The Birds Began to Sing

By Simon Dillon

When aspiring novelist Alice Darnell enters a competition to write the ending for an unfinished manuscript by late, world famous author Sasha Hawkins, it appears she might have her big break at last.

However, upon arrival at Sasha’s former home – the sinister Blackwood House – Alice is unsettled by peculiar competition rules, mysterious dreams and inexplicable ghostly visions. She begins to question her sanity as she is drawn into a terrifying web of deceit, revenge and murder.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon Dillon
• Release date: Oct 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311573360

Simon Dillon

I was born the year Steven Spielberg made moviegoers everywhere terrified of sharks. I lived the first twenty or so years of my life in Oxford, and am pleased to have spent so much time in the place where some of my favourite writers wrote their greatest works (including JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, and Philip Pullman). I like to think I can write a diverting tale, and as a result I have penned a few novels and short stories. I currently live in Plymouth in the UK, and am married with two children. I am presently brainwashing them with the same books that I loved growing up.

Book preview

The Birds Began to Sing

By Simon Dillon

Copyright 2014 Simon Dillon

Cover Design by Charles Bown

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, Licence Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

Dedication: For Zara

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Bonus Content: Chapter 1 of Peaceful Quiet Lives

Bonus Content: Chapter 2 of Peaceful Quiet Lives

Bonus Content: Chapter 3 of Peaceful Quiet Lives

Chapter 1

Rejection is normal. Everyone experiences rejection at some time in their life, so there is no point getting upset about it. Don’t give up. Just move on. Tomorrow might be better.

That’s what Alice Darnell kept telling herself. Yet having her writing rejected again and again by agents and publishers was beginning to feel worse than getting dumped by a boyfriend. She had just received another rejection letter from a literary agency through the post, and every time she read one it felt like something inside her died. Her bedroom now had an entire wall plastered with rejection letters of one kind or another, all of them saying more or less the same thing:

Dear Alice,

Thank you for your sample chapters and synopsis which we read with interest. Unfortunately we don’t feel this is one for us, but we wish you the best of luck elsewhere.

Kind regards

The Publisher/Agent

Alice thought a more honest summary might read as follows:

Dear Alice,

I’m not sure why you bothered to send us your sample chapters and synopsis, as you are not an established author. Obviously, we didn’t bother reading it. You might want to try elsewhere and see if anyone is foolhardy enough to take on an unknown author, but don’t count on success.

Indifferent regards

The Publisher/Agent

Alice pinned the most recent rejection letter alongside the others, and glanced at the alarm clock at the side of her bed. Almost half past nine. She had a cold, and had already called in sick so wouldn’t be going to work. That meant a day alone trying to rest, recuperate and watch daytime television whilst trying not to feel too depressed.

Alice stared at the walls of her small, rented terraced house in Kensington, wondering why she didn’t have more to show for her thirty-two years. Was this how it would be indefinitely? Nine to five at Farrow and Company alongside her housemate Chloe Green? Still, work at the Central London letting agency might be dull, but at least it paid the bills and gave her the time she needed to concentrate on writing.

After deciding she might feel better after a shower, Alice dragged herself across her rather messy bedroom to the bathroom and stared miserably in the mirror. Running her hands through her straight dark hair, she felt the scars that were still present from her fall down the nightclub stairs all those years ago. She had sustained serious head injuries that day, but thankfully her face had suffered no long-term damage. Peering into her deep brown eyes she wondered - not for the first time in her life - who the person staring back really was. If eyes were the windows of the soul, then her windows had shutters. Whatever was in her soul couldn’t be seen.

Alice shook her head. These dark thoughts were what the doctors had advised against. She had to think positively.

Raindrops pattered on the window. The weather was typical for January – persistently bleak, with all trace of the excitement and colour of December’s festivities seemingly swallowed up in a grey gloom. Not that Alice did much at Christmas. Since her parents’ death in a gas explosion, she had spent winter holidays with Esme, her aunt on her mother’s side, or the families of kind-hearted friends of colleagues, most recently Chloe’s.

