Close Encounters of the Strange Kind

by Michael Kerr

  Thank God that the future is a closed book, and that only one page may be read at a time. The knowledge of what is to come does not bear thinking about. If it could be subtly or even radically changed, then fine, but even that way lays madness. To see the misfortune that would affect so many would be intolerable. Who would want to know that a loved one would succumb the following month or year to incurable disease? Or be privy to an impending air crash; to know that a 747 would explode in mid-air and fall from the sky to decimate a residential area, killing several hundred people. The prior knowledge of death and destruction would invite insanity. And informing people of future events would beg disbelief, then fear, and finally a shunning hatred as they came to pass. To see the following week’s winning lotto numbers, race results and stock market share prices may be desirable: inside information that could be instantly employed and converted to vast wealth has its charm. But no bad stuff, thank you. Just a quick in and out of the near future with a mind full of get-rich-quick information would do nicely.

  Alec was not going to reach Keswick that bright summer morning. If he had known what was about to happen, he would not have been so relaxed, singing along with Willie Nelson, who was ironically – as it turned out – telling all who were listening how funny it was that time slipped away. As Alec sang, with the radio cranked up good and loud, he was planning a steamy night back at the old homestead, which would involve Sara, his Mickey Mouse towel, and maybe a liberal amount of baby oil. And as those thoughts drifted through his mind on that hot July day, he had exactly five minutes left to live.

  The deer leapt out from high bracken, appearing in mid-air two feet from the windscreen of his Ford Explorer. Even as Alec spun the steering wheel and stamped on the brake, he knew that he could not avert disaster. The tyres screeched in complaint and left two black lines of rubber on the warm asphalt. The 4x4 left the road and ploughed into the undergrowth – the deer wedged in the now glass-free frame where the screen had been – to impact with a tall pine tree. The melding together of man, deer and machinery was a gruesome spectacle.

  OH GOD, SARA! Alec’s mind screamed in glaring mental neon as a light as bright and intense as an exploding star ignited in his brain, then travelled out, away from him, dimming, receding, becoming a void of black infinite space. Where am I?, he mused, as even his awareness of the darkness dissolved.

  It was a year to the day of Alec’s passing that he woke up from what he imagined to have been no more than a vivid nightmare. He was safe and warm in bed. All was well...until he opened his eyes. Teary-eyed strangers stared down at him, and a man wearing a white coat held a stethoscope to his chest. He fought to make sense of the situation, and then passed out.

  There was no logical explanation. The truth made no sense to him or anyone else. As far as everyone but he was concerned he was Danny Mitchell, a twenty-eight year old electrician who had suffered a massive stroke. When they had eventually switched off the life support, Danny had apparently died, had flat lined, only for his vital signs to almost immediately and vigorously return.

  Could he be insane? Had the damage to his brain caused him to imagine a previous life, complete with a rich and intricately woven tapestry of memories? The only other rationalisation was that he was Alec Parker, and that he had somehow survived by entering the mind of a man who had just expired. That was a bizarre supposition, for if true he would be little more than a ghost; a revenant returned from beyond the grave. But he could not live a lie. His love for Sara would not allow him to turn his back on what had been and start anew. If there was such a thing as reincarnation, then he was back, complete with a full knowledge of his previous life.

  Sara had just returned from spending time at the cemetery and placing fresh flowers on the grass in front of the headstone. She was sitting in the rocking chair out on the patio when a van pulled into the drive and a sandy-haired young man in T-shirt and jeans climbed out and approached her.

  “Can I help you?” Sara asked, standing up and walking towards him. He was probably lost. A lot of tourists stopped to ask directions at this time of the year, having taken a wrong turn on a back road in their search for Derwent Water.

  “I hope so,” Alec said, not knowing how to broach and share the miracle of his survival. “I used to know...was very close to Alec, and wanted to meet you and talk about him. Is that something you are prepared to do?”

  The slightly crooked smile and the somehow familiar intensity of his gaze disconcerted Sara. She felt that she knew him, and invited him in for coffee.

  It was over an hour later that he found the fortitude to tell her the truth as he knew it; of how he had somehow been returned to life in the body of a young man by the name of Danny Mitchell.

  There was too much detail for Sara to dismiss as the ravings of a lunatic. He knew the minutia of her and Alec’s time together. Even that she had a small cherry-red, crescent-shaped naevus on her left buttock, and that his nickname for her was Pooh. There was no question she could pose him that he could not immediately and fully answer. And finally she believed, and thanked God for the second chance that they had been given to be together.

  25

  IT TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE

  It was ten p.m. and Larry was under a lot of pressure. He had been dating Terri for a couple of months, and she was now pushing for them to move in together. The right thing for him to do was stop seeing her: just tell her that he wasn’t interested in a long-term relationship. But he had fallen in love with her, and it was hard to walk away from someone that you now cared for more than anything else in the world.

  “Penny for them?” Terri said as she climbed out of bed and slipped on a fluffy towelling robe.

  “My thoughts?” Larry said.

  “What else? You’ve got that thousand yard stare, and you’re a little melancholy this evening.”

