What the Soul Still Fears (Novella preview!)

A photo of Rome by Martin Guido at Unsplash

I am finishing up my next novella, a story of fear even deeper-seated in our beings than those peculiar reflexive reactions we have to certain shapes that suggest predators, or movements that hint at imminent attack.

Have you ever jumped because a moth flew at you?  At a peculiarly-shaped shadow in the night?  Something harmless like that?  These reactions are a part of your brain that is a relic of evolution, so ingrained that you need not even think of it--or more so--even if you think of it, sometimes you cannot resist the sheer instinctive force of your ancient reptile brain.

What if there was something that, instead of terrifying your brain, brought fear to your soul?  Something, perhaps, long banished from this world, that no human has been exposed to for hundreds or even thousands of years.  Would you shake?  Jump?  Scream?  If you did, would it be your brain doing those things?

What the Soul Still Fears follows the efforts of psychiatrist and neurologist Arthur Barstow as he is drawn into a bizarre study of the unknown by his childhood friend, physicist Luca Pellegrino.

Sample below... full version coming soon to e-book retailers!

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Many will tell you, quite seriously, that there is something beyond the material world we inhabit. Whether they believe in some greater, benevolent power or perhaps some largely benign First Mover, none of them ever present the kind of proof that a man of science would accept. Faith is not wholly a bad thing; it can provide direction and guidance to people that need it. However, at the same time, fanciful descriptions of supposed metaphysical truths have been a stout tool of trade for charlatans and scoundrels of all sorts since the beginning of history.

I wish I could come to you purely as a man of science. Until these events, I had always considered myself as such. I want to be upfront with my biases, as best I can. For what I am about to tell you, I can offer you very little scientific proof, and I dare not offer you the knowledge that might allow you to repeat what I have seen, else you might subject yourself or others to a danger I will not allow to achieve a greater foothold in this world. I have already lost my best friend to it.

Perhaps this disqualifies my experiences from the realm of science. After all, my experiences are difficult to attribute to my purely scientific understanding of the physical world. However, I can point you to three living persons who could perhaps tell you more, if only they could speak. My dear friend, Dr. Luca Pellegrino, and two others now occupy a room on the top floor of Italy's National Institute of Infectious Diseases. Awake and alive, but not conscious, and fear that they never will be again.

If only one of them would speak, I would be able to rest easy that my conclusions are false and there is nothing to fear in what we explored together. As long as they remain silent, I cannot justify any chance of unleashing what happened to them onto the rest of the world.

At this point, I have collected all of the most concrete data that I can access, and despite my best efforts to organize it persuasively, my story has been turned down by every scientific journal I have tried. Not that I blame them; my story is strange enough that any reasonable person would be expected to turn up his nose and call it the product of a deranged mind. So, in desperation I am collecting what I know here, in the hopes that someone with foresight will read it and come to the same conclusions that I have, while still deterred from the same mistakes Luca and I made.

You may find it surprising that the earliest part of the story is still incredibly vivid in my mind, after all this time, but the reason for that is simple: my story begins with a gulp of scalding hot coffee down the wrong pipe.