BLIND SCHOOL
JOHN MATTHEWS
Blind School
None can see like the Blind…
Ryan Lorimar and Jessica Werner have a special gift: they can see ‘fallen angel’ apparitions within other people. But as the fallen angels in turn know that they’ve been ‘viewed’, it’s a gift that will get him killed. They need protection. They need to enter ‘Blind School’.
Their only hope is Ellis Kendell and his team of agents. Day in, day out, Kendell’s team trawl through street-cam images from across the nation to pick up that tell-tale eye light-refraction of ‘viewers’. Can Kendell’s team get to the viewers before the fallen angels and get them to safety in ‘Blind School’? But there’s also an added agenda: Kendell’s department want the ‘viewers’ help in tracking down more ‘fallen angels’.
Yet is Kendell deluding himself? Setting this small group of teens against a legion fifty-times their number of the most cunning and vicious murderers and criminal masterminds the nation has to offer – is he simply throwing them to the wolves? Fated to watch them one-by-one die. The odds are against them.
Blind School reviews:
'An adrenalin-rush, one day read. If you’ve ever wondered what might make mass-murderers and megalomaniacs tick, now you know. Never has the ongoing fight between good and evil been so much fun, or so frighteningly real.’
- Wendy Mellor, Simply Scripts.
‘Harry Potter with attitude. Plumbs into the teen readership that has made Harry Potter and Twilight so popular, but with a wry slant that would also make it appeal to adults. Has ‘kidult’ written all over it.’
- Tom McIntyre, Xanadu Productions.
John Matthews reviews:
‘Matthews maintains the suspense... an engrossing odyssey into the seamy side of a world that is so near, yet sometimes seems so far. Compulsive reading.'
- The Times
'Impressive... strong characterization and a relentless race against time to avert the worst carry the reader along the thick pages of this psychological and legal thriller with a difference.'
- Time Out
'Intriguing thriller (with a) ...dogged and sexy French detective. Treat yourself.'
- Prima
'One of the most compelling novels I've read... an ambitious and big novel which will keep you enthralled to its last page.'
- Cork Examiner
'If John Grisham ever developed a sense of irony, or Scott Turow ever tried to write from the other side of the prison bars, they might come up with something like John Matthews's Ascension Day. This is a book that doesn't sacrifice style for suspense, or character for plot. The legal thriller has needed a jolt of electricity for a few years now and Matthews may just be the man to throw the switch.'
- Peter Blauner. Author of The Intruder.
ASCENSION DAY is a fast-paced thriller set between New Orleans and an upstate Louisiana prison, and Matthews' strong descriptive prose brings the darkness at the heart of Libreville penitentiary alive. His chief protagonist, Jac McElroy,is particularly interesting with his Franco-Scottish heritage - and his ever-changing relationship with prisoner Larry Durrant sets the main pulse for this race-against-time thriller... with the stakes and tension racheted up throughout the book.'
- Luke Croll. Reviewing the Evidence.
'A classy, well-written and unusual thriller.'
- Yorkshire Post
'Matthews delivers one of the best debut thrillers in years, brave, ambitious and remorselessly entertaining. Past Imperfect is a stormer.'
- Dublin Evening Herald
'Lock the doors and turn off the phone. Once you start this compelling, thoughtful, edge-of-your-seat thriller, you won't have time for anything else. A riveting read that hits it just right - right on the knife-edge between psychological and action thriller.'
- Chris Mooney. Edgar-nominated author of `Remembering Sarah'
'Move over Grisham, your reign is over! Reminiscent of vintage Grisham, but Matthews has his own distinctive style. Strong, believable characters and a plot that grips from page one and won't let go, twisting and turning its way towards a nail-biting climax - they don't come much better than this. One of the best and most memorable thrillers I've read in years. A winner all the way.'
- Bob Burke. Mystery Readers International.
Distinctively written… all the forceful energy of the best thrillers.
- Kirkus UK.
‘A clever premise for an epic page-turner written with wit, compassion (and) highly evolved characters.
- Daily Telegraph.
‘… A chilling and thrilling novel, one in which real people start to wonder if they are insane, and have to come to terms with a terrifying reality that threatens their own life. Mesmerising.
- Books Monthly
‘Shoots super-fast from the first page, immersing the reader in a plot full of surprising twists and turns. A fresh, contemporary tale which doesn't let up for a second - firmly establishing an author from whom we'll no doubt hear more.
- Books n' Things
ONE
Gary Fulton’s life could pretty well be tracked from the photos and mementoes around his house: pictures of Gary in infantry fatigues alongside his buddies in the First Gulf War; Gary as a National Guardsman with another bunch of buddies dutifully smiling for the camera; Gary with his hunting buddies.
Two things predominated: buddies, and lot of rifles and guns; as if they were the main things to put a smile on Gary’s face. Only four family photos, but Gary’s smile was less easy in those – even the two from way back, happier days, when his wife was still with him. And only one photo of him alone with his teenage daughter: his smile almost completely stiff and forced now, as if the pain of his wife leaving him and the four years of teen angst he’d had to endure alone with Tracy since had taken their toll.
