The Night Owl: A Selection of Short Stories Woven with the Unexpected

By Maureene Ann Fries

Do you believe in coincidence, chance, accidents or the power of suggestion? The Night Owl is a selection of unique tales with a distinctly Australian backdrop. From the Sydney Harbour Bridge to dusty country towns, the beaches of Sydney to the deserts of the outback, take a journey into the not so ordinary. The Night Owl offers a variety of twists and surprises in bite size pieces but savour slowly and with great care.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9780992386702

Book preview

CHAPTER

FRIDAY’S CHILD

Sal’s fingers clutched the balcony railing tightly as though bracing against an unseen force. The cold of the smooth steel clawed at her wrists as her knuckles whitened. A comforting scent of wood smoke belched from the chimneys of the homes further down the valley. With closed eyes, she lifted her face into the chill borne by the setting sun. She took a deep calming breath and listened to a lone cockatoo calling across the valley. Its call was answered by another and then another until a screeching chorus ripped through the twilight sky. The echo surrounded and engulfed her. She heard or imagined she heard the loud command in their hideous cries.

‘Doo it! Doo it!’

Sal’s eyes flew open; startled she pushed herself away from the railing and fled toward the balcony door. She slammed it behind her and leaned against it with her hands flat as if to keep out the world on the other side.

‘Do what?’ she whispered.

She rested her face against the cool of the door as hot tears escaped down her cheeks. ‘How did this happen?’ This question loomed from a whirlpool of thoughts and spiralled back to last summer to the day it had all began.

Sarah Walden, everyone called her Sal, had wanted an antique writing desk for years. Last year she had finally decided to go in search of the one she had in mind. An empty space had waited patiently in front of the window ever since Sal had moved into the house. She had deliberately left the spot vacant as a constant invitation to the chosen occupant.

‘Yes that’s the one! It is absolutely perfect.’ Victorian turned legs and mirrored inlays on the return. Sal was delighted with her find at the back of a dusty old antique shop in the small country town. ‘I love it. It is just what I was looking for. How soon can you deliver it?’

Now finally placed in the perfect position by the window, the rich lustre of the polished cherry wood gleamed in the afternoon sunlight. Sal stood in different parts of the room admiring it from various angles, each one as satisfying as the other. An almost victorious smile warmed her face but Sal didn’t know the battle had not yet begun.

Sal placed her laptop on a mat in the centre of the desk. Two note pads and two pens she placed in the top drawer. A folder of clippings and scribbled ideas she placed in the drawer below.

‘Uncluttered that is how I want it to remain.’ she thought to herself. The only other thing she added to the desk was an elegant reading lamp to the left hand side in front of the mirrored return. The desk was so stylish, not only a workable showpiece but truly an object to be admired.

‘Tomorrow Sarah Walden, future bestselling author, will begin her novel.’ Sal whispered to herself wishing her dream to come true.

The next few months passed in a blur for Sal, she seldom left the house and saw very few people. She chose to stay at her desk for hours at a time. Her laptop had been moved to the side and was now buried beneath a blizzard of paper. Pages lay balled and discarded at her feet. She wrote quickly, word after word, filling pages, scanning them some she would keep and others were tossed. Sal slept so deeply at night, exhausted and drained by the time she fell into bed.

‘Saturday’s child works hard for a living.’ She murmured one night as she drifted off to sleep. The next morning it was as though she had woken from a coma. She took her coffee to the desk and gasped in dismay as she saw the rings from countless cups she had placed there before. Quickly she tidied the litter from the floor. She began to organize and clean the top of the desk.

‘How could I have done that?’ she thought, thoroughly disgusted. As she flicked through the pages and sorted them into some kind of order, she felt as though she was reading them for the first time. There was only the vaguest recollection of the story lines. If it had not been in her own handwriting she would have been sure it was someone else’s work. Over the next few days, Sal transcribed the mountain of paper into a manuscript on her laptop. She enjoyed reading the dark twists and turns of the subplots, the quirky and sometimes malevolent characters seemed to take on a life of their own as page after page the bizarre, unexpected and terrifying unfolded.

