by Graham West
Beyond the Dark Waters
Trilogy
Finding Amelia
A Rising Evil
Mosswood
by
Graham West
Beaten Track
www.beatentrackpublishing.com
Beyond the Dark Waters Trilogy
First published 2019 by Beaten Track Publishing
Copyright © 2017–2019 Graham West
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
ISBN: 978 1 78645 362 4
Cover Concept: Michael Gallagher
Cover Design: Debbie McGowan
Covers for Books 1 and 2: Michael Gallagher
Cover for Book 3: Graham West and Debbie McGowan
Cover Model for Books 1–3: Becky Poole
Beaten Track Publishing,
Burscough. Lancashire.
www.beatentrackpublishing.com
Contents
Finding Amelia
A Rising Evil
Mosswood
Full Table of Contents
***
This trilogy is a work of fiction and the characters and events in it exist only in its pages and in the author’s imagination. While it includes reference to real locations, these are fictional representations, which may or may not be factually correct.
About Finding Amelia
Following the horrific death of his wife and child, Robert Adams struggles to rebuild a life with his seventeen-year-old daughter, Jenny. Their relationship is tested further when she expresses a desire to contact her mother through a spiritualist and he watches helplessly as they slowly drift apart.
But everything changes when Jenny begins to dream—dreams which take her into another world—a world inhabited by a young girl, imprisoned in a dark attic. A girl Jenny believes is an ancestor whose spirit is reaching out across the generations.
But who is she? What does she want? As Jenny’s behaviour becomes increasingly dangerous and unpredictable, Robert finds himself confiding in Sebastian Tint—an old professor who claims to possess a sixth sense. Together, they employ retired genealogist Jack Staple to trace the family tree, but it is a journey that takes Robert down a road of discovery that threatens to tear their world apart.
Prologue
There are several things in life for which I am grateful, the first being that my parents decided not to call me Adam. It had been close, and the fact that I’m not is thanks to my father, who, having been caught in something of a dilemma, had leaned into the pram and asked his six-week-old baby boy if he would like to be named after the first man to inhabit the earth.
Maybe even at that tender age, I’d seen the flaws in the Biblical version of events, as I had, by all accounts, stuck out my tongue, which my father interpreted as a sign from the Almighty. Hence, I was christened Robert.
Robert Simon Adams.
Perhaps now you can understand why I am grateful.
Not that there is too much wrong with Adam Adams, but I prefer a name that doesn’t attract unwanted attention.
You see, I just wanted a quiet life—to keep my head down, study hard, raise a family and earn enough money to get by. I’d never sought fame—not the way kids do these days. Not even the fifteen minutes’ worth to which, apparently, I’m entitled.
One of the other things I am grateful for is my health. I am aware how many of my generation battle with disabilities, aggressive allergies and mental-health issues, yet I have rarely suffered from anything more than a common cold, and, according to a mystic at a local fairground, I’m going to enjoy a long and healthy life.
That was good to hear, although back then, I’d never taken much notice of those crystal-ball-gazing sideshow merchants. Spiritual things baffled me, and I generally put them to the back of my mind and concentrated my energies on the things I could actually see with my own eyes. Of course, I watched the ghost-hunting programmes if only to laugh when one of the presenters ran screaming from the old castle vault at the sound of a creaking door. Or when someone from the crew commented that they felt an icy cold draught, seemingly oblivious to the fact they were standing in a dilapidated old building with more holes than a sieve. It’s great TV.
I didn’t even mind watching the odd spooky movie; they always seemed to be based on true events, although I’d always taken that with the proverbial pinch of salt.
But then, something happened in my own life, and it changed everything. From my casual disregard for those who saw ghosts lurking in the shadows around every corner, I found myself on a quest to prove that we could indeed communicate with the spirits of the dead.
There are so many things I don’t understand, so many questions to which I’ll never have an answer on this side of the grave, but I keep my mind open. All I ask is that you do the same, because this is not a story ‘loosely based on real events’ nor the ramblings of a man with a mind warped by grief. It’s the truth, and that’s why I’m going to tell you exactly what happened—from the beginning.
Chapter One
The murder of my wife and five-year-old daughter was described by the legal system as an accident. Of course, the official term was misadventure because the suits and the wigs are programmed to categorise everything. Elizabeth and Hanna had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time; their notes were neatly filed away and the case was closed. Me? I should be reading bedtime stories to my child, climbing into a warm bed next to my wife and breathing in the faint scent of her perfume before gently drifting away. Now I don’t drift so much; I think. I think, and I watch, because there’s a movie inside my head, and for the past twelve months, it has run on a loop every night.
It was mid-June and the temperatures had been climbing all week—nearly seven whole days of sunshine. Predictably, the media dragged the global warming issue into every news bulletin, and while two scientists argued over the ozone layer on the Sunday morning current affairs programme, Darren Pascoe and Kevin Taylor jumped the bus across town, hoods pulled up over their heads, avoiding eye contact with the driver as they pushed a handful of loose change into the tray and took a seat.
