For Rye Gavin Gardiner (best book club books for discussion TXT) 📖

‘Lord, have mercy,’ he said. ‘The girl babbles like her mother.’ Renata jolted as dynamite suddenly exploded from the frail old man’s mouth. ‘SPEAK.’

She took a deep breath and threw a fresh shovel-load into the little engine’s furnace.

Choo-choo.

‘Father,’ she began, fingering her jersey, ‘sorry, but…I was hoping to ask you about, well…’ Another shovel-load. ‘…about Noah.’

In a Quentin C. Rye scary story, such a scene may have been embellished with the pattering of rain against the window, maybe some thunder and lightning for good measure, or the shadows of branches reaching across the room like bony claws. In this scary story, however, the evening was calm and fresh, the room well-lit and claw-free, yet the moment froze as if on a triple dose of Dexlatine. Within this paralysed second, she waited.

‘I expect you’d like to know when he’ll be joining us. I expect you’d like to know when he’ll be arriving…’

‘Well, I mean—’

‘…so YOU can leave.’

‘I’m sorry, Father. I just—’

‘Let me tell you what I’d like to know, girl.’ He struggled to his elbows, fighting the paralysis already taking hold. ‘I’d like to know why God gave me a girl, one who soiled my family with nothing but anguish and misery.’

She stepped back as the monster emerged.

‘I’d like to know,’ he snarled, ‘why after all these years of service, our heavenly Father took from me the only righteous thing in my life.’ His crooked fingers tried to reach for her but were held back by the medication, an invisible protector. ‘Except I already know the answers, child. I know because the Almighty has granted them upon me through the unfolding of tragedy – the tragedy of my family.’

Renata stumbled into the half-open door.

‘He has revealed to me that this family…’ His milky eyes swelled towards her, a torment on her flesh. ‘…is forsaken.’

Outside, the fields swayed gently in the placid breeze. Although it would return, the mist eased its watch for the night, the clear, crisp moonlight blanketing the calm comings and goings of the meadows surrounding the house. The clock tower was audible from across the pastures, tolling the midnight hour.

Renata’s hand gripped the doorframe. She watched in terror as the skeletal shape of Thomas Wakefield gave off a violent spasm, before finally sinking into the mattress. He stretched his face in her direction as he deflated, his jaw extending with unnatural elasticity.

‘Change in will…’ he hissed.

Tears stung.

‘…strength of service.’

4

One

She flattened the pedal.

Two

Flames flew past. Her hands, dripping with some sort of slick, jet-black oil, tightened around the wheel as she bore witness to the dying throes of all, a world collapsing.

Three

A white light of pain struck with every count, that old familiar pickaxe to her brain. She pushed the engine through fire.

Four

A clatter from beneath as chunks of chassis broke free. The sound of tumbling metal faded behind her.

Five

The flesh of her blackened hands melted into burning vinyl.

Six

She threw the vehicle into a blank canvas of fog. She looked at the passenger seat. Sure enough, there was the spade, red as blood.

Seven

The air became searing smoke.

Eight

She glanced at the lava crawling on the floor beneath her seat.

Nine

The windows smashed, glass flying in scorching shards. She craned her neck to the sky. The magma now raged like waves across the curvature of the atmosphere.

Ten

She whipped her head back inside as fire rained from above. The surrounding fields erupted.

Eleven

Then the shape appeared, right on cue. That vague, fluid, yellow shape. It loomed in the fog ahead, unmoving. Her entire being thrust the engine harder into the mist, yet the spectre remained fixed and unwavering from its station.

It began to resemble a figure.

Twelve

She recoiled in agony as the ice pick inside her head continued swinging with each count.

The blazing sky became an ocean of flames falling from the heavens, a mighty, incurved belly finally released in a parachute of fire. The car broke apart around her, falling away piece by piece. The spade gave itself to the inferno as the vehicle’s frame crumbled, retiring into its own fiery wake. Her hands continued to drip their black, sappy liquid.

And still she flew towards the yellow apparition.

Thirteen

Renata awoke.

She lay on the child-sized bed in her old room, feet sticking out the end. She stared at the ceiling. Soaked in sweat and gasping for air, she thought of the dream.

Too many years to count: that’s how long it had dominated her nights. Its intensity was overpowering, always leaving a vivid trauma upon awakening. Worst of all were the stabbing pains in her head throughout. Thirteen, always thirteen.

She’d put the apocalyptic nightmares down to a cognitive remnant of the crash, fractured memories haunting her. Her doctors had told her it was only natural considering how little memory of the accident her amnesia had allowed. A day trip to the coastal village of Hadwell-on-Sea gone wrong, she’d learnt. Then she’d had her run-in with the Quentin C. Rye display at Stonemount Central.

Horror Highway. Glimpsed by chance as a little girl, she hadn’t thought of the book for an eternity, but with its burning pickup truck and phantom in the fog, it seemed like a closer fit than anything else. And yet the dream, besides the fire and brimstone, was different – felt different. The nightmare didn’t feel like a retelling of images from some cheap horror.

She rubbed her eyes then checked the clasped bun at the back of her head, before resetting the usual mass of grips and clips in her black hair. She squinted around the room, dragging the heaped boxes into focus. These four walls once housed columns of precariously stacked romance novels, until one day, along with her mother’s collection, they’d vanished. Their