Hi friends! Well here is an excerpt from the book's opening prologue. Enjoy...I think...!
From the Diary of Romilly Winter, April 14th.
Aged 18, I’m probably too old to keep a diary now, still I write words nonetheless, hoping for something coherent, something real, something I can believe in to come out of it. Maybe I have written a lot this winter because it’s the kind of season that ceases to end. When will the snow stop? Even when I want to see blue skies, my eyes are tricked into seeing pitch-black night.
Dana Cullen told Beth one time that ‘Nothing ever just happens, there is always a design.’ But I have seen enough in my short life to know that things don’t just happen. Maybe my faith is to be tested at every turn, so I hope to God that there is some design amongst the chaos.
Another part of me believes that things don’t just happen for a reason, and all we’re doing is fighting to make sense of the chaos that surrounds us. The kind of chaos that would become us, if it went unchallenged. It is a battle I find myself losing, and yet those around me think I am so strong for keeping it together.
I hope to God with my every breath, but what is hope anyway? Does it fool us into forgetting what is real in our lives? What if it is all wrong, that we are all lost souls wandering around with no meaning to our existence? What can hope do for us then?
It could be that I think things over too much. It could be that the Mirror of Souls has affected me for far too long. It could be that I have convinced myself that everything will work out just fine. There’s a strong chance I’m just playing tricks on myself and those around me.
There is a very strong chance things will not work out fine.
There’s a very strong chance that the Demon inside me will win.
I hope to God I am wrong.
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I plant this tree with some aversion,
As nature controls her own reversion,
When reversion is completed,
All those lives will be deleted.
Whoever cuts or harms the tree,
Will likewise suffer some adversity.
- A local Midlands curse.
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1 Corinthians 15:51
Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.
Luke 22:3
Then Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot, who was of the number of the twelve.
Revelation 12:4
His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it.
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Prologue
49 years ago.
His eyes were black. Not his pupils. His eyes. Only five years old, and Donald Curie was making people scream. The boys had blindfolded the girl; an innocent game of kiss-chase. In this regard, Donald was a boy typical for his age. He didn’t really want to kiss the girl the group had caught for him.
He had a surprise for her in his small hand. Something that was doing all it could to emerge.
Hold her still, Joey, he’d say. Joey would guffaw and say yes, that he would hold her still. Not that blonde-curled, eyes-as-large-as milk-bottle tops Janey Reid was fighting it. She liked kiss-chase. She giggled as she could make out the shape of the boy in front of her. Her friends were pushing her forward gently towards Donald, unaware of the event unfolding in his head.
He took one smile at Joey, opened his hand, then shoved the hairy spider into Janey’s mouth and used his two fingers under her chin to push her jaw shut.
He laughed, but no-one else did. Not Joey. Not Janey’s girlfriends. Least of all, Janey, who vomited into the tall grass.
A teacher, Mr Daniels, grabbed Donald by the shoulders and ordered a supervisor to tend to Janey, who by now was an unattractive mix of vomit, tears and red-rimmed eyes. Not to mention the hairs of the spider’s legs which clung to her lips and chin. He uttered no words to the boy, because Mr Daniels wanted rid of him. Not to another school, not even to the police. He wanted rid of the boy with the black eyes and empty expression. Talking with the boy’s mother, Mrs Eloisa Curie, was certain to be a waste of time.
Mr Daniels knew, because this would not be the first time he had locked horns with the parents of wayward children.
Wayward would be easy to deal with. A fairground ride. This child, he was convinced, was as close to total and utter evil in a human being as you could possibly get. He had said as much to Eloisa Curie on the previous occurrence of Donald’s special brand of playground fun.
“His eyes are black, Mrs Curie. I don’t see any kindness, anything good. No sense of compassion for his classmates. It’s not school policy to pry-”
“Then pray, Mr Daniels. Do not pry,” interrupted Eloisa curtly.
“I must.” Mr Daniels, Bernard to Donald, who thought the portly teacher’s first name was hilarious, spoke hurriedly to avoid another interruption. Eloisa Curie was 5’1” tall, wore her hair in a bun, dressed in imitation Chanel suits from China, and spoke her words like a diamond cutting glass. She would not have her boy criticised, especially by some breast-groping middle-aged fatso who would go on strike at the drop of a hat if his union said so. Bloody socialists always wanting a free lunch, thought Eloisa scornfully.
“Any history of abuse at home, Mrs Curie? Where is Mr Curie? We cannot afford a repeat of this kind of incident.” The words came out, rapid-fire style, as if the speed would lessen the intensity of the statement. It didn’t.
Eloisa smoothed the crease in her skirt and crossed her legs. Her chest knitted closer together, and Bernard’s eyes glimmered with delight as her breasts pushed upwards by the slightest of notches.
