ATLANTIC IN OUR BONES - my Glasgow thriller - Chapter 2

Just pasting in here the second chapter of my Glaswegian 'Tartan noir' thriller ATLANTIC IN OUR BONES, which I'm currently putting through what hopefully will be a final revision. If you want to hear me READ this chapter in audiobook form, that's on Soundcloud HERE: https://soundcloud.com/user-752957699/atlantic-in-our-bones-chapter-two

(My other MYSTERIES OF GLASGOW novels are available here: GLASGOW, LIKE A STRANGER and here: AZTEC LOVE SONG )

2./ The train drowns its rumble in the distance. Mhairi lingers under the overhang of the tiny station's roof, the slender white building and single platform marooned in rain-swept blackness. Past streamings from the overflowing gutter, she sees, in the valley below, an intermittent flow of car headlights and tail-lights travelling the sole road, hereabouts, between north and south. Dragging her rucksack onto her shoulders, she pulls up the hood of her fleece and descends from the platform, taking the rain and chill gusts full in her face. Her lower belly suffers another twinge, accompanied by a trickle of blood down the inside leg of her jeans.

Beyond the station, a narrow road, coursing with water, descends past a portakabin post office, a tiny school, a fire station and the short single line of houses which passes for a village, the curtains tugged tight. At the foot of the hill, the main road greets her with the spray from a northbound supermarket lorry.

At the road's far side, a small hotel clenches light and warmth within itself, a few chattering backs-of-heads bobbing behind the leaded windows of its bar. She wonders if there isn't some outbuilding where she could bed down. There is a phone box near the door of the bar. It occurs to her that a phone call and a confession would sort her a bed for the night.

But by the time the next car has swished by, awareness of how important it is to keep running has reasserted itself, along with a certainty of there being only one place, one person, she can run towards. Squelching onto the grass verge at the near side of the road, she turns into the glare of the next vehicle hurtling southward.

As it races by, she wonders if she should stick out her thumb. Instead, she stares at the dark shapes behind each oncoming set of headlights, urging one of them, sooner or later, to understand what it is like to be a lost object in a callous world.

Her backward steps have carried her to the far end of the verge before a car swerves close, passenger door swinging wide.

*********************************************************************

"Some’dy waiting for you in Glasgow?"

Facing Mhairi across the table in the roadside cafe, the man with the vague smudge of moustache licks his middle finger, using it to mop doughnut crumbs from his plate.

"Mm," she nods, taking another slurp of milkshake.

"What? Family?" he asks, smiling that same smile he's been shoving her way since picking her up at Bridge of Orchy.

She gives a sidelong shrug. "Yeah."

She wishes they could have kept on going, whooshing through the dark in his snug, sleek car. Mightn't they have been as far south as Loch Lomond, by now?

"They do know you're coming?" he asks, licking the crumbs from his finger. He has told her he sells cars, that he's got his own showroom in Glasgow and is on his way back from a trade show in Fort William, clearly assuming she's impressed.

She nods. He pats his hand on top of hers.

"There was me taking you for a little girl lost," he says. 'Aitch', he's asked her to call him.

She tries to slide her hand clear. He takes firmer hold.

"Can we... can we maybe get going?" she suggests.

"That highland lilt," he grins, "that bonnie red hair. The boys are gonna fall over themselves in the Big G."

She wrenches her hand free. "Can we? Go?"

"Sure," he agrees, knocking back a last mouthful of coffee. Cappuccino foam clings to his moustache.

They head outside to the gravel car park, which is almost empty of vehicles at this hour. The rain has dwindled to a drizzle.

“Ooh...!” says Aitch, frowning and doubling up as he opens the door of the driving seat.

“You okay?” asks Mhairi.

“What? Oh... yeah, sweetheart. Oof. Just the usual.”

“Usual?”

“My digestion… the Rennies shareholders must be cock-a-hoop every time I clock a doughnut. Ulcers! Side effect’ah being a successful entrepreneur!”

“Is there...” Mhairi begins warily, “...anything I can... do...?”

He straightens up, shows a plucky smile.

“You, pet? Well, short of you having a jumbo bottle of Pepto-Bismol on you, you could spare me a wee five minutes for a lie down before we move on.” Reaching inside his souped-up little number, he pushes flat the back of the driving seat. 

“Oof...how could I have missed the whiskers on yon doughnut? – Don’t worry, pet, you don’t have to stand out there in the rain. Here, look - !” He pushes down the back of the passenger seat. “You can have a wee lie down too. Bet you could do wi’ one!”

“Uh no…” says Mhairi, stepping back, “…not really….”

