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The Orphan

 

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Christmas in the back of beyond

 

The dude in the mirror is trying to kill her!

Ivy moves into an overgrown cottage in the back of beyond two days before Christmas. She soon discovers that the old place keeps old secrets. The mirror above her mantlepiece is not what it seems. Ash and oil footsteps appear from nowhere, as does writing on a wall.

Is her refuge haunted? Ha, well, she’ll decorate the bejeezus out of it, overwhelm whatever it is with pretty baubles and blinking lights. Not everyone loves Christmas as much as she does, after all.

A good plan indeed … until Gabriel introduces himself.

Old houses certainly do keep old secrets.

GABRIEL

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Excerpt: The Orphan - Rose scented shampoo

 

HE RETURNED AFTER hours of waiting. Her nerves screamed at her to go after him, help him, he may be in trouble, but just as she was about to abandon the dry hollow where she hid, he appeared.

Sunflower hit him in the shoulder. “Don’t do that again,” she snarled.

He merely laughed … and held out a holdall.

Eyes narrowed, she snatched it, opened it. Oh. Fresh clothes. Toiletries, including pads.

“We can wash in the pond we saw a way back.” Adin watched her rummage, clearly enjoying her reactions. “But first …”

She accepted the brown bag he shook with wiggling eyebrows. Food. Proper stuff-it-in food. Sunflower sat flat on the stony ground, and stuffed her face. Although cold, it was delicious. Fries, deep fried fish, pork sausages, savoury tarts, and a yummy chilli dip.

“How?” she asked around filled cheeks.

“Raided the clothes recycle bin to look presentable enough, washed up in a toilet in back of the local gas station, and then went shopping. Got some funny looks for the girl stuff, but so what?” He peered at her. “Charged my phone at the diner.”

Sunflower stared at him. “You went online?”

“That’s what took so long, yes.”

“And?”

“Your father put out a fresh appeal for you on your birthday, but I didn’t find anything else about you.”

Sucking the last of the sauce from her fingers, she prompted, “Fred?” She still called him Fred, easier to deal with him, as if he were no more than a character in a play.

“Dug some into Paul Paterson’s life. Seems he vanished around the time you did, so it’s definitely him. Folks have the kind of money to put him in that fancy school, but he was the fifth son, won’t inherit much. The bulk of the estate goes to the oldest.”

“Explains why he took me for ransom.”

“His folks have a reward out. They’re looking, as your folks are looking.”

“But he can’t go home, not until I’m dead.”

Adin nodded.

Sunflower rose to gather the remains of her meal. “Let’s get to that pond.” As they walked on after shouldering their gear old and new, she asked, “What are you not telling me?”

“He broke out from an institution. Committed for some mental disorder. His parents want him found because they say he is a danger to society.”

Closing her eyes briefly, she walked on. It explained his odd behaviour. How he taunted her. How he watched her. Yet, to be truthful, he did not actually hurt her. In some ways he, in fact, cared for her. Monthly feminine products. New clothes. Books, including the cookery kind. Sleeping tablets. Cough mixture when she had a chest issue.

It didn’t make sense.

She said as much.

“There’s such a thing as mental torture,” Adin murmured.

And wasn’t that the truth?

They reached the pond, and as the first rays of sunshine peered over the towering mountains, Sunflower forewent everything else to become as clean as she could be, revelling in the rose scented shampoo Adin had bought for her.

Ever would the smell of roses bring him to mind.

An orphaned boy searches for a lost girl.

A woman abandons her new-born at a motel in the back of beyond. Adin grows up unloved, bullied, and no one remembers him. He doesn’t exist.

Until he sees a poster for a missing girl on a lamppost. There is an instant connection to little Sunflower, kidnapped for ransom, only to disappear after the money is paid. He exists because he must find her. Alone, he searches, a journey that takes him into the wild places, meeting along the way some interesting characters.

In dreams he speaks to her, for she is the one who will remember him.

THE ORPHAN

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Excerpt: The Orphan - Nowhere

 

HE BOUND HER, gagged and blindfolded her, put her in the back of a truck or van – she felt ridges under her and surmised it was more of a pickup – and then drove without stopping for many hours.

When they finally stopped, he dragged her by her foot to the edge, and snapped something cold and hard around her ankle.

