The Dragon in the Snow

By Darryl Greer

CURSED BY HIS DRAGONS ...

A first-rate drummer in a third-rate rock band, Gary's life is going nowhere until his chance encounter with Helena. His spirits are uplifted and with her help, he tackles his drug addiction, but the LSD flashbacks continue.

When Helena suggests they spend some time at her parents’ country cottage, he is excited by the prospect of being alone with his new love.

Despite heavy snowdrifts cutting them off from the rest of society, the couple’s first day there is idyllic. But their peace is shattered when the cottage is invaded by an axe-wielding psychopath.
An emotional avalanche for a mild mannered drummer as he battles something far worse than his imagined dragons.
A Dragon in the Snow is powerful, provocative ...

• Language: English
• Publisher: CUSTOM BOOK PUBLICATIONS
• Release date: Oct 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310876882

Darryl Greer

Darryl Greer spent the first part of his life in Queensland. Cutting short his education due to his sheer boredom with school, at the age of fifteen he left to work on a milk run. Over the years he tried his hand as variously a window cleaner, cocktail barman, wine waiter, clerk and car salesman. His recreation was as a guitarist and backing singer in a rather ordinary rock band. At twenty-eight, he studied Law and upon graduation set up his own law firm. After nine years in the tropics, he became disenchanted with constant blue skies, gently swaying coconut palms and scuba-diving on the Great Barrier Reef, sold up his business and moved with his family to London. He practised there for many years, specialising in commercial litigation, returning to Queensland in 2004 and now lives with his wife in the Gold Coast hinterland. The Author has written in his spare time for as long as he can remember. For a period he wrote articles for various international magazines. In 2009 he published his début novel, The Election, followed in 2011 by Calvus. Apart from being driven by writing, he lives for his family. Darryl enjoys walking, swimming, travel, theatre, cinema, reading – thrillers of course – and he can still pen a song and play a decent tune on the guitar.

Book preview

CURSED BY HIS DRAGONS …

A first-rate drummer in a third-rate rock band, Gary's life is going nowhere until his chance encounter with Helena. His spirits are uplifted and with her help, he tackles his drug addiction, but the LSD flashbacks continue.

When Helena suggests they spend some time at her parents’ country cottage, he is excited by the prospect of being alone with his new love.

Despite heavy snowdrifts cutting them off from the rest of society, the couple’s first day there is idyllic. But their peace is shattered when the cottage is invaded by an axe-wielding psychopath.

An emotional avalanche for a mild mannered drummer as he battles something far worse than his imagined dragons.

A Dragon in the Snow is powerful, provocative …

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

D

arryl Greer spent the first part of his life in the state of Queensland, Australia. Cutting short his education due to his sheer boredom with school, at the age of fifteen he left to work on a milk run. Over the years he tried his hand as variously a window cleaner, barman, waiter, clerk and car salesman. His recreation was as a guitarist and backing singer in an ordinary rock band.

At twenty-eight, after studying law, he set up his own law firm. After nine years in the tropics, he became disenchanted with constant blue skies, gently swaying coconut palms and scuba-diving on the Great Barrier Reef, sold his business and moved with his family to London. He practised there for many years, specialising in commercial litigation, returning to Queensland in 2004 and now lives with his wife in the Gold Coast hinterland.

The Author has written in his spare time for as long as he can remember. For a period he wrote articles for various international magazines. In 2009 he published his début novel, The Election, since followed by Calvus, Agnus Dei and Sleeping with Angels.

Apart from being driven by writing, he lives for his family. Darryl enjoys walking, swimming, travel, theatre, cinema, reading – thrillers of course – and he can still pen a song and play a decent tune on the guitar.

Copyright © 2015 Darryl Greer

Published by

CUSTOM BOO

K PUBLICATIONS

All the characters are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental

A DRAGON in the SNOW

A Novel by Darryl Greer

One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to

understand and to be understood.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

This one’s for my dear friends Peter Hale and Bob Halloway.

CHAPTER ONE

The sky above Hobart’s Elizabeth Street was just one shade of grey. It was a kind of grey that for most spelt gloom, the sort that rarely featured in art and was hardly ever described in literature because it was so uninspiring. This sky was a monochromatic roof over a technicolour world. Frankie Morgan glanced up and wished it would rain but he knew it wouldn’t. What he saw were not rain clouds.

While most took the sky, its colour, its very existence for granted, Frankie had spent most of his adult life studying and appreciating it, because that was usually all he could see from his prison cell. When the sky was blue there was nothing to see, when there were clouds he examined their shape, their velocity, the varying shades of white and grey. But he loved rain the best, the smell of it, the sound of it, the movement of it and when he was on the outside, as he was now, rain was a kind of shield, something he could hide behind. People tended to walk with their heads lowered when it rained or cower beneath a newspaper or umbrella so they were less likely to notice him. Frankie did not like being noticed.

