Tomorrow would be the start of a new life, a new day for the cold-hearted killer. But today she would fully grieve for her old one.
The End
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Here is a list of all of my books to date –
Novels
Ugly Beautiful (Horror/Thriller)
After going on the run into the mountains, a young gangster comes across the body of an unconscious young woman outside his hideaway cottage retreat. As he attempts to nurse the mysterious girl back to health things take a chilling turn.
The Desolation of Solitude (Sci-Fi/Mystery/Thriller)
A young man awakens from a long hibernation sleep on board an eerie and crew-less space shuttle with no memory of who he is or how he got there.
Sarah Smiles (Young Adult/Coming of Age)
After moving with his military father to a new army base, an introverted eleven-year-old boy struggles to fit into his new life. But when he meets the mysterious tomboy, Sarah, she is the one who opens his eyes up to a whole new world filled with fun, adventure, romance, and tragedy.
Once Upon a Time in Edinburgh (Adult/Drama/Romance)
When Ryan tragically dies in a plane crash, he bizarrely reawakens on an Edinburgh bus, seated beside a familiar, beautiful, lost tourist girl from five years earlier, and soon realizes that he has been granted a second chance with the one who got away.
The Wrath of David (Post-Apocalyptic/Action/Thriller)
In the aftermath of a brutal civil race war, David, a suicidal marine with a tragic past and nothing left to live for, sets off on a perilous journey into the heart of a lawless, un-United Kingdom, to seek out the barbaric racist murderers who brutally butchered his mix raced lover.
The Old Man and The Princess (Thriller/Mystery/Sci-Fi/Fantasy)
A Raven Award Finalist. A Nashville Film Festival Screenplay Finalist and recently optioned to be a MAJOR MOTION PICTURE. 'Is the old man really who he says he is? And is he telling Sersha the truth about where she is truly from?' A crazy old man kidnaps Sersha, a young, headstrong, Irish girl, from the streets of Galway and tries to convince her that her life's destiny is tied to a mysterious cave in the Scottish Highlands.
My Sister and I (Horror/Thriller)
A young teenage girl and her twin sister must grow up hard and fast in the unforgiving Scottish Highlands as their father - a twisted and violent man, obsessed with the end of the world - teaches them how to survive out in the wild with no one to rely on but themselves.
Lust for Life. (Thriller/Action/Adult/Romance)
A working-class man with terminal cancer gives up everything so that he can live his life to the fullest. But when he finds love and a new lease of life along the way, will that be enough to curb his crazy antics from spiraling into an unstoppable train wreck of carnage?
The Fairy Boy of Calton Hill (Books 1-3). (Young Adult/Fantasy)
A young boy is befriended by a strange fairy creature after she breaks the strict rules of her world and intervenes when the boy is beaten up by a gang of bullies outside the secret magical entrance to her fantastical world.
Novelettes
The Comedian
The Letter
Short story collections
3in1 Horror
As an added bonus, please find excerpts from my latest, best-selling books 'My Sister and I’ and ‘The Old Man and The Princess'
'From the author of 'The Old Man and The Princess' (Recently optioned to become a major motion picture) - comes a new, dark, violent and gripping, twisted Scottish Thriller.'
MY SISTER AND I
(Contains strong language, graphic scenes of violence and scots dialect - Not for the faint of heart)
A young teenage girl and her twin sister must grow up hard and fast in the unforgiving Scottish Highlands as their father - a twisted, violent man, obsessed with the end of the world - teaches them how to survive in the wild with no one to rely on but themselves.
- What readers are saying about this truly disturbing novel –
'Truly delicious horror'
'Make no mistake, the novel is carried by the heart of the characters, through the sick and the depraved to the shining little core of hope that is sisterhood.'
'A road trip tale from hell.'
'Wow. This is dark and perhaps the darkest book so far from Sean-Paul Thomas. I love the way that whatever genre he writes he evokes the atmospheric feel of where it is set. I could feel the isolation and have to say I was impressed with this book.'
1
My earliest memory of my father's violence was when I was around five years old. I remember sitting in the back seat of our old beat up five-door ford escort. It was cold and dark outside as we travelled along a lonely highland road where the only faded light came from a full but faintly clouded moon that had just slunk down behind one of the dark and brooding mountain tops that hovered over us like some gigantic sleeping dinosaur.
We might have been driving back from the local town, or even Glasgow perhaps—which was around a four-hour drive south from our farm house in one of the remotest regions of the Scottish Highlands, or we could’ve just been out and about for a wee random winter drive in amongst the beautiful snow swept highland valleys and mountains. I can’t quite be sure. Although, my father did enjoy his random, spur of the moment drives and ventures out into the wilderness, so it could have been that more than anything else.
