Highwayman: The Land Between Midnight Trilogy, #2

By Craig Saunders

Legends never die.

There's a highwayman who still roams ancient, lost forests. He's a murderer, a dead man who forgot to die. Once, he killed a girl called Madeline Rose Goodman. Now her father is the only one who can stop her killer. He might have to die to do it, lose all that he has left, but he won't face the highwayman alone.

In a world where the old things still hold sway, good men will never have to fight alone.

This is book two of The Land Between Midnight Trilogy. Book One: Hangman. Book Two: Highwayman. Book Three: Coachman (coming soon).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dark Fable Books
• Release date: Feb 26, 2019
• ISBN: 9781549764189

Craig Saunders

Craig Saunders is the author of forty (or so) novels and novellas, including 'ALT-Reich', 'Vigil' and 'Hangman', and has written over a hundred short stories, available in anthologies and magazines, 'best of' collections and audio formats. He tends to write science fiction as Craig Robert Saunders, fantasy as Craig R. Saunders, and most fiction as Craig Saunders...although sometimes the lines are blurred. Imprints: Dark Fable Books/Fable Books.  Likes: Nice people, games, books, and doggos. Dislikes: Weird smells, surprises, and gang fights in Chinatown alleyways.  He's happy to talk mostly anything over at: www.craigrsaunders.blogspot.com  @Grumblesprout Praise for Craig Saunders: [Masters of Blood and Bone] '...combines the quirkiness of Dean Koontz's Odd Thomas series with the hardcore mythology of Clive Barker to create an adventure that is both entertaining and terrifying.' - examiner.com [Vigil] 'A gripping accomplishment.' - Murder, Mayhem and More. 'Saunders is fast becoming a must read author...' - Scream. [Bloodeye] '...razor-sharp prose.' Wayne Simmons, author of Flu and Plastic Jesus. 'Plain and simple, this guy can write.' - Edward Lorn, author of Bay's End.  [Deadlift] 'Noir-like, graphic novel-like horror/thriller/awesomeness.' - David Bernstein, author of Relic of Death and Witch Island. 'A master of the genre.' Iain Rob Wright. [Spiggot] 'Incredibly tasteless, shamelessly lowbrow, and very, very funny.' - Jeff Strand.  [A Home by the Sea] 'Brutal and poetic...' - Bill Hussey, author of Through a Glass, Darkly. [Rain] '...the best book I've read in a year.' - The Horror Zine. [Cold Fire] '...full of emotion and heart.' - Ginger Nuts of Horror.

Book preview

Acknowledgements

This is for you; whoever might read this story. Writing can be a lonely journey and there are always highwaymen out there on the dark old roads of England. It’s nice to have some company for the ride.

Thank you.

Craig

The Shed

2015

I was a highwayman. Along the coach roads I did ride

With sword and pistol by my side

Many a young maid lost her baubles to my trade

Many a soldier shed his lifeblood on my blade

The bastards hung me in the spring of twenty-five

But I am still alive.

—Jimmy Webb/Highwayman

BOOK ONE:

WHEN RAIN FALLS IN THE FOREST

I.

THE OLD MAN AND WOMAN

1

1993

Cambridge, England

Coming up on midnight. In ’93, England, before twenty-four-hour licensing for pubs and bars, there were plenty of people making their way across the city. The pubs kicked out some time past eleven in the evening. Clubs, anytime between two and four in the morning.

On the main drag through and into Cambridge, maybe two hundred people were there to see Damien Peterson walk out in front of the taxi a minute before midnight true. Damien was a second-year student at one of the universities in Cambridge. He was bright, kept fit between hockey and sex with whoever would have him. Well-fed, toned, around five feet and eleven inches in height.

The taxi that hit him was a Mercedes. It was big, clunky, silver. It carried two co-workers. The driver was sober, Damien wasn’t. There was nothing the driver could do to avoid the man in the road. Nothing Damien could do to get out of the way, and the Mercedes was a damn sight heavier than any student that ever lived.

It wasn’t an even match.

The Mercedes wasn’t going fast, because it was in the city and a university city, at that. At midnight on a Friday there were always plenty of drunk kids around, whether they walked or rode on bikes. It was a hazard city taxi drivers knew well enough, but knowledge of the possibility doesn’t necessarily negate those possibilities. The heavy, slow car hit Damien, bumper to the part of the shin that sits just below the kneecap. It happened to catch both legs, because Damien, in his surprise, managed to turn to face the car. Side on, he might have stood a chance. Twenty-three miles an hour and both legs bent the wrong way. His arms hit the hood, leaving a fair dent, a second later, his face, knocking out a tooth without ever marking any other part of his face. The taxi, at this point, was braking. There was nothing wrong with the brakes on the car, but no car can stop dead from 20 or 30 miles an hour.

