Dark Solstice Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental

  N.P. Martin

  Dark Solstice

  Greytown Horrors Series Book 1

  Copyright © 2021 by N. P. MARTIN

  [email protected]

  Cover design by Original Book Cover Designs

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  FREE BOOK

  Author Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Glossary

  MAKE A DIFFERENCE

  TEASER: INFERNAL JUSTICE (ETHAN DRAKE # 1)

  TEASER: SERPENT SON (GODS AND MONSTERS TRILOGY BOOK 1)

  Books By N. P. Martin

  About The Author

  FREE BOOK

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  Author Note

  When I decided to write this book, which started off as a passion project, it was my goal to stay true to the characters by using their own dialect. Initially, I wrote the whole thing in a Northern Irish dialect before reading over it and having the same reaction you’re probably having right now at the thoughts of having to read a whole book written in Trainspotting-esque dialect. Which is to say, I just went, “No, Neal…just no.”

  So I rewrote the whole book and got rid of nearly all the dropped Gs and phonetical spellings to make the whole thing much easier to read. I’ve left a few phonetical spellings in the text here and there, but only for colour. There are also a handful of slang terms, but I’ve included a glossary you can refer to if need be. The text is also written in British English because of the setting, so to all my American friends, no reviews complaining about spelling errors please :)

  The dialect used throughout the book is Northern Irish, which differs a fair bit from the Southern Irish dialect that most people around the world are familiar with. If you want to know what a "Norn Iron" accent sounds like, listen to actors such as Liam Neeson, Jamie Dornan, James Nessbit, Stephen Rea, Bronagh Gallagher, or the cast of Derry Girls.

  Also, Northern Irish people curse A LOT. So be warned, there is LOTS of swearing in this book.

  N.P. Martin

  “The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind.”

  ― Howard Phillips Lovecraft

  1

  You spend forty years of your life in a place, you’d be forgiven for thinking you know it inside out, wouldn’t you? I mean, you were born there—you had your first shite there, your first wank, your first ride, your first just about every fucking thing. The place is in your blood, flowing through your veins, affecting how you act, how you talk, how you carry yourself. You think you know everything there is to know about this place you’ve spent your entire life in—every street, every back alley, every fucking hole in the hedge. You know what goes on, and what doesn’t go on; what’s acceptable and what’s not; who’s a cunt and who isn’t.

  But then something happens that blows your whole idea of this place you live in—Greytown, in my case—to kingdom fucking come. Something happens and it’s like somebody took a shotgun and blew your brains all over the place, and ever since, you’ve just been scrambling to pick up all the pieces and assemble them back into some kind of working order again.

  I mean, if you’d told me that Greytown—my wee fucking town!—was infested with evil—pure, unadulterated evil—I’d’ve told you to away and shite and lay off the fucking trips or shrooms or whatever mind-bending shite is going around these days. If you said to me, “Fergie, there’s monsters in this town, real fucking monsters that eat people and steal their souls, and do fuck knows what other messed up shite to them,” I’d’ve probably just said, “Fuck away off back to St. Lukes, you mad cunt.”

  Course, if you say it to me now, I’ll probably just say, “Aye, fucking tell me about it, mucker!”

  Because I know different now.

  And I wish to fuck I didn’t.

  If you’re up for it, I’ll tell you how I came to know that there're monsters in this wee town of mine. And maybe, if you feed me enough Buckfast, I might just tell you as well what happened when I did come to know.

  It’s a quare fucking story, so it is.

  And it all started with a day from hell that eventually turned into Hell for real.

  Right. Here we go. Pass me that fucking Buckfast there…

  2

  Know what I fucking hate? Fucking spides. Know what else I hate? Cunt’s who call me a spide. I mean, just because I’ve got a moustache and the same hairstyle I’ve had from the nineties—you know, the greasy curtains look—doesn’t make me a fucking spide. Clothes and haircuts don’t make the spide. Being a snattery wee cunt with a spidey moustache makes a spide. Being a fucking street urchin with all mouth and no balls makes you a spide. And I can categorically say I’m none of those things. A spide I am not.

  “Fuck off, you spidey cunt!”

  A spide is saying this to me in Tesco carpark at half-eleven in the morning. The wee ballicks is standing there with his can of lager and his bum-fluff moustache, eyes like two piss holes in the snow from all the weed he’s been smoking, and he has the balls to call me a spide! And that’s after me telling the wee cunt that I’d kick his ballicks in if he didn’t get the fuck away from my car, which he’s standing beside now like he owns the fucking thing. My fucking car! My Betsy! Him and all his wee spide mates standing there as well, fucking looking at me like I’m a joke to them? Clearly, the wee bastards have no clue who they’re talking to. If they did, they wouldn’t be standing here in front of my car, giving me gyp like this, would they?

