For a story that was conceived during those long boring hours flying in a steel cocoon, striving to keep away the thoughts that the plane and everyone in it could just simply disappear as planes have in the past, it has come a long way.
Whilst I have always had a fascination in what happened during the second world war, not the battles or fighting, but in the more obscure events that took place, I decided to pen my own little sidebar to what was a long and bitter war.
And, so, it continues…
We walked slowly towards the end of the passage, each time I passed a cell I had a look in, and noted if it had a prisoner or not. By the end of the passage, I counted six prisoners, and one was a woman.’
She just looked at me sullenly, and I guess if it was light enough, that look would be with pleading eyes. Sadly, I couldn’t save her, or the other five.
At the end of the corridor, we retraced our steps towards the hall, along the passage where I counted another three prisoners, then up the stairs to the ground level. We came out into a better-lit alcove with arches leading in three directions.
Straight ahead was the hall.
We turned to the left. Along another passage that seemed to run the length of the wall, what I thought was the stone battlement that made up one side of the castle, looking out over fields, with a village in the distance.
What I thought was the opposite side to the guard tower I’d been in earlier.
I tried to figure out if that’s where we were, and if my memory served me correctly, we were heading towards the wall that was built into the mountainside, in which case we’d go up another set of stairs, at the top of which would be an exit, or turning right, to a room that once served as the guards quarters, now used for kitchen supplies.
What else was here? My mind was blank.
Up the steps, so far I was right, ahead of a thick wooden door, locked, so we turned right and passed a small room. I’d forgotten it, but it was the radio room, wires leading out a small arrow slit window to the aerial. The man in front stumbled, then regained his gait.
I could hear the man behind me shaking his head.
“Halt,” the man behind me barked.
The man in front stopped dead, and I crashed into him. I felt rather than saw the fist come towards me; it was not for me, but the other guard, who, preoccupied with not falling, never saw it coming.
He went down like the proverbial ask of potatoes, no idea what happened.
My turn?
A hand landed on my shoulder, thrusting me towards the door to the storeroom. “Go, now. The door on the other side is open, head down to the creek and follow it. Someone will meet you.”
I half turned, “Who…”
“No time. Go. And shut the door behind you.” I felt him thrust a gun in my hand. “Hit me.”
I hesitated.
“Do it, or I’ll be shot.”
I shrugged and hit him. He slowly slid to the floor. A second glance, no, I didn’t know who he was, the headed for the back of the storeroom. The door was open. A cautious look before stepping out, I saw no one but heard breathing. Jack. How did the dog know I’d be here?
I closed the door behind me and heard the lock engage, then after a pat on Jack’s head, he led the way.
How many people do you know have their front door smashed in at the crack of dawn, followed by a swat team, armed to the teeth, swarming through the house ready to put down any resistance?
Just the suddenness of the cacophony of noise, the shouting, and the sheer threat of death, left me firstly shattered, and secondly, in fear of being accidentally killed, especially when there were six guns trained on me.
When the all-clear came, when no one else was discovered in the house, one of the suited men came back and motioned the six to take a step back and raise their weapons.
“Get up.”
If I was expected a ‘please’, or an apology, both would be a long time coming.
“Where is she?”
I barely had time to catch my breath and try to stop shaking. Six guns were still pointing in my direction, and those holding them no less wanted to shoot me for any reason whatsoever.
“Who?” There were two girls in this house.
“Don’t be obtuse, Mr. Jacobs. Obstruction will get you nothing but a stretch in prison with some very unsavoury characters. Where is she?”
The notion that they could be looking for Liz was as preposterous as the day was long. I had known her for five years, since we both left the same company, unhappy with the pay and conditions, and moved to a new company, deciding to stay together, first as a team, and then I was hoping would be something more intimate.
It had to be someone else, like the odd woman who had ingratiated herself with the group I was with, and ostensibly left the bar with me, but only as far as the car park. Perhaps, if we were being observed, it might have been construed as something else.
“Can you give me a name, at least?”
“Elizabeth Morgan.”
Liz? She designed computer games, and I helped with the programming. Other than that, she went to church every Sunday and visited her folks in the next county every second Saturday. I’d met them on numerous occasions, and they were just ordinary people.
“Why on earth would you be looking for her?”
“That’s classified, Mr. Jacobs. All you need to do is tell me where she is.”
“I don’t know. The last time we spoke, she was heading off to the market to get groceries.”
“Which was?”
“About an hour ago.”
A woman put her head in the door, and said, “she’s nowhere on the property, sir.”
I recognized her immediately as the woman in the bar, and suddenly realized she had been subtly interrogating me about Liz, trying to find out where she was, and why she wasn’t there with me.
She glared at me, then disappeared.
“Who are you?” I asked. “FBI, CIA, NSA?”
“Why would you assume that I’m from any of those agencies?”
