The Traveler , livre ebook

Outskirts Press - Jeffrey D. Barbieri

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191 pages

English

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A ground breaking work of science fiction, in this gripping novel tinged with supernatural events, Joey’s dreams lead him on a perilous journey of self-discovery that ultimately forces him to face his demons where he will eventually meet Ambrose or Satan himself who delights in chaos and violence. But who will have the upper hand in the end? Steeped in mystery and in imagination, working from his bestselling The Watcher, Jeffrey Barbieri, NJ Male Author of the Year continues to share his adventures his fan base has come to expect. Hold on tight as Joey finds himself in Mexico, working on a cruise ship and being thrown off only to land on the big island of Hawaii. Filled with twist and turns this story is tangled in an elemental struggle between good and evil remains as riveting as his first book in the series “The Watcher.”

Sujets

Univers ado

Suspense

Imaginaire

Science-fiction

General

General officer

Young Adult Fiction

Science Fiction

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Publié par	Outskirts Press
Date de parution	26 février 2023
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781977263636
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

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The Traveler The Watcher Series All Rights Reserved. Copyright © 2023 Jeffrey D. Barbieri v2.0
The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.
This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Outskirts Press, Inc. http://www.outskirtspress.com
ISBN: 978-1-9772-6363-6
Cover Photo © 2023 Jeffrey D. Barbieri. All rights reserved - used with permission.
Outskirts Press and the "OP" logo are trademarks belonging to Outskirts Press, Inc.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Table of Contents
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 1
"KILL EM ALL!" I shouted above the fracas. The carnage surrounded me as it had so many times before. Monsters, shadows, demons, and angels waged war all around me. "Do not stop. Do not back down. Kill every single one of them!"
Flashes of light, blue flames, and gnashing teeth were everywhere. The smell of death and smoke filled my nostrils. My muscles felt ready to burst from swinging my sword and dealing out crushing blows.
"Kill em all." I had heard those words over and over inside my head countless times. I couldn’t remember when they had started. The pain, the agonies, the death and destruction, the fire and light, the teeth, and the blood seemed to always be there, always around me.
Then I suddenly woke up. It had been another dream. I was in my bed and my sheets were soaked in sweat. Another one of those damn dreams that wound me up yet left me with an empty feeling. I had a big day ahead of me. I had to get my ass out of bed and get rolling. I could not reminisce about such nonsense. It was just a dream, just a damn stupid dream.
I was so over it already. I just didn’t care anymore. For months now, I could feel myself slipping. I couldn’t tell if I was depressed or if I was truly losing my mind. Whatever it was, it was getting harder and harder to put on a happy face. The world was falling apart around me, or at least it seemed that way. The bad guys got away with murder and only the people who really cared followed the rules. Our judicial system, considered by some to be the best in the world, was a joke. It was a freaking joke on a colossal scale and I was sick of it. But what could one man do? I mean really. The corruption seemed to permeate the entire governmental body. Normally I tried not to worry about things that I couldn’t control, but I was obviously waking up in a mood this morning.
I had lived in San Diego for the past ten years and only recently got to hear how broke the city was. It was sad how this lovely place could fall into such dark times. The city had teetered on the verge of declaring bankruptcy for months now. How was something like that even possible? How could a city of this size fall into such a mess? I knew the answer. It was so obvious that I found it hard to believe that no one else could see it.
This city was as corrupt as the entire country of Mexico. Our leaders just did a better job of covering it up. They approved the conversion of over fifty thousand apartments into condominiums, thus chasing out the people who could afford rent so that they could increase their tax basis. This, unfortunately, caused a mass exodus of the good people who could no longer afford to live here. With them left many small businesses and a good number of jobs. Those who remained were conned into believing they could afford the new condos even though they couldn’t. Brokers used exotic loans to fill the vacancies, which in turn, increased foreclosures at an exponential rate. Their idea to increase revenues backfired and now they all cried about how broke they were.