  “I’m fine. Just wishing that I didn’t have to drive into the city tomorrow.”

  “I’ll come with you…if you want me to.”

  “I’ll be tied up all day with my agent,” Larry said as he got dressed, all set to leave Terri’s flat after they’d had coffee. “And then I have a meet at a restaurant in Chelsea with the editor from Harper Collins who handles my work. You’d be on your own.”

  Terri shrugged. “Okay, whatever.”

  Larry hated lying to her, but had to. That was why he knew the relationship would have to end. He had been a loner for all of his adult life, since he had been the victim of a serious life-changing attack. Fortunately he worked from home. He was a writer of horror fiction, and two of his books had made him enough money to buy a small cottage in a very secluded location on the Essex/Suffolk border, tucked away off a B road not far from the village of Birdbrook.

  He drove home from Terri’s flat in Haverhill at a little after midnight, garaged the car and went into the cottage and locked up. It was that time of the month again. He had never got used to it. During the next day he started with what appeared to be a fever. His throat was sore, his nose ran, and he began to sweat profusely and then shiver violently. His bones ached, and a headache grew in intensity until he was sure that his skull would split and explode. All he could do was lie in his darkened bedroom and suffer the symptoms that he knew would lead to him being overcome by dark, violent dreams, and mental and physical changes that he had absolutely no control over.

  Scotch, painkillers and sleeping pills made no difference. He had tried everything over the years to lessen the affects of…of what? A strange malady that was impossible to believe existed in the twenty-first century. It was supposedly little more than folklore from a bygone age. But he knew better. He was afflicted with a condition that was better suited to the terror-filled pages of the fiction that he wrote with such authority.

  Night came, and Larry’s personality was suppressed as he shape shifted and left the cottage by way of opening the bedroom window and leaping down to the ground, to land with the agility and balance of a gymnast dismounting a beam, or a cat that had f
allen from a building or tree, to right itself and land on its feet…or paws, no worse for wear.

  There was an immediate sense of total freedom, and a need to run, hunt, kill and eat. He was now able to see the slightest movement in the glow from the full moon, such was the acuity of his improved sight. And he could hear the wing beats of both bats and the moths that they fed on, and smell the scent of living food all around him. His perception of everything was heightened a hundredfold. Pausing and raising his head to the heavens, he howled at the silvery disc that had given him temporary release from being human.

  He awakened at dawn, dazed and confused, lying in a corner of the kitchen, curled up like a dog. Sitting up with his back against the wall he felt well again. The fever had passed, and he knew that normal service had been resumed for another month. The blood did not surprise him, for it was what he expected after another ‘episode’, as he chose to label them. The red streaks and patches and spots were almost dry on his naked body, and rimmed his fingernails. And he could still taste the coppery, salty aftertaste of something’s lifeblood in his mouth. God help him! He had no memory of where he had been or what he had done, and could only hope, as always, that he had not taken human prey.

  After going upstairs to shower and dress, Larry went back down to the kitchen and switched on the coffeemaker and the television that stood side by side on a worktop. As he poured a cup of coffee, the local news came on, and first up was an interview with a farmer from Cavendish who had found two of his sheep dead, ripped to pieces and partly consumed. The farmer was convinced that a pack of feral dogs were the culprits, but he was wrong. Larry knew better.

  Terri phoned at lunchtime, as he was writing a dénouement to the first draft of a creepy novel that featured a small group of survivors facing a multitude of zombies, following a viral outbreak that had almost wiped out humanity.

  “How was your trip to London?” Terri asked.

  “Fine,” Larry lied. “And we need to talk…about our future.”

  “Yes, we do,” Terri said, smiling. She had known what Larry was from the moment that she had met him and recognised the lycanthropic glint in his dark-brown eyes. It took one to know one, and she looked forward to being his lifelong partner, and the pleasure that they would have hunting together under each and every future full moon.

  About The Author

  Michael Kerr is the pseudonym of Mike Smail the author of several crime thrillers and two children’s novels. He lives and writes in the Yorkshire Wolds, and has won, been runner-up, and short listed on numerous occasions for short story competitions with Writing Magazine and Writers’ News.

  After a career of more than twenty years in the Prison Service, Mike now uses his experience in that area to write original, hard-hitting crime novels.

  Connect With Michael Kerr and discover other great titles.

  Web

  www.michaelkerr.org

  Michael Kerr’s official site

  Facebook

  https://www.facebook.com/MichaelKerrAuthor

  Kindle Store

  http://www.michaelkerr.org/amazon

  Also By Michael Kerr

  DI Matt Barnes Series

  1 - A Reason To Kill - Link

  2 - Lethal Intent - Link

  3 - A Need To Kill - Link

  The Joe Logan Series

  1 - Aftermath - Link

  2 - Atonement - Link

  Other Crime Thrillers

  Deadly Reprisal - Link

  Deadly Requital - Link

  Black Rock Bay - Link

  A Hunger Within - Link

  The Snake Pit - Link

  Children’s Fiction

  Adventures in Otherworld – Part One – The Chalice of Hope - Link

  Adventures in Otherworld – Part Two – The Fairy Crown - Link