By the time it stopped, twenty more yards down the road, Damien’s head had hit both the road and the underside of the big car. Thump on the hood, then thump on the road (duller) and a sound somewhere between the two on the way back up.

Two hundred or so people didn’t all see the accident, but they were aware. A couple of screamers, the screech of the tires on the road. Plenty turned to look. A few people stood under a restaurant’s canopy and saw, pretty much, the whole thing. No one moved. Even the taxi driver sat for a few seconds, not hurt, but stunned. He already knew he’d killed the boy, whether at fault or not. Killed him, without a doubt, rather than stunned or broken.

This refrain would stay with him for the rest of his life.

Killed him.

But he didn’t die, not entirely—not instantly, anyway. A fiber, a frayed filament, still tethered his soul to his wrecked body.

On the south side of the street an elderly gentleman and his elderly wife held hands. An oddity in the drunken cities that belonged to younger people after ten in the evening. People saw the elderly man, his wife still by his side, move to the dying boy. The man took a few seconds getting down, like older people do. Sore back, knees, hips—a body that doesn’t work like a twenty-year-old hockey player’s used to.

The back of the boy’s head was split. His eyes rolled and there was a shard of tooth left at the front.

The old man put his mouth over Damien’s. People watching saw him try to give the kiss of life to the student. Pumped up and down on the laboring chest, mouth-to-mouth again, pump. The old man’s hands were covered with liver spots. His nails were yellow, but people didn’t see that in the orange light of a city night.

His wife stood beside him, her hand at her throat. A well-turned-out couple, people would say. He wore a three-piece suit, she, a dress under a coat. A heavy coat, because it was cold. A dark, woven material, with a broach on her lapel. Her hair was curled.

His, bald, perhaps, under a smart hat.

The old man closed the boy’s eyelids with his old, stained fingers. He stood, then shook his head to his wife, peered into the taxi, shook his head again.

He looks so sad, thought a young woman watching from beneath the canopy, smoking cigarette forgotten between her fingers. She felt bad for not being the one there first. But there’s always someone there first. No sense in interfering.

The old man and his wife stepped back to the pavement. No one moved to talk to them. It wasn’t that they didn’t care. They cared. But there was something about the couple, some kind of connection between the two that couldn’t be touched. Like a younger couple, kissing on the street. People look away, smile. Let them touch, hold each other, they might think. Like people know it doesn’t last forever.

At that thought, the woman with the forgotten cigarette moved toward the dead student in the road. The taxi driver stepped from his taxi. He spoke into his radio, which was on a long, curled wire attached to a box set in his dashboard.

No one looked at the elderly, dapper couple after that first instant and it wouldn’t have mattered if they had. Already ignored and largely forgotten, the man opened his mouth, and showed his wife the bright light that nestled there. The man closed his lips so he would not drop the soul he held inside. They smiled at each other. Not, perhaps, happy smiles, or sad smiles. Just old lovers sharing something only they would ever understand. A moment people would never see, either—a moment later they stepped backward into the land between midnight and were gone.

*

2

The two co-workers in the taxi were Karl Goodman and Bethany Moon. Karl and Bethany worked in a branch of an overseas bank in the center of Cambridge. Karl was married to a beautiful woman named Silvia, and had been for four years. His anniversary would be in three weeks, when he’d buy Silvia a diamond pendant. He’d feel guilty all day, because he thought about Bethany Moon while dining with his wife that evening.

Later in the year, Karl and Bethany would sleep together for the first time, and early in ’94, Karl would divorce Silvia. In ’97 Bethany Moon became Bethany Goodman, and in ’99 Madeline Rose Goodman came into the world.

Worth it, thought Karl, holding his daughter for the first time beside his wife’s hospital bed. Worth the long road.

He thought back to the night he’d decided he needed Bethany, and not Silvia. Thought of the night they’d been in a taxi that had hit the poor boy.

Funny how things turn out, he told his daughter, quietly, while Bethany slept a sleep well-earned.

His daughter’s eyes were squeezed shut. She, too, had earned a rest. Fed, content and quiet, even only a couple of hours old, she was a cool baby. She’d be a cool kid. A good kid. And he loved her right there, without reservation.

Karl Goodman kissed his daughter on her tiny forehead, a little above and between her eyes.

Worth it, he said.

Madeline Rose was fourteen years old when she died as he struggled across a river to her.

The river pulled him away, and he fought harder. Looking up, calling out, he saw them. An old couple, stepping down the steep earth to Madeline’s side. The woman gave his daughter the kiss of life while her husband held her arm so she wouldn’t slip, but it was too late for Madeline.

