HIS OTHER SON (12 page)
Authors: MAYNARD SIMS
Simon
suddenly let out a yelp of pain and staggered against the desk. Caroline held a
black stiletto shoe in her hand, the tip of the heel coated in blood. When
Simon hit the floor it was with quite a crash.
Randolph
Stock had fallen face forwards out of the wheelchair and was dragging himself
painfully across the deep carpet towards his beloved son.
Romodon
stood from the body and watched him, fascinated.
“You
are wasting your time, Mr. Stock. It is not your son. Not any longer. Facially
it resembles him as he was, but his essence, his soul, is long gone. We
replaced it with a substitute, but…”
Stock
had reached Frank and was cradling his head. He was talking softly to his son,
but no one tried very hard to hear what he was saying.
The
door to the study opened and more white robed figures came in.
Caroline
let herself be taken, and it served as distraction enough, to allow Paula to
get away.
Ray
felt fingers of fire filter under his skin until it was as if his internal
organs were being ripped apart.
Ray
and Caroline were subdued. As they were carried out of the room Stock looked up
but just as quickly returned his attention to the only child he had really
cared for.
A few weeks later Paula stood on the dock by the harbour
and looked out to sea.
Martin
Devereaux
had called in the police, and they
in turn brought in the FBI, but no trace was found of either Caroline or Ray.
The search continued.
The house was cleaned, the bodies were cleared away,
and Martin slowly got on with the job of running Yellow Beach. If he missed, or
was upset about his wife, he hid it well.
Randolph Stock became a recluse. He took to his bed, under the supervision of
Dr Cooperman, and wasn’t responding to any treatments.
Marlene was pronounced dead, and a small private funeral service was held. Her
body was buried in the grounds of the Stock estate.
Romodon
and his followers disappeared.
Paula had made her own inquiries about her mother and uncle. She knew some odd
people from hanging around the various bars and clubs, and through word of
mouth she got a lead.
She’d been at the dock since morning, and it was now moving towards four in the
afternoon. A fisherman, Oscar Hernandez, and his son Rudy, had shown her where
to look. She knew Elsa Hernandez from college.
Paula sat on the rough wooden decking, pulling at splinters with bored fingers.
Despite outward appearance she loved her mother very much, and she wasn’t going
to rest until she found her.
She didn’t really know her uncle Ray so much, but the night of her eighteenth
birthday was ingrained on her brain, and she was determined to locate him as
well.
When she saw the boat enter the harbour, passing the harbour master’s station,
she stood. She was more excited than she had thought she would be.
It was a small launch, and a big man stood at the wheel as he guided it home.
There didn’t seem to be anyone else aboard.
As the boat moored, the man tied it up and busied himself on deck.
Paula walked across and called out. “Hey, Ray.”
The big man looked up without comprehension.
Hair long and
uncombed, curling down over the collar of his shirt, several days’ growth of
beard, a gold earring in the lobe of his right ear.
He was over six feet
tall, sun tanned, lean and well muscled. His nose looked as if it had been broken,
and a mouth whose corners seemed to recall a time when they might wrinkle up in
a sardonic smile, mocking the world.
His mouth mocked no more.
There was little or no life behind the eyes. His movements were automatic, without
emotion.
“Uncle Ray.”
“Yes,” the man said. “Ray. That’s me. Ray.”
He sounded drunk, or drugged, or worse.
Paula turned away. “I used to know you.”
THE END
PRAISE FOR THE AUTHORS
“I think Let Death Begin is terrific. I loved it. It's
pacy
, engaging, mysterious, and full of conflict and
good scenes.” Advanced reader review
“With Dark
Of
The Sun Maynard Sims successfully ventures into thriller
territory. And the fast-paced action builds to a surprising climax.” Publishers
Weekly
“There are several twists and turns in Dark
Of
The Sun that I did not see coming and that is something I
always enjoy.” Amazon
“Dark
Of
The Sun is awesome.
