Shutter

By S E Holmes

Impoverished eighteen-year-old student, Mim, is thrilled when a Solicitor contacts her with the surprise inheritance of a lifetime: a terrace in a prestigious city suburb not far from the art college she’s scholarshipped to attend. But number seven Bligh Street is a derelict ruin hiding a wrathful presence, and he has plans for Mim that have nothing to do with generosity. She is about to learn why her adopted mother has always told her never to accept a gift from a stranger. (Novella)

• Language: English
• Publisher: S E Holmes
• Release date: May 9, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463428542

S E Holmes

The fact the real world is not as appealing as the ones I create was obvious in kindergarten when I ran away from school to have a chat with Santa, triggering a police search. My imaginary friend, Wendy, who often came in handy to eat my peas, generously took the blame.

Book preview

The Crone’s Stone (Sacred Trinity Trilogy – Excerpt at the end of Shutter)

The Hidden Key (Sacred Trinity Trilogy)

Dominion

Brink (Maverick Duology – Excerpt at the end of Chattel)

Chattel (Excerpt at the end of Shutter)

Trouble With Angels

Short Stories and Novellas:

A Darker Shade of Grey

Sleek Comes the Night

Shutter

Coming soon:

The Keeper’s Secret (Sacred Trinity Trilogy)

Rift (Maverick Duology)

For more content please visit:

www.seholmesauthor.com

Copyright © 2018 SueEllen Holmes

Smashwords Edition

Table of Contents

Other Novels by S E Holmes

Frontispiece

1 – Sunday Afternoon

2 – Monday morning

3 – Monday, early afternoon

4 – Monday, late afternoon

5 – Monday, early evening

6 – Monday evening

7 – Tuesday, before dawn

8 – Tuesday morning

9 – Tuesday midday

10 – Tuesday afternoon

Excerpt from latest novel: CHATTEL

Excerpt free novel: THE CRONE’S STONE

1 – Sunday Afternoon.

Take a torch, the Solicitor, a crusty old duffer named Denning, had advised.

He’d gazed imperiously over crescent-shaped spectacles at Miriam, across a desk so expansive it discouraged any illusion of comfort during the dry as dust will-reading. At the time, Mim was too stunned by her inheritance good fortune to ask why an extra source of light may be necessary, especially as it would likely be day when she first took a look. Besides, any creeping doubt was quickly smothered by her desperate need to escape a future on the chicken-packing assembly-line, in a go-nowhere town, where a rusted combine-harvester was the epitome of art.

But now, as she stood like an idiot on the footpath with her jaw slack and her mobile planted to her ear, those questions roared into focus. Yet another of Marge’s country-spun sayings pushed to the fore: never accept a gift from a stranger. What had she gotten herself in to?

She checked the street number on the sheaf of documents balled in her sweaty palm, confirming again this was number seven, Bligh Lane. Rosellas squabbled in bottlebrushes lining the row either side, a late-afternoon scene of urban tranquillity that mocked her part inheritance with its crumbling coat of grey concrete and boarded-over windows. The derelict terrace hunkered between perfectly manicured homes like a hooligan’s middle finger thrust at the neighbours. And at her.

Well? Aaron demanded over her phone.

Err, was all she managed in reply.

No need to draw out the suspense on this historic occasion. Show me.

Hope shrivelled like the parched brown weeds dotting an arid square of dirt not even pretending to be lawn. It was all she could do to begin filming, panning to reveal the moneypit she was now tasked with making liveable. It was a wonder the terrace hadn’t been condemned and totally beyond her purse, especially if eating again made the agenda. She didn’t begin her new job for three weeks.

Bit of a fixer-upper, she said, aiming for nonchalance and missing.

Silence stretched across the ten hour void. If Aaron couldn’t fabricate a positive response from his cushy bedroom back home on the farm, Mim knew she was screwed. He tried, producing a throttled huff. He cleared his throat and launched another aborted attempt, before finally succeeding.

