REVELATION: Book One of THE RECARN CHRONICLES

The first book in the
series

Copyright ©
2016 Gregory N. Taylor All rights reserved

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This book or
any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner
whatsoever without the express permission of the author except for
the use of brief quotations in a book review. Contact details can
be found at the end of this book.

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Please note
that this book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons,
living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely
coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s
imagination and used fictitiously.

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Dedicated to
Eliene, for her patience and understanding

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Cover photo by
Dylan Borck of kenaz24 photography

Hannah walked
across to the television and turned it on. The on/off knob, which
doubled as the volume switch, was a little loose and she had to
remember to press it at the same time as twisting it, so that it
didn’t fall off. She really should contact the TV rental company
and ask them to send a repairman out to fix it, or perhaps even
change the set for another one. It would have to be the same model
though, as she couldn’t afford an upgrade. She’d heard that there
was a chance that colour television would be introduced in Britain
in a couple of years, and she’d see if she could afford an upgrade
then. Her son, Simon, would love that. Once the TV had warmed up,
she tuned the channel to BBC1 and sat down to watch. A Mr. Magoo
cartoon, ‘Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol’, was about to finish and
then it would be Jackanory with the actress Wendy Hiller reading
‘Little Grey Rabbit’s Christmas’. Hannah enjoyed watching
Jackanory, even though her childhood was now far behind her. The
first episode of Jackanory had been broadcast only eleven days
earlier, when the actor Lee Montague read the fairy story
‘Cap-o’-Rushes’. Hannah had been hooked since that very first
episode and decided to put aside fifteen minutes each day to watch
the programme, whether or not Simon watched with her.

This would be
the third successive Christmas that she would spend alone with
Simon; she was beginning to get used to Christmases with just the
two of them now. Simon’s father, Richard, had left three years ago.
Not to the day, but almost. She’d tried so many times to forget
that day in November 1962 when Richard had arrived home from work,
placed his briefcase on the kitchen table, and brazenly announced
to his wife that he’d met someone else and was moving to Cardiff to
be with his new love. Hannah had always thought the stories of
travelling salesmen cheating on their wives were just clichés – but
Richard had proved the stereotype to be true, at least in this
instance. He’d given her the old line that it wasn’t her, it was
him. At first she didn’t believe him, but once she and Simon had
got over the initial shock, she was able to realise that it was
indeed him. She had tried to ignore her gut feeling that something
was wrong but eventually couldn’t deny that her husband certainly
seemed to be less committed to their relationship than previously,
which coincided with the expansion of his sales territory to
include South Wales. It took some time to recover but, after a
while, when Hannah had decided that it was his loss and not hers,
she felt empowered and able to continue her life without him.
Anyway, she still had Simon and she felt that she could face
anything with her boy by her side.

Their house was
a typical two up, two down terraced house with a small back garden.
Hannah didn’t have much spare money but she did her best to keep
their home clean and tidy and tried not to let her son want for
anything. She always looked well-dressed, and that was in no small
part thanks to the mail order company that allowed her to pay by
weekly instalments for her purchases. It was also another source of
income, as she passed the catalogue around her friends and family
making a little money from the commission gained as an agent. It
was a happy home, and she and Simon made a small but happy
family.

Simon was
upstairs in his bedroom playing with his train set. His mother had
tried to get him interested in watching Jackanory, but at the
moment he was more interested in playing with his toys. He had told
her that perhaps he’d give the programme a try after Christmas. He
was wearing his favourite green checked shirt and a new pair of
jeans that his mother had bought the week before from the local
supermarket. He didn’t mind wearing the jeans inside the house,
where nobody could see the label on the back-pocket, but if he went
outside he preferred to wear shorts – even if it was cold – rather
than wear the supermarket’s own brand jeans. He was average height
for his age, had semi crew-cut, dark brown hair and a pair of NHS
spectacles resting on his nose. His friends at school called him
the Milky Bar Kid, saying that he looked like the boy from the TV
advert, but he didn’t mind. After all, the Milky Bar Kid was
‘strong and tough’.

Simon’s bedroom
was directly above the staircase, and the recess that allowed
people to go up and downstairs without hitting their heads,
protruded into his room, providing a convenient base upon which his
model train layout was set up. Ordinarily this architectural
feature might be thought of as a nuisance but – with his parents’
help – it had been turned into the foundations for a miniature
wonderland which had Simon’s train set as its focal point.

And what a
train set it was!

It was a real
feat of miniature domestic civil engineering. The tracks were set
amongst papier-mâché hills, moulded by Simon with the help of his
mother. Simon had painted the hills, but anything that required
finer detail than broad brush strokes had been lovingly painted by
Hannah. The hills were peppered with model shrubs and trees that he
bought (with his own pocket money) from the local model shop. But
the
pièce de résistance was the attention paid to
the buildings. These were bought in kit form printed on durable
cardboard and then assembled and placed in position in the diorama.
Simon’s father had installed electric lighting in the station,
sheds and houses, so that at night the landscape was a small forest
of glistening lights. None of his friends had such a realistic
train set; it was amazing what his dad had been able to do with
clear Christmas tree light bulbs and ingenuity. Standing on the
station platforms and on the roads were several OO scale plastic
figures of people waiting for trains, a person riding a motor
scooter, a postman, and a man walking his dog. All had been
carefully and lovingly painted by Simon’s mother’s steady
hand.

