Turtle Island: 20th Anniversary Edition (Georgina O'Neil Book 1)

by Darren E Laws

  Caroline wanted to speak, she wanted to scream and fight back but everything was so difficult. He was right, Gary Morris was right; the feeling spreading through her body now was sublime. For the first time in a long, long while, Caroline was at last feeling an overwhelming sense of peace. The anger, the fear, the injustice all dissipated.

  “Now you can sleep.” Morris’s hand covered Caroline’s face and his finger and thumb closed her eyelids, shutting out the world. “Sleep like your mama slept. You’ll thank me for this. For closing this world of pain.”

  And with that action came the darkness and peace Caroline had secretly longed for, but in the sober reality of day would never be brave enough to take alone.

  Part One

  Dark

  Chapter 1 Ghosts

  Washington DC—Tuesday November 12, 2002

  The ice was inches thick across the pond. The grass surrounding it was brittle to walk on and crunched under foot. Ducks skidded on the glass surface confused at the sudden hardness of the water. The air was cold and biting and somehow seemed to mute the ambient noise of traffic from the freeway not more than half a mile away. Susan Dark stopped walking; her breath visible in the cold air. She looked around. Everything was calm. Winter had a vice-like grip on the madness of the world and had slowed everything, people included, down to a slow bearable pace. The only reason to rush was to stay warm but if you wrapped up in enough layers you could take it easy all day and enjoy the silence.

  Susan watched the world gently slipping into stasis. The season had stopped nature’s clock, everything had become frozen in time, in slumber, awaiting the coming spring and the end of a gentle hibernation in peace. She sat on a wooden bench that had become covered in light snow, wiping the seat before she sat. The park would be full during the summer, filled with sun worshipers taking lunch breaks and time off from the melee of work just to catch life away from the office. Government buildings would be vacated while staff flocked to the green grass in search of relaxation, if only for an hour. Some of the most powerful and yet unknown people would be mingling with colleagues, laughing and joking with safe anonymity. But for the next few months there would be more wildlife than human life in the park. Susan liked these quiet months, where she would meet no one but the occasional seasoned jogger. With no one around to see her or more importantly hear her, Susan sang the first few lines from one of her mother’s biggest hits, “Lonesome, as I am”. The poignancy of the song never failed to hit Susan, and her voice quivered with emotion whenever she sang it. Her mother’s legacy to her was financial security, as “fans” bought her back catalog in huge amounts making Caroline Dark another in a long line of recording artists who sold many more records after she died than when she was alive. Making Caroline Dark a carbon copy of her mother, Amy Dark but with better royalty rights to bequeath. Susan’s voice moved across the frozen lake in a haunting melody that entertained only the ducks and geese. Her voice faltered over the line “My heart waits for you to come home.” It wasn’t a difficult line to sing in terms of technique, it barely touched Susan’s vocal range, but it was emotionally difficult to sing. Her eyes filled with tears; they always did.

  “Never have I felt so alone.” She fought with her vocal cords willing them not to give in to the sadness deep within her heart. Her voice hovered in the air like winter fog with only the sound of the ducks, geese and other birds an accompaniment to her solo voice. Susan hung her head, lost for a moment of personal grief. Her tears hit the snow under her feet, the salt from them melting the snow as though it was acid burning through the surface. These waves of melancholy haunted Susan whenever she sang a song by her mother or grandmother. She held no pretense about their deaths, Susan only knew her mother for a few short months. Her grandmother, Amy Dark, was nothing more than a celluloid memory. An image captured on film at her concerts and her one brief moment in the limelight as the star of a movie, State of Confusion, a light-hearted romantic comedy about a country and western singer finding love. This was to be the first in a series of movies, sadly cut short by her murder. She often found herself thinking of them when she was in the middle of cutting an album and looking for inspiration needing to tap into her emotions when writing a new song. Or when, like today, she had to go into the studio to do a cover of one of their records. Susan wiped her eyes and stood. She walked back to the recording studio, through the park and out onto the main street. All the while she was humming the bars to the chorus of “Lonesome, as I am” and the sense of melancholy was replaced with a sense of oneness with her mother and grandmother. Susan held no real religious conviction but somehow felt that she would not be alone in the studio. She often felt her mother’s presence and was told on many occasions about the striking similarities not only in looks but also in sound.

