A Gift: A Novel

By P.S. Wall

Character-driven fiction with themes of the supernatural, loss, love, crime, and culture. Main character Derek Jones wakes up on the morning of his twenty-fifth birthday with the gift of premonition and is in for the ride of his life.

Derek lives with his mother, Eileen, in the family home on Burwood Road, Sydney, Australia. Eileen lost her husband, Dereks father, to lung cancer ten years prior. Her younger sister, Robin, cared for Derek at that time. Experiencing a loss of her own in the story (miscarriage), Robin is just an ordinary girl caught up in the extraordinary.

Dereks eventual girlfriend, Selena Jacobs, is the daughter of an eminent surgeon and is a practicing Christian. An unlikely bond is formed with Derek as he has a premonition about her being attackedand she is in the hotel car park. Selena also lost her mother around the same age as he lost his father. Her brother and antagonist, James, thinks his sister is way too good for the likes of Derek.

The attack on Selena introduces criminals Kraut and his girlfriend, Jezza, to the story as these two down-and-outers are at the rear of the hotel car park breaking into cars when rich bitch Selena walks up. Their tale is one of consequences.

The premonition element, along with cultural and class distinction, draws in the main characters as the plotline weaves through a series of actions and events toward a fulfilling climax. Although Dereks story is far from over, the epilogue sets up a continuation with the emergence of his mysterious uncle Doug.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Oct 8, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499023619

P.S. Wall

Pete Wall is a semiretired author and web editor and lives with his dog, Trisha, on his property in Northern New South Wales. He began writing earnestly in the nineties, and the short story In Dreams won a highly commended award and was published in Short Stories ’94. In the year 2004, a journalism diploma was completed, and then nonfiction works were published in local papers and blog sites, and articles were published in the sociopolitical journal Australian Quarterly (AQ). The idea for his first novel came from a dream. Pete also holds a degree in literature and comprehension from Griffith University, Queensland. His passions in life are his children, writing, and preserving the environment for future generations.

Book preview

1

S prawled on his bed after a rather sedate twenty-fifth birthday celebration, Derek Jones had this overwhelming feeling come over him that his neighbour, Merle Keating, a decent old bloke who’d lived next door for thirty odd years, is having some kind of a problem. No specifics, just this sudden feeling of concern for Merle’s well-b eing.

Tired and inebriated, he sat upright and scratched his head, then promptly dropped back onto the pillow and fell asleep.

The next morning through the haze of a mild hang-over, Derek was willing to put the incident down to bourbon consumption. That is until he noticed the ambulance parked next door, and finds out later from Merle’s sister that the old guy passed away from heart failure. That was some problem. Could he have helped Merle? A question Derek’s conscience would wrestle with for some time.

The following week, he sat at the dinner-table with his mother and her new boyfriend. Frank was spruiking about his many hot investments, when it came to Derek plain-as-day that the old tosser wasn’t telling the truth.

He didn’t say anything at the time; not that he had to. Storming into the kitchen the following day his mother cursed lover boy for all her worth, as she had bumped into Frank’s ex down-town, who told her there were no hot investments only unpaid child support and failed businesses.

Rounding out a trifecta of weird events, one morning while patting Rusty, his seven-year old Blue Heeler, a nagging feeling came over him that there was something wrong with his dog.

He ran his hand through Rusty’s fur looking for ticks, and was alarmed by the discovery of a lump the size of a large marble at the base of his dog’s skull.

An x-ray that same day showed cancer, which sadly had spread to Rusty’s brain. A week later seizures started, and facing more of the same not to mention the pain his old mate was in, Rusty was put-down.

Three spot-on premonitions only Derek flatly refused to entertain the idea of his somehow, suddenly possessing psychic abilities.

He couldn’t deny the accuracy of this strange foresight, or gut feeling, or whatever the hell it is, he just didn’t believe in all that spiritual mumbo jumbo.

He reasoned that it was just his mind piecing two-and two together. Like the fact old Merle had been looking rather ill of late; he already thought Frank was a windbag, and he probably felt the lump in Rusty’s neck prior just didn’t register what it was.

Eleven days had now been added to his twenty- five years, and the eternal sceptic inside Derek’s head is about to be sorely tested.

2

H e woke this particular morning to a beeping alarm at 6. 30am.

It is Friday. And Wednesday to Friday he drove his mother to work at Ace Laundromat in Fairfield.

Eileen Jones stopped driving cars when she was diagnosed with glaucoma six months ago. Her son took over driving duties from that point on, seeing the duty as part-payment for room and board that she refused to accept while he is out of work.

