Forces

By J P Julians

Rick and Sophie were enjoying a simple romantic dinner on a normal weekday evening. The food was good and the company was better. They weren't to know that choosing a certain way to walk to the car would lead to the discovery of two slain bodies in an alleyway.

Consumed by the need to find out what killed them they rope their friends, Tony and Kim, into helping. It doesn't take long for them to discover that what they are investigating goes far beyond what any of them could ever have imagined. What seemed like just a random savage attack leads them on a path that could alter the world as they know it. Who or what could be capable of committing such an attack? How is a man named Charles linked to it? And how does his plans threaten to alter life for every single person on the planet? The battle between the forces of good and evil is about to begin.

• Language: English
• Publisher: J P Julians
• Release date: Nov 20, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370632947

J P Julians

I have an unhealthy addiction to stories. Whether they be TV, movies, games or books, I tend to get hooked without much difficulty and it's what led me to start writing stories of my own. I have two completed books and another 3 at various stages. Many more planned to write. I also love steak.

Book preview

About the Author

For as long as I can remember I loved stories. Even as early as my youth I would get invested in the characters in shows like Saved by the Bell or Power Rangers. As I got older this transitioned to things like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel and now I find myself with a backlog of things to watch and read that will likely never get completed as there isn’t enough time in the world.

At around 18 I came up with the idea for a group of people that would find themselves dragged into the world of the paranormal but with none of them having any powers to be able to have the advantage. Over a decade later this idea would develop into Forces with many plot points in this and subsequent books being planned out all that time ago.

As for why I didn’t write this back then? I had other priorities, such as being a lazy young adult who was far more interested in drinking than sitting down to write a book. One of my many regrets.

I hope you enjoy Forces and that by the time you reach the end you’re eager to see where this journey takes the characters. I’m eager to write it all.

Chapter 1 - It’s Just Dinner.

Dinner, a simple meal out for two. That’s what this was meant to be. It was an evening Rick Abbots had been counting down the hours to, given his love for food. In this instance, he was taking Sophie out, so he got to have the boyfriend brownie points and the steak, a win-win, he thought to himself.

Rick had been with Sophie Hayter for just over eight months, and he’d been trying to get her to go out on a date with him for a solid year before that, but she kept insisting she could only see him as friend. He is proof that persistency wins through on occasion though. This wasn’t a special dinner, no anniversary, no proposal on the cards or anything significant, just a regular meal out on a regular evening. Well, at least that’s what they thought: they had no idea how wrong they were, or how things would end up turning out.

As the two of them sat there, enjoying the food and each other’s company, they weren’t to know that as soon as they left the restaurant, their evening was going to turn sour. They especially could not have predicted that going to dinner would signal a dramatic change in their lives, as well as the lives of those closest to them, but then that was something nobody could have foreseen. At least the meal itself was as good as they had hoped it would be.

‘I could literally eat steak every single night with no feeling of guilt,’ Rick said. Or at least that’s possibly what he said; it was hard for Sophie to tell given that he had a great deal of cow in his mouth whilst saying it.

You see, when you have been together for longer than six months, it can be easy to forget the manners reserved for impressing somebody. Sophie thought back to how on their first date, he would have cut the meat into the smallest of pieces, how he certainly would have made sure it was cooked to at least medium in order to avoid the dripping red sea of juice that exuded from it now. She didn’t mind though, since by this point she had already managed to spill gravy down her top and had tried to wash it off with lemon water. It was clear to both of them they were a well-suited couple.

‘I think you pretty much do eat steak daily anyway,’ Sophie responded, as she continued to scrub at the gravy that was now looking worse, thanks to the large water stain appearing around it.

‘No I don’t, but it’s the dream,’ said Rick, getting lost a bit in his own meat-related thoughts. ‘When fame and fortune arrive, I’ll have a private chef in the house just to make steak at whatever time of day I feel like having it. Breakfast steak, lunch steak, dinner steak, one day it will happen.’

‘You’re a strange man with strange life goals,’ she said, not wanting to indulge him by admitting that it didn’t sound like the worst dream to have; she quite liked the idea herself.

Rick smiled: she was his life goal. She who now had a blotch on her shirt the size of an apple was the person he wanted to spend the rest of his life with, but he couldn’t say that to her just yet; it had only been eight months. Instead, he did what he did best: he resorted to humour. He lifted up a giant piece of meat attached to his fork and stared longingly at it. ‘Don’t listen to her, baby,’ he said to the dripping piece of steak, so big that surely one person couldn’t eat it in one go, ‘she’ll never understand what we have.’ Impressively, he proceeded to eat the whole thing.

