Host Writer: Book 1

W. F. Kuehn

Description

When Zoe Edevane takes time away from Oxford to fulfill her mum's dying wish all she knows about family and life changes forever. Her mother's peculiar wish requires Zoe to obtain a grave rubbing in the dead of night. Everything about Zoe's existence is altered when she meets the unearthly owner of the grave and one of his descendents, a mysterious and handsome young man who saves her life. They convince her that she belongs to an ancient and secret society of Archivists, who interview the dead. These Archivists keep the world's secrets and history preserved in hidden collections around the world.
Members of their society begin to mysteriously disappear. This discovery launches Zoe into a quest filled with secrets and murder, as she runs from those who are intent on abusing the extraordinary powers of the Host Writers.

Sujets

• Fantastique
• Fantasy urbaine
• Urban
• Fiction
• Fantasy

Informations

• Publié par: Wendy F Kuehn
• Date de parution: 09 avril 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780996165211
• Langue: English

Extrait

HOST WRITER


Book 1: The Archivist




W. F. Kuehn
This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.



Host Writer. Copyright © 2015 by W. F. Kuehn.


All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without permission except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.


First Edition, April 2015


ISBN 978-0-9961652-0-4

eBook ISBN 978-0-9961652-1-1


www.wfkuehn.com
This book is dedicated to Mike:

Alongside you, creating an eternity of archives will seem but a moment.
What is there more kindly than the feeling between host and guest?

-Aeschylus
Chapter 1 VESTIGES
Prestbury, England

John examined the grave markers that surrounded him, each capped silvery in the moon’s light. He found a granite marker wide enough to conceal his broad shoulders. He knelt in the damp grass behind the stone and waited for his assignment. His assignment was Zoe Edevane, a free spirited Oxford student who studied English and completely lacked the survival skills needed for the world she was about to be thrust into.
He had not relished the purpose of tonight’s mission. Zoe’s mother, Kathryn, had trained him and taught him about their world. Unfortunately, Kathryn had died before telling her daughter anything about the responsibilities of their family. It was now up to him.
He glanced at a nearby grave marker, the one he knew she came to find no sign of her yet. Zoe and her captivating sea-blue eyes, framed by dark hair. The tresses cascaded in soft waves down her back to her small waist. She usually dressed in a sweater or a pullover, wearing her trousers tucked into expensive leather boots or simple wellies. She stood tall and slender giving the impression of delicacy. But the past month of monitoring her had dispelled that perception. A month had passed since Kathryn’s death and his assignment had changed from observing the mother and daughter, to only watching Zoe. He had shadowed her around the globe while she did activities at every stop she travelled. He discovered her to be extremely athletic, not delicate in the least. It had been difficult to keep up with her and at the same time not be discovered by her. She had run along the Great Wall of China, hiked through the Himalayas, rock-climbed, and raced rally cars at astonishing speeds throughout Europe mainly solitary activities that tested her skill and endurance to its limits and kept her mind off the death of her mother.
And, to top that, she didn’t believe in the afterlife imperative in the line of work he was to introduce her into. He didn’t know why Kathryn had kept her in the dark. Because Zoe wasn’t prepared, he ended up at the cemetery with a mission that would turn her life upside down.
The corners of his mouth turned up in a grin. She had found the grave. It was a start.