“Your friend who put her head in the door. I might not have realized who she was last night, but I do now. You think Liz has committed some sort of cybercrime, don’t you?”
“So, you do know what she’s been up to?”
“No. But you just told me. And I suspect a man by the name of Champion has been feeding you scurrilous lies, but you don’t need to say anything more. You’re right, I do know what this is about, but I know whatever he said to you to get here isn’t true, but, then, he has more money or more low friends in even lower places than we have, so do your worst.”
Liz wasn’t a criminal, nor was she guilty of anything except claiming the rights to her property. Champion, though, always maintained that anything she created while working for him was his. True enough, we all signed the contract. But what she created was after she resigned and we were working on a new project together. Now, to get around that, he was claiming her work would be a violation of national security. It would, if it was in his hands, and that was never going to happen.
“It would be good for everyone if she just surrendered and pleaded her case if what you say is true.”
An interesting change in tactics.
I looked him up and down. Just the sort of man who would sell out to the highest bidder. Champion was good only at one thing, knowing how much a person would sell out his principles for, even his mother if it came down to it. Everyone had a price. Unfortunately for us, it would seem, he didn’t know ours.
He shrugged. “Perhaps so time in a dark hole might loosen your tongue.”
Dark hold indeed.
To be honest, I thought he was joking, but he was not.
I was put in a small room with no furniture or anything to sit or lie on. There was just a cold, damp and hard concrete floor, designed to make you so uncomfortable, you’d sell your soul just to get away from it.
There would be some hard choices to be made here. Would I sell out Liz, would I do everything I could to stop Champion who was intent, now that he had what he wanted, in getting rid of anyone who might have a claim.
She had said this was what would happen, and I didn’t believe her. No surprise then she was gone and didn’t tell me.
But if they were to ask me, and I was in that frame of mind to tell them everything I knew, there wasn’t much I could tell them. I think that’s what she had once told me was plausible deniability.
She had been trying to keep me safe, but didn’t realize that my captors didn’t really care whether I knew anything or nothing, they wouldn’t believe me and were going to extract the information they wanted by any and all means available.
Something I definitely wasn’t looking forward to.
It was impossible to stay awake. I was trying to, just in case they came and took me away while I was unconscious.
Despite the hard, uncomfortable floor, I fell into a fitful sleep, and it was appropriate that I would dream of Elizabeth.
I remembered the first time I met her, being introduced as an assistant programmer, the look of contempt she gave me, and the messenger. I’d never seen anyone that focussed on their work.
It took a month before she would let me look at the code, and then only small sections at a time. It was complex, and way beyond anything I had been involved with, which surprised me how it was I got the job.
She said, one morning, and I agreed, that a more experienced programmer was required.
Until I told her five lines of code needed a slight change otherwise there would be a rather interesting result. I was not only a programmer, I had once worked with a scientist whose field was space and time, not exactly time travel, but he theorized that we could move from one place to another through what were essentially wormholes.
I thought he was working on a script for a television show.
My job was to create a data warehouse, and while doing so, did some reading on the side.
I had also seen the coding behind a prototype machine that was supposed to create the wormhole, but it was too complex for me to understand.
But the code Elizabeth had was almost identical but mixed up. When I told her, she said I was an idiot who wouldn’t know what day it was, and demanded I leave.
Two days later she came to my apartment, apologized, asked me to return, and on the way asked a thousand questions.
At that time, I learned the scientist I worked for was her mentor, and that he was dead, ostensibly from a heart attack. She didn’t believe it, and that’s where I got my introduction to the arch-villain Champion.
From there it evolved into something more special, but the constraints of work and her idea of romance seemed to make it more like a rollercoaster ride and I didn’t press.
So, I was, for the time being, content with my dreams, one of which was playing in my head now.
She had appeared, coming through a sort of haze or distortion, and was standing above me, smiling.
It couldn’t be true, and yet it seemed so lifelike.
She knelt down and took my hand in hers, and whispered. “Wake up, sleepyhead, it’s time to go.”
I could smell the aroma of her perfume enveloping me.
When I went to open my eyes I found they were already open. I gently squeezed her hand, and it was real.
“Elizabeth?”
“Yes. Now. We really have to go.”
“Where?”
“Stand up, and I’ll show you.”
I let her pull me to my feet and she gave me a hug, and whispered in my ear, “I love you,”
Now I knew it was a dream. She had never intimated such feelings before.
I’d play along. “It’s impossible to escape this cell.”
“Is it?” She took a step towards the distortion, “Come.”
I followed. Then, the next moment, I was in the dining room of her apartment”
“What just happened?”
Before she could answer, I lost consciousness. Last thought, it was too good to be true.
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 instalment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.
The pier had been moving gently up and down in response to a passing speed boat that had flouted the minimum speed law, like most of the speed boat owners.