When Karl finally pulled himself from the water, the old woman and her husband were gone.

He held his daughter there while the clutching mud of the riverbank tugged at them, trying to pull them down. He dragged her from the mud to the grass above and laid her down.

We’re wet and cold. I’ll warm up. She won’t.

He remembered thinking that.

On that day on the muddied bank of a river where his daughter Madeline Rose breathed her last breath, Karl Goodman remembered, too, a dapper elderly gentleman and his wife, and how that old man had shaken his head as he stood back from a dead student there in the road. He remembered, after all those years, how the old man had seemed to shake his head not at the taxi driver, but at Karl himself.

*

3

2014

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Karl Goodman stood at a window on the nineteenth floor of Minara IMC. Deutsche Bank employees behind him, a great big drop to the ground in front. The glass was thick.

He looked up from the ground at the sky. Blue, a couple of clouds. Monotonous. Dull.

Shit, he whispered. No one heard him. Few people listen to the men and women who stand on the precipice. It’s not that the wind steals their words. It’s because they stand out too proud against the horizon. It hurts to look at them, to hear them, to see them so bleak against the sun.

Karl wanted to jump.

Bethany, he thought. Bethany’d break.

It wasn’t that he didn’t care. He loved Bethany with everything that he had left. But even so, he didn’t think it’d be enough.

If she was here? Would I smile, try to make a joke, keep it light? Would I bawl like a child, snot on my thousand-pound suit?

The view wasn’t that great. A city, from above.

He’d seen it before.

I like trees. I like the sea. I like walking in the country, where there is air that changes.

Bethany, at home. Him, halfway across the world. His daughter a year in the grave. Him, thinking about tunneling down into the selfsame dirt and see if he couldn’t find her. Curl up next to her. It’d be cool.

So hot in Malaysia. Boring hot.

Everything’s boring, Karl, he thought.

You’re suicidal.

It’s not that bad.

Some small voice inside him told him it was, but he’d turned away from the bright window by then, and begun walking through the office.

Mr. Goodman... said a young woman. Once, he’d have stopped just for the sight of her. She was talking, but he kept walking. He smiled, but he didn’t feel it. Smile, maybe she’d leave him alone.

She followed, a few steps, but something she’d registered in his smile stopped her. Her step faltered, his grew stronger.

He couldn’t wait for the elevator. He stepped into the stairwell and for a moment, he could breathe easier. Even though it was nineteen floors down, he took the stairs. As he got more winded, it seemed his breath felt lighter.

*

4

What am I doing?

Karl wondered, even as he saw his credit card in hand already.

Am I running? Quitting my job? Planning on jumping from a plane if I can?

Maybe all of those options sounded good.

He wasn’t sure what he was going to do until the bright young face looked at him from behind the counter. He didn’t ask if the girl spoke English. Airports, pretty much anywhere in the world, someone does.

Morning, he said. I need the earliest available flight to the UK.

She smiled and tapped at the keyboard on her desk.

She must stand there all day, or until her shift ends. Her feet must hurt. That’s the kind of job people move on from, a stopgap. Old women in the job would have big, fat, flat feet.

Even his thoughts felt inane to him. Dull.

Everything isn’t fucking awesome, he thought, remembering the movie on the flight over. Everything is boring. So fucking boring I want to kill myself just to do something interesting.

Two changes, leaving today. Singapore and Amsterdam.

She told him the price, he said okay. She gave him the flight numbers, talked him through it. He didn’t really listen, but it was on the tickets. Flight numbers, times...it really wasn’t that hard.

The girl, Malaysian, smiled at him and thanked him and wished him a good journey. He saw Madeline’s face over hers, one eye full of blood and a stupid look on her face, one of a girl dying, frightened, in pain.

Not dying, Karl. She was dead.

She is dead.

He nearly puked, but he knew his daughter’s face wasn’t really there, laid over the Malaysian girl’s face. She seemed concerned, when her face came back. Karl figured he looked crazy, maybe. A man shouldn’t look mad when getting on a plane.

Thank you, he said.

First rule of flying, post 9-11...don’t look suspicious. Blend in. Even if you’ve nothing to hide, just blend in. Don’t cause a scene.

First rule of planning to kill yourself, too, maybe.

*

5

All told, on the KLM flight there should have been around seventeen hours’ worth of time for Karl to stew things over. His mind was a great big copper pot. Suicide there, in the pot. His dead daughter the flame beneath. That fucker was bubbling away, Kuala Lumpur to Singapore, and later while he dozed and stared and drank whiskey from Singapore to Amsterdam, he had time to stir it round.

The captain’s voice made him jump a little, causing the woman in the aisle seat beside him to smile.