“It’s a GPS tracking device. Run, and I can find you anywhere at any time. Nod if you understand.”

Sunflower nodded.

“If you attempt to remove it, it will trigger an explosive chip inside and you will lose most of your leg. Nod if you understand.”

Swallowing, she did just that.

“An alarm will sound if you are more than a hundred yards from my receiver. You will have ten seconds to return to range. If you don’t, the explosives will trip. Nod if you understand.”

With tears seeping from under her blindfold, Sunflower nodded vigorously.

“If someone comes and you do not hide immediately, I will set it off myself. Do I need to say it?”

No, he did not. She nodded.

He lifted her to her feet, removed her bindings, ungagged her and shifted the blindfold down. He gave a strange smile and waved a hand. “You are free to move around within those constraints.”

First, she stared at her ankle. An ugly metal band sat there; a tiny red light glowed steadily. She believed him. It could do all he said. Escape was virtually impossible. Then she looked up to their surroundings.

A stone cottage squatted in the middle of absolutely nowhere, in a field of grass with nothing but a lone tree next to it to break the severity of isolation. There were no other homes in sight, not even a stable or pen or corral. The middle of nowhere. There was nowhere to run to, had she the ability to do so. There was nowhere to hide. No one would hear her scream.

Sunflower inhaled the fresh air.

Nowhere was by far better than a dank room in the dark.

An orphaned boy searches for a lost girl.

A woman abandons her new-born at a motel in the back of beyond. Adin grows up unloved, bullied, and no one remembers him. He doesn’t exist.

Until he sees a poster for a missing girl on a lamppost. There is an instant connection to little Sunflower, kidnapped for ransom, only to disappear after the money is paid. He exists because he must find her. Alone, he searches, a journey that takes him into the wild places, meeting along the way some interesting characters.

In dreams he speaks to her, for she is the one who will remember him.

THE ORPHAN

Realm of Forgotten Things WIP

So, this is interim cover (or maybe I like it enough to keep it!) for a new novella I'm starting. A crazy place where literally ANYTHING is possible, so stay tuned for tongue-in-cheek humour alongside some serious action! I will be writing it when time allows (am editing for Redwing Productions at the moment and the second Seasons book is calling to me …) 😊

Orphan Excerpt: Adin in the North

 

In wild places, no one is ever truly lost.

ADIN

SPRING ARRIVED PAINSTAKINGLY slowly, but when it was in full swing, the glory left Adin breathless.

Harry Wilson, reading in his young companion an affinity for the natural order, made a suggestion. He needed to see his brother, he claimed, his brother having been the subject of his winter dreaming, often to leave him as speechless and unmoving as the first time it happened with Adin present. He would be away some time and would appreciate it if Adin would stay in the cottage and look after things for him. Just until he returned. Then Adin was a free agent once more, but was welcome to remain as long as he wished.

No hurry, he said. “Will leave only after the spring melt. Roads too dangerous right now.”

He then watched Adin think. He saw the lad study the trees, the surroundings, and smell the air. As spring gradually gave way to the beginnings of summer, Harry knew the boy had fallen as hard for the wild spaces as he had as a much younger man. He knew what the answer would be long before Adin himself knew it with certainty.

“I’ll stay.”

“Good lad.” Harry gripped his shoulder. “Will make sure you have all you need before I go. Unless you wish to come into town with me, spy out the lay of the land there for yourself?”

“If they know I’m alone here, I won’t be here long.”

“Yeah, the do-gooders will want to save your sorry ass,” Harry chortled.

THUS IT WAS that Adin spent the summer alone and unfettered in the wild northern spaces. The beginnings of manhood to come settled into broadening shoulders and developing arm and leg muscles, growing height, as he traipsed the spaces endlessly, discovering new sights with every step.

Harry was right. One found oneself out there.

While he unleashed his physical self during the day, at night his spirit delved nocturnal spaces. His dreams intensified.

At first, while Harry was still around offering insight, his dreams didn’t change much, except for colour. The images were more vivid, and he remembered more detail upon waking. Now, with no one watching, he soared into the unknown.

His wandering became about more than simply seeking Sunflower. In fact, it became about more than mere ‘wandering’. Adin sought to know the realm of the spirit, and therefore flew into spaces both awe-inspiring and terribly dark. By his reasoning, the more he knew, the better equipped he was to aid Sunflower.