An arrangement that looked set to continue for some time, as Derek is having trouble finding other work—not that he is looking that hard.

A baker by trade, Jonesy hasn’t touched dough since leaving Bronstein’s Bakery four months ago. He quit when the franchise was sold to an Asian concern, the same week he was told there’d be no more overtime. The wage-issue a catalyst however; the manifestation of a career-crisis, for Jonesy was tired of being a slave to a hot oven.

As his mother’s call of, ‘Bathroom’s free’ echoed down the hallway, to ensure her son is awake and moving.

Derek threw off his faded patchwork doona, rolled out of bed and headed for the toilet.

The Jones’ family home was built by Derek’s father in 1959, and is typical of the era’s inner-city square, reddish-brick style.

The faded white-tile bathroom with its antiquated plumbing fixtures and peeling yellow paint is located at the rear right-corner of the house, down the hall from Derek’s bedroom. And that’s where he headed each morning to relieve himself and stand before the bathroom mirror inspecting his not-overly-handsome; though-not-ugly dial.

Then the ritual would begin: a splash of water, a drying-off, and then a brush of his shoulder length brown locks.

This morning is no different, except he did survey his face with the anxious fervour of a young male that hadn’t had a girlfriend for some time.

But it is Friday, and tonight Jonesy hoped his luck would change as Mother is going to visit Aunt Robin, where the ladies would indulge in a few wines over a game of Canasta and mum would hopefully stay the night.

The card nights were infrequent, so weird shit going down or not, Derek planned to make good use of this opportunity. Well, at least try to. He knew the chances of chatting-up a babe and bringing her home were pretty slim. But one had to try of course.

Suddenly his mother’s stocky bulk filled the bathroom door; she was ready to go and dressed in Ace’s drab uniform of blue-blouse and black shoes. Her short auburn hair tied back in a bun, framing an attractive face that belied her sixty-two years.

‘Can we leave a bit early?’ she asked. ‘I need to get some Iced Vovo’s for morning tea.’

‘Okay, I’ll have breaky when I get back,’ Derek said, nodding and smiling at his mother’s reflection. ‘Are you still going to Aunt Robin’s?’ He then asked.

‘Yes. Why?’ She said, immediately suspicious, a bi-product of her son’s wilder days, ‘Derek, what have you got planned? No parties I hope?’

‘Yeah,’ said Derek, with animated flourish, ‘And I’ve invited the local bikie gang.’ He turned and gave his mother a kiss on the cheek. ‘Don’t worry mum; I’m only going to the pub for a few beers.’

Naturally what mother didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.

Outside and multicultural Burwood was rousing itself to the sun’s rays breaking through a cluster of high-rise buildings to the east. It is early September and the weather is temperate, under a clear blue sky and a haze of brackish smog.

Derek sat in the driver’s seat of his ’99 metallic-green Commodore sedan, warming the motor and thinking of the day ahead. And that’s when the fourth premonition hit him: an overwhelming feeling they were going to have a car accident. ‘What the hell!’ he proclaimed aloud.

Then the passenger-door opened, and his mother slid in beside him. She gave her son a perplexed look. ‘Were you just talking to someone?’ She asked, looking for a mobile phone.

‘Nah,’ said Derek, ‘just yawning.’ He lied.

‘Yawning in the morning?’ Eileen closed the car door. ‘Keep that up and I’ll begin to think there is something wrong with you.’

Derek pulled out of the driveway and turned left into Burwood Road. ‘Damn straight,’ he thought, ‘there’s something wrong with me alright.’

About a kilometre further along, he stopped the car out front of the Seven Eleven store, while his mother went in to get the packet of biscuits. Another 500 metres further on, sat the intersection of Burwood and Wentworth roads.

As Derek watched the lights changing, another premonition came to him: that’s where the accident will happen!

Then his mother got back into the car clutching a packet of Monte Carlo’s and shaking her head. ‘Jillian won’t be happy,’ she said.

Derek shrugged a ‘too bad’ gesture; he had more important things going down than her work friend’s damn Ice Vovo’s.

He glanced over his shoulder, and pulled out from the curb.

A minute or so later, the Commodore approached the intersection and as if on cue, the lights turned amber, and then red.

Derek braked to a stop, as a stream of cars poured across the road in front. As he waited, looking around anxiously, a simple plan came to him: he would wait for a few seconds just to see if anything happens. There’s is only car on this side of the intersection, so it wouldn’t cause any problems.

Then the lights turned green.

He didn’t have to wait long—about three-seconds—when the unmistakable growl of a truck exhaust was heard.

Suddenly, from the right, a white semi-trailer roared into his field of vision, to hurtle past only metres in front of the car. The Commodore shook from the force of the deadly missile.

