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At Every End There Lies A New Beginning


So here it is - the big announcement. Hope you're ready for this...

As some of you may be aware, I have recently started work on a new writing project. On many occasions recently, I wrestled with the dilemma of whether it was a good idea to re-visit the place I thought I had finished with a little over a year ago.

But here I am, firmly back there again. Yes, my friends, I can finally confirm that we are going back to Wildermoor!

I may have written the end of the Apocalypse tale there, but there's so much left to tell. In particular, the burning question - what would happen in a place that had witnessed its end of days?

Let's cover the basic details first. This new book - titled POISON IN THE WELL - is not going to be a stand-alone novel, but part of a brand-new trilogy called The Wildermoor Resurrection and set eighteen years after the end of the Wildermoor Apocalypse. My plans at the moment are for at least the first book - if not the whole trilogy - to be told from the perspective of a new lead character, eighteen-year-old Zero Morden.

You may recognise the surname from another character of mine, particularly if you have read the final part of the Wildermoor apocalypse trilogy, OF GODS & INSECTS.

I won't divulge many more details at this stage, mainly because the book only sits around the 13,000-word mark at the moment, so is very much in its infancy and a hell of a lot more story yet to come to the fore.

But to get you in the mood, I am treating you to two chapters from the story so far. True to form, one of these is an 'interlude' chapter, which my readers may have noticed I like to use in my books to pad out the backstory a little. I hope it works.

So with a deep breath and nerves on red alert, I present to you the first glimpse of POSION IN THE WELL...

Enjoy!

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Chapter One

I remember the white light.

It was all around me. It warmed me, soothed me. Its substance felt so thick that it was supporting my own weight. I was laid there, bathing in its brightness. I was not aware of any surface below me holding me up. I felt weightlessness.

Peace.

I closed my eyes, held my breath. Once I opened my eyes again, the vastness of the white landscape was still around me. I repeated the practice countless times, maybe for an eternity. The result remained the same every time I opened my eyes.

Well, almost every time.

On one occasion, the most recent, I looked around me and I noticed something different. I couldn’t understand what had changed immediately, just that there had been a shift of some kind. And I was suddenly afraid. Darkness started to seep in from the invisible corners of the white landscape. With it, I felt a chill beneath me.

I remained horizontal, as if I were lying on my back, but suddenly aware that there was nothing beneath me. The weightlessness gave way to a great pressure, bearing down on me from above. I was falling, but I realised it only too late. My stomach felt as though it were shrinking at a blistering speed, then rising to become lodged in my throat.

I opened my mouth and tried to scream, only to find that I couldn’t utter a sound. I couldn’t even breathe. The light that had soothed me for however long I was in that world was now rushing past me, rattling my ear drums to the point that I feared they would burst. I was suffocating.

And then I heard the whispers from somewhere above me. At first I couldn’t hear them clearly, did not recognise any word they were uttering. But the further I fell, the louder they became.

Fear coursed through me. I was now aware of how much my body was already aching. I closed my eyes, willing it to end, knowing full well that I had to reach the bottom of this abyss at any second. I clenched my eyes shut even harder, thinking that my skin was drawn tight enough to start to tear from my bones. My limbs would not move. I simply lay there and waited for the end.

Then it all stopped.

I tried to open my eyes again, but they were now so heavy that it took every morsel of energy to lift the lids. Was it fear itself that was trying to keep them closed? I somehow knew I was now somewhere different, but I believe that my mind didn’t really want to find out where.

I felt tired. Beyond tired, utterly exhausted. Finally my eyes opened but only a hazy film coated my sight. A mixture of white, grey and yellow floated past me. My head lolled limply from side to side as I tried to get my eyes to paint some kind of picture, freeing my mind from the cocophony of confusion that was now setting in.

The whispers returned too. Only this time, louder and clearer. But just as comforting as the bright light had been.

‘Can you hear me, dear?’

My eyes were open but I still saw nothing. I focused with all of my might, dragging all of the colours and shapes together. I felt a sound resonate from my chest. It made me jump before I realised that it was indeed me, though I had no clue as to what I was trying to say.

