Becoming Lara: Read In a day, #1

By James C Brook

Do you know where reality ends and nightmares begin? And can you sense the strange, thin curtain between the real and the unreal, the natural and the supernatural? 

It began with a chance meeting, the casual showing of a photo and a remark: 'My sister-in-law looks like your sister-in-law.' And from that, a strange series of events take place. 

Jane and her husband Adam are on their way to a make-or-break second honeymoon. As their train pulls into Oxford station, she gets a sudden, violent headache that stabs viciously into her mind. But Adam does not notice: he has seen his dead sister on the platform. The sister he hated. The sister who stepped off a cliff to her death. 

At the hotel, Adam meets Lara, a strange child/woman who – disturbingly – resembles his wife. 

While, flying in from Canada, is Carl, with a mesmerizing icon on the thrift-store tablet computer he felt compelled to buy  …  

This creepy, compelling, supernatural chiller will make you question how real is reality and how easy it might be to slip from the here and now into an alternate, threatening world, where formless, many-legged malevolent creatures are prowling in the snow. 

For devotees of the paranormal, the unnatural, the creepy.  

Right up to the end you will be asking, 'what is going on?' 

• Language: English
• Publisher: James C Brook
• Release date: Feb 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201149475

Book preview

Becoming Lara

#1 of read in a day

James C Brook

Becoming Lara

Copyright © 2021 by James C Brook

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without the prior written permission of the copyright owner, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Disclaimer

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, 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.

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 person you share it with. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Description

Do you know where reality ends and nightmares begin? And can you sense the strange, thin curtain between the real and the unreal, the natural and the supernatural?

It began with a chance meeting, the casual showing of a photo and a remark: ‘My sister-in-law looks like your sister-in-law.’ And from that, a strange series of events take place.

Jane and her husband Adam are on their way to a make-or-break second honeymoon. As their train pulls into Oxford station, she gets a sudden, violent headache that stabs viciously into her mind. But Adam does not notice: he has seen his dead sister on the platform. The sister he hated. The sister who stepped off a cliff to her death.

At the hotel, Adam meets Lara, a strange child/woman who – disturbingly – resembles his wife.

While, flying in from Canada, is Carl, with a mesmerizing icon on the thrift-store tablet computer he felt compelled to buy  …

This creepy, compelling, supernatural chiller will make you question how real is reality and how easy it might be to slip from the here and now into an alternate, threatening world, where formless, many-legged, malevolent creatures are prowling in the snow.

For devotees of the unnatural and the creepy, and will keep you guessing until the end.

Series description

This is the first book in the series ‘Read-in-a-day' by James C Brook.

For several years, the author wrote radio scripts. Creepy thrillers, tense dramas and comedies. Now, he is mining those plays, turning some of them into short, easy to read, page-turning novellas of between 50,000 to 60,000 words.

Why ‘Read-in-a-day'? Well, the average reading speed is between 200 and 250 words a minute. 60,000 words at 200 a minute is 5 hours. So: start after breakfast, have an hour for lunch and still be finished in time for tea. Or take longer: why not? After all, a good story is a good story, however long it takes to read.

Also, by the same author: ‘Those Diana Moments’ an autobiography. A fascinating life told in an extraordinary fashion.

Prologue

For a short while - even after discovering she was pregnant - Pat would dream and remember. 

Lara. 

Sometimes Lara would be huddled in the snow, her bare limbs as numb and as cold as those of a corpse. 

Or she would be floating, seemingly in space, as remote and as distant as the moon. 

Or lying in a hospital bed, a small still figure with frizzy static hair, at the centre of experts discussing the effects of electric shock on the brain. 

Or standing on a plain under a maroon black sun; but she would not be alone: swirling around her would be shapes and figures that mutated and coiled and vanished like worms into the corner of the eye. Pat found this vision the most disturbing, and would wake, sitting upright in the bed, her face distorted in the soft dark shadows of the bedroom. 

And sometimes - the best times - she would remember the three of them: Pat, Lara and Carl, striding over the hills, with the landscape green in every direction. And Lara would sing her song without words. 

Once, Pat had asked her. ‘What are you singing, Lara? That’s a nice tune.’ 

And Lara had stopped, to look puzzled before saying Lara singing the song without words. And then adding, to keep the wolves away.

But by this time Pat had automatically ceased paying attention. She might have said to Carl, ‘I’m getting fed up with the W word. She said it five times today. And then I stopped listening.’ 

And Carl - then - would hold her and tell her not to worry. The wolves had no meaning; they were figments left over from a previous life; the life destroyed in the accident, when Lara’s brain had been seared with an electric shock, leaving parts functioning, parts non-functioning. 