After taking a shower, Alice put on her dressing gown, went down to the kitchen and made herself a hot lemon drink. She didn’t feel much better, so skipped breakfast and instead curled up on the sofa with a spy novel by Sasha Hawkins. In spite of her preference for more highbrow writing, Alice found Hawkins’ books something of a guilty pleasure, and like the millions who had read them was gripped by the page-turning plots. Her enjoyment of them felt like something of a dirty secret, and to others she always felt the need to qualify the reasons for reading them as research.

As she read, Alice felt a peculiar twinge of pain from the scars on the back of her neck. She rubbed the area to ease it, thinking she might have slept in an awkward position. The unfortunate tumble she had taken down the nightclub stairs had occurred shortly after the death of her parents at the height of her illegal drug use, and had actually been one of the factors that propelled her to seek medical help. At the very least, it had made her more willing to do so when her overbearing Aunt Esme had insisted on it.

It had been many years since these scars had given Alice any problems, so it was unusual for them to flare up. The pain was sharp, stabbing and urgent. In spite of Alice’s attempts to rub the scars they kept hurting. If anything it got worse.

Alice began to feel hotter than was comfortable. Perhaps this was simply her illness. Her temperature had risen and fallen throughout the night, but Chloe had left the central heating on, so Alice decided to turn it off for a while. She walked to the thermostat and adjusted it. She then opened the sitting room window to let in a little fresh air.

A damp, cool breeze rushed in amid the sounds of distant London traffic. Alice breathed deeply and for a moment felt refreshed. But mere seconds later, she began to shiver and wanted to shut out the draught. She went to close the window when suddenly a large black crow fluttered into the sitting room.

It was all Alice could do to stifle a scream. She froze, her eyes fixed on the bird as it flew around the sitting room in obvious frustration. Alice was terrified. She had always been afraid of birds. There was no rational reason for her fear, but nevertheless she could not seem to get over it.

Taking slow, deep breaths, Alice tried to calm herself. All she needed to do was guide the bird towards the window and it would fly off. Surely it had the sense to leave the way it came, if gently coerced into doing so. But Alice’s instinct wasn’t to help the bird. Her instinct was to kill it. She could not understand why, but she felt this in her bones with every fibre of her being, as though the bird were an aggressive, venomous serpent.

How could she kill it? She had no weapons to speak of, and certainly couldn’t attack it with a kitchen knife or suchlike. Perhaps she could get a pressurised canister of something lethal to birds and spray it. But what? All she could think of was deodorant, and that was hardly likely to cause serious damage.

The bird landed on the coffee table and glanced around the room with its dark eyes. Then it stared at Alice, and Alice stared back; too frightened to look away and unable to think of how she could possibly resolve the situation. What was she thinking about before? She needed a way to kill the bird. Pressurised canisters were out. Or were they? She could run upstairs and get her deodorant and a match from the kitchen. That would certainly do the trick. Unfortunately, it could also set fire to the house, and such damages would have to come out of her rental deposit…

What about cleaning agents? There was bleach in the bathroom upstairs - the kind you could spray. It was normally kept under the sink in the kitchen, but Chloe had left it in there as she had recently cleaned. Surely bleach would do some damage. It was better than doing nothing. But it wouldn’t kill the bird, just enrage it. No, perhaps deodorant and a match would get the job done in a simpler, quicker way. Besides she could always bring a jug of water to hurl onto the burning plumage once the bird fell in flames.

Unfortunately, there was a much bigger problem. Alice realised she would have to walk away from the window, through the sitting room and past the bird; which had now taken off, and once again was fluttering through the air. This could prove a serious impediment to her plans, since she was paralysed with terror and could barely move.

With a supreme effort, Alice closed her eyes and told herself to calm down. This was a bird. It wasn’t going to attack her. It wasn’t going to suddenly peck at her like in that Alfred Hitchcock film. But it was going to die. It had violated her home, her sanctuary, her space. There was no question of trying to usher it out of the window. It had to pay for what it had done.

