Monumental

By Mark Abel

Is it possible for an old stone monument to magically manipulate people’s actions?
Meet Dick, the country and western loving ex-milkman, Julie who plans to change her name and everything else, Jack who may or may not help her whilst Tom knows that in the fast moving world of meat retail, you’re only as good as your last sale and Andrew who understands a spread sheet but very little else.
Can a piece of architecture use paranormal powers to influence events and lives?
Find out in this everyday tale of murder, betrayal, lust and masonry.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mark Abel
• Release date: May 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463302798

Mark Abel

I'm lucky enough to live beside the river close to the city of Chester which is handy as I am of the general opinion that outdoors beats indoors for most activities.Hopefully you have enjoyed some of my writing and may do so again.

Book preview

MONUMENTAL

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are fictional or used fictitiously.

Copyright Mark Abel 2018

Chapter 1

The Monument.

The dark stone structure stands on the very top of a strip of land running east to west and dominates the view for miles around. A solitary feature against the skyline, serving as a landmark for weary travellers. Skirted by the wide main road on one side and a much lesser known and rarely used single lane track on the other.

From the top, on a rare clear spring day, the cathedral spire in the distant city is just visible to the west, far beyond the rolling fields of the novel bright yellow Rape seed, the increasingly popular new crop in the area that was being heavily subsidised and producing an unpleasant tasting low quality cooking oil. It was also proving to be particularly annoying to the local beekeepers as the honey it created was so thick it clogged up everything it came into contact with.

Turning around to look to the east, the ground drops gently away for several miles to peter out at the docks at the mouth of the river with the coal dark sea and its permanent scummy coating of coke dust just beyond.

The southern aspect contains a rough track worn into the grass bank, which drops steeply down to meet the main road, beyond which are the original three terraced rows of small pit cottages now sharing the freshly cleared and landscaped countryside with the new housing development just behind them.

A stylised silhouette of the monument featured proudly on the original advertising hoardings for the Carrott Builders new Athenaeum housing development, and with the wind in the right direction, the sounds of the heavy machinery employed in the second phase of the construction could easily be heard high up on the crest of the ridge.

Loosely styled along the lines of an ancient Greek temple, the structure was composed of a base of black granite blocks, contrasted with lighter coloured sandstone columns rising to a canopy of more black stone. During the summer evenings, three large floodlights mounted on the grass bank illuminated the structure through the night, the columns acting as a beacon for travellers on the coast road.

The much-repeated popular local opinion that the monument was built on an ancient Druid worship site had been proved to be totally unfounded and yet even today some of the younger, fitter, hornier and more brazen couples still climbed the steep hillside to celebrate the ancient religion, pray to the ancient gods and ravish each other under open skies.

These religious festivities made it far from unusual for early morning dog walkers to observe discarded underclothes littering the grass banks or hanging from bushes.

Semaphore signals of sin.

A few less knowledgeable locals, not wanting to be left out of any discussions, confidently stated that the temple had been built by the Greeks shortly after they had arrived in their long ships to plunder the town and commit other atrocities. They then went on to cite the abundance of Kebab shops in the locality as giving proof to their proclamations.

Some of the better-educated but just as equally deluded folk will swear blind that the structure is situated on a major ley line, one of the mystical prehistoric routes criss-crossing the land and linking important sacred sites.

By spreading a map out onto a table top and using a ruler, a straight line can be persuaded to run from the monument, almost through the cathedral spire and then carrying on to pass close to a pond, where supposedly, crusaders had paused and allowed their horses to drink as they made their slow and often one-way journey to seek glory in the Holy Land.

This imaginary line can then be continued to come within nodding distance of a hill where legend has it that St George once slew a dragon. Now, back in the dim and murky past when this slaying occurred the creature may have originally been a large worm but over time, evolution or metamorphosis gave the beast impressive fire breathing capabilities and improved the quality of the tale.

Given a suitably large enough map and an impressive table top,