50 photographs, 50 stories, of which there is one of the 50 below.
They all start with –
A picture paints … well, as many words as you like. For instance:
And the story:
It was once said that a desperate man has everything to lose.
The man I was chasing was desperate, but I, on the other hand, was more desperate to catch him.
He’d left a trail of dead people from one end of the island to the other.
The team had put in a lot of effort to locate him, and now his capture was imminent. We were following the car he was in, from a discrete distance, and, at the appropriate time, we would catch up, pull him over, and make the arrest.
There was nowhere for him to go.
The road led to a dead-end, and the only way off the mountain was back down the road were now on. Which was why I was somewhat surprised when we discovered where he was.
Where was he going?
“Damn,” I heard Alan mutter. He was driving, being careful not to get too close, but not far enough away to lose sight of him.
“What?”
“I think he’s made us.”
“How?”
“Dumb bad luck, I’m guessing. Or he expected we’d follow him up the mountain. He’s just sped up.”
“How far away?”
“A half-mile. We should see him higher up when we turn the next corner.”
It took an eternity to get there, and when we did, Alan was right, only he was further on than we thought.”
“Step on it. Let’s catch him up before he gets to the top.”
Easy to say, not so easy to do. The road was treacherous, and in places just gravel, and there were no guard rails to stop a three thousand footfall down the mountainside.
Good thing then I had the foresight to have three agents on the hill for just such a scenario.
Ten minutes later, we were in sight of the car, still moving quickly, but we were going slightly faster. We’d catch up just short of the summit car park.
Or so we thought.
Coming quickly around another corner we almost slammed into the car we’d been chasing.
“What the hell…” Aland muttered.
I was out of the car, and over to see if he was in it, but I knew that it was only a slender possibility. The car was empty, and no indication where he went.
Certainly not up the road. It was relatively straightforward for the next mile, at which we would have reached the summit. Up the mountainside from here, or down.
I looked up. Nothing.
Alan yelled out, “He’s not going down, not that I can see, but if he did, there’s hardly a foothold and that’s a long fall.”
Then where did he go?
Then a man looking very much like our quarry came out from behind a rock embedded just a short distance up the hill.
“Sorry,” he said quite calmly. “Had to go if you know what I mean.”
I’d lost him.
It was as simple as that.
I had been led a merry chase up the hill, and all the time he was getting away in a different direction.
I’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book, letting my desperation blind me to the disguise that anyone else would see through in an instant.
It was a lonely sight, looking down that road, knowing that I had to go all that way down again, only this time, without having to throw caution to the wind.
“Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.”
I remember Angela quoting that to me when we were doing a tutorial for the Journalism part of my degree. It was only one part of many for me, whereas, for her, it was to become her bread and butter.
She had taken up the role of a reporter on the campus newspaper, and she was inclined to write sharp pieces that would later point to how she would approach the job at the local newspaper, a job assured there for her based on her department head’s glowing recommendation.
Her vendetta against Emily had begun from day one at university and only grew more acrimonious each year. Emily had hardly helped her situation by joining her equally entitled friends and behaving badly.
She knew my secret feelings about Emily and had often mocked me for it, especially after we didn’t find mutual ground. It was probably the one relationship on campus I regretted.
It seemed inevitable that I was about to get entangled with her again, after trying so hard to keep out of her sight. I had scored a piece, the smartest kid in college, but it was hard to tell if it was a character assassination or just a bio that might land me a useful job.
I didn’t bother calling up and asking her.
Xavier had just spent the last half hour roasting me for going to the ball and then demanding to know when and where I had fallen for the meanest girl on campus.
“I hardly think fallen is the word I’d use. I like her, surely that’s obvious because she’s a reasonably likeable girl.” It was difficult to find the words that dodged the bullet that was coming straight at me.
Xavier was a friend, but this would stretch it. She was, categorically, the enemy.
“Perhaps,” I added, “with my new special status, I can put in a good word for you. I know she knows Amy, and I know you like her, and that’s no different to my situation.”
He shrugged. Like me, I don’t think he would ever confess his undying love to a girl who would have no hesitation in humiliating him. “Don’t. I prefer the wistful looking for a great distance and using my imagination. What was she like to dance with? I heard it was a Viennese waltz.”