“Well, the café there’s shutting up, so where you gonna hang around, catchin' the rain, while my belly’s settlin’? Still umpteen miles o’highland between us and Glasgow. Go on, doll, climb in.”

"No... listen..." Mhairi responds, scanning the unpopulated distance between herself and the cafe and the road beyond, "...I’m just gonna...."

"What?" asks Aitch, grinning. "Catch the bus? What bus? C'mon, I’m talkin' about an innocent lie down. We can play at being Babes In The Wood, eh?"

"No..." Mhairi draws back further, "...no way."

Aitch steps after her, gastric agonies dispelled.

"You don't want to snub me entirely, I’m sure? Wind up stranded here? It's a cold world if you don't make the most of a friendly hand."

He reaches towards her. She turns, takes the first step of a sprinting away. He catches her rucksack, dragging her back, pulling the pack down the single arm onto which she has its strap looped. She turns, tries to tug it back. He pulls her closer, the pack sandwiched between them.

"Hey..." he says, "...what's the panic? Even a sweet wee teuchter cannae be entirely naïve about a fellah's assumptions when a lassie hops in his motor, middle of the night."

She pulls harder on the pack. He tugs it his way.

"What you got in here?" he sneers. "The crown jewels? Some frilly knicks tae fire my fantasies? Or…"

He stops, lifting one hand from the pack, studying its palm in the meagre light. Something drips on his shoe. Looking up, he glimpses too late the metallic flash. The sound of the flesh around his eyes shearing wide registers ahead of the pain.

He supposes the eyes themselves have been scythed out, hot black agony searing his skull, sending him tumbling through the open car door at his back. The rear of his head bumps the door-frame, his backside bouncing on, then sliding from, the edge of the driving seat, clunking onto the metal edge below.

Tears scald a pale shape into his darkness, the shape of the girl staring down at him, all white face and red hair. She grabs the rucksack, running off. For a moment, he watches her dissolve into the drizzle. Then, pain biting deeper across his face, blood coursing hot into his mouth and bubbling up his nostrils, he gropes into the driving seat, anger jostling ahead of agony.

Mhairi, running, hears the rev of his engine, the slice of his wheels across the car park's gravel and puddles. The cold heat of his headlights is upon her back, throwing her shadow before her, the vehicle’s heat and oily stink sniffing at her rear. She glances over her shoulder.

Metal, hard and hot and slicked with rain, thumps into her. But even as she is thrown across it and cast to the ground, she realises this car came from another direction.

The next second or two is a chaos of engine snorts, wheel screeches and gravelly rattlings. Her reeling vision settles on Aitch's car, much further away than she had thought. It stands at a skewed halt, exhaust fumes thickening the red glow of its tail lights. It is another set of headlights that shines across the puddles in front of her. Somewhere to the rear of that glare she catches the sound of a door opening, of feet splashing her way. Aitch's car screeches out onto the road. Mhairi feels hands about her shoulders.

"You okay?" someone asks: a man's voice, Glaswegian, gentle and slightly gruff. "That bastard almost killed you."

ATLANTIC IN OUR BONES First Chapter of my new novel

Hi, just beginning final polish of what I hope is the final draft of my new 'Tartan Noir' novel ATLANTIC IN OUR BONES, the latest in my series The Mysteries Of Glasgow (another two novels, AZTEC LOVE SONG and GLASGOW, LIKE A STRANGER, are available already HERE: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Aztec-Love-Song-Marty-Ross/dp/0956219322  ... and HERE: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Glasgow-Like-A-Stranger-ebook/dp/B004ZH3EGQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1365784255&sr=1-1&keywords=glasgow%2C+like+a+stranger

No better way of testing if the words all flow freely than to read the darned thing out loud, which I've done with the first chapter posted on SOUNDCLOUD here.... https://soundcloud.com/user-752957699/atlantic-in-our-bones-chapter-11

And here's the text of that first chapter.... More to follow!!!

The moment he spots her, on the platform of the harbour's train station, a shock seizes Chief Superintendent Creggan, a shock sharper than the wind off the sea loch.

“Mhairi....?” he mutters, like the old family friend he is, starting towards her even as she darts aboard the train. He has almost reached her when the doors slide shut between them. The train, running late, starts grumbling into motion.

Creggan, who has just got off this selfsame train, weary after a tedious conference in Inverness, followed by the lengthy, slow-running journey which has brought him back home, runs alongside the carriage, Mhairi in view as she takes a seat on the carriage's far side, the girl's pretty, slender face fixed forward, giving no clear sign she has spotted him.

