DEAD...at 04:00

By Bob Francis

The father of the central character Tom disappeared in mysterious circumstances. Later, Tom is led into an ever-deepening maze of strange events by his young girlfriend Pat, who turns out to be, if at first unwittingly, part of an ancient order, formed to protect the world against evil doers. She too disappears and Tom has to join the sect in order to assist them in unravelling the mystery. Together they travel to a strange new world and battle against evil, eventually destroying it and releasing Tom's father, Pat and many others from a terrifying fate.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bob Francis
• Release date: Feb 27, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463777268

Bob Francis

Robert (Bob) Francis was born in Eastbourne, England in 1957 and has been (amongst many other things), a butcher, chef, milkman, bus conductor and driver, truck and coach driver, driving instructor, window cleaner, DJ, comedian and presenter, tour guide and licensee. A “jack of all trades, but master of some.”He teaches English and international cookery and is also a professional wine taster.His hobbies are editing the magazine for a British Classic Car club, writing, cooking, building guitars, and restoring old cars.He plays trumpet and trombone, sings (badly) plays the washboard and blues harmonica, speaks fluent Italian and is “quite good” at some other languages, but by his own admission, repeats the same old rubbish in all of them.He has lived with his long-suffering partner Jeanne, at Lake Garda in Northern Italy since April 1991.

Book preview

DEAD… at 04:00

Copyright 2019 Bob Francis

Published by Bob Francis at Smashwords

ISBN: 9780463247044

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to my long-suffering partner Jeanne.

About the author

Robert (Bob) Francis was born in Eastbourne, England, in1957 and has been, amongst many other things, a butcher, chef, milkman, bus conductor and driver, truck and coach driver, driving instructor, window cleaner, DJ, comedian and presenter, semi-professional wrestler, tour guide and licensee. A jack of all trades, but master of some of them.

He teaches English and international cookery and is also a professional wine taster.

His hobbies are editing the magazine for a British Classic car club, writing, cooking and building guitars and wooden clocks.

He plays trumpet and sings (badly) plays the washboard and blues harmonica, speaks fluent Italian and is quite good at some other languages, but by his own admission, repeats the same old rubbish in all of them.

He has lived with his long-suffering partner Jeanne, at Lake Garda in Northern Italy since April 1991. This is his first novel.

Foreword

This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to persons, alive or otherwise, is entirely coincidental although the central character at the beginning somewhat resembles me, the author, in my younger days. During the story there are some ceremonies and rituals which to the uninitiated may seem occult-like, but they are figments of my imagination and have no connections whatsoever to genuine occult practices. It was written over the course of a few evenings at my in-law’s home in Bagsvaerd, a suburb of Copenhagen, Christmas 1992, for something to do and put away and forgotten about in a drawer until recently. It’s just a fantasy and was written for fun, ‘because I could’ I hope you’ll enjoy it.

Chapter list

Inebriation

The shadow on the wall

Sunday Afternoon

Lovers

The Beginning

Paulette

The order of Nardrak

Revelation

Disappearance

Missing

Jim

Changes

New Friends

Discoveries

Preparations

The Chase

Rodney

Reuniting the Spirits

Travels

Dyrona

Doubts

Streenoh

The end of Evil

Rescue and Flight

Goodbye to a Friend

Closure

DEAD… at 04:00

Inebriation

DE:AD, 04:00, DE:AD, 04:00, the clock on the windowsill flashed its message at one second intervals, the way that mains powered digital clocks flash when the power supply has been interrupted, awaiting reset. The alarm bleeped a couple of times too, or did it? Tom sensed something was not right and woke from a fitful sleep. Sitting up, he shook his head and blinked until his eyes began to focus a little in the darkness. Thinking he was seeing things he stumbled out of bed to take a closer, if somewhat fuzzy look at the clock, but when he was able to focus properly, all it said was 04:01.

The room spun around him. He switched the dressing table lamp on and groped his way to the wash basin, which seemed to rush up at him with sudden speed. He caught the edge of it, narrowly missing smashing his teeth, and steadied himself, breathing heavily with the realisation that he wasn’t feeling quite as well as he would have liked. It was no good, he’d have to do it here! If he staggered to the toilet his little sister Sally would hear him puking and tell mum he’d been drinking again.

She was thirteen and had been a nice kid until puberty, then she had turned into a typical early-teenaged sister, growing up in the catty spiteful way that some little sisters often do. Of course, Tom knew he’d been particularly difficult when he was thirteen too so he tried to tolerate her, but every so often she just got on his nerves. No, he couldn’t risk her hearing him. He poured a glass of water, forcing back the nausea for now.

The shock of the cold water on his stomach forced a rebellion, no good, up it came. He hated puking. Why was it (he’d asked himself this so many times and never heeded his own advice) that when he’d been drinking, he always had to pig out and eat a massive portion of something he’d normally only have one of? Two doner kebabs! Extra hot chilli sauce too and that stuff really burns when it comes up.