Rick and Sophie were close friends long before anything romantic happened between them. He liked to think he eventually won her over thanks to his charm, but it was actually due to Tony Bales and Kim Heaton, their best friends and two people who had been a couple far longer than they had. Tony and Kim had been together longer than anyone could remember, with the type of childhood romance that nobody ever thinks will last. They had always been determined to prove everyone wrong, and it was a case of so far so good for them on that front. It was the strength of those two as a couple that caused Sophie to take a look at her and Rick: they made her realise their chemistry was worth risking the friendship for, to have something as special as their friends had. She had never told Rick, but she always had feelings for him too deep down, but they were just so close already that she was always scared of losing him altogether, should any potential relationship fall apart.

Tony had no idea he was one half of an inspirational couple; Kim did though, thanks to Sophie. She had long planned on keeping that ace up her sleeve for if she ever needed a favour. She’s the sweet and innocent one of the four best friends, but that doesn’t mean she won’t try and make things work to her advantage if the opportunity ever arose. As for Tony, he and Rick were similar in a lot of ways and it’s why they get on as well as they do, the difference being that Rick is the more sensible of the two. Tony’s not exactly irresponsible, but if there’s an opportunity to slack off, or to find a joke in something, he’ll have found it long before the thought even occurs to anybody else.

‘Anybody for dessert?’ asked the waiter. He’d just wandered over and was trying not to look at the stain on Sophie’s shirt, failing miserably in doing so.

‘I’m okay, thanks’ Sophie responded, short and with a glare, noticing him smirk at her unfortunate accident. Rick didn’t do much to help the situation by smiling back at him.

‘I’m glad you said that, because I feel like I have literally just devoured a whole cow,’ added Rick. ‘Just the bill, please.’

As the waiter headed off, Sophie couldn’t help but notice Rick chuckling away to himself. ‘It’s not that noticeable,’ she exclaimed, with mild frustration.

His response of ‘NASA is currently pondering what this new anomaly on the Earth’s surface is’ was probably not the wisest of comments Rick could have made, but he stood by it, purely for the comedy value. Luckily the smile he got in return was validation that, not only did she find the remark funny, but the situation too. Another example of them being perfect for each other, he thought to himself.

The waiter brought them the bill and walked away as quickly as he could, without making eye contact with Sophie, safe in the knowledge that the only tip he would be getting is ‘don’t make fun of your customers.’ Rick proceeded to reach for his wallet.

‘Hey, we said we’d both pay half.’ Sophie reached into her bag for her purse.

‘No, it’s fine, scratch card win. Technically neither of us are paying for this.’ He was lying of course, there was no scratch card win; he wanted to pay, and lying was a good way to avoid the inevitable ten-minute conversation about why he shouldn’t that would surely have followed.

‘Then in which case, thank you.’

‘You’re ever so welcome,’ replied Rick, thankful that it was agreed far quicker than it normally is when the subject of who’s paying arises. Sophie’s very headstrong, always wanting to pay her own way, even when it’s her boyfriend treating her.

It had been a nice evening, the only complaint from either of them being that the gravy was a little runny. It should have remained nice and it would have, were it not for the choice they made in which way to walk to the car. They could have walked the quickest way, straight down the road and it would have taken them about ten minutes. Or, they could have taken a slightly longer route, a route that they would never normally take, one that would lead them through an alley. Were it not for the weather outside, that second option wouldn’t have even been considered.

Rick looked towards the door: the wind outside had picked up since they got there and leaving the confines of the cosily-lit restaurant didn’t seem like the wisest of moves. However, it was late and the restaurant was closing soon, so they had little choice in the matter. How was he to know that not long after walking outside, everything was going to change? Not just for him, not just for Sophie, but for Tony and Kim too. Two people who weren’t even there with them that night were going to be caught up in something that would prove to be life-altering. Leaving at that time, walking down that alley, those choices were to alter things for all of them. For Rick at this moment though, he just didn’t like the thought of the cold wind.

As they stood up, each making their own variation of the noise you make when you’ve eaten too much, they put on their coats. Rick placed the money for the bill on the table and they headed for the door. The waiter who collected it was pleasantly surprised he did get a tip after all; it was obvious to him who out of the two of them must have paid.

They exited the restaurant and stepped onto the street, the cold of the nearly ending winter immediately hitting them both. It wasn’t snowing, but there was an icy chill in the air and the wind stung their cheeks as they battled against it. It was of course typically blowing directly at them as they were walking and there was a lot of road between them and the car. They wrapped themselves in their coats as tight as they could, the cold wind beginning to cause them to lose the feeling in their faces. Rick told Sophie that he knew a way to get there that would get them out of the wind, the only downside being that it would add an extra few minutes to the walk. It was a cut through, a diversion that would take them through an alley.

‘There’s a turning up on the left, we’re going through there.’ Rick was adamant they had to get out of the head wind. As they approached the turn, it didn’t look welcoming. There were no lights, the gale was blowing toppled metallic bins across the ground, rubbish circled the air and whilst it might have got them away from the icy gusts, Sophie was cautious that it could also get them killed.