Ladies and gentlemen, there’s a moderate snow-fall over Amsterdam, cloud and coming in at 8:27 a.m. Schiphol has a couple of centimeters of snow. We are, however, making good time, and the snowfall is minor. We estimate arrival in thirteen minutes. Thank you for flying KLM. Please don’t forget your coat.

Out in the east, he’d all but forgotten what season it was. The thought of snow jarred him awake, and then a sense of anticipation as he realized he was just a short hop, now, away from home.

Maybe Bethany could fix him. Maybe he could fix her.

Could they, between them, pull through this? His daughter wasn’t even a year dead, and he’d run, run away like a coward, afraid to fight for his marriage and both their sanity. He could have said no to Kuala Lumpur. People expected him to say no. Bethany didn’t. She hadn’t said anything.

The seat belt sign came on, but Karl had put his on when the captain told them thirteen minutes. He’d flown before. He felt the plane shift as it began to bank, to slow.

You don’t like this part? said the woman beside him. Dutch, to his ears. She spoke in careful but confident English.

I don’t really like any of it, he said, but he didn’t want to freak her out. Truth was, the part in the middle of a flight didn’t worry him. It was the takeoff and landing that got to him. That sense of hollowness inside.

It’ll be fine, she said.

I wish it would. I really do, he thought.

He returned her smile, but he wondered. Would a man who wanted to die be frightened of crashing in a plane?

He guessed he would. Of course he would. He was a coward, wasn’t he?

He thought about that as the plane hit the tarmac. He saw the snow through the window to his right, and then the plane was sliding and skidding sidelong across the runway. People screamed, somewhere behind. Probably just as scared as him.

Snow, bad landing, that’s all.

But coward or not, he was realistic.

Sliding sideways, a plane traveling somewhere in excess of one hundred miles an hour, probably, as it hit the runway.

Realist, and coward, he felt his trousers dampen.

The Dutch woman beside him was pale.

Realist, he understood already how fast things turn bad, so

Reviews for Highwayman

[agrimscythe · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

It's a bit hard for me to really talk about how I felt while reading Highwayman by Craig Saunders. To some extent, I feel that I may not know as much about old lore and mythology as I thought I did - and that's definitely a possibility. The concept behind the book is intriguing, but there are many elements of Saunders story that failed to satisfy me.

In the wake of a plane crash, Karl Goodman finds himself in-between life and death - a sort of limbo that I felt was reminiscent of an episode of Supernatural where Castiel and Dean are fighting vampires in purgatory. I say this largely because of the whole Fog-World/forest atmosphere. In this surreal world, a murderer from centuries past is able to cross the lines between the worlds of the living and dead to continue visiting his reign of horror upon unsuspecting individuals. Guided by the Deans, who appear to be a set of reapers, for lack of a better term (or maybe ferrymen), and a young, comatose girl named Imke, Karl finds himself seeking out this murderous highwayman so that he can exact revenge for his daughter's death.

While I have a strong love for the supernatural and paranormal, I couldn't help but find myself confused more often than not by several aspects of the story. I am, admittedly, ignorant of the White Hart and the Green Man, but I like to think I'm a bit more versed in the many varieties of spooks. In fact, Saunders portrayal of a barrow-wight did not stray unreasonably far from its native draugr. What does baffle me though is how Saunders introduces these supernatural elements into his book. When I received Highwayman, I was expecting something dark and macabre that dealt with... well, with highwaymen. The main villain of the tale is precisely that, but the book itself is largely a ghost story. That isn't necessarily a problem, but it simply did not sit very well with me.

To further complicate the telling of the story, there are far too many differing points of view - five or six, total. (I can't remember if there was a part told from Mr. Dean's perspective.) This makes it hard to keep track of the passage of time, and whether or not that is intentional, I found it bothersome. For instance, at one point Bethany, Karl's wife, does something. Then, for several chapters, the story does not return to her. In fact, the disparity between returning to her point of view was so great that I actually thought that Saunders had forgotten about her.

One of the other issues that bothered me was the circumstances of Karl and Bethany's daughter's death. At first it is explained as a drowning, but then later we learn it was not. Apparently her murder was so horrid that Karl conveniently blocked the tragedy from his mind with a far more "rational" explanation, and to me this felt more like slapping a bandaid on a forgotten plot element than something that was done naturally.

At no point during my reading of this book did I feel any sort of emotion or attachment to any of the characters, and I found that to be extremely disappointing. The cast of Highwayman are not, in any way, extraordinary (well, not depth wise), and that made it harder for me to get into the book.

Overall, I didn't care much for Highwayman; however I will not let that discourage me from reading more of Saunders' work in the future. As part of the DarkFuse Reader's Group, I received an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I would like to thank DarkFuse, Craig Saunders, and NetGalley for this opportunity.