Fool's Hollow

Van

Description

The kick of a ball. The swing of a bat. The toss of a coin, Skinny knew how it would fall because he controlled it, he cheated. He had this secret power which he kept close to his chest and with this most powerful weapon at hand, it came to him how to knock-off his nightmare without arousing suspicion to himself and be free from all pain.

Sujets

• Thriller

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Date de parution: 31 juillet 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781528957816
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Fool’s Hollow
Van
Austin Macauley Publishers
2020-07-31
Fool’s Hollow Copyright Information © Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four Chapter Twenty-Five Chapter Twenty-Six Chapter Twenty-Seven Chapter Twenty-Eight Chapter Twenty-Nine Chapter Thirty Chapter Thirty-One Chapter Thirty-Two Chapter Thirty-Three Chapter Thirty-Four Chapter Thirty-Five Chapter Thirty-Six Chapter Thirty-Seven Chapter Thirty-Eight Chapter Thirty-Nine Chapter Forty Chapter Forty-One
Copyright Information ©
Van (2020)
The right of Van to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781528904803 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781528957816 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2020)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
Chapter One
His name was Kelvin Reddison. From the age of four, he was held prisoner in a shed and tortured. The shed was in Asherville, a mile away from the city of Durban. He was nine years old when the break came. He escaped from the shed. Only four people in the country knew him by his name.
Two out of the four would resume their torture if they could lay their hands on him; or kill him because he knew they had committed murder. That was in Durban, here in Greyville, no one knew him. He did not give them his name. It was a guarded secret from the time he showed up in their town and decided to stay. The town’s folk gave him the name of Skinny, simply because he was beanpole thin. He accepted the name Skinny. It saved arguments and there was less of a chance of those hunting him or discovering of his whereabouts.
The clothes he wore were discarded clothes picked up from trash cans. To live, there was nothing short of murder he would do to earn a dollar and he would take on any form of work to earn a penny. But that is, if he could find work in the financial crisis the country was experiencing. He would not lie or steal, not until he took up sports and discovered he could cheat and not get caught at it. He had an edge over any rival who wished to challenge him. He had this mental power which came out of fear and torture. It was his secret weapon.
He was careful how he used this invisible power. He never abused it, nor did he show off. This power allowed him to carry out feats which many rivals believed impossible to do on the pitch. So, he used it to the full— to cheat at sports— and got away with it with nobody being the wiser. But he could never cheat his nightmares. They were real. They haunted him at every sleeping hour and it was eating him alive from the inside.
Rarely did he smile because of throbbing pain caused by the migraine headaches, which dogged him at all times. But when he did smile, his face would light up like a child who has just been presented with a chocolate cake. Folks, if they got the chance to look into his eyes, would see only pain and fear. They would see the tortured, twisted soul in the boy, and nothing else. Apart from his fear, they couldn’t read him nor could they scare him. The citizens of Greyville tried to when he showed up in town the first morning. They did not want strangers roaming their streets.
For Skinny to be left alone, he acted tough. When he first showed his face in Greyville, they figured him to be a weakling. He was the pick of every one of the town’s bullies. They figured to smother him with their weight or amuse themselves. But Skinny’s mind was set long before setting foot in Greyville—that nobody is ever going to beat him again like the two men who tortured him did. That was then, but now anyone who lifts their hands on him must go all the way and kill him. It’s either that or they must leave him alone. So, he fought the bullies until they left him alone.
The word ‘alone’ was a big word for him. It weighed a ton, because he just wanted to be left alone. It was worth its weight in gold. It gave him strength. It gave him freedom of movement, and he was not governed like the city folks of Greyville were. He learnt that they are weaklings, and for their weakness, they wilfully would inflict pain on others much weaker than them and take satisfaction when carrying out their ghastly deeds.
He kept his scars hidden and let no one learn of his pains. If they did, they would know how to hurt him. Moreover, they must never learn his name, if they do, then his name would spread afar. Given time, the people who he is running away from would hear about him. They would hunt him down so that they could resume their tortures, maybe this time, they would bury him.
When the leading citizens of Greyville asked him his name, he wouldn’t tell. When they asked him to move on, he would not budge. He stayed and for his stubbornness, he got into many fights. Although, he kept pretty much to himself and walked his own winding road, he still ended up in brawls which he was prone to. He had committed no crime in town. The law couldn’t pin him, but it was the neighbourhood watchdogs that bothered him. They just fancied getting shut of him, maybe because he was a loner. He had the looks of a fragile kid and the neighbourhood watchdogs thought he would be easy to get rid of. They tried various methods. In the beginning, they tried strong-arm tactics to run him out of Greyville. He would fight them off. Then disappear but only to be the first to show up on the streets come mornings. And many nights, he was the last to disappear.
No one knew why he was in Greyville or where he came from, they didn’t know where he stayed or slept either. Many attempts were made to find his hideout, they tried to wait him out at night so they could follow him to his camp but it did not work. Skinny was too cunning to be caught by them. The clothes he wore everyday were the same that he had on the first day when he arrived in Greyville. The faded blue shirt was always a little creased but clean. It was like it was just washed. The black leather jacket he had on was a size too large on him.
The first time folks got a look at him when his jacket was off, mind you, he still had his sweatshirt on to cover the scars. They called him Skinny. They called him that because of the skin and bones they could see on his frame. That’s how thin he was and would be. Toughs and muggers took Skinny for an easy pushover, they soon learnt different.
He was too stubborn and would not be pushed over worth a damn. He would stand his ground to fight anyone who came looking for him, and if he did lose a fight on the first day, he would come back looking for the bully the next day and continue the fight all over again. The toughs just could not take it. They could not win. They left him alone or steered clear of him.
He shied away from making friends. His only contact with the locals was on the football grounds where he could make himself tired. The ground had no stadiums or stands built to watch when a game was in progress, and several matches could be played at the same time. It was a massive big field with over thirty pitches in two rows of fifteens. Spectators would stand around the football pitch of their choice to cheer for their team.
Matches were played every day of the week, and you would find Skinny threading his way between spectators and pitches hoping to be called in to play. Sometimes, opportunities arose when a club lacking funds or substitutes would call on Skinny to sub for the team. He would play, and nearly always scored.
Skinny would be the last to leave the grounds. Long after the ground’s staff had cleared the nettings, posts, secured the changing rooms and then departed. Once alone, he would then exercise through the night until he’d collapse to the ground out of sheer exhaustion; and what little muscles showed on his scrawny frame would quiver with exhaustion. Most nights, it did. He had to exercise every night to get to that stage, where he would knock himself out to have an untroubled thirty minutes of fit-full sleep before the dreaded nightmares struck.
After his nightly exercise, he would then stagger from the ground. He would enter the motorway, walk a mile and a half on the shoulder of the highway to enter the forest. He would then thread his way through the tall grass and densely wooded forest to the river, were he would wash and would barely be able to make it to his dry grass bed to lie down. Sleep, he could only get it if he was mentally and physically tired. If he wasn’t tired, then he would not be able to sleep a second.
He did not push for sleep and did not waste his waking hours lying down either. To make himself tired, he started the day cultivating his vegetable garden on the banks of the river. He followed it by exercising. Then came the excavation of the lake he was creating, and he was constructing it according to the lay of the land.
He had lived six lonely years in the forest, recuperating, before he was fit to venture out. The forest gave him time for his wounds to heal. It fed him and it gave him life. It was his little Eden. It was a safe haven from his enemies and from the folks of Greyville. The three square miles of forest was b