Pascoe and Taylor had been unlikely partners. Young Darren had been raised in the suburbs on the edge of town, a single child of Benjamin and Victoria Pascoe. Benjamin, a well-respected therapist, was a socialist of the old order and had never even considered giving their son the private education they could so easily have afforded. It was a decision Victoria—a buyer with a leading fashion retailer—suspected they might live to regret.
Taylor had been brought up on the Kirkland estate, a notorious concrete jungle surrounded by wasteland where the kids would kick footballs and shoot up with anything they could afford to buy from the local dealers. Pascoe told the judge that the place smelled like shit on hot days. Dog shit, mainly. Pets roamed the streets, abandoned by feral families. They pretty much lived by their own laws, and the police never seemed to bother with the Kirkland people, having drawn up their own no-go policy. They just drove on by, stopping only when they were asked.
The only thing the pair had in common was the school they attended, and when Benjamin Pascoe walked out of the family home, his son Darren found a listening ear in Taylor: a boy who had never known any stability in his life.
“Life is a lake of crap,” he’d told Pascoe
, quoting his father, a pretentious ponytailed waster. “You just have to learn to swim!”
Taylor was sixteen and already ‘alcohol-dependent’—another of those politically correct terms that my old man had detested. Taylor had bought two three-litre bottles of cheap white cider from Bill’s Booze—an off-licence with a fat greasy proprietor who didn’t ask too many questions and had never set eyes on an ID card in his life.
The local council had poured a pot of European cash into Alshaw Park, dredging the lake and landscaping its fifteen acres. It attracted the kids during the summer months. Pascoe and Taylor spent the afternoon sitting by the water’s edge, watching the girls who paraded around in their short skirts and croptops, chewing gum and strutting like mating peacocks.
That day, a few of the girls were lying on the embankment, sunbathing with their skirts hitched up to their knickers. After a litre of cider, Taylor had walked over to one of the girls and rammed his hand between her legs. She had screamed and threatened to part him from his balls, but that didn’t cut much ice with a kid from the Kirkland estate. He just laughed and walked on. I discovered later that, in between his literary efforts, Taylor’s father had done time for rape and possession of obscene material. His son had grown up surrounded by pornographic magazines and films.
Sometimes I wonder if the Grim Reaper actually exists in some mystic form and was already hovering in the afternoon sunlight, watching my wife playing with our beautiful, happy little girl in the back garden. I wonder if he smiled as the ice cream van turned into our road, knowing that their time was near.
Just ten minutes earlier, Sally Reston, a single mother with a wealthy father, was driving along Alshaw Road in her black four-wheel drive. It was fate. If her six-year-old kid hadn’t been suffering from a bladder ready to burst then my wife and child would still be alive. It’s as simple as that.
Sally would never have pulled over and hauled little Nathan over to the bushes, shielding him from public view while he urinated. Sally was a girl in a hurry, flustered by the unplanned stop. She hadn’t bothered to take the keys out of the ignition. Why bother? She was less than five metres away.
But the Reaper had everything in hand. Pascoe and Taylor were heading home. Taylor loved cars. The black beast purred provocatively, and to a troubled teenager, it was sexier than all the Alshaw Park girls put together.
Pascoe rammed the pedal to the floor, and the car was gone before Sally turned. She watched helplessly as the four-wheeler took a left turn, running the red light at the corner of Alshaw Road. They were headed in our direction. No one ever asked those kids why they turned left instead of right. I guessed it had just been a split-second decision. Fate. Kismet.
I stood at my front window as the ceiling fan whirred above me. Hanna was holding her mother’s hand, looking up at the pictures of ice creams on the side of the van. Her eyes danced as she jumped up and down with such innocent excitement, and in that single moment, I remember wishing that she would never grow up. I loved her just the way she was, and the irony within that wish was never lost. Hanna never did grow up.
It all happened in an instant. Elizabeth stepped off the pavement, holding my daughter’s hand tightly. The ice cream was melting, and tiny rivers of pink and white liquid ran down her hand. Hanna was waving at me with frantic enthusiasm. She didn’t seem to hear the screeching tyres. My wife turned in the direction of the sound. Instinctively, she stepped back behind the ice cream van just as Pascoe lost control. He swerved wildly, his hand gripping the wheel.
I can see it now. The moment. The sickening thud. Bone, blood and metal. My wife’s twisted frame, the blood oozing from her mouth. She was staring up from lifeless eyes.
Hanna was under the wheel. Thank God, I couldn’t see her. The paramedics covered her with a sheet. She was too badly mashed up. That’s the phrase I caught the neighbours using. It seemed as if the whole world screamed when Pascoe smashed into the back of that Mr. Whirl van, and I just stood, rooted to the spot, unable to lift my feet from the floor. The window was my screen as I watched the scene unfold. I heard the frantic knocking on the front door. Someone out there was going to tell me something I already knew. Elizabeth and Hanna were dead.
