This horrible little story forms an introduction to my Shakespeare´s Moon series of novels, the first of which, The Invisible Hand, will be published by Lodestone Books in February 2017.
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Many thanks to the very talented Lpixel for the fantastic cover of this ebook, and for she, Miss Jane Appleton of Box Hill School and Mer Rooney´s SPF English Class at Obersee Bilingual School for proof-reading it. Any lingering mistakes are all mine.
I would like to dedicate this tale to Seets and Matty, my own little devils.
Han, couldn´t do any of this without you.
So now, without further ado, settle down and enjoy the story.
James
Madrid,
Halloween, 2016.
Dark frost was in the air without,
The dusk was still with cold and gloom,
When less than even a shadow came
And stood within the room.
From Winter Dusk
By Walter De La Mare
I
Imagine you are the full moon high in the heavens, your face lit bright by the sun. Hanging below you in the starry darkness is the blue marble earth, silent but flashing with the fireworks of world war.
Down from the northernmost ice-cap some green islands are speckled with points of fire. The capital city is alight, under attack from waves of planes and the bombs tumbling from them. Beyond the conflagration is a vast zone of darkness where the country is hiding. You must look very closely to spot a pair of headlights flickering under swaying boughs as a car makes its way along country lanes swirling with leaves.
A storm has come in off the sea with the bombers, and now, hitting land, is gathering pace, tearing tiles from roofs, tipping fences and uprooting oaks which have stood for generations. The sky is fast moving cloud, tangling and untangling to reveal and hide your pale, white face.
A well-groomed man is driving the car, wearing gloves over his spotless hands, squinting as he peers through the rainy windscreen. There are hedges on either side, the road only wide enough for one vehicle, a sharp turn never far away and the strongest gusts, when they come, threaten to topple the car over.
“Oh, Jack, we must stop!” cries the lady in the green matching hat and coat sitting beside the driver. She is very rich, very pale and very scared. “This is madness.”
“We can´t stop,” her husband growls back. The noise of the storm is almost as loud as the engine. A great bushel of leaves and twigs comes hurtling up out of the headlights and rattles over the roof.
On the back seat a young girl, no more than eight, presses her nose to the cold window and smiles up at you. She has dark hair, cut square along the fringe, a pale complexion and empty, black eyes. She watches the trees being shaken free of their leaves, watches the elms and firs bend back and forth in the winds, sees branches snap off and fly through the air and smiles.