I remember being tired and hungry . . . waiting around endlessly in the arrivals lounge for my ride to turn up. The food on the plane had been adequate but nothing more, but now I was starving and needed something quick to fill me up. All around me posters on walls and video feeds on monitors telling me what I should try. Burger and fries, pizza, donuts, the barrage was nonstop, the temptation overwhelming. So America fill me up, the way only you know how. Whoopee . . . supersized plates bulging and I couldn’t wait to dive in all the way up to my scrawny neck. But I did wait; I was too shy to get in a queue with so many people I didn’t know. The hours passed, several in fact and more and I get totally hacked off, I’m bored and fidgeting like a dog with fleas. I’m counting wall tiles, rechecking the magazine racks and trying to break in my new baseball boots (but of course, they had to be) and it seemed as the minutes slowly ticked away that my waiting would go on forever. Mum never told me about this unlikely disappointment, she said staying with Dad for six weeks in the summer would be the best thing to ever happen to me, just what I needed to get me back on the straight and narrow path again. I didn’t really know what she meant at the time as I couldn’t remember falling off it. But I missed Dad big time and that had a massive affect on me and I reckoned being in his company and talking to him, face to face about things, might just help me understand what had gone so badly wrong? Settle my head; you know, help me make some sense of it all, because maybe it was my fault that he had gone away. I needed to know more, get to the bottom of it all and maybe that might help me come to terms with the grief I was feeling. Now my little sister Sophie, she didn’t care one jot about it all and it was her decision to stay with Mum over the holiday period and that was just fine and dandy with me.

The bad times at home had made me difficult and hot headed, I didn’t care about anything in the world any more, the Head Master at St. Martin’s High had called Mum and me into his office late one afternoon to discuss all my problems. He stood up from behind his desk in an animated way and yelled at us both, repeatedly banging his fists on the wooden top shouting, `Your behaviour just isn’t good enough Jake, you had better change your ways or you’ll be expelled pretty damn quick from this school, my lad. ` I think he lost it briefly because some woman came into the room and asked if everything was alright. Well it wasn’t was it and I had good reason for it not to be.

You see, one minute I had a Dad and the next he was gone. No explanation, no good cause for him vanishing. He just phoned one day and said it was best for Mum and him to be apart for awhile and anyway he had a new job to manage in the Mojave Desert. What? Was I mad – I was bloody livid I can tell you! The Mojave where? What about me and Sophie, didn’t she need a Dad either? No – well he said we would understand one day, when we were older. How old do I need to be to work out my Dad is an asshole and had just dumped the lot of us . . . for what? Yeh – for what, the coward hadn’t even got the guts to tell us properly, his only children. Well I didn’t get it, it made no sense to me and from that moment I almost hated him . . . almost? I was so mad I didn’t know what to do and would have smashed his face in with a brick had I seen him. If only the Headmaster had known that, he might have been more tolerant, still it was my problem to sort out and not his. I just needed to get on with life, make a few adjustments, that’s all?

“Jake Wisty please? Jake Wisty is here?” I hear the shouting before I catch sight of the man. It isn’t my Dad, but then why would it be? Wishful thinking on my part I suppose. This man is fat and bald, about five foot nine and sweating; he mops his brow over and over again with a dirty cloth and looks exhausted as if he’s just run a marathon. Another loser, I guess, but I should never be that judgemental as I don’t even know the guy and anyway he might be okay? Then I have a brilliant but mischievous idea. I feel the need to exercise my jaded brain, as it’s become dull from all the waiting around I’d done in the arrivals lounge. It’s only a naughty little game I’m gonna play out on an unsuspecting man I don’t know. I’m sure it’s inappropriate; he’s only doing a job after all, but I don’t really care as he looks like a real jerk, so what the hell and anyway he’d kept me waiting for hours, so tough shit loser!