The plughole blocked, and he tried, in his drunken stupor, to clear it, but with little success. That was ‘it’ for Sunday morning’s lay-in then, as he’d have to get up at eight o’ clock and clear it, clean the sink and open the windows to let the stink out, otherwise when his mother came in at nine with a mug of tea for him, she’d see, or smell it, and throw a fit. She always did if it was obvious that he’d been drinking a lot. He could understand it, as although he looked old enough and could pass for someone in his early twenties, he was still only seventeen. She didn’t mind him having a couple of beers, she’d been no saint when she was younger - as she’d told him - but said;

Try to be responsible and don’t overdo it.

She’d most probably go ballistic at him for getting wrecked again and start shouting at him, reminding him of his responsibilities, his job, his sister (little bitch) and that he was now the man of the house and should know better. Dad would probably have taken him down the pub, got him totally wrecked on all sorts of stuff, on purpose and make him smoke a couple of huge cigars to make him ill for days just to teach him a lesson, that was the kind of sense of humour he’d had, but things had not been the same since he’d disappeared.

No-one knew where he had gone. He’d been at home one night, about eighteen months ago and the next morning he just wasn’t there. He’d gone to bed as usual, the car was there, his shoes, his clothes, wallet, driving licence, his passport even, but he wasn’t. The Police came, after twenty-four hours, as a person only becomes missing after a certain period has elapsed, but they found nothing suspicious, even after several thorough searches for clues, eventually leaving, just as clueless as everyone else. After a while, they suggested, politely, that perhaps he’d become disillusioned, or depressed, and disappeared like so many others, only to turn up in Australia or Canada a few years later under an assumed identity.

As there was really nothing they could do, due to lack of any evidence, they would keep the file open until something turned up. The insurance company couldn’t, or wouldn’t pay anything until another five and a half years had elapsed as he couldn’t be officially declared dead, or permanently missing until seven years had passed: there was no body, so Tom had had to give up his dream of going to technical college to become an engineer and had taken an apprenticeship at a local garage as a car mechanic, to try and help mum pay the mortgage. They were managing it, but it was hard going at times. This room had been his parent’s room before dad had gone, but his mother just couldn’t face sleeping there anymore, she said the room gave her the creeps as it had an odd feel to it, so Tom had moved into it and she had taken his smaller room. Still, he was lucky in one respect, he had a sink!

Hell, that chilli sauce really burns. He mumbled.

Why did I have to drink six pints of that shit lager, good job it was the cooking, and not export.

He knew well enough that bitter would have been better than the lager and wouldn’t have been so gassy. He’d tried it a few times and hadn’t been sick, but what a head in the morning! No, he’d stick to lager and try to keep the amount down. It was only because he was trying to keep up with his mate Jim, who was a few years older than him and had finished his motor mechanic’s apprenticeship at the garage some time ago.

Jim, so it seemed to Tom was an alcoholic, he’d seen him drink ten pints of bitter at a Saturday lunchtime session, another six in the evening, a few more at a night club, plus a couple of Jack ‘n Cokes, and polish off a half bottle of Bacardi, neat, on the way home. That’s what he’d drunk last night, and it hadn’t seemed to affect him much.

The boss would probably realise it one day and sack him, but to give him his due, he didn’t drink more than a couple of halves at lunchtimes if he was working, and never ever drove when he’d had a drink or was still drunk from the night before. The strange thing was that Jim never looked drunk. He was often a bit red faced and glassy eyed and smelled a bit gassy as Tom’s mum put it, even when he was dead sober, so no-one really took all that much notice as it was his normal appearance anyway.

Forcing his floundering mind back to the matter in hand, he gulped down some more water, which came straight up again.

Shit, what a state, he thought, trying to force his reluctant brain cells to calculate the equation. He had read in a magazine article, probably one of Jim’s collection of porno mags, that the major cause of a hangover headache and the nausea, is dehydration. If you drink a lot of water to replace the body fluids lost, since alcohol stimulates the kidneys and makes you pee out more than you have actually drunk, although you still feel rough later on, the headache is not quite so bad.

Every pint of beer you drink, he slurred to himself, you piss a pint and a quarter, so ... six pints means I’ve lost one and a half pints of fluid, so if I drink two, I should be alright.

He filled the glass, which held about a third of a pint, and forcing back the nausea, managed to slowly swallow six glasses of it, stopping a few times to quell the need to vomit again. The water was icy cold and brought him to his senses a bit. It didn’t come from the roof storage tank; it was connected directly to the mains supply. Dad had fixed that up some years ago so that he could fix the garden hose to it and water the garden from a height, via the bedroom windows. In that way, he could water the back garden and wash off the garage roof, and if he put it out of the landing window, or the front bedroom window, he could water the front garden and wash the short driveway off too. His dad was no fool, he just wished he knew where he’d gone.

He sloshed his way back to bed, like a water filled balloon, and reached over for the clock, which he set for eight.

