Q is also for Quick Peek

Voices by David Shaw is due out on May 10th. For those who don’t know, David Shaw is me, and Voices is a product of my alarming imagination.

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The novel concerns Chris Deacon, a man who survives a terrorist bomb attack only to find himself haunted by bizarre phantoms, disturbing visions and Voices in his head.

Voices could not be further removed from the gentle and easy flow of The Sanford 3rd Age Club Mysteries. This is a psychological thriller steeped in the paranormal, with a strong sci-fi element. This is a man robbed of his hearing, robbed of the power to speak, tortured by the Voices until he is compelled to follow a thin trail to their “lair” a remote house, hidden deep in the Northumbrian forests. And it is there that he will confront the horrifying truth.

To give you a taster, here is a short scene from somewhere around the halfway mark. Desperate to regain control of his life, Chris has established two-way contact with the Voices, and he has asked them why him. The Voices agree to “show” him, and immediately, a black hole opens and swallows him.

***

It was like being inside a tunnel. I had no conception of time. It could have taken a few seconds, it could have taken an hour, even a day, and I would not know the difference.

The tunnel was not entirely dark. All around me were flashes of light and I got the impression that there was some substance to them; as if I were looking through windows with reality on the other side of them. It reminded me of sitting on a train at night, when it passes another coming in the opposite direction. Every window of the second train flies past in a millisecond, and although you know that each window shows a view of the second train’s interior, it happens too fast to make sense of it.

The tunnel was like that, but instead of a continuous stream of windows, the flashes were intermittent and came at irregular intervals, moving laterally, appearing ahead of me, passing by, disappearing behind me in a nanosecond, giving the impression of unimaginable speed.

Between the flashes there was nothing; only a mind-numbing blackness darker than the darkest night. A darkness so complete that it was all-encompassing. A black that was blacker than my swim after The Refectory. A darkness so dark that, were it not for the sheer astonishment of the experience, it would have generated hallucinations.

For all the imagined speed, there were none of the sensations usually associated with forward motion. Somewhere under my apprehension was the knowledge that I should be able to feel the wind rushing into my face so fast that I would be unable to breathe. There should have been the dizzying feeling of a fall, like the stomach churning motion of a roller coaster. There should perhaps have been the familiar rocking motion of a train, maybe even the clickety-click of wheels on rails. But there was none of that. It was as if I was stood still and the tunnel passed me on all sides.

I detected the faintest of light up ahead, a mile, a million miles distant. The tiny pinhole suddenly rushed towards me and burst outwards in all directions at once. I could make out street lighting. I was hurtling towards it at an unstoppable rate.

A memory of the Chatter’s head flying at me, leapt into my mind. That had hurt. This would be worse. I braced myself, throwing up my arm to absorb the impact.

It never came. Instead, the sensation of movement ended. There was no braking, no slowing down, not even the sudden stop packed with sufficient kinetic energy to smash through the earth below. I just stopped.

***

What is awaiting Chris on the other end of the warp? You’ll have to wait and see.

Voices by David Shaw, is published by Crooked Cat Books on May 10th 2012

Voices … You can’t escape what is in your head.