Possessed

by Peter Laws

  So let me leap up from my desk in a crash of spilt tea as we enter the applause section because the following multi-dimensional gems deserve every clap. To my lovely literary agent, Joanna Swainson, and my foreign rights agent, Therese Cohen – you prepare the way for these books, and I’m grateful. To Susie Dunlop, Lesley Crooks, Kelly Smith, Daniel Scott, Christina Griffiths, Kirsten Munday, and Simon and Fliss Bage – this is the team at my publishers, Allison & Busby. You guys will probably never know how much it meant to me when you said yes to my first novel Purged, and now look – you’ve given Matt Hunter a fourth ride on the carousel? Wow.

  I want to thank my family too: my mum Jean, my sister Julie and my brother Norman (to whom this book is dedicated). It’s been a heck of a stormy year, hasn’t it, but your lights keep on shining. What an inspiration you all are. I want to thank my dad too.

  Thanks also to my wonderful, beautiful wife Joy, who just poured me a red wine (about three minutes ago). My talented and brilliant daughter Emma, who helped me get a moth out of my office just now, then hugged me goodnight (about ten minutes ago). And to my whacky and kind-hearted son, Adam who I was tickling on the bed (about thirty minutes ago, while he wore an Ikea lampshade on his head). Crikey, I love you lot.

  Then finally, to you the reader, who I could easily just see in one dimension I suppose. After all I’m the author, and you’re the kindly punter who bought this book (for which I’m grateful). But of course, it’s way more intricate than that, isn’t it? Who knows what you’ll be doing when you put this book down, or what life lies at the other end of these words. I’ve no idea, but what I do know is this: I’m not just an author, and you’re not just a reader – we’re both wonderfully complex characters with noble traits and significant screw-ups. There are no bit players in this world, after all. I think of that sometimes: of where these books end up, and who reads them. Yeah, I’m talking about you sitting or lying there right now, somehow hearing my words playing through your brain system, in your choice of voice. Letting my spirit possess your mind, if only for a few hours. Thanks for letting me into your head again, but now, we must get the spirit of Possessed from out of your body. So that you can carry on with your life. So are you ready? Good …

  Close your eyes, and hear this prayer …

  ‘Spirit of the fourth Matt Hunter book, listen to me. You cannot live in this reader any longer. I CAST THEE OUT! You are condemned to wander the earth until you find some other reader to climb inside. But for now set this prisoner free. Amen.’

  There you go. All clean again. Now go and eat chocolate and watch some telly.

  Peter Laws, at home, drinking red wine and eating Ben and Jerry’s cookie dough ice cream (which is, I reckon, the most convincing proof of a deity that I know of)

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Peter Laws is an ordained Baptist minister with a taste for horror. He writes a monthly column in the Fortean Times and also hosts a popular podcast and YouTube show which reviews thriller and horror films from a theological perspective. He is also the author of The Frighteners which explores our fascination with the macabre. He lives with his family in Bedfordshire.

  peterlaws.co.uk @revpeterlaws

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  By Peter Laws

  The Matt Hunter series

  Purged

  Unleashed

  Severed

  Possessed

  COPYRIGHT

  Allison & Busby Limited

  11 Wardour Mews

  London W1F 8AN

  allisonandbusby.com

  First published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in 2020.

  This ebook edition published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in 2020.

  Copyright © 2020 by Peter Laws

  The moral right of the author is hereby asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  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 without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978–0–7490–2472–7