***
The young policewoman sat beside me, running her slender fingers across the back of my hand. She had a voice as soft as silk and eyes of Caribbean blue. Her name was Lauren, and for some inexplicable reason, I asked her how old she was. I can’t remember her answer and, to be honest, I can’t remember why I’d asked. It was irrelevant. My mind was on Jenny.
She was our eldest. A seventeen-year-old with a passion for art and the classical guitar. She worked Saturdays in the local petrol station to pay for her lessons with a teacher who lived less than a mile down the road. I remember the moment she arrived home, bursting through the door, her face twisted with panic. She stared at the young policewoman holding my hand. Jenny collapsed before Lauren could reach her.
A paramedic sat with my daughter as she regained consciousness, but despite suffering what he referred to as extreme shock, she didn’t shed any tears. My daughter just stared into space for what seemed like an eternity while Lauren, who had been joined by an older officer, stayed with us. They told us they’d arrested Pascoe and Taylor, who had been found running across a patch of wasteland. At the time, I hadn’t the energy to hate those kids. I felt nothing.
In the days that followed, I found myself living in a vacuum while a kindly, middle-aged woman from Victim Support visited us, along with a couple of the braver neighbours who told me that their doors were always open if I needed anything.
***
I’d left a message with my sister in New York. Sophia had suffered from depression from an early age, and my father had struggled with his daughter’s impulsive behaviour and violent mood swings. When she was eighteen, my sister married a New Yorker, ten years her senior, and moved out of our lives forever.
There had been no contact since, although she always sent Jenny a birthday card, unsigned, with the words, Thinking of you xxxx. If you knew Sophia, this would not seem unusual. Nor would you be surprised that she never returned my message. Not even a condolence card.
The man from the funeral director’s visited our home to discuss the impending burial. He wore his dour expression like a mask and talked in a serene whisper as if anything louder might disturb the dead he’d buried. The minister from the local free church called a couple of days before the funeral which, I understand, was his duty as leader of a steadily dwindling flock.
I guess that he didn’t get an easy ride with the recently bereaved, and at the time, God was my enemy. How could he have been anything less? The Almighty had stood by and watched as my family was torn apart and sent His servant to do His dirty work. The reverend spouted platitudes, but I treated him with the respect that my father would have demanded as an ardent supporter of the Church. The old guy would never have shaken a fist at the Almighty. In fact, he would never have even raised a question. I thanked the reverend when he left, and he vowed to call again after the funeral.
The church was full when they carried the two coffins down the aisle. The teachers from Hanna’s school, young women and men responsible for the education of my child—an education she no longer required—sat with dewy eyes alongside the parents of some of her friends. Jenny and I were in the front row, staring impassively while the whole church seemed to tremble under the terrible weight of grief. The minister told us we’d coped well, but I think he knew that our time hadn’t come. We were dry-eyed and numb to the very core of our beings.
I stood at the graveside with my arm around my daughter’s shoulder. The minister reminded us he’d call. I smiled. His God had forsaken us, but I simply shook his hand. I wanted to crush his bony, ecclesiastical fingers and ask him what his tyrant of a God was up to, but I didn’t. I didn’t because my father was watching from the other side. It was for him that I held my tongue and kept my peace with the Church he loved.
***
Grief is a strange and unpredictable emotion; a ride that takes its victim through black lonely spaces into areas of light and then back to black. After three weeks, I’d still lived like a man waiting for his wife to walk through the door after an afternoon at the shops. In my heart, I couldn’t accept that she’d gone. Sure, the house felt empty, and Jenny had a habit of leaving a music channel running all day just to kill the silence. Sometimes she would pick up her guitar and play a piece. It didn’t seem to matter where the sound came from.
Doctor Elworth called unexpectedly, early one evening after surgery. Jenny had developed a teenage crush on the Clark Kent look-a-like when she was thirteen and would frequently feign mysterious illnesses that required immediate medical attention. He smiled sympathetically as I opened the door, an expression well practised, I guessed.
“Mr. Adams,” he began, hoisting his briefcase a little higher as a statement of his professional status. “I thought I’d call—just to see how you are.”
Elworth had supported Elizabeth through two difficult pregnancies and dealt with my subsequent paranoia with grace and patience. He had shown nothing but kindness towards the love-struck Jenny even when he realised that her illnesses had been invented. So, when I found him on my doorstep, I also found myself welcoming him in with an honest and transparent enthusiasm. Elworth had never succumbed to the pressures of modern medical practices, and his patients treated him like a family member.
“It’s good of you to call,” I said, handing him a strong coffee—in a cup of which I imagined Elizabeth would approve. Elworth removed his spectacles—Jenny informed me they were only for reading, anyway—and smiled. “You must be busy,” I continued.
The doctor sipped his coffee. Clark Kent had gone with the spectacles, and now he resembled the flying, caped crusader of film and comic. “I am,” he said. “I’m only sorry I’ve not managed to call before now. It’s a terrible tragedy, Mr. Adams. Everyone at the surgery was deeply affected. They all send their sympathy.”