Have a good gawp, you bald-headed bastard, thought Eloisa.
“No abuse. Mr Curie died whilst on a training exercise with the RAF. He was due to be discharged this year.” She took a breath. “There will not be a repeat of this kind of incident.”
Understanding the limitation of his powers, Mr Daniels let her statement conclude matters. That would be his official report to the Head, along with a letter of apology to Janey Reid’s parents, where he would allude to a typical schoolboy prank and hope you will accept the School’s apology and assurances that this event will not be repeated.
The reality of the meeting’s conclusion was the sight of Eloisa Curie standing up stiffly and leaving the Year Head’s room once the word incident had left her thin lips, which had a tint of rouge. Her stilettos hammered the school floor with purposeful intent. She wanted to show these upstarts at the school she was better than them. Donald was complex, yes. But a good boy. She had no doubt about that. He was just misunderstood. He would grow out of…whatever this was.
As she drove back home, she knew the routine would play out as it had done so before. Donald would do his wide-eyed, lost puppy routine, and she would wilt, and give in once again.
“I’m sorry, Mum. And I’ll say sorry to Janey tomorrow too.”
Eloisa pitied her son. She knew he was fighting some kind of demon. The kind of demons the school teachers couldn’t deal with. The unseen kinds of demon are the worst. They don’t look back at you in the mirror, but you know they’re there. Eloisa had spoken with the new priest at the church, a young man by the name of Fr Brannigan.
While they were talking, Donald’s face convulsed, and he uttered curses that would make the girls at the Meowsa Gentlemen’s Club, opposite the church; blush redder than a London bus, with their gasps falling into stunned silence when they realised it was a five-year-old boy shouting Tonight you’ll be raped by Satan, and bitch you better enjoy it.
“Your son’s behaviour isn’t normal, Eloisa. As your friend, I sometimes might have to say things that are uncomfortable for you to hear.” Cathy Tudor meant well, but it was the last thing Eloisa wanted to hear whilst the two women waited for the school day to end, so that they could collect their children.
Cathy was scared of Donald Curie. Eloisa spun around to challenge her, but as she came to a full stop, she chose her words carefully. “He is only five years of age, and what boy hasn’t played pranks? I’m not defending his actions, just…just see it for what it is, Cath. Don’t blow things out of proportion. He’s always been polite to you, hasn’t he?”
Cathy was scared of Donald Curie. “Polite he may be. Street angel, house devil, is what he is, though.”
Donald was only five years old, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous. He’d had a brother. Malcolm when he did good, Malky when he did really good. But the older boy was still Number-One-Son to Eloisa, even though parents aren’t supposed to have favourites. She’d spoiled Donald rotten too. But that was never enough. He wanted to be Number One.
Donald was lying in bed when it happened. There was a flutter behind the curtain, but the house was old and drafty, so he paid scant attention to it. It was a summer’s evening, but the temperature in the room was dropping fast.
The shapes that appeared above his bed could have been explained away as a child’s overactive imagination. He tried to ignore them, and turned his head to the side on the pillow. There were two of those, but they were thinning. Number-One-Son always had three.
Eyes looked back at him, so he pulled the duvet up above his head and breathed hard. In the blackness where the bottom of his legs would be, two luminous lights concentrated on him. Blue lights.
He could feel something on his bare feet. Strands of hair, perhaps. But they didn’t have the scent or feel of his mother when she would hug him. They felt clotted, uneven. Dead.
A hand, now. At least, it felt like one. It pressed a bony finger behind his knee, and Donald let out a scream. But Eloisa wouldn’t hear. His mother was a heavy sleeper. She was good at sleeping, since the settlement from the divorce came through. A little white lie that would be lost on the likes of Mr Daniels, and she hadn’t cared to enlighten him about that.
Any regular sleep pattern evaporated when she had fallen pregnant. Malcolm had been born seven pounds and one ounce, and right on time. Donald had been born four pounds and eight ounces, and nine weeks ahead of schedule.
The ultrasound showed Malcolm’s pattern, no problem there. Donald’s image continued to escape and confound the doctors, who in the end said Maybe it’s a phantom pregnancy, Mrs Curie.
Eloisa told them that a woman knows when she’s pregnant, and to not belittle my intelligence.
When he was born, Donald was a sickly child. The doctors were not sure if he would survive the first twenty-four hours. At one point, his temperature dropped so much that his lips turned blue. The doctors were about to give Eloisa Curie the bad news, when Donald rat-tat-tapped the incubator with his stubby little fingers, giving the doctors the same, cold, dead-eyed stare for which he would become infamous.
“Better, er….let her know he’s um, alright,” said the main doctor, who had seen a lot of babies over his time, but none that gave him the chills in the way that this boy did.
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