The Identical Boy Read online

  The identical Boy

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  ~Part One~

  ~Chapter One~

  ~Chapter Two~

  ~Chapter Three~

  ~Chapter Four~

  ~Chapter Five~

  ~Chapter Six~

  ~Chapter Seven~

  ~Chapter Eight~

  ~Part Two~

  ~Chapter Nine~

  ~Chapter Ten~

  ~Chapter Eleven~

  ~Chapter Twelve~

  ~Chapter Thirteen~

  ~Chapter Fourteen~

  ~Part Three~

  ~Chapter Fifteen~

  ~Chapter Sixteen~

  ~Chapter Seventeen~

  ~Chapter Eighteen~

  ~Chapter Nineteen~

  ~Chapter Twenty~

  ~Chapter Twenty-One~

  ~Chapter Twenty-Two~

  ~Part Four~

  ~Chapter Twenty-Three~

  ~Chapter Twenty-Four~

  ~Chapter Twenty-Five~

  ~Chapter Twenty-Six~

  ~Chapter Twenty-Seven~

  ~Chapter Twenty-Eight~

  ~Chapter Twenty-Nine~

  ~Part Five~

  ~Chapter Thirty~

  ~Chapter Thirty-One~

  ~Chapter Thirty-Two~

  ~Chapter Thirty-Three~

  Get Your FREE book!

  The Identical Boy

  By

  Matthew Stott

  Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought this book, or telling your friends about it, to help spread the word.

  Thank you.

  mrmatthewstott.com | Follow On Twitter | Official Facebook

  Copyright © 2015 by Matthew Stott. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental. Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited.

  Cover by: Phil Poole

  First published by Fenric Books

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  Things live between Awake and Asleep.

  In the moment after your eyes grow too heavy to stay open, but before the dreams take you.

  Some of the creatures that live Between are nice.

  A great many are not.

  ~Part One~

  Sam and the voice

  ~Chapter One~

  This sort of thing happens to children all the time.

  More often than you'd think, really.

  Wherever the dark night falls and tired eyes falter.

  Sam didn't know that, of course, as he lay curled within the thick blanket upon his single bed and listened to the wind howling outside, rattling the wooden sash windows. The only people who do know are those whom it's already happened to, and just who are they in a position to tell?

  Sam could hear a voice.

  He thought he could.

  He was sure he could.

  Had? Would? Was right now?

  Sunlight crept through a parting between the frayed, drab curtains of his bedroom. Sam’s forehead creased at the intrusion, eyes wrinkle-tight.

  There was a voice.

  A boys voice, wasn't it? Yeah. Or? Was it actually a boy? Maybe it was something else. Something other. He was sure that sometimes the voice seemed to change. Perhaps it was really a—

  Sam needed the toilet. He turned over in bed, legs curling up to meet his stomach.

  Where was he? In bed, asleep? No, he was in the forest again, yeah.

  ‘Sam! Over here, Sam!’

  The voice!

  Sam stopped wondering about whether he was or wasn’t asleep, whether he was dreaming or really sprinting through a forest with trees the size of skyscrapers, and instead focussed in on that voice. That voice. That intoxicating sound that was…. Wait.

  What had he been thinking about?

  Was there a voice? Perhaps it was just in his head. Had he been alone all along?

  The trees knew, but they wouldn’t let on.

  ‘Did you hear a voice, too? I think I might be waking up, and I can’t quite remember what’s happening. It’s all going away again. Dreams do that, don’t they? They can just go away and hide when we wake up. Tell me, did you hear a voice, or not?’

  The trees rustled their leaves and whispered at each other in the sleeping place, but they refused to answer in any way that Sam could understand.

  ‘Over here, Sam; you have to remember!’

  Remember what? Remember wh— Brown hair. A conversation. Running and running and laughter and secret signs and not alone! At last, at last—

  Sam blinked. Once. Twice. Again. He could see his bedroom ceiling. The other place, the dream place, was fading. The trees had gone; his bedroom pushed them out of the way.