Then he would mention the neurosurgeon and the physiatrist and all the other specialists who had investigated, prodding and probing and making judgements which - as far as Pat could tell - all came down to the same thing: Lara was lucky to be alive, with a brain that functioned well enough, so count your blessings. 

But now, with Lara gone but not gone, she was fading and had become as insubstantial as a forgotten memory. So when the baby kicked, Pat would smile her maternal smile, look down and say to Carl, if this is a girl, we’ll call her Lara. And he would place one of his comforting, large hands on her swollen belly and say if? If this is a girl? But you know it will be a girl. And her smile would broaden into a grin and she would nod her head in agreement. 

And both would ignore - because they had to ignore - because it was all now in the past, with the birth becoming nearer every day - the central paradox, which came to them only now in dreams: where had Lara gone?

Chapter 1

Once, Jane had been dragged along to see a late-night film. John had said, ‘Honestly, you’ll love it. It’s a classic.‘ And Jane had said, laughing: ‘but it’s black and white!‘ To which he replied, ‘Listen: not only is it Hitchcock, it’s possibly the best Hitchcock.’ 

So they went, as she always knew they would. And afterwards, walking back through the dark streets, John had pulled her urgently into a doorway, thus making the evening memorable. 

But then John had gone abroad, so she married his brother Adam. And now they were on a train. 

As she watched the trees flick past, Jane looked at her husband, then sideways at her own sallow reflection, imposed like a stationary ghost upon the moving countryside, and thought: ‘Strangers on a Train.‘ 

They had hardly talked since leaving London. He sat across from her, his eyes closed, the heavy glasses a fraction down his nose, a small deep frown like a scar on his forehead. 

She glanced round. Across the aisle an elderly couple were intent: he on a crossword, she on a book with a sunny cover. Diagonally opposite, a teenager was plugged into his phone, his head nodding to the unheard beat. 

She said Adam. A pause. His eyes did not open. Adam, she said again: what was that film John liked? The Hitchcock one?

His eyes remained closed, but he said, Are you just making conversation, or did you ask on purpose?

On purpose of what? 

To find out the answer, of course. 

Oh God. She looked away. Why do you have to make everything so complicated? 

After a pause he said, Look, you know and I know we both know it’s ‘Strangers on a Train,’ and you know and I know you thought it would be something clever to say. 

How do you think you know, she said what I know. Once, they might have delighted in this verbal interplay, the repetition, the feeling they were taking part in some witty drama set in a 1930s drawing room. But now it just seemed tedious and trite, hardly worth the effort. As if to match her mood, the train slowed down. 

Ah. He opened his eyes, Oxford. 

A platform came into view. People and families, suitcases and bicycles, babies and prams. A man in a tracksuit, incongruously jogging on the spot while waiting to board the train. A splash of sunshine. 

We’ll have to do better than this, she said, and immediately regretted it. He always picked her up when she stated the obvious. They both knew they’d have to do better. Try harder. Keep talking. Treat each other for what they were, and what they both knew they were: responsible, sensible, intelligent, adult human beings. 

His reply was bleak. Better than what? 

She continued staring out of the window. The train had stopped.

Jane felt a headache starting. A bad one, blooming unstoppably from the back of her mind like black ink in clear water. She pinched the bridge of her nose. Oh Christ Adam, she said. I’m not one of your office morons. She turned her head and looked straight at him. Through the headache, he appeared thin and blurred. The last thing she wanted to do was continue the conversation, but she said: Let’s try to at least treat each other as adults, OK? 

For a moment she thought he might sink back in his seat, his face closed off, but he took a breath and leaned forward. You’re right. I know you’re right. He looked down and then up. How did we get to where we are now? 

A man with two suitcases struggled past. A girl with a lollipop in her mouth followed, clasping a laptop to her chest. 

Jane concentrated. I don’t know. But where we are now is driving me crazy. 

In my head, His voice was increasingly distant: In my head I’ve not started this conversation yet. In my head, it starts when we’re both relaxed. Maybe this evening, with a full stomach and a bottle of wine. 

His voice trailed off, but Jane scarcely noticed as she struggled to concentrate. She knew he was doing what he always did when faced with a difficult topic: procrastinating by talking about when they could talk. 

Oh, for God’s sake, Adam - she began, but then the headache arrived, a jolting pain scorching from eye to eye and she slumped back into her seat. 