Dressed in dirty denim jeans, boots and, despite the warmth of summer, an oilskin jacket he’d stolen from an R M Williams store in Melbourne only a week earlier, he ambled along the street, oblivious to the fact that for someone who didn’t like to be noticed he was as conspicuous as a rat at a banquet. Instinctively he felt inside his jacket. He took comfort in what he felt inside – a brand new Ka-bar fighting knife. According to the blurb in the shop where he lifted it, the classic, oval-shaped handle had been modernised with black Kraton G, an ultrastrong material nearly impervious to sweat, chemicals, water and wear. It had been crafted from 1095 Cro-Van steel, the high-carbon, nonflective black blade epoxy power-coated and supremely durable. As soon as he saw it he wanted it and what Frankie wanted he usually got. Stupid bastards didn’t even know he had taken it. He had no idea why he needed it right now but it would certainly come in handy. It was protection, his exit strategy from any fight he got into, any skirmish that came his way.

And there had been a few.

Simon Holdcroft was only twenty-three but he was destined for greatness, or at least that’s what he thought. He held degrees in Law and Economics from Monash, was a junior accountant at the largest accounting firm in Hobart and it was, at least to Simon, beyond question that one day he would be the firm’s senior partner. He still lived at home with his parents in Sandy Bay in what could only be described as a mansion but one day that would be his or he would have his own place, probably twice the size. And he was handsome and articulate to boot. It was a joy to see his own image in the mirror each morning as he combed his straight, blond hair, the fringe of which fell across a face that could have been chiselled out of granite.

Right now he was walking down Elizabeth Street dressed in a charcoal grey Armani suit that cost his parents the equivalent of his monthly salary, a lemon coloured bespoke tailored J H Cutler shirt, a burgundy floral swirl Italian silk tie and handmade leather Oxford brogues. A pair of black five hundred dollar socks from Moxon Huddersfield completed his ensemble. He was, sartorially speaking, picture-perfect. He was accompanied by Janine, one of the girls from the office. She was eighteen, tall for her age and sex and had long, blonde hair that gently cascaded down her shoulders. If her effervescent blue eyes didn’t light up the room, her smile surely did. The only attribute that seemed out of proportion was her legs. There was no end to them, a factor that was not easily missed as she wore her skirts dangerously short. To all the males in the office, from the junior clerk to the senior partner, she was their dream girl. Even the females liked her because of her bubbly personality and willingness to pitch in when things got a bit hectic. Her parents lacked the resources to kit her out in the style of Simon but what she could afford she chose carefully. The way clothes hung off her, she would not be out of place as a model in a high fashion magazine.

While Simon knew Janine was a little beneath his station, he nonetheless did not object when he was asked to accompany her to the bank with a satchel full of cash with which a client of dubious background had paid his bill. ‘How much cash is in the bag?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know. Geoff didn’t say but I heard from Tracy that Donny Edmunds paid a whopping great invoice in cash. Brought it in in a tin box. I guess that’s what this is.’

‘Could be thousands then?’

‘I guess so.’

‘It’s fortunate you have a strapping young chap like me to escort you,’ he said with a smirk, ‘could be a bit dangerous for a young lady wandering around with that much cash on her.’

She looked up at him and smiled. ‘Strapping young chap eh? Is that what you are?’ The talk around the office was that Simon was the most arrogant man on the planet, that he wouldn’t have even got the job but for his father’s wealth and influence. Janine got on with him okay as she did with everyone but despite his wealthy background and good looks there was nothing about him that she found attractive.

‘Well you have to admit I’m pretty fit. I could handle myself pretty well in a crisis, I reckon.’

‘That’s very comforting Simon.’ She hoped he didn’t pick up the facetiousness in her comment.

Just in front of them a child in a pram threw a plastic rattle onto the footpath. Her mother had obviously not noticed and kept walking. Simon picked it up and caught up with the woman. ‘Your child dropped this,’ he said in a tone which suggested she was a moron for not realising what had happened.

Janine frowned but said nothing.

‘You know, Janine,’ he said dropping back to her, ‘this could be your lucky day.’

‘Oh, and why would that be, Simon?’

‘Because I’m inviting you to come out with me, that’s why, to the most exclusive restaurant in Hobart.’

‘Sorry Simon,’ she said with a grin, ‘but I’m taken. I don’t think my boyfriend would like that idea very much.’