On the day he and Sunflower turned fourteen, he finally spoke to her.

An orphaned boy searches for a lost girl.

A woman abandons her new-born at a motel in the back of beyond. Adin grows up unloved, bullied, and no one remembers him. He doesn’t exist.

Until he sees a poster for a missing girl on a lamppost. There is an instant connection to little Sunflower, kidnapped for ransom, only to disappear after the money is paid. He exists because he must find her. Alone, he searches, a journey that takes him into the wild places, meeting along the way some interesting characters.

In dreams he speaks to her, for she is the one who will remember him.

THE ORPHAN

Something for every reader!

 

Book of Being so far

 Hoping to publish quite a few of the missing short stories in 2024 :)

When winter catches you - Orphan Excerpt

Chapter 11

Lost in the woods is found amid trees.

  

ADIN

 

ADIN WALKED INTO winter.

At the home, when winter came, the boys were soon ill. No one supplied them with extra blankets or warm coats, never mind heating in their rooms. In his long years there, seven boys died of lung diseases, and he also shuddered through the unbearable cold, coughing and sniffling.

Now he was prepared.

Iris showed him how to use her bank card and therefore he knew what to do to have cash in hand, but a child drawing a large sum alone would appear suspicious … or be an easy target. He might technically be a teenager, but he was small for his age, and did not have the strength to fight off bullies and thieves.

Choosing ATMs inside shopping malls worked well. Not only was he amid many and less likely to suffer a beating, but he was able to pretend he was drawing money for his mother. That was his story, if asked, but only once did an older woman enquire if he needed help, standing behind him with her own card ready. He smiled at her and told her his mother had shown him what to do.

He drew the maximum daily allowance each time, and then made the cash stretch. Less of a trail, not that anyone had cause to be looking for him.

He headed north, and as the weather worsened, he bought proper gear, a little here, a little there, never spending too much in one place. Each time he entered a store, it was with his needs in mind, and he’d head directly to what it was he sought, select the item, pay and leave. No window shopping. No indecision. Once a young girl at the till asked him where his parents were, him shopping for himself, and he said his father sent him to pay while he went into the store next door.

Every move he made ensured he was forgotten the moment he walked away.

He walked for the most part, tramping the minor roads. Sometimes he got a lift, usually from women who stopped and asked why he was alone out there. The story that worked best was an argument with friends while on an outing, and he left the fight, choosing to walk rather than wait for his lift. Generally, those rides took him into the next town or occasionally a bus station.

A few times he caught a bus, but found that worked best on weekends. On school days the old folks were too nosy. He took the train, too, but after a conductor said to stay put, he’d contact the cops to help him with adult supervision, he stayed away from trains.

Mostly, it was safer to walk.

He avoided cities at all costs.

Too young to secure accommodation in motels or hotels, he opted for the outdoors. One of the first items he bought, after sturdy hiking boots and thick socks, was a tent and then a sleeping bag, one with a built-in pillow. More and more the outdoors felt like true home. He could not understand why folk chose to live in cities. Swiftly he had camping in remote areas down to expert level. He was a survivor, after all.

Prepared as he believed himself to be, winter caught him off guard.

  

ADIN UNZIPPED THE tent flap, shivering. Whiteness greeted him. The snowfalls he’d heard talk of in the nearby town had arrived.

Two days back he overheard a conversation about frequent blizzards in the region, and how snow piled many feet thick. Staring out over a landscape featureless, where yesterday had been trails and boulders, he understood he was in trouble. Not in this particular moment, no – he’d simply pack up and tramp back to town before conditions worsened – but long term. If this forerunner stymied him, shuddered him head to toe with the onset of what had to be minor cold, he could only imagine what a blizzard would do.

Time then to make new plans, the kind to see him through winter without calling attention to himself. Not once did he consider turning around and heading south in search of milder weather. Something summoned him north, and he chose to follow that inner directive. Or someone.

Sunflower summoned him.

She was in his dreams every night, her amber eyes pleading with him to watch over her. He would do more than watch over her in dreams; he would find her in real life.

Sunflower was somewhere in the north.

Therefore, Adin would bear winter, survive it, and continue his search with spring.

   THE ORPHAN

Blacktop in a Red Wood

 

MORNING LIGHT FILTERED through the canopy and birds sang greeting.