Deep down Alice knew such thoughts were irrational and ridiculous, and yet they made perfect sense in a way she couldn’t explain. In what felt like an act of monumental bravery she finally put one foot in front of the other and began to creep across the room, past the sofa, around the coffee table and back to the door that led to the stairs. The process of crossing the room seemed to take an age, and as she neared the door Alice found herself making faster, slightly more reckless movements. She kept her eyes fixed on the bird at all times, and tried not to think about the claws. The beak. The feathers. Those horrible, horrible eyes…

With a last frantic rush, Alice hurled herself out of the room and slammed the door. The crow now had nowhere to go but out of the open window. But would it fly out? For a moment Alice stopped and listened intently outside the door. She could hear the bird still flapping about inside. Part of her didn’t want the bird to escape. She wanted to go back in and kill it.

With sudden determination, Alice ran upstairs to her room and grabbed the deodorant from the bedside table. She then rushed back downstairs, went to the kitchen and grabbed a match. She also found a near empty bottle of window cleaner and filled it with water. That would surely be enough to extinguish any flames once the bird was on fire. Alice placed the water bottle inside the belt of her dressing gown, put the matches in one pocket and held the can of deodorant in her hand. Now she was ready to take on the crow and kill it.

Upon approaching the sitting room door, Alice could hear the sensible voice of Chloe ringing in her ears as she imagined what she would be saying if she could see her now.

Alice, have you finally gone completely nuts?

You’ll burn the house down!

It’s just a bloody bird!

But Chloe’s voice of reason became strangely muffled as Alice put her trembling hand to the door handle. Inside the sitting room she could still hear the fluttering of the crow, and as it let out a loud caw, her blood ran cold. Fresh terror surged through her body, and Alice froze once more.

After about thirty seconds of helpless panic, her resolve hardened. Determined to pull herself together Alice lit a match, held it carefully at arms length in front of the deodorant, and after pressing the handle with her elbow, slowly pushed open the sitting room door.

The moment Alice saw the bird she screamed. The crow flew right at her with surprising aggression. It seemed the bird wanted access to the rest of her house. Time seemed to slow, and amid the flapping wings, Alice saw peculiar images in her mind’s eye, accompanied by eerie unsettling sounds.

Screeching tyres on a remote country lane at night.

A car overturning.

Fire.

A great country house surrounded by frost covered grounds.

A corridor that ended with a dark closed door.

A screaming woman clutching her face as blood dripped through her fingers.

Claws.

Beaks.

Flapping wings.

All of these pictures and sounds flashed through her mind in less than a second, but it seemed far longer. The bird was closer now, and to Alice it seemed the claws were extended, ready to attack. Ready to lacerate her face and tear her eyes from their sockets. Alice didn’t hesitate any longer. She pushed down on the canister of deodorant and held the match in front. A jet of flame shot from the nozzle, igniting the bird.

The bird shrieked as it was immolated. Within seconds it fell dead onto the sitting room carpet. Alice stood with uncharacteristic remorselessness and watched it burn. The smell of frazzled crow carcass was revolting. It had been quite a large bird, so took a while to be fully consumed by the flames.

But the fire was spreading. The carpet was alight. Alice had forgotten to spray the water. Coming to, Alice realised her foolish error and frantically squirted the bird’s ashes and the burning area of floor. But she was too late. The flames licked along the carpet and up onto a wooden table by the wall. Paintwork began to peel and burn. Thick smoke filled the air. A loud ringing… Smoke detectors going off…

Alice cursed herself for her stupidity. If she hadn’t stood like an idiot watching the bird burn, she could have easily put out the fire. But it was too late now. She had to get out. She had to call the fire brigade. She had to…

A wave of extreme dizziness engulfed Alice. Her head swam, and clammy sweat emerged all over her face, arms and upper body. She tried to steady herself against the door, but that was now on fire too, and by doing so she slammed it shut. The smoke grew thicker than ever. In spite of the open window breathing became almost impossible.

