The Grave
by Mike Bennett
Smashwords Edition
Copyright Mike Bennett 2000 – 2011
All rights reserved by the author.
This story originally appeared as part of the free podcast, Hall of Mirrors: Tales of Horror and the Grotesque. The podcast is available via the author’s website: www.MikeBennettPodcast.com and www.Podiobooks.com. The podcast features this story and eleven others.
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
The author would like to thank Pauline McGrath, Jason Andrews for his tireless work on the web sites, Evo Terra at www.Podiobooks.com and all the Hall of Mirrors listeners around the world for their ears, support and enthusiasm over the years.
For Pauline.
~~~~
The Grave
They'd been in the grave for three hours when Jack made a grab for Dave's crotch, his big, clay encrusted hand coming between Dave's legs from behind.
'What the f - ' Dave blurted, shocked by the sudden contact. He turned around fast, his legs scissoring Jack's arm and causing him to withdraw it. 'What the fuck do you think you're doing?' he said, his eyes wide with astonishment.
Jack smiled at him knowingly. 'Come on, boy. You're a wrong 'un, I can always tell.'
'I've told you, Jack,' Dave's voice trembled slightly with shock and indignation. 'I'm not gay. So just keep your fucking hands to yourself, alright?'
Jack grinned. 'What's the matter, boy? Not your type, am I?'
'You're not female, if that's what you mean, no. You touch me again and I'll ... ' Dave looked at the stocky, pit-bull of a man before him. Jack was in his fifties, but he was powerfully built. The idea of hitting him, Dave felt, was unwise.
'You'll what?'
'Well for one thing, I'll clear off and leave you to dig this fucking grave on your own.'
Jack's lips parted in a yellow-toothed grin. 'Makes no difference to me, boy; the amount of use you are, I'd be better off without you.' He chuckled humourlessly.
'Yeah, well, that's not permitted, is it. There's got to be two of us at all times - Health and Safety rules.'
Jack grunted. 'Bloody stupid rules they are too. Never used to need any help. Twenty-seven years I've been digging graves, boy. That's a lot of holes. Never needed help before, and I don't need it now.'
'Well, things have changed, haven't they? Council's got to be seen to be responsible. Don't think I like this arrangement any more than you do. I don't have any choice in the matter, not since they took me off mowing and stuck me with you.'
'Well, if you've got to be here, you might as well be of some use.'
'Look, I told you ... ' Dave started, angrily.
Jack laughed. 'I mean get digging, you nancy-boy. Fuck me, talk about a one-track mind.'
'Just fuck off, Jack. I'll get digging as long as you promise to keep your hands to yourself.'
'Alright, precious, whatever you say,' said Jack, smiling lecherously. He drew his spade up and struck it down into the shale-packed clay at his feet.
Dave watched him for a moment, then, hesitantly, continued to dig.
They were about five-and-a-half feet down in the ground, the narrow walls of the grave rising around them and over their heads. Inside the grave, it was suffocating; there was barely enough room to move, let alone dig. It was a humid day in July, and the grave grew hotter the further down they dug. Like a drowning man, Dave would snatch a lungful of air every time he surfaced to empty his spade onto the mound of earth by the graveside before sinking back down into the pit and the acrid smell of Jack, who sweated and grunted only inches behind him.
Dave hated the job. It was supposed to have been a temporary thing, just until the Council could find Jack a full-time helper. However, that was proving to be a difficult position to fill. They'd offered the job to Dave, but he told them he wanted to go back on the mowing. He'd been tempted - after all it was a permanent job and the mowing was just temporary work. But he didn't like Jack, and that dislike was rapidly maturing into hatred.
At first Jack had just been annoying. Dave would catch the man looking at him in a funny way. Sometimes Jack would wink at him or make little puckering motions with his lips. Uncomfortable, but not unbearable. Then one afternoon - it was Dave's second or third day on the job and they were having their lunch break - Jack had come out with a strange question.
'So, you a wrong boy, are you?'
'I'm sorry?' Dave had said, fairly sure he knew what Jack meant, but giving him a look of righteous incredulity intended to underline the impropriety of the remark.
'I asked you if you was a wrong boy,' said Jack through a mouthful of cheese and pickle sandwich. 'A poofter?'
'No.' Dave gave a laugh of disbelief. 'I'm straight. Not that it's any of your business. What makes you think I'm not?'