  “Just ignore the wee ballicks’,” my mate Jamesy says, who used to be a spide himself before he wised up. Some would argue—not me, unless I’m drunk or mad at him, which is most of the time—that Jamesy is still a spide, even with his black leather jacket and tight denim jeans, which Jamesy thinks makes him look hard. It doesn’t. It just makes him look like a more matured spide. Jamesy used to be in the UVF. I’m an ex-Dissident Republican myself. I shot Jamesy in the leg one time, after he shot himself in the foot. That’s how we became friends. I’ll tell you the whole story sometime once I’m done showing these spidey bastids hogging my car who the real boss is around here.

  “Listen to me, you wee ballicks,” I say as I step into the wee ballicks’ face. Not literally, like. But close to him. Close enough that I can smell the Buckfast and lager off his breath, and the stinkin
g weed off his spidey clothes. “Move away from my fucking Celica now, before I take that can of piss you’re drinking and shove it up your fucking hole.”

  “Awww, Tony,” one of the spide’s spidey mates says. “Are you going to let him talk to you like that?”

  “Knock the cunt’s ballicks in!” another one of them says.

  I keep my eyes on the wee cunt, knowing Jamesy has my back. Or at least, he fucking better have. Knowing Jamesy, he’s probably bricking himself now. Jamesy’s not one for confrontation. He’s been known to pish himself on occasion when things get too lively. Like that time he shot himself in the foot. Or that other time a tranny stood up to him in Lavery’s in Belfast after Jamesy asked him what toilet he used when he had to piss. The cunt better not bottle it now, because this wee cunt in front of me is going to kick off, I can tell. You can always tell. Wee shite’s getting himself into position, drawing his free hand back. Fucking amateur. Time to clean this wee cunt’s clock for him.

  Fucking bang!

  I headbutt the wee cunt in the face, breaking his fucking nose. He falls back onto the bonnet of the Celica and just lies there moaning as his blood runs all over my good fucking car.

  But before I can even reprimand the wee cunt for bleeding inconsiderately like that—

  Bang!

  Some cunt whacks me on the back of the head with a bottle. Some kind of squeal leaves my mouth. Or is that Jamesy squealing? Probably Jamesy the useless cunt.

  “Fucking get the cunt!” someone shouts, and the next thing, I’ve got a load of spides kicking my cunt in, right in front of Betsy. I feel ashamed, so I do, going down like this in front of Betsy. What must she think of me, hitting the deck like a sack of spuds, brought down by a herd of feral spides?

  And as the boots lay into me, where the fuck is Jamesy? Why isn’t he getting stuck in and helping out his aul mate, who in case you don’t know, badly needs help at this point. The wee cunts are vicious as fuck, tanked up on fuck knows what drugs. Probably coke or that other shite all the spides take these days. That synthetic shite—Plantfood, I think it’s called—Northern Ireland’s answer to meth. To be honest, I wish I was on it myself. Maybe then I wouldn’t be feeling as much pain as I lie here getting my cunt kicked in by a bunch of fucking spides who probably couldn’t care less if they kill me or not. I tell you, back in the day, this would never have happened. When I was running with the Dissidents, we kept social order. Wee cunts were too afraid to do shite like this. Now there’s no one to keep order anymore and the spides think they own the fucking place. Which I suppose they do, like, now that I think about it.

  “Jamesy! Help me! Help me, ferfucksake!”

  I’m not sure if it’s me screaming or not. I think it is, even though, under ordinary circumstances, I wouldn’t normally degrade myself in such a manner as this. Nor would I be shouting for Jamesy’s help because I already know Jamesy is a useless cunt and I don’t even know why I’m friends with him half the time.

  Wait. The booting’s stopped. Aw, thank fuck. I’m fucking sore as fuck…

  “Aww!”

  Nope. There’s a few more boots left in them yet, the wee bastards.

  “Fucking wanker!” the wee bastard I headbutted says. I’m looking up at him trying not to choke on my own blood, and Christ almighty, the wee cunt has his dick out and—

  “Ah! Jesus…sssppppppwwwahhh…you wee cunt!”

  They're all laughing now like it’s fucking hilarious, which I suppose it is from their end—I mean, the wee fucker just pished over my face!—but from my end, not so much. I can almost hear Betsy’s gaskets sighing in disappointment. Fucking bitch. Probably won’t start for the next week, just out of disgust for me.

  “’Mon lads,” the wee cunt Tony says. “I think the stupid cunt has learnt his lesson.”

  “Aye like!” they all agree. “Wanker!”

  Wanker? Not wankers? Where the fuck is Jamesy in all this?

  When I think all the wee cunts have gone, I groan and shout for Jamesy. “Jamesy! Help me! Where are you, Jamesy?”

  “I’m over here, Fergie,” he says from somewhere. Somewhere far from the action, as usual.

  “Jamesy! Fucking help me here!”