I’d been to cemeteries before, but never after midnight, never alone, and never to fulfill someone’s dying wish. I’d seen both my parents buried. My dad died ten years ago when I was eleven, and last month my mum. But here I sat like a crazy person in the front seat of Mum’s old Bentley, adjacent to a sinister looking graveyard near Prestbury. Why had I decided to do this? I felt a combination of stupidity and mortification that I had actually come here, and I considered forgetting about it and driving home. I could be home in less than fifteen minutes and be sipping tea in less than thirty.
I rolled down my window to receive some air and stared into the night at the rows of granite headstones that looked like uneven dominoes scattered in the grass. Rows of ivy-covered reminders of the endless numbers of people we’d never see again. The English countryside, green and beautiful and laden with cemeteries and churchyards that filled me with dread. My family grave plot lay on a hill by my home, which I had visited twice once for my father’s burial and once for my mother’s. I didn’t see a reason to visit and despair over buried bodies. Photos of Mum and Dad were spread over walls and tables throughout my home weren’t those enough reminders that they were gone?
The light from the moon’s orb peered through the trees to depict a leaf shadow dance on the front of my car. The sheer size of the forty-year-old car created a protective feeling; it enveloped me inside its black body that seemed to meld into the vacant car park. The smell of autumn’s rotting leaves blew through the window and mixed with the faint scent of my mother’s perfume that lingered in the orifices of the car.
The clock on the dashboard read half past one in the morning. My heart fluttered. I had thirty minutes to find the mysterious gravesite and needed to control my uneasiness and actually step out of the car. The longer I sat there the more my imagination ticked off scenes from recent horror movies I’d watched scenes of masked villains holding butcher knives to the throats of lone females foolish enough to go to a cemetery in the dead of night.
I glanced at my manicured nails. They were chipped from yesterday’s rock-climbing adventure and smeared with black dust that had rubbed off the charcoal piece I held in my hand. I placed the charcoal on the dash, wiped my hands on my black trousers, and glanced outside. The wind blew leaves off the trees and created a swirling leaf-twister that arose from the ground with a rustling noise, twirled along the pavement, and disappeared behind a pine tree where the blustery sound dissipated. I removed a band from off my wrist and used it to put my hair in a ponytail that hung in a wavy mass to my waist. In a tree next to me an owl hooted from a branch and caused me to jump. I grabbed the handle and rolled up my window the rest of the way. With my task filling my mind, it had not occurred to me that I’d become this jittery.
Mum’s lovely and kind face appeared in my thoughts. Her white-toothed smile, her wavy, dark hair and long-lashed eyes picturing her face calmed me, somewhat, because I still felt anger towards her. Ignoring my anger and determined to discover the purpose behind her bidding, I grabbed my denim bag. It had a long strap interwoven from patches and strips of material dyed the neon shades of a sunset. Inside I carried my life and a letter I found in Mum’s desk drawer during the last few minutes of her life. She had been very weak too weak to talk.
I pulled a torch out of my bag. The weight of the metal shaft gave me assurance on my strange errand. With the torch lit, I grabbed her letter. Even during the weakness of her final day my mother hadn’t rested until she pointed her trembling hand towards her desk drawer where I found an envelope. Written across the front of the envelope in her lovely script handwriting was "my sweet Zoe." I had cried when I saw it, as I thought she had written a personal note for me. I picked it up and turned back to her bedside to thank her, but her arm hung over the edge of her bed and the intensity in her eyes had disappeared. Instead they stared at nothing. I ran to her and touched her cheek. I climbed in bed beside her and wrapped my arms around her and cried, her warmth still radiating from her body, her precious letter crumpling in my hand. When I at last sat up, I tore open the envelope and cried more. Instead of reading an affectionate and memorable note of goodbye, I discovered it to be an absurd letter instructing me to make a grave rubbing. The letter was only a senseless dying wish, complete with the details of when and where along with the name on the gravestone, John Link. Enraged, and with my heart broken, I decided not to return to Oxford. I took a leave from university and moved back home. I kept myself busy with activities my mother disliked me doing, while I counted down the days to the next full moon.
I gazed out of the car’s window. I didn’t know what was more daft, her dying wish or my putting my life on hold in an attempt to fulfill it. I didn’t even know this John Link and with him being dead I wouldn’t know him now. I wondered at the need behind her wish. She had never mentioned him until I read his name written in the letter. Of course that could have been my fault, because for several years we had rarely spoken. I had seldom listened to her suggestions when she had been alive and it seemed a little late to be paying attention now. Besides, the entire letter appeared odd with its detail of not seeing John Link’s grave until the next full moon. This John Link was a complete mystery to me, but he had meant something to my mother and it had become my goal to find out why.
With renewed determination to find out the reason John Link had been so important to her, I took one more look at the blowing shadows, stuck the letter back in my bag, and opened the door of the old car, which didn’t squeak until I shut it. After glancing around to make sure the owl and the shadows hadn’t noticed the sound, I made a mental note to speak with Benny about the car’s maintenance.
I looped my bag over my head and under my arm before realizing the charcoal remained on the dash. I opened the door, grabbed the charcoal with a tissue, shoved it in my bag, and carefully shut the door no squeaks. Relieved, I held my torch in front of me like a sword and took a step. As I stepped forwards a hedgehog scurried out from under the warmth of the car’s engine and brushed my shoe with its tiny spines. I jumped as it snorted and ran away.
A bit rattled, I headed to the pebble path where a border of ancient, gnarled trees framed both sides. The trees were large with uneven burls on their trunks and branches that appeared to reach out to me. The orange and amber leaves glistened with moisture in the light of the moon and the cool breeze.