Time Flies Read online

  Ferdie & The Seven:

  Time Flies

  By Larry Buenafe

  Copyright Larry Buenafe 2017

  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 recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1`

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  EPILOGUE

  PREVIEW: FERDIE AND THE SEVEN, BOOK THREE: FRACTALS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  OTHER BOOKS BY LARRY BUENAFE

  CONNECT WITH LARRY BUENAFE

  Prologue

  The afternoon sky took on a threatening tone, prompting Pasquale Sanna to rush through the recovery of his fishing nets. The fishing had been good and the hold was nearly full, so Pasquale didn’t feel bad about quitting a few minutes early, and definitely did not want to get caught two kilometers out to sea during the infrequent but powerful storms common to the coast of Isola di San Pietro. Although generally an area of temperate climate, the fall day was rather cool, and Pasquale shivered as he bent to his task. Tall and lean, with a dark complexion and unruly mop of black hair, he looked more like a fashion model than fishing boat hand.

  “I can’t wait until I can leave this all and go off to college,” he mumbled, in his preferred proper Italian. “I am getting big guns from all this work, though,” he smiled to himself. La Eleonora, their small, ten meter converted lobster boat, was quite ancient, even for the area, but she was what they had, and they made the most of her; he thought of her as his, although she was owned by his grandfather. The winch for their nets had long since deteriorated, but the Sanna’s persisted by spreading and gathering their nets by hand, an extremely labor-intensive method. The catch usually consisted of grouper and sea bass, but occasionally they would also net a barracuda, which meant a bit more struggle in the gathering.

  Pasquale grunted from the effort while ruminating about his current lot in life and what the future may hold. “I wonder what the girls are like in college… I bet there will be girls from everywhere, maybe even from the US!” he enthused. So it went until, gazing starboard, he noticed a speed boat coming in his direction. Boats of this kind were rather uncommon, especially two kilometers out to sea, which made Pasquale curious. “Hmm… maybe they are coming to warn us of the storm, or perhaps they need help,” he said to no one as he watched it approach. The coming craft was long and low, and looked expensive to Pasquale, as it sped through the chop being generated by the oncoming weather. It was soon close enough for him to see that there appeared to be only one person on board: a large, blond-haired man, with skin so white he appeared nearly translucent. Pasquale waved, signaling him to approach on the port side, so as to avoid running afoul of the net.

  Now directly alongside the La Eleonora, the man stood at the stern of his boat. He was very tall and wide, lumberjack-like in appearance. He had the broadest of smiles on his face, and began speaking in German. Pasquale knew some German from school, and recognized that the man was asking if he could come aboard, saying something about engine trouble. Huh, seemed to be traveling awfully fast for engine trouble, he thought, but welcomed the man aboard with the best German he could muster: “Yes, yes, you join on boat mine.” The man grinned wider still, and heaved himself on board.

  Whoa, Pasquale thought, I’m tall, but this guy is really big. He looks like an American football player. “You speak the Italian?” He asked in his broken German.

  The man laughed heartily, and said, “No, my friend, but I speak English. How about you?”

  Pasquale grinned in return; his English was definitely better than his German. “Yes, I can speak to you in English,” he responded. “My name is Pasquale.”

  “Well, Pasquale, I had better get to shore, or risk getting caught in this storm. By the way, what is your last name, friend?”

  Pasquale thought it curious that the man said “I” instead of “we”, but chalked it up to English not being his first language. It’s a mistake anyone could make, but still… “My last name is Sanna, Pasquale Sanna. I did not catch your name, though,” he said, now feeling slightly uneasy.

  The big man, still grinning crazily, said “That’s because I didn’t throw it. My name is Engelbert. Engelbert Engel. Yes, like the singer. It is a terrible name, I know, but it was given to me by my parents, so I could not refuse it. Pasquale Sanna, you say? Are you any relation to Leonardo Sanna?”

  There is a singer named Engelbert? Now that is weird, thought Pasquale. “My grandfather’s name is Leonardo Sanna. He’s probably not the only one, though, so I don’t know if he is the one about which you are asking.”

  “No, perhaps not,” Engelbert continued, “it’s just a name I know from many years ago.”

  “Well, Engelbert, let’s get your boat tied up, and maybe you would agree to help me finish hauling in my net.”

  “Oh, yes, my friend, I would be happy to help you,” said Engelbert, and he turned toward the port side, reaching down to his boat. As he did, Pasquale turned to the starboard to continue pulling in his net, so he did not see Engelbert come up from his boat with a very large knife. The big man approached him with shocking stealth.

  “Engelbert, my friend, if you could just…” Pasquale looked over his shoulder to see the knife being swung in an arc toward his back; he squealed in surprise and spun away, the knife catching him instead in his left triceps, slicing neatly through and spraying blood onto the deck of the La Eleonora.