He gives up the chase as the train rattles into the distance. What is he concerned about? - he asks himself. The girl looks fine, old enough, just about, to competently make a journey on her own. And yet... it is not like her father, for better or worse, to turn her free like this. Creggan fumbles out his phone, thumbing his way to a familiar number. Past the platform's far end, he can dimly make out the island, on the grey horizon beyond the mouth of the sea loch.

*********************************************************************

On that island, the sea-wind swings wide a cottage's front door, clattering its knob against the wall of the narrow hallway. The gust ebbs. The door attempts to creak shut, barely halfway there when the next gust slaps it as wide as before. Beyond, past a hiss of wind-coarsened undergrowth, the sea grunts a cold grey laughter.

Wind-stirred puddles lie in the warps of the hallway’s linoleum floor. On the wall at one side, coats hang in a clump, threadbare sleeves and crudely patched elbows jostling one another. Through the living room doorway, the television crackles its imperfect reception of some faraway game show. On the coffee table facing the TV, the old manual typewriter hunkers its metal bulk. Alongside, the all-but-full ashtray and all-but-empty whisky glass gather dust. Nearby, the phone rings and goes unanswered.

In the kitchen, the little table with the checked tablecloth stands set for dinner, the dinner itself beyond rescue within the burnt-down stump of saucepan on the fused hob. A tiny crab scuttles the floor. The kitchen door, half-open onto the hall, voices a low groan, then slams against its frame, caught by a gust that makes the kitchen calendar flutter on its hook. The phone rings on.

Upstairs, empty rooms offer that ringing no answer. In Mhairi's little box room, the rumpled covers on the single bed hold only soilings of dried blood, the small and slender hand-print in blood on the wall above hardly hand enough to lift a receiver, the silence which chokes the place scarcely able to afford Chief Superintendent Creggan the answer for which, over on the mainland, he fairly aches.

*********************************************************************

Blurring by, the highland landscape and the troubled clouds above lie slashed with violet and scarlet. Hill after hill swells – green, brown, black - against the sky and is bundled aside. Between them and the edge of the railway track, a bog shivers, its pools mirroring the sunset clouds, the waters suffering the first stabs of oncoming rain.

Mhairi sips lukewarm tea. The train compartment is half empty, but still the figures with whom she shares it seem to press altogether too close, their various conversations a threatening murmur. Perhaps it’s her they’re muttering about: that strange lassie who bought her ticket with a cascade of coins across the station counter, like a kid who'd taken a hammer to her piggy bank.

That man there, face like a bleached headstone… doesn’t she know him? From Church, maybe? Friend of Dad’s? No… maybe not. Her Dad has so few friends. Has… Present tense. How dare she phrase it otherwise? Yet to see him back there at the station, Creggan of all people... what kind of fate, of ill luck, does that imply for this attempt at escape? Perhaps he's already phoned ahead, ensuring her arrest at the next station. Maybe he's been over to the island already and seen... and seen....

No, of course not, there hasn't been nearly enough time for that. And why should even he raise any alarm over her catching the same perfectly ordinary train he himself had just got off? All the same....

At the other side of Mhairi’s table, a baby on its mother’s knee screeches from a scarlet, single-toothed mouth, eyes fixed on Mhairi. Maybe that young and raw - she ponders – it can smell the blood. Like a crow. Or a police dog. Or maybe that’s a cry of sympathy? It’s a terrible thing, after all, to be a child in such a world, as Mhairi well knows: all of seventeen, yet with little more experience of all she is running from, of all she is running towards, than that cry-baby kid.

Her innards suffer their latest pang. The dour-faced man further up the aisle has seen her wince, craning his head for a clearer view. Does she know him? Does he know her? Did he spot that look Creggan gave her?

She knows one thing: she must get off this train.

THE BALLAD OF THE DRIFTWOOD MERMAID MEDIA RELEASE

Just posting here the media release for my next storytelling show, at No.28 in Belper on December 5th.

THE BALLAD OF THE DRIFTWOOD MERMAID

A Storytelling Drama by Marty Ross

No. 28, Market Square, Belper, Derbyshire DE56 1FZ.

Saturday 5 December 7.30pm. Tickets £7 / £5 concession.

Storyteller MARTY ROSS (BBC Radio drama; Doctor Who & Dark Shadows audio drama) returns to Belper with his latest dramatic performance, a very modern version of a classic folk tale from his native Scotland, with all the mix of magic, poetry and eerie romance that implies.

