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    The Last Observer: A Magical Battle for Reality
    The Last Observer: A Magical Battle for Reality
    The Last Observer: A Magical Battle for Reality
    Ebook136 pages1 hour

    The Last Observer: A Magical Battle for Reality

    By G. Michael Vasey

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    About this ebook

    The Last Observer is a compelling tale of magic, alternative realities, murder and conflict. An ordinary man is abruptly dragged into the middle of a violent struggle between black and white magicians who both seek to use his extraordinary powers of imagination and observation. He soon learns that reality is not at all what it seems before being called upon to play a decisive role in determining whose reality will prevail.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJohn Hunt Publishing
    Release dateAug 30, 2013
    ISBN9781782791812
    The Last Observer: A Magical Battle for Reality

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    Reviews for The Last Observer

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    • 1/5
      This short book has some of the worst dialogue I have ever read in my life. It's almost worth the .99 cents to be able to read it out loud and wonder does anyone actually talk like this? But of course the answer is "no."

      In contrast to reviewers' assertions, it is neither fast-paced nor surprising. The plot is as thin as the page count. Unless you were hatched out of an egg last Thursday, it will not challenge any ideas you have about the nature of reality--not if you've seen The Matrix, Being John Malcovich, any episode of Supernatural, or indeed a kazillion other movies or shows. Not that The Last Observer belongs in this company.

      In writing a book, there has to be some attention paid to the craft of writing. You must let others who are well-read read your work, and give you feedback. Could that have been done in this case, with clumsy sentences like these?

      "The volume was high and the bass notes were thunderous inside the small cabin of the sports car."

      "By the time Stan looked up again, his tea was stone cold and his stomach was telling him that it urgently required filling."

      "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to observe it, does it make a noise? he thought echoing something he had read."

      And that's just a quick sample across a couple of pages. There is no art, no craft here. The story is a crude illustration of a simplistic philosophical point. It is not worth your time.

    Book preview

    The Last Observer - G. Michael Vasey

    2013

    Chapter 1

    A Dead Psychic

    There was something remarkable about Michael Kent. His crystal-clear and deep-set blue eyes, sunken into a pale and haggard face, seemed to penetrate into the depths of your very soul. He appeared to be capable of reaching inside of you so that he could search through your entire contents without first having had the courtesy to ask. Michael was a well-known psychic in those parts. Locally famed, and at the same time loathed, for his apparent ability to help the local constabulary solve unsolvable crimes. Yet now he was an unsolvable crime himself.

    Kent had been found dead just outside of his favorite pub, the Rose and Crown. The back of his head caved in like a boiled egg, and the contents of his larger-than-normal skull splattered about the pavement. No one had seen how he had met this fate and the local police remained stumped. Even in death, those eyes glittered like opals as if taking in the entire world and reflecting it back out again. His untimely death made the front page of the local papers and had people whispering and gossiping for a few days. Who had killed Michael Kent and why?

    Edward sat reading the account of Michael’s death in an old copy of that paper in a dimly lit and rather damp room of the local library. Kent’s face stared out from the page and Edward felt a strange sensation as if those eyes examined, and yes, even judged him. For Edward, this strange and unsolved crime was not an isolated incident but one of tens, or perhaps even hundreds of similar murders that he had stumbled on almost by accident. Psychics, it seemed, were dying in their droves and they were dying strangely.

    Edward leaned back in his creaky wooden chair and, suddenly feeling as if his balance had been lost, he pushed himself forward abruptly, attracting the disapproving looks of his fellow library occupants. He went back over recent events trying to convince himself that there surely couldn’t be anything to this wave of psychic killings. However, something deep inside told him there was.

    Chapter 2

    Imagination

    Stan looked up for an instant from his book. The sound of torrential rain hitting the window had distracted his attention, and for a short while his eyes saw a streaky view out of his back window through the rivers of water running down it. He looked but he did not see, for inside his mind he was still watching the dreamlike images conjured up by the narrative that he was deeply engaged in reading. A sudden ‘crack’ of a window off its latch and catching the wind somewhere in the distance finally brought him out of his inner landscapes and imagination with a jump.

    Stan put his book down. Time for a cup of tea, he thought as he made his way through his smallish and untidy flat to the kitchen. As he filled the kettle with water, his iPhone began to ring. He ignored it, hitting the button to kill the call while he popped a teabag in his cup and smothered it in boiling water. The phone began to ring once more.

    The bane of modern life, he said to himself, echoing a conservative politician in parliament. Although that was no reason to try to slap a tax on the bloody things. He recalled that the Government had indeed tried to tax mobile phones. He once again hit the button to kill the sound if not the call. He wanted to get back to his book. It was a good bit and he was enjoying it very much. However, the phone began to ring yet again.

    This time he picked it up. The number shown was ‘private’. Immediately, various thoughts went through his mind. On the one hand, he never answered calls unless he knew whom they were from, as he detested people hiding behind private numbers. But, on the other, it could be something serious, like a hospital or the tax man…He answered.