From upstairs came the strains of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Kashmir’. Gary looked its direction and swore he could almost see the dust jumping from the staircase in time with its beat.
‘Tracy! Turn that Goddamn thing down!’
No response. For a man his size he moved surprisingly swiftly to the bottom of the stairs, glaring up.
‘Tracy!’
Still no response. The music seemed louder than normal, and he doubted she could even hear him above it this time.
A yard to his side in the hallway was a display cabinet with guns and rifles in one section and his infantry jacket, a round of 12mm shells and sharpshooters certificate the other.
He shook his head. She was too big now for him to take off his belt and whip her, but locking her for a spell in the broom cupboard had been effective the last few times when grounding her hadn’t worked.
His eyes were fixed so intently on her bedroom door at the top of the stairs that he didn’t notice the two empty slots in the hallway cabinet. He started his way up the stairs.
Tracy Fulton rocked gently to the strident beat of the music and stroked the gun in her grip – a Desert Eagle Magnum – to the same rhythm, as if mesmerized.
She barely heard the door swing open behind her, and it took a moment for the booming voice to register above the music and her own thoughts.
‘How many damn times do I have to tell you?’
She didn’t answer. She stayed facing the fading afternoon light through her bedroom window, her back to the door behind. She kept stroking the gun in her grip, but slower now.
‘And what the hell’s the meaning of this?’
She realized he was questioning why she was wearing his beloved trench coat; he couldn’t see the gun from behind, and the music was too regular an occurrence to earn surprise.
‘Oh, this? This means you don’t have to tell me any more.’ She slid the gun back into her pocket.
‘No more annoying music for you to have to put up with.’
The tone in her voice was somehow different, and Gary Fulton was still puzzling over his daughter’s new-found confidence as she turned to face him. With the light behind her, it took him a second to focus on her: the look in her eyes was different too, bleary and gone, and he might have put that down to drugs or drink if they weren’t fixed so intently on him, seeming to bore right through him. And something else in them too, a deeper glow and movement.
He was still trying to work out what it was as the shotgun swung up from beneath the trench coat.
The music was so loud that their next door neighbour, Beth Turner, had her favourite soap opera, ‘Days of our Lives’, turned up high to bury its strains reaching her.
The two gun shots were louder still, and broke abruptly into Bo Brady’s anniversary dinner speech. Car backfiring? Beth wondered, going over to the window: that Pontiac of the Fulton’s had seen better days. But as she glimpsed through the nets, the black Pontiac was still in the driveway, nobody behind the wheel.
She quickly scanned the road: no cars just passed that she could see.
Then she saw the Fulton girl, Tracy, coming out the house and heading to the Pontiac. The long black coat she wore looked odd on her, at least two sizes too big; and as she got in the car, Beth noticed the shotgun for the first time.
She took a step back from the curtain as Tracy Fulton fired up the Pontiac and swung out of the driveway. But she waited until the car was fully out of sight before she went to the phone and dialled 911.
She’d seen that on films too: baddies seeing callers on the phone and turning back to take them out.
TWO
Mocha Bocha Cafe, Cedar Falls.
Half hour after school closing was one of the Mocha Bocha’s busiest times. Shoppers, late coffee-breakers, moms with younger kids ordering lattes and milk shakes, but by far the largest crowd was from nearby Cedar Falls High, who regularly decamped to the Mocha Bocha to chill out after school.
Ryan Lorimer, Tommy Rawlton and 'Ginge' Caldwell, all eleventh-graders, had commandeered their favourite table in the corner of the cafe. Books and schoolbags were spread out, though mostly forgotten as Tommy mooned about their new history teacher, Rachel Torrens.
‘I ask you – is she hot or what?’
‘Or what? being the operative question,’ Ginge said. ‘I mean, what is she now – twenty-eight, twenty-nine?
‘Yeah, like really old.’ Ryan rolled his eyes, but it was clearly lost on Ginge.
‘So – she's too old to be a 'babe'. Does that then automatically make her a 'MILF'?’
Tommy smiled. ‘I suppose – if she was eleven or twelve when she had us.’
Every group invariably has their leader, and in this small after-school group it was probably Ryan Lorimar. Though not as vocal as Tommy, the others often looked to him for support. Possibly because he was the only one of them to have turned seventeen, if only by two months.
Tommy was Ryan’s closest friend. The inches he lost in height were added to his waistband, so Tommy felt he had to work harder to get noticed; which often meant picking edgy, risqué subjects or playing the clown. Ryan held out a palm.
‘I'm not sure that's how it works: her having to be old enough to be our moms. Just old enough to be someone's mom.’
Tommy was lost in thought for a moment. ‘Somehow seems unfair, though. She makes a play for us or succumbs to our charms...’
Ryan chuckled. 'Succumbs to our charms?' More like falls for our clumsy chat-up lines.’
Tommy conceded with a wry smile. ‘Yeah, whatever. She does that and gets found out – she loses her job. We do that and score, nothing happens. It's just a bit of sport for us.’ He took a sip of latte, wiped away a foam moustache. ‘Doesn't seem right.’
