The Dark is Always Waiting

THE DARK IS ALWAYS WAITING ©2023 T.J. BREARTON This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the authors. Aethon Books supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. 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CONTENTS Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 Chapter 48 Chapter 49 Chapter 50 Chapter 51 Chapter 52 Thank you for reading The Dark Is Always Waiting! PROLOGUE That feeling. Being utterly helpless, dwarfed by the massiveness of the universe and its mystery. Corrine Baines stood beneath a dark, churning sky. The clouds spiraled toward a bright center, lightning pulsed with white veins. She felt herself pulled upwards, drawn by her chest, lifting her toward the dark, sucking hole. A bright flash of light preceded a crack of thunder, and in the next instant she awoke, heart thumping. She took a moment to ground herself. Calm down. You’re okay. She consciously slowed her breathing, counting to four for each inhalation and exhalation. She sensed the heat of her sleeping husband beside her in bed. Okay. This was home, their big house in Scarsdale, and the earth was not cracking to pieces. 2:48 in the morning. She listened for the children and sensed only the placid hush of sleep, the faintest ticking of brittle snow falling against the windowpane, the growl of a downshifting truck on the nearby freeway. What a thing, a dream like that. So many dreams were just surreal versions of banal things – being a waitress with never enough time for all her tables; one of her children lost in a giant store as she struggled to find them. This dream was different. Even now, closing her eyes, she could see it, like an aftereffect: a great gyre of clouds spun like sooty cotton, tunneling up into the sky, twisting faster as they went. It frightened her. What was more – she’d seen it before. A long time ago, going all the way back to when she’d first met Alex, during a Vipassana meditation retreat. Her first; his fourth or fifth. During a session that went particularly deep for her, that same swirling sky had materialized, a powerfully affecting vision. But maybe that was a good sign – a reminder of some past experience was not a threat. She rolled over on her side and looked at her husband’s back, just the rough shape of him in the semidarkness. Back then, she’d confided in the Buddhist nun at the ashram and told her about the vision. The nun said strange thoughts could arise during deep meditation, or jhana; a person could penetrate to the substrate consciousness, the source of the subjective experience. When she’d discussed it with Alex, it was three days later, after he’d asked her out for coffee, then dinner, then drinks, and finally to visit his room at the Marigold Guest House. Maybe it had been all the meditation, clearing the mind – the sex had been, frankly, transcendent for a first encounter. Afterward, Alex had disagreed with the nun’s take on things. “I don’t think it has to be that spooky. People in solitary confinement see things. Hallucinations. Your body can take sensations, deep sensations during meditation, and make a picture out of them. It’s not supernatural. It’s natural.” “Deep meditation is like solitary confinement?” He’d laughed. “I mean the absence of stimuli. Anyway, you should paint it. It sounds beautiful.” Just like that, she’d been captured by him. His confidence, humor, the kindness in his eyes. He could have been arrogant with all his education and experience, but Alex was down to earth. There was proven science behind the effects and advantages of meditation, things you could observe, data you could repeat. Ways you could breathe – just breathe – and improve your life. Wherever there was experimental evidence, Alex was hooked. There was no experimental evidence that a dream, re-creating a long-ago meditative experience, was anything more than a neurological burp. A little nighttime indigestion of the brain. But it felt like more. And the longer she lay motionless in the dark bedroom, the more she realized it wasn’t going to go away. When she