Read Dreamwalkers Book One - The Intruder. A Markland Garraway Paranormal Mystery Thriller Page 18
Chapter 17
Markland Garraway’s house
12th October
8.28 p.m.
Three hours earlier, Markland had returned home after his first day of employment at Compton Wells School. It had been the first time he’d worked since leaving the police force just over a year earlier.
He hadn’t expected the day to have taken so much out of him. He was tired, and was enjoying the quietness of home. He dunked a Rich Tea into his coffee and thought about the conversation he’d had with Howie Doyle. He wasn’t sure what to make of the young man’s story.
Something Howie had said intrigued Markland. He was fascinated by the concept that James, the man Howie had told him about, had been ‘punched out of his nightmare’.
He thought about the strange dreams he’d had when dealing with the Ben Walker case, and how he’d shared dreams of others who’d been involved with and present at Walker’s death. By virtue of his own experiences, he was aware that dreams can be powerful things, and are only limited by the acceptance and understanding of the human mind.
Markland shuffled in his chair and considered whether a dream could be so real, that it projected into actual physical ‘real life’, to the degree that a person could step out of another person’s dream.
He thought more about the Walker case, and the powerful dream he’d had of Carla Price, the young girl who had undoubtedly saved the life of Ben Walker’s girlfriend, Liz, who would have almost certainly died during the attack in Badock’s Wood had Carla not shouted at the top of her voice that the police had arrived. He’d dreamt what happened with so much clarity, he knew it was real. Carla had eventually confirmed to Markland that his dream detailed exactly what happened the night Ben Walker had lost his life.
Daydreams rested on the backs of Markland’s eyes. He sat up and snapped back to reality. The last thing he wanted was to fall asleep with thoughts of what happened in the woods drifting around his subconscious mind. He drank the dregs of his coffee, and coughed as the slurry of biscuit stuck to the back of his throat. He reached for the remote control and turned on the television. As always there was nothing worth watching. He stood up and searched through his collection of DVDs. Sometimes he was quite happy to watch a film he’d seen countless times before. He had four or five favourites which never let him down.
“You’ll do for tonight.”
He pulled Steven Spielberg’s classic movie ‘Jaws’ from the shelf and admired the timeless picture on the DVD case. Despite being a gory film, he found it relaxing. He thought the location where it had been filmed, Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts, was stunning. It was somewhere he’d hoped to go on holiday with Joan, but never did. Perhaps if, and when, they ever got back together, they would visit the place.
He placed the disc in the player, sat back and pressed play.
As the disc loaded he thought about his wife. He was desperate to contact her, and tell her how his first day in his new job had gone. But he had to respect her wishes. If they had a future he had to do things on her terms, and wait for her to contact him.
The DVD loaded. He hated waiting for the trailers and the other nonsense to finish before the film started. He fast-forwarded to the start of the film and watched as each trailer played at thirty times the normal speed. He knew each trailer for each film, as he’d seen them in fast motion over fifty times. Then he saw a trailer he’d not noticed before.
How could I have not seen this one before?
He became even more intrigued as the words ‘Coming to a Universe near You!’ appeared on the screen. He hit the rewind button and shuffled back to the start of the trailer. He watched the image of a man appear in the centre of the screen. It hung there for a blink of the eye, then reduced to the size of a postage stamp and zoomed to the top left of the screen. Another image of the same man appeared in the centre, and after a second it too zoomed to the top left of the screen alongside the first picture. Then another, and another. Within half a minute the screen was almost full of tiny images of the same man. Each image of the man was a little different to the last. Either the hair was a little thinner, a little longer, or cut in a different style. In some images the man looked older, in some he looked younger, in some he looked happier and in some he looked as though he bore the weight of the world. In no picture did he wear the same clothes.
“What the hell?”
Within one and a half minutes, his fifty-five-inch screen was full of images of the same man. The man seemed familiar. Markland paused the DVD just as the words ‘Coming to a Universe near You!’ faded in. He edged closer to the screen to get a closer view of the man’s face.
The faces filling the screen seemed familiar.
He grabbed the remote and pressed ‘open’. The DVD player whirred and the disc slid out. It was definitely the film ‘Jaws’. He nudged the disc back into the player and hastily waited for the trailers to begin again. He fast forwarded through the ones he’d seen before searching for the trailer he’d just seen. There was nothing, it wasn’t there. He knelt closer to the screen as the movie started. He ejected the disc for a second time and held it up to the light, as if doing so would give him a clue as to what on earth was happening.
“Holy shit!” exclaimed Markland, as he remembered why the man had appeared so familiar.
“No, no…….. please not again,” he said out loud, as it dawned on him what was happening.
He dropped into his chair, and placed his head in his hands.
“Please God, I can’t go through this again.”
He shook his head as his brain computed what was happening. Tears welled in his eyes.
“It’s that fucking hill.”
The face which had filled the television screen was the face of the man Howie Doyle had told him about in the school. It was the same man Doyle had shown him on his smart phone.
It was the face of James Trafford.
Again, the hill in Badock’s Wood was reaching out to Markland, and there was nothing he could do about it.