At that moment, louder than anything - even the smoke alarm - Alice heard the piercing cry of birds. The same paralysing fear that had seized her earlier returned. The floor no longer seemed stable and the room spun. Sweat dripped down her face, and as she put up a hand to wipe it Alice felt her knees giving way. The last thing she remembered was a dull pain, as she caught her forehead on the edge of an armchair falling to the ground. After that the cawing of birds stopped, and there was only blackness.

Chapter 2

‘Alice! Alice, wake up!’

Alice opened her eyes, feeling groggy and disorientated. She had a strange, grimy taste in her mouth, and as she placed her hand to her head, she found it was covered in sweat. The alarmed face of a blonde girl with shoulder length hair stared down at her.

‘Chloe?’

‘Oh Alice, thank God!’

They were still in the sitting room, but Alice lay on the sofa. She gradually became aware of movement and voices around her, and noticed two firemen in conversation next to the wall she had set on fire. The fire had been put out, but a large blackened patch remained.

‘What happened?’ asked Alice.

‘Next door saw smoke in our sitting room and called the fire brigade,’ said Chloe. ‘They found you in here unconscious.’

Alice began to hear what the firemen were discussing behind her.

‘That’s a dead bird.’

‘How did it end up on fire?’

One of the firemen picked up the deodorant canister and glanced suspiciously in Alice’s direction. Chloe noticed this and frowned at Alice.

‘It was an accident,’ Alice muttered. She didn’t want to explain the whole humiliating story of being afraid of a bird that had flown in the window. Nor did she want to admit her actions, as she felt very stupid for having done something so dangerous. But there seemed little choice. She knew the firemen wouldn’t leave without a proper explanation. What had she been thinking?

With as much dignity as she could summon, Alice explained that she had a phobia of birds, and because she had been feeling ill had acted a little irrationally when one had flown into the sitting room. The firemen exchanged dubious looks then lectured her at length about how foolish she had been and that she was lucky to be alive. Alice felt like a small child being scolded as they spoke, mostly because there was something deeply disconcerting about being told off by someone who was one hundred per cent in the right.

And yet… Alice couldn’t help herself. Even now she shuddered in terror at the thought of the bird in her home. Every instinct in her body had urged her to kill it. Why?

‘Perhaps you should try hypnotherapy,’ Chloe suggested, after the firemen had left. ‘What you did was properly crazy Alice. You really should talk to someone about it.’

‘I have,’ Alice replied defensively. ‘Dr Singh says I’m improving.’

‘Yeah, well if you could just improve a bit more so you don’t burn down our house that would be great.’

Alice sighed. ‘Chloe, the whole point of an irrational fear is just that. It’s irrational! I can’t explain it. I can’t control it. But Dr Singh says I am gradually overcoming it.’

‘So you literally have no idea where this fear comes from? Did you have it before you developed a drug habit and had a schizophrenic meltdown? Perhaps you should go back on that medication you told me about.’

‘No. Look, I know my brain took a battering when I was younger, but… I’m starting to remember some of the stuff I blacked out. Bits and pieces of my childhood, although it’s still very fragmented.’

‘What do you remember?’

‘My parents were always busy, working in that church they ran. I also remember I found it hard to make friends, because I was always top of the class and people thought I was weird. Even the teachers thought I was weird…’

‘But you still remember your first stories? You told me about those, right? The series about the mole?’

‘Oh yes, I wrote several of those. The mole just wanted to live outside the burrow in the sun, but in every one of his adventures he lost something - his sight, his right paw. Eventually he forgot he was a mole and thought he was simply a blind rat. My parents found that a bit alarming. They encouraged me to write happier stuff.’

‘And did you?’

‘No. I didn’t want to write something that was happy for the sake of it. I wanted to write something important. There’s no point in telling a story without having something to say. Sadly, so far publishers don’t like what I have to say.’

‘Have you told Dr Singh about all this?’

‘Yes. I also told him about my latest recurring dream.’

‘Another one?’