On board the boat, the movement was more pronounced, and it was a bad time to remember that I get seasick, even standing on the pier. My stomach was suddenly queasy.
Boggs was standing by the hatch that led down below. It was locked with a big padlock so there was no way we were getting below. Along the side of the boat was a raised section with windows, but there were curtained off, and the material was faded and looked dirty.
Boggs walked along the narrow walkway to the bow and tried the hatch in the middle of the foredeck.
I noticed the boat was tied to the pier fore and aft with some think rope and funny looking knots. I don’t think I’d make a very good sailor. I looked up to the top of the mast and it made me feel dizzy. It was a long way up.
Behind me was an area where people could seat, and further back a large wheel which I assumed was how the boat was steered. I could just see Rico standing behind it, captain’s hat on, looking all business-like.
“There’s nothing to see here,” I said, turning back towards Boggs, who was now coming along the other side of the cabin. One slip and he’d be in the ocean. I looked over the side and it didn’t look very deep. I could even see some small fish swimming near the pylon that was covered below the waterline with seaweed.
Boggs stopped at the last window, then knelt down and peered in.
“What do you see?”
“There’s someone in there?”
“Rico?”
“No. I saw him leave earlier. Someone else.”
“You know who it is?”
“No. Never seen him before. A guy in a suit. Not the sort of person I’d expect Rico to know, or have as a friend.”
“What’s he doing?”
Boggs changed his position to get a better look. “He’s just sitting…oh my God, there’s blood.”
“Where?”
I moved quickly over to where Boggs was crouched. “Give us a look?” Curiosity was overtaking concern.
“Oh my God, oh my God,” Boggs said over and over.
I pulled out my phone and dialled 911. When they asked me who I wanted, I said Police. Then I looked over at the fishing shop and saw Rico and his friends coming back.
“Boggs.”
He ignored me, trying to get a better view.
“Boggs. It’s Rico.”
Then the policeman answered, “What’s the nature of your emergency?”
“Dead man on a boat, Eden’s Landing, Pier 5, a boat called ‘Freedom Runner’. And you’d better hurry.”
“Why?”
“Because the owners coming and he doesn’t look happy.”
Then to Boggs, “We got to get the hell out of here, now.”
But, by that time, there was nowhere to go. Rico had seen us and was all but running to cut off our escape.
For a story that was conceived during those long boring hours flying in a steel cocoon, striving to keep away the thoughts that the plane and everyone in it could just simply disappear as planes have in the past, it has come a long way.
Whilst I have always had a fascination in what happened during the second world war, not the battles or fighting, but in the more obscure events that took place, I decided to pen my own little sidebar to what was a long and bitter war.
And, so, it continues…
We walked slowly towards the end of the passage, each time I passed a cell I had a look in, and noted if it had a prisoner or not. By the end of the passage, I counted six prisoners, and one was a woman.’
She just looked at me sullenly, and I guess if it was light enough, that look would be with pleading eyes. Sadly, I couldn’t save her, or the other five.
At the end of the corridor, we retraced our steps towards the hall, along the passage where I counted another three prisoners, then up the stairs to the ground level. We came out into a better-lit alcove with arches leading in three directions.
Straight ahead was the hall.
We turned to the left. Along another passage that seemed to run the length of the wall, what I thought was the stone battlement that made up one side of the castle, looking out over fields, with a village in the distance.
What I thought was the opposite side to the guard tower I’d been in earlier.
I tried to figure out if that’s where we were, and if my memory served me correctly, we were heading towards the wall that was built into the mountainside, in which case we’d go up another set of stairs, at the top of which would be an exit, or turning right, to a room that once served as the guards quarters, now used for kitchen supplies.
What else was here? My mind was blank.
Up the steps, so far I was right, ahead of a thick wooden door, locked, so we turned right and passed a small room. I’d forgotten it, but it was the radio room, wires leading out a small arrow slit window to the aerial. The man in front stumbled, then regained his gait.
I could hear the man behind me shaking his head.
“Halt,” the man behind me barked.
The man in front stopped dead, and I crashed into him. I felt rather than saw the fist come towards me; it was not for me, but the other guard, who, preoccupied with not falling, never saw it coming.
He went down like the proverbial ask of potatoes, no idea what happened.
My turn?
A hand landed on my shoulder, thrusting me towards the door to the storeroom. “Go, now. The door on the other side is open, head down to the creek and follow it. Someone will meet you.”
I half turned, “Who…”
“No time. Go. And shut the door behind you.” I felt him thrust a gun in my hand. “Hit me.”
I hesitated.
“Do it, or I’ll be shot.”
I shrugged and hit him. He slowly slid to the floor. A second glance, no, I didn’t know who he was, the headed for the back of the storeroom. The door was open. A cautious look before stepping out, I saw no one but heard breathing. Jack. How did the dog know I’d be here?