'You look like a poofter to me.'
'Well I'm not,' said Dave with finality. 'Sorry to disappoint you.'
'Doesn't disappoint me, boy. I know what I know.'
That had been the start of the wrong boy remarks. Jack would address him as wrong boy, sweetie, cutie pie and various other inappropriate terms of endearment. Dave would make a strong objection, and Jack would stop - for a while - only to start up again a day or so later. Once or twice Jack had touched him, seemingly by accident, as they worked in the extremely close confines of the graves that they dug together. A certain amount of shuffling and bumping was unavoidable, but Dave knew there was nothing accidental about the way Jack's hands touched him.
And now this, Dave reflected, angry and not a little frightened. Jack had made an ugly, almost animal pass at him. He'd groped him, a direct, firm squeezing of his genitals. And what did he think it was going to lead to? Love? A joyful exchange of passion in a freshly dug grave?
As they carried on with their work, each outwardly behaving as if nothing had happened, Dave's mind reeled with the situation. He wondered if that was it now - whether his fierce rebuttal of Jack's attentions would bring an end to it once and for all. Or whether Jack, in much the same way as he would cool off on the pet-name thing for a few days after a rebuke, would try another, bolder mauling in the future? Dave felt again in his memory the pressure of that big hand on his crotch - the sheer, insane effrontery of it.
Jesus, he thought, just quit now! Just climb out of the grave and go the fuck home. He began to think through various scenarios. He could phone the management from home and tell them that he just wasn't prepared to work with Jack anymore, and if they didn't put him back on the mowing, he'd quit.
Oh yeah, good one, like I matter. He could just hear Ray Thomas now, telling him if he didn't go where they needed him when they needed him, then they didn't need him at all. Maybe he'd even get sacked from the agency for walking out on a job, and then where would he be? Fucked, that's where. These days you couldn't afford to be picky if you were unskilled and unqualified. You took what you could get.
Sweat dripped from Dave's face as he scraped and struck his spade at the ground, trying to break up the tightly-packed shale. It always got harder the further down you went; the topsoil coming up easy, then the clay coming harder, and then this shit: solid fucking shale. It was brutal.
Dave suddenly became aware that his was the only spade making any noise. He stopped. Was it tea break? He straightened his aching back and turned around. His eyes came to rest on Jack's sweating face. A strange expression of what had first looked like discomfort and extreme concentration was playing across the other man's features.
What happened next filtered into Dave's mind in a kind of slow motion, as if his brain were employing a seldom-used sanity defence mechanism, one which prevented a full comprehension of too much, too soon. He saw that the look in Jack's eyes was neither one of discomfort nor concentration. His usual ruddy complexion had darkened to a cardiac blush, and his breath was coming from between his bared teeth in short, hissing grunts. His whole upper body was trembling with the effort of whatever he was doing just below Dave's line of vision. Dave's gaze dropped to Jack's lower body.
He saw that Jack had abandoned both his spade and his senses. His Council-issue trousers now draped his Council-issue boots. His off-white, slightly yellow Y-fronts trembled like a strange trampoline stretched taut between his hairy thighs and his hand, filthy with the clay of another man's grave, was pumping frantically in his lap.
Dumbstruck, Dave looked back up to Jack's face.
Jack's lips peeled back in a tobacco-tinted smile.
Dave's response was a question that, even as he said it, sounded ridiculous to his ears. 'What do you think you're doing?'
'Come on, boy,' said Jack, panting a little. 'You know you want it.'
'What?'
'It's a beauty, innit?'
Dave stepped back and came up against one of the walls of the grave. He steadied himself and managed to take a single step away, wary that in their cramped situation, any too-dramatic movement might cause him to stumble and fall. He took another step away, and his heel came up against the end of the grave. Dave reached out in a warning gesture, trying to keep his eyes steadily and calmly on Jack's.
'Alright, Jack. Just ... put that away. I've told you; I'm not gay. And while you may think that ... that's a beauty, I don't share your feelings.'
Jack made a noise that resembled a laugh. 'I been watching you, boy. The way you mince about, the way you act. You're a wrong boy, alright, whether you know it or not. So why don't you quit bellyaching, come over here, and get your laughing gear round this?'
'I mean it, man!' Dave screamed. 'Put it away!'