What was that I saw? DE:AD, 04:00? he asked himself. No way, it must have been his mind playing tricks on him, it always did that when he was pissed. The room spun again and he opened his eyes to see the ceiling coming down towards him and then back up again, slowly at first, and then with ever increasing rapidity until he had to sit up and prop himself up with the pillows to stop the room from going around and around.

I’ll not do this again He mumbled, knowing full well that he probably would, and next Saturday more likely, and slowly drifted off to sleep.

The shadow on the wall

The alarm clock beeped and an arm came out to switch it off. It wasn’t his arm, or at least, it didn’t feel like it was his. Things often seem that way when you’re still drunk the next morning after a good binge. Before the repeater alarm had a chance to go off, Tom was up, and had washed the sink out, running the hot tap and mashing the part-digested meal into a paste before forcing it down the plug hole with his fingers.

He couldn’t risk a blockage, and certainly couldn’t throw it in the bin or his mother would see it, nor could he risk throwing it out of the window because it would attract the birds and she’d put two and two together.

He opened the windows to air the room, it wasn’t too cold for a November morning, but there was no breeze, which he would have preferred as it would have cleared the air a little quicker. He turned on the cold tap and relieved himself in the sink using the noise of the flowing water from the tap to cover the noise of him peeing.

That’s the problem with alcohol he mused, it stimulates the kidneys and having to drink all that water to replace what you lose, doesn’t really help much in the morning when you need a piss so badly it hurts. You wake up with a hard on so big you can’t even force a drop out for ages until the swelling starts to go down. Even when it does, you only get a tiny dribble to start with, and then just when you think you’re done, it all comes rushing out as your muscles begin to relax.

When that happens, you hang on like hell to avoid crapping your pants.

Not nice really, peeing in the sink, but better to do it here than risk Sally hearing him peeing for five minutes as she would tell their mother, getting him into a row again, and grinning smugly at her devilment. Bitchy little sisters are alright, but when they tell just for their own gain, and drop you in the crap just for the fun of it, they can be a real pain in the arse.

He was still a bit wobbly and his neck was stiff, but he felt alright and had no real headache, just a bit of nausea, but that would pass soon. Hanging onto the wall to steady himself, he crept along the landing to the bathroom and locked the door.

Hang on in there, not long now, he told himself, fighting with the window catch and easing down his underpants.

Pants down, seat down, sit down... aaaaaaahhh OWWWWW.

The kebabs, the parts of them that had not come up earlier were teaching him a lesson. He sat there in agony, not sure if the burning pain was worse than the smell, wondering why it was that everything that tasted so good must hurt so much when you say goodbye to it at the other end. Curry was the worst in his opinion, and grinned as he remembered his favourite Billy Connolly sketch from the 1977 album Raw Meat for the Balcony, the sketch was called Gandhi’s Revenge;

It hurts TWICE as much on the way out! Said Connolly. It even hurts for a day or two if you’ve vomited half of it up, two bloody kebabs, why on earth did he have to eat two?

Two weeks ago, it had been a take-away pizza, with salami and blue cheese. Worst thing was, his mother had found out what he’d eaten, and packed him Stilton and salami sandwiches in his lunchbox all the following week, to teach him a lesson. The first couple of days he’d swapped with Jim, who would eat a boiled boot with a week-old dead foot in it, if it had been boiled for long enough and was served on a plate, and even then he probably wouldn’t even notice what it was he was eating.

The next two days he secretly swapped them for Jim’s when he wasn’t looking. He hadn’t even noticed, which Tom found a bit strange, seeing as he always made his own sandwiches in the morning before setting off for work.

It proves he must be losing his marbles with the booze, he thought, as he watched Jim wolfing down the hated salami. The final day he’d tipped the contents of the lunchbox into the yard for the birds to fight over and bought some chips.

Very funny mother, he’d thought, but she did have a point and he supposed it was her way of putting across the fact that he could run, but he couldn’t hide forever, but why oh why did she have to be so bloody self-righteous all the time?

He stepped into the shower and turned it to as hot as he could bear. Feeling quite sick again, he turned it to cold and braved it until the feeling passed. Feeling better and a lot steadier, he made it back to his room to dress. A short time later his mother came in with some tea - her Sunday morning treat - and sniffed the air, not too obviously, but not subtly enough for him not to notice.

What time did you get back? she asked, pouring herself a glass of water, and taking the opportunity to inspect the plughole for condemning evidence, her face the very picture of innocence, raising her eyebrows when she found nothing suspicious.

About one-thirty, he lied I went out with Jim but I only had a couple of beers and a kebab.

Oh, okay, she said but be careful, and don’t try to keep up with that lunatic, remember The Plough?

Tom had been drinking regularly at ‘The Plough’ a while back, nearly a year ago now, and had got totally legless three times in one week. She’d grabbed hold of him and dragged him back there, still as drunk as the proverbial skunk, as pissed as a parrot, and had several discourteous exchanges with the barman until the landlord heard the ruckus and appeared to see what the fuss was about. She had stuck Tom’s birth certificate under his nose and