Shadows at Sunset

By Roger Munro

Who is the strange, shadowy figure who ascends the steps of the abandoned cottage at precisely the same time each evening? Is the strange man dressed in black standing by the side of a deserted country road promising rescue – or a death of unspeakable horror? And what is the true motive of the silent, withdrawn young man who joins a cycle touring group? These dark, imaginative short stories are the work of a retired Government scientist who now spends much of his time walking the lonely shores of the South Wales coast. Perhaps too much of his time...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mereo Books
• Release date: Apr 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781861514172

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Roger Munro

SHADOWS at SUNSET

Tales of fear, fate and foreboding

Copyright ©2015 by Roger Munro

Smashwords Edition

First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Mereo Books, an imprint of Memoirs Publishing

Roger Munro has asserted his right under the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

This book is a work of fiction and except in the case of historical fact any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover, other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

The address for Memoirs Publishing Group Limited can be found at www.memoirspublishing.com

The Memoirs Publishing Group Ltd Reg. No. 7834348

Cover design - Ray Lipscombe

Mereo Books

1A The Wool Market Dyer Street Cirencester Gloucestershire GL7 2PR

An imprint of Memoirs Publishing

www.mereobooks.com

ISBN: 978-1-86151-417-2

CONTENTS

Introduction

Dedication

The fishing match

Déjà vu

Caroline’s last ride

Night shift

Follow my leader

Rhyme and reason

Shadows at sunset

Practice makes perfect

The visitor

Friends for life

Terminus

A lesson from Grandma

Teatime for teddy bears

The wind farm

Birds have long memories

Once upon a time

Through the eyes of others

The crossing

Dead time

A life less ordinary

The silence of the birds

For my last trick…

Like father, like son

The way to a man’s heart

Innocence

A promise is a promise

With Jack’s compliments

The colour of death

Introduction

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. So said H P Lovecraft, an American author who achieved posthumous acclaim for his chilling works of dark fiction. Psychologists would have us believe that our fear of the unknown is a residue of traumatic events in our early lives that we haven’t properly addressed and haven’t managed to control because we instinctively run away, if we possibly can, from anything we regard as a threat to our well-being. Some of the stories in this book feature protagonists who are not in control of their own actions, as depicted in the stories Caroline’s Last Ride and Terminus, or find it impossible to change course. Some of the characters would be free from danger if they could manage to get away (Through the Eyes of Others) or they are prevented from doing so by malevolent or sinister beings (The Wind Farm). After all, our most feared demons are those which never go away, or even worse, those which keep coming back, as in The Visitor.

Dark fantasy is difficult to delineate but can best be translated as a metaphor for an effective means of bringing to our attention the fearful thoughts and memories we each have embedded deeply in our subconscious minds. Everything we experience in our lives affects us, if not consciously then subconsciously. We each of us therefore are strangely perturbed by things we cannot explain to ourselves, let alone to others, and what we as individuals find deeply disturbing may be of little or no concern to others. I remember as a child fearfully climbing the stairs in my grandparents’ old house on the way to my bed, which was in a room at the end of a long, narrow corridor. Midway down the corridor was a room which was completely empty, the door of which was almost always closed. As a child, I wasn’t disbarred from entering this room if I so wished, but for some inexplicable reason I was petrified of it and ran past the door each time I made my way down the corridor. Echoes of this trepidation are reflected in the story Night Shift. We all have dusty empty rooms, empty cobweb-strewn attics and dark empty cellars in the recesses of our minds.

The best and most convincing dark stories are succinct. They don’t necessarily have substantive ghosts in them but their defining trait is that they provoke a psychological fear-response in the reader merely by suggesting that there is something present, so the reader may feel an entity brushing past them or sense that a seemingly ordinary person in their presence is anything but. Dark stories should disturb the thoughts of the reader to such an extent that they cannot differentiate between what is real and what is not, what has solidity rather than just being a shadow, and they can end up believing that their closest relative looks like an undertaker who knows he’s going to get them in the end.

I hope you too will be disturbed by the stories in this book, which describe eerie and unfathomable events involving mortuaries, graveyards, unwelcome visitors and strange birds. When you read them, don’t worry about the tapping on the window. Console yourself that any whispering you hear is probably just the wind. Be at peace when you read them - but try not to be alone when you do, since even death itself provides no safety.

To my grandchildren

Mia and Noam

The fishing match

As Frank dozed half asleep in his warm bed, he was drifting in his dinghy through a vast shoal of feeding bass. Again and again the fish rolled and jumped, just begging to be offered a tasty, drifted sand eel. He didn’t want to abandon his cosy sanctuary and his delightful dream, but the sound of branches pattering against the window increased until it sounded like sudden hail, and he could ignore it no longer.

He realised from the growing intensity of daylight that on this late December morning, it was high time he was up and dressed. It was the fishing club’s last competition of the year that night, and he was determined to maintain the overall lead he had over his fellow members so that the coveted award for the ‘Best Angler of the Year’ would be his. After all, he deserved a day off after his hard work decorating the house. There were only the skirting boards left to gloss.

The setting for the competition was a spot on an island at the extreme tip of a remote peninsula in the far west of Wales; it would be an overnight contest. Mindful that he had but a brief window of time in which to cross the island’s causeway - accessible only during low water - and anxious to arrive at his fishing mark before the early dusk of the winter’s day, Frank dragged himself from his bed and began to gather his tackle together – rods, reels, lines, hooks, leads, bait and waterproofs. A quick glance at the weather forecast; fine for most of the day, but it seemed rain and strong winds would be coming in later. He fired up his ancient but trusted Ford and eagerly set off.

When Frank reached his destination that afternoon, it was still full daylight. However his growing excitement was tempered when he discovered that the only other car in the headland car park was a rusty and long-abandoned wreck. It seemed he had been in too much of a hurry; he was obviously the first.

Heavily laden with fishing gear and confident that his fellow club members would soon be hard on his heels, Frank set out along the narrow, beaten track which threaded its way across the peninsula. Away to the west the winter sun was beginning to slip down, a great golden ball. To the east, the sea and the sky had darkened to a leaden grey. The path took him through an expanse of quiet fields hemmed by lines of coal-black hedges against which the sheep scurried together under a huge brooding sky; the promised rain and storm clouds lowered over the distant, silent estuary. Beyond this, iron-grey marshes rippled in the dying light, shadow chasing gloomy shadow.

The path turned sharply to the north, running along the summit of the peninsula for about a mile before zigzagging downwards to the causeway. By the time Frank reached the island, the short winter’s day was already closing in. He looked back the way he had come; there was no sign of his