‘Yes. This one’s different. In it, I’m standing in front of a podium addressing a huge crowd, but masking tape had been placed over my mouth, so my words are unintelligible. I stand there in frustration, with people in the crowd straining to hear her, but it’s no good. I try to move my hand up to her face to tear off the tape, but I can’t move. My arms and legs are frozen. I feel embarrassed, and that’s when I usually wake up.’

‘Well, it doesn’t take a great psychiatrist to explain that dream,’ said Chloe. ‘Clearly you feel you have something of great value or importance to tell the world, but someone or something was preventing you from doing so. It could be a subconscious metaphor about constant rejection from agents and publishers.

‘Could be.’

Alice sat back on the sofa, feeling sulky and irritable. She wondered if Chloe was right. Perhaps she should try hypnotherapy. It seemed a silly and no doubt expensive idea, but she couldn’t keep going like this. Not if it resulted in her near incineration whenever she encountered a bird.

‘Tea?’ Chloe asked.

Alice nodded. Chloe got up and went to the kitchen. As she heard the clanking of dishes, Alice smiled. At least she had a housemate who put up with her craziness. Chloe wasn’t the most imaginative girl she’d ever met, but she had a heart of gold.

‘How was work?’ Alice asked.

Chloe groaned from the kitchen. ‘We’ve all got performance reviews.’

‘Great,’ muttered Alice. ‘Wish I could pull a sicky to get out of that.’

‘You’ll be fine. Just flutter your eyelashes at Graham and he’ll give you a good report.’

‘I don’t do eyelash fluttering.’

‘Well you should.’

‘Call me old-fashioned, but I think a work performance review should be exactly that – a review of work performance. Not a review of how well you can flirt. Besides, Graham’s a creep. I refuse to flirt with him on principle.’

‘It’s a means to an end.’

‘That’s utilitarianism, and I don’t believe in it.’

‘See? That’s why you write. You know long words.’

‘I don’t write. I rent overpriced properties to people who would sell their souls to get on the property ladder.’

‘Oh, enough with the self-loathing! You’re a proper writer. You just…’

‘…haven’t been published yet. I got another rejection today. At this rate I’ll have to start a new wall.’

Chloe looked sympathetic. ‘Everything happens for a reason Alice.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean? Of course everything happens for a reason! I’m just not convinced everything happens for a good reason.’

‘You’ll find a publisher soon. I’m sure of it.’

‘Why do you think I keep getting rejected?’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’

Alice studied Chloe closely. ‘I recognise that look. It means you have an opinion but don’t want to tell me. You think I won’t like what you have to say.’

‘Oh God Alice, you’re so paranoid!’

‘I need constructive criticism. Tell me what’s wrong with my work!’

‘Alice, your books are brilliant. They’re deep and profound, and thought-provoking and…long.’

‘Long?’

‘Well, perhaps you should try something a bit different for your next book. Perhaps you should write one of those bestselling thrillers that you always pretend to be snooty about but secretly read when you think no-one’s looking.’

Alice stared at Chloe aghast. ‘What are you saying? Don’t you like my style of writing?’

‘Yes, I do. It’s just… Well, most people want to read stories that grip them from the very beginning and don’t let go.’

‘Don’t mine do that?’

‘They do, it’s just… Well, they have so much important stuff in them that it’s sometimes quite an effort to get to the exciting bits in between – which are really exciting, by the way.’

Alice sat down, feeling depressed. ‘Thanks Chloe. You’ve been a source of great misery.’

‘Don’t be like that! I didn’t say I didn’t like your other books. I just think you might be stretching yourself if you tried to branch out from your current, way of writing stuff…’

Alice gave Chloe a look that strongly suggested she stop digging a hole for herself, and changed the subject.

‘I’m sorry about burning the wall.’

‘Oh don’t worry. These things happen.’

‘Only to me. You don’t set fire to birds if they fly into the house.’

Chloe smiled. ‘Let’s get the landlord to take it out of the deposit.’

Alice shook her head. ‘No, I did it. I’ll pay. So I’ll extend my overdraft, big deal. Besides, he’ll charge us far more than he really needs.’

