
Closer to home, there’s a guy in Southside Chicago, a stone mason, who became part of the cathedral he and his crew had been working on. They say if you go down there at night you can still hear the guy singing. All you have to do is look up at the northwest corner of the roof. There’s a gargoyle there. Only it’s not a gargoyle. It’s the stone mason who became fused with the cathedral that sings. But that’s not the worst The Anomaly had to offer…
Right now, a war rages in Zanzibar—humans and hybrids alike, fighting side by side, against a legion of Popobawa. The United Nations declared open season on these demonic creatures, but they aren’t easy to kill. UN troops, Christian, Jew, and Muslim alike, have been issued Korans, as this seems to be the only defense against the creatures. The Popobawa can disguise themselves as humans during the day. The body count continues to grow, and there's no sign of the war ending any time soon.
Paranoia runs deep in that part of the world. So far, the war has been contained there. Mythologists and anthropologists working closely with the UN believe that the Popobawa are inexplicably tied to that region. Still, there’s no telling what the future holds for Tanzania.
In America there are many zones that humans and hybrids have learned to avoid. To wander beyond these zones is risky. The worst of the borderlands beyond the safe zones exist in the southern states; Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Louisiana got it the worst.
The western states, California north to Washington—and parts of Arizona and Nevada—were deemed the safest place in the world. And the government-funded militia groups made sure it stayed that way. The central states, including Illinois and my hometown of Chicago, became the new Mecca for all who had once been normal. People—pedigrees for the most part—flocked there in droves in the early days following The Anomaly. The result was a regular refugee crisis. Rents were reduced to almost nothing. Not long after that, they fenced off the entire Southside. Hybrids and others who no longer were qualified as Homo sapiens were forced to live there or be killed. We were the new minority, even though our numbers were greater than the unaffected who took power. It was an old story. Nothing ever changes.
After The Anomaly, most major cities followed Chicago's example. Whole neighborhoods in Philadelphia, Atlanta, New York, Houston, and other cities were fenced off. Hybrids were relegated to these new ghettos. We were able to work wherever we wanted—provided we had papers to show at various checkpoints—but we could not live outside the ghettos.
History had always been a hobby of mine. In fact, back when I was in school, it was the only subject in which I excelled. My thirst for history made me an oddball in the Chicago Police Department back when I joined the force. Those days, however, are long gone. I retired after twenty-five years on the job and opened a private detective business.
Anyway, I returned to Southside Chicago after my last job: a missing persons gig that took me down south into the heart of dangerous territory. It was a bona fide doozy of a job. Over time, ever since I had opened my practice, I had worked some strange cases, even by post-Anomaly standards. But it was the last two cases that ended my private investigator career.
The story you're about to read chronicles those events. I wrote this account for two reasons: first, I wanted a record of what drove me to leave my beloved city; secondly, I wanted this to serve as a warning to anyone out there in the post-Anomaly world thinking about getting into the private investigator business. A word of advice: avoid contact with changelings, and no matter how much they are willing to pay you, never take on vampires as clients.
 
 
~ PART ONE ~
The Lady in the Red Dress
&
The Vampire Business
 
 
~ One ~
Gloomtown: Chicago after the big change.
Take a stroll down any street and you're bound to run into hybrids like me—along with faerie creatures just trying to make a living.
Every day at noon, a six-armed goddess flies past my office window on a flying carpet. In the evening, the elevated trains are crammed with demonic office workers and construction Orcs alike.
This is the new reality. It's been this way going on nearly a century.
Children play in parks with winged faeries. Old couples stroll around at twilight walking pet shug monkeys.
From Lower West Side to points north stand castles that defy the laws of physics and burial mounds that give off strange phosphorescent lights of varying hues at dawn and dusk.
Valkyries and vampires battle one another nightly for prime high-rise real estate. Sometimes, humans get in the way. I can't get to my office without having to walk around broken, bloodied bodies hurled from such vast heights.
This is life after The Anomaly. It's the same all over the world. And there hasn't been any indication that things will return to the way they were in the old days before the great change.
The scientists tell us that The Anomaly happened in deep space, and the ripple that ensued changed everything forever. Over the course of a single day, two worlds collided—the physical and the fantastical, the world we took for granted and the world of make-believe. That was seventy years ago.
My name is Wolfgang Rex. I am a private detective. Once upon a time I’d been a police lieutenant. After twenty-five years of service to the city of Chicago, I retired in 2063 and opened Chi-town Detectives, a private investigation firm.
I’m what they call in the medical books a second-generation Anomalous cross-breed. My father was a cop like me. One night he was out walking his dog, a Rhodesian Ridgeback named Rex. My mother hated that dog. After she died, I learned that she had always wished that Rex would meet some