  He fell to the deck, looking up in shock as blood gushed from his arm. “Hold still and it will all be over in a minute,” said Engelbert, now in guttural German. Pasquale pushed himself backwards, scooting on his backside in a panicked attempt to get away from the big man. Engelbert edged forward, knife held sword-like in his left hand. Despite his terrorized state, Pasquale noticed that it appeared as if Engelbert had cut off his own nose, as blood was streaming down and pouring off his chin. “Just let me get this over with,” he bellowed, now in English. He leaned forward, knife extended, and in a desperate attempt to protect himself, Pasquale threw his good arm in front of his face.

  Suddenly, Engelbert froze in place, his face going slack; he shuffled with an odd, truncated gait to the edge of the La Eleonora, and then flung himself off the deck of the boat and into the deep waters of the Mediterranean Sea, quickly sinking below the choppy surface.

  Slowly, slowly, an elderly figure rose up the steps from below deck. His weathered face, with an immense nose and unruly halo of white hair, was bent against the now stiff easterly wind. Leonardo Sanna, grandfather of Pasquale Sanna, shook his head, saying in his native Tabarchino, “No, no, not today. Not my grandson. You may not have him. Not like his father. No, no, no…”

  ####

  I’m a killer.

  Not a natural born kill
er, like those people in that crazy movie, but I’m a killer just the same. I melted a guy’s brain with the power of my mind, and that guy just happened to be a police officer. Yes, he had just fatally shot my best friend, but still… things have gotten crazy, and it seems like it started so long ago… give me a minute, and I’ll get you caught up on what’s happened so far.

  My name is Ferdie Shamley, and I have some unusual abilities and some unusual problems. I can read minds, I can even control people with my mind, and I can use my mind as a weapon. I have to avoid using those powers, though, because it leads me down a path toward eternity in hell, or the Bad Line, as the supernatural types call it. I can also make myself invisible by going to a place called the in-between, which is a space in between our universe and the universes where heaven, or the Good Line, and hell, or the Bad Line, exist. I also have a nasty case of OCD and hypervigilance, and probably PTSD too. If you think all this makes for a complicated life, you’d be right.

  It seems like death has been following me always. When I was twelve, I witnessed my mother kill my father with a butcher knife, and then kill herself with a rolling pin to the head. Before she died, she told me that she would have killed my sister, Ariel, and me if she had gotten to us. She also told me that she didn’t want to do it, but someone was controlling her mind and she couldn’t resist it.

  After my parents’ funeral, Ariel and I went from our home in Colorado to Bakersfield, California, to live with our uncle and aunt, Mark and Cindy Wilson, and their two daughters, Jill and Debbi. They were nice to us and did everything for us they could. Ariel seemed to recover fairly well, but I developed a couple of weird OCD habits, including tapping myself on the head every time I entered or left a room. When I was in a stressful situation, I would tap my head repeatedly.

  Not too long after our move to Bakersfield, I found the Book of Names in the library, and it had in it the names and dates of death of everyone who ever lived. On one side, it had the names of people who had gone to heaven, and if you turned it over you saw the names of the people who had gone to hell. As I was trying to determine the purpose of the book, a weird, pixie-like lady came up to me to explain it, and turns out that lady is an angel. In fact, you could say that in a way she is my guardian angel. She was assigned to me because I’m one of a group of people called The Seven, which is an obvious name since there are only seven of us in the world at any time. Most of The Seven never realize that they have supernatural powers, and they just live out their lives like anyone else. Some of us, though, like me, learn of our powers and develop them. Because we’re partly human, we have free will, so we can use our powers however we decide to, but we’ll all be held to account in the end.

  Right after meeting Gabriella, I met Arnie Hayward, a person we would call a demon. He was from the Bad Line; he came back to Earth to try to make up for the negative things he had done in his previous life, and to get over to the Good Line. Just about the only way for him to do it was to earn lots of positive energy by solving murder crimes, and he asked for my help because of my special abilities. Although I was scared of him, I also thought he was honest and sincere so I decided to try to help him change lines.

  Meanwhile, a separate group of supernatural types were gathering, and in fact they were the ones responsible for my parent’s death. They want to kill me, but not before they torture me by killing everyone I get close to. My best friend, Marshall “Marsh-dog” Nolan, a short, skinny, skateboard-riding computer genius with a giant ‘fro, was the only normal human who knew what was happening with me, and he paid the price for it… The Others, as I call them, killed both of his parents and almost killed Marsh-dog and me by possessing his uncle Freddy, but Marsh stopped him with a baseball bat.

  We managed, through Marsh-dog’s computer skills, to make contact with another member of The Seven: Ling Lee, who lived in Hong Kong. She came to Bakersfield to be with us in our attempt to stop The Others before they killed even more people, but we were not able to stop them from possessing my Uncle Mark, and they caused him to kill his kids and himself.