What happened next, happened fast. Jack let go of his penis and lunged forward, grabbing Dave by his T-shirt and pulling him towards him. Dave shouted at him to get off and brought his spade up between them, but there was no room to manoeuvre and Jack was suddenly right up against him. After a moment of pushing and stumbling, Dave realised with disgust that the older man was kissing him. Then he felt Jack's hands fumbling at his trouser fastenings.
'NO!' Dave cried, pushing upwards and out with the shaft of his spade and sending Jack staggering backwards. Dave pushed again with the spade, and Jack - his legs entangled in his trousers and underpants - lost his balance, falling face-first into the side of the grave and sliding down to land flat on his face at the other end of the hole.
'You fucking bastard!' Jack snorted, struggling to raise his face from the dirt. 'You fucking wrong boy bastard. I'll fucking kill ya!' His fingers scrabbled at the sides of the grave, clawing into the clay as he managed to bring one of his knees up beneath him. 'I'll fu - ' The sentence was cut off as Dave brought the flat of his spade down squarely on Jack's head with a ringing thud. Jack dropped face down into the dirt.
'I'm a wrong boy bastard?' Dave shouted. 'Just how the fuck did you work that one out? You - wanking yourself into a fucking frenzy and begging me to come and help! And somehow, I'm homosexual?'
Jack said nothing.
'Well?' Dave kicked one of Jack's clay-clogged boots. 'You fucking lunatic!'
Jack continued to lie still, face down to the floor of the grave.
'Jack?' Dave stepped over the tangle of Jack's trousers and underpants and hunkered down over his back. 'Oi!' He prodded Jack in-between his shoulder blades.
Jack didn't move.
Fear and panic suddenly crackled through Dave like a low voltage current. He reached out and pulled Jack around by the shoulder. The older man was unconscious, his eyes closed, his face slack. Dave touched back of his fingers against Jack's open mouth: no breath stirred. Dave grabbed at Jack's leaden arm, pulling it free so he might feel the wrist for a pulse: there was none.
'Oh my God,' Dave let the arm fall back onto the body. The foetid, clinging atmosphere of the grave suddenly thickened unbearably. Dave stumbled backwards, drowning in the airless hole. He fell against the sides of the grave, his hands scrabbling up at its grassy edges, pulling handfuls of loose earth and clay down into his face before finally finding a good handhold. He heaved, his feet raking the clay frantically for purchase until, at last, he managed to pull himself up and out of the grave.
Emerging sweating, gasping, gulping at the air, Dave fell onto his back, feeling like a fish dumped on the deck of a trawler. For a moment or two, he just lay there, breathing hard and staring up at the sky where large, black cumulus nimbus clouds were beginning to gather and blot.
What now? He thought. Phone the Management? Tell them there'd been an accident? Tell them the truth? That Jack had tried to ... to molest him? Is that what had happened? He was wanking, yes, but had there been more than that? Shit, killing a man for having a wank was hardly justifiable homicide, was it?
But Jack had had ... intentions. The way he'd grabbed him and started kissing his face. 'Jesus Christ, he was trying to get my fucking trousers off! He was trying to molest me! Fuck, that's a euphemism if I ever heard one.'
He sat up suddenly and crawled to the edge of the grave. 'You fucking bastard!' he shouted down at Jack's body, his voice breaking into sobs as the first tears came. 'You sick, dirty old bastard!'
A shadow fell across the cemetery and a long, low peal of thunder rolled across the sky. The first heavy drops of rain began to fall, an erratic pattering that gradually rose to a roar. Dave lay still, unmindful of the downpour, wondering now about the body and what - with a funeral due on this very spot at three - he was going to do with it.
Ten minutes later, sitting under a nearby tree and watching the rain pour down around him, Dave sat, considering his options. A million crazy scenarios had played themselves out across the stage of his imagination, and somehow they all seemed to end in handcuffs for him. He lit a cigarette. There was no way that the management were ever going to buy the story of how one of their long-trusted employees was a potential rapist. And the police? No. He didn't have a mark on him. No signs of a struggle, none of Jack's semen on him - or, thank Christ, in him. Nothing to prove that he didn't just kill Jack and pull the old bastard's pants down afterwards in a grotesque and inept attempt at incriminating him.