  What had he been thinking about again? Had he been dreaming? He tried to grasp it and pull it close as he awoke, but it was like trying to hold onto smoke. It fuzzed and warped and fell apart as he became more and more awake. Sam sat up in bed and rubbed the sleep from his eyes as he yawned, expelling the night and inhaling the day.

  It was gone again. Whatever it was, whatever he’d been dreaming, it was gone—just like the day before, the day before, the day before.

  But wait—

  No. No, not quite like the day before. Something was different this time. Sam balled his blankets tightly in his fists as he concentrated. This time something had clung on. Ever so slightly, but it was there. A hook had lodged. At last, at last. An idea remained.

  Itching.

  Persistent.

  There had been a voice.

  ~Chapter Two~

  Sam Ward lived in an ordinary house on an ordinary street in an ordinary English town.

  The brick was either grey or red, and it often rained as though the heavens were attempting to scrub the land free of a nasty case of civilisation.

  'What voice?' asked Sam's Mum, with her thin-frizz hair and red-infused face.

  'I don't know,' said Sam, prodding with suspicion at the sickly-grey mash on the plate before him. Sam wasn't much more than a small boy, eleven years old, though he'd swear blind he was touching twelve to anyone who didn't know better.

  The ordinary town that holds this ordinary house was northern and hard. People’s faces didn't develop and grow as much as they were etched into the flesh by creative cold winds. Eyes, noses, and mouths were chiselled upon heads. Even the dogs looked like they were weathered from ancient stone. Sam often thought he'd been born in the wrong town. His own face was soft and plump and pleasant.

  'Well there either is a voice or there isn't,' said Sam's Dad. 'And there isn't. Obviously. But if there was and you'd heard it, you'd know what sort of voice it was. Seeing as there wasn't one, you don't. QED.' His coal-shovel hands straightened his newspaper by way of punctuation.

  Sam attempted to push a small amount of the mash to the back of his throat, but failed to completely bypass his taste buds. 'No. There absolutely was a voice. I think.'

  'Now, just stop it,' said Mum. 'You're too old for monsters under the bed. Act your age.'

  Dad peered over the top of his newspaper at Sam, eyes narrowed like he was examining a specimen in a lab. 'You know I never believed in all that nonsense growing up. I had a straight head on my shoulders. Things that go bump in the night is for soft-brains.' He snorted and straightened his paper again, eyes darting away from a squirming Sam.

  Sam often got the feeling that his Dad didn't really like him. Which was okay by him. You can't like everyone. In fact, the feeling was pretty mutual. His Dad was too fierce and distant. Always talking about all the different me
dals he’d won as a child, from playing football, and rugby, and tennis, and swimming, and on, and on. He could've been the country’s next sporting hero, the way he told it. As opposed to what he actually was. Which was … something to do with numbers. Money. In a bank, maybe. Something like that.

  Not so much the sporty type now. He had three chins and a stomach that sat over his belt, hanging down to obscure the buckle. Sam had once seen his Dad roaming the house in just his boxer shorts. His upper body had been like a bulbous, pink fungus bursting from a pair of twigs. He was a heart attack in the making, Sam was sure of that. He'd thought about designing a health and fitness regime for him, had even looked up a few routines and recipes, then realised he'd probably be much happier with just his Mum.

  Sam successfully negotiated a mouthful past his taste buds, swallowing the cold, lumpy mass un-chewed and accompanied by a shiver as it went down.

  'A voice,' said Mum, shaking her head. 'You know Val never gets any nonsense like this from her Todd.'

  The blessed Todd. Sent by our Lord and Saviour to make Sam look like crap.

  'Fine boy, Todd,' said Dad. 'Won the under-tens rugby tournament almost singlehandedly last month, you know. Four trys and seven conversions. Seven! Fine boy, yes. Fine boy.' Sam felt the narrowed eyes briefly slither over him before they returned to the tabloid news of the day.

