Thunderstruck E-Book

Preston Child

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Since the beginning of humanity, people have been afraid of thunderstorms; the electrical discharges shatter dreams, cost lives and send poor sinners down into the gorge of hell. But not everyone has to wait till death open the hell, some experience it in their daily lives.   In this anthology of short stories, Preston Child teaches his beloved readers how to fear simple moments and leaves behind a shiver that will keep them awake all night long.  

Leseprobe

Preston Child

Thunderstruck

BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

Beginning...

Preston Child asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of these short stories.

Since the beginning of humanity, people have been afraid of thunderstorms; the electrical discharges shatter dreams, cost lives and send poor sinners down into the gorge of hell. But not everyone has to wait till death open the hell, some experience it in their daily lives.

In this anthology of short stories, Preston Child teaches his beloved readers how to fear simple moments and leaves behind a shiver that will keep them awake all night long.

These stories are a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Last Moments

The sun dipped the water in a greenish shimmer, the stones under the surface sparkled like gold nuggets. A lot of fishes romped around it and crickets quietly chirped at the nearby reed.

Lewis Haien lay in his small rubber dinghy which glided along the lake, watched the snow-white clouds that wandered slowly across the light-blue summer sky while his thoughts dwelled on the close past.

They went across the narrow bridge which led through the marshland at the edge of the nature area. The rotten wood creaked under their feet and with every step they plunged into the muddy mass, so that the brown sludge washed around their sneakers.

In the middle of the bridge they stopped, leant against the banister and took a look out of the sparse marsh.

“What's wrong with you?”  Sarah asked after a while.

“Nothin. Whit fur ye're askin?”

“Well, you've a face like a bag of spanners.”

“Ah'm feelin awrecht, really.”

Sarah glanced an eye at him and in the pale moonlight of the March evening Lewis saw how she knittered her brows so that he immediately regretted his lie but he also had not the courage to tell her the truth. Not at all he had wanted to lose her because such a beautiful, self-confident and smart girl never got involved with him before.

He surreptitiously scrutinized her.

Sarah hid her blonde head of curls under a Celtic-Cap, the suntanned skin of her face seemed perfect and her little breast stood out of her thin beige-colored blazer to which she wore her blue jeans.

“But something's wrong with you.”

Embarrassed Lewis let his eyes glide over the marsh, wanted - could not look at her directly.

“Come on, you can tell it to me. We're friends and we'll stay friends, promised.” She tried to make her classmates talk about it. Sarah knew from own experience that it was not clever to bottle up a problem. After the divorce of her olds, she spoke with nobody about her feeling for months, first at a class trip to Esplugues de Illobregat she lost her self-control and collapsed crying in the middle of the Ramblas at the neighboring Barcelona although there was no reason in those moments. She absolutely wanted to spare him this destiny, not only because he was the one who comfort her once.

“Could be.” Lewis whispered. “Ah, well. Ah... ah aye like ye, Sarah.” Done. He breathed a sigh of relief, turned his head and looked at her uncertainly.

“Say, haven't you noticed that I love you, too?” She leant forward and gave him a kiss on the blush cheek.

With tears in the eyes Lewis Haien returned to the present.

His fingers trembled when he took out a Swiss penknife from the pocket of his short jeans. Sarah gave it to him at his seventeenth birthday some weeks ago after he outed himself as a fan of the TV series MacGyver. For a moment he watched the wine-colored coat and then he opened it.

Lewis drifted over to the lost time again.

“Haven't you noticed that I love you too?” Sarah asked before an invisible suction tore her away, threw her carelessly down to the ground after a few yards.

Steaming with blood, she remained lying on the platform. He heard himself screaming her name. With her blue eyes, she stared at him. He slowly sank to his knees next to her. The pool of blood around her head unstoppable grew on. Somebody said something, but he could not understand it.

Like in slow-motion the happening occurred to him. Again and again the goods train raced along them and swept Sarah away.

Tears ran down his cheeks while he leaded the knife to his artery.

Somebody dragged him away from the lifeless body. Another man crouched down close to the girl and took her pulse. With a sad shaking of his head, he stood up.

Lewis felt the cold metal on his skin.

The man said something after which the grip became loosens. The teenager tore him off immediately, crouched to Sarah, caressed her cheeks and whispered unintelligible words. He could not understand why his luck was killed in such a brutal way.

In that morning the last thing he saw was the daily triumphal procession of the sun that rose up in the East.

Two Haunted Friends

A sudden gust of wind tore at their clothes, hit their faces, ruffled through their brown hair and gave the two lads an intensive push which almost brought them down to their knees. As fast as it hit them, the blast disappeared again.

Jake said something.

“What did you say?” Said shouted back.

The boy turned his head and glanced an eye at his best friend.

“Be careful! You are too close to the edge of the abyss. Please come back before the wind will push you down there.”

Said looked down at the bubbling water again, which buckled against the cliff, that hardly could resist its strength. The roughness of the sea fascinated him.

“Bullshit.”

Jake gave him a concerned, but strict look. He knew too well that he would not be able to persuade him. »Please, bro, I don’t want to lose you, too.« However, before he finished the sentence, she realized that his friend could not hear him. The sound of the surfing was too loud, covering all other sounds.

And then it happened: A hurricane-like gust of wind build up over the two boys and hit hard on both of them.

One moment, Said was standing near the edge, the next second he was gone, erased from his sight. Jake needed all his strength to keep himself up on his legs. He shouted to his best friend, even though he thought it must have been loud, at the maximum of his lungs, he only heard a whisper escaping this mouth. A whisper, too weak to be heard.