Ben stretched after uncurling from his hollow in the damp soil along the verge. Body heat had made the indentation for him. He hadn’t dared the wood behind. He doubted there were predators, but rather safe than not.

Wisps of mist floated like white ethereal arms about the tree trunks. It was so silent he felt entirely alone. But for wildlife, no one else lived in this world. Except a woman in a cottage not far away. North, a few miles.

He turned to gaze in that direction. A hollow feeling erupted in his stomach, and it had nothing to do with hunger.

Slinging his rucksack over one shoulder, he started walking.

There was no sign a car had ever passed here during the night.

Alayna lives as a recluse in the giant redwood forest far from prying eyes. When intruders break into her home with the intention of robbing and using her, a man with vivid green eyes becomes an unlikely saviour. The instant they see each other their fates are sealed. Ben and Alayna have the kind of attraction that reeks of a celestial mandate.

 She realises what Ben truly is, but he’s too young to know his real self. She sends him away to discover his destiny, telling him to play the music able to move stars, and awaits his return. Their attraction, though, is so visceral and overwhelming that Ben comes back again and again, each time finding it harder to leave the only woman who has ignited his soul.

 Alayna feels it too, because Ben possesses a kiss able to break worlds. His green eyes are an ethereal magnificence amid the redwoods, lighting the way for love, music, dreams and destiny to mark their paths, but such a connection has a price.

ETHEREAL MUSICIAN

Excerpt: Orphan - Who is Iris Hill?

 

IRIS HILL STEPPED on the pedal, pumping it. It took a while for the car to respond, but eventually the green city commuter lurched forward. She hated it, but funds no longer permitted an upgrade. This was her transport now, had been for fifteen years … not that she even recalled the years already gone by between buying this at an auction and her current position. Sometime after year two alone, her memory started playing tricks on her. What was, was no longer part of her reality. It wasn’t illness of a kind with a fancy medical name –as folk whispered to each other in the butchery the other day – it was deliberate. Iris did not want to remember her past and therefore she locked everything away, even the moments spent on a lot bidding for a five-year-old baby sedan.

The car swivelled, losing traction on the gravel.

Swearing, she stomped on the pedal again, the other one, the one that brought the vehicle to a halt, but missed it and lunged ahead instead.

A young boy flashed into view, and Iris screamed, seeing him grow alarmingly larger in her sights. Huge blue eyes swung her way, as panicked.

She stomped and stomped, and screamed.

  

ADIN HURTLED SIDEWAYS into the brush, suffering slashing from sharp branches, and bruising his knees as he landed on rough stone. A green swirl filled his vision, causing him to cover his face. A strangely dulled scream filled the surrounds, eclipsing all birdsong, even the pounding of his heart.

The world stilled.

All sound vanished, and life fell into breathlessness.

A car door slammed extra loudly, jerking him back to life.

“Boy! Where are you? Are you okay?”

The woman’s voice was deep. He expected it to be shrill, but that was probably perception based on the sound of screaming. Where had she come from? He could swear her tyres made no sound on the gravel road as she approached. Maybe he had been careless in his attention, rapt in the sight of so much nature.

He crawled from scratching twigs, searching for her. She had been as terrified as he was. There was a chance she needed him to be as fine as he needed her to be on her way and leave him alone. She wouldn’t do that until she saw him.

The old and dinged thing she drove listed to one side, hanging into the ditch on the opposite side of the road. He noticed the ditch when he chose this backwater rural lane, and opted to walk on the incline side, where trees grew, and grass. Lots of grass, and wildflowers. He liked grass. Grass was far easier to sleep on than a concrete step in a city.

Another swirl entered his field of vision, this one greyed out black rather than dusty green. A swish of too much material became a dress. Adin stared at her dress. She was like a witch from the tales with her long robe billowing out in the breeze.

He shuddered, wondering if she wanted to eat him.

Pointed red shoes appeared under the rim of her mighty dress affair, causing him to smile. That wasn’t a sign of evil; that was a sign of cheekiness.

Adin looked up … into the kindest green and brown flecked eyes he had ever seen. It wasn’t her eye colour that got him, for he had seen eyes of every colour in his short life, it was her kindness. She exuded it. Stranger still, he knew it as kindness.

“I’m okay,” he said, but his words emerged croaked and broken.