‘My god,’ his mother breathed, ‘what an idiot!

She looked at her son in a mixture of shock and relief. ‘Just as well you didn’t speed off like you usually do,’ she breathed, ‘he would have hit us for sure.’

Derek could only nod in solemn agreement. He gathered himself and inhaled a deep breath, then drove on. The undeniable thought plaguing his mind: ‘We would have been mincemeat; hammered to scrap metal.’

Driving on, the truck incident had shaken Derek more than he’d like to admit. He dropped his mother off at work and had to sit in the car for a few minutes processing what had just transpired, not to mention the other three premonition things, for want of a better word.

He couldn’t deny this last warning pointed to some kind of psychic ability. Sure he’d heard of people who against all reason and the efforts of sceptics to discredit them seemed to have the ability to contact the dead. Others supposedly had premonitions of future events and controlled objects with their mind—but not him, not plain old Derek Jones.

Bloody hell eleven short days ago, he honestly thought it was all a load of crap.

3

A rriving home, Derek skipped breakfast and ploughed into his weekly chores of vacuuming, cleaning the kitchen and bathroom and putting on the washing—nothing like a bit of elbow grease to settle the mind.

Only it didn’t work; so after stuffing the last of his mother’s uniforms into the washer and turning it on, he made his way to his bedroom and fired up the computer. Maybe the Internet could tell him something about these weird goings-on.

It took a few minutes before the old HP desktop had Google’s home-page adorning the flat-panel screen. Derek typed premonitions into the search-engine and hit ‘Enter’. And after a few seconds, up came a plethora of related websites.

He quickly scanned the pre-page blurbs about premonitions at Wikipedia.com, themystica.com and psychic-experiences.com, settling on the Australian website: spiritual.com.au.

He clicked on the link ‘Precognitive dreams and premonitions’.

The webpage opened and he was presented with anecdotal evidence of premonitions people had that have supposedly come true. Aside from Pharaoh out of the Old Testament who dreamed about seven fat and thin cattle that was interpreted by Joseph as future years of abundance and famine, a person’s dead mother came to them in a dream and told them they would not see their brother and his wife again, and two days later learned both brother and wife had been killed in a plane accident. Another had a dream of a boy drowning and the following day, the boy actually did drown. Another dreamed of meeting a certain Dutchman in a library and the next day it came to pass...

It’s at that point Derek lost interest. His premonitions—to settle on a name—are feelings, no dreams, as yet. Not only that the page’s author states that in the main, precognition foretold of unpleasant events, and very few had happy outcomes.

‘Of course,’ Derek thought sardonically, ‘premonitions about good things would be too bloody easy.’

He then checked his emails and found the usual pile of advertising from sites he’d subscribed to, which he promptly deleted, then exited Internet Explorer and switched off the computer.

Staring at the blank screen for a moment, Derek decided he is an idiot: all this is a mixture of intuition and coincidence. Even the near-accident event was a case of if he didn’t get some work done on the Commodore shortly; he would have a bloody accident. ‘Let’s face it,’ he further reasoned, ‘trucks run red lights all the time.’

He hung out the washing, and then made himself a brunch of cereal and toast. After which, he filled in the rest of the day by giving the Commodore a much needed detail, and then watching league replays and a movie on TV.

Around 6.30pm, he hooked into some leftover Lasagne, then dressed in his blue Levi jeans, cream corduroy shirt, Nike runners, and set-off for the pub.

The Royal Sheaf Tavern is only a short walk down the road, a recently renovated old dame that is a favourite haunt for the local crowd.

It was just after seven by the time Derek ambled into the public bar and ordered a schooner of New from a vivacious-looking barmaid with short red hair. He parked his behind on a stool and gave the girl a good once-over, while she attended to his order. And that’s when he received a stinging slap on the back.

‘Hey mate, fancy meeting you here!’

Derek recognised the voice and turned to face his friend. ‘Jacko,’ he said. ‘How’s it going?’

‘Yeah, good mate.’ Jacko’s spritely demeanour signalling he’d been at the pub for some time.

Derek’s long-time mate from high school, Jack Hughes had a freckled face that peered out from behind a shock of shoulder-length blond hair. He wore blue denim jeans like his friend and a black surf shirt over his gangly torso.

The barmaid arrived with the order, and Jacko’s hand dove into his jeans pocket and removed a pile of change he slapped on the bar. ‘Take it out of this,’ he said with intent.

‘Thanks mate,’ Derek exclaimed, with genuine surprise.

As the barmaid scooped up the cost of the beer, and turned to make her way back to the cash register...

