Aurora Revelations (eBook)

A Paranormal Mystery Novel

Michael Walker (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
340 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3509-5928-4 (ISBN)

Infos

An unconscious man lies in Chaco Canyon National Park, covered in blood not his own, near a backpack stuffed with baffling documents. Some recount the crash of an 'airship' in Aurora, Texas in 1897, whose alien pilot was buried in the local cemetery. Others trace the frantic journey of a ragtag quartet of paranormal investigators, the 'Nerd Legion,' to find their friend, supernatural sleuth Kevin Starkly, who vanished while hunting the Jersey Devil in 2015. Throughout the found chronicle, one phrase emerges like a warning bell: 'The pilot has awakened.' What did Starkly find out about the Aurora UFO, and has he paid a terrible price for his curiosity? Join the irascible twenty-somethings of the Nerd Legion on a quest across haunted America to find the truth, and their missing friend, as they stumble into a terrifying conspiracy and must fight for their lives against a ghastly enemy. Like a grown-up Stranger Things on a cursed road trip, or The X-Files with no FBI boss and no filter, the harrowing exploits in The Aurora Revelations will captivate fans of paranormal thrills, mystery, and supernatural suspense.

Michael F. Walker is a lover of the strange and macabre. The Aurora Revelations, an epistolary novel based on found documents chronicling a supernatural road trip in July 2015, is his debut novel. Walker promoted the curators and curiosities, relics and specimens at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City for 20 years. He lives with his wife and daughter in a ramshackle old house in Brooklyn, NY that looks haunted but (probably) isn't. He can be contacted at www.michaelwalkerbooks.com.

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In April 1897, a strange airship crashed in Aurora, Texas and the "e;unearthly"e; pilot was buried in the local cemetery. Today, the pilot finally awakened. God help us all. In July 2015, supernatural sleuth Kevin Starkly disappeared mysteriously in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. What secrets did he uncover about the Aurora UFO crash, and has he paid a terrible price for his curiosity?Four twenty-something paranormal investigators, a self-styled "e;Nerd Legion,"e; Tony Fermia (a psychic who talks to ghosts in his dreams), John Walters (an art curator), Rich Harrigan (a skeptical science teacher), and Angel McQueen (an alien abductee and Tony's high-school crush) travel across a haunted America searching for their old friend Starkly. The group soon find themselves entangled in a terrifying conspiracy to resurrect the alien pilot a plot that brings them face-to-face with a ghastly enemy and has them fighting for their lives and for the future of humanity. Like a grown-up Stranger Things on a cursed road trip, or The X-Files with no FBI boss and no filter, the harrowing exploits in The Aurora Revelations will captivate readers of Paul Tremblay, Dan Simmons, Edgar Cantero, or any fans of paranormal thrills, mystery, and supernatural suspense.

Textauszug

Handwritten note on top of page: This is who we were.

From “Journey Into the Abyss: My Escapade Under Atlantic Avenue”

New York Press, June 1, 2015

By Randy Carter

I felt safe assuming that climbing down a manhole in the middle of Atlantic Avenue at midnight would be the strangest situation I’d find myself in last week—but I was dead wrong. I never imagined that I’d be screaming for my life, struggling to hold onto my sanity like a whimpering, neurasthenic milquetoast from a Lovecraft horror pulp.

I just wanted an on-the-job interview with the elusive Kevin Starkly, paranormal investigator and blogger of the weird, and I thought following him underground as he explored the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel, the oldest and most haunted subway tunnel in the world, left shuttered and abandoned for over 120 years, would be no big deal. Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

After all, people loved exploring the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel. Thousands have shimmied down that manhole and dropped 20 feet underground since amateur historian Bob Diamond re-discovered the lost tunnel in 1980 and transformed it into one of the most bizarre tourist attractions in Brooklyn, maybe the most bizarre in all of New York City.

Once a month, more than 100 intrepid explorers, equipped with nothing more exotic than sturdy shoes and tiny flashlights, descend from the noonday sun of Atlantic Avenue into the perpetual midnight of the tunnel in search of secrets. Maybe they’re looking for hidden pirate booty or the missing diary of John Wilkes Booth, or maybe they’re just looking for a good scare listening to ghost stories of old New York. The reason Kevin Starkly is here with some of his self-described Nerd Legion in tow is because apparently some of the spooks down here have gone bat-shit crazy.

Visits to the tunnel started getting scary a month ago right after that freaky 5.8 earthquake hit New York. People start seeing floating orbs of glowing green mist and then report unexplained cold spots near the back wall. Lights would go out for no reason; even flashlights with new batteries would go stone-cold dead. And then visitors heard the unexplained sounds of footsteps and the eerie cries for help coming from somewhere in the dark. Tourists went elsewhere for safer scares, and eventually Diamond called a halt to the proceedings and invited in an old friend to help him out—ghostbuster-next-door Kevin Starkly.

After climbing down the manhole in the middle of the street, I squeezed through a narrow passageway that opened up into an extraordinary barrel-vaulted brick tunnel. The air temperature dropped about 15 degrees; I could see my breath huffing out in tiny clouds. My mind raced through any number of horror story clichés, which perversely became more overwhelming as I tried to push them aside. I was dropping into the abyss, into the depths of a fungus-covered catacomb, into a cistern more ancient than humanity itself. “Carter! For the love of God, put back the slab and get out of this if you can!”