“Wisty that’s me,” I say in a poor upper class English accent, holding out my hand for the man to shake. As he attempts to grasp it, I purposefully let it drop to my side making the stranger feel a fool. “Lead the way, there’s a good man,” I taunt haughtily, like an arrogant public schoolboy. “The limo, waiting outside is it?” I enquire as I walk quickly towards the exit. “I hope you’ve brought me something cool, a stretch Hummer? Father always did have good taste.” I stare him up and down like he means nothing to me and I can see by the look in his eyes he thinks I’m a spoilt brat that needs a good beating.

“You sure you is Meester Wisty from Englands?” He says in a broad Mexican accent full of hate.

“Of course,” I reply with my arrogant mouth trying hard to confuse the sweaty character.

“The car it out front, eet no Hummer. What you expect gold Rolls Royce . . . you . . . you . . . best be quick’s or I be getting the parking ticket, huh. You sure you’s from England? That some strange British talking you got there, you no wind me up – eh boy?”

BOY. He actually called me boy. Now that makes me furious – like big time, does he not know who I am? Who is paying his bill? I’m almost foaming at the mouth I’m so mad. What an arrogant cheeky bugger he is and then I’m out of the building, gone in a flash, sure that Rodriguez, or whatever his name is, will be as mystified by my disappearance as he is by my stupid accent. No doubt he’s already on the phone to my Father, saying he’s met an idiot at the airport and is this likely to be his wayward son?

The road is long and time seems to linger in the evening air as we drive away from the airport. I think a lot about Dad and Mum, the mess we are all in and the town I’m heading to – SHOVEL. It’s easy to check things out these days; the internet tells me everything I need to know, the rest I just make up in my head, the glamour of the Wild West, gunslingers roaming the desert on the trail of Native Indians and outlaws. It’s the glamour of films again, making me think all these things are real and I suddenly remember how Dad and me would sit on our worn sofa on a wet Saturday afternoon long ago, drinking Coke and eating crisps with his strong arm around my shoulders, keeping me safe. The history tells me there had been thirty four mines around the town, all digging for gold and silver and assorted minerals. Hundreds of hard working, hard living miners, drinking and eating in dozens of different bars all looking for fun and good times in those dusty streets and just as many outlaws looking for a quick profit at the expense of a bullet. Mum said that had all disappeared decades ago, turned to nothing with the invention of machines and new technology; there were only playful spectres roaming the streets these days she said. Ha – ghosts, remember I told you I know them all too well – spiritual remnants of the living I call them. A ghost town – the residual bones of a community that died decades ago. Now, as I said earlier that concerns me, because I know there will be shadows and images of the long departed creeping around the streets . . . they just do it aimlessly, looking for a passage, for something to help them escape the clutches of the real world. Desperate souls looking for help . . . that I simply cannot give them. Sometimes when I feel very brave, I try making contact by speaking loudly to grab their attention, like I’m not afraid of them, but the shapes just evaporate like mist in a breeze. Occasionally some will make contact with a brief gesture, a single word or a facial expression that I can’t understand, but I know from experience they will never harm me if I ever overstep the mark by getting too close to their world. Trouble is, I’m not so sure I can completely rely on my instincts with that issue; particularly in this town, everything feels so different, so intense. Can a demon spirit be truly trusted? Probably best that I try and ignore the feelings I have right at this moment, because deep inside I realise it will only be a matter of time before they reach out and touch me, that instinctive desire every spirit has to drag kids like me into their world and get answers. Remember Poltergeist and Insidious, how those kids suffered at the hands of demon spirits? But there are no answers I can give that will help them . . . well not right now anyway?

Without warning the haze of dreams evaporates like a cloud in a raging furnace and I’m grasped by unseen hands around the throat and tossed back into reality. I sit bolt upright, head fuzzy, images of ghosts and spirits flicker in the half light of another lingering world, sweat dribbles like a slow running cold tap down my spine and my heart races at a breakneck speed fit to burst. I breathe in heavily, gasping and choking as if my end is only moments away and let out a harrowing scream at the top of my voice . . . to warn this town of what is on their doorstep, almost ready to break through from the other side?

Chapter 1 – Chapter 2 – Chapter 3