  'Make anyone proud, a child like that,' said Mum, smiling wistfully. Her eyes turned vacant as she looked into an unrealised reality.

  Sam was under no illusions as to what his Mum thought of him. If his Dad seemed to resent him and his disinterest (and plain lack of ability) in sport, then his Mum had chosen a different path. She’d settled into a comfortable disappointment. Sam could deal with being disappointing. You knew where you were with disappointing. Resentment was uneasy, threatening, violent—but disappointment was like a cosy blanket.

  'Maybe there wasn't a voice. I was probably just dreaming stuff,' said Sam.

  'You don't say, genius,' said Dad, this time not bothering to drag his eyes away from the paper. Sam finished the rest of his tea in silence as his Mum regaled them with a story about how Todd had arrived home the previous Friday with a bunch of flowers for his Mum. 'No reason, he'd just thought she'd like them!'

  Sam wished an early death upon Todd. Nothing too painful. He wasn't a monster.

  ***

  Later that night, Sam slipped on his Batman pyjamas and checked again that the door was firmly shut. He didn't like it being open when he was in bed; who knew what could silently slither in as he slept, unguarded?

  'Things that go bump in the night is for soft-brains.'

  Sam gave his Dad a mental middle-finger and checked again in the wardrobe. A rack of ironed shirts and trousers greeted him. No monsters.

  Next he knelt by the bed, breathing in once or twice to settle his nerves before he ducked down sharply to see what lurked beneath. Nothing but an abandoned sock, a broken water pistol, and a few books.

  Sam stood and shook his head. Soft-Brain. He clambered under the cool covers, springs squeaking their complaint, and turned off the bedside lamp. Within minutes, sleep took him….

  …That night Sam heard a voice,

  and for as long as his eyes were closed,

  he remembered.

  ~Chapter Three~

  Once it had been an all-boys’ school, but for the last fifteen years girls had been allowed to attend. This didn't sit right with many of the longer serving male teachers, who wondered what on Earth it was a ten year old girl could want to know.

  Sam entered through the giant gates, the dark green paint peeling in ribbons from the metal. The playground noise was like a ghost as you approached, turning to a fist as you stepped through the gate. All confusion and shouts and energy and potential trouble.

  In one corner, Sam could see two boys bent over, one with his neck being squeezed by the other’s forearm and bicep. The boy struggled but the other one, the bigger one, held tight and laughed as others crowed along and clapped. Mark, the bully.

  Sam kept his head down and stuck to the edges, making his way around the fence until he reached the school building itself, with its large bricks slick with recent rain and mottled with a rash.

  He found his way to the entrance and hopped through, shaking off the outside like a dog would pond water.

  'Morning, Simon,' said Mrs Tithe, the head of year.

  'Sam,' he replied.

  'Yes, yes, that's right,' she said smiling, blouse straining as she turned and squeaked off down the corridor. At least she'd managed to remember the first letter of his actual name this time.

  The bell rang and the doors exploded open as a flood of messy hair, torn shirts, and knee socks surged into the building and then away down the different tributaries at hand.

  Sam held onto his bag as thought it were a floating log and navigated his way through the choppy waters towards his classroom.

  ***

  All day Sam trudged from class to class He never sat at the front and he wouldn't be welcome at the back, so he sat to the side, lost in the mix of faces and voices.

  And this was Sam's school life, forever trying to avoid attention.

  Drift

  Drift

  Drifting.

  'Sam, will you please listen for once in your life!'

  Sam blinked and looked up from the shapes he was doodling in his textbook, to see every face in the room turned towards him and smirking, and Mr Taylor up front, with his beard you could lose a pencil in, hands on hips, shaking his head.

  'Sorry, Sir,' said Sam.

  The children giggled, then turned their backs on him.

  ***

  Sam hadn’t always been alone; he'd had friends of his own at one point. Lots of friends.

  Well.

  Some friends.