As soon as the blast subsided the boy kneeled down and crouched towards the edge. He carefully looked down to the angry sea, but he could not find any trace of his friend, neither hanging on the rocky wall nor swimming in the waves. 

Tears rose up in Jake’s eyes. He started to crouch backwards, away from this abyss, away from this nightmare – when something touched his legs, grabbed his ankles and pulled him backwards.

Curse of the raven

Julian Sharks stood on the cliffs and looked down at the ocean from fifteen yeards and felt slightly dizzy when he thought about jumping into the raging water from here. Gray clouds covered the sun.

He thought about his life and what he possibly could have done wrong to deserve all this: the war zone in his family that got worse day by day and today, even his best friend called him an ‘selfish coward’. Somehow everything seemed to go tatally wrong suddenly.

One week ago his bad luck started; in the morning he found his black rabbit Nikita dead and skinned in its cage - few days after his father lost his job as waiter in the Hyatt Regency. The next day his selfish behavior made his soccer team lose its match and instead of making up for it by a chosen test of courage, he could not jump over his own shadow and walk barefood a parkour consisting of broken glass, pottery shards and pieces of glowing coal - which is why his teammates turned their back on him and no longer wanted to have anything to do with him, why their coach temporarily banished him from the team.

And then, today, his English assignment went totally wrong, gave him his first F as result. With a heavy heart he confessed his failure to his father. He got furious about it, even slapped his face and banned the teenager on his room. However, instead of going to his room, he ran out of the house, aware of the fact, that he would be in serious trouble after return. Crying he came to the cliffs.

Julian looked down at the ocean. He sat on the edge of the cliff and observed the sharks in the raging water below him. His anger already gave way to a deep despair that made him wish to be free as the sharks were. His eyes slowly turned upwards to the sky, made him wonder how it would be to live up there in the heavenly paradise.

Being free and no fathers who would slap his face, no unnecessary band and no more ‘I hate you!’; just peace and unlimited freedom.

I wanna be free like a bird

I wanna live in a holy church

I wanna fly above the ocean

With wings making easy motion

Oh holy Lord, let me be free

A holy angel I wanna be

A holy angel I wanna be! 

Suddenly he remembered the first verse of a song he had sung during the school enrollment of the first grader some weeks ago. That day, it was the only solo and everybody was happy for him to get such an important part. And now, he was nothing but a freaking loser.

The sky slowly began to clear up and the sun fought its way through the clouds with its wonderful and warm rays of light. Julian lay back and thought about his messed up life. Why should he remain in this world where nobody liked him?

But one! Michael liked him.

Last year, when Michael and his two-years-old son spent their vacation in Adelaide Julian was hired as babysitter. Despite their huge age difference they became friends. As often as his parents allowed it, Julian spent time with them, showed them the sights of the city. They particularly liked the Botanic Garden with its historic, victorian-era Palm House. When Michael had to return home, they exchanged their adresses and wrote each other letters at least once a month.

***

The sun lost its fight against the upcoming storm again. The sky inexorably darkened. Ravens croaked from the nearby fields, circled the the coastline. When Julian hardly could see anything in the darkness, they started to attack him and tried to peck his eyes. 

Julian waved with his hands to defend himself against the birds, what worked quite well to his own surprise.

Out of nowhere a Black Man emerged. He wore a long black cloak, from where he put out an arm-long saber. He grinned when he approached the teenager.

“Your head will blow, your blood shall flow!” He said with a deep, metalic voice.

The Black Man came closer and closer, step by step. The teenager stared at him in shock, unable to move. He even did not notice that the ravens no longer attacked him and returned to circle over the coastline. Again and again he heard the voice in his head: “Your head will blow, your blood shall flow!”

Before the Black Man reached the boy, a shot overtones the eerie soundscape. The Black Man collapsed immediately and even the circling ravens pushed away screaming. Reddish smoke rose from under the cloak before the whole body explode and disappeared. The birds croaked one last time and flew away.

The darkness lost its fight and hat to give way to the warm rays of the afternoon sun.

Only now could Julian see who had saved him from the black man. It was none other than Michael. He stood opposite him and held a smoking colt in his hand.

The teenager stared at his adult friend in disbelief and burst into tears; his nerves broke and flooded the dams. Michael immediately dropped his Colt, and ran over to the boy, hugged him. However, before each of them could say anything, the grown-up began to fade away.

***

From one moment to the next, the boy was back on the cliff and and looked up at the sky, as nothing had happened. He sat up shivering and observed his surrounding carefully. It could not have been real, nevertheeless it was too lively for a dream.

A vision?

But how could such an event be a vision and most of all, what did the vision tell him?

Julian had no answer and he really did not know it either. Still trembling, his finger slid into his pocket and took out a package of cigarettes he had stolen from his father’s desk few days ago - he probably woud kill him if he knew that his misguided son was smoking. The teenager looked for a lighter in his pocked, when he found it, he pulled it out and lit the cigarette. He coughed quite strongly as he always had to do when he took the first paff.

While sitting on the cliff, greedily smoking his cigarette, Julian Sharks wondered what Michael was doing. He probably played with his son. He noticed how he slowly became jealous of the todler. How many times did he wish that Michael was his father last year; but he certainly did not want a loser like him as son. For sure nobody wanted to be with a loser.

The word loser ran down cold his spine; at the same time he realized that he had to go home somewhen in the near future. Of course it would be best for everyone if he ended himself right here and right now. Yeah, when he would be dead he could never disappoint anyone again.

Julian snipped the finished cigarette over the edge of the cliff and got a new one from the package. This time without coughing. 

He laid back again, with tears in his eyes. His thoughts circled back to the vision or whatever it was. The horror was still quite deep, although the rays of sun gently touched his lean body, however, it failed to warm him.

***