Arms akimbo, she studied him. Her hair was dark, far darker than her dress, and all she needed was a pointy hat, and she would be a witch. Freckles covered her face, though, and he couldn’t make out wrinkles. Maybe not so much a witch, then. Maybe she liked to play dress-up.

“No, you’re not fine. We need to see to all those scratches and your poor knees. And I think you’re hungry and thirsty.”

Yes, he was, but he wasn’t going anywhere with anyone.

He drew himself up. “I’m fine.”

“What’s your name?”

“What’s yours?”

Grinning, she said, “Iris Hill. I live up there.” She pointed to a space above his head.

He craned around, but couldn’t see anything other than trees guarding the road. When he faced here again, she had one eyebrow raised.

“Adin,” he muttered.

“Adin who?”

“Don’t know.”

“Ah.”

In that ‘ah’ was a world of understanding, as if she knew exactly what he meant, as if she had once walked the same path in life as he now did. He stared at her.

She glanced at his knees weeping thin trails of blood. “Adin Stone, is that your name?”

Nodding vigorously, he swallowed. She did understand.

“Well, Adin Stone, we gave each other a fright. I need help getting my car back on the road and you need help with your injuries. Shall we make a deal? I help you first and then you help me? Tomorrow you can be on your way again, but I’d welcome the company at dinner tonight, if that’s okay with you.”

This time he nodded slowly.

Man, she read him too well.

An orphaned boy searches for a lost girl.

A woman abandons her new-born at a motel in the back of beyond. Adin grows up unloved, bullied, and no one remembers him. He doesn’t exist.

Until he sees a poster for a missing girl on a lamppost. There is an instant connection to little Sunflower, kidnapped for ransom, only to disappear after the money is paid. He exists because he must find her. Alone, he searches, a journey that takes him into the wild places, meeting along the way some interesting characters.

In dreams he speaks to her, for she is the one who will remember him.

THE ORPHAN

Chapter 10: The Orphan

 

An orphaned boy searches for a lost girl.

A woman abandons her new-born at a motel in the back of beyond. Adin grows up unloved, bullied, and no one remembers him. He doesn’t exist.

Until he sees a poster for a missing girl on a lamppost. There is an instant connection to little Sunflower, kidnapped for ransom, only to disappear after the money is paid. He exists because he must find her. Alone, he searches, a journey that takes him into the wild places, meeting along the way some interesting characters.

In dreams he speaks to her, for she is the one who will remember him.

Chapter 10

Your face is also your fingerprint.

 

SUNFLOWER

 

SHE SAW FRED’S face.

When it happened, she realised he would never let her go. He would soon kill her. He needed her alive for the photos he took of her with the day’s newspaper, but once her father paid, he would kill her.

She had seen his face.

Fred surprised her. In fact, he freaked her out completely. There was nothing normal about him, just as there was nothing normal about her. His type of strange came from a different planet, though. He did not act or react as a child expected. She doubted adults could deal with him either.

Late one evening – she knew it was evening when a bar of light appeared under the door, for he switched the lights on for the night – he unlocked her prison and beckoned her out.

The action was familiar to her. Either it meant he needed another photo, or he was allowing her to go to the toilet. He allowed the latter only once a day, and sometimes it was morning and sometimes it was night. Sometimes she had to hold for untold hours between, but never did she surrender and wee on the stinking floor.

He looked odd this night. Not quite the Fred who now no longer wore the balaclava over his face in her presence. Unfortunately, she finished in the toilet one time before he was ready, despite having stolen time to splash water on her face and wash her hands, and exited the cubicle to see the balaclava rolled up, revealing his features. She had thought him old, like her father, but he was more like her friend Tara’s older brother, when she attended his twenty-first birthday party. Fred was too young to have a daughter, and she had believed him that day in the park. How naïve she really was, of the real world.

Tonight, his brown eyes seemed like living orbs. As if two worlds moved there in his face. Usually he showed no emotion; he just beckoned her to duty with dead eyes. His kind of strange was all about no expression. His hair was a funny reddish-brown, worn slicked back, which she thought might be because he always wore the balaclava rolled up as a cap, ever ready to pull it down when his face needed hiding. Tonight, his hair stood on end. In fact, as he waved a hand at her to come, the other messed his hair even more. Obviously, he’d been running hands through his hair.

