Paul's realllly cool novel print it he invented a religion for this.. (also for world domination of course.) RIGHT CLICK THIS TEXT AND HIT "SAVE AS" for printer friendly version.

No other prevarications or introductions about the story apart from a simple statement, yeh - I am more excited about this book than I have ever been about any painting that I have ever done. There.

PAGES

By Paul D Robertson.

He stood at the end of the bridge, looked across, and sighed. Just a few hundred meters or so. The wind blew his thin regulation shirt against his chest and prickled his skin, chill. He shoved his hands into his pockets, feeling the hardness of the ring on his finger against the cloth, hunched his shoulders and started across the boards. The wind whipped the sweat on his cheeks to ice, and the sea boomed against the pylons beneath him. A few gulls held their wings hard against the cold, their eyes half shut.
He could see the waves between the beams beneath him, twisting through the channel in white coils. His legs ached from the long walk, from the small responsibility that he carried, from the exhaustion of his mind and will, with this missive, with it all.
Half way across and he turned away from the keen wounding wind and looked down the channel; deepening cliffs on either side rimmed with bright green grass, fading now in the late sun. Dark soon, but he was close to his destination and could hope for food, military or otherwise it would be hot and most welcome. He twisted his neck stretched his back and heard a satisfying click. He walked on.
A red and white boom gate stuck half way down over the road leading to the bridge from Seroquel. Rain specked his khaki jacket as he walked around it to the gate booth. He was about to call out to catch the attention of the suffering guard posted to this unrewarding task, when as he peered towards the grey timber booth he sucked in a cold breath sharply, harshly in surprise. A black booted foot jutted from the open door.
He looked nervously around him, aware that he was unarmed and once again that he regretted it. He had refused the regulation side arm, saying he would just throw it into the ocean as soon as he had the chance, and because of his… unique position this had been accepted. He hated guns, feared them, was inept and clumsy with them. He felt like he held a deadly snake every time he touched one. He had left his jeep after it had broken down some eight kilometers of icy road behind him. He was even less skilled with mechanicals than he was with firearms.
The wind blew the door of the booth against the prone man’s boot. He tentatively moved closer. The guard lay face down, his heavy woolen trench coat twisted about him. The pieces of his chair lay splintered around him. His outstretched hand clasped a black knife.
Max stood over him, his face distressed, puzzled.
He reached down and willed his hand to grasp the man’s shoulder and turn him over. The shoulder was cold. At first the corpse would not move, and Max realised that congealed blood held his coat to the floor and pulled harder. He saw a young face under chestnut hair, a face set in some kind of rage despite having relaxed into death.
The man’s white shirt was thick with deep red brown blood, and his revolver remained in its holster, the securing clip still fastened. Grimacing Max reached to take it, noticing as he did the mortal wound the guard had suffered. His hands were bruised and bloody but the blood that soaked him was from a wound, a tearing wound in his throat. Something had bitten or torn across the man’s neck with savage intent.
Max hesitantly unclipped the holster and slid the black gun from its place, his hand already feeling the twist of discomfort at holding such a weapon, shaking. He let the man fall back down to the sticky floor, stood quickly and tried to control his gasping breath. He leaned against the doorframe, the wood rough under his palms, and tried to keep from vomiting.
He stepped from the booth, pushing the man’s foot inside the door and closing it. His face twisted as he opened the chamber of the revolver and checked that it was full. He tucked it into his belt and the cold of the metal seemed to seep into him, deeper than the wind.
He flexed his left hand that had just lifted the shoulder of a dead man, stared at it intently before glancing around him and stepping to continue his journey.
There was enough light to see the weed choked road, and he climbed the increasing incline with some relief at leaving the dead man behind him. He would report the murder, make his observances, let the local authorities find out the details… ask them to write him and outline what had happened, though he had his own understanding of what was most likely. War stalked close to these quiet rural islands, hatred simmered in their green hills. This would be another secret and celebrated religious act.
His steps brought him to the top of the first rise leading away from the water and the corpse. The wind spat acrid salt air, and he could barely make out the road beneath him through his watering eyes. In the shallow valley before him he could see the outlines of a few scattered houses set back from the road amongst twisting and waving grasses. Making up his mind, he walked on.
Turning off the road at the first house, glad for the shelter of the shallow valley, he realised that none of the homes he could see held lights despite the deepening evening. He stood before the open front door of the stone cottage before him and peered intently inside. No sounds besides the soughing of the wind. A child’s tricycle lay overturned beside him. He pulled his lighter from his pocket and lit it, the light weak and small but comforting. He flicked the light switch with no effect. Perhaps the storm…The kitchen table was spread with moldering foods, a half-eaten loaf of bread, a wilted salad. Not too old - two days, perhaps three.
“Hello?” he called. “Is there anybody here?”
Silence. Some dire emergency had made these people leave, and leave swiftly. Perhaps war had come. He closed his eyes, trying not to explore in his mind what that would mean. It could of course be something, anything else. Yes. Anything but war.
He searched through the draws in the kitchen, the cupboards, by the yellow flame of his lighter, finding a torch eventually. He took some canned beans, beginning to realise that he may have to be prepared for some kind of disaster. He flicked the light of the torch through the drawers till he found a can opener and pocketed that too, though he could not imagine being hungry any time soon. The gun pushed against his belt.
He explored the rest of the house, finding more evidence of a sudden departure; beds unmade, chairs overturned. The back door hung from one hinge as though someone had charged through it.
He continued his journey, the night pushing the shadows deeper in the valley. He called out as he passed the next few houses, but received no response. He tried to remember how far it was from the bridge to the town of Seroquel – he had never been here but had studied the maps he had been provided like as in any military endeavour. Another 15 kilometers or so, through some woods. He was now afraid of what he would find.