“It wasn’t anything special. You did the Arthur Murray lessons like I did. And you would have fitted in. The people were just people, Xavier.”
We both looked up at the same time to see Angela chugging her way across the cafeteria towards us.
“That’s my cue to leave. You think I’m pissed; just wait till she gets here.”
And he was gone in the blink of an eye. He hated Angela more than I did. I thought of running, but what was the point. She would just chase me down until I surrendered. Better now than never.
She sat down, no tasking if it was alright, and pulled out her recorder and notebook. She was nothing if not thorough.
“I’m assuming you’ve come here for an interview, though I’m not quite sure why.”
She shook her head, the trademark scowl getting a little deeper. “I hope you’re not going to try and act dumb.”
“Who said it was an act. I believe you told me, once, that I was the dumbest boy on the planet. You’re being an authority on the subject, I accepted my lot.”
The scowl deepened. “You’re going to be a pain in the ass, aren’t you?”
I shrugged. “You reap what you sow, Angela.”
She switched off the recorder and softened her expression. “Off the record, for the time being. What were you thinking, going to that ball?”
“It was a perfect opportunity to put my Waltzing skills to the test. You don’t get that kind of dancing opportunity every day.”
“With Emily, though?”
“She’s just a girl, Angela.”
“One I might add you are so obviously enamoured with.”
“How could one not be, at the moment. I have had a crush on her for quite some time, yes, but up close and personal, it was not something I was going to pursue on or off the floor. Not the time or the place.”
“How did you get an invite?”
“How did you?”
She shook her head. “Try answering some of the questions, or I’ll just have to imagine what the right answer is.”
“OK. Let me ask you a question. Were you appraised of my brain out a week or so ago in this very cafeteria where I chewed out both the girl herself and that idiot boyfriend of hers?”
“It was mentioned. People were surprised, but not shocked. You and she have a very rocky sub-history.”
“Exactly. Her father wanted to meet someone who doesn’t try sucking up to her because of who she is. He invited me for that reason only. You can ask him if you like.”
“I have. You impressed him, and that is very difficult to do. Are you thinking of working for him? He seems to think you would make an excellent fit given your academic history.”
“You mean, marry the boss’s daughter? That’s so 1950s cliché Angela. If anything were to happen between us, and that’s very unlikely, I wouldn’t want to work for him, and things go south. No, not considering it. I have offers from New York, Washington, and Philadelphia. Or I might just stay here and compete with you for a job on the paper.”
Another shake of the head. “You’re very good at ducking and weaving. Perhaps you should consider becoming a politician.”
“I couldn’t, I’m too honest.”
She snorted. “You haven’t told me the truth yet, William. She likes you, that was plain to see when you were together. Her official line is no comment to any of the questions I asked her, and your obfuscating, which smacks of collusion. I’m going to keep my eye on the two of you because there’s a story here.”
“You’re talking about a fairy tale, Angela, and they are just that, tales. You know I like her, and I have for a long time, unrequited love I believe it’s called. I had an argument with her, and it amused her father to invite me to an event that normally I’d never get an invite to because of who I am, and I’m sure all the toffs had a lot of laughs over it at my expense. Emily was there, we danced the waltz, it was fun, and I surprised her in that a slum boy could actually wear a tuxedo and look good, and actually dance in time to the music. That’s the story.
“As for the job, you know as well as I do, Rothstein invited the top 10 college students to an orientation day where they get to see how the company works, and then get a job offer. I’m in the top ten so that’s a no-brainer, even for you. There are no special attachments to it. Knowing or not knowing Emily is not a precursor to getting an offer.
“And as for an ongoing relationship, do you see us together, here, now? No. I am as distant from her horizon now as I was yesterday and all the t=yesterdays before that. I am not going to treat her differently now I’ve been to a ball and danced with her, she is still the same pain in the ass girl she always was, only at the end of this year I will be put out of my misery, and she will move on to the next shiny toy in the toy box.”
“So, you’re not expecting anything to happen?”
“Me? No. They’re the Rothstein’s. Rothstein’s do not mix with people like me. People like me are put on this earth for their amusement. We all are.”
She shrugged. “You make it so black and white, but I don’t think it is. This isn’t over, William.” She picked up the recorder and the notepad and put both into her backpack. “Next time.”
This case has everything, red herrings, jealous brothers, femme fatales, and at the heart of it all, greed.
See below for an excerpt from the book…
Coming soon!
An excerpt from the book:
When Harry took the time to consider his position, a rather uncomfortable position at that, he concluded that he was somehow involved in another case that meant very little to him.
Not that it wasn’t important in some way he was yet to determine, it was just that his curiosity had got the better of him, and it had led to this: sitting in a chair, securely bound, waiting for someone one of his captors had called Doug.
It was not the name that worried him so much, it was the evil laugh that had come after the name was spoken.
Doug what? Doug the ‘destroyer’, Doug the ‘dangerous’, Doug the ‘deadly’; there was any number of sinister connotations, and perhaps that was the point of the laugh, to make it more frightening than it was.
But there was no doubt about one thing in his mind right then: he’d made a mistake. A very big. and costly, mistake. Just how big the cost, no doubt he would soon find out.
His mother, and his grandmother, the wisest person he had ever known, had once told him never to eavesdrop.
At the time he couldn’t help himself and instead of minding his own business, listening to a one-sided conversation which ended with a time and a place. The very nature of the person receiving the call was, at the very least, sinister, and, because of the cryptic conversation, there appeared to be, or at least to Harry, criminal activity involved.
For several days he had wrestled with the thought of whether he should go. Stay on the fringe, keep out of sight, observe and report to the police if it was a crime. Instead, he had willingly gone down the rabbit hole.
Now, sitting in an uncomfortable chair, several heat lamps hanging over his head, he was perspiring, and if perspiration could be used as a measure of fear, then Harry’s fear was at the highest level.
Another runnel of sweat rolled into his left eye, and, having his hands tied, literally, it made it impossible to clear it. The burning sensation momentarily took his mind off his predicament. He cursed and then shook his head trying to prevent a re-occurrence. It was to no avail.
Let the stinging sensation be a reminder of what was right and what was wrong.
It was obvious that it was the right place and the right time, but in considering his current perilous situation, it definitely was the wrong place to be, at the worst possible time.
It was meant to be his escape, an escape from the generations of lawyers, what were to Harry, dry, dusty men who had been in business since George Washington said to the first Walthenson to step foot on American soil, ‘Why don’t you become a lawyer?” when asked what he could do for the great man.
Or so it was handed down as lore, though Harry didn’t think Washington meant it literally, the Walthenson’s, then as now, were not shy of taking advice.
Except, of course, when it came to Harry.
He was, Harry’s father was prone to saying, the exception to every rule. Harry guessed his father was referring to the fact his son wanted to be a Private Detective rather than a dry, dusty lawyer. Just the clothes were enough to turn Harry off the profession.
So, with a little of the money Harry inherited from one of his aunts, he leased an office in Gramercy Park and had it renovated to look like the Sam Spade detective agency, you know the one, Spade and Archer, and The Maltese Falcon.
There’s a movie and a book by Dashiell Hammett if you’re interested.
So, there it was, painted on the opaque glass inset of the front door, ‘Harold Walthenson, Private Detective’.
There was enough money to hire an assistant, and it took a week before the right person came along, or, more to the point, didn’t just see his business plan as something sinister. Ellen, a tall cool woman in a long black dress, or so the words of a song in his head told him, fitted in perfectly.
She’d seen the movie, but she said with a grin, Harry was no Humphrey Bogart.
Of course not, he said, he didn’t smoke.
Three months on the job, and it had been a few calls, no ‘real’ cases, nothing but missing animals, and other miscellaneous items. What he really wanted was a missing person. Or perhaps a beguiling, sophisticated woman who was as deadly as she was charming, looking for an errant husband, perhaps one that she had already ‘dispatched’.
Or for a tall, dark and handsome foreigner who spoke in riddles and in heavily accented English, a spy, or perhaps an assassin, in town to take out the mayor. The man was such an imbecile Harry had considered doing it himself.
Now, in a back room of a disused warehouse, that wishful thinking might be just about to come to a very abrupt end, with none of the romanticized trappings of the business befalling him. No beguiling women, no sinister criminals, no stupid policemen.