‘Thursday’s child has a long way to go.’ breathed the whoosh of the hydraulic elevator as she rode up to the office on the 23rd floor. Her hands shook as she delivered the bound manuscript into the hands of the publisher. She felt it was good but the weight of self doubt that fell on her shoulders almost made her knees buckle beneath her. They had liked the first two chapters and had requested she submit the completed work for consideration.

Sal didn’t sit at the desk for weeks and it seemed as though the whim of becoming a writer had disappeared completely. She had been busy reacquainting herself with her friends and getting back to all the activities she had enjoyed before writing the book.

It was a sunny spring morning with only a breath of chill in the air. The trees were sprouting new greenness and this tinged the world with a fresh optimistic light. Sal went to the letterbox as she did every morning to collect the paper and the mail. She stood transfixed, looking at the envelope with its neatly typed label and embossed blue and gold logo. There in the sunshine with the birds fluttering in the branches above, she turned the envelope over. Her fingers trembled as she gently peeled back the flap.

‘Tuesday’s child is happy and gay.’ the birds sang to her. Accepted, signed, published, a success, these words leaped from the letter she held shakily in her hand. Sal caught her breath. She had done it.

And so began the giddy journey of book signings and interviews on talk shows all over the country. The words ‘bestseller’ on everyone’s lips left Sal in utter disbelief and overwhelmed with happiness. The day Sarah Walden realized her dream was the last sane and happy day she could remember before the nightmare life began.

The first incident, as unsettling as it was, Sal put down to an awful, unthinkable coincidence. Both the similarity to the character and the way in which he met his death unfolded just as it had in chapter one of her novel. By the fifth ‘coincidence’ and the third death of someone she had known, not closely merely acquaintances, panic and confusion churned in her stomach. From the news reports, all bore a distinct resemblance to the characters in her book. Had she actually brought these people into her mind as she was writing to get more reality into her characters? She didn’t know. The whole process of writing this book was such a blur to her now. It was like looking into the valley showered in the morning mist, knowing what was there but unable to see.

‘Wednesday’s child is full of Woe.’ whispered a voice quietly as she tossed in her bed at night.

A loud knock at the door announced the arrival of two detectives, their emotionless faces surveying her as she opened the door. They had brought her bad news. Geraldine Sparks was dead, suspicious circumstances they said.

‘Gerri dead?’ Sal slumped onto the sofa. Gerri had been her closest friend, her yoga buddy, her coffee mate and shoulder to lean on. She was her confidante who only yesterday had been laughing, planning and living.

‘It’s come to our attention Ms Walden you have been acquainted with several people who have met with untimely deaths in the last few months. Many of the incidents also appear to be very similar to the events written in your book. Can you explain this?’

Sal sat very still and quiet on the sofa consumed by shock. Afternoon sunlight fell in shafts across the room and illuminated the cherry wood of the desk, now well polished and uncluttered in front of the window.

‘Is that where you wrote this?’ the younger detective nodded toward the desk and held up the copy of her novel he had brought with him. He stood beside the desk and ran his hand over the lustrous surface. ‘It is a beautiful piece of furniture.’

Little stickers of green and orange protruded from the pages as he flicked open and showed Sal the paragraphs highlighted in bright yellow marker. The paragraphs Sal knew were the coincidences she herself had realized. When he got to the last one Sal gasped.

‘No! Gerri! Please tell me this didn’t happen to her. It’s too… Please tell me it didn’t.’

Sal shook and sobbed with her face buried in her hands. The senior detective cleared his throat.

‘She was pinned down by shards of glass from a broken skylight not with pieces of mirror as in your book. However the injuries and position were consistent with your story.’

It was as though a shard of glass had cut through Sal’s own heart.

‘You don’t think I…?’ she couldn’t go on.

‘No Ms Walden, we are already aware you were nowhere near any of the incidents when they occurred. However we would like your cooperation assisting us with our investigations when you feel up to it. Please give me a call and