The horrific smell of greed permeated the city. Builders, politicians, and everyone right on down the chain lost sight of what was right and wrong. People yanked equity from their homes at an astonishing rate. And why? To show off. To keep up with the Joneses. This was a city of beautiful, fake-ass people who lived to show off. Whether it be the big fancy Hummer or the fake breasts and plastic faces; they were all the same. Look at me, look at me. And to pay for this lavish lifestyle, they mortgaged themselves to the hilt and beyond. They took out loans that no one could ever pay back, pretty much gambling their futures on nonsense. Banks shut their doors, and the people who worked for them were put out into the cold. Brokers, loan officers, and real estate agents quickly found out that they had all been duped by this new economic strategy implemented by the Federal Reserve and the big banks across the country. The trickle-down economics started to trickle at a startling rate, but not in the way they were designed to. They worked in reverse, and it seemed as though half the people I knew personally were either out of work or leaving town.
The politics of San Diego had become a joke. They used the write eminent domain to take away people’s stores and family-owned businesses only to replace them with condo towers that were, for the most part, empty. They allowed developers full reign of the county and they overbuilt everything. It seemed absolutely ridiculous to see that many for sale signs right next to new buildings still being built. Why would they allow new structures with even more condos to rise up all around the city when they couldn’t sell the ones they already had? Was it just reward? Was this payback for our city leaders’ arrogance? Supply far surpassed demand and the people who did own properties found their values diminishing almost as fast as they had risen in previous years. Foreclosures were up six hundred percent and market prices were down by as much as thirty to forty points. San Diegans had taken the equity out of their homes at an astronomical rate and now they were all paying the price.
Unfortunately for me, I had to pay too. No new speculatory homes meant no new work for me. I had been installing surround sound and building home theaters in people’s homes, and when the construction industry slowed, so did my work. At least my boss was cool enough to keep me on the books and keep paying me. I had several slow days of finishing up some smaller jobs. Hanging flatscreen TVs for clients, running wires inside walls, and untangling massive piles of wires had become the norm as of late. I put special brass and silver ends on wires and used a device called a tone generator to label which of the wires went to which rooms of the house. The tone generator made a sound I could pick up with a small speaker, hence finding the one wire that matched up in the huge, snarled piles. Most of these houses were gigantic, so I could put miles on my sneakers on any given day. These were monotonous jobs, to say the least, but it had to be done, and it was work.
I used to get a nice reward of a beer on the beach at the end of a hard day. Nothing beat the cool, refreshing taste of an ice-cold Bud Light with the warm sand under my butt and my bare feet. But the passing of a new law banning drinking on the beach was the last straw for me. Once again, the needs of the few outweighed the needs of the many, and a few drunken idiots ruined it for millions of us. Wednesday night volleyball on the beach had become a mission to sneak beers under the noses of the lifeguards and the roving police officers. Those charged with watching the waters to keep us safe were now up our butts, looking to see what we had inside our plastic cups. Our freedoms were being systematically taken from us one at a time and I, for one, was growing quite tired of it.
The constant persecution of the little things that made me happy had gone more than too far. I was frustrated, to say the least. As it stood, I wasn’t doing all that well mentally. A few months back, I had gone with some friends to a past-life regressionist to see if we could be hypnotized to remember previous lives. We wanted to see if we could remember different places, maybe even speak in a different language.
We were so damned excited that we all drove out into the desert to the east for a day of discovery. Unfortunately, it did not work out as we had expected. The old woman who was to be our host and our guide to the past had expired while holding my hands. She had taken my hands in hers and was speaking to me softly, then suddenly her eyes widened with a look of absolute fear, and she died. She slumped in her chair and her neck seemed to turn to rubber. The light of life left her eyes and she was dead.
It was both odd and very depressing, and I think I had not really recovered from the experience. Who could really expect me to? How many people had a complete stranger die while holding their hands? It had really creeped me out, way more than I had realized at first. It haunted me and daunted me. Since that day, I felt like I was just going through the motions, kind of like a zombie. I was feeling more than a bit lost.
This feeling, coupled with an extreme amount of time on my hands due to the growing lack of work, was beginning to take its toll. I was smoking a lot more pot and drinking way more alcohol than I should. I tried to busy myself but watching the crap they put on television was working over my brain. Reality TV ruled the airwaves and it seemed that every channel was filled with nonsense. They even had a whole channel set up about jails and prisons. It further re-e