I was dropping into a trap, never to see the light of day again. “For the love of God, Montresor!”

And in the back of my head, I kept repeating I will not scream like a little girl. I will not scream like a little girl.

I thought I spied Starkly and two pals setting up an infrared video camera on a tripod. He seemed shorter than I’d imagined and with a noticeable beer belly and a prematurely receding hairline.

Was this the same guy involved in that sketchy arson case in Rhode Island? Rumor has it he and his Nerd Legion comrades would be behind bars if it wasn’t for the fact that no one was left alive to press charges.

Was this the same guy who was persona non grata at Bell House after he bitch-slapped that scientist dude during a Secret Science Club contretemps a few months ago? The guy described as equal parts bullshit and bunkum—and that’s from his friends?

Then he turned, looked up at me and said, “Who the hell invited this hack to join the party?” Yeah, that’s my guy.

Then, as if to disabuse me of any lingering doubt, he said, “Listen, if you’re looking for the hero of this story, I’m your guy, so spell my name correctly. It’s Kevin—traditional spelling—and there’s no ‘e’ in Starkly. That punk from The Times deliberately kept misspelling it just to piss me off.”

Luckily, neither Starkly nor I were interested in making new friends that night. I just held back and watched the team in action. One guy, tall and lanky, Tony Fermia, looked almost normal. Well, passably normal anyway. After all, he does talk to the dead in his dreams.

“I saw this headless man walking toward me in the tunnel,” Tony said. “I guess he was talking, but since he didn’t have a head it was hard to tell. He said, ‘Don’t open the wall. Whatever you do, for Christ’s sake, don’t open the wall.’ Then I woke up.”

Starkly looked particularly grim in the glow of the fluorescent lamps that lit up the entire half-mile length of the tunnel. “I was afraid of that. The headless spook is probably the English foreman ordered to keep the unruly Irishmen building this tunnel in line.

“According to legend, he ordered that all these upstanding laborers should work every Sunday until the job was done. So those guys responded as any other God-fearing, church-going gentlemen would respond—they shot the foreman between the eyes, chopped off his head, and buried him somewhere in the tunnel walls.”

The other member of the team was Richard Harrigan, a portly little professorial type who was really rocking the scholarly look with a neatly trimmed goatee and black-framed glasses. The guy is the only real scientist in the bunch, with a degree in physics or something, which already puts this team a cut above most other self-styled paranormal investigators. Richard is about half the height of Fermia and looked even smaller hunched up over a pile of electronic equipment. A tug-of-war was going on between Starkly and Richard over one of the instruments.

“I told you to adjust the EMF so it was totally unidirectional,” said Richard. “With all the underground cables here, the electromagnetic spike could be spillover from another source.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Wizard, but unless Con Ed opened a secret generating plant behind that wall, I’m betting our hotspot is located right there,” said Starkly as he brushed past me.

Electromagnetic field (EMF) detectors can find even the smallest electrical sources, and this one was going off the charts.

The four of us, alone in the tunnel, headed for the wall at the other end. The ground in front of the wall was littered with a pile of rubble, bricks and stones tossed everywhere. Nobody knew what lay behind that wall. Bob Diamond thought that an old steam train—an American made copy of a British design, the “Planet” type 2-2-0 engine—was entombed there, bricked into place once the tunnel and the rail line went out of business in 1861.

Legends said treasure might have been hidden there by gangs of pirates and bootleggers who commandeered this tunnel as a hideout in the 1880s and 1890s.

“And then there’s the story that the railroad company taught a lesson to those workers who killed their foreman. They hired some Pinkerton agents to terminate the ringleaders,” said Starkly. “Nobody could prove anything, but it’s a fact that many of the men working down here disappeared mysteriously and were never seen again.”

I asked about the fourth member of the Nerd Legion, John Walters, and why he wasn’t here tonight. “Johnny doesn’t like working underground,” answered Tony.

In addition to the EMF detectors, the Nerd Legion had a wicked assortment of digital video cameras, fiber optic cables, and monitors set up near that dreaded back wall.

Starkly had worked out a deal with Diamond: In return for checking for spooks, he would get first dibs at posting videos from the tunnel on his Myth-America blog. Starkly garnered quick accolades for his blog and podcasts, especially after that quake turned the world upside down. Within weeks this sketchy dude was one of the paranormal cognoscenti. Hell, Myth-America won a spot on the “25 Best Blogs You’re Probably Not Reading” from this very publication.

“Damn, now I remember why I invited you tonight,” Starkly paused while lugging a monitor to the far wall. “I needed a reporter to pitch my big summer adventure. Make sure you mention the Myth-America Geek Freaks Across America podcast starting next month. I’m taking our weird investigations to the next level and the road trip begins with a monster hunt in one of the forgotten towns of the Jersey Pine Barrens. That’s the real story here.”

I ignored the PR pitch and instead asked how Starkly had met up with Diamond. Starkly smiled and said, “We’re both stubborn sonsabitches. Bob knew in his gut this tunnel really existed, even though everyone else in the world had forgotten about it. The more the experts told Bob to drop his pursuit and stop his searching—the more they said all the stories were fake—the more he kept pushing on, bulldozing every naysayer in his path. We’re both alike in that way, so I guess we formed a mutual admiration...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 17.9.2024
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror
• ISBN-13: 979-8-3509-5928-4 / 9798350959284