I’ll come down. You can’t deal with this alone.

Her adopted family were only beginning to recover from the worst drought on records. Aaron was needed for the harvest right up until enrolment day, somewhere she should have been, were it not for the supposedly joyous news from a tenacious lawyer who’d exhausted years hunting her along a mysterious ancestral tree.

I’m sure it’ll scrub up okay with a bit of spit and polish. Possibly a wrecking ball.

Mim reached around and shoved the wad of paper into her backpack, digging in the front pocket of her shorts and pulling out a single key on its ratty piece of string that should have given her a hint. Surely a friendly heads-up would have been decent? Instead, Denning had fed her some half-arsed history involving a vagrant with a broken neck and a record of misfortune to explain its vacancy. She wished she’d listened, not sat there dreaming of the millions she’d make listing a Surry Hills property when no one else had bothered, which of course, should have been her first question. Naturally, such a gift wouldn’t come without a catch or ten.

I’m thinking napalm and a match. He echoed her thoughts.

Let’s not judge the chocolate by the wrapper. I’m sure it’s better inside.

She continued to film: along the cracked front path, edging through a rusted chain-link gate that canted on a single corroded pivot and looked like it may lose to gravity any second. Two masonry columns of cancer-splotched render buttressed either side like arthritic guards, the front fence in both directions long since gone. Her father, Barry, would faint at the unkempt state of the garden graveyard. She took a couple of stairs to the porch, swiping away a jungle of webs. Who knew how long since the front door had budged, its dark green paint peeling to reveal anaemic patches of timber beneath. Inserting the key in a tarnished dead-bolt and turning met stubborn resistance.

Should have brought WD-40, said Aaron.

Jiggling the key in the lock failed, so too an experimental karate kick. Mim pressed her shoulder against the door and shoved, stumbling into the gloomy, narrow space when it finally gave way in a hail of splinters and a screech of wood dragged on wood. The building groaned and creaked as if stretching awake after a long hibernation.

Should have brought a flamethrower instead of a torch.

She rubbed her bruised shoulder and checked the damage. The lock was now useless, not that she worried anyone would enter of their own accord. Besides, she owned nothing worth stealing.

Are you okay? he asked.

So much for grandly crossing the threshold.

Churning shadow forced her to grope for the torch in a side pocket in her rucksack and switch it on. Swivelling to capture more video, it would have been better not to. She wasted a moment glaring resentfully at the torch. This, this was what Denning chose to divulge? Mim shook her head in disbelief. Maybe he withheld the true state of her inheritance so she wouldn’t throw the key back at him. She battled the urge to flee, but this crumbling shack offered her only chance at accepting an Art scholarship in the city. When the tour was over, she’d interrupt Denning’s Sunday family roast or golf game and give him a good piece of her mind.

Craptastic, Aaron mumbled, as the beam highlighted decades of neglect. It’s as hideous inside, as out.

A cool gust of fetid air laden with mildew and something far worse, made her gag. She sneezed, and cursed forgetting her Zyrtec.

Ugh, there’s a dead animal in here. Maybe more than one.

The stench was so thick, it coated her tongue and made her eyes water. Trying to breathe only through her mouth made Mim sound like she had a heavy dose of sinus.

As long as it’s dead, Aaron said, not nesting in the roof. I wouldn’t let the dogs live there. It’s so rickety, you need a hard hat. No wonder squatters have given it a miss. He’d reached that conclusion due to a layer of undisturbed dust, so thick she had no idea of the floor underneath. Even graffiti vandals haven’t touched the place.

Are you trying to make me feel better?

Denning gave other reasons for reluctant trespassers. What had he droned on about in his posh accent? Unfortunate incidents, bad reputation. She failed to recall and cursed herself for the lapse. With hindsight, she should have pushed harder, asked for clarification, along with hassling for details on an anonymous partner to complicate matters. Odds on they’d turn up to claim their share, once she’d developed callouses and given the impoverished student cliché a new low. There wasn’t enough flesh on her skinny frame for starvation.

