Ethan Walker's Road To Wonderland (Road To Wonderland #3)

by L. J. Stock

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  A note to the reader

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  Dedication

  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

  Authors Playlist

  About The Author

  A note to the reader:

  Ethan Walker’s story is the third in a series of releases, all written by different authors who came together with one idea in mind: to be part of a team that could create a world away from reality, where struggles are dealt with today in order to find a better tomorrow.

  This is their journey to Wonderland.

  For more information on upcoming releases, please visit Twitter @RTWSeries

  www.twitter.com/RTWSeries or like our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/RTWSeries

  Ethan Walker's Road to Wonderland© 2015

  L.J. Stock

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the author, except that of small quotations used in critical reviews and promotion via blogs.

  This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination only. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or deceased, events or any other incident is entirely coincidental.

  Front cover image by L.J. Stock

  Edited by Heather Ross

  L.J. Stock is a member of MP ~ Wonderland©, a creation of Victoria L. James and Francesca Marlow. It is an independent twitter RP group that was created in January 2012 and still runs to date. All stories played out there are from the future of these characters' lives and do contain spoilers. Please be aware of this when choosing to follow.

  Currently available in the Road To Wonderland Series:

  Izzy Moffit's Road To Wonderland

  Paris Hemsworth’s Road to Wonderland

  Acknowledgements:

  They say it takes a village to raise a child. Well, a book is very much the same way. You birth it, nurture it, put your heart and soul into, and then look to the best people out there to help you make it something better. There are so many people in my life who are supportive of this passion of mine, and I'm going to attempt to thank them all in here. First and foremost, I have to thank my family. To my dad, Phil, and Step-mom, Ellen, thank you for always encouraging me, for believing in my passion and me also, and for the suggestion of a character called Ellen. She's not in this one, but soon, I promise. To my sisters, Rachael and Emily, brothers, Jason and Adam, my brother-in-law, Kevin, Sisters-n-law, Alicia and Dawn, and all my nieces and nephews... You guys inspire me everyday, and I can't thank you enough for being who you are and loving me for who I am, strange quirks and all.

  To my mum, you may not be here in body, but you inspire me every single day. I love you.

  To my amazing friend and editor, Heather Ross, writing was how you and I became friends, and that we're here just goes to show that the pen is mightier than anything else that life can throw at us. You have supported me from the beginning, and I can't thank you enough for that and for always being there; I love you. To Victoria L. James, you have been an amazing friend to me, and I can't thank you enough for giving me Ethan, and for all of the others. *Wink* You are a wonderful friend and collaborator, and I love you. To Amy, Francesca, and Charlie, I can't thank you enough for every ounce of love and support you've given me. To K, thank you for the amazing Beta job, you have a fantastic eye for detail. You helped me see some big mistakes I would have missed.

  To the ladies at Bare Naked Words - no typo this time - thank you for being at our backs and helping get the word out there; you're both wonderful.

  To the Wonderlanders, you know who you are ladies! Thank you for always having our backs and being there to support and interact and encourage us every day. You inspire me, and I love each and every one of you for simply being there. Never stop dreaming ladies, because dreams do come true... in time!

  Lastly, to the reader, thank you for buying this book, for supporting my dream and the dream of every indie writer out there. It's people like you that keep the words coming.

  Dedicated to:

  My mum, Karen Stock.

  Without you I wouldn't be who I am.

  I keep you alive in my heart and mind every single day.

  "Dean, turn that crap down."

  My brother’s chuckle as he mashed the buttons on his games console wasn't unexpected. The kid lived to give me a hard time. He was two years younger than me and a royal pain in the arse. My mate Scott and I, however, were the only two people on the face of the planet that could rag on him. Anyone else got their arse kicked. He was family. Blood. That's all anybody needed to know.

  Frustrated with the noise, I rolled over and put my back to him. It was a Saturday morning. The night before, Scott and I had been at a party and I'd been shit-faced. Mum had handed me two paracetamol and a pint of water on her way out for her ritual Saturday morning with the ladies. She'd been gone a while, but peeling an eyelid back to look at the clock and check the time, I figured she was due home any minute. She was the only person in Manchester that could sort the lad out. She'd said she'd be stopping by the butchers to grab something to roast the next day, and Dad was still at work at the garage, so I had to deal.

  "I swear, next time you come in with a hangover, Dean, I'm gonna bounce on your bloody bed at the arse crack of dawn, you knob."

  "That a challenge, E?"

  "Fuck. No." The kid had too much of an imagination on him. If I offered up a challenge like that, I'd wake up with pink hair or pierced nipples. My grumble was met with another chuckle from him. "Laugh it up, you little twat."

  I'd find a better way to get him back. He had his ways, but I had mine, too.

  Throwing him my middle finger, I started drifting again as he lobbed another indecipherable sentence at me and stuck his head back in his game again. The only way to get through it was embracing the little sentences of annoyance rather than grumbling about them. Sometimes you just had to learn to go with the flow in this house. Dean was loud as fuck but when Dad was home, we scarpered. He was a moody bastard.

  In all honesty, I'm not sure if I managed to fall asleep or not, but I know I drifted, because the knock on the door was the next thing I remembered, other than Dean's hissed swearing under his breath as the game kicked his cocky little arse.

  "Answer
the door, kid."

  "It'll be Scott, E."

  I waited almost a full minute for him to get off his arse and do as I asked, but another knock came long before he so much as thought of moving.

  "I'll get it then, yeah?" I grumbled.

  I was on my feet in a twist of my body, my hand shoving at Dean's head as he tried to duck out of reach. I caught him before he could dodge me, my laugh more of a snort of triumph.

  "Arsehole!"

  "Tit!" I laughed, jumping over the back of the sofa and padding toward the door. I rubbed my cheeks with both hands, ignoring the rasp from my unshaven face. I was hoping to get rid of the cobwebs of sleep before I was forced into wakefulness. Every weekend I swore I wasn't going to drink as much as the one before, but every weekend I was convinced that the hair of the dog was the only right way to get rid of my smashing headache. It actually worked, but the Sunday hangover was the biggest bitch to contend with, along with my dad.

  I didn't think it was going to be anyone other than Scott at our door. Dad’s friends didn't dare come to the house in fear of Mum’s wrath at them for leading him astray; Dean’s friends were too scared of me to even think about knocking, the little twats, and Mum was out with the ladies.

  Scott was the obvious choice. He was my best mate, had been since our mums had set up a play date when we were about one.

  "You know you don't have to knock, you twat," I said, flinging the door open and offering the same salutation I did every time he chose manners over habit. Only, it wasn't Scott, and the bobby with his neon yellow jacket and chequered cap looked put out at my greeting. "Sorry, thought you were my mate."

  What the hell did the Old Bill want on a Saturday afternoon?

  "Clearly. Is this the Walker residence?"

  I scoffed at his comment and crossed my ankles as I leaned against the doorframe. At nineteen, I'd had a couple of run-ins with the law, but nothing serious. Mum's disappointment was the best deterrent out there. Even Scott kept on the straight and narrow at her word. That being said, not one of my dealings with them had ever been this polite or formal.

  "Aye, it is. How can I help you?"

  "Kevin Walker?"

  "That's my dad. What's he done now?"

  Dad had a bit of a gambling problem. Granted, cops at the door were normally accompanying bailiffs, but they weren't ever this formal. It wasn't right and it set my teeth on edge.

  Peeking out the door, I saw the police car sat at the curb, another bobby sat in the passenger seat, scribbling down on a clipboard on the dash. There were no bailiffs to be seen, and it was obviously not some restitution order, because the constable only had a notepad in hand.

  Dad must have done it this time.

  "Nothing, son. We just need a word. Is he home?"

  "No. He's at work."

  "Walker's Garage is it?"

  "That's the one."

  He read off the address and I nodded in agreement. Mum had always told us to leave this shit up to her and Dad, which meant Dean and I should probably evacuate the house. Mum was an absolute pushover most of the time - always trying to help people out and put out fires, but when she and Dad got into it, and when it was over us, it wasn't pretty.

  The worst had been the time I'd broken my nose while boxing. I'd loved working the bags with Dad and Dean, but when we showed a little bit of talent, Dad turned us into cash cows and all the fun was taken out of it. He put us in paid fights with kids twice our size. They'd been a sure thing, so Dad had made a mint when we'd won the fights. I'd got sick and tired of it and took a hit to the face. The only rule Dad had was omit the truth; if Mum asks, do not lie.

  To say she'd been pissed when I told her the truth, was an understatement. Dad had been in the dog house for months and I'd been in the shit with him for a month after that.

  Knowing all this, I simply nodded when the officer rattled off the address, and I closed the door like a good lad as he thanked me and wandered off.

  Now, as much as my dad and I didn't get along, I wasn't a total shit. I knew I had to warn him what was heading that way, and my curiosity was clearly getting the better of me.

  "Oi, Dean. Be right back, mate."

  A wave of acknowledgement was all I got as I shoved my feet in my trainers and pushed my keys in my pocket. By car it was a twenty minute drive, but I knew a shortcut. I had to warn Dad.

  The factories behind the house weren't small by any stretch of the imagination, so driving around them took a lot longer than it did to go through them. I'd taken the path so much that the security guard raised his hand in welcome as I sprinted through. He'd tried to catch Dean and I when we were younger, but even then we'd been too fast for him, and now he was an old man. We didn't touch ought, we just passed through, and at some point over the years, the geezer deemed that good enough and stopped chasing us.

  I was through it in five minutes, hopping over the fence and jogging across the road to the ancient brick building Dad had inherited from his old man. It smelled of oil and grease, but had been a second home to us growing up. Noticing he wasn't in the office, I checked the cars in the bay and found his legs sticking out from under the rusted undercarriage of an old escort.

  "Dad."

  "Not now, Ethan."

  This was my dad's standard answer to everything. My arm could be snapped in two and hanging backwards, and he'd still tell me not now. It was what he'd done when Dean got a Lego stuck up his nose when we were kids. Mum had ripped him a new one for that, but it was still his standard response.

  "The Old Bill came looking for you at the house."

  That got his attention. The squeaky wheel told me to move back long before his body appeared. His oil-stained and craggy face already had its standard scowl in place as he looked up at me. Dean looked more like him than I did, but the hazel eyes were disturbingly familiar to the ones I saw in the mirror every morning.

  "So? Your mother’s there, ain't she?"

  "She ain't back yet, Dad. They asked if this was where you worked so they're on their way over. What did you do?"

  "Nothing, you little twat. Now off with you before they get here."

  "Too late," I said smugly, my eyes hitting the car as it pulled up to one of the bays at the front of the garage.

  I had to admit, my curiosity had got the better of me. It hadn't been the usual visit. I knew what to expect when the Old Bill showed up. They tarred us all with the same brush. To them, we were little hoodlums in training. They were just waiting for the day they'd be coming to the door for us. They hadn't counted on our mum, though. A teacher with a good head on her shoulders, she wasn't going to let her boys become trouble makers. She had a hard enough time with Dean winding her up with his dialect. He and his little idiot friends spoke like that all the time and he knew Mum hated it, so he'd started using it more often. Even his teachers in school had been confused as hell, because he had a good grasp of the English language.

  "In the office."

  "What?"

  "In the fucking office now, Ethan!"

  I let out all the air in my lungs as I pushed my hands in my pockets. It must be pretty bad if I was being sent out of earshot. Kicking the dirty rag out of my way, and dodging the clip around my ear for doing it, I headed to the office and kicked the door shut with more force than I'd intended. I'd get my arse chewed out for it later; that was for sure. The one good thing to come of it, however, was the fact that the door had bounced from the frame and left a gap, which meant the moment the constable strolled in through the open bay door, I could see, and hear, everything.

  "Mr. Kevin Walker?"

  "Aye, what can I do for you?"

  "I'm afraid there's been an accident, Mr. Walker. Your wife was on a bicycle on her way out of town."

  "No."

  "The car that hit her didn't stop-"

  "Not my Julia."

  My palm fell flat on the wall as the other grabbed the door at my dad's tone. He'd already come to the same conclusion I had. The bobby's tone was fat
alistic. There was no hope, just condolences.

  My blood ran cold as they continued to talk, the spill of tools as my dad's wail filled the small building setting my teeth on edge, but it was nothing in comparison to the battle inside of me. My body hunched with pain, my fingers digging into the door and clawing at the wall as grief started like a burning in my heart and flared out to my limbs.

  Not Mum.

  Between one breath and the next, I had forgotten how to do the simple task of inhaling and exhaling. My lungs burned as a lump formed in my throat, tears swelling in my eyelids. This wasn't real; it couldn't be real. I'd just seen her this morning. She'd kissed me on the cheek and handed me a cup of tea. She'd smiled her smile at me...

  Not Mum.

  The world seemed to vibrate violently as I forced a burning breath into my lungs, reality bleeding into a waking nightmare as the conversation beyond the door went on. The words were impersonal, and my dad's reaction was very real: the roar of pain, the heartache, the absolute devastation. I could feel it echoing in my own emotions as they drowned me.

  Not Mum.

  Unable to listen to anymore references of Mum as a victim, a tragedy, or any other clinical terminology they had, I punched the door out of my way and lurched through the frame, my hands balled into fists.

  "Not Mum."

  The police officer was surprised to see me, but my dad just looked disgusted at my sudden appearance. We stared at one another for the longest time, our grief echoing between us before his took precedence above mine, he closed his eyes, and turned away.

  Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised by his reaction, or hurt by it, but everything was hurting, inside and out. My father's refusal to give me support just weighed me down further as I turned my glare to the policeman stood beside him.

  "Please..." My voice didn't sound like my own. Hoarse and broken, it echoed from the walls like a siren.

  "I'm sorry, kid. They did everything they could but she was gone by the time the ambulance arrived on scene."

  I felt my head shaking from side to side, my balled fists pushing against my temples. I didn't want to hear this. I didn't want to believe any of it was true.