IT - Pieces in the Dark

Chapter 1 - Pieces in the Dark

IT

Pieces In The Dark

 Nick Sambrook

 Book 1 of 3

IT – Pieces in the Dark

Nick Sambrook

Copyright 2013 Nick Sambrook

Published  March 2014

ISBN 978-0992889814

All characters, incidents, and dialogues are fictional and not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to real persons living or dead, is purely coincidental.

The right of Nick Sambrook to be identified as the author has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. With the exception of excerpts for preview purposes, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system.

First Edition

Chapter 1  -  Pieces in the Dark

 It was a sea you wouldn’t want to swim in, laced with froth and rendered opaque grey-green by the heavy clouded sky above, mixed with assorted floating kelp and driftwood, churned in the waves against the dark, rocky shoreline below.

The strong, warm, onshore wind was humid and stinging with sea spray; a follow-on from the previous day’s storm.

The West Coast sand was harsh, dark grey flecked with coarse black volcanic rock, making it rough to sit on and baking hot to walk over. It was a stark contrast to the bright East Coast beaches, with their blue, calm, clear waters, soft white gently sloping sand, and picturesque shores.

Alone on the top of the dunes he closed his eyes and rested his arms and head on his knees. He sat with his bare feet in the hot sand, and rubbed a flat pebble between his fingers.

It had been three days now, and Sam’s head was still throbbing and numb. The warm salt wind and the sound from the sea just seemed to exist in perpetuity. He felt detached from it, and yet somehow he was more awake than he had ever been before in his life, and probably more than anyone else ever had, or at least it seemed that way.

He had hoped the sea air would bring him round a bit more, and help him recover, but it just made him feel more remote, like watching life go by from the inside of a café window on the street.

 It seemed not to matter to the world if he were there or not, just another blade of grass on the edge of the beach, incidental. Like the pebble, he was just part of the environment; picked up, randomly moved, washed over, buried, and then just left. 

He may have been on this earth, but he seemed disjointed from it; not involved, detached, as if no longer an integral part.

He saw things differently now too, everything seemed to have so much more perspective, depth, context, and meaning than from before. What he now knew was utterly vast and profound.

Unsurprisingly, given the weather, he was totally alone on the beach that morning, which was unusual here for late March.

Not even the usual small selection of overweight New Zealand seagulls had bothered to turn up. Kapiti Island lay several miles offshore, and in the sea mist it looked grey and bland in the distance like a gravestone in the half light.