Alice and Chloe spent the rest of the day cleaning up the mess and watching television. The rain continued long into the evening, and Alice’s cold showed no signs of improving. The incident with the bird had shaken her up, and she felt worse than ever. Chloe insisted that she eat something, but Alice could barely manage a few mouthfuls of pasta.

As Chloe prattled on keeping her informed of office gossip, Alice’s mind wandered. She thought back over what Chloe had said earlier, about writing a thriller. What if she were to attempt this? What if she wrote something that was meant to be purely entertaining and had no attempt at social commentary whatsoever? Perhaps she could give it a try. After all, if it got her published, she would have a foot in the door as a proper writer, and perhaps might find her more personal work was better received.

After retiring to her bedroom, Alice pondered a number of ideas for a potential book along the lines Chloe had suggested, each as improbable and foolish as the last. Eventually rather than attempt to come up with conspiracy plots or spy stories, she began to think about detectives in popular fiction, and decided to try and devise one of her own. But this also proved difficult. Creating an icon like Sherlock Holmes was no easy task, and after sketching out half a dozen mediocre characters, she decided to change tack again.

Instead, Alice began to devise a story about a highly intelligent insurance claims manager who plots to murder his wife but makes a vital mistake in the deed that causes him to be suspected, investigated and put on trial. Subsequently he hires a lawyer who he falls in love with. She gets him off, but then discovers his guilt, and he is forced to murder the woman he loves to cover his tracks.

As she wrote the synopsis Alice knew she was borrowing extensively from movies like Double Indemnity and Jagged Edge, and thought the plot was derivative nonsense. But as she considered details of how she might tell this tale, she began to feel more inspired. For a start, she would set it in an unusual location – perhaps a remote island community. Furthermore, she thought of ways to tell the story with elements of jet-black comedy through the eyes of the murderer. Perhaps she would build sympathy for him as a hen-pecked husband who gets pushed too far. Perhaps she could even make it a satire of the justice system. All kinds of ideas occurred to Alice, and before she finally fell asleep, she had written reams of notes.

That night she experienced the usual recurring dream about trying to address a large crowd with tape over her mouth, but this time burning crows flew out from the crowd towards her. As they did, the scene changed, and she saw the images that had flashed through her mind earlier, when the crow had entered her house.

Alice stood in a remote country lane at night watching a car skid and overturn. It exploded.

The scene changed again. She stood next to the same country house. The lawns, trees and gardens around her were covered in frost.

She then found herself inside the house, in the same peculiar corridor with the door at the end closed. Feelings of dread arose within her as she knew what was coming next.

With horrible suddenness, a screaming woman appeared in front of Alice. She clutched her face which was covered in blood.

The burning crows returned, fluttering around the unknown woman. One of them landed on Alice and set her hair on fire. She frantically tried to put out the flames, but it was no good. As her hair burned, the shrieks of the screaming woman built to a terrifying crescendo.

Alice awoke with a violent start. She wiped the sweat from her brow and saw it was almost morning. Outside, relentless rain still poured down.

She dragged herself out of bed to the bathroom. Even though she still didn’t feel up to work, she felt a little better today, and her head buzzed with ideas about the book she was going to write.

Chloe left for work as usual after breakfast. Instead of lounging on the sofa feeling sorry for herself, Alice decided to start writing in earnest. Normally beginning a book was a difficult process. Alice had procrastination down to an art form, and would often exhaust every possible chore before finally putting pen to paper. But on this occasion, it seemed unusually easy to get going.

After three hours sitting at the desk in her bedroom, she had written a couple of character profiles, and had researched possible islands to set her story. She had also investigated some arcane points of UK law that would provide the inspiration for legal twists and turns, and had even come up with a suitably bestseller-ish title: Deceitful and Wicked; a Biblical reference regarding affairs of the heart. Alice knew a lot about the Bible because of her father, but she hadn’t shared the faith of her parents, Reginald and Pauline Darnell.

Alice looked up from her work for a