‘That’s it, come back to us,’ the voice said again. I knew the face from which it came was floating above me, but I could still not make out any features. I focused harder, making my temples throb.

But it worked. As if I were somehow tinkering with the inner aerial of my mind, as we once did with our TV’s before the digital age, I slowly tuned in to the world around me. The woman’s face was beautiful, warm. Her eyes glowed a shade of brown I had not seen before. I felt at ease only for a few moments. The halo around her head became a head of blonde hair, pulled tightly back into what must have been a ponytail behind. She wore no make-up.

Our eyes met and she smiled briefly, before hers darted to one side and she spoke to another person who was not in my vision.

‘He’s coming to, doctor. He’s okay.’

I tried to move my head from side to side, desperate to take in as much as I could, aching to know where I was. My head started to buzz, making my ears ring. But my head wouldn’t move. It was only then that I became aware of the collar holding my head in place. I quickly also realised that I could move none of my limbs.

The panic set in but I couldn’t scream. Only a strangled, gurgled cry sounded from my drooling mouth. The sound embarrassed me. This wasn’t me. I felt shame almost immediately, giving my mind something else to focus on so that I didn’t notice the paint as the blonde woman removed the first needle from the back of my hand.

‘Just relax and try to stay still. You’ve been through a lot, but you’re going to be fine now.’

I tried to nod, but instead only stared at her dumbly. She looked again at whomever the ‘doctor’ was that she had addressed the moment before, and then looked at me again.

‘We will take you through to the ward now.’

I felt the world beneath me move again. I focused only on the movements above me, the rows of strip lights dancing by at increasing speed. The sight of them lulled me back to sleep.

*****

I was back in the weightless, white world again. Only this time, the sense of confusion was not there. I knew where I was only too well. It was a memory that replayed itself to me every time I closed my eyes. It was more than just routine now. However, despite its familiarity, the sights, sounds and smells were all too real, as if I were living them for the very first time.

Which in a sense was exactly what was happening.

A mixture of red, black and yellow danced above me. My head lolled limply from side to side as I tried to get my eyes to paint some kind of picture, freeing my mind from the barrage of confusion that was now pounding inside my head.

The whispers returned too. Only this time, louder and clearer. And they were no longer whispers. The sound that first entered my ears then was incoherent, but savage. Shouts, screams, snorts…something altogether horrid. I remember a hand around my neck, pulling me up from the warm place in which I longed to remain. The cold hit my naked body, awakening every sense that had until then lay dormant. The cold turned to confusion as I was wrapped in a dirty shroud.

I should have been warm again, at peace. But I was scared. I tried to cry out, but my lungs ached. No sound would come. Then the world around me started to move, shaking violently.

From behind my eyelids, I could tell that I was then transported to a different place, somewhere even darker, somewhere away from the chaos that was ensuing around me. The horrifying sounds faded until the only sound I could hear was of someone breathing.

Again, it should have comforted me. But even then I knew that something wasn’t right, that this wasn’t how it had been intended.

That was my first day back on this earth; snatched from the belly of the one person who should have been there to welcome me. My mother was left to die on a rusty table. Maybe she was already dead even before I left her body.

I don’t believe that it should be possible for anyone to remember their first moments of their lives. I call it my curse. One that I’m sorry to say has followed me ever since.

*****

The muffled images began to fade once more as the all-encompassing light returned, bathing me in its warmth for only a moment before it too dissipated and I could feel the weight of my own body again. My eyes prised themselves open and the haze eventually cleared.

I was in a world of white again, yes…but not the one that brought me comfort. The cold, clean colourless walls of the hospital room made me feel queasy. The pictures all began to form as my head lolled from side to side. There was no-one there with me. I was alone.

Again. Just as I had always seemed to be.

I inhaled deeply, wincing at the pain that shot through my sides. I closed my eyes again briefly, chasing the pain away. My mind buzzed with too many questions, awakening every sense I had but at the same time dizzying me. Unable to cope with the inertia as the room around me started to spin out of control, I turned my head and vomited on the floor.

Then I heard footsteps coming towards me.

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INTERLUDE

O Father, Where Art Thou?