Ryan shook his head, smiling.
Ginge was thoughtful, petulant. ‘I've never really forgiven her for giving me a B-grade on that Dred Scott thesis. That was one hot piece I turned in.’
But Tommy's was distracted as a couple of girls from their school walked in. ‘Talking about 'hot pieces'...’
‘Not to mention more within our reach,’ Ryan said. ‘Or age range.’
Through the front window of the cafe, a black Pontiac pulled up across the road and a girl in a trench coat stepped out. But nobody at the table paid her any attention, all eyes were on the two hot girls heading their way.
One person who had paid attention to the girl and the Pontiac was the patrolman in the passenger seat of the squad car passing on the next cross street up.
‘Could that be the two-four-six we heard earlier?’
The driver braked. They’d drifted past the point where he could get a clear view. He backed up and peered down the street.
Two hundred yards down, the girl was now halfway across the road from the black Pontiac. The description fitted: Trench coat. Straggly blonde hair. But the dispatch notice had said: ‘Armed with a shotgun and possibly dangerous.’ He couldn’t see that from where he was.
‘Dunno. Not sure.’ They got a dozen false shooter alerts for every real one. Then he noticed the stilted gait in her walk. ‘But worth checking out, I suppose.’
He swung into the turn.
‘Hi girls. Howya doing?’
Tommy greeted both girls as they approached, but his eyes rested more on Diana, a stacked, drop-dead gorgeous brunette. Only problem was, she knew it.
‘Hi guys. Good, thanks. Good.’ Diana in turn aimed her greeting at all three boys, but her eyes rested a second more on Ryan.
Though Ryan seemed distracted at that moment, his gaze drifting past Diana’s shoulder. Diana wasn’t used to that, not being the center of attention, and she half-turned to see what had drawn Ryan’s eye:
A non-descript blonde, straggly hair, eyes red-rimmed and bleary. A long black coat that fitted like a sack. Looked like a left-over Grunge rocker, she’d probably have made a good bag lady if she’d been forty years older.
But Ryan had seen something else in that moment: a strange apparition, half-angel, half dragon-demon, seeming to swirl within the girl. Misty at first, but starting to take shape, become clearer.
‘Are you going to Tina’s party next weekend?’ Tommy asked Diana. ‘Could be good.’
‘I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe...’
The rest was lost to Ryan, drowned out by a wild cacophony of voices, merging with the other voices and clatter in the cafe, the hiss of the espresso machine.
The mumbling voices rose until he could hear nothing else.
Tracy Fulton approached the Mocha Bocha counter. A twenty-something barista gave her a requisite smile.
‘Can I help you?’
‘Double-shot mocha looks good.’ Tracy’s eyes didn’t shift for even a second to the display board behind. They stayed resolutely on the girl.
‘To have here or to go?’ The barista’s fingers hovered over the register.
‘Oh, to go... definitely to go.’
The shotgun swung up so swiftly from beneath the trench coat that the barista barely had time to change facial expression, let alone move.
Ryan saw the girl take the full blast in her chest, half-separating her head and shoulders from her torso, then the second shot hit the manager just behind as he turned and held a hand up.
The rest of the cafe was suddenly in motion: people rushing for the exit, chairs and tables knocked aside or upturned.
The shotgun was thrown down and a large silver gun taken out to down a mid-fifties couple halfway from their table to the door. Then as another middle-aged man was shot only a yard from the door, escaping suddenly didn’t seem such a good option.
Panic scurrying for cover from the rest of the cafe, including Ryan’s table, which they quickly upended and dived behind.
The sharper panicked screams were the only thing to reach Ryan above the wild cacophony of mumbled voices. He peered out one side of the table edge, breathlessly assessing: they dare not raise up and draw her a
ttention, but they were four tables away with several other people in between – so hopefully shouldn't be first on her hit list.
And thankfully she was still looking away from them, towards the man she'd just downed by the door and activity the far side. But Ryan could still see that demon-like apparition.
And at that moment, as if sensing it had been viewed, its head started to rotate Ryan's way.
Its eyes locked on his position. The girl, thankfully, was still looking away. But then, as if a message service ran between them, her head started to also turn his way.
The two cops heard the first shots as they got out the squad car, then another as they approached the cafe – so they already had their guns drawn.
Four or five people down, as far as they could see. The trench-coat girl had just fired and taken out the corner of an upturned table as the first cop entered, and she looked about to fire again.
‘Freeze! Drop your weapon.’
The girl swung her gun towards him, and he didn’t hesitate to fire – a square-on chest shot. But then his expression quickly dropped as he saw that it had only knocked her back a foot, and there was no visible blood. Jeez. You didn’t expect eighteen year olds to be wearing kevlar.
He fired again, but it went wild as her return shot hit him in the shoulder.
His partner, catching on to what had happened, went for a lower shot that hit her in the thigh.
He was about to make sure with another couple of shots – but as she went down the Desert Eagle fell from her grip, skittering across the floor.
He moved in, careful not to slip on the tile floor already slippery with blood, and trained his gun on her from only a yard away. Two more back-up cops burst in through the door at that instant.
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