Just a nasty little man whose only concern was how quickly or how slowly Harry’s end was going to be.
This story is now on the list to be finished so over the new few weeks, expect a new episode every few days.
The reason why new episodes have been sporadic, there are also other stories to write, and I’m not very good at prioritizing.
But, here we are, a few minutes opened up and it didn’t take long to get back into the groove.
Things are about to get complicated…
“Turn around and head towards the trees, we’re not very far from you,” the voice in my head said.
I turned, saw the trees and moved towards them.
“Straight ahead.”
Then I could just see her, beside one of the tree trunks, under the cover of the canopy.
For the moment we would not be seen, but if someone was looking intently, we would be seen.
Jennifer was kneeling, her knees and weight keeping the assailant on the ground. She handed me the gun, a silenced Baretta, with the distinct aroma of a discharged bullet.
Jennifer had pulled off the balaclava. Jan.
Not working for Severin, but Dobbin. Or someone else?
“Who ordered the hit?”
“Go fuck yourself.”
Not entirely unexpected.
I pulled out my phone and dialled the number for the Detective Inspector that had been at Maury’s crime scene. I knew there was going to be a need to call her in the not-too-distant future. And Jan needed to be in a safe place where she couldn’t be got at.
“Who is this?”
My number would have come up as a ‘private number’.
“We met at the hotel where Maury died.”
“The spy?”
“Of sorts. I’m sorry to say that his companion, Severin, is also now very dead in the rotunda at the Italian Gardens at Hyde Park. I’d get someone down here before the body is removed or found by a member of the public.”
I heard a scream and deduced it came from the rotunda.
“Too late. Hurry before the crime scene is contaminated.”
“Where are you?”
“Nearby. And if you’re especially quick, we have a surprise for you.”
Two constables arrived in four minutes, most likely nearby for another reason. The Detective Inspector and her Sergeant arrived within 20 minutes, but by that time Jennifer and Jan had retreated to the car, parked away from the gardens.
Anyone seeing us heading away would have picked us for three drunken fools escorting a friend who had passed out. Jan had struggled to get free, and it had been necessary to subdue her.
I had wanted to ask further questions, but circumstances didn’t allow it. Not yet.
Leaving Jennifer with Jan, securely tied up, but looking like she was sleeping of a long drinking session, I went back to the crime scene just as the Detective Inspector was coming out of the rotunda.
She recognised me and called me over to the tape that separated the public from the scene. The forensic team had just arrived and was setting up. I doubted she would let me into the crime scene area, but I had seen enough when I’d been there with Severin.
“Why are you here, and give me a good reason not to take you into custody.”
“He called me earlier and wanted to talk. I think he found out Maury was dead, and he was next. I didn’t kill him, but I know who did, but I’m not sure we’re going to be able to prove it.”
“That weedy little man that saved your ass the last time?”
“Richards or Dobbin? Either or together or one of their henchmen. Not sure, to be honest. All I knop is it’s possible Maury was killed during an intense interrogation. I suspect Severin was killed to silence him.”
“Because of what?”
“I believe it is about the existence of a formula for a biological weapon.”
A single event driven by fate, after Ben told his wife Charlotte he would be late home one night, he left early, and by chance discovers his wife having dinner in their favourite restaurant with another man.
A single event where it could be said Ben was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Who was this man? Why was she having dinner with him?
A simple truth to explain the single event was all Ben required. Instead, Charlotte told him a lie.
A single event that forces Ben to question everything he thought he knew about his wife, and the people who are around her.
After a near-death experience and forced retirement into a world he is unfamiliar with, Ben finds himself once again drawn back into that life of lies, violence, and intrigue.
From London to a small village in Tuscany, little by little Ben discovers who the woman he married is, and the real reason why fate had brought them together.
It was a wild and stormy morning half-light half dark with roiling seas around us.
If anyone had seen us from the shore, they’d say we were stark staring mad.
We were.
Trying to come ashore in the sort of weather that had wrecked many a ship along this stretch of coast. What would be one more boat among many at the bottom of the sea?
We were too busy trying to stay alive to be sick, and I felt very, very ill.
At the wheel Christina was looking very resolute, fighting the ocean trying to turn the rudder against her ministrations.
I was keeping the sails at the bare minimum, and at least the wind was taking us ashore and not out into the ocean and where the huge waves were waiting. Not that going ashore was any more attractive given the rocks alternately submerged and exposed.
I’d just repaired a snapped rope and got the sail back into position after nearly being decapitated when it broke free.
“There it is.” I could just barely hear her before the wind snatched the words away.
I followed her outstretched arm to see a break in the white water crashing on the rocks, a narrow passage that led to calmer water and a remote landing place.
This we had been told was good weather. I’d hate to see what was ‘the bad’.
We rose up and slid down the waves hoping when we came up again, we’d be heading in the right direction.
Luckily, we were.
Christina had sold the voyage as a sailor’s dream, to cross the Atlantic at what was supposed to be the calmest time of the year.
The fact that no time of the year was calm was carefully omitted from the sales pitch, but I had to admit I’d had worse weather heading north from New York to Nantucket.
The real selling point was the fact we would not advertise our departure nor our arrival, a definite plus in remaining anonymous when anonymity was a must.
She had been right to suggest we leave, with two more attempts on our lives, a car bomb, and a long-range sniper. Someone seriously wanted us dead, or if not the two of us, me.
Now it was a matter of hoping the sea didn’t finish was someone else started.
On the other side of the reef the weather hadn’t changed, the skies were still very dark and the rain was sheeting down, but the movement of the boat had settled, and we were gliding across almost still waters.
I’d heard about Scotland’s bleak weather, and this was everything one could expect. It could only get better.
I leaned against the stern rail just behind her, now more relaxed, watching the rain pouring off the wet weather gear she was wearing. On top of the endless layers to keep out the intense cold, she looked more like Santa than the woman who, barely a week before, had turned every head in the room at her father’s birthday bash.
It made me wonder why she was willing to go through what we had to get here. It was no secret she detested what her father represented, and there was no doubt he wasn’t happy about her living with a policeman, yet willing to accept his help when trouble came knocking.
There was no doubting that bond between them, despite the circumstances.
The coastline stretched before us, as did the Cove, and somewhere there a sea cave, a place to hide the boat. It was the stuff of legends, that Cove, reputedly to have been a lair for pirates, whiskey smugglers, and Scottish patriots hiding from the British back in the days of Bonnie Prince Charlie.
“Are you feeling like the Vikings?” I said the first time I could hear my own voice above the weather.
“Who?”
“The Vikings? They were reputed to come ashore, do some pillaging, then go.”
“We’re not here to pillage, as you call it.”
“No, but you can just imagine it. I doubt this shoreline has changed much in a thousand or so years.”
“Except for the plastic washed ashore.”
I didn’t have to see her face to register the disdain, it was in her tone. She was a loud and passionate advocate for the environment, sometimes the lone voice in the crowd.
Whereas once I just threw the empty plastic bottles overboard, she insisted we collect them and dispose of them properly.
I shrugged. Our minuscule efforts were not going to change the world.
I moved to stand next to her, putting my hand on hers on the wheel. I changed the subject. “That was some pretty good navigation.”
She turned to look at me. She was tired, if not exhausted. “Where else would you want to be?”
I hadn’t realised she loved being in a boat, sailing. It was her other world; one I hadn’t known about. The boat we were on was hers, one of three.
It was just one of several revelations that I learned in the last week.
That she owned and ran a very successful legitimate internet business.
That she owned properties in five different countries, including the one we were heading to now.
That she collected vintage cars and had a museum.
That she shunned the limelight and preferred to blend in as just another ordinary person. I’d only seen her once in elegant clothes, her usual garb rarely changed from workout gear or simply jeans and polo shirts.
It made it all that more difficult for me to understand why she would be interested in me, and more so the potential harm I could do on the other side of the law.
Her father was certainly icy about the relationship, and a few of the others at the birthday bash had intimated that my ongoing relationship with her would cause an early demise.
Until her father put an end to it.
“Do you really own all this?” I waved my hand across the shoreline.
“Yes. As you say, it’s one of the few places on this earth that has not changed in the last thousand years.”
We had reached the edge of the Cove and as she rounded the point we could see the cave, actually one of six or seven though most were relatively shallow.