On the road a short distance over the next rise lay a small abandoned truck, its red paint deep in the fading light. Max approached, gun in hand, feeling ill with discomfort at the possibility of ever, EVER having to use it. It hung limply in his pale hand. The truck had stopped at an angle across the muddy road, a door open, a deep darkness inside the cab. Max switched on the torch he carried in his left hand, switched gun and torch, paused and switched them back again awkwardly before advancing forwards to peer inside. The truck was old and stank with human sweat, and some acrid animal stench, the upholstery cracked, as was the windshield. The handle of the door was twisted from its screws and hung half affixed.
Max flicked the weak beam of the torch around the interior, looking for what he did not know; some clue as to what may have happened; information of some ilk to prepare him for what may be before him. A melee weapon may help him – he opened the glove box, looking for a knife or some kind of sharp farming tool, shuddering at the thought of having to use such a thing on another human being. He pushed the gun back into his belt and reached his hand down to pat the floor in search of a wheel brace or something like it. He felt his hand push through a dry skin of cold thick liquid before snatching it back. He shone the torch on his hand. The palm was wet with blood. He flicked the beam back onto the floor of the truck’s cab, and gasped, a harsh sound in the night.
The floor was ankle deep in congealed blood.
There was no sign whatever of the driver.
Max became keenly aware that he was standing in an open field with a single light in the night, and the sighing wind sounded criminal and dangerous in his ears. He felt a flush of pure dread tightening the skin on his scalp and balls and hastily wiped his bloody hand on the cracked seat. He made his trembling fingers push the switch on the flashlight to bring back the darkness and walked quickly away from the truck.
He clutched the gun with both hands as he walked on, deliberately trying to slow his panicked breath that steamed into the night. He tried not to look back, but gave up after a few more meters and snapped his head back, seeing only a looming hulk in the darkness behind him.