Full of action, mystery and intrigue, with enough twists and turns to make your
head spin. Believe me once you get drawn into this story you will not be able
to put it down until you finish it.” Literary Mayhem
“Nightmare City is a page turner, plenty of
supernatural thrills and action.” Horror Review
“One word describes this novel to a T: wow. A non-stop
roller coaster ride of pure horror from beginning to end (Nightmare City)”
Night Owl
“If you're looking for a
genre read with a lot of the red stuff, a quick pace and some cinematic action
scenes you will definitely enjoy reading "Stronghold",” Open Salon
“This is one of those rare
novels you’ll never forget. (Stronghold)” Barnes & Noble
“Shelter, I’d recommend this for horror readers.” The
British Fantasy Society
“Maynard and Sims really understand good storytelling.
(Shelter)” Maximum Horrors
“Demon Eyes was very well written and fast paced. I
enjoyed this one very much!”
Hellnotes
“L.H. Maynard and M.P.N. Sims are a duo of talent to
be reckoned with. I really enjoyed this book (Demon Eyes) and
it's
one hell of a read.” Horror Bob
“Black Cathedral” is an exciting adventure in the dark
fantastic, a dark and twisted “Mission: Impossible”. With this opening tale,
Sims and Maynard have crafted an attention grabber that's exciting and
frightening.” Shroud
“Maynard & Sims -- two of my
favorite
literary necromancers -- have done it again! Turn down the lights, lock
the windows, curl up by the fire, and prepare for a long night...” Steve ‘The
Grudge’
Susco
“Black Cathedral took me back in the day when all I
read were the likes Stephen King, Rick
Hautala
, Peter
Straub and John Saul. All of these guys are great masters of horror and Maynard
and Sims have officially joined their ranks after finishing Black Cathedral.
What makes these authors really appealing to me is that their writing reads so
well.” The Novel
Blog
/ Amazon.com
“In the space of a mere 3 novels, they have proven
their ability to effortlessly put horror readers through the ringer time and
again. Their novels don’t merely command your
attention,
they squeeze your nerves with death-grip power. This is real, unapologetic,
scary stuff.” Gary
Braunbeck
, 5-time Bram Stoker
Award-Winner.
“With their slick style and eye for the macabre,
Maynard and Sims take their readers on a rollercoaster of sensory
delight. If you've been crazy enough to miss them so far then grab their
next book and jump on for the ride. Prepare to be thrilled and you
won't be disappointed!” Sarah
Pinborough
“Maynard and Sims books just keep getting better and
better, and
Night Souls
might just be their best yet. You are doing
yourself a disservice if you do not give their books a try. I can only hope
that there are more adventures in store for the intrepid souls of Department
18.” Famous Monsters
Of
Filmland
“Maynard and Sims give us a fresh story altogether
here, (Night Souls) one that I highly recommend. The only problem I have with
the book is that it ended…of all their books, this one is by far my
favorite
.” Horror Review
“The Eighth Witch is
a consistently
entertaining blend of supernatural horror and British drawing room mystery, and
well-delineated characters escalate the tension as the story moves toward a
surprising whodunit conclusion.” Publishers Weekly
“For anyone looking to read a good scary book then you
should check out
The Eighth Witch
.” Fallen Angel
BIOGRAPHY: MAYNARD SIMS
www.maynard-sims.com
Novels, Shelter, Demon Eyes, Nightmare City,
Stronghold, Dark
Of
The Sun, and the three Department
18 books Black Cathedral, Night Souls, and The Eighth Witch, have been
published mass market and
eBook
. Their first four
novels have been purchased by Amazon Publishing.
The fourth Department 18 book, A Plague
Of
Echoes, is for 2014, as are the thrillers, Let Death
Begin, a mystery thriller, Falling Apart At The Edges, a crime thriller, and
Through The Sad Heart, an action thriller. They have sold a standalone ghost
story novel, Stillwater, and Department 18 book 5, Mother
Of
Demons. They are working on the Dark
Of
The Sun
sequel.
Their first screenplay, Department 18, won the 2013
British Horror Film Festival Award for Best New Screenplay. They have also
written scripts based on The Eighth Witch, and some of their ghost stories.
They have completed two original, commissioned screenplays, a horror and a
drama, both of which are being read.
Collections include, Shadows At Midnight, 1979 and
1999 (revised and enlarged), Echoes Of Darkness, 2000, Incantations, 2002, two
retrospective collections of their stories, essays and interviews, The Secret
Geography Of Nightmare and Selling Dark Miracles, both 2002, Falling Into
Heaven in 2004, The Odd Ghosts, 2011, and Flame And Other Enigmatic Tales, and
A Haunting Of Ghosts, both 2012.