But that was not only what could be seen.
There were two people waiting by the cave, and when I looked at them through the binoculars, I could see they were not a welcoming committee.
“Are you expecting anyone to greet us on arrival?”
“No. I didn’t tell anyone but you we would be coming here.”
“Then make a detour, out of the sight line, and drop me off. Anchor there if you can, and I’ll go ask them. Politely, of course.”
Ten minutes later I was about to go over the side, and wade ashore. She handed me a gun, with a suppressor. “Just in case they don’t understand the word polite.”
So much for a new start in what we thought was going to be obscurity.
This is countryside somewhere inside the Lamington National Park in Queensland. It was one of those days where the rain come and went…
We were spending a week there, in the middle of nowhere on a working macadamia farm in a cottage, one of four, recuperating from a long exhausting lockdown.
It was not cold, and we were able to sit out of the verandah for most of the day, watching the rain come and pass over on its way up the valley, listing to the gentle pitter-patter of the rain on the roof and nearby leaves.
But as for inspiration:
This would be the ideal setting for a story about life, failed romance, or a couple looking to find what it was they lost.
It could be a story about recovering from a breakdown, or a tragic loss, to be anywhere else but in the middle of dealing with the constant reminders of what they had.
It could be a safe house, and as we all know, safe houses in stories are rarely safe houses, where it is given away by someone inside the program, or the person who it’s assigned to give it away because they can’t do as they’re supposed to; lay low.
Then there’s camping, the great outdoors, for someone who absolutely hates being outdoors, or those who go hunting, and sometimes become the hunted.
I saw the alien visitor tilt his head, as if someone had just whispered in his ear, if he had an ear that is, and then made a guttural sound.
Seconds later a beam appeared, and he or she, was gone.
“What just happened?” It was out before I could stop myself.
“I suspect he just beamed off our ship to his.”
The captain pushed a button on his desk communicator, and barked, “where is that foreign ship?”
The voice of the second officer came back, “just reappeared, then disappeared again, like it isn’t there, or we just can’t detect its presence.”
“This is like an old scifi show, sir. They have what I think was called cloaking.” It would be awesome if they did, but more awesome if we had it too.
Then another beam appeared, where the captain was sitting, and then he was gone too.
OK, now we were in trouble.
I ran to the desk and pushed that same button to get the attention of the bridge.
“That ship reappear?”
The second officer was quick to reply. “Yes.”
“And I take it, it has gone again?”
“Yes. What just happened?”
“Do a crew count, now. I’ll wait.”
In those next few moments a great many thoughts passed through my mind, not the least if which centred on one of our crew, there mostly to keep an eye on some of our systems.
The more obvious, that without the captain, I had just got a field promotion, one I was neither looking for, or had the experience or training to fulfil. I had been hoping over the next ten years to get both the trains and the experience.
After the seconds report my first action would be to call space command.
The second officers voice came back, “both the captain and Lieutenant Myers are both not aboard sir.”
I was expecting the obvious question but it didn’t come.
Lieutenant Myers was a nuclear scientist. The alien had been keeping us amused while his men captured the Lieutenant. And he was not chasing the pirates, he was the chief pirate.
Damn.
“Can we trace that ship?”
“I’ve got people working on it, but it seems so. It’s leaving a trail we can pick up on our sensors.”
“Good, get after it, and that’s an order.”
A minute later I could feel the gentle tug as we accelerated.
I pushed the button to get the second officer.
“Sir?”
“You have the bridge. Let me know our progress in about 15 minutes. I have a call to make.”
It seems that we can be completely focused on a single task to the detriment of all else, and, when that task is complete, suddenly we feel totally drained.
That’s how I feel right now.
The current year is almost half over… Where did the time go?
All I have to do is get past the publication of my next two books, take some time away from writing, and then I should be invigorated. Perhaps COVID will have something to do with it because it will be more of the same, rather than a brave new world, we will be counteracting new surges and variations with resultant isolations, so it will be more of a case of head down, tail up, with nowhere to go, no travel to plan, and not able to go anywhere other than the shops, the doctor or the chemist.
This is despite our fearless leaders telling us that COVID is no longer a problem. Sadly, for people with compromised immune systems, it is, and we are being thrown under the bus for the sake of getting the economy going again. What are a few lives for the greater good, eh?