Simon didn’t do rejection very well. ‘Oh,’ he said tight-lipped, ‘well it’s your loss.’

Frankie grinned. When he thought back, he had never lost one fight, always he came out on top. Only problem was, he mused as his smile became a frown, he was the one who usually ended up in prison. Provocation was supposed to be a defence. Self-defence too. But none of the bloody judges he ever come across seemed to realise it. Victoria’s Barwon Prison was his last known place of abode. Three bloody years he had spent there, this time round in the high security Acacia Unit. Plenty of time to gaze at the sky. He spent some time thinking about what he’d do when he was released, eventually deciding to quit Victoria and head for Tasmania. He’d never been to that part of the country before and he needed to make a fresh start. Not that he had resolved to change his ways, he just decided that he would try a bit harder not to get caught. So far he liked what he had seen of the island state. Tasmanians seemed a little more down to earth than Victorians and the countryside was more lush. Greener pastures was just what he needed right now.

Looking ahead he saw one of the prettiest girls he had seen in a long time walking towards him. Tall, blue eyed, blonde, legs that reached for the sky. He grinned. He’d have to do something about his love life soon. It had been too long. He glanced across at the dude accompanying her. What’s he got that I haven’t? he thought. He quickly answered himself, money, good looks, expensive clothes, that’s what.

For some reason lost on Frankie the couple didn’t seem to be talking to one another and he wondered whether they’d had a lover’s tiff, though, despite the stormy look on the dude’s face the girl seemed to be wearing a sheepish grin. He’d pay more than a penny for their thoughts.

Just then something in a store window momentarily drew his attention away from the couple. It was a sports store and he wondered whether it might stock hunting rifles. He had never used a gun of any sort in his life but he thought it would be great to own one, even if he had to steal it. He stopped for a few seconds, glanced through the front door but couldn’t tell whether there were any firearms inside. Not wanting to raise suspicion in case he paid them a visit later, he decided to move on and filed the thought for subsequent retrieval. As he turned to continue his walk, the couple he had noticed before were virtually right up to him and although it was accidental, he slightly bumped the dude on the shoulder.

‘Sorry mate,’ Frankie said, ‘didn’t see you…’

Simon Alexander Holdcroft then made the biggest mistake of his life. He cast his eyes the full extent of Frankie’s body with a look of utter disdain. That would normally have been sufficient reason for Frankie to react but to make it worse, Simon said, ‘Bloody vagrant, why don’t you look where you’re…’

The speed at which Frankie withdrew the Ka-bar was such that any onlooker would have thought he had been holding it all along. Ignoring the screams of the girl he had been admiring only minutes before and the attention of passers by who were too frightened to intervene, Frankie grabbed the dude by the neck and his expensive tie and forced him to the ground. Holding him there with his left arm with such pressure and intensity that the man could barely breathe, he went to work with the knife, turning the hand-tailored Armani suit into something a scarecrow would be proud to wear.

Simon’s eyes bulged out of his ashen face. ‘Please… please!’ he managed to blurt out with some difficulty. He tried to wriggle out of the hold the man had on him but to no avail. He seemed possessed of superhuman strength. He prayed that Janine – or someone – would call the police but he was instantly struck by the sobering thought that even if they did, officers wouldn’t get to him in time.

The suit having been appropriately redesigned, Frankie stared straight into the dude’s face, only millimetres away from his eyes. Speaking so calmly it only served to increase the terror Simon already felt, Frankie said, ‘Now then pretty boy, let’s see who’ll wind up the vagrant out of this little meeting.’ With the knife still held in a steely grip in his right hand, Frankie cut through the dude’s shirt so that it sprung open, leaving him bare-chested, then he carved his initials.

Simon screamed.

Janine fainted, dropping the satchel.

Oblivious to the distant but ever-increasing volume of police sirens, which were almost drowned out by the dude’s ululations, Frankie then set to work on his face.

Five minutes was all Frankie needed to complete the artwork on the dude’s face but as he stood up to admire his handiwork the sirens he had been ignoring died, car doors slammed and he turned to find sufficient police officers to form a cricket team rushing menacingly towards him. Instinctively he held up the knife, now dripping blood but dropped it immediately he saw the range of firearms pointed directly at him. He wasn’t stupid enough to take on an arsenal with a knife, as efficient as the Ka-bar was.

By now the footpath was clear of pedestrians. The girl remained on the footpath, her eyes closed, motionless. A young constable glanced at the couple on the ground and with fire in his eyes lifted his revolver and aimed directly at Frankie’s head. Frankie raised his arms in surrender at no time taking his eyes off the policeman’s trigger finger.