I closed the door behind me and heard the lock engage, then after a pat on Jack’s head, he led the way.
How many people do you know have their front door smashed in at the crack of dawn, followed by a swat team, armed to the teeth, swarming through the house ready to put down any resistance?
Just the suddenness of the cacophony of noise, the shouting, and the sheer threat of death, left me firstly shattered, and secondly, in fear of being accidentally killed, especially when there were six guns trained on me.
When the all-clear came, when no one else was discovered in the house, one of the suited men came back and motioned the six to take a step back and raise their weapons.
“Get up.”
If I was expected a ‘please’, or an apology, both would be a long time coming.
“Where is she?”
I barely had time to catch my breath and try to stop shaking. Six guns were still pointing in my direction, and those holding them no less wanted to shoot me for any reason whatsoever.
“Who?” There were two girls in this house.
“Don’t be obtuse, Mr. Jacobs. Obstruction will get you nothing but a stretch in prison with some very unsavoury characters. Where is she?”
The notion that they could be looking for Liz was as preposterous as the day was long. I had known her for five years, since we both left the same company, unhappy with the pay and conditions, and moved to a new company, deciding to stay together, first as a team, and then I was hoping would be something more intimate.
It had to be someone else, like the odd woman who had ingratiated herself with the group I was with, and ostensibly left the bar with me, but only as far as the car park. Perhaps, if we were being observed, it might have been construed as something else.
“Can you give me a name, at least?”
“Elizabeth Morgan.”
Liz? She designed computer games, and I helped with the programming. Other than that, she went to church every Sunday and visited her folks in the next county every second Saturday. I’d met them on numerous occasions, and they were just ordinary people.
“Why on earth would you be looking for her?”
“That’s classified, Mr. Jacobs. All you need to do is tell me where she is.”
“I don’t know. The last time we spoke, she was heading off to the market to get groceries.”
“Which was?”
“About an hour ago.”
A woman put her head in the door, and said, “she’s nowhere on the property, sir.”
I recognized her immediately as the woman in the bar, and suddenly realized she had been subtly interrogating me about Liz, trying to find out where she was, and why she wasn’t there with me.
She glared at me, then disappeared.
“Who are you?” I asked. “FBI, CIA, NSA?”
“Why would you assume that I’m from any of those agencies?”
“Your friend who put her head in the door. I might not have realized who she was last night, but I do now. You think Liz has committed some sort of cybercrime, don’t you?”
“So, you do know what she’s been up to?”
“No. But you just told me. And I suspect a man by the name of Champion has been feeding you scurrilous lies, but you don’t need to say anything more. You’re right, I do know what this is about, but I know whatever he said to you to get here isn’t true, but, then, he has more money or more low friends in even lower places than we have, so do your worst.”
Liz wasn’t a criminal, nor was she guilty of anything except claiming the rights to her property. Champion, though, always maintained that anything she created while working for him was his. True enough, we all signed the contract. But what she created was after she resigned and we were working on a new project together. Now, to get around that, he was claiming her work would be a violation of national security. It would, if it was in his hands, and that was never going to happen.
“It would be good for everyone if she just surrendered and pleaded her case if what you say is true.”
An interesting change in tactics.
I looked him up and down. Just the sort of man who would sell out to the highest bidder. Champion was good only at one thing, knowing how much a person would sell out his principles for, even his mother if it came down to it. Everyone had a price. Unfortunately for us, it would seem, he didn’t know ours.
He shrugged. “Perhaps so time in a dark hole might loosen your tongue.”
Dark hold indeed.
To be honest, I thought he was joking, but he was not.
I was put in a small room with no furniture or anything to sit or lie on. There was just a cold, damp and hard concrete floor, designed to make you so uncomfortable, you’d sell your soul just to get away from it.
There would be some hard choices to be made here. Would I sell out Liz, would I do everything I could to stop Champion who was intent, now that he had what he wanted, in getting rid of anyone who might have a claim.
She had said this was what would happen, and I didn’t believe her. No surprise then she was gone and didn’t tell me.
But if they were to ask me, and I was in that frame of mind to tell them everything I knew, there wasn’t much I could tell them. I think that’s what she had once told me was plausible deniability.
She had been trying to keep me safe, but didn’t realize that my captors didn’t really care whether I knew anything or nothing, they wouldn’t believe me and were going to extract the information they wanted by any and all means available.
Something I definitely wasn’t looking forward to.
It was impossible to stay awake. I was trying to, just in case they came and took me away while I was unconscious.
Despite the hard, uncomfortable floor, I fell into a fitful sleep, and it was appropriate that I would dream of Elizabeth.
I remembered the first time I met her, being introduced as an assistant programmer, the look of contempt she gave me, and the messenger. I’d never seen anyone that focussed on their work.
