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    Happy Slumbers
    Happy Slumbers
    Happy Slumbers
    Ebook57 pages54 minutes

    Happy Slumbers

    By Tom Lichtenberg

    ()

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    About this ebook

    When Argus Kirkham disappears, his older brother Alex returns to the city of his youth to join in the search, but finds himself instead at the edge of a baffling mystery he can neither see nor begin to understand, in this fourth and final re-mix of the Dragon City series.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTom Lichtenberg
    Release dateJun 24, 2012
    ISBN9781476241968
    Happy Slumbers
    Author

    Tom Lichtenberg

    Author of curiously engaging novellas of the science-fiction-y, post-modern-y, absurdist variety

    Read more from Tom Lichtenberg

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      Book preview

      Happy Slumbers - Tom Lichtenberg

      Happy Slumbers

      by Tom Lichtenberg

      Copyright 2012 by Tom Lichtenberg

      Smashwords Edition Copyright 2012 by Tom Lichtenberg

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author

      Chapter One

      Alex Kirkham returned to Spring Hill Lake one summer morning. He was sixty one years old, had taken early retirement a few months earlier and had been doing nothing at all with his life. Then his brother Argus turned up missing. There were no clues, none at all. Argus' wife knew nothing. His son knew nothing either. It was totally out of character, because Argus had been as stable as the moon, following a strict routine, and completely avoiding any risks. Alex had nothing to go on, except for some weird vivid dreams of a giant space-bubble creature extending out through the asteroid belt, past Mars, floating in space and slowly breathing in and out, shifting and reshaping continually, its extremity lightly touching the surface of the Earth.

      If it thinks it can talk to me through dreams, Alex thought, it's got a lot to learn. No one knows anything about dreams, how they work or what they mean, if anything. There are many theories, and there's been a lot of research, but all of it has lead nowhere. The thing has got to do better than that if it wants to tell me anything. If there is such a thing in the world.But Sapphire Karadjian had never returned, and his uncle, Charlie Kirkham, had never re-appeared again either, and now Argus was gone. Had the thing now taken him too? It had come in the form of a bus for Charlie, who had been a bus driver. What had it been for Sapphire? A war? She was always attracted by those. Alex chuckled to himself as he sat on the park bench along a gravelly path, surveying the greenery that was now Sea Dragon Park, its gently rolling lawn interrupted only by the occasional oak for shade, and a few picnic benches strewn about for the rare families who would challenge the daunting Arizona heat.

      It was a jungle, somebody said, and Alex turned to see an old lady sitting on the next bench over. Had she even been there a moment ago? He didn't know who she was. He was a stranger in this town, even through he'd grown up there. He had abandoned it in his youth, so many years before. His job for the state as a railroad crossing inspector had brought him back around quite often, but other than his brother and his brother's family, he knew almost no one in the city, and he wasn't exactly a favored guest at his brother's house, for that matter. He had garnered their indelible disapproval due to the broken state of his own ex-family.

      At least it sounded like a jungle, the old lady continued. She had turned her head to look at Alex, who was staring at her, with her crown of bright white hair and her blue print dress of a fashion from decades before, matched with shoes he was certain hadn't been manufactured in ages. Her face seemed not so much older than himself, however. A woman in her seventies, he figured, but dressed like her own grandmother might have been.

      I'm sorry, Alex quietly said. Are you talking to me? Had he been babbling out loud? It wouldn't be the first time, he silently admitted.

      Yes, the old woman replied matter-of-factly. You said something about Sapphire. You said it must have been a war to pull her in. But it wasn't a war. It was a jungle. That's what reached her, you know. That was her place, her refuge, her key.

      Key?

      The thing that does it. For me it was a garden, the old lady waved her hand as if swatting away a pesky fly. It's hard to explain.

      So is that what the newspapers said? Alex asked, and sat back against the bench. He'd come to the

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