"Tracks" - unfinished novel - excerpt
Chapter Five
Then
I watched through the rear window as Castleton shrunk into the distance. I had enjoyed coming to see Mum again. When we came to her grave it was as if, just for that short period of time, she were alive again. When I talked to her I could see her face, smiling, nodding as I told her what I'd been up to lately. Leaving the village only served to bring back the emptiness that I had felt since she had died. Dad was great, and he did his best to do the things Mum used to do, but it wasn't quite the same.
Dad flicked the car stereo on as we drove once again through anonymous countryside. There was a cassette in the machine, Van Morrison, one of Dad's favourites. The first song was called Have I Told You Lately, and I knew it was one that Dad used to play to Mum. I tried to catch his eye in the mirror, to let him know that I knew, but he was staring intently at the road, tapping the wheel in time to the music.
After a while I realised we were going a different way home. In fact, if my rudimentary grasp of local geography was correct, we were heading in the opposite direction.
'Aren't we going home Dad?' I said.
'Thought we'd go the scenic route. It's nice out this way.'
Not for the first time that day, I thought Dad was acting a bit strange. The normal route home was scenic enough for me. I was about to ask him exactly why we were heading in the wrong direction when he slowed the car and swung left into a road that was little more than a rough track. It was one of those tracks that criss-cross over farmland, and I was sure that meant they were private roads. I thought we probably shouldn't be on this one. The car was bumping so much as Dad drove along the track that it was like being on a fairground ride, one of the scary ones that Charlie was too small to go on.
Out to the left of the track there were fields that stretched to the horizon. On the right there was a steep embankment that sloped down to a railway line running parallel to the rough road. A rickety wooden fence formed a barrier between the road and the bank. The car was bumping wildly and Dad seemed to be driving rather fast, considering the state of the track beneath the wheels.
'Dad?' I said, concerned now, 'Can we go home now? I want to go home.'
'Soon. We'll be home soon.'
His voice sounded strained. I looked in the mirror. Sure enough, there were tears in his eyes.
'What's the matter Dad? Are you alright?'
Charlie had sat up, slipping his hand into mine. He look scared, which was hardly surprising as we were thundering down a bumpy, deserted dirt road in the middle of nowhere. I hoped he hadn't seen Dad's eyes.
'Dad? Where are we going?'
'I love you boys,' he said, ignoring my questions. Now I was scared, too. Dad did sometimes say odd things, or just act a bit strange, but when he said that he sounded like a completely different person. Something in his voice sounded so desperate that my breath caught in my throat and I felt a hot prickle behind my eyes.
I started to reply, not really knowing how to answer him, but Dad cut me off before I'd got one word out.
'I love you more than anything,' he said, 'And you'll always be my special boys.'
His face reflected back at me once more in the rear-view mirror, and this time there were tears running down his cheeks. Charlie was squeezing my hand tighter and tighter. I turned to speak to him, to say something reassuring, but as I moved my head I felt the car move sideways with a thud. Dad had hurled the car off the track to the right, towards the fence, towards the steep slope that separated us from the railway lines down below. Charlie shrieked as the car smashed through the fence, hit the top of the slope, hung in the air for a split second, and thumped down, careering on down the embankment. My little brother grabbed at me, clutching my arm and crying out hysterically as the car plummeted down the steep incline.
Somehow Dad managed to control the car as it reached the bottom of the bank. He steered onto the railway lines and began to drive along them, picking up speed. Charlie was hysterical by now, clinging on to me and crying out 'Daddy! Daddy!' as Dad stared straight ahead and got the car moving faster and faster, bumping along the railway track.
'Dad! Stop! Stop!' I cried. Oh my God, my Dad's gone mad. I can remember that thought more clearly than anything else. I didn't know what was going on, just that it was something terrifying, something wrong.
The noise in the car was painful as the car picked up speed and rumbled over the railway sleepers. I was grabbing at Dad's shoulder now, crying and pleading for him to stop, and I could see the speedometer needle edging towards seventy. Then, coming towards us in the distance, there was a train.
'I'm sorry,' Dad said then, speaking for the first time since we'd left the dirt road at the top of the embankment. He repeated those two words, over and over, as the train came nearer and nearer. Charlie had seen it and started screaming. Even his inward breaths came as screams, his little face burning white with terror. I tried to climb through to the front of the car, to get to Dad, but Charlie wouldn't let go of me, and in his fear his grip had become rock solid. He was the strongest six-year-old in the world right then.
The train kept on coming, and Dad kept on driving, and Charlie kept on screaming, and I kept on crying and begging for Dad to stop. Dad was saying, 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I love you, I'm sorry' over and over, tears streaming down his face. I was still begging him to stop when we hit the train head on with a noise that blocked out the senses. My body twisted and cracked, and then there was only darkness.
Author's Note: I worked on this novel (or rather, intended novel) for literally years. I knew pretty much how it was all going to pan out but as I worked through it I found it excited me less and less as I went on. It was one of those things - I loved the premise so much that I couldn't let go, but then eventually I had to face facts. This - "Tracks" - was not going to be "the one". I still think it's a great story, and I will publish a few more excerpts from it along with this one, but if anything it was TOO complex and also, as the story progressed, it veered far closer to melodrama than I had ever wanted it to. I doubt I'll ever return to this now, but it will always have a place in my heart as my first serious attempt at writing a novel. Lesson? Walk before you can run. "Tracks" has a dual timeline, a highly difficult vehicle for a debut novel, and was just too ambitious for its own good. So... my current novel? Yep... dual timeline again... only this time I'm better equipped for it. Fingers crossed, eh...