So what of Jack's family? From what Jack had told him over the past week or so, he didn't have any family. There certainly wasn't a wife. He'd lived alone in a Council house somewhere. His only neighbours were single mums with kids playing music and entertaining boyfriends day and night - or so he'd said in so many grumbled tirades against them. They certainly wouldn't be missing Jack.
Of course there was the Council, they'd miss him. Or would they? If he told the Council a story about how Jack had been bitter about the new staff arrangements - which he certainly had been - and the Council knew it too. If he told them that Jack had seen him - Dave - as a threat, the first in a series of moves to replace him; if he told them that they'd argued, and that Jack had stomped off saying that he quit and that he wasn't coming back What then?
Jack didn't have a phone. The Council would write to him and, being a disgruntled ex-employee, he wouldn't write back. Would they call around to see him? No, of course not, they'd just write him off; they had better things to do than worry about bitter ex-employees - especially when he could so easily be replaced by a contract worker they could pay a fraction of Jack's wage.
The rain began to ease off a little and Dave got up to peer out from under the tree at the sky. The clouds were clearing. He walked back between the lines of headstones to the freshly-dug grave and looked down. Jack's upper body lay crookedly against one end while his legs were now partly immersed in a brown puddle.
Yes. It could work. Dave smiled. Maybe he'd even get Jack's job.
He flicked his cigarette butt into the grave and looked at his watch. One-forty-five. If he was going to do it, he'd better get cracking. He got down on his haunches and dropped down into the grave.
***
At three o' clock, a small cordon of three black limousines rolled into the cemetery on whispering tyres. They were followed by an assortment of regular cars. All of the vehicles contained sombre-looking people dressed in mourning. Dave now stood beneath a tree, a short, respectable distance from the grave - which was now fully prepared to receive its occupant.
Dave had been careful to make the preparations exactly as Jack used to do. He'd concealed the large mound of earth and clay at the graveside beneath fabric sheets of artificial grass. This fabric also bordered and hung down into the grave itself, concealing and making tidy its muddy and trampled edges. He'd framed the grave mouth with heavy planks that allowed the pallbearers to walk safely around the grave without fear of falling in. He'd laid three more stout planks directly over the grave mouth; the coffin would be rested on these during the service. Along them he'd rolled out the long canvas straps which would be used by the pallbearers for lowering the coffin into the ground. As far as he was aware, he'd done everything correctly. He smiled. Jack would have been proud.
As the first car slowed and stopped, Dave took a deep breath and walked slowly over to meet the funeral director. He knew this was part of Jack's routine, though quite what it was he was supposed to say he had no idea. He imagined it was probably to do with coffin size or weather conditions, nothing too tricky. He'd play it by ear.
The funeral director was an appropriately gaunt man, taller than Dave and wearing a black top hat that made him seem all the taller. As he stepped silently up to Dave, he murmured. 'Alright, mate? Where's Jack?'
'He's gone home,' said Dave in suitably low tones. 'We had a bit of an argument and he just steamed off.'
The funeral director shrugged and gave a short sound of dismissal. 'Sounds like Jack, miserable blighter. Bet you're hoping he won't come back, aren't you?'
Dave wasn't quite prepared for this. He'd imagined that the funeral director and Jack would be mates. He smiled. 'Yeah.'
'Anyway, everything all right with the grave?'
'Yeah. No problems.'
'Right. Well, let's get on with it, then.' The funeral director turned and walked back to the hearse, from which his colleagues were now drawing the coffin.
Dave moved back to his respectably removed position beneath the tree and watched as the mourners, the funeral director and the vicar followed the coffin to the final resting place.
As the pallbearers moved slowly into position around the grave mouth, Dave ached for a cigarette. As they lay the coffin down onto the planking, Dave began to bite and gnaw at his nails, despite the dirt and clay beneath them.
The pallbearers bowed their heads and the vicar began the graveside service.
Dave searched the faces of the mourners for recognition, for any sign that he'd fucked up somewhere, but they were too consumed with their grief to notice anything other than the coffin of the deceased.
It wasn't a long service, though for Dave it felt like a lifetime. The Vicar bent and picked up the little dish of ashes. The pallbearers took up the canvas straps and then the weight of the coffin before another two of the funeral director's men removed the support planking. Then, slowly and carefully, the pallbearers began to lower the deceased into the grave.
And then it happened.