Marty Ross has become a regular performer at Belper's No. 28 Arts Centre with shows such as The Blackwater Bride, 21^st Century Poe & Blood And Stone. For his latest show, he returns to the folklore and fairy tale tradition of his native Scotland, drawing inspiration from a legend of the Solway coast between South West Scotland and North West England, the tale of 'the Haunted Ships', lying sunken out in the deep waters and haunted specifically both by ghosts and by fairies – not the twee, cute butterfly winged fairies of Victorian sentimentality, but the fierce and seductive and sometimes downright frightening fairies of Scots / Irish folklore.

The original story concerns a Laird and his wife, the fairies trying to tempt the wife off into their undersea kingdom. But Ross is a storytelling 'modernist', always keen to move the resurgent art of storytelling away from being too quaint and olde worlde... and so in his version of the story our central characters are a very modern couple, David and Jenny who've made some serious money with an internet business and have channelled that money into refurbishing a house on the Galloway cliffs. But the marriage has its problems and when a handsome young sculptor, named Finn, who may have a connection to the 'otherworld' of the Haunted Ships, charms Jenny, the scene is set for a climax of drama and terror and magic.

MARTY ROSS is well established as a playwright, particularly with radio drama for the BBC, including The Darker Side Of The Border, Ghost Zone, Catch My Breath, My Blue Piano, Rough Magick, Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk, Moyamensing and The Dead Of Fenwick Moor. He has also written two Doctor Who audio dramas and the award-nominated Dark Shadows: Dress Me In Dark Dreams. Redder Than Roses and The Woman On The Bridge were commissioned for and performed at the Buxton Festival. Crooker's Kingdom was performed this Halloween at Cromford Mill. Shortly to be produced is Romeo & Julian, commissioned by Amazon Audible.

As a storyteller he has performed successfully at the likes of the Edinburgh Fringe, London Horror Festival and Glasgow Southside Fringe. He regularly performs in the East Midlands, where he currently lives, with regular shows at No. 28 in Belper and Chilwell Arts Theatre in Nottingham. Shows have included 21^st Century Poe, The Blackwater Bride, Ghosts Of Christmas Past, The Strange Tale Of The Glasgow Golem, Blood And Stone & The Gorbals Vampire.

THE BALLAD OF THE DRIFTWOOD MERMAID No.28 Belper Derbyshire 5 Dec

As promised, here's a little more detail on my next storytelling show, which is being performed at my regular performance haunt of No. 28 in the Market Square, Belper, Derbyshire. This is THE BALLAD OF THE DRIFTWOOD MERMAID.

This is my contemporary version of one of the classic Scottish folk tales, that of The Haunted Ships, as first collected - so far as I'm aware - in Allan Cunningham's "Traditional Tales Of The English And Scottish Peasantry" in the early 19th. century. The tale is native to the Scottish borders, to the area of the Solway Firth, that great sweep of water between South West Scotland and North West England. I've always felt a strong connection to that area - my Dad's boss used to have an upmarket log cabin in the area and we would go there for weekends away. Years later, it was in that selfsame log cabin that I had my honeymoon!

My version is set on the very edge of the Solway, at the tip of the Mull of Galloway (the same region where that other classic Scots horror tale, The Wicker Man, was filmed.) and is very definitely set in contemporary times. In the original, the fairies who haunt the Haunted Ships out in the Solway get their eye on the wife of a country Laird and try to tempt her from her husband into their underwater kingdom. The Laird does what he can to stop this happening... but the story comes to a rather abrupt end when the ghosts / fairies come up with a cunning plan to steal her away that is never actually put into practice. I decided, therefore, in my version to not only update the story to a contemporary setting but to develop the plot further - though of course I don't want to give too much away at this stage!

Anyway, in my story Jenny and David, making a fresh start after some marital difficulties in Glasgow, make a fresh start in a state of the art house they've had built on the Galloway cliffs. But they aren't quite over the problems with their marriage, these difficulties compounded when Jenny gets closer to Finn, a young fisherman who makes a hobby of carving extraordinary beautiful sculptures out of driftwood. And out among the great heap of sunken ships not far off the coast, the ghosts and the fairies are still covetous of human beauty....

The show was performed at the London Horror Festival where one wag said it was like "Scots folk tale meets H. P. Lovecraft" and maybe there's something in that. Certainly it's intended, for all its modern setting, to have the rich mix of romance and spookiness, beauty and the uncanny, that typifies the greatest folk tales.

The show is at 7.30pm on Dec 5th at No. 28 Market Square, Belper, Derbyshire DE56 1FZ. Tickets are £7 full price & £5 concession. More details on the poster above.

