We are delighted to welcome author David I. Aboulafia to Omnimystery News today.
David's new mystery-thriller is Visions Through a Glass, Darkly (Cosmic Egg Books; January 2016 trade paperback and ebook formats) and we are pleased to introduce you to it with an excerpt, the prologue and first chapter.
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I AM DRIVING NORTH ON THE Taconic Parkway in New York, approximately forty miles from the City. Fall is coming here, arguably the most beautiful time of the year anywhere in the world.
I am passing the Pleasantville exit five miles south of the Croton Bridge, a pretty little span crossing the New Croton Reservoir. It has always been one of my favorite places.
The trees are passing by so quickly now; too quickly to be able to reflect upon any one by itself. Every now and then, though, one appears so large, so magnificent, that it stands out from the rest, causing one to crane in such a way that neck and vehicle move in different directions.
It is an attempt, I suppose, to keep a special moment of one's life still and fresh for a second longer in the mind's eye.
What am I doing here? How did I get here?
I adjust the rear view mirror to look at my face. It is a familiar face, except for the large bruise on my left cheek bone and the multiple lacerations I see elsewhere. There is a starburst hemorrhage in my right eye.
That explains the tears, I guess.
I readjust the mirror and survey my immediate surroundings. They are decidedly unfamiliar. I do not own the vehicle I am driving.
It is an old Ford, equipped for a physically disabled driver. Two levers on the left side of the steering wheel — similar to those found on a bicycle — control the brake and the gas. An over-sized electric clock sits in the center of the dashboard. I watch as a minute passes with a tick of the mechanism.
An old children's bedtime story forces itself into my mind. For some reason, I smile.
Strange.
My hands feel peculiar. I attempt to lift them from the steering wheel and find there is an odd adhesion; they yield with an audible smack. I take my eyes off the road for a moment.
The sun, that most ancient of timekeepers, is rising now over the reservoir. The moon, its distant cousin, is still visible above the horizon.
I look down.
Blood. My hands are covered in blood.
The clock ticks again. It is 5:54 a.m.
Oh yes; I remember now …
In four minutes, I will be dead.
Time is not real.
And if time is not real,
then the dividing line that seems to lie
between this world and eternity
is also an illusion.
— Herman Hesse
Chapter 1
It is always dark in some part of the world.
I find the light a transient thing. It is the darkness that pervades. We are born from it; we die into it. At some time, in every evening anywhere, someone closes their eyes and immerses themselves in the black.
We depend on the darkness; we require it like food, like water and like oxygen. Deprived for any significant time of the murky emptiness that sleep provides we find ourselves mad. Our time in the sun is made possible only by the moments spent in the shadows.
The universe itself is dominated by darkness. The stars are not the entranceways to the heavenly realm that the ancient mariners believed they were. They are mere pinpoints; anomalies, abstractions, and distractions, filling the void in only the most infinitesimal way, offering only the vaguest, most tenuous respite from the surrounding beyond. Perhaps they struggle each moment to avoid being swallowed whole by the very giganticness of it.
Yet it is the light that we walk in, and to which we ascribe all manner of attributes. That it is good and omnipresent and that the physical energy of it washes away the gloom. That the light of God, or the light of truth or the light of justice shall shine forever through the darkness of evil or cruelty or hatred, or that of Hell itself, making all these terrible things disappear, or dissipate, or be rendered moot.
You poor fools. The light is never there for more than a few moments. Only for as long as it takes the sun to go down on your side of the world. Only for as long as it takes you to flip the switch of the lamp beside your bed.
Or for as long as it takes for you to close your eyes.
Of course, for some, there is more time in the dark than for others.
Time. For most of us unconcerned with Einsteinium theory, metaphysics or astrophysics, time is merely a straight line that we walk upon; a path with a discernible beginning and a definite end.
But most hope that there is more. Many believe that there is.
And to me, that's what's really funny. Because I know there is more. Ohh, so much more. But that "more" bears little resemblance to fiery pits of molten flame, or depths of ice where Judas hangs halfway out of the mouth of the devil; it shares little similarity with any artist's vision of a celestial Promised Land, where white people with blond hair and halos take flight among the clouds and smile all the time at everything and nothing at all.
Can we talk? You don't mind if we talk, do you?
You see, I know nothing of bearded men with stone tablets on mountain tops. I don't know if flocks of virgins wait patiently in some distant reality for the holy of heart. I can't tell you whether we all repeatedly reincarnate from one existence to the other or, if we do, whether we are reborn as cows or as millipedes. I do not know if an ancient wise man sits judging us all upon a throne in another dimension, or whether that wise man is in fact a youngish looking black woman, an Asian youth with a tricolored Mohawk haircut, or someone else.
I cannot say whether there are two immortal beings engaged in an eternal struggle for the souls of mankind, or whether there are two immortal beings who simply don't give a crap, who activate the Earth like we turn on television sets, and who sit and merely watch — for time immemorial, like some kind of eternal couch potatoes — real life sitcoms, horror stories, dramas, mysteries, crime series', divorce courts, animal planets, music videos, and the like.
I know only what I see, what I experience, what to me alone is true, eternal, and proven beyond any reasonable doubt or calculation. And what I see are things that no one else can see; what I experience, things that I alone of all the people in the world am capable of experiencing.
In many ways, I suppose, all of us are unique. But this trite assertion has little meaning to me. For I, among all of you, am inimitable, one of a kind. And because of this, regardless of any human association I may attempt to construct, I am utterly, and completely, alone.
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Photo provided courtesy of
David I. Aboulafia
David I. Aboulafia is an attorney with a practice in New York City.
For more information about the author, please visit his author page on Goodreads, or find him on Facebook.
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Visions Through a Glass, Darkly by David I. Aboulafia
A Mystery-Thriller
Publisher: Cosmic Egg Books
Two days, eighteen hours, fifty-eight minutes … The time of your life on this earth.
Richard Goodman is the caretaker of a unique institution that trains disabled youth in the art of watchmaking. But he is no ordinary administrator. He possesses extra sensory powers he does not fully understand and cannot control.
But an innocent outing to Coney Island results in him obtaining a more disturbing ability, along with a terrifying prophecy that he will die in less than three days.
As the clock of his life counts down, a still greater threat emerges. An uncanny assassin who will destroy everyone he knows and loves.
Unless he can discover who the killer is. And stop him in time.
— Visions Through a Glass, Darkly by David I. Aboulafia
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