Night Navigation

By Paula Harmon

Hide but don't seek.

By rivers and in houses and hotels, among ancient hills, in a lighthouse and down a backstreet, are people with secrets. 

Some want to change the future and others to change the past. One person just wants to go home and another just wants to sleep.  

Secrets and lies.

For some, their secret could mean the end of everything. 

Who will get what they want? And if they do, will they end up with more than they bargained for?

Ten ghost short stories for dark evenings.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paula Harmon
• Release date: Sep 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201489700

Book preview

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 Paula Harmon. (‘Taking Shelter’ and ‘Goth Girl’ are also in ‘Kindling’; ‘A Night At The Crown’, ‘Night-Stalker’ and ‘Night Navigation’ are also in ‘Weird and Peculiar Tales’).

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, event and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Bookcover Artist: Paula Harmon using an image Photo 210695352 / Ghost © Raggedstonedesign | Dreamstime.com, Canva and Photoshop Elements

This book is written in British English.

Sheltering or hiding?

Rivers, houses, hotels, ancient hills, a lighthouse, a backstreet.

One person tries to change the future and another tries to change the past.

One person just wants to go home and another just wants to sleep

Secrets and lies.

For some, their secret could mean the end of everything.

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to Sim and hoping next time we visit The Crown, no one follows us home.

WEATHER WATCHING

It was Thompson’s watch; the dead hours.

When Sykes came into the room and started to take his boots off, Thompson rose and dressed. Harris was softly snoring, oblivious to the others. They had been working together so long that no-one disturbed anyone else, not even grunting a greeting in the night. They just got up when it was their time to get up and went to bed when it was their time to go to bed like mechanical figures in an intricate clock, working round each other in the narrow space and never bumping into each other.

Below the sleeping quarters was the kitchen. Once a day they would all meet up and eat together, so used to not speaking that they barely conversed about anything except the lighthouse and the weather. Sometimes they simply sat, shovelling food in; each man in his own private silent world. They worked four hour shifts to run the lighthouse. They read the weather. They checked the seascape. They spoke when they had to. They ate and drank when they needed to. On the island, they longed for their homes but when ashore in the midst of noisy families and demands and bills and long hours awake, they longed for the silent certainties of the lighthouse. They yearned for the peace they found even in the midst of a storm, knowing that as long as they did their job the same as always, no-one could ask for more.

Every few months, one of them was relieved by a man called Jones. Jones talked. He read to them, tried to engage them in debate, to discuss things from the newspaper or books or ideas. The other two would fidget and grunt, preferring their liturgical world of ritual to a potentially chaotic mess of unknowns. When Jones’s stint was over, they all relaxed, the three of them settling back into their clockwork routine.

Thompson was thirsty and knew that Sykes would have made him a pot of tea before retiring, but first he  followed procedure and climbed up to check the light.

The last steps were almost vertical, narrow wooden slats with hand-holds, yet he could run up and down them like a cat. The glow above reassured that everything was working fine and the lens was turning properly, letting out its lazy flash over the turbulent sea.

Thompson looked out of the rain smeared window into the darkness. He could read the weather like a book. People said it was unpredictable and treated storms as if they arrived from nowhere, but if you knew what you were looking