It took a month before she would let me look at the code, and then only small sections at a time. It was complex, and way beyond anything I had been involved with, which surprised me how it was I got the job.
She said, one morning, and I agreed, that a more experienced programmer was required.
Until I told her five lines of code needed a slight change otherwise there would be a rather interesting result. I was not only a programmer, I had once worked with a scientist whose field was space and time, not exactly time travel, but he theorized that we could move from one place to another through what were essentially wormholes.
I thought he was working on a script for a television show.
My job was to create a data warehouse, and while doing so, did some reading on the side.
I had also seen the coding behind a prototype machine that was supposed to create the wormhole, but it was too complex for me to understand.
But the code Elizabeth had was almost identical but mixed up. When I told her, she said I was an idiot who wouldn’t know what day it was, and demanded I leave.
Two days later she came to my apartment, apologized, asked me to return, and on the way asked a thousand questions.
At that time, I learned the scientist I worked for was her mentor, and that he was dead, ostensibly from a heart attack. She didn’t believe it, and that’s where I got my introduction to the arch-villain Champion.
From there it evolved into something more special, but the constraints of work and her idea of romance seemed to make it more like a rollercoaster ride and I didn’t press.
So, I was, for the time being, content with my dreams, one of which was playing in my head now.
She had appeared, coming through a sort of haze or distortion, and was standing above me, smiling.
It couldn’t be true, and yet it seemed so lifelike.
She knelt down and took my hand in hers, and whispered. “Wake up, sleepyhead, it’s time to go.”
I could smell the aroma of her perfume enveloping me.
When I went to open my eyes I found they were already open. I gently squeezed her hand, and it was real.
“Elizabeth?”
“Yes. Now. We really have to go.”
“Where?”
“Stand up, and I’ll show you.”
I let her pull me to my feet and she gave me a hug, and whispered in my ear, “I love you,”
Now I knew it was a dream. She had never intimated such feelings before.
I’d play along. “It’s impossible to escape this cell.”
“Is it?” She took a step towards the distortion, “Come.”
I followed. Then, the next moment, I was in the dining room of her apartment”
“What just happened?”
Before she could answer, I lost consciousness. Last thought, it was too good to be true.
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 instalment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.
The pier had been moving gently up and down in response to a passing speed boat that had flouted the minimum speed law, like most of the speed boat owners.
On board the boat, the movement was more pronounced, and it was a bad time to remember that I get seasick, even standing on the pier. My stomach was suddenly queasy.
Boggs was standing by the hatch that led down below. It was locked with a big padlock so there was no way we were getting below. Along the side of the boat was a raised section with windows, but there were curtained off, and the material was faded and looked dirty.
Boggs walked along the narrow walkway to the bow and tried the hatch in the middle of the foredeck.
I noticed the boat was tied to the pier fore and aft with some think rope and funny looking knots. I don’t think I’d make a very good sailor. I looked up to the top of the mast and it made me feel dizzy. It was a long way up.
Behind me was an area where people could seat, and further back a large wheel which I assumed was how the boat was steered. I could just see Rico standing behind it, captain’s hat on, looking all business-like.
“There’s nothing to see here,” I said, turning back towards Boggs, who was now coming along the other side of the cabin. One slip and he’d be in the ocean. I looked over the side and it didn’t look very deep. I could even see some small fish swimming near the pylon that was covered below the waterline with seaweed.
Boggs stopped at the last window, then knelt down and peered in.
“What do you see?”
“There’s someone in there?”
“Rico?”
“No. I saw him leave earlier. Someone else.”
“You know who it is?”
“No. Never seen him before. A guy in a suit. Not the sort of person I’d expect Rico to know, or have as a friend.”
“What’s he doing?”
Boggs changed his position to get a better look. “He’s just sitting…oh my God, there’s blood.”
“Where?”
I moved quickly over to where Boggs was crouched. “Give us a look?” Curiosity was overtaking concern.
“Oh my God, oh my God,” Boggs said over and over.
I pulled out my phone and dialled 911. When they asked me who I wanted, I said Police. Then I looked over at the fishing shop and saw Rico and his friends coming back.
“Boggs.”
He ignored me, trying to get a better view.
“Boggs. It’s Rico.”
Then the policeman answered, “What’s the nature of your emergency?”
“Dead man on a boat, Eden’s Landing, Pier 5, a boat called ‘Freedom Runner’. And you’d better hurry.”
“Why?”
“Because the owners coming and he doesn’t look happy.”
Then to Boggs, “We got to get the hell out of here, now.”
But, by that time, there was nowhere to go. Rico had seen us and was all but running to cut off our escape.
So there are words on paper, and three times I’ve tried to fix it, or, perhaps just make it sound better because reading it in my head, there’s too little background and too many questions.
The flow of the story isn’t working for me, so I guess it’s time to sit down and work out what it is I’m trying to say.
