Dead Man Talking by Jonathan Squirrell

Author:Jonathan Squirrell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Comic horror
Publisher: Troubador Publishing
Published: 2024-02-28T00:00:00+00:00

Now his new home hangs over me. All night I’ve known where to find him. Inside. I’ve known all along.

Shivers shudder through me. A rumour of breeze makes wind-chimes of fir cones and leaves, sways the trees in rhythmic imitations of the nearby breakers. Beyond, a black-green sea waves, carrying currents of Norwegian brine, undercut by the peaty scent of compost from the flowerbeds.

Inhaling deeply, I seek some inner calm, even succeed in pushing away a few feebler feelings. Forget the trespass, and the smarting patella.

The dark is my time. What better mask for what we do, than the shadows?

Normally.

A final check of my phone shows no more calls. No new messages. Maybe there never will be, ever again.

There is no comfort for me now, not there, not in darkness. Not anywhere. Swallowing the sea air from an ocean planet wouldn’t break the strain sawing through my brain. There’s not enough sodium and chloride in the galaxy.

Moving towards the building with slow, spacewalk steps, any clutched-at sense of serenity drifts away. A wafting illusion, a lost scent of incense. If there was any tranquillity left in my world, I wouldn’t be here.

Reality bites, rends and tears. Composure trickles away like blood from a wound.

Fact is, I could be stealing through Elysium right now, and still be antsy, anxious. A casual observer, an owl perhaps, might have had me down as quiet, swift, purposeful. Inside, I am creased, crushed and crippled. Crawling, hauling myself forward. A parched and broken legionnaire in the desert, drinking sand with every laboured shuffle. No stomach, no guts. Only lonely pain.

A knowledge flogs me: that nothing can ever be right again. Happiness is lost. I’m hapless. Functioning is impossible. My chest is exposed and a phantom heart throbs inside, known only by the nerve endings left bare. A hole left open inside me, one I can never fill.

Sick to my stomach, I’m ill and empty, gnawed by a nauseating hunger that has no sating. Knowing that the best of me has dried to dust and drifted away.

No. Not dust. Ash.

And in ash lies hope.

I need Vlad. That much is clear. And he’s near. Which is why I’m here.

Well, that and the random hand of fate.

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