‘Listen, speaking of nice arse,’ said Jacko with a conspiratorial grin. ‘Sis and a couple of her friends are coming up for a few drinks and a feed. The two girls are hotties mate, so why don’t you join me in puttin’ some work in. Ya never know ya luck.’

‘Yeah, why not,’ Derek agreed without hesitation. It saved him having to scope out his own prospects.

Sis is Jacko’s sister Joanne, and the two other girls Derek didn’t know. He’d known Joanne for as long as he’d known Jacko, and although they’d played doctors and nurses as kids that’s as far as it went. She wasn’t his type; thin like her brother, with a feisty temperament and mouth to match.

‘Great,’ said Jacko, visibly pleased with the arrangement. He knew his chances of scoring with Hayley, the more easy going of his sister’s two friends, are somewhat improved with the addition of Derek to keep the other girl, Selena Jacobs, occupied. Selena may be a raven-haired spunk, but also a red-hot Christian and nothing short of marriage would get that little lady in the sack.

‘Alright then,’ Jacko rubbed his hands together. ‘I’m going to have a lash at the greyhounds. I’ll come and get ya when the girls arrive.’

4

A s Jacko departed for the TAB to bet on the greyhounds, Derek resumed his appraisal of the barmaid, chatting and flirting with her to fill in the time.

He was onto his second schooner by the time Jacko poked his blond head through the Lounge access-door, and signalled with a wave that the girls had arrived.

Derek grabbed his beer and followed after his friend, excited and nervous at the same time.

The Lounge Area had recently been painted in two tone beige, and tastefully furnished with a series of comfortable brown circular settees and tables placed at intervals around the wall. The bistro counter occupied the centre of the southern wall and to its left was access through to the Poker Machine Room.

The girls had chosen a table to the right of the Bistro counter, and by the time Derek walked up, Jacko was in the process of taking their drinks order.

Derek nodded a smile at Joanne, who returned a friendly wave. And while waiting for his friend to finish talking, he gave the other two girls the once-over.

Seated next to Joanne, Hayley Brookes is similar in looks to her feisty friend: thin body, shoulder-length blond hair platted at the front and a reasonably attractive face. She wore black jeans, a white frilled-blouse, and black mid-length leather boots.

However it is the other girl that had immediately captivated Derek. ‘Bloody hell,’ he thought, ‘she’s hot!’ As that pleasant feeling associated with lust suffused the nether regions of his body. He loved her bobbed, jet-black hair, and that face, goddess-like...

Feeling his attention, Selena glanced at Derek.

And caught staring, he quickly looked away —but not before noticing a pair of striking green eyes and slender figure tightly wrapped in a knee-length black dress.

‘Okay,’ said Jacko finalising the order, ‘bourbon and coke for Sis, vodka and orange for Hayley, and just an orange for Selena.’ He turned and nearly bumped into Derek. ‘Ah, here he is!’ Jacko faced the trio of women again to introduce his friend.

‘The lovely creature sitting next to my sister is Hayley,’ Jacko said.

Derek said ‘Hi.’

Hayley nodded a smile.

‘And the vision of beauty next to her is Selena...’

Their eyes met again, only this time, Derek wanted to make a good impression. He mustered his most articulate voice, and said, ‘Nice to meet you.’

‘Ladies,’ Jacko finished with a flourish, ‘this is Derek. He used to make the best pies in Burwood.’

‘Emphasis on the used to,’ Derek qualified with a rueful grin.

‘Okay,’ said Jacko, slapping his friend’s shoulder, ‘we’ll go and get these drinks then.’

Back at the bar, and Jacko placed the girls order, stating that he would get the spirits and Derek could get their beers.

Thoughts focused on the lovely Selena, Derek nodded absentmindedly. ‘Mate, that black-haired chic is bloody gorgeous,’ he said.

‘I’m glad ya think so,’ said Jacko, ‘’cause I’m makin’ moves on the other babe.’

‘Good luck. Listen, do you know much about Serena?’

‘Selena,’ Jacko corrected. ‘Nah,’ he fibbed. ‘Only that she looks like she just stepped off a bloody catwalk.’

‘Damn straight.’

Back at the table, after a drink and some idle chatter—mainly between the girls— meals were ordered.

Derek settled on a bowl of calamari—he wasn’t that hungry after devouring the left-over lasagne before leaving home, and the girls ordered three bowls of nachos, with Jacko settling on a steak sandwich.

The meal order took around fifteen minutes. And when their number was called, the two men rose and went to collect the meals.

During the course of dinner, the Lounge began to steadily fill, and a two-piece band of drummer and guitarist began to set-up on a small