DARK TWILIGHT

by Charles Justus Garard

Dr. Harper Paget, a mythologist and paranormal researcher whose family has been battling with the ancient Lamiae for generations, returns to China with the ashes of a Chinese lady-friend who died in the USA, his home country. Once there, he returns to teaching again in universities and meets new ladies and a Canadian colleague Brady Simon. Brady has lost his wife in an accident and has begun messaging ladies in the Philippines. They tell him about a creature called an Aswak. Harper warns him against this, telling him about the Lamiae who can disguise themselves as an Indonesian creature called a Kuntilanak. The horror resumes when Harper learns that the Kuntilanak have again appeared in China and have evil intentions against him and his friends -- male and female. He meets Anjani from Indonesia and becomes her lover. He again encounters Christabel from his past who left him for a French friend but is still nearby to either look out for him or threaten him; he does not know which. He meets Xue from the Foreign Affairs Department on his latest campus, and still hears from Marilyn, a smitten former student from his last campus. Which of these, if any, can he trust? When Harper is almost killed in a night attack, he is confined to a wheelchair and can only, when not teaching, watch the neighboring building which is a dormitory for female students. Even they, however, can be threatening as they watch them from their windows at night. Brady is disappointed in Harper because he has given up being a paranormal researcher with ghost-hunting equipment nearby that he no longer uses. Harper has become worn-out and disillusioned. He learns one fact along with his friend. You can no longer even trust your cell phone messages.

135 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 27, 2018

About the author

"I grew up on the front row of my father's small-town movie theatres, watching horror and science-fiction films."

So says Charles Justus Garard.

"My favorites were such films as IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE and THE CREATURE OF THE BLACK LAGOON (both in 3-D). The only time-travel sci-fi time travel I remember seeing in Dad's theatres was WORLD WITHOUT END and BEYOND THE TIME BARRIER. So why did I become interested in time travel? Maybe it was because of my obsession with my past and the wish that I could change it in order to create more pleasant memories. That's one for a shrink to deal with, you might be thinking.

"However, I also sketched comic books that resembled some of the horror and sci-fi films I'd seen and even, with friends, cranked out 8mm horror movies. The paranormal trilogy novels currently on Amazon-Kindle, however, represent an attempt to grow up and show not just simple heroes like scientists and paranormal investigators doing battle with simple monsters but complex people with deep problems other than the creatures they must defeat if they are to survive. I wanted to give readers a sense of place, a sense of everyday characters with troubling personal issues and doomed relationships as well as memories and dreams that could be used against them.

"With OF TIME AND THE DREAMER, I wanted to give readers something to ponder: Would they, if they could visit their own pasts, make changes? What if that past happened to be in an alternate dimension where any changes made would not change the present or future of this world -- this dimension?"
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Dr. Garard is a former literature, film, and writing professor who taught for many years in southern Illinois and Atlanta, GA, before going to teach for seven years in China. His PhD in Modern British literature with minors in American literature and film studies was earned at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale while his MA and BA in English were earned from Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville and McKendree College, Lebanon IL, respectively.
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"I've been fortunate in that I have been able to teach a lot of different courses at different colleges and universities, including British and World literature (my favorite because I get to teach the classics like Homer), mythology, all levels of writing (including graduate levels in China), Shakespeare, History of the English Language, and film studies (which usually means film history)."

He grew up, as did his brothers and sisters, in the environment of the small-town movie theatre business because his father owned three theatres in three small western Illinois communities. "Two of these towns figure as backgrounds for a couple of my novels. I never lost my love for movies, but, for some reason, seeing all those on the big screen influenced me to want to create my own stories, and I have spent my life struggling with fiction -- revising, rewriting, submitting, etc. You know the drill. It is not an easy road to travel, but somehow I could not get off that road."

His mother thought he liked horror movies too much. "I even tried to promote some of those movies myself with gimmicks and artwork in our small theatres. I had a good imagination, but it unfortunately interfered with my school work, causing me to look out the classroom window instead of paying attention to the classroom lectures and textbooks. I did terribly at math, but English seemed to come the easiest to me. No surprise. I barely graduated from high school, but now I have three degrees in English. Go figure. Mom said I was a late bloomer." Ask Sam, his younger brother, what it was like with an older brother who was supposed to babysit him but frightened him by donning a head-covering horror mask and playing gothic music on the family's Hammond organ. "My brother has never forgotten that. He and my sister still bring it up occasionally. You think maybe he i