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see also: all about the book
Prologue
Matt was lying face down on the beach again.
Had he escaped? Had he broken free from this awful place?
He turned onto his side and, gradually, his eyes came to
focus on a pale object a short distance from his face.
Embedded in the beach was a human skull.
A jagged crack ran upwards from its left eye socket, and
crawling all over the thing were hundreds of tiny brown sand
flies.
Horrified, he looked more closely at the sand and shingle:
scattered throughout were small white fragments of bone, broken
vertebrae, lost teeth.
Slowly, he swung his gaze out to sea. Dark storm clouds
hung over deep red waves. It was the sea of his dreams, the
sea of blood. Debris floated in the bay and he did not want
to look too closely to see what the floating objects might
be. Flocks of gulls soared and swooped, feasting on the carnage,
their white plumage stained a gruesome, sticky crimson.
He twisted away and threw up on the sand.
He struggled to control his breathing, he had to calm down.
This was no longer a dream, he was actually here...
He made himself look around again. He had to get out of
here, but how do you wake yourself from a dream that has entirely
swallowed you up?
There was an old tramp a short distance away, shuffling
along the tideline, turning over the jetsam with the open
toe of one of his boots. Matt wondered what he was hoping
to find.
His senses were becoming numbed to all the horrors that
he was seeing, he realised. Even when the tramp squatted to
extract something from a dark tangled mass, Matt didn't look
away. Even when the tramp raised his trophy to his mouth and
bit into it.
Matt struggled to his feet. He climbed the concrete steps
to the Promenade and was surprised to see how many holidaymakers
were here, despite the deep gloom of the weather. He stopped
himself, suddenly frightened at how easy it was to accept
this grim distortion as reality: a world of holidays and football
and school and work, a world where nothing was really any
different.
The people were dressed in a strange assortment of clothing,
as if they had all taken part in a lucky dip at some monstrous
jumble sale. Striped blazers, frilly summer frocks with parasols,
mismatched items of school uniform, pin-striped trousers with
torn tee-shirts, patchwork waistcoats, wide-brimmed straw
hats, long leather coats, high boots, fur caps.
Couples strolled arm in arm, their faces pale and hollowed
out, as if they were being eaten away from within. Emaciated
dogs tottered along after grotesquely overweight owners. Tiny
children, covered only in dark red mud from the beach, chased
each other through the crowds, while yet others gathered around
an ice-cream vendor's stall.
And all the time, as Matt walked along the Prom, eyes followed
him, tracking his progress. Even the children stopped what
they were doing to stare.
They all knew that he didn't belong here, that he was new
in this terrible place. He understood now that this was another
world: a world constructed from the darker shadows of the
one he knew.
All the time, the eyes followed him.
He kept walking, fearful of what might happen if he stood
still for too long.
It had all started with Gran's funeral, he supposed: that
fateful visit to the family home in Crooked Elms. Or perhaps
it went back further than that.
He had to think his situation through. He had to work out
how to get out of here. There had to be a way!
The alternative was too awful to consider.
...end of extract
see also: more info about the
book
and
Flesh and Blood can be ordered through Amazon.
It's also available at BOL,
WH Smith's
Internet Bookshop and other online booksellers, and all
decent bookshops.
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