  “Right. I’m coming.”

  What feels like five minutes later, Jamesy arrives over and lifts me off the ground. He’s a strong cunt. Bullish, like. It’s about the only thing he has going for him. For all the good it does him. At least he’s handy to have around when you need lifted out of a pool of your own blood.

  “Where the fuck were you?” I scream at him, splattering his face with blood. “That wee cunt was pishing over me!”

  “Jesus, Fergie,” he says wiping his face. “Watch the blood spittle there. You never heard of fucking AIDS?”

  “What?” I just stare at him because that’s about all I can do. “I don’t have fucking AIDS, you stupid cunt!”

  “How do you know? You been tested lately?”

  “Tested? Jamesy, what the fuck—” I shake my head. “It’s you that needs tested, Jamesy. Your fucking head needs tested! Chrissake, just get me into the fucking motor. I think them wee bastards broke a few ribs. Wee cunts.”

  “You shouldn’t’ve wound them up, Fergie,” he says as he puts my arm around his neck to hold me up and walk me to the back of the car. “They’d’ve moved on eventually.”

  “That’s not the fucking point though, Jamesy, is it.”

  “Then what is the point, Fergie?” He opens the back door.

  “The fucking point is…the point is…fuck it. Just get me on the back fucking seat, will you?”

  He starts to ease me into the back of the car, but grabs my side as he does, and I fucking scream. “Awooo Jamesy fuck! My fucking ribs!”

  “Sorry, Fergie. You alright?”

  “Fuck you, Jamesy! Long as you’re fucking alright, aye. Where the fuck did you run to, anyway?”

  “Over there behind that Ford Fiesta.”

  “You fucking hid behind a Ford Fiesta while I was getting my ballicks knocked in by a bunch of drugged-up spides?”

  “Aye, Fergie. I did.”

  “And where’s my fucking shopping bag gone to?”

  “The wee cunts must've taken it.”

  “Bronna’s fanny pads were in there, and the child’s fucking nappies! She’ll kill me!”

  Jamesy shrugs like it’s all okay, which it definitely isn’t. “Sorry mate,” he says.

  “I fucking hate you, Jamesy.”

  “Aye, whatever, Fergie. Let’s get you home to Bronna.”

  Another scream of pain leaves me. Nothing to do with the ribs. The mention of my wife’s name is enough. Fucking Bronna. I only married her because I got the aul whore pregnant and her fucking psycho ex-Provie da threatened to shoot me if I didn’t make an honest woman out of his slut of a daughter, who’s half my fucking age, by the way. That’s what happens when you ride some wee hussy one night thinking you’re Don Juan because you managed to pull some young thing half your fucking age. One fucking night! One fucking very forgettable ride! And then my life is fucking ruined!

  “You be careful with Betsy,” I tell Jamesy as I lie on the back seat, sore as fuck, fucking seething at them wee cunts for doing what they did to me. Not only that, I feel ashamed for letting them do it. This had’ve happened when I was still a Dissident, I’d’ve had the wee cunts fucking kneecapped. Fuck, what am I talking about, it would never have fucking happened back then. I’ve gone soft in my aul age. That fucking bitch Bronna has made me soft, her and her fucking child that hates the sight of me.

  “Wise up, Fergie,” Jamesy says. “It’s just a fucking car, as I keep telling you.”

  “Just a fucking car!” I sit up to glare at him. “It’s not just a fucking car, Jamesy, as I keep telling you. It’s a fucking Celica. A classic! Not only that, this is where I first rid the love of my life, I’ll have you know.”

  “Bronna, you mean?” He starts up the Celica and revs the engine like he’s in a fuckin
g rally.

  “Bronna!?” I nearly choke on my own blood. “Fucking wise up, will ye? I mean Susie, you daft cunt. And go easy on Betsy, ferfucksake!”

  “That bird from Portadown, you mean?”

  “Aye, I told you about her before.”

  “Why didn’t you marry her then?”

  “Cause the bitch went and married some other cunt, that’s why.”

  “Oh aye. I mind you saying one night. I take it she didn’t reciprocate your feelings?”

  “She did,” I say, laying back down to stare at the white vinyl roof above me. “Her fucking parents were having none of me, though.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they thought I wasn’t good enough for their daughter, that’s why.”

  “What age were you when you went out with her?”

  “Sixteen.”

  Jamesy bursts out laughing, the cunt. “Sixteen? You never told me that. I thought this was a recent thing, not over twenty years ago, ferfucksake.”

  “Fuck you, Jamesy. Love is love, no matter when it was.”

  “Aye but—”

  “Just fucking drive, Jamesy, will ye? And don’t be taking me home.”

  “Where to then?”

  “The carryout first to get a few bottles of wine, and then back to your flat.”

  “You paying for the wine then?”

  “No, I haven’t got my dole yet. You’ll have to strap me.”