Maybe it was because Dave had been hurried in his graveside preparations, but he'd evidently messed up with the planking. That job had been something that Jack always did alone; he'd fussed over it, regarding it as work that only he was capable of doing properly. This arrangement had always suited Dave because he'd been able to sit and watch and take a cigarette break. But the thing he hadn't watched closely enough was the positioning of the small wooden blocks on which the planks were set. Dave had placed one of these blocks too close to the edge of the grave, and now - no doubt as a result of the rain and the trembling weight of the pallbearers upon it - that ill-placed block suddenly slipped and fell into the grave. The plank upon which three of the six pallbearers were standing tipped, and for one horrible moment, it looked like they were all going to fall in on top of the coffin. The mourners gasped; one woman screamed. But then, mercifully, the pallbearers managed to regain their footing: but only at the cost of dropping their burden. The coffin fell to the bottom of the grave where it landed with an undignified thud. There were more gasps and cries. The mourners looked furiously from the grave to the funeral director, and the funeral director looked furiously from the mourners to Dave.
Fortunately however, no one was in the mood for further disruptions, and with unspoken mutual consent, things quickly settled back into a sombre rhythm. With various gestures of comfort and sympathy, the mourners soothed and composed themselves as the vicar resumed the service, casting a handful of ash into the grave.
From his respectful distance, Dave could hear the vicar's solemn tones carried on a light breeze from the graveside.
'Ashes to ashes ...'
A moaning sound arose from the scene.
Dave bit his nails.
'Dust to ... ' the Vicar's voice seemed to lose some of its conviction.
Then a woman screamed; then another. The pallbearers looked edgily at the funeral director, who in turn was looking with an expression of growing horror into the grave.
Again came the moaning, and Dave realised it wasn't coming from a particularly distraught mourner. It was coming from the grave.
'Oh my God, he's still alive!' cried one mourner.
'Get him out of there!' cried another.
'Oh shit,' whispered Dave, abandoning protocol and fumbling out a cigarette.
Taking up the canvas straps, the pallbearers quickly began to pull the coffin back up. It swayed and thumped against the sides of the grave as it rose, and again, from the within the dark of the hole, there came a low moan. A woman fainted into the arms of the man beside her. And now the name 'Ken' was being called from among the bereaved.
'Urrrh. My fucking head,' said a muffled, almost inaudible voice.
A man fainted. Children were wailing and clutching their parents. 'Ken!', 'Kenny!', 'Oh, praise the Lord!', and 'Sue that fucking hospital!' were among the cries from the graveside as the coffin was finally brought back into the world of the living.
'Get it open, for God's sake hurry!'
'Use a spade. Get the grave digger, quickly!' All eyes turned to the spot beneath the nearby tree where, just a moment before, Dave had been standing. He had disappeared; an abandoned cigarette smouldering on the ground was the only sign that anyone had ever been there at all.
'Here it is!' cried one man, running around from behind the covered mound of earth, brandishing Dave's spade.
His co-mourners urged him to hurry, and he fell to work, prizing at the edge of the coffin lid.
A woman bent to the lid and sobbed, 'Don't worry, Ken! We're going to get you out.'
The spade forced a crack between the lid and the box and in a moment many fingers were pulling at it. Then the coffin yawned open, and the body of Ken - cold to the touch and grey-faced, despite the make up - was finally grasped and pulled up into a sitting position.
There was a moment of dreadful, breathless silence. Then the realisation sank in to all the dearly beloved that Ken was, in fact, 100% dead.
The howling and wailing started afresh.
Ken was eased back into his coffin by his would-be rescuers. Some turned to the funeral director; their expressions, wordless, pained pleas for help.
It was then that a child standing near the mouth of the grave began to point into the grave and scream. His mother ran forward to comfort him, then seeing what her child was pointing at, she begin to scream as well.
In the shadowy depths of the bottom of the grave, through a scattering of dead leaves, mud-slick arms reached up from the earth. They wavered and groped at the walls of the grave, trying to find purchase.
Other mourners came forward, their mouths falling open at the sight of the man now emerging from the mud and leaves at the bottom of the grave. Two more people fainted, one man ran screaming, and the remainder simply stared in horror, babbling incoherencies about God, Jesus, and Dawn of the Dead, before the funeral director eventually managed to break through the hysteria.
'It's all right!' he cried, his hands raised in appeasement. 'It's okay.' He then clambered down into the grave and began to assist what appeared to be one of the risen dead, up to its feet. 'Jack? Is that you?'