She did not see her husband staring out of the window, his face tense and frozen, his eyes unblinking. She did not see his hands twisting together so hard they must have hurt. Oh Christ, he was whispering, Oh Christ, oh Christ, oh Christ. 

The doors slammed and smoothly, without jolting, the train moved, carrying them through the station and away, the view changing from houses and streets and cars to fields of green and indifferent cows chewing the cud. 

Jane felt her headache lift like a curtain at the start of a play. She opened her eyes. Blue and cream railway carriage seats. The couple still intent. Across from them, a new passenger with fashionable stubble, stabbing fingers at a laptop. Jane turned her head, eyes wide. The teenager was now staring at the outside world, his head still nodding. For a moment too long, Jane kept her eyes on him. He shifted, glanced at her, and turned away. 

Only then - for she had been putting this off - Jane looked directly across at her husband. 

Adam seemed small and diminished, his skin as waxy and as smooth as that of a doll; she suddenly had the sensation that he - and everything in this carriage - was untrue and unreal. Even the landscape moving past outside the window was untouchable and false, a painted backdrop. 

He stirred, a drawing coming to life. The eyes opened, a hand came up and adjusted his glasses. He sat up. 

His voice was too loud: Jesus. Shit. Christ. Wildly, she looked round: no-one seemed to have heard. 

He noticed her discomfort and added, not like you to worry about what other people think. 

There’s no need to swear. 

Ha! Coming from you, that’s a joke. She looked away. A farmhouse, a tractor in a field, seagulls circling. He said something more. She really should pay attention. 

He lifted his voice. Oh for God’s sake! You’re not even listening. She knew that resentful cadence, that ignored small boy tone. Her mouth puckered in distaste. If you’re interested, he continued: if you’re really interested, I saw my sister on that platform. Sarah. The bastard Sarah. He waited to see how she would react. Her face remained blank. His tone became almost pleading. I swear to God it was her. Just as the train started moving. She had her back to me, then she turned and looked over her shoulder. Completely unmistakable. She stared straight at me and smiled that smile. 

Jane said nothing. 

I damn near, he said, I damn near puked up there and then. 

She opened her mouth. Now you’re just being dramatic. 

It was her, I tell you! He glanced round, lowered his voice and took her hand. Jane, believe me, it was her. 

She left her hand in his, but surprised herself by saying: So? 

What d’you mean, ‘so’? 

So you think you saw your dead sister. 

I don’t think, I know I saw her. 

She sighed. OK, but…. how does this change things? She withdrew her hand and took a breath, trying to soften her tone. Look Adam, it’s been 15 years since she went missing -

- 16 - 

- whatever - and she hasn’t turned up. So if she’s still alive, she’s been hiding. She doesn’t want to be found. So I’d leave her be. He glanced away. Suddenly, impulsively, she put her hand on his. God, she was sending so many mixed signals. Let it go. Christ, she’s screwed up your life enough. You and John. 

He closed his eyes, then startled her by saying: d’you still love him? 

Oh, for God’s sake, Adam: we’re not in a soap opera. 

Glumly, he looked downwards. I suppose I’ll have to take that as a yes. 

Oh, put your hair shirt on, why not? 

She turned once more towards the window, folding her arms and crossing her legs, tucking herself away from him. 

The train eased round a long curve, and for the next fifteen minutes there was silence.

Chapter 2

Lara had been uncharacteristically quiet. Normally she enjoyed going in the car - particularly since they’d got the red one - and would stare through the window, enchanted with the moving view. She would be chatty and excited, almost bouncing in her seat. 

But that morning it had taken Pat a long while to find her. The garden shed had been empty, under the stairs had drawn a blank, and there was no sign of her in the attic. 

Pat had felt a rising panic. What if Lara had gone out, alone? Alone and without a definite agenda, without clutching a note specifying an errand or a task to perform? Without something to keep her focused? 

Lara had such a random brain. Pat stopped and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly, counting inside her head ‘one elephant, two elephants, three elephants..‘ timing it so her lungs were empty just as she reached ‘twenty elephants.’ Then slowly inhale. She felt calmer now. Lara hadn’t gone out, she was sure. So it was just a case of finding her.

Pat stood in the hall, her back to the front door. A ray of sunshine illuminated the stained-glass skylight, throwing a pattern of reds and blues on the floor. 

Lara. Pat lifted her voice, projecting the sound, pretending she was on stage. Lara, sweetheart, we really have to go. Carl wants us to go. We can stop on the way, it’s going to be fun, just you and me, in the car. 

The house remained silent. Pat sighed and started searching. Living room: behind the sofa and the large easy chair. No. kitchen/dining room: there