Wicked Thoughts

By Robert Harris

PURE EVIL COMES IN MANY FORMS…

 

It's 1967 and Zach Naylor is young, bright, and carefree. He is about to move to a big city in the southwest of England and start his first real job, and he has his whole life and a world of possibilities in front of him. However, that all quickly changes when Zach witnesses a terrible accident on a steep, twisty country road and his bad thoughts suddenly start coming true a few months later.

 

Zach soon begins to wonder if he might be losing his mind, but as he eventually discovers, the truth is far worse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Harris
• Release date: Sep 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9798223762072

Book preview

Chapter 1

It is 1967 – July 29th to be exact – and Zach Naylor is travelling back to his home in Bridgwater, Somerset on a glorious summer’s afternoon. One of those rare and wonderful days where the colours are brighter, the sounds are sharper, and the smells are sweeter.

Zach has just spent a fun week in a caravan between Blue Anchor Bay and the harbour town of Watchet with some close friends, enjoying the last bit of his summer vacation before he begins working for a living – what you might call a lads’ budget holiday.

His friends are staying on for another week at the idyllic spot on the southwest coast of England as they have nothing more pressing to do, but Zach has to get home and pack, so that he can travel up to Bristol the following day – Sunday – and settle into the tiny basement flat that he has recently found and secured for himself on Redcliff Street.

Zach is really pleased to have found a place that is within walking distance of Bristol’s Temple Meads Station and the nearby engineering company that he will be working for on Monday that has very close ties with the railway, and he is really excited about living in a big city for the first time and starting his first job; a fact that had earned Zach a great deal of ribbing from his friends during the past week as they lazed on the beach sunning themselves, chatting up passing girls, and eating too many ice creams.

The thought of his friends constantly teasing him about actually wanting to start work makes Zach smile, then he refocuses his concentration on the tight, twisty country road ahead of him.

Zach is driving his light-blue Austin Mini Cooper – a recent present from his proud parents for graduating from college at the top of his engineering class and securing a paid apprenticeship with one of Bristol’s most prestigious engineering companies – and he is enjoying throwing the speedy, agile little car around the sharp bends that spring up in front of him as he continues to power his way up Cleeve Hill.

Tight to his left are vast stretches of high, forbidding, grey stone walls and to his right, beyond the sparse traffic passing him, are ditches, hedges, and lengthy coastal drops, so now is definitely not the time for Zach to make a mistake that could prove to be very costly—even fatal.

The snaking country road continues to slope steeply in front of Zach as he prepares himself for the next tricky, sharp bend, which he knows will then continue on up the steep slope until it eventually crests the hill and begins to slowly even out for a while.

This is a particularly nasty stretch of road and Zach is taken by complete surprise when a black Triumph motorbike suddenly roars past and overtakes him as he is approaching the sharp turn.

The motorbike is moving really fast and the black-and-red leather-clad rider probably figures he has enough time to complete the risky overtaking manoeuvre and get back on the correct side of the road before taking the tight bend, but his judgement is way off.

The rider cannot get back into position in time, and with nowhere safe to bail out on the tight road, he runs straight smack into a dark-green removals van that is coming the other way down the hill and around the bend.

The motorbike and the panicked rider slide straight under the front wheels of the sizeable removal truck with a sickening, crunching sound. Then they are both bounced around for a few seconds, trapped helplessly between the steel chassis of the vehicle and the unforgiving road, before finally being spat out the back of the van.

When he reappears, the mangled rider does not move and Zach and the driver of the removal vehicle both execute an emergency stop and rush to the rider’s aid.

Zach’s little Mini stops much quicker going uphill than the hefty removal van does going downhill and therefore Zach gets to the stricken rider first.

He does not need to be a doctor to know that the motorcycle rider is dead.

The rider’s head is lolling at an unnatural angle inside his crushed helmet, and several of his limbs are horribly twisted and bent into shapes that they shouldn’t be able to form. The rider’s white, faceless helmet was just no match for the sheer weight of the removal truck and had cracked like a coconut under the immense pressure of one of its wheels.

Zach shivers, like someone has just stepped on his grave, and figures that the rider died instantly—hoped he had. Hoped he had been spared too much pain.

The bulky driver of the removal van appears at Zach’s side then. He is white-faced and obviously extremely shaken by the tragic event that has just transpired, but there is nothing he can do. There is nothing either of them can do except to manage the flow of traffic until someone notifies the local police and they show up to take charge of the situation.

The motorcycle accident is an awful thing to witness on such a warm and beautiful summer’s day, something that Zach will never forget for as long as he lives. It is also an event that will change his life forever, not that Zach knows this at the time, of course.

He doesn’t have a clue.

Chapter 2

It is two months later and Zach Naylor is now happily settled in Bristol.

He is enjoying the freedom of having his own place, even though the basement flat he has procured is a little dark inside for his liking and barely big enough to swing a cat in, and his new job is going extremely well.

Zach is bright, enthusiastic, and hardworking and is currently helping out on a large project for the local railway, modifying the bed of a standard boxcar to be fitted with a fully working crane, which has been subcontracted to the large engineering firm he works for by British Rail.

David Moss is Zach’s mentor. Dave is in his early thirties, is very experienced – having worked in the engineering field since he was sixteen himself, and has trained several youngsters before Zach and enjoys passing on his tacit skills and knowledge, which is why he and Zach get on really well.

The two of them sharing a similar sense of humour doesn’t hurt, either.

Zach