The notion that our main character, Graham, is a loser seems to shine through, and that’s not what I’m trying to portray him as. No, far from it, it’s been a lifetime of bad choices that have put him where he is, and he knows it.
So, in part, this is about owning your mistakes, and it’s my job to make him come across as a hero in waiting. There’s good in him, perhaps too much, but there is also that attitude that led to all those bad choices, the one that can get him into trouble, and a sort of intransigence inherited from his father, that has more or less got him ostracised from the family.
I want this character to be a chop off the old block, both of whom are the type not to back down, not to say sorry, and, to quote a rather apt allegory, would cut their nose off to spite their face.
Graham’s intransigence led to his refusal to follow his father into business, refusal to go to University despite having the necessary qualifications, and just to round out the defiance, his choice of women whom he knew would meet with family disapproval.
And these factors, over a period of time, saw him bounce from a low-paying job to jobs with no prospects, and a string of failed relationships, until this moment in time, where he was basically on his own, working the graveyard shift as a security guard. The sort of job where qualifications weren’t looked for and workmates looked like and probably were ex-cons.
There are a few more details like the older brother, Jackson, politician and schemer, the same as his father before him (the seat was passed down through the family), like the younger sister who is a highly successful surgeon, married into immense wealth. His brother had been less successful in the marital stakes but what he lacked in a wife was more than made up with a string of highly eligible and beautiful women.
And, no, he doesn’t resent the fact they’re rich, or that his parents were, too, just that they treated him with contempt.
It was almost five years since the last time he had seen any of them, that last time he attended the family Christmas in Martha’s Vineyard, the ‘Stockdale Residence’ an ostentatious sprawling fifty-room mansion that, in a drunken rage, he’s tried to burn down.
Once again, he had not received an invitation to the next, due in a few days, and it was not entirely unexpected.
Graham has his faults, but that even, five years ago, had pulled him off the road to self-destruction, helped along by a year stint in jail where he learned a great many lessons about life itself, and survival.
The four years since?
A lot of regrets, and a lot of repentance. Life after jail was a lot worse than life trying to defy the family and the system. There were two roads he could have gone down, and thankfully for him, it was not the wrong one.
So, he’s back on the path, a whole lot wiser, a whole lot tougher.
That might not have been exactly what I was thinking for him over the first three attempts. I don’t think any character really begins to shine until halfway through, as you find him meeting various challenges in ways even you, as the writer, find quite unexpected.
Is that the end result of being a pantser over being a planner?
I don’t think, even as a planner, you can create a character that’s not going to change, or even surprise you, as the story evolves.
And somehow I don’t think I’m about to change from one to the other.
This is a story inspired by a visit to an old castle in Italy. It was, of course, written while travelling on a plane, though I’m not sure if it was from Calgary to Toronto, or New York to Vancouver.
But, there’s more to come. Those were long flights…
And sadly when I read what I’d written, off the plane and in the cold hard light of dawn, there were problems, which now in the second draft, should provide the proper start.
They always come for you just before dawn.
I could hear the words being spoken by Sergeant Major during lesson one of torture training. Not us giving it to them, but them giving it to us. Why? For some reason at that hour of the morning, you were still asleep, or half asleep, and totally unprepared.
So, lesson number one, if you found yourself in that situation, waiting, you needed to prepare.
Easy to say, not so easy to do. He then went on to outline the methods to employ when faced with an imminent interrogation. The problem was, he also told us the methods that would be employed, and that was basically terrifying. I saw men stronger than me wilting at the thought.
And, right there, sitting in that cold cell, it was not only the cold that was making me shiver.
I wasn’t a brave man. I think sometimes I might classify myself as stupid, and with a devil may care attitude, to life and other situations; in war, every day could be your last, but I’d always considered it would be a bomb or a bullet.
Something instant, with no time to go through an agonising process of extreme pain, before dying. Everything that went against the purpose of torture.
But not today.
I heard the sound of a key turning in a lock, in a door that was at the other end of the passage, the sound of the captors coming.
For me? Or for someone else?
Was it selfish of me to want it to be someone else?
The door swung open with a groan, it had been oiled, but the rust was still thick enough to impede progress. I was glad of it, it gave me time to compose myself. I think by then I had convinced myself it was time. Wallace wasn’t happy I was still alive, and I suspect Johansson had stopped Jackerby killing me for him because I had useful information.
That usefulness would end if I didn’t co-operate.
I could hear the boots on cobbles coming towards my cell, then felt, rather than saw the guards.
I stood and took several steps back from the door. I could see one of the guards had a gun, trained on me, ready to shoot if I tried anything, flattered that someone thought I might try to resist or escape. I had given it some thought, weighed the possibilities, and the odds were I’d be shot before I got 10 yards.
“Don’t try anything or you will be shot.” Surprisingly unaccented English, but an unsurprising threat.