‘Really? You want us to go down there?’ she asked, her apprehension at the idea not disguised by the unimpressed sound of her voice.

‘It’ll be fine, it’s about a minute of creepy alley and then it’s just sheltered roads. It’ll take us away from the wind,’ he said, eager for them to get to some form of shelter so he could start to get the feeling back in his face and fingers.

‘If we get axe-murdered to death, I’m blaming you.’ Sophie’s half joking words were at odds with her nervous tone as she spoke them.

‘Fine, I’ll take the blame,’ he said, unaware her fears of something terrible happening were extremely, albeit unknowingly, well-founded.

As they veered left into the alley, the mood changed. It wasn’t something either of them could do anything about, but there was an air of unease that couldn’t be shaken off and despite the howling of the wind, it felt desperately quiet.

‘I should probably apologise for bringing us down here,’ Rick said, the sound of his voice now as nervous as Sophie’s.

They continued to walk further, their pace slowing.

‘We could turn…’ Before Sophie could finish her sentence, one she would come to wish she had started a mere two seconds earlier, she tripped on something and tumbled to the floor with a thud, cracking her head on to the concrete of the floor below.

Rick quickly scrambled for his phone to give them some light. The darkness of the alley was stopping him from making her out, despite her being right in front of him.

Sophie, dazed from the knock to her head, tried to lift herself up. She turned slowly to the right to see what she had tripped on and at that moment, Rick aimed his light in her direction. She immediately focused on what was in front of her, a body, eyes wide open, lifeless and vacant. She froze, overcome with an inability to take her gaze off it and unable to muster the courage needed to make a decision as to where she should go, or what she should do.

‘Sophie, get up and back away,’ Rick said, horrified by what he was staring at.

‘Rick, what’s going on?’ she asked, shaken and paralysed by fear. Sophie continued to stare at the person lying next to her, a girl who appeared to be no older than she was. She began to focus on the horror of her surroundings, and noticing a puddle of blood, she realised she was lying right in it. She panicked and quickly shuffled backwards to Rick who put his arms around her.

‘We’ve got to go.’ Rick’s voice was quiet, barely reaching a volume louder than a whisper. ‘We need get out of this alley and call the police.’

Sophie nodded and looked down at her shirt, it was covered in the blood of whoever this girl was. She didn’t know why, but all she could think was at least she couldn’t see that gravy stain anymore. At least that was all she could think, because Rick’s next sentence contained a word that immediately caught her attention.

‘Whatever did this to them could still be here.’

‘Them?’ she asked, ‘why did you say them?’

She got to her feet, Rick’s light shining down to where she had fallen and there was the girl. She was a brunette, and Sophie thought to herself the dress she was wearing looked pretty, not the obvious thing to think at this kind of moment and she couldn’t explain why she thought it. Her eyes gradually moved to her left and she saw this girl was not alone. Her blood-soaked hand was holding onto someone; there was somebody else lying dead on the alley’s cold concrete floor. It was a man and she once again couldn’t take her eyes off the scene; she was almost in a trance, transfixed by the gruesome display that lay before her. After a few seconds, she began to register Rick repeatedly calling out to her. She could then feel him dragging her away, but all she could do was stare at the horror at her feet. Whoever did this, whatever did this, it did it with ferocity, it tore into them so quickly they didn’t even let go of each other’s hands.

‘Sophie, let’s get out of here, now!’ Rick yelled.

She regained her composure, saw Rick’s desperate face staring at her and nodded. They turned and headed back the way they came, back onto the street and out of the alley. That cold wind didn’t seem so bad anymore.

Chapter 2 - Spreading the News

Langton isn’t a big town. It’s not so small that you can’t make it to buy some milk without running into someone you know, but it’s the kind of size where news travels fast. For instance, if two brutally maimed people are found dead one night, that has the tendency to move whatever supermarket has been given planning permission from the front page of the local paper.

The names of the victims were known fairly quickly, Alexander Summers and Abigail Gibbs, a couple in their mid-twenties who were celebrating their two-year anniversary that fateful evening. With their details in the public domain, it was the same newspaper article that named the people who had discovered the bodies too. Rick and Sophie had obviously spoken to the police, but they hadn’t spoken to the Langton Herald, although that didn’t stop their names from appearing in it. At this stage, they were unaware that they had become famous in the local area, since they hadn’t surfaced that day and neither had gone in to work. Rick and Tony worked together at a call centre and it would be fair to say all the talking that day in the office had been about the night before. In Rick’s absence, it was Tony who was bearing the brunt of the questioning.

‘Is Rick okay?’

‘How’s his girlfriend?’

‘Did they know the people killed?’

‘Did Rick get a photo of the scene?’