  'Hi Miss, do you have any books about dreams and stuff?' Sam asked the squashed looking librarian, who was all hair and heavy, frayed cardigan.

  'Not sure about 'stuff', but there's a book about dreams in aisle K somewhere. I think.'

  ‘Thanks,’ said Sam.

  'As much as I applaud your thirst for knowledge, young man, you really should go and play football and run around shouting with the others boys once in a while.'

  'Yes Miss,' he replied. Sam set off in search of the book. The library was where Sam spent his break times, amongst the rows and rows of books. He ran a finger along a shelf of spines as he wandered along the aisle. Books didn't ignore you, or send a heavy leather football hurtling towards your skull when you weren't paying attention. Books held secrets, and knowledge, and laughs, and entire new worlds.

  A group of boys shoved the library door open and made loud farting noises before running away, laughing and shrieking. Sam saw him amongst them, at the centre of the whirlwind: John Finney. He'd been Sam's friend for a while, ever since they were at nursery together. Two peas in a pod, or so said Finney's Mum, a tall, fire-haired woman who spoke with a thick Dublin accent. Not that she'd lived there since she was seven years old, but she'd held onto the brogue. Pure dumb stubbornness, according to Sam's Dad: 'A country takes your family in and treats you right, least you can do to pay respects is talk like you're from here.' Sam had nodded at his Dad, but even then, at the age of five, had known his Dad was wrong and probably a bit stupid.

  Sam pulled out a book at random: The Secrets of Ancient Egypt. It was one of his's favourites. He briefly paused in his quest for the dream book, and flicked through the full colour images of mighty pyramids, bird-headed Gods, and the riddle-spinning Sphinx. He slid the book back between its neighbours and carried on.

  He wasn't quite sure when he and Finney had stopped being friends. Sometime over the last year or so they'd just spent less and less time together, Finney hanging out with a new gaggle of boys. Boys like Mark, the bully. Boys who enjoyed gobbing fat wads of spit out of the top floor window onto unlucky passersby below. Boys who were all noise and dirt, flashing fists and fear. Oh, and loud farting noise
s, apparently. These boys were not at all taken with Sam. Without Finney standing in their ranks, he assumed he would be one of the lucky few to receive their daily attention. No doubt they’d get around to him. In time.

  'Why don't you go out and play with that nice John Finney lad anymore?’ Sam's Mum would ask every few weeks. 'You'd always be out and about, instead of moping around my house all the time, nose in a book. It's not natural, Sam. Boys need to be outside. You'll turn quite odd reading on your own all day.'

  ‘Turn quite odd?’ Sam’s Dad interjected. ‘I think the turnings already been done, love. He’s done a complete 360 and he’s on his way back round again!’ Dad had laughed, wiping mirthful tears from his red eyes.

  Sam found the book: What Dreams Mean, by Dr. Sandra Gubba. Sam pulled it down and took it over to the nearest table. The front cover was an illustration of a head with the top prized open like a pedal bin to reveal the brain, a multitude of symbols and sparks firing out from within.

  Chapter 1: What Are Dreams?

  Chapter 2: Common Dream Types.

  Chapter 3: What Dreams Really Mean.

  He'd heard a voice.

  He wasn't sure quite when he'd first heard it, but he knew that he had. Thought he had. No matter what his Dad said. But it was all so vague, so difficult to pin down to an exactness. He thought it was probably a boy’s voice; that seemed to stick. Any more attempts at clarity slid off and aside, like he was attempting to push two magnets of the same pole together.

  Dreams often represent a person’s unconscious fears—their desires, worries, and wants.

  Sam turned the page.

  He supposed he must be dreaming the voice. There was no such thing as ghosts, or monsters. And even if there were, he'd checked and triple-checked his room, his parent’s room (when they were out), the tiny stone enclosure that had once housed an outside toilet; every nook and cranny that might house something of the night. He'd even ventured into the attic with a torch in case anything had bedded down there for the winter. Not so much as a mouse had scurried from the light as he’d prodded and poked around.