  The peace of the park was soon replaced by the buzzing noise of the city, traffic and people going about their daily activities as Susan made her way to the studio.

  Portmorion, Maryland

  Georgina O’Neil stopped running to regain her breath and looked out toward the sea; forty feet below where she stood was the harbor. Fishing vessels vied for space on the cramped quay and fishermen walked back and forth to large wooden sheds, their daily catch was stored by the side of the boats on the dock awaiting processing before being transported to shops, supermarkets and local markets. Georgina made a point of stopping today and watching the overwhelming beauty of the sea and of nature in full winter bloom. Snow clung to flat surfaces but had been blown away from exposed places. The winter promised to be harsh, but nothing short of a full force gale would stop her daily run when she was at home. The white caps on the sea told a story of bad weather further out, hence the queue of seafaring vessels and stranded fishermen. The wind shifted direction cutting into Georgina’s face, whipping at her with a stinging sensation. The tip of her nose, cold and red, almost numb from the elements. Georgina jogged on the spot determined to keep her muscles warm, the last thing she wanted was to seize up and pull a muscle or tendon on her way home. She took a last look at the picturesque scene in front of her before turning to her left and finishing the last mile along the coast road, and then the downhill stretch to her house. Georgina’s feet bounced off the ground, her body felt light and comfortable with the exercise, she could run like this for another hour with ease, but time was her enemy today. She had to get home, shower and get ready for work. Her house came into view and Georgina’s speed increased slightly. The prospects of a warm shower now the overwhelming desire. Her door key was placed around her neck like a winner’s medal, attached to a blue ribbon. Georgina grabbed the ribbon and pulled the key from between her sweatshirt and tee shirt. Her front door was weathered and needed a fresh coat of paint as it lost the battle to the salty air, sun, rain and snow. She stopped by the door, her breath fairly labored, and found the lock. Twisting the key, she was greeted with a sense of home and of how her job had impacted on her private life. The cardboard boxes which she had been meaning to empty ever since she had moved in over three years ago remained untouched, but life had shuffled along. She was okay with things as they were, she was in no hurry. That was the good thing about home, the good thing about Portmorion, nobody was in a hurry. Today was unique in many respects for Georgina. The culmination of an enquiry on a previous case in Missouri was due, it just so happened to coincide with her yearly review. Georgina knew promotion was not going to be on the agenda. She’d shower, dress and drive to Headquarters at Washington DC for a 2:30 p.m. appointment without the knowledge that her fate had been sealed long ago while sitting in the living room of a police officer on Turtle Island. Her fate had been dictated by the events of her two journeys to that little anomaly of an island and by decisions she made which she knew at the time went against her better judgment. The past would be waiting in the office for her arrival. Georgina stripped as she walked to the bathroom and the waiting shower. Her sweats were bundled unceremoniously into the laundry basket that was close to overflowing. Georgina turned
the shower on. Strong jets of water were forced out of the showerhead by the powerful pump and the room began to mist as the heat from the water clung to cold surfaces. Goosebumps prickled Georgina’s skin as tiny hairs searched for heat to trap. She stood under the stream, closing her eyes as she was consumed by water. She felt safe standing in a vacuum of water, it was the same when she was running, there was very little from the outside world that could touch her. Her fingers rubbed soap into bubbles, and she massaged her face. Her fingertips felt the fine line of a scar across her forehead. The mark was not obtrusive, a small ridge but a permanent reminder for the most part hidden under her fringe. She purposely grew her hair an extra half-inch longer to cosmetically conceal a memory that was more painful than the wound itself.