  The main person I have had contact with from The Others is a guy I call The Coward, because he won’t tell me his name or where he’s from, and because I think calling him that might irritate him a little bit. Anyway, during the times we have contact he tells me they are going to keep killing people all around me until they can finally get to me, and I could stop it all by just killing myself. To tell you the truth I have considered it. Gabriella tells me that would not stop them; it would just make it worse. She says the only reason it’s not worse now is that they are afraid of me because I’m so “powerful”. I can tell you, though, most of the time I don’t feel all that powerful.

  Eventually The Others got to us in a big way. We knew they were going to do another killing, so we planned a surprise attack in which Ling, who had really worked on her abilities, would follow me into the fight. They had been tipped off somehow, and ambushed us before we were able to put our plan in action. As a result, Ling got blasted, and it blinded her in one eye. They also shot Arnie so many times that even his super-tough demon skin couldn’t protect him, and he died. He made it to the Good Line in the end, though, so I guess it was all worth it. Or almost, anyway… because they also got Marsh-Dog. But guess what? He wasn’t ready to go, so instead of heading out to the Good Line, he’s staying in the in-between until we stop The Others or they stop us, and if we don’t succeed… well, that’s it for everyone. So, my best friend is a ghost, and my team consists of two angels who are reluctant to use their angel powers, and Ling, a powerful but half-blind member of The Seven. Dude, we need to get some more help or we are screwed. And the clock is ticking… 781 days to go for all of us, according to the Book of Names, not that I’m counting or anything…

  Chapter 1

  The walls of the small apartment on the bluffs near the university in Bakersfield, California seem to be closing in on me. My OCD quirks have gotten worse over the past few months since Arnie and Marsh… well, since they died, at least in the earthly sense. Sometimes I get in these loops where I am tapping my head without knowing it and other times I find myself flipping the lights on and off for no reason. It’s getting really annoying, both to me and the rest of the crew. The weird thing is it’s been six months since we were ambushed by The Coward, and we haven’t heard anything from them since. Obviously we can’t just keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, but we don’t seem to have many other choices at the moment. Maybe that’s why I’m going crazy. I wish I could go and talk to Dr. Saresh, the psychologist from India that I used to see, but it’s too much of a risk because he might have to turn me in to Social Services, and that would be a mess.

  Since we lost Marsh-dog and Arnie, there are four of us left: Ling, Gabriella, Rafael, and me. In our little apartment, it’s me in one small bedroom, Ling and Gabriella in the other, and Rafael crashing on the couch in the little living room. I’ve been spending most of my time practicing at getting to the in-between, which is that space between dimensions, or universes, or whatever they are. I can get there instantaneously now, and I can stay there for quite a while before I get uncomfortable, maybe a couple of hours at a time. It’s a weird, shadowy, fuzzy place, the in-between. When you’re in there, you can see two locations at the same time, sort of superimposed on one another, and it’s confusing. For the sake of having a name for them, I’m going to call the different places universes because that’s what it seems like to me, although I don’t know if they’re that, or if they’re something else entirely. The universes I have seen so far are the one containing the “Good Line”, as the supernatural types call it, which we humans know as heaven, and the one containing the “Bad Line”, which, you guessed it, is what we call hell. So let’s say I’m in my room here in our little apartment, and I decide to go to the in-between. There is a certain vibration or frequency that I can connect with that will take me to one side, and a different vibration or frequency that will take me to the other side. I generally
go to the part of the in-between containing the Good Line, because being on that side is much more pleasant. I can see the walls, desk, chairs, and everything else in my room, and also the whole universe at the same time, with the multicolored row of lights that make up the Good Line, extending across and out, seemingly forever. Calling them lights doesn’t exactly describe them, though. It’s kind of like a cloud that has a distinct boundary and is lit from inside somehow. That’s the closest I can get to describing them correctly. Anyway, while you watch, you can see more of these amorphous blobs of light flying past to join the Good Line, and it gives you the greatest feeling you can imagine. Once you get past being made sick by being in the in-between, I mean… it’s not a place that was meant for live humans, even half-supernatural ones like me.

  Like I said, though, I’ve gotten used to it, which is a good thing, because that’s where Marsh-dog lives now. There is no way I would have gotten this far without him, and we still have a lot more to do.

  On day 781 and counting down, I faded into the in-between to talk to Marsh-dog. I remember the first time I went there; it felt like the tiniest fishhooks in the universe hooked on to every cell in my body and pulled me in. In other words, it was painful. It kind of felt like torture to tell the truth. Ok, here I go, and here come the fishhooks… doesn’t even hurt anymore, just kind of uncomfortable… now tuning in to the right vibration, or frequency, or whatever, and…

  I am in the space between universes. The sight just never gets old… then, as usual, I heard behind me, “Hey, ‘Nando… it just doesn’t seem possible, but you have gotten even uglier than the last time I saw you. What’s going on, dude?”

  “Hey, Marsh. I would slug you if I knew my hand wouldn’t go right through you. And I told you before, ‘Nando is short for Fernando, not Ferdinand.”

  “Yeah, I know. I just use it ‘cause it annoys you.”

  “Well, mission accomplished. What’s up with you?”