THE BALLAD OF THE DRIFTWOOD MERMAID at No.28 Belper Dec 5th

Hi, full post to follow on the subject, but in the meantime here's the poster for my next storytelling show, which is THE BALLAD OF THE DRIFTWOOD MERMAID at my familiar haunt of the No.28 arts centre in Belper Market Square on Dec 5th. It's my radical contemporary reinvention of the classic Scots border folk tale of The Haunted Ships. Details of booking etc. are on the poster anyway....

LADY MACBETH OF MTSENSK back on BBC Radio 4 12.11.15 at 2.15pm

Hi just a quick post to let you know that my radio play LADY MACBETH OF MTSENSK, adapted from the story by Nikolai Leskov is back on Radio 4 today at 2.15pm (and available through iPlayer / BBC website etc for a full month thereafter) and to post links to my two previous MAKING OF posts, which are here....

LINK NO ONE:
http://martyrossstoryteller.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/lady-macbeth-of-mtsensk-bbc-radio-4.html


LINK NO TWO:
http://martyrossstoryteller.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/siberia-in-north-london-recording-lady.html

21st CENTURY POE: FALLING FOR THE USHERS at Glasgow's Britannia Panopticon Music Hall October 10th.

Just announcing....

21^st. Century poe:

falling for the ushers

sat. october 10^th. 7.30 pm, britannia panopticon,

113-117 trongate, glasgow, g1 5hd.

TICKETS £8 / £6 CONCESSION.

BOOKINGS:

judith@britanniapanopticon.org

info@britanniapanopticon.org

0141-553-0840

Scottish storyteller & playwright Marty Ross (BBC Radio horror; Doctor Who audio) drags The Fall Of The House Of Usher kicking & screaming into contemporary Glasgow – in one of Glasgow's most atmospheric locations, the world's oldest surviving music hall. What better show to get Glasgow in the mood for Halloween?

Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall Of The House Of Usher is long-established as a classic horror tale, but Marty Ross is a ‘modernist’ on the live storytelling scene, audaciously relocating the tale to his own era and his own Glaswegian 'back yard'. Thus, in his version, Falling For The Ushers, haunted twins Roderick and Madeline Usher have left behind the misty Gothic manor of the original story to become superstars of Glasgow's contemporary art world, thanks to their macabre conceptual installations in the manner of Damien Hirst and the Chapman Bros. But when Madeline’s old art school admirer Ed shows up, their tragic downfall is as inescapable as ever. And Marty Ross's unique performing style, combining evocative language with expressionistic mime and gesture, makes full-blown theatre out of the story as he embodies a whole cast list of larger than life characters.

21^st CENTURY POE has already been a hit at the Edinburgh Fringe and London Horror Festivals, as testified by the reviews below, but it has never enjoyed a more atmospheric location than the Victorian grandeur of Glasgow's – and the world's – oldest surviving music hall. This is sure to be one of the highlights of the run up to Glasgow's Halloween.

“Ross has a great aptitude for suspense and terror, and he hurls himself into his tale with energy and passion, in words which ring with Glasgow rhythm. An accomplished piece of work… a chilling conclusion.” – The Scotsman

“…What Marty Ross does with literature’s most mystical and macabre works is make them sing with new energy and beguile an audience all over again…. poetically re-worked ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ manages, in its modernisation, to preserve and revere the original, even intensifying its impact… a bewitchingly good story that leaves a haunting reminder long after the lights have gone down.” - 3 Weeks ****

“Insanely good storytelling… a master craftsman who never turns down the pressure… Ross’ violently impressive performance make this a heart-pounding triumph… Trainspotting meets gothic horror….” – Broadway Baby *****

“Visceral. A compelling narrator and onstage presence. … left you thinking as well as reeling… theatre that kept you on edge… an immensely entertaining ride that scared and shocked in equal measure – a fair ground ghost ride for the 21st Century….” – Fringe Review

Well established as a playwright, particularly with dark drama for BBC radio (Ghost Zone, Catch My Breath, Darker Side Of The Border, Rough Magick, Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk, Moyamensing, The Dead Of Fenwick Moor), plus Doctor Who & award-nominated Dark Shadows audio drama, as well as Blood And Stone, nominated for a 2012 Rondo Award (horror fandom’s Oscars), Ross also regularly performs as a live storyteller throughout Scotland and England. Two plays of his have premiered at the last two Buxton Festivals – Redder Than Roses: A Glimpse Of Mary, Queen Of Scots & The Woman On The Bridge. A new play Crooker's Kingdom, has been commissioned by Cromford Mill for premiere this Halloween. Another audio drama, Romeo & Julian, has just been commissioned by Amazon Audible.

TICKETS £8 / £6 CONCESSION.

BOOKINGS:

judith@britanniapanopticon.org

info@britanniapanopticon.org

0141-553-0840