  Studio 9 ached for a revamp. The technology was new, but the studio was old and wore its history with pride. The walls were decorated with images of a bygone era, pictures of its colorful and rich past. Somewhere along the corridor, Susan Dark would pass photographs of her mother and her grandmother, pictures of them sitting in the very same recording studio where she was recording her new album. Doing exactly what she would be doing, singing in a box with a pair of cans over her head playing her backing track while she cut a vocal. Today would be stranger than most though, today she would be singing with her dead mother and grandmother for the first time. No ghostly apparition just the wonders of modern digital technology as Caroline and Amy Dark rose from the grave to sing once more. The weirder part would be when they come to shoot the video to accompany the song. Magically, Susan would be reunited with them as video technicians splice old film of her mother and grandmother and merge it seamlessly with new footage of Susan sitting with them, laughing with them, talking and singing with them. All the things she longed to do, all the things most women of her age were able to do. Today though was the song “Lonesome, as I am”, written and recorded by her grandmother in 1951 and recorded by her mother in 1977. Now half a century from when Amy Dark sat alone in her kitchen and scribbled the words onto a scrap piece of paper, Susan would be singing a solo verse and backing vocals in a family reunion that only one generation of the Dark family would ever know about. Susan felt strangely apprehensive, as though she was under the scrutiny of her family’s history. The weight of expectation placed upon her shoulders had risen inexorably since news of the recording had leaked in the trade press. Country Music Week magazine was the first to break the story after a careless record executive at her label was overheard talking too loudly at a convention. Susan all but walked away from the project … all but. Had it not been for her serious cash flow situation, she could have easily left the record company, had it not been for her serious cash flow situation she could have retained her artistic integrity and turned down the huge cash advance for the Dark Family Album, as the record title was going to be. There were three family traits in the Dark family and Susan had inherited two of them, a wonderful singing voice and a terrible ability to finance her affairs properly. The third was that her mother and grandmother had both had their successful singing careers cut short through violence. Susan had no desire to inherit the third family trait.

  She made her way along the corridor until she came to one of the studio’s recording rooms. She could see Gil Frolan, the record producer sitting inside the mixing room. The air was thick with smoke, nicotine painted the surface of everything from the faders on the mixing desk to the yellowed wall tiles. Frolan was sucking hard on his twenty-third cigarette of the day and it wasn’t even midday yet.

  “C’mon in, babe.”

  When Frolan spoke, it looked as though his lungs had caught fire. Smoke poured out of his mouth like a factory chimney in the industrial age. Susan dreaded to think what the condition of the man’s lungs were like; his skin was ravaged by the effects of smoking. Hundreds of lines etched his eyes and mouth from the repeated action of sucking in deeply on the long white sticks of tobacco. His long silver hair was wiry and tinged with brown streaks that on first inspection looked like highlights until you drew closer and could smell the rank odor of stale tobacco. The brown streaks, a physical imprint of over sixty years addiction to a nicotine craving that manifested itself with a continual chain of cigarettes permanently placed between his parched lips, only the tips of his fingers matched his hair and teeth in discoloration.

  Susan smiled. Frolan was the Country & Western history man. The man who had produced all the greats during the past fifty years and at seventy-five still had the magic touch to produce hit records. He had worked with both her mother and grandmother. He knew things about them she never would.

  End of free sample

  About the Author

  Born in East London in 1962. Darren's first writing success came in the mid 1990's, winning first place in a short story competition for a BBC Radio 4 arts program. The thrill of hearing his words read on Radio 4 drove him to write short stories of a dark and quirky nature before progressing to lengthier works. Darren then crafted his first novel ‘Turtle Island’, a crime thriller, which was picked up by an American publisher.

  Darren is now a seasoned author with another novel, ‘Tripping’, a surreal black comedy described as chick-noir, published. The sequel to Turtle Island is now published, entitled ‘Dark Country’ with the third book in the trilogy underway, and a new novel is in-progress which is another stand-alone book outside of his series of Georgina O’Neil crime thrillers.