A different guard, standing back from the door, key in hand, and in the light so that I could see him. Why? This one didn’t look German, and he was someone I hadn’t seen before, obviously one of the new arrivals.
Jackerby’s handpicked torture squad?
The door was unlocked and swung outwards, held onto by the man who issued the threat.
The other guard had stepped back two paces. “Follow him. I’ll be right behind. Don’t try anything.”
He didn’t have to add anything to that command. He was seven inches taller and 60 pounds plus heavier than I was. Implied message understood.
I have an electronic notebook on my smartphone and writing pads at the ready at home in my office/writing room/library.
As soon as one hits, I get it down, either on paper or on the phone app. I use SomNote as it’s easy to export the text to an email or have a version of the app running on my computer and just copy and paste. SomNote is great because I can use it anywhere.
Of course, it doesn’t work so well in the shower, so I’m still waiting for a waterproof phone. Or perhaps it can wait for a few minutes until I’m finished.
But the trouble with that is, these ideas come so quickly and are sometimes so vivid that they need to be put down as quickly as possible. I have come up with the perfect dialogue for a tricky scene and played it all out in my head, and by the time I got to the paper, it was almost gone.
Perhaps a whiteboard and a permanent marker on the wall.
Or is that going too far?
A long time ago, I received a portable tape recorder for a present, you know, the one you can hold in your hand, and the tapes so small you wonder how much will fit on it. The gifter said that when ideas came to me, all I had to do was speak. It was also voice-activated.
Needless to say that conjured up a few ideas right there.
But I used it, but I found it quite weird to be talking, ostensibly to myself, in the car whilst driving home, or going to, work, and the curious looks I’d get from others. One thing it did teach me was that when a conversation was replayed, it would sound ok or like most of the time, hardly what one expected a conversation would really be like.
So, because of that device, I learned to read out all conversations, and if they sounded stupid, they were.
So, ideas come in the shower, ideas come while driving, ideas come when reading the newspaper, and ideas even come when reading books.
This leads me to another point that I learned early on. Writers must read. Not only novels of their chosen genre, but any reference books that go with it. The research was, a friend and more successful author than I told me, was mandatory.
So too was the reading to the classics, old English, and sometimes American, literature, to gain an appreciation for the written word. We might not follow those styles, but we can learn the majesty of the English language.
That author taught me a lot, though at the time I didn’t realize it. Perhaps I thought I was already smart enough to write, but I’m guessing that it took a long time before I felt my writing was worth reading before publishing it.
I don’t profess to have a full understanding of the language. I might have loved that school subject called English, and later in university, creative writing, and literature, but not all of it soaked in. But writing is one of those odd things, that it can take many forms and styles, but at the end of the day, if the reader understands where the story is going, and when at the end, is satisfied that it was ‘a good read’, then the author’s work is done.
The only trouble is, getting the next idea, and then they were able to write a second book, or third. It is said everyone has one book in them. For those who can write more, well, that might be what might be called, a gift.
My trouble is that I have too many ideas, too many starts, and brief outlines to work with, I don’t know which story to start on next. I guess being spoilt for choice is a good thing, yes?
It started with a phone call, a phone call that I never expected to get.
I was one of those people who went through life, almost invisible. It was not what I wanted, it just happened.
I was not the sociable sort, at school I tended to spend my time studying and then being labeled a nerd, I didn’t make friends, except for those who wanted help with their homework.
Few friends in elementary school, fewer in middle school, and none in college, that is no one that you could call a true friend. They were more acquaintances that were there for the help I could give them, but no one that would invite me to parties, or to just hang out.
That continues on into university. Except there were several new acquainted that were a little more than that, though not quite BFFs.
There was one, in particular, Anna, who was one of the study group, the one who needed the most help, someone who had been wavering on returning after the first year.
My trouble was that I liked her more than she liked me, my opinion of course, based on what I called the indifference factor, but perhaps I had more expectations than she did
She was doing uni because it was expected of her, not because she wanted to be there. She could take it or leave it, and the last time I spoke to her, she was going to leave.
And when she left to go back home, it was the last time I expected to see or hear from her.
Until that phone call.
“What are you doing this weekend?”
A dumb question, nothing of course, but I wouldn’t tell her that. I was still in shock that Anna would call me, for anything other than school, if at all.
“Not a lot.”
“Good. How would you like to housesit with me?”
House sit? Surely she had a dozen others who would do anything for her. She was that popular and well-liked. And would probably be far more amusing than I ever could be.
“If you like. I had no idea you did house minding.”
“I don’t, but an aunt is going away for the weekend, and she wants someone to look after the cat. I hope you like cats. And gardens. It has a nice garden.”
Cats I could take or leave. Gardens, it was probably a birdbath, two beds of roses, a large tree with a seat under it, and neighbors peering over the fence.