Novellas, Moths, The Hidden Language
Of
Demons, The Seminar, and Double Act, have been published
in 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2007 respectively. His Other Son, is published 2013.
Numerous stories have been published in a variety of
anthologies and magazines, including the Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, the
anthology, Strange Tales, which won the World Fantasy Award 2004 and the Del
Rey
anthology, The Children Of
Cthulhu
.
They worked as editors on the first seven volumes of
Darkness Rising, and the two annual Darkness Rising anthologies. They co-edited
and published F20 with The British Fantasy Society. As editors/publishers they
ran Enigmatic Press in the UK, which produced Enigmatic Tales, and its sister
titles. They wrote essays.
Email contact can be made at
[email protected]
or
[email protected]
3 Cutlers Close, St Michaels Mead, Bishops Stortford,
Herts, CM23 4FW, England
FaceBook
as Maynard Sims.
LinkedIn under Maynard Sims
Twitter on @
micksims
Google+ as Maynard Sims
EXCERPT
from LET DEATH BEGIN by MAYNARD SIMS, coming soon to Amazon Kindle
PROLOGUE
A YEAR AGO
He didn’t know
today was the day someone was going to kill him.
From the outside
the police station is a mass of glass and concrete. Monument to a modern
architectural desire to be individualistic, to be different, rather than an
attempt to create a building that will blend in with its surroundings.
Detective Sergeant James Price often
thought the building was a mess rather than a mass. He generally has the
thought each time he walks up the short flight of stone steps to the smoked
glass front doors that make an irritating swishing noise as they both open and
close.
James wouldn’t voice his thoughts,
and certainly not to his Detective Chief Inspector. Joe Royce was a good man,
and James considers he has a pretty good personal relationship with the older
man, but there are lines that he knows not to cross. Joe is the boss and there
is never any mistaking that. Besides, effective detective though he is, there
have been enough times when his boss has covered his back with his superiors.
Inside the station
James looks around him and thinks how quiet it is. There has been a ram raid on
a cash and carry in Hertford, and that has taken quite a few members of the
team out. There are a of couple of DC’s who look bored as they file through
computer records looking for profile matches to a recent spate of sexual
assaults near a night club. It isn’t James’ case but if it was he’d have looked
at the security team first. The bouncers were often a dubious lot who
considered drunk and vulnerable young women easy game, perks of the job.
James is waiting
on a call. One of his cases is a major robbery involving a Hatton Garden
diamond company. The theft was huge and James has a lead that he has been told
might lead to the man who planned and organised it. Major organised crime was
on the increase – when was it any different James and his colleagues moaned. It
is usual to use informants but this one is different. This is a new source who
claims the name he will give James will open up a whole can of worms that he
should think twice about using.
James is used to
sailing close to the wind. His last appraisal report spoke of “...gets results
and he is honest, but several of his colleagues have called him a maverick.”
One or two of his other appraisals have mentioned his tendency to act first and
think afterwards. As Joe Royce succinctly put it – ‘Don’t shit ‘til your
trousers are down, boy.’
James is typing
out a report when his mobile buzzes. He glances at the screen and sees it is an
unknown number. He presses the button and holds the phone to his ear.
‘DS Price.’
‘Are you on your
own?’
James looks around
the all but deserted office.
‘May as well be.’
‘The meeting I
mentioned. It’s today.’
‘Where and when?’
James scribbles
down the address. It’s about twenty minutes away.
‘I hope you’ve got
that.’ The connection was broken.
James stands and
grabs his jacket from the back of his chair. He glances towards Joe Royce’s
office but he can see it’s empty. Joe, like the others, is in Hertford or out
elsewhere.
James should
report the call. He should co-ordinate back up. He should go in as part of a
team.
He signs out his
gun and heads down to the underground car park.
It’s a bright
sunny day.
A day for beaches and sitting in the garden, not
for chasing villains.
James has waited for this lead for days and now
it’s come through he can’t deny he is excited. It’s an excitement he only gets
from the job. Much of his work is repetitive and even boring, but when the
adrenaline kicks in, there is no feeling like it.
