Welcome to the second in my mini-series as I give a bit of well-deserved love to one of my favourite writing devices – prologues (and I love reading them, too!).
The extract I have for you today is from That Killer Image, one of my Darker Minds Crime & Suspense books. I have a particular love of prologues that show the reader something that happened in the past life of one of the characters, and which directly influences the life of the clear ‘villain’ of the book. It allows the reader to keep this event in mind as they watch the villain build up to their darkest deed of all, or maybe change over the course of the story and come to terms with this event of the past. The reader has an opportunity to question the behaviour, knowing what they do about the character. It may even make the reader complicit in the dark deeds, or at best, unable to do anything but watch and shout, ‘No, don’t do it!’ But, imprisoned in the book as he/she is, the villain can’t hear you…
I’m not giving away spoilers by telling you that this prologue is all about Anthony, and if you’ve read the novel you’ll know how quickly it’s obvious that he’s going to be the bad boy of the book. We first meet him when he a small boy. Anthony loves and adores his mother, and in particular, certain features about her. A specific event that occurred in his childhood has a massive impact on his psychology – and on his dreadful motivations for what he does (which I’m definitely not giving away!) in That Killer Image. I hope you enjoy it. Or that it creeps you out, just a bit, by the end. Either way, it means the prologue did one of its jobs!
Please note that, as my extracts are crime-related books or dark fiction of some kind, they are suitable for an adult readership. Please read responsibly.
Happy reading!
Claire
P.S. I’ve replaced any swear words in the novel with ****, for the purposes of this extract. Please also be aware that this scene contains domestic abuse and death/murder and in no way condones either. If this is likely to upset or trigger you in any way, please skip this extract.
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Prologue
Anthony rubbed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. His eyelids stung and he yawned until his mouth became a gigantic hole that made the rest of his face screw up around it. That made his eyes worse. He tuned into the noise, listened in silence, until it stopped being something that rumbled up and down through the wall and turned into proper voices. There was shouting. What was the shouting for?
He peeled himself out of his bedsheets, grabbed his teddy bear, the one that Mummy had given him, and stumbled his way across the floorboards to the bedroom door. His pyjamas were still too big for him and they got under his feet and tried to trip him up, but Mummy liked them because they were blue. He wriggled the striped trousers up until the waistband was over his ribs as he pressed his ear against the door. That was Mummy’s voice on the landing. And there was a man. He’d heard that voice many times before, when he was very little. When he was five. But he was a big boy now, at nine. He was the man of the house. That’s what Mummy always said.
The handle of his bedroom door squeaked, so he was really careful to move it so slowly that the squeak got bored and didn’t bother making a noise. He opened the door just enough for half his body to lean through and he clutched Teddy tightly to his chest as the voices became clear, loud.
His feet got stuck in his pyjama legs as he inched himself into the gap and he yanked at each one in turn until his toes reappeared. The floor was cold, but not as icy as the air that blew from the landing into his room. He shivered as he watched Mummy and the man. The man who only came home when business was done, or when he needed to. The man who was his father.
Before Uncle John died, he’d told him that his father’s ‘business’ was mainly in being a guest of Her Majesty. Anthony had been so excited to tell everyone, because how many other children would be able to say their father was staying with the Queen? Then, one day, a tall boy with a big fist and missing teeth had hit him, and worse, and told him what that really meant. All the other boys had laughed and called him ‘convict’s kid’ while he’d curled up on the grass, tasting blood and clutching his ribs. That was the day he knew he hated his father.
Anthony hated him now, while he watched the man shouting into Mummy’s face. It made her look away so all Anthony could see of her was the waves in her hair. Father was holding Mummy by the shoulders now. He was shaking her. It made Anthony’s chest hurt. Nobody should be touching his Mummy. Only he was allowed. He wanted her to wrap her arms around him now, so he felt warm and she could rock him to sleep, just like on those other nights when he still had bad dreams.
Mummy was shouting into the man’s face, his father’s face, but Anthony couldn’t understand what she said. She’d never used those words to him. Mummy only ever smiled at him – smiled and sang lullabies and read him stories, and looked at him with her beautiful blue eyes. They had specks of grey in them. Each one looked like a tiny teardrop, the same shape as her silver necklace.
The lamplight at the top of the stairs lit up half of his father’s body. Half a dark beard, the side of his nose, and one big hand that now grabbed Mummy’s face while he shouted back at her. More words Anthony didn’t understand. He couldn’t see Mummy’s face, just the light shining on the edge of the teardrop shape of her necklace, and on the part that spun in the middle, and that held a picture of her and him. She said it was so she always had him close to her heart.
Anthony’s heart thumped in his chest like it had done when the boys had kicked him to the ground. Mummy and his father pushed and shoved and knocked against the handrail along the landing. The wood made cracking sounds as they thudded against the spindles. Teddy’s face squashed against the door frame as Anthony took another step forward to watch. He called out. ‘Mummy?’
His father spun to face him.
