Something Disturbed

News from the coalface

I have so many books on the go, but because I am waiting for this and waiting for that, making progress is so slow. Gate in the Shadows will be published next month, Hooray! Meanwhile, it would be rude not to start another. A writer’s gotta write!

I have started another, and this one is going to be a bit creepy. Here is an early version of the first chapter, to give you a hint of where this one will be going.

Chapter One.

Eve

If you’re reading this, then I guess you must be curious. Am I the monster I was made out to be? Did I really do all those things?

I was just nine years old.

My life was decided for me when I was nine years old.

Just think about that for a moment. What were you doing when you were nine years old? I bet you didn’t have photographers camped at the end of your road, sneaking into your garden at night, trying to get pictures of you through the windows. I bet you didn’t have reporters asking your school friends what you were like, what you were really like, passing them notes to pass to you, offering you money.

Did you get taken to the ‘special room’ at the police station, with its comfy sofa in front of the cameras, every sound you made recorded, somebody trained to make you tell lies?

I’m sure you will believe what you want to believe, after all, it’s what we all do. I have people trying to get me out of here, people who believe I am innocent, or they say they do, but what do they know? Half of them are religious fruit cakes, the other half maybe just fancy a girl with ginger hair.

I am sure some of them must think I am still that sweet little girl from the newspapers, although that picture they used didn’t make me look sweet. Maybe they doctored it or something. I don’t remember. Boy, would they be disappointed to see me now. That was seventeen years ago. I’m not that little girl anymore, and this place doesn’t exactly turn out beauty queens.

What do any of these people think freedom means, anyway? Where would I live? What would I do? Those people really haven’t thought this through, have they? I’m sure they mean well, or at least some of them do, but it will take more than good intentions to give me my life back after all these years.

It would be different if I had a family, but that ship sailed, and it isn’t coming back. My mother, my loving mother, thinks I am the demon child, the spawn of Satan. Dad? No idea, and I don’t want to know. Little Pearly? The apple of my mother’s eye? Forget that one, then, she is my mother’s daughter. Sweet little Pearl.

That leaves the lovely Laura, my beloved twin, although sometimes I have doubts that we are even sisters. I have red hair, she has brown. I was the wild child, she wouldn’t melt butter. Not so much chalk and cheese as not even related, but we still did that twin thing, always knew what the other was thinking, and boy, did that go wrong sometimes!

We weren’t even born in the same century, something the papers had a field day with. Oh yes, they loved that one, and it all helped to put me in here, I’m sure of that. I was born just before midnight on New Year’s Eve 1999, hence the crappy name. Even giving me my name was some sort of joke. The lovely Laura didn’t arrive until half an hour later, or something like that, by which time all the parties had already started.

She didn’t get a stupid name, although they nearly called her Dawn, as in the dawn of a new century, but she had a lucky escape because Dawn Sinckler sounds like a tool you would use to unblock a drain. Pass the dornsinkler, this is going to be a tough one.

So she got to be called Laura after our grandmother, and I got to be called Eve because my parents had no imagination. I am making it sound like we didn’t get on, which is unfair. We got on fine. As I said, we had that twin thing going on as well as being sisters, and we worshipped little Pearly because everybody did. Mum used to dress us all up nicely and tell anybody who would listen that we were just divine. And Dad, he would do anything for his girls.

Everything was fine, one big happy family, until we moved into that house. Number thirteen, Matilda Drive. Yes, number thirteen. The papers made a big deal out of that, too, but grow up for pity’s sake. It’s just a number between twelve and fourteen. There were plenty of things wrong with that house without adding stupid superstitions to the mix.

But there was the bird. You could say that was a superstition, but with everything else going on, I think everybody forgot about the bird. Looking back, that was probably the start of it all.

Have you heard the expression; one for sorrow, two for joy?

One for sorrow

Two for joy

Three for a girl

Four for a boy

Five for silver

Six for gold

Seven for a secret

Never to be told.

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Thank you for reading.

You can find out more about what I am up to at nigelcode.co.uk

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