Frankie grinned as two other officers grabbed him from behind and snapped on a pair of handcuffs. As they roughly manhandled him towards a police van, Frankie turned and for the first time noticed the bag that the girl had dropped. It had sprung open and in full view was more money in cash than he had ever seen. He would spend the rest of his life despairing at his ineptitude in overlooking the fact, as he was later to ascertain, that the bag contained twenty-four thousand, two hundred and forty dollars in unmarked notes.

*****

CHAPTER TWO

Brilliant! He was about to be entertained. There was a giant silver screen in front of him, the kind they have at pop concerts so you can at least see a moving picture of the person you’ve paid a small fortune to venerate, only the screen had no edges, no borders, no frame, no stand or support, as though he were there in real life, an integral part of the performance. He had a nice feeling inside – warm fuzzies as they say in the advertising business. He was calm, euphoric even, breathing naturally, focused. He watched, waited as the screen flickered and it began.

At first all he could see was sky but something was wrong. Why don’t they adjust the picture? The sky was purple; not your trick-of-the-sunlight gentle lavender but purple as in Deep Purple. And there was something else. It was rippling like you’d expect the waters of a pond to ripple in a gentle afternoon breeze. But this was no pond; there was a sun in the top right-hand corner, a perfect sphere, the colour of chocolate and it throbbed like an exposed beating heart.

His own heart was gathering pace, beating as though some renegade, some… Apache Indian… were using it as a tom-tom. The sound was all-engulfing, all-consuming. It reverberated through his body, worse, through his mind. Morbid fascination snapped him back to the screen. There were clouds now. They were wispy, fluffy, most definitely clouds but they were green and they didn’t float gently across the sky – they revolved.

Then he saw them. They began as tiny dots in the top left-hand corner. He focused on them for an eon and in the depths of his subconscious he knew what they’d be.

If only he was wrong.

They were growing larger now and getting closer. They could have been birds with their wings gently flapping, seagulls perhaps but seagulls were white. As the dots grew larger, closer, he could see that they were red. Okay, in the kaleidoscopic world in which he had become engulfed true colours didn’t seem to matter but birds, seagulls, terns, pelicans, whatever, they were gentle, pretty creatures, easy on the eyes. These dots, these red things, whatever they were, there was something dark, something evil, malevolent about them.

Then he realised there was more to the picture than he had first thought. At the bottom of the screen in the foreground he could see a coastline jutting out into a sea. The ground of the coastline was black the sea beyond yellow but the yellow was fixed, as though it had been poured then set. This was no calm sea but a sinister, thick quagmire. There was another dot, just one, on the coastline atop a cliff. The dots above – the red dots – were larger, closer. He still couldn’t make out their features, but his deep-seated fears of what they might be made his heart beat faster, his breathing more laboured. He was sweating. The euphoria had evaporated. The serenity he had felt was evolving into panic.

He’d always loved colour – the greens and golds of autumn, the myriad oranges and reds of the sun setting in a clear sky, the virginal white of snow beneath azure heavens on a perfect winter’s day. Now the colour was terrifying him, screaming at him. This was an artist’s palette in turmoil. The colours angry, their vitriol directed at him.

The sky continued to ripple, the sea remained fixed, the land tilted one way then the other. The single dot on the clifftop was taking shape – it looked like a person, a tiny image of a person with long hair. He wanted it to be a woman. Unlike everything else in the picture, it was the right shape, the correct colour, which somehow made it all seem worse.

The red dots above were larger, closer. They had wings but they weren’t birds. There were dozens of them heading for the woman on the cliff. Her image was growing larger too. She was tall, slim and had long, straight, blonde hair.

But it wasn’t a woman. It was a man. It was him.

The approaching creatures were taking shape – as they grew larger, closer, there was no mistaking what they were. His stomach churned as his worst fears were realised.

Dragons. Ugly, scaly, slimy, fire-breathing dragons with faces like gargoyles and thrashing, demonic tails. The red was alive, kinetic, leaping upwards like fire. They were made of fire. Instead of breathing orange flames, they emitted a blue substance, the essence of evil – blue, electric and comprised of millions of tiny, squirming, high-voltage maggots, each emitting a deafening, buzzing noise. At first he thought they were false, robotic, special effects but as the dragons got larger, closer, he could see that the maggots themselves were living, breathing creatures, not manufactured but created in the depths of some Stygian crypt.

He had to escape.

He looked down at his image – it was clearer now. It had seen the dragons and was running inland, away from the coast, away from the apocalyptic terror in the sky, hands waving desperately in the air in a hopeless attempt to ward off the descending beasts. He was yelling for help but there was no-one else.