It’s in Surry Hills, Aaron tried belatedly. City investors would pay a fortune for the privilege of spending a fortune renovating it. You could put it on the market as is, and we’d still be millionaires.

Denning made it very clear, I’m not allowed to sell.

That doesn’t sound right. Can the owner dictate what you do with your inheritance after they die?

The truth would encourage more endless questions she wasn’t ready to deal with. The title’s in trust. Unless certain conditions are met, that city investor dream is as useless as this pile of turd. Basically, we’re stuck with it.

Aaron knew her tone well enough to drop it for the time being. Some charcoal, grimy stain that likely demanded acid for removal, bubbled the walls. She zeroed-in on the lone piece of furniture: a ratty old chair at a jaunty diagonal next to an ornately mantled hearth of jade marble. Springs popped through cracked leather, stuffing scattered about its wooden legs like a grubby skirt.

Nice fireplace, Mim. Do you think it’ll take a fire?

Not if that’s where the vermin are living. Can you hear it? All that muffled knocking and creaking?

Possums, he verbally shuddered. Nasty. Get rid of them first.

Her beam travelled from the hearth to the right, revealing a tall square of plywood that covered a window behind her, next to the front door. Weeds had forced their way in via cracks, and long-neglected discards of former occupants – dirt-filled glass bottles, scraps of rotting packaging, utensils so corroded it was difficult to determine their original form – littered the floor. Surely the room wouldn’t be so dismal once she’d torn down the boards and let in the sunshine? It was hard to picture in the falling shade of afternoon. The more she saw of her surprise inheritance, the more deflated she became.

If this wasn’t so close to college, I’d shut it back up and offer to babysit Em’s children in exchange for free rent. Regardless of how many buses or trains or sleepless nights I’d have to cop.

Where would I live?

Maybe you could commute.

Ten hours there and back every day. Very practical.

As if. We need to make the best of it. It’ll be shabby chic once I clean it up.

Mim owed the Sampsons. They’d claimed her after she was found in the hospital foyer in a cardboard box. Otherwise, she’d be a State ward. She’d do anything for her adopted family, who’d given her everything.

You’re right. We can fix it up, he said.

I guess we’d better look at the rest.

I’ll see if I can work double shifts and come down earlier to help.

You forget, I’ve seen your bedroom. We both know cleaning’s not your specialty. Stick with the plan. I’ll manage. Somehow.

You’d better get a Tetanus booster.

At least the house was tiny: a long, slim rectangular space halved by a set of rickety stairs hugging the left, beyond which was a dining-cum-kitchenette. Straight ahead in the courtyard out back, there was a laundry undoubtedly requiring a machete to reach. She knew from a moth-eaten set of plans Denning had shown her, the stairs headed up to two bedrooms mirroring this front and back arrangement with a bathroom in between.

Stepping over chunks of fallen plaster, she eyed drifts of debris along the skirting boards. Her Docs stirred clouds and the floor squealed in her wake. There’d be no drunken sneaking in with a one-nighter. Mim sneezed again, blinking to clear her eyes.

Away from a sliver of daylight and fresh air through the front door, the smell increased, which was definitely enough to repel the curious or needy. Fly-blown carcasses out in the fields back home didn’t reek as bad. Still, there was no evidence anyone had ever even tried to break-in. How would the homeless hear rumours, anyway? She tucked her face in the nook of her elbow, experimentally planting her weight on the bottom rung.

Um, so the lawyer didn’t mention who bequeathed it to you?

It was the fourth time he’d brought it up, probing for details about her birth parents. Her inheritance proved relatives could contact her if they’d wished. The whole episode confirmed she wasn’t wanted, a far bigger hurt than the fact she’d never met those responsible for such desertion. Outwardly, she buried her pain, acting pleased to stay ignorant. Aaron