Mother wasn't there, I recall that much. Just Dad, sitting up front by himself, singing along to his Bruce Springsteen greatest hit tunes on the car stereo while my twin sister and I sat silently in the back with our seatbelts firmly fastened.
In fact, if I recall correctly, my sister was sleeping soundly in the back beside me, although she could have just as easily been in one of her foul, demonic moods and refusing to speak to me for some reason or another.
That night it seemed like we were the only other people out there on that isolated highland road. Everywhere around us seemed so calm and peaceful as my father continued to drive along in good spirits, safely sticking to the fifty miles per hour speed limit like he always did, while singing with his heart and soul to some imaginary concert audience sitting behind the windscreen, out in the road in front of him. An audience that only he could see.
I remember feeling him tense up all of a sudden. Only a little at first as his singing became less frequent and passionate until he ceased from singing out altogether. Concert over for the time being.
He kept anxiously glancing into his rear-view mirror, every so often at first, then it seemed that he spent more and more time gazing into it than he did paying attention to the road up ahead. The next thing I knew a pair of bright headlights from behind us were swiftly shining in through the rear.
Another vehicle was fast upon us. A larger one than ours, possibly a van or a big jeep. It had sped up on us over the past few miles, going well over the national speed limit, and now sat impatiently tailgating our smaller car from behind.
So, this was what had caused my father's new anxious state of mind. He hated anyone speeding up behind him, especiall
y too fast and reckless, when there was clearly no need for such bullish behaviour and on a quiet country road too, with all that beautiful stunning scenery every which way one looked.
“Why is every cunt aw-ways in such a fuckin' rush these days, eh?” he always used to say while shaking his head in absolute disgust when other cars and lorries drove right up behind him, like he wasn’t even there. “Why would ye no just wantae go as slow as you can drivin doon these magnificent roads, or even stop and pull over for a wee minute, get the hell oot yur damn fuckin car and just take in aw this bloody great gorgeousness and fresh clean air. Ah dinnae ken.” He finished with a deep sigh and another shake of his head.
Observing him over the years, he usually—nine times out of ten—just pulled over into the next available parking or passing bay and let the impatient driver or drivers pass him by with only a dirty scowl on his face and a shame-on-you glint in his eye as they sped on by, continuing on their merry way. But something was different this time. Something was dangerously off inside my father’s head that night. A switch had been well and truly flipped and I was seeing it for the very first time.
The driver of the van sitting tucked up, bumper to bumper directly behind us, had begun to push all my father's very few trigger buttons all at the same time.
First button: he was tailing so dangerously close to our car on such a treacherous highland road, obnoxiously disrespecting the national speed limit and failing to keep a safe distance from the vehicle in front, which was two seconds, he’d always say, in dry conditions, and six seconds in icy wet conditions, such as it was in this very situation.
Second button: the driver behind us was flashing his headlights over and over again, like his car was having some kind epileptic seizure, before leaving them on full beam, temporarily blinding everyone inside our car. Putting the lives of not just my father in danger, but the lives of his two-innocent-wee-darling-daughters seated in the back.
And third: the ignorant, arrogant driver was now tooting his horn for my dad to pull over or just move the hell aside and let him pass.
The only problem with that plan of action was that there happened to be no good passing points that my father could see in the darkness up ahead for him to pull over and into. He needed some time to find a good safe spot and this ‘arsehole, baw-jawed bastard, cunt bag’ —father’s words—just wasn't allowing him the time to do that.
I was beginning to see an insane and uncontrollable rage brewing in my father’s eyes, slowly but surely taking over his recent placid energy. At the time, it terrified the life out of me because it was the first time I'd ever seen him morphing into such an enraged, demonic creature. Although, it was by no means to be the last that I ever witnessed such an act. It’s just that the first time is always the most shocking. It’s the one that sticks with you the most, and so much more than all the others that came thick and fast over the next few years. It’s the first memory you always carry with you, even when you see it happening all over again and again, in even greater, gorier detail.
What happened next though transpired so fast. Like a snap of someone else’s fingers right in front of my face. Anger and hate engulfed him. It raged through every ounce of fibre in his being like some out of control freight train.
Then it happened.
Without any warning to the driver behind, or any consideration for his daughters’ safety tucked up in the back seat, dad braked violently hard.
My sister, who had been sleeping soundly up until that point, suddenly found herself jolted awake. We stared at each other in absolute dread as the large van ploughed hard into the back of our car with the most deafening crash and bang of crushed metal on metal. Within seconds we came to a shuddering halt in the middle of the deserted road, as did the van with its front bonnet crushed up into the back of us. Without any hesitation, my father swiftly blazed from the car like some freak force of nature. He seemed completely oblivious that my sister and I were even there at all and might even be hurt from the collision. And without checking to see if we were all right, he yanked out a hidden baseball bat, from behind the front driver’s seat.