And for computer programmers who never leave their semi-darkened lair, ordering pizza and Coke, it must have been a Godsend.
Given that I prefer to be at home, working on any number of stories, it usually is for me too.
But, have I been working too hard, and it’s finally got to me. I mean, you can only write so much before the brain starts to fry?
But, at the very least. I have been working on the two novels that needed to be completed, and they are finally there, and other than NaNoWriMo which saw another go through the mill I’m still writing a few pages a night, and another two that I have been working on here and there are now ready for the first edit.
This has all happened to the detriment of my episodic stories, which have lain idle since almost a year ago, but in recent weeks I picked up one or two and wrote two or three more episodes, just to keep it ticking over. Another has five episodes I hope to publish soon. The last I’ve finally finished and I am feeling pleased with myself. My editor has it now.
Something else that pleases me, and is entirely unexpected, is that I have sold a number of copies of my books in the last few months or so. I know I’m not about to be vying for the top of the bestseller list, but it’s still satisfying.
Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.
I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.
But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.
Once again there’s a new installment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.
…
A dark room, a dark woman, and a dark desire.
A very, very bad combination.
But in a moment where my brain must have switched off for at least ten seconds, I kissed her back, and that was a fatal mistake.
I closed my eyes and went with it. Until one or other or both of us decided this was not the time or the place.
And then she said something that really worried me.
“I’m sorry.”
She unbolted the door, opened it and we stepped out. Instantly the temperature dropped forty degrees.
And sanity returned.
I tried getting my mind back onto realistic matters, like leaving. “Do you think they might be waiting, just in case there is someone here, like us?”
“Then we have to go another way.”
“There is only one way, the way we came. It was a dead-end where the torture room is, and, apparently, where there’s a safe.”
“WE’RE not staying to find out, maybe another day. It’s time to leave before they possibly come back. There’s a back way in here.”
I followed her out of the room, up two offices, and then into what would be the middle office. It looked like a reception area, with dusty seats along the wall, under peeling wallpaper. At the back there was another door, shut. She opened it, and it led to a passage.
“The cells.”
“Like a jail?”
“Like rooms for the shoplifters awaiting their punishment.”
She stopped at a doorway and looked in. I saw her physically shudder, before moving on.
“Bad memories?” I asked.
“It might not have happened if I’d acted my age, but you know what it’s like. When you’re sixteen, you want to be twenty-one, and when you’re twenty-one, you want to be sixteen again. Trouble is, you can’t get back what you’ve lost.”
I wondered briefly if that something was innocence. Some people seemed to think I still had mine, but I wasn’t so sure.
The passage didn’t go very far before it turned right, and then to the top of another staircase. We went down, and then to the left again. From what I could remember, we were on the other side of the mall.
There was another door, and we went through it, and out into the mall itself. It was the second level, near the center where the garden was, and moments later we were at the railing looking down to the ground floor.
And a faint glow of light, moving around as if it was being carried by someone moving slowly towards the pond.
And voices.
“Look, Alex, there’s no one here. We’ve just done a circuit of this creepy place and found no one and nothing else to show there is anyone here.”
“I can feel it.
“That’s the coke you had, Alex. Turns you paranoid. Let’s get the hell out of here, before the guards get back.”
We moved back from the edge just in time as a stronger beam of light swept past just where we had been standing.
She had held my hand as we moved backward, and I could feel a tremor in it.
After another sweep of the beam, he said, “I swear someone’s here.”
“It’s a ghost. There are supposed to be a few. Ask your father. He’s responsible for at least three of them.”
“There’s no such thing as ghosts.”
“That’s your opinion.”
“Just shut up and let’s go, before I shoot you myself, and then you can talk to your friends.”
We waited ten minutes until there was a boom, the sound of a door slamming shut. They had left by the front entrance where there was a large, heavier door, beside the large main entrance.
“Time for us to go too, Smidge.”
Even so, she didn’t let my hand go, not until we got back to her car.
And when we were back, safely inside her room, she asked me to stay. She said nothing on the way back. The bravado she had shown was just that, and the last encounter, at the mall center had shaken her.
Perhaps I would stay until her nerves had settled.
