by Gil Brailey
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Faith didn’t like going to the doctor’s, she just didn’t. She didn’t trust them really, and refused to take any of the medications they prescribed. But this time she knew something was wrong. When the doctor suggested she might be pregnant, Faith let out a piercing laugh. The doctor looked taken aback at the reaction.
“I don’t think so,” said Faith. “I’m divorced, or soon to be divorced, no one else lining up to take his place either.”
But the doctor persisted, saying a test would decide it one way or the other. Faith said it could not be, it just couldn’t and apologized for troubling him. But a couple of months later there was no disputing it; she was huge.
Phil had been disappointed when he found out, but then said that Faith could work from home when she needed to, they would work something out. Faith gladly accepted the offer, worried about the mortgage, and all the other bills that seemed to drop with depressing regularity through the letter box at Renfield Road. More important than all this, were the dates.
Faith worked it out again and again, and there was no way the baby could be Dan’s. That left Nick, and as she knew very well, Nick was a ghost. So she started to read up just about everything she could find on the subject “ghosts and child birth,” “immaculate conception,” “phantom pregnancy”.
Her parents were very bewildered, so Faith made up a story about a mysterious consort, a man who crossed the world doing this and that, never in one place for long, but who would support Faith through childbirth as best he could. So after their initial misgivings, Faith’s parents were excited at the prospect of a grandchild. But as the day of the birth got closer, Faith found herself worried that the child would be a ghost too, an imaginary bundle of nothing, and this anxiety she found difficult to quell.
She needn’t have worried, her son was born with little fuss or bother, and his very healthy lungs and other vital checks confirmed him to be a card carrying member of the human race. Faith found herself gazing at him constantly, and touching him too. He was real, and she was real and her life was real, but Nick was not. How could that be?
A year later, not long after Nick had come to the house and stayed for the best part of a day, cooing over his burly offspring, Faith found herself sitting in the consulting room of a well-known psychiatrist in Harley Street. Damien (Faith’s idea of a joke) was being looked after by her mother, so she had the day to herself. Faith had filled Professor Steinway in on everything: the house, Nick, Dan, her baby, and although the story sounded absurd to Faith when she detailed it out loud, the professor didn’t look phased at all. He asked her hundreds of questions and she answered every one. She went to see him three more times, warning him that money was tight, and she needed answers, as soon as possible if that was alright with him.
Professor Steinway was guarded, but he suggested finally that Faith was in the midst of some deep depression probably brought on by her split with Dan. That’s all he could come up with, and for the money Faith had handed over, she felt short changed. She didn’t feel depressed, had never felt depressed and so that was no answer at all. She asked about the baby, and all the professor would say was that she must have had sex with a stranger and kept the whole thing under wraps, denying it to herself too, maybe.
On the way home to Dalston, Faith laughed at the idea of consulting a psychiatrist over Nick, and decided to tell him about it when next he turned up. But Nick did not turn up, and although his continuing physical absence was painful to Faith, as she gradually got used to the idea she wouldn’t see him again, she was aware each time she stepped down into the garden, and watched the willows sighing in the wind, that something, or someone, had set her free.
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DEATHLOOP by G. Brailey, a full length, supernatural thriller is available on Amazon.co.uk and also Amazon.com - B008DRX7D4.
When successful lawyer, Zack Fortune agrees to take part in past life regression, the visions that confront him from another life are so horrific he cuts the session short. But the following day, a young woman, completely unknown to Zack, standing on a high roof calls out to him by name asking him to catch her, moments before she jumps and kills herself. When a strange boy starts to stalk him, and an ex-girlfriend accuses him of assault, suddenly Zack’s perfect world plunges into chaos, and when, one by one, he comes across more strangers who call out to him to save them, moments before they die in tragic circumstances, Zack embarks on a frantic journey of survival, convinced he is being pursued by demons, hell bent on his ultimate destruction.
REVIEWS:
“A THUMPING GOOD READ” “INTRIGUING TITLE, INTRIGUING BOOK” “STUNNING DEBUT NOVEL”
“ENGAGING AND ABSORBING” “CRACKING READ” “A CULT BOOK” “BRILLIANTLY WRITTEN” “TAKES THE THRILLER GENRE TO ANOTHER LEVEL” “FASCINATING” “ORIGINAL, A ONE OFF” “EXCEEDINGLY GOOD” “A TERRIFYING UNSOPPABLE READ”
Also by G. Brailey IT WASN’T ME a Young Adult psychological thriller, to be released on Amazon Kindle late November 2012
Following the death of her mother, Ruth McGovern, 14, is sent off to boarding school in the Scottish Highlands. Feeling lonely and rejected, Ruth struggles to settle at Grimewell Manor, (once a Victorian orphanage) but taking part in a séance not long after she arrives, a spirit called ‘Jennifer Rose Carr’ seems to be attempting to make contact with her. When Ruth gets lost one day trying to make her way back to school, she is surprised to come across a real life ‘Jennifer Rose Carr’, who helps her and asks to be her friend. When she is bullied by classmates, Ruth finds herself spending more and more time with Jennifer who has the kind of life with her mother, Dolores, Ruth envies.
Cast as Mary Magdalene in the school nativity play, Ruth begins to find acceptance at Grimewell, and when she embarks on a relationship with Jake, from nearby St Wilfred’s, things start to look up. But when the bullying gets worse, and when Ruth finds herself rejected by Jake too, Ruth’s desperation sets off a chain of events that culminates in tragic consequences.
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