Immediately, I unclicked my seatbelt. My sister did the same before we both clambered swiftly onto our knees and up onto the back seats of the car. With curious eyes, still caught in a frozen, dream-like aura of shock, horror, and excitement, we watched as my father approached the van and dragged a bearded and dazed, stocky older gentleman out from the driver's seat of the smashed-up vehicle. Then without a single thought for mercy, regret or consequences, our father began to beat and pound the holy living hell out of the man, with stroke after brutal stroke from the full length of his bat—to the man’s chest, arms, legs, and head.
When the man became motionless and no longer seemed to be putting up any kind of fight or resistance— when all life appeared to be pummelled from every ounce of his body and soul, well that was when my father proceeded to use the soles of his big, black, leather, steel-toe-capped boots to stamp and crush the poor man’s head to a total bloody pulp on the tarmac.
I remember compelling myself to hurriedly turn away at that point and hide my face in my hands as the brutal, vicious acts of horror became far too much for my young innocent eyes to handle and my small child brain to comprehend.
My sister, on the other hand, continued to watch the severe act of violence without any feeling whatsoever. At first her face looked expressionless like she was watching some late-night adult TV show that she wasn’t really supposed to be watching but couldn't care less if someone happened to walk in and catch her anyway. Like she’d seen it all before. If it wasn’t for the tiniest flicker of a faded grin upon her angelic face then I would have just figured that perhaps she had no emotion about the situation at all, good or bad. But secretly, I knew in that moment she was loving my father’s brutal actions and learning from it too. Soaking in all that fiery rage and terrible violence into her not so innocent sponge like brain.
When the sick thudding noises of boot upon crushed bone and flesh came to an abrupt halt, I gradually found the courage to glance back up and out of the window again. My father had finally exhausted his efforts to pound the man’s head and body into the ground. He then dragged the dead man—who I sincerely hoped was dead or else I couldn’t imagine the pain and suffering he’d be going through—back up onto his feet before bundling him into his van again but on the passenger side.
Dad then climbed into the driver's compartment and reversed the vehicle away from our own car before accelerating forward and pulling up alongside us. He climbed out of the van and approached us. He then leaned into the driver’s side door and gave us both a warm, reassuring smile. So, he had remembered that we were there after all.
“Ye’s baeth awright, aye?”
We both nodded in unison but said nothing more. Words were not needed in that moment only our calm, cold expressions that told him that we were both fine and unphased with everything that had just gone down.
“That's ma girls. Strong as fuckin Rhinos, eh? just like their fuckin da.”
He gave us a firm, cocky wink that said everything was going to be fine because he was back in charge of the situation. He told us to stay in the car and not get out or go for a bloody wander while he was away. He said that he wouldn't be long. He said he had to drop his friend off somewhere safe and sound and that he’d be back real soon to take us home.
I think we waited for around thirty minutes or so. Only one other car passed us by on the lonely highland road during that time, but lucky for them, they didn't stop. My sister and I kept our heads down low when it drove past, just like Dad had taught us to do when he wasn't around. He wasn’t a big fan of nosy strangers either.
I was about to fall asleep in my sister's lap when the loud, violent sound of the driver's side door swinging open then shut again jolted me awake. My out-of-breath father had thrown himself back inside our car.
“Fuckin freezin oot there the night girls, eh? Jeezo.”
My fathe
r didn't wait for an answer. He'd already started the engine and was soon driving off, back along the dark and lonely highland road. His car back to being the only other vehicle out on the road once again, just the way he liked it.
Without words, my sister and I resumed our seated positions in the backseat and clicked our seat belts back into place. On went the CD player again and, just like nothing had ever happened, our dad began singing once more—full swing, full passion. Normality resumed.
A few minutes later I remember gazing out of the car window as an old stone bridge emerged from the darkness in front of us. A rip-roaring river wound its way down from a higher valley to flow right underneath the bridge. On the right side of the bridge, half of the old stone barrier had come away from the edge like something big and heavy—perhaps the size of another car like ours—had smashed right through it.
Sure enough, as we slowed down to cross the single file bridge, I could just about make out the dark outline of the van from earlier. Its front end totally submerged in the freezing cold-water depths of the murky riverbed below while it's rear-end poked straight out of the rough flowing, ice cold water, shiny and glistening in the moonlight.
As we drove across the bridge, my father stopped singing for a moment. He grinned then snorted out hard.
“Ooof. Looks like a sore one that, eh? Bad luck fella. Al need tae report that tae the station first thing in the morn.”
And with that my father began singing out to the high heavens once again.
‘My Sister and I’ - AMAZON UK
‘My Sister and I’ – AMAZON US
Cold Heart Page 28