It was strange behaviour.

Fred was excited about something.

Had her father paid the ransom?

Her heart became a lump of ice in her tightening chest. Fred was about to kill her. That was the reason for his excitement.

He preceded her down the short dark passage, knowing she would follow. Sunflower once went the other way, seeking escape, and discovered only a blank wall. Besides her cell-room, there was nowhere to go. Her heart started beating again, loud thumps she was certain would soon jerk her up and down in the violence of its movement.

Where this was, she had no idea. Her room had no window, the passage was lightless, and this space, where he forced her to pose with a newspaper, was boarded up. There were two windows, but dirty slats had been nailed over them, tight, allowing no light or sight through. A naked bulb overhead highlighted the nastiness. The narrow toilet cubicle to the left did possess a small window and that one allowed light in – when she visited it in the day – but was constructed of glass that allowed no view. It was rusted in place; she had attempted to pry it open, if not for escape, then at least for knowledge of her whereabouts. Well, escape had been first on her mind, but the sight of a tree or a building might help, too.

No sounds other than Fred’s grunts, footsteps and occasional words now formed part of her life. She had not yet heard the whisper of a bird in song, or a tyre crunching over gravel or swishing in rubbery silence on tar. Whether she was in the country or hidden somewhere in the city, she could not know. Not knowing meant she was as lost inside as she was to the outside.

The only other sounds she experienced emphasised the state of her existence. The slap of a tin plate on the floor – deposited once in the morning and once in the evening, and she knew it as morning and evening by the food on it – and the scrape of it being collected again. The click of the camera on Fred’s phone. The rustle of the newspaper. Her ablution noises, and the flush of the toilet.

And her sobs, but those were silent. He was not to know of her pain, although it was true that her hopelessness sounded loud in her own mind.

In her dreams, when she managed to sleep, blue eyes watched over her. Once she watched a documentary with her father about New Zealand, and said how lovely the blue rivers were, and her father said the melting snow caused that kind of blue.

Snow-melt eyes.

Because he saw her, she lived. And while he looked, she could endure. It was a boy, she just knew it, but also wondered if even her sleeping mind played tricks on her. Maybe she needed a protector so much, she made him up.

Fred motioned her to the plastic chair she usually sat in, and then dragged another closer. This, too, was unusual behaviour. She had seen the other chair between the two boarded windows, but he had never bothered to use it before today.

He sat in it, facing her. Staring at her. With dancing, gleeful eyes.

Sunflower swallowed. “My father paid,” she whispered.

A massive grin split his face. He laughed then, and slapped his thighs. “He paid!”

“What now?”

He lifted a finger into the dank air. “Now it is time for decisions.”

“Yours?’ she dared.

“Yours!” He chortled and slapped his thighs again.

She did not dare ask what that meant, but he told her without her having to prompt him. His excitement could not long contain his ability to create suspense for her. He wanted to share, because she was the only one he could share it with.

“I now have enough money to disappear, little flower, and you will need to deep disappear also. The permanent kind, because you had to look, didn’t you? But you have a choice. You have made me rich, so I’m giving you a choice.”

She did not trust that, but anything was better than a knife across her throat. He wouldn’t use a bullet, no; too loud. And she had a suspicion he’d prefer the thrill of her blood over his hands, rather than a clinical kill.

“Choice?” she whispered.

“See that door there?”

Fred pointed at a door to the right, one she thought led either to a kitchen or maybe a hallway that led to outside. It was locked. She’d seen him lock and unlock it with a bunch of keys he kept in his pocket.

She nodded, staring at him, her heart alternately beating hot and cold, sending heat and then ice to shiver over her skin.

“There’s a hole beyond it, real deep. Either I throw you into it and walk away, for none will find your body for months, maybe years, or …” He stopped there, leering at her.

“Or?” she shuddered.

“You come with me, and we disappear together.”

Would he beat her if she went with him? Or have sex with her? Would he throw her into another cell somewhere? Maybe he’d kill her in another place. Maybe he liked the idea of her scared, putting off her murder until she could barely talk for fear.

But maybe she’d escape from somewhere new. Even if he beat her. Even if he raped her.

“You have ten seconds to make your mind up, little flower.”

“I’ll go with you,” she stated.

THE ORPHAN

Just clicked publish :)

Ethereal Musician's Portuguese translation: