by Bryan Murphy
Other e-books by Bryan Murphy
Breakaway: https://bit.ly/1bzeL1z
Postcards from Italy: https://booksonblogtm.blogspot.it/search/label/Bryan%20Murphy
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Website: https://www.bryanmurphy.eu
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Now read this extract from Bryan Murphy’s e-book Heresy.
They go to Flandria. The weather is unusually cool, such a relief after the heat and humidity of Lewes. The Association’s hotels are all in town centres and uniformly comfortable.
In the second week, Maggie suggests they venture into the countryside.
“It is only outside the towns that we will really be anywhere different from home. Can we?”
“I know what you mean, my love, but unapproved hotels can be awkward. You never know who you might meet there.”
Dougal’s need to demonstrate his acceptance of his new wife far outweighs his misgivings about strangers, and they go.
The village is picturesque. The old materials used to construct its buildings are now the height of Continental chic. Most of the houses are scattered around a tall, imposing building, the village’s hotel. The newlyweds are allocated a spacious, well lit room, containing several fittings whose purpose is unclear to them. They make love all afternoon.
A wave of unease catches his stomach as they come down towards the dining room and absorb the smell. Dougal thinks that his fear for Maggie should be greater than for himself, but as they pass through the swing doors, he realises that it is not.
Five men and three women sit around two tables next to each other, relishing blood and meat. Dougal is sure that Maggie has never been allowed near such a scene. It is one that he has been trained to avoid. He feels sick. Sick and angry.
The talk in the dining room lapses. Hard eyes search their faces, their physiques, for an indication of their tendency. A grey-haired woman motions them with pointed chin and broad hand to take seat among them.
Dougal’s training has not equipped him to deal with a group of carnivores who presume he is one of them. It has not allowed him even to imagine it. But the unimaginable has become real, and the horror of it roots him to the spot.
Doubt dissolves. Fury seeps into eight faces. The nearest to Dougal, a fat, ruddy, man’s face, the epitome of all that he has been taught to classify as unhealthy, moves into the centre of his blurred vision. A drinking beaker is thrust into his hand. It contains pig’s blood, warm and pungent. It gives off the tang of the heavy stimulant mixed into it. It is not an invitation or a question. It is a challenge.
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