'Yeah,' said Jack, spitting a leaf from his lips. 'Fuck me, my head hurts.'
'What happened to you?' asked the funeral director as Jack steadied himself against the wall of the grave.
'Fucking bastard hit me with a spade,' said Jack. 'Next thing I know, a God Almighty weight comes crashing down of top of me, and I'm half-buried in wet clay and leaves.'
'Bloody hell. Well, you're okay now. I'll phone for an ambulance.' The funeral director took out his mobile phone.
The mourners looked on, comforting each other as the pallbearers leaned into the grave and begin to help Jack out.
'I'll kill that fucking Dave when I get my hands on him,' said Jack scrambling up and out of the grave. 'That wrong boy bastard.' He trudged awkwardly around the edge of the grave towards the mourners, spitting and wiping mud from his eyes and ears. As he walked, he began to shed his covering of muddy leaves and the reason for his awkward gait become apparent.
A woman who had earlier fainted started to come around in the arms of her husband. ‘Ken?' she said, and turned to the grave to see Jack's mud-slick genitals swaying unsteadily towards her, his Council trousers and now extremely off-white Y-fronts still entangling his ankles. The woman gave a little gasp and fell wordlessly back into oblivion.
Having watched these proceedings from over the rim of the grave, the funeral director then resumed speaking to the ambulance service. 'Actually, you may as well make that two ambulances.’
~~~~
All the Hall of Mirrors stories are available as free audio podcasts via the author’s site: www.MikeBennettPodcast.com and www.Podiobooks.com
Also available as an e-book from the same author
Hall of Mirrors Volume One
Hair and Skin: Millionaire, Charles Mason, has a grotesque idea for a hair transplant that stops one step short of horrific. Fortunately, his personal surgeon is sick enough to take the extra steps necessary to make Charles’s dream come true.
The Grave: Jack starts a series of increasingly unpleasant events when he makes a pass at suspected “wrong boy”, Dave.
The Haslet Technique: Lottery winner, Jim Haslet finds himself caught up in a bizarre nightmare when he and his wife are kidnapped by people even weirder than Jim is.
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The Green Man
If you go down to the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise – Alec Bingham is murdering his wife. He’s got it all worked out, but there are some things in the woods that even the most careful plan cannot anticipate.
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Night Crossing
Meet Underwood and Flinch as they sail across the Mediterranean on a fog-shrouded night. Are they being followed? And if so, who should be the more fearful – the hunter or the hunted? This is the short vampire story that whets the reader’s appetite for the novel, Underwood and Flinch.
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From the same author as free audio podcasts
Underwood and Flinch
All David Flinch ever wanted was a normal life.
But when you’re a member of the Flinch family, normal has never been easy. For hundreds of years, the eldest male Flinch has been servant and guardian to the Lord Underwood. While the Flinches have changed through the generations, Underwood has been eternal – for Underwood is a vampire. David had hoped to be spared the horror of serving his family’s lord and master, but when he is summoned to the Flinch home in Spain by his dying older brother, he knows his luck has run out. Underwood must be resurrected from the grave in a ritual of human sacrifice, and David must be the man to do it. Because if he doesn’t, an even greater evil than Underwood will rise: the evil that is David’s sister.
Underwood and Flinch is an epic horror-thriller that spans the centuries. From the teeming slums of 17th Century London to an ex-pat community in modern-day Spain, this is the new novel from Mike Bennett, author of One Among the Sleepless and Hall of Mirrors.
“One of the best podcast novels, ever.” Walt Kolenda, Examiner.com
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One Among the Sleepless
Who is “The One”?
Is it Peter Reynolds, mild-mannered office clerk pouring petrol through his neighbour’s letterbox in the middle of the night?
Is it Wayne Dolan, a man who discovers strange, unsociable uses for his own urine – and an even stranger desire for the lady upstairs with the whip?
Or is it Dusty, a mysterious vagrant in sunglasses who claims to have a past in ZZ Top?
Mick Nixon wants to find out, because people are disappearing. And if he and Sally ever want to share more than just sandwiches, he’d better hurry up, or they could be next.
One Among the Sleepless is a novel set in a neighbourhood just like yours: noisy, angry, demented. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll throw it through your neighbour’s window tied to a house brick!
~~~~