But it was a weekend somewhere else other than my little room, and Anna would be there. Maybe I could try to get past my shyness and actually talk to her.
“OK. I’m in. Do I need to bring anything?”
“No. I’ll send you the address and see you there at 5 pm. Friday.”
Why did I get the feeling I was being set up?
That feeling of impending doing followed me down the path from the front gate to the front door.
Far from the house being a small thatch cottage, based on the address she gave me, it turned out to be a three-story manor house with a large outhouse that looked to be once a stable and coach house
It seemed far too large to be a house for one person.
When I rang the doorbell, I expected a butler to answer the door, but it was Anna herself.
“Nice place,” I said.
“Too large and too hard to maintain. Were trying to convince her that she would be better off in something smaller. But you should see the back.”
Based on the front garden which could happily grace the front cover of any country living magazine, I couldn’t wait.
She let me pass and closed the door behind us. It sounded like the vault was closing and there would be no damage until the timer released the locks.
Inside, the whole place reeked of heritage and antiques, and the personality of its owner. The walls had paintings, table tops had old magazines, the seats worn leather, and worn carpet squares covered floorboards that creaked when you walked on them.
At the end of a long corridor was the kitchen at the end if the house, after passing several sitting and dining rooms. It was a very large house and raised a very important question.
She had not mentioned any family or relatives with anything like the wealth this house exuded. In fact, she had often implied that she was just an ordinary person.
This was anything but ordinary.
I caught up with her on the back patio, just off a large sunroom, to view what had to be an acre or more of manicured laws, garden beds, and trees. All it was missing was a maze.
“Do you actually have a secret life?”
“I was always told not to advertise our wealth.”
“Isn’t showing me this, a form of advertising? After all, I’m apparently from the wrong side of the tracks.”
“I trust you.”
“But you don’t know me, or anything about me.”
“Why do you think you’re here?”
If I wanted to make an educated guess, my first thought was to set me up for something, for the very reason she was aloof, and people like her, and those she kept company with, were not people like me associated with.
I was surprised not to see the two girls I’d once nicknamed ‘the dynamic duo’, Melissa and Winona, with her. Maybe they would turn up later.
My second thought, the most improbable reason, was that she wanted to get to know me, but, why choose a place like this? To make me feel small, grateful, impressed? Ten minutes in a Cafe was all she needed to find out what she needed to know about me.
An alarm bell went off when I asked her where I could get a drink of water, and she said, the kitchen, but didn’t really know where it was. I got an instant bad feeling.
That was followed by a bang that I thought came from the rear of the house.
“Did you hear that?” I asked.
“You hear all sorts of noises in places like these.”
If she wasn’t worried, neither was I.
Then the door chime rang.
“You expecting more visitors?” My internal fear factor was rising exponentially.
“No, but I’d better find out who it is, just in case.”
I shrugged and headed towards where she indicated the kitchen was, the rear of the house, what I would call an educated guess
After I found the kitchen, not technically at the rear, I returned to find my worst fears had come true. Not only the dynamic duo but also their boyfriends, Chad and Lester, two of the worst bullies from school days.
“Well, look who it is.” Chad was particularly menacing.
A glance to the side, it was hard to tell if Anna was looking pleased or neutral, but she wasn’t surprised. I glanced in Anna’s direction and all I got was a tilt of her head.
“Shouldn’t you be down the country club trying to prove you’re a new version of your drunken bully of a father?”
His smile turned into a very angry look. “Don’t go there, Scanlon.”
“Why are you here then?”
I expected to hear Anna had invited them. Instead, “we’re here to make sure Anna doesn’t make a mistake.”
“I don’t need your help or advice Chad. In fact, you should leave.”
None of the four looked like they had any intention of leaving. “Not until we’ve impressed upon both of you, the error of your ways. We thought you were smarter than this or did Scanlon force himself on you?”
She shook her head, not necessarily in anger, but more in despair. “I don’t know where you get your ideas from Chad, but you are very much mistaken. So, I will only say this once more, Chad,” she added quietly, “otherwise you will find yourself in a world of pain. Leave now while you still can.”
Chad, being Chad, was the master of ceremonies, puffed up as he had been in the schoolyard when he was about the unleash his gang on some poor misguided fool, usually me, or one of three others. But it was Melissa who spoke instead, “You go teach Scanlon a lesson outside by the pool while we have a talk to Anna.”
Lester took the cue, came over, and grabbed me by the shoulder. I thought about trying to shrug him off, but Chad was across the room before I could initiate anything. Best to leave calmly and sort it out outside.
I gave Anna a last look, but she was wearing her poker face. Had she set this up? It seemed as though she hadn’t, but then, it didn’t look like she was worried about the dynamic duo.
I shrugged.
Intentional or not, Chad and Lester were about to learn a very valuable lesson, and revenge, at least on them, was going to be sweet.
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 