The Bad Samaritan and The Gospel of The Twelve

By Jon Jacks

We were the other twelve; the women who followed the Teacher.
He called on my mother, a Samaritan, to quench her thirst with the waters of life.
And so my sisters went with him too.
Is he who he says he is?
I have yet to be persuaded.
He promises many things; promises I find hard to believe anyone could keep.
Now he seems to be telling us he will soon die – so why are we still following him?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jon Jacks
• Release date: Dec 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463983973

Jon Jacks

While working in London as, first, an advertising Creative Director (the title in the U.S. is wildly different; the role involves both creating and overseeing all the creative work in an agency, meaning you’re second only to the Chairman/President) and then a screenwriter for Hollywood and TV, I moved out to an incredibly ancient house in the countryside.On the day we moved out, my then three-year-old daughter (my son was yet to be born) was entranced by the new house, but also upset that we had left behind all that was familiar to her.So, very quickly, my wife Julie and I laid out rugs and comfortable chairs around the huge fireplace so that it looked and felt more like our London home. We then left my daughter quietly reading a book while we went to the kitchen to prepare something to eat.Around fifteen minutes later, my daughter came into the kitchen, saying that she felt much better now ‘after talking to the boy’.‘Boy?’ we asked. ‘What boy?’‘The little boy; he’s been talking to me on the sofa while you were in here.’We rushed into the room, looking around.There wasn’t any boy there of course.‘There isn’t any little boy here,’ we said.‘Of course,’ my daughter replied. ‘He told me he wasn’t alive anymore. He lived here a long time ago.’A child’s wild imagination?Well, that’s what we thought at the time; but there were other strange things, other strange presences (but not really frightening ones) that happened over the years that made me think otherwise.And so I began to write the kind of stories that, well, are just a little unbelievable.

Book preview

The Bad Samaritan

and The Gospel of The Twelve

Jon Jacks

Other New Adult and Children’s books by Jon Jacks

The Caught – The Rules – Chapter One – The Changes – Sleeping Ugly

The Barking Detective Agency – The Healing – The Lost Fairy Tale

A Horse for a Kingdom – Charity – The Most Beautiful Things (Now includes The Last Train)

The Dream Swallowers – Nyx; Granddaughter of the Night – Jonah and the Alligator

Glastonbury Sirens – Dr Jekyll’s Maid – The 500-Year Circus – The Desire: Class of 666

P – The Endless Game – DoriaN A – Wyrd Girl – The Wicker Slippers – Gorgesque

Heartache High (Vol I) – Heartache High: The Primer (Vol II) – Heartache High: The Wakening (Vol III)

Miss Terry Charm, Merry Kris Mouse & The Silver Egg – The Last Angel – Eve of the Serpent

Seecrets – The Cull – Dragonsapien – The Boy in White Linen – Porcelain Princess – Freaking Freak

Died Blondes – Queen of all the Knowing World – The Truth About Fairies – Lowlife

Elm of False Dreams – God of the 4th Sun – A Guide for Young Wytches – Lady of the Wasteland

The Wendygo House – Americarnie Trash – An Incomparable Pearl – We Three Queens – Cygnet Czarinas

Memesis – April Queen, May Fool – Sick Teen – Thrice Born – Self-Assembled Girl – Love Poison No. 13

Whatever happened to Cinderella’s Slipper? – AmeriChristmas – The Vitch’s Kat in Hollywoodland

Blood of Angels, Wings of Men – Patchwork Quest – The World Turns on A Card – Palace of Lace

The Wailing Ships – The 13th Month – The Silvered Mare

Text copyright© 2018 Jon Jacks

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Chapter 1

‘The Teacher is here, and is calling you; promising a better way of life!’

‘A teacher? How could he be calling me, Mother? And what kind of a better life does he promise?

‘Don’t they all promise a better life, Mother?’ Anatoli, my elder sister, replied with a humorous cynicism approaching my own.

‘He’s calling us all,’ my mother, Susanna, assured us, taking all five of us in with her elated gaze (my brother Joseph being out, my eldest brother Victor away in the army). ‘Not just you girls and me, but anyone wishing to follow him.’

My mother wasn’t the kind to make elaborate jests, yet all four of my sisters raised their eyes in disbelief, as if – like me – they wondered if she could be serious.

‘Mother, you go to the well to fetch some water; and instead you come back with news about a so called teacher we should follow!’

Photes chuckled. Paraskevi and Kyriaki smiled, perhaps wondering if Mother had become a touch dazed on her trip to and back from the well.

‘He spoke of living water,’ Mother gravely retorted. ‘And although he is a Jew, he calls on Samaritans to follow him too!’

*

‘Give me water.’

Mother was shocked by the man’s abrupt request.

‘How