I’m unleashing the opening to my most recent novel, ‘The Lives of Ghosts’
There were ghosts at the Loch House long before we arrived, with ours.
Marie told me about them towards the end of the journey. After nine hours behind the wheel and all that silence, her voice didn’t sound right. It was hollow and tinny and seemed to scrape at the air trapped between us. Air that had smelt of melting rubber for the entire four hundred mile drive.
“There have always been stories about the place,” she said. “Sightings of shadowy figures and sudden lights. Strange noises in the night. For a while, we even thought about including them in the brochure. Some people like that kind of thing.”
Looking back on it now that I’m older, I imagine that she was simply talking for the sake of talking, chatting to ward off the panic as the reality of what she was doing finally started to set in. I can clearly remember how her eyes flicked at me in the rear-view mirror, a dark, wet flash and then away, and how her shoulders had risen; she was practically cowering in her seat. Clinging to that wheel. And certainly not thinking straight to say the things she said.
. . .
If you’d like to continue reading, or want to find out more about ‘The Lives of Ghosts’, please visit my website, where (for a limited period, as they say, whoever they are) you can read the complete first chapter.