As I have already mentioned, I have been blessed – or cursed – with an abnormally acute memory system. I can remember my first hours in this skin, and I could write possibly recall at least one event from ninety-nine percent of my days so far. But memories of my father actually being like a normal dad are less common.

For my fourth birthday, he bought me my first bike. It was red, with a cartoon monster faceplate sitting on the front between the handlebars. We celebrated the day, just the two of us, tucked away in the cabin that served as our home at the time. Surrounded by a vast and silent forest, I should have been in heaven. After our meal of baked bean chilli – one of his few culinary masterpieces – he brought out the cake. He had tried to decorate it himself and it showed. One half of Thomas the Tank Engine’s face had started to slide south, giving the impression that he had been inflicted with Bell’s palsy. The cake itself was dense and dry, but I loved it because he had tried. He was trying to be the dad that he so desperately wanted, and that he constantly told me that I deserved.

I never hated him for being absent, because physically he wasn’t. Until I turned eleven, I was never away from him. But his job kept us from being the family that we should have been.

But it was more than a job. It consumed him. It was near impossible for me to ever explain to any of the scattered people that I ever met what my father did for work. For so many years I simply didn’t know. The only thing I knew was that I had to absorb any day – any moment – when we were stationary, with any hint of settling somewhere, because before I knew it we would be running again.

It was the same old story. In the dead of night, my father would wake me and carry my sleep body to the car. He would be frighteningly calm. Our bags would already be packed, stored away in the corner of his room or in his wardrobe if our current abode afforded it. He always knew that wherever we ended up, it wouldn’t be permanent.

On a few occasions, we were followed. I remember peering out of the back window of his speeding saloon car once – I can’t recall which model it was exactly, as he often ditched whatever vehicle we had shortly before we found our new residence – hearing the mad roar of the black car’s engine as it sped towards us, its headlights dazzling me. My father was a deft navigator, however, and knew where pretty much every overgrown lane would take us, always managing to throw our assailants off course.

But it wouldn’t last forever.

That’s why my fourth birthday always stuck with me; it was the first time I realised that the life we had was far from the one that my father wanted for us. He was simply doing what he had to do. But as the years wore on, the less I felt I knew him. It wasn’t that I felt more distant from him; as I say, he wasn’t exactly an absent father. I just became more aware of the fact that I didn’t actually know who he was.

I was never enrolled in school. I hardly ever made friends. Even those I did get remotely close to would quickly disappear from the scene. I never saw them or heard from them again. We often moved miles away shortly after, with no explanation to me why or where we were headed.

I guess as a kid, I never needed to know too much. I just accepted that that was my life, and thought I was no different to anyone else. It was as if my father did everything to protect me from what was considered normal. He shunned society, for a reason that was unbeknownst to me for my entire childhood. The way he reacted when other people were around, when anyone from what he considered to be the ‘outside world’ stumbled into our – his – little bubble, was just plain scary to a child.

In the end I found a way to block it all out. I began to wonder whether we were two of only a handful of people in the world. Of course, some familiar faces did come and go sporadically, one of them being the man known as The Caretaker, the dark stranger that was waiting for me that night upon my return to Spinwood. I hardly ever saw my father talk to these people, for when they arrived they would disappear into his office. No matter how small the homes that we occupied over the years my father always ensured he had a space of his own, dedicated to his work. I was never allowed in there. Whenever I asked questions about his office, or his work, he would simply tell me that I didn’t need to know. Or that he would tell me one day, when I was old enough to understand.

He never did.

When I was eleven-years-old, I started to see my father less and less. He travelled abroad more and, unlike the early years when he would take me everywhere – to places that to a wide-eyed impressionable child looked like something out of a fairy tale or comic book – he left me behind. I would be sent to a stately home somewhere in the heart of the country – I never really knew where it was, despite my efforts in my later teenage years – for my schooling, mainly. The place resembled a boarding school, except for the fact that I was the only student. The same teacher took me through each of my lessons; a crone-like old lady called Mrs Stepson. Her grey hair pulled tight into a bun, pulling at her temples so that the corners of her eyes narrowed, making her look suspicious of my every move. A thin pair of spectacles rested on the edge of a hooked nose. Her blouse was buttoned up to her chin, making it look as though she had no neck. And she was ever-so-tall.