Simon still saw quite a lot of his father, but it wasn’t the
same as having him at home. He had a special relationship with his
father, one of love but also one of wonder at the things that
Richard could do. Simon missed his dad.

Hannah called up the stairs.

“Simon, your programme’s about to start. It’s nearly five
o’clock. Joe Brown’s on this week. You like him.”

In reality, it was only a quarter to five but Simon’s mother
always exaggerated the lateness of the hour. At first it had been a
ruse to make sure that Simon got out of bed in time to have
breakfast before he went to school, but now it had become a habit.
Although Simon was fully aware of his mother’s strategy, he didn’t
let on.

Simon loved Crackerjack. Five to five on a Friday afternoon
was his favourite time. He would sit in front of the small screen
TV waiting impatiently for the cry of
‘
It's Friday, it's five to five and
it's Crackerjack’.
That night the
programme was actually due to start five minutes later, at five
o’clock, but that was probably due to it being Christmas Eve and
they certainly wouldn’t change their catchphrase just because of
that. Every time somebody on the show mentioned the word
‘Crackerjack’ the studio audience of children would erupt in
unison, shouting out ‘Crackerjack’ and children all over the
country, watching at home, would do the same. Simon was no
exception.
He loved shouting ‘Crackerjack’
back at the TV, even though he knew that the only person who could
actually hear him was his mother. His favourite part was the little
play that the presenters performed at the end of each show,
shoehorning the latest pop songs into the rather dubious
comedy-drama finale of the programme. He’d have liked to watch
Crackerjack every night of the week, but one night a week of Simon
shouting at the TV was plenty enough for his mother’s nerves. At
least watching Doctor Who on Saturday nights was a much quieter
experience, albeit a little more frightening.

Simon turned the dial of his train set control to the off
position and the OO/HO gauge model of the Princess Victoria steam
locomotive halted abruptly. Simon loved this particular
locomotive

“On my way down, Mum,”

He hoisted his leg over the varnished bannister and slid down
it to the bottom of the stairs. Like all children, this was his
favourite way of going downstairs but he was careful to make sure
he only did it when his mother couldn’t see. He thought that she
probably knew what he was up to, but he didn’t see any point in
putting his suspicions to the test.

Simon trotted into the living room and flopped into a soft
armchair. He started half-watching Jackanory but he considered the
‘Little Grey Rabbit’ stories too young for him now. He had no idea
why his mother was watching either; she was a grown-up. If the
story was too young for him, then it was definitely too young for
her. His favourite books were the Jennings books; he couldn’t get
enough of the schoolboy adventures of Jennings and his best friend
Darbishire. If those books were featured on Jackanory, he’d
definitely watch the programme.

The two-seater sofa was vacant but he preferred the way that
the armchair kind of wrapped itself around him. Hannah liked the
sofa too, but when her back was playing her up – as it was that day
– she preferred the more rigid posture that a wooden dining-room
chair forced her to take. For some reason it seemed to alleviate
the pain.

Hannah looked over at her son.

“There’s jelly and ice-cream in the fridge.”

She knew that Crackerjack coupled with jelly and ice-cream was
a combination that her son could never resist.

“What flavour is it, Mum?”

“Go and fetch it and you’ll find out, won’t you?”

Simon poured himself out of the armchair and skipped into the
kitchen. He was in a very good mood. He opened the fridge door and
saw two glass dishes, each containing a good portion of raspberry
jelly. Then he opened the freezer compartment and took out a tub of
raspberry ripple ice-cream, the best ice-cream in the world. He
strolled across the kitchen to the welsh dresser and opened the
second drawer down, his hand scrambling around inside it trying to
find the ice-cream scoop. Scoop found, he stood for a moment
looking at the freshly sharpened carving knife sitting in its block
on the nearby worktop.

“What’s keeping you Simon? Your TV programme will be starting
soon.”

“Be there in a minute, Mum.”

Simon peeked through the kitchen doorway and saw his mother
sitting bolt upright on the dining room chair, waiting patiently
for her dessert.

He went back to look at the carving knife, caressing it with
his eyes. This was too good an opportunity to miss. He pulled open
another drawer, into which lots of plastic carrier bags had been
stuffed. He dug around inside the draw, the mass of plastic bags
threatening to swallow his hand, until he found what he was looking
for – a particularly large green plastic carrier bag. Simon had
hidden it at the bottom of the drawer several weeks earlier as it
had the number one quality necessary to help him in his venture –
no air holes. From the next drawer down – the knick-knack drawer -
he took a length of strong but flexible wire, and two rolls of
gaffer tape.

Simon quietly crept up behind his mother and in one swift
movement he pulled the plastic bag over her head. She started
flailing around, panicking, wondering what on earth was going on.
He pulled hard on the bag, securing it by wrapping the wire around
the entrance of the bag, causing Hannah to choke as it tightened
around her neck. He was pleased but not particularly surprised at
the success of his plan so far; he had been practising this
manoeuvre for weeks using his old, dilapidated but large teddy
bear. He continued to pull the wire taut, bracing his feet against
the chair legs to help him fight against the resistance that his
mother was putting up. After a brief struggle, the lack of air
caused Hannah to lose consciousness. Satisfied that he hadn’t
accidentally killed her and that she wasn’t going to wake up
anytime soon, Simon removed the bag and looked at his mother
sitting there, not lifeless but certainly helpless.