Tony was asked these questions a lot throughout the day, the last one surprising him the most. ‘Yes, he did. I think he’s planning on sharing them on Twitter at some point’ was his sarcastic response to that disturbingly inquisitive colleague. Most people who were there when that question was posed knew Tony was joking, some didn’t; with those few he began evaluating the people he allowed to come near him during his working day.

Despite not bitterly hating his job like some, he couldn’t help but be jealous of Kim. She worked in an office in the city, and with all the murder and crimes that occur there, they probably wouldn’t even know that anything had happened in Langton. He was fully aware of how strange it was to be envious of her working in a bustling location with a higher crime rate, but after question number one hundred and fifty-six, he stood by his thought process on the matter.

Amidst the frustration of the day though, he was worried about his friends, two of the people closest to him who were normally so carefree would surely be changed by what had happened to them. They had plans to head out the following weekend, would that be cancelled now? It was a trivial, almost selfish thought to have, a few drinks in a rundown bar was hardly important right now, yet he couldn’t help thinking it. Mostly though, he was just worried about what he should say to them. There’s no handbook on how to deal with friends who have seen something so barbaric.

Tony’s 5pm ritual was straightforward: make sure he was out of the building no later than a minute past the hour, then he would head to the station to wait for Kim’s train to get in. This was a daily thing, since he and Kim didn’t officially live together, though they may as well have done at this stage. They had been a couple for so long and she had more clothes at his home than at her own; she also had far more space in the wardrobe than he did, much to his annoyance. Today, however, when the train pulled in and she got off, there was a different atmosphere.

The usual fun mood they would instantly find themselves in was replaced by sadness. Kim too had been having the same thoughts as he had; she may not have had any frustrating and sarcastic Twitter-related conversations on the subject but like Tony, she was just worried about what to say to her friends when she saw them. Both were aware the other wasn’t acting normally, and the greeting pleasantries were followed by a prolonged silence and that didn’t tend to happen to either of them. Normally it was hard for them to stay quiet for more than a minute.

‘Have you heard from them?’ Kim asked, concerned because she hadn’t.

‘No,’ Tony replied, ‘not even a text.’

‘Same, I keep wanting to send Sophie a message, but what would I say? Kim held her phone and stared at it, awaiting an inspiration that was never to come. ‘Hope you’re okay’ wouldn’t really cut it I don’t think’

Tony remained silent, a bit too silent for him until he noticed Kim’s glare. ‘I couldn’t think what else to send other than that,’ he responded coyly. ‘Plus, we’re guys, direct and to the point seems to work for us.’

‘Did he reply?’

‘No.’

‘Didn’t cut it then, did it?’

There was no response needed. It was a difficult situation for everybody and both Kim and Tony could only feel a little foolish for how much stress it was causing them. They weren’t there, they didn’t go through it. Really, it was just another day as far as they were concerned. There was no way either could predict the events of the previous night would have such an impact on them in the future, but then, why would they?

The walk home was an odd one; attempts at small talk failed and attempting to have a nice evening was always going to be a hard task, but when they got to Tony’s front door, they saw what neither of them was expecting to see. There stood Sophie. She looked drawn and pale, at least that was Kim’s first thought although she felt awful for thinking about her appearance at a time like this. Now there was the awkward situation, waiting to see who of the three of them would speak first. Tony sadly didn’t have a reputation for dealing with awkward situations very well, and he said the first thing that came into his head.

‘Was the food nice last night at least?’

The glare that Kim had cast his way earlier was nothing compared to this one. This was the glare that’s reserved for special occasions, for times when his stupidity reached heights that even she couldn’t quite wrap her head around.

‘I’m so sorry, that wasn’t what I’d planned to say’ he said, hoping he had been able to backtrack quickly enough.

Luckily Sophie knew him well enough to know what he was like, so the small smile she sent in his direction was enough to cause him some relief, and it also allowed Kim’s still angry stare to gradually drift away from him.

After walking into the house, Tony offered drinks and made himself scarce, since it was pretty clear Sophie needed Kim right now.

‘Was the food nice?’ whispered Kim to him before he left the room, still shocked he had asked it. There was a witty response he could have given, and indeed he had about five different ones swirling around in his head, but he thought better of it and headed upstairs to the safety of his own company.

Sitting on the couch, Kim was desperate for Sophie to talk first. That whole issue about what to say at a time like this wasn’t any easier in a real-time situation. Thankfully, after a few seconds, Sophie broke the silence.

‘Is everyone talking about it?’

‘You made the papers,’ Kim replied in a cheerful tone, one she quickly realised to be inappropriate given the subject matter.

‘Great, there was me thinking I could fly under the radar on this one,’ she replied.

This wasn’t what Sophie wanted to hear; she had been concerned things wouldn’t be returning to normal at any point soon to begin with, but now that