She scared me. But I knew that my education was massively important to my father. Otherwise, why would he have gone through the trouble and obvious expense to send me to that place? Whatever reasoning or plan behind it, it worked. I left there a few months after my sixteenth birthday. I may not have had official certificates to display my intelligence, as I could not sit the academically-recognised exams, but they told me how well I had done and I believed them.

I could feel the difference having received their kind of education too. When I saw my father again, my mind was afire with questions. Not just aimed at him and what he had been doing, but about everything I had learnt. I wanted to know more about the world – the world that he had tried to hide from me.

The only problem was, each time I saw him after that – sometimes months at a time in between – he would tell me less. He still didn’t talk about his work, where he had been, what he had seen. He didn’t even say he loved me. And that was when it really hit me; I had never heard him say that. I couldn’t even remember him giving me a cuddle when I cried or felt scared. Any affection or assurance he ever offered me was from a distance.

I had no idea what it felt the touch of another human being felt like. The only ones who had ever shown me anything like that – even just a quick shake of my hand – were those who left my life just as suddenly as they had arrived.

I should have hated him, but I couldn’t. How could I when I wasn’t even sure if I had been given the chance to truly love him?

But this was the hand that fate had dealt me, clearly. I had so very little of what could be considered a normal life for me to be able to feel bitter about what I didn’t have. But now, as I think about it, I realise that I have even less.

My father died almost a month ago, on September 10th 2030. I have no idea how, or even where. We said goodbye for the last time in very much the same manner as we always had whenever he left for another job; in awkward silence. I remember sitting in the same front room that I now sat in darkness with The Caretaker. My father was sat in his armchair, his feet elevated on the dusty antique stool, its tight leather coat unblemished as it held his weight effortlessly. We both sat with an emptying glass in our hands, both knowing we had probably had one too many, neither feeling as though it were enough.

I like to think that maybe, somewhere deep down inside, we both knew it was to be the last time. Neither of us wanted to spoil the air with careless or trivial words. I watched him take the last swig of whiskey from his glass, and then gently placing it on the occasional table next to him. He stood, looked at me and waited. I stood, wanting this to finally be the moment that he would embrace me, even just taking a hold of my hand.

I stood. I waited. It never came.

He nodded silently at me as if to say ‘see you soon’, but possibly not believing he would mean it, and so didn’t. I nodded back, my heart racing, aching. My mind ablaze with so many things I wanted – needed – to say to him, to ask of him, before he left. But the words never came. I watched him leave and then within moments I felt suffocated within that house, my eyes throbbing with the din of silence.

But I couldn’t leave. Not that night. I surrounded myself with every small memory I dredged from the walls of the cottage at Spinwood, and sank a few more glasses of whiskey until the bottle was empty, deciding that it was what my father would have wanted or expected of me.

I bravely took a seat in his beloved chair, letting the dizziness from the alcohol take hold. My eyes grew heavy, tiredness suddenly wrapping its warm arms around me. I gave in to it. The dreams I had that night still haunt me now. It was the first time that I dreamt of the dying red world, the scorched earth beneath my feet, the swirling shadowy figures floating together to become one.

And the the phantom. The huge, grotesque silhouette that made my fear ring in my ears, grinding at my bones beneath my crackling skin. I watched as he came towards me. I was powerless, just as I have been every night since that he has found his way into my sleepy mind.

Something threw me violently from my slumber in the early hours of the morning. I woke up struggling for breath, realising I was still clutching the whiskey glass. The sun had started to creep above a band of thick white cloud, blinding one of my eyes as I drew the net curtain back across the window beside me.

I could feel he was there at that moment but didn’t see him at first. And then he spoke. The Caretaker was there with me, just as he was now. He told me my father was dead. But after that I didn’t hear a word. All I could hear was the rumbling all around me as my entire world fell to the ground.

My father’s name was Dean Morden. You may have heard part of his story. Now you will listen to mine.


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