    Mr. Howard? said a male voice. Mr. Stanley Howard?

    Yes – who is this? he replied

    Click! The phone went dead.

    In annoyance, Stan threw the phone down and vowed never to answer an unknown-number call again. I mean, the bloody cheek!

    The book Stan was reading took him in deep. He read in a trance-like state as images formed in his brain, conjured up by the author’s words. He had traveled the world had Stan in his mind. Books were his escape from ‘reality’ into other worlds that he created and imagined into existence as the author talked words in his head. He had experienced everything more or less that could be experienced in life through his books but, more importantly, through his vivid imagination and inner picture building. He couldn’t bear to watch movies as he found that they were simply a substitute for a poor imagination. For Stan, it wasn’t just his ability to clearly see images because his imagination was able to factor in smells, sounds and all of the other senses. It was a veritable 4D IMAX experience for him, and this was why he simply spent almost all his free time with his head in a book.

    Stan took a sip of his tea absentmindedly. He was struck by a thought that the tea, the physical tea he was drinking, didn’t taste or smell half as good as the tea he could imagine. It was also the realization that, in fact, his inner world was more real than the outer that had turned him into a bookworm.

    A book that he had recently read had surprised him greatly. It had suggested that the outer world, that he had grown to despise quite a bit, was also simply his inner world. He had read that, for example, images created in his brain resulted simply from light hitting his retina. The brain even managed to turn the image the right way up so that he didn’t think he was upside down! This was apparently the way that light reflections from any object hit his brain – upside down. He was fascinated. It appeared that every image, every sound, every sensation was created in his brain and that his sensory experience was simply his brain’s perception and interpretation of some cloud of atoms within a cloud of atoms. His mind struggled to understand this concept, but somehow he grasped it subconsciously. The real world, his world, was simply an image his brain constructed based on the signals it received. Imagine that! he had thought and then chuckled at his inadvertent joke.

    At that point, the phone rang again. This time he had to search for the damn thing, which lay in a corner on the floor where he had thrown it amongst piles of books and unwashed clothes. Picking it up, he answered immediately.

    Mr. Howard? said the same monotone voice.

    Yes, he replied rather abruptly.

    Be very careful, Mr. Howard. said the voice.

    What? Be careful of what? But the caller had already hung up.

    Stan was quite shaken. Who was this mysterious hidden caller and why the hell should he be careful? Why were such useless and slightly worrying calls disturbing him now?

    Stan had had enough of his reading. His inner reveries had been shattered and he felt quite anxious. A pint of bitter might help, he thought, as he began to look for his coat and umbrella.

    The pub was not very full but it was warm and dry. One or two people sat at tables chatting quietly in corners, while several others stood at the bar intently watching a football game on TV. He ordered his bitter deciding to stand by the bar.

    Hey, Stan, said a voice from behind him.

    Evening, Jimmy, said Stan, instantly recognizing the middle-aged but prematurely greying face of his neighbor Jimmy Bell. How are you?

    Jimmy sidled up along the bar next to Stan. Can’t complain, he said in typical English fashion, which Stan took to mean that he would have to spend half-an-hour listening to a barrage of such complaints.

    What brings you in? No books to read? asked Jimmy.

    Just needed to rest my eyes a bit, Jim, he replied.

    Can’t be good for yer all that bloody reading, said Jimmy. Missus is always complainin’ ’bout her eyes when she reads those bloody women’s books.

    Stan smiled patiently and took a sip of his ale.

    Don’t get it m’self, said Jimmy. Dusty gloomy bloody things books if yer ask me.

    Stan retreated inside of his mind as he vaguely listened to Jimmy’s drone in the background still complaining about books, women, weather, and the England soccer team. Stan had no interest in any of Jimmy’s ramblings and so he simply nodded or said ‘yes’ or ‘no’ from time to time. In his mind, Stan was imagining. He was imagining Jimmy having to go to the bathroom, imagining the peace and quiet that would ensue when Jimmy left. After a few minutes, Jimmy suddenly excused himself and ran off the men’s room. Stan smiled to himself. Always works, he thought and moved to a vacant seat in a quiet corner of the pub.

    Stan surveyed the scene, catching the three or four younger men leaning forward on their seats as they enjoyed a soccer game and a couple deep in conversation in the opposite corner. A few others were stood by the bar quietly sipping on their drinks, obviously lost in their own worlds of thought and imagination. However, Stan’s eyes drew back over the bar to an anomaly. Something seemed out of place and rather strange, and he realized more or less immediately what it was. At the end of the bar stood a man dressed in a suit and tie.

    How very odd, he thought.

    He examined the man. He was tall and quite thin, almost gaunt. He had quite long black wavy hair that splashed over his collar and was swept back such that, periodically, he had to push the long locks back over his eyes into a more comfortable position. His suit was a

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