He picks up his
mobile phone from the cup holder. For a moment he almost dials Joe Royce’s number
but something stops him. He tells himself that he’ll go to the address and take
a look. There is plenty of time to call in reinforcements. The lead might not
amount to anything and then no one would thank him for the waste of man power
and hours. No, better to proceed, with caution, and make sure this is a genuine
meeting.
He has his
suspicions about who will be there. It is one of two major criminals that
has
carried out the robbery, he’s certain of it, one of
several recent crimes with a similar modus operandi. Two big time crooks have
all but dominated London crime for decades, though foreign gangs are beginning
to make their mark.
James is convinced
it is either Frank Dyson or Harry Moss that is behind the recent armed
robberies. The crimes were almost a throwback to the glory days of high street
crime. These days much of the real money is made behind the scenes, high tech
stuff.
He
pulls off the A1 motorway in Hertfordshire and after a couple of wrong turns he
finds a narrow service road that leads into an industrial estate on the
perimeter of Stevenage. Some of the small factories and warehouses are clearly
disused but some look as if they might still be functioning.
He
glances at the piece of paper with the address he’s been given. It’s up ahead
on the right. The building is large, several thousand square feet, and tall.
A large factory warehouse.
The walls are pale green
concrete. Every window is boarded with exterior quality plywood, and the name
board is barely legible.
James
parks out of direct sight of the warehouse and climbs from the car. The tarmac
surrounding the building is in a bad state. The whole estate has a rundown,
nearly extinct atmosphere about it, and this large beast is the final dinosaur.
The
main door is covered by the same strong plywood that boards the windows, and
there is a steel centre bar, secured to a padlock.
James pulls out his gun and checks it is
ready. He walks cautiously around the side of the building, past the kind of
debris that empty and abandoned buildings seem to attract. A chain link fence
surrounds the place, but it’s easy for him to vault over, once he’s at the back
of the building.
A
ramp leads up to a raised walkway, which leads up to the double doors that
would once have been the busy loading bay. There is another door to the side of
those, and with some gentle persuasion, James manages to get it open so he can
go inside.
The
air is stale, heavy with disuse, old oil, and a ghost stench of failure. There
is a short passageway with doors that lead to old offices. At the end of the
passage is a door that gives entrance to the factory floor. James pushes it
open.
There
is some sunlight in here, pouring like redemption through holes in the
roof.
The factory area is huge. It is
like a vast industrial desert. Standing like forlorn trees are three stainless
steel cylindrical vats, and running around them are a series of linked
catwalks.
Overhead
is another network of
walkways, that
lead from the
vats to a small gallery.
James
runs to the cover of the central vat. There were no other cars outside, none he
has seen anyway. That didn’t mean there is no one else here.
He
listens.
Nothing.
No sounds, no echoes.
Time to wait.
The
first shot takes him across the top of his thigh. The pain is immediate and he
hears himself cry out.
He
stumbles, falls backwards onto the damp concrete floor. Water drips from a
fractured pipe around the huge vats and it soaks into his trousers, and meets
the blood that is beginning to pump out from his leg.
He
can’t see who has fired the shot but when he struggles to his knees he fires
off a couple of shots in the general direction. Then he hears a man’s voice,
laughing.
James
gets to his feet and peers round at the walkways above his head. Then he sees
him.
The shooter.
He can’t tell if it’s a large man or
not because he is distracted by just one thing. The man wears a clown’s mask on
his face. Then the man disappears.
When
the clown’s face appears again he fires at it but misses.
He
fumbles for his mobile phone. It’s got a weak signal and he presses buttons,
tries to summon help.
The
second time he is hit the bullet enters his shoulder, spins him round,
‘Behind you.’
He
hears footsteps on the metal catwalk, but the pain in his leg and shoulder is
intense. He can’t operate the hand that holds his gun. He transfers it to his
left hand and fires off a couple of shots at random.
He
must have blacked out. The next thing he can see is the clown, only a few feet
away, gun in hand.
‘Bye
bye, James.’
The
voice sounds familiar. If only he had more time he knows he can work out
who
it is, who it is that wants him dead. He doesn’t have
the chance. The clown fires a final shot.
The
pain in his head is so fierce he can’t breathe. It feels like an eternity as
the bullet ricochets inside his skull.
Then
it all goes black and he falls.
EXCERPT
ENDS