He was the last human soul on earth.

Beyond the screen there was nothing but desolation, no-one left to come to his rescue. Even if there had been someone, it was hopeless – the dragons were travelling much faster than he was. The fiery blue substance of each dragon’s breath lashed out. He could feel the heat of each loathsome flame as it licked at his back. More and more of them appeared in the distance, drawing closer until the sky was a twisting, squirming mass of them.

There was no escape.

Inside his chest, the Apache Indian was beating faster – inside his head there was a blood-chilling yell, as though the renegade was about to go on the warpath but this was no warrior’s chant, it was a scream.

His image screamed.

And so did he.

The screams merged to become an ululation that came in waves, engulfing him, drowning him.

Soon, surely, an alarm would go off. Someone would put a hand on his shoulder and gently wake him. It would be all be gone.

This was no dream.

*****

CHAPTER THREE

It was the fag-end of summer and a few gentle rays of late-February sun fought their way through the dirty windows, past the partly open, tattered curtains and onto the bed in the corner of the room. But it wasn’t the sun’s warmth that had lathered Gary Willows in sweat. His breathing was rapid, his head ached. He turned onto his side and propped his forehead in his hand. He’d been screaming and he hoped no one had heard. He wasn’t exactly Mr. Ideal Neighbour.

He tugged at the neck of his T-shirt and took a few deep breaths. His heartbeat was beginning to slow. If only it had just been a nightmare but not this time, it had happened again – a flashback.

He glanced at his watch. It was a shade after noon. He had arrived home after last night’s gig just before four am. Tired as he had been he couldn’t sleep. There was too much on his mind: the band, its lack of direction, himself, his lack of direction. He had dozed but he had no idea for how long. He never knew with the flashbacks – they seemed to last for hours, but when he emerged from them very little time had passed. He felt as though he had been turned inside out and there was another gig tonight. Great.

He took one more deep breath, slithered out of bed and padded to the bathroom. As he stood over the pedestal pissing loudly, he ran a hand through the tangled mess that was his long, blond hair. He felt some damp patches from the sweat. His face was taut and pale as though it hadn’t seen sunlight in months. Wasn’t that the fucking truth. His eyes belonged to his great, great grandfather – his deceased great, great grandfather – not in the body of a twenty-nine-year-old. He flushed the toilet, passed his hands under cold water and without drying them, went to the kitchen. Horrid, black, instant coffee was hardly the breakfast of champions but it might help kick-start the day.

He lit a cigarette and sat on a stool at the kitchen bench, immersed in his thoughts. Twenty-nine and he had tried just about every illegal substance known to mankind. He had given them up now apart from the occasional spliff. He had the band to thank for that. He hardly earned enough to pay for rent and food and the upkeep – such as it was – on his battered Kombi, let alone have sufficient to splash out on recreational drugs. From the bad old days when he was heavily into everything – as long as it was illegal or bad for you or both – only the LSD had left its legacy. Introduced to him at university, at first the acid was great; those trips were the best travelling he had ever done.

But his first bad episode had made his worst nightmare seem like a child’s fairy tale. He’d given up almost immediately but he hadn’t counted on the flashbacks. Eight years now and they hadn’t let up, hadn’t released him. They’d probably haunt him for the rest of his life. He took a deep drag on the cigarette and slowly blew the smoke across the kitchen. The rest of his life? He allowed himself a cynical laugh – what fucking life?

The Kombi wouldn’t start – that’s all he needed. He kept trying the ignition, all the time looking up at the windows of the units where he lived in Mornington, Hobart. It wouldn’t be long before they all stuck their heads out their windows and started tut-tutting. How dare he interrupt their day? He almost did it, the engine nearly turned over. He looked up to see the old bag in number twenty-seven looking out her window. He could see her mouthing some words before slamming the window. Thought of having to get out and look at the engine filled him with dread. He’d have to live up to the expectations of those watching him and at least look at it but after that he’d call Mark, the only band member with any knowledge of cars and other mechanical contraptions. Mark wouldn’t be happy about it but the need to ensure Gary could get to tonight’s gig would be enough to get him there.

As the Kombi backfired, leaving half the residents of his apartment block wondering who’d been shot, he gunned the motor and headed for the Chinese fish and chip shop less than a kilometre away.

He ate the chips in the van – if he had to go through the same engine-cranking exercise he had back at the units the bloody things would be cold. While he ate he fidgeted with the radio. Nothing but static. He made a mental note to ask Mark if he could do anything about it. He’d have to pick the right moment as most of the time they were at each other’s throats.

He screwed up the newspaper holding the last remnants of the