The landscape changed from open fields to light woods as rain began to fall from the darkness above; light cold drops. Max walked with his hand on the gun in his belt, trying to hold and control the fear squirming, a dark eel alive in his guts.
The temptation to turn on the flashlight filled his mind almost as much as the depth of the shadows moving between the trees and the thoughts of what they could contain.
The road sloped further downward into the shallow valley as Max walked on. He stopped, turned his dripping head. His senses strained by the fear in his heart, he heard a soft sound almost indistinguishable in the night, but repeated. He took two deep breaths and closed his eyes for a few seconds before walking with deliberation from the road into the trees towards the sound; clearer now with every step.
“… shuck…shuck… shuck,” he pushed through the wet trees, the sucking sound twisting in his mind in time with the beats of fear in his ears. He moved more slowly as the sound grew louder before seeing light through the leaves and peering into a clearing.
A man in late middle age, what remained of his hair straggling down his face, wearing dirty white long underwear, stood digging a shallow grave in the light of a gas lantern. The rain streamed down his face, twisted in concentration and grief. There was the mound of a completed grave next to the torn shreds of grasses surrounding the new one, white material – a dress – draped over it.
Max drew his gun as the man let the shovel fall and bent down to collect something from the ground.
Max stepped from the shadows into the pale light, his gun held in two hands in front of him.
“Hey!!” the man started, and slowly looked up and then rose from the ground, a double barreled shotgun in one hand. “Curse God…” Max could feel the hot sweat on his palms underneath the cold rain.
The man stood there, ridiculous in his dirty underwear, inappropriate, absurd. The shotgun limp in his hand, he stared at Max, his eyes in the lamplight bleak and bitter with desolation.
“What… what has been going on here? Where are all the people? What are you doing? Why are you burying someone here???” Max held the gun so tightly his fingers were starting to go numb.
The man stared at him, then slowly started to speak, “My daughter, she… I did things to her. I touched her, I hurt her. I don’t understand what happened. I don’t UNDERSTAND! I was sleeping and I dreamed of this… this” he began to weep and swayed on his feet, his chest heaving with grief. “I dreamed that I hurt her and then I… I woke and she was… Cursed God, Curse GOD!! It doesn’t matter, nothing matters, it. I…” He choked and beat his free hand, hard, against his forehead, the rain spraying. He bent over double, coughing and retching, and vomited gouts of blood down the front of the shirt of his underwear. He slowly stood up, his eyes fixed in a burning gaze on Max. “Whoever you are, why did you come out here? Why did you come all the way OUT HERE TO HELL??”
Max gaped in incomprehension, the gun hanging loose in his tired fingers now.
The man, in the lamplight, his underwear sticking to his paunch, his thinning hair wet over his ears, his face a masque of grief, closed his eyes.
He swung the shotgun swiftly as fear surged through Max and he tightened his finger on the trigger; too late, too late.
The shotgun arced past him, for a moment the barrels looked huge as Max squeezed the trigger and realised dismay flooding him and fear cresting in him, that the trigger would not move as he had left the safety on.
With one hand the man swung the gun on his own chest and fired both barrels. Max saw his wrist snap at the same instant the barrels blazed and boomed; the shotgun kicking backwards in the man’s outstretched hand as his chest opened red.
He fell. The rain dripped from Max’s nose and trickled down the front of his shirt. He blinked against the water in his eyes.
He moved forward, his boots sucking against the freshly turned mud. He knelt by the man and looked at his eyes, blind and open. The wound was massive, and lethal.
He had fallen half into the open grave.
Max lifted his still warm form into the open earth.
He closed the nameless man’s open eyes. He took the shovel and began to cover him with the soaking mud.

After cursing himself for a fool and getting lost in the sparse woods, Max found his way back to the road. He looked towards the town, and a wave of dizziness and nausea fell over him and he staggered, alone in the night. He bent over and held his head in his hands, his fine blonde hair dripping. The images of the man’s death flashed through his mind, again, again. He breathed deep gulping torn breaths. He made himself stand upright.
He felt weak and stupid. He knew so little of what was happening; he knew nothing. What kind of bizarre tragedy had afflicted this place? What had happened to the sobbing man before his suicide? What had he done to his daughter? Had he killed her? The images flicked over-bright through his mind again. The twisted face, the wretched grief in his voice.
He pushed his hair back from his face. He was shaking and he was cold. Yes, cold and sick. And exhausted.
He tried to think clearly through the shock and the maddening dripping rain. He peered down the road. Blackness; opaque. He had thought that he would be able to see the lights from the town by now.
He needed rest, and food, he supposed, though his body felt anything but hungry. Max found his hands were curled into claws, and watched as he straightened them finger by finger. He pulled the gun from its cold place at his belt and retrieved the torch from his pocket to examine it. Safety. Click. On. Click. Off. He would not slide it back into his belt, deadly against him, without that small caution, and he practiced his thumb over the switch. The sight of it made him feel a fresh twist of nausea and fear, and he pushed it back into place, shrugging his jacket tighter.
The rain eased, gentle now against him, and he turned his face towards the sky. The clouds hung glowing dull with static and power. He would not sleep here, this night. He believed that with a snap of clarity. His mind cleared with the night.
The tragedy in the clearing, the wet snap of the man’s wrist breaking. He could find one of the empty farm houses and lock the thin doors against the darkness. The man’s body; the first slap of mud over his corpse. He could light a fire, he could… the two graves. Two…
Max walked on. He needed to know, now. Curse God.

NEXT PAGE