‘Get back inside your bedroom, boy.’
Anthony shot back inside the room, leaving just his head peering around the door frame, his eyes fixed on Mummy and the way she grasped onto his father’s clothes. She was shaking the front of his shirt, shrieking in his face. Anthony flinched. He hated hearing her like this. Father made Mummy like this. He would have bad dreams again, about what it was like before. It was perfect when it was just him and Mummy, and father was somewhere else and didn’t come home. Why did he have to come home?
The icy night air whipped itself around Anthony’s face as the argument went on. His father reached out and tried to grab Mummy’s necklace. She put her hand over it and screamed at his father to get out of the house. Anthony clutched Teddy to his ear to try and drown out the slap that sent Mummy’s head reeling sideways. For one second, her eyes caught his and a feeling he didn’t recognise shot through him.
‘My house. And my rules. You’re my wife and you’ll do as I **** well tell you to. What the **** are you looking at?’
His father swung around again. Eyeballed him. Took two steps towards Anthony’s bedroom door.
‘I thought I told you to go back into your room. Just like your **** mother. I’ll sort you out. You’ll learn to be like me, boy.’
Mummy’s voice screeched across the landing. ‘Don’t you dare touch him. He’ll never be like you. He’s better than you could ever be.’
Anthony stood, his feet frozen, the stripy trouser legs tangling themselves under his feet once again. His arms shook where he clung to the teddy bear that Mummy had given him on the day he was born. Father no longer seemed to care that Anthony was standing there. He was shaking Mummy. Shaking her and shaking her. He was shouting words that sounded cruel but that Anthony had never heard before. Mummy had her back against the handrail and she was gripping it until her knuckles stood out like white marbles. His father was thrusting his head at hers, saying the same words over and over.
‘You’ll do it for them. Why won’t you do it for me?’ His hand was at Mummy’s dress, pushing at the material. Pushing it up and up and Mummy was shoving him off her. But his father kept pushing and pushing his hand further and further up her dress.
Anthony was the man of the house. Mummy said so.
‘Get off her. Get off my Mummy. Leave her alone.’
His father was laughing. Laughing at him. He was saying bad things about Mummy. Bad things to him, and he didn’t want to hear these things about her because they weren’t true. Mummy was the best person in the world and he loved her and his father would not say bad things about her. He wouldn’t let him.
Anthony ran. He ran straight forward and shoved his hand and Teddy into his father’s stomach. His father grunted and he let go of Mummy and stumbled backwards, landing across the floorboards and lashing out his arms.
There was a scream. It made him clutch his teddy bear to his head and shut his eyes, just for a second. Just one. Mummy was screaming at him.
‘Help me!’
Her back was arched over the rail. Her eyes were fastened on his face.
He reached out to her, clutched his little fingers onto her dress and pulled hard. But they slipped from the fabric and she screamed again. He tried to grab her arm but the pyjamas were caught underneath his foot and he tripped. His teddy bear spun in the air and he tried to grab it but it disappeared over the handrail as Anthony crashed, hands first, into Mummy’s leg, just as her foot stopped touching the floor. Then her shoe was against his face. He tried to grab her foot but missed. She looked straight at him as the shoe came off and she screamed again.
And then there was a thud.
Anthony peered through the spindles as his father swore and yanked himself to his feet. He watched the man walk, in no great rush, down the stairs to the rug in the centre of the large hallway. Mummy was lying there. Her arms and legs were twisted in places where they didn’t usually belong. Teddy was at her side, as if he was sleeping next to her.
Anthony clawed at his trouser legs and took careful steps down the stairs, holding on tight. He felt so small and the steps felt so huge. His father was standing over Mummy. She was sleeping. Anthony knelt at her side, clutching her shoe. He put his hand on her arm, on her face, and called her name.
‘Mummy, wake up. Mummy, please wake up. Mummy?’
His father made a gasping noise as Mummy opened her eyes. She looked at Anthony. Nowhere else. He picked up the teddy bear and put it on her chest. He grabbed her arm and wrapped it around Teddy because Teddy would look after her and Teddy would make everything all right. Mummy made a noise and then she lay still.
Anthony wanted her to blink. He stared at her eyes until his own throbbed. He wanted to see the beautiful light in them, the way she always looked at him when she sang lullabies and when she told him she loved him, because nothing in the world was more perfect than she was. But her eyes looked towards the giant chandelier that hung far, far away in the ceiling. Her eyes didn’t smile. They didn’t do anything.
The front door slammed. His father wasn’t standing over Mummy anymore. It was just her and him. And those dead eyes. But Anthony didn’t see them like that. All he saw was the look they had at that moment Mummy knew that his push against her leg tipped her over the edge.
And he’d give anything to see her eyes glow like that again.
Also available as a digital boxset
If you prefer e-book boxsets, then you can find all three of these Darker Minds Crime & Suspense books collected together. The boxset includes:
- Show Me Dead
- That Killer Image
- No Deadlier Time
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