Today I am sharing with you the opening chapter of 'Beautiful Freaks' the serial based on the original novel,
'Beautiful Freaks' which was published in 2012.
This series has taken that novel as the starting point; the series has a much bigger cast of fantastical creatures, well recognised gothic characters and a lot more action. 3 seasons of 'Beautiful Freaks' is planned. Each series is 12 episodes and each episode is 10,000 (the size of a small novella)
The first TWO episodes will be downloadable on THURSDAY 3rd DECEMEBER (You can Pre-order them both now
HERE) and then an episode will be released every Thursday afterwards until the end of the series. In order that you don't miss one, they are all available on PRE-ORDER at Amazon.worldwide.
Visit the
Beautiful Freaks Facebook Page
So without further ado - let me introduce you to the opening chapter of 'Beautiful Freaks'
SEASON 1 EPISODE 1
1
LONDON
1899
BOTH
the century and its Queen were dying. The winds of change rattled through the
streets of the metropolis, leaving its citizens fearful of the coming times.
Uncertainty bred suspicion, causing the people to return to the old ways.
Mystics and fortune-tellers swarmed out of the city mists and filled the
billboards of the now sober dancehalls. Nobody felt like dancing anymore.
Gypsies hawked silver charms and lucky heather, and iron-faced preacher-men
stood at every corner shouting warnings of damnation. It was a grey world, full
of shadows.
The
city was a landscape of monsters, both of flesh and brick. Chimneys from a
thousand slave factories belched out black smoke; stealing the breath from the
lungs and the light from the sky. Workhouses swallowed the poor; asylums the
insane. It was amongst this labyrinth of sorrow Kaspian Blackthorne walked.
He
was approaching his eighteenth birthday, although he felt he had been an adult
for most of his life. His patron, Professor Heartlock, was making arrangements
for a small private engagement in celebration of the boy’s coming of age. It
would be an interesting evening, although not a very exciting one.
Heartlock
was a paranormal investigator – had
been a paranormal investigator – he was now mostly housebound. For the past
three years, the professor had been confined to a wheelchair following a
serious accident whilst in pursuit of a notorious serial killer. That was the
official story. In truth, the professor had broken his back falling from the
roof of a church in pursuit of a werewolf.
Professor Heartlock had once been a
fascinating man to a younger Kaspian, but now his fantastical tales had faded
into the sad ramblings of a man full of regret about losing his youth. When he
told his tales, the lines between reality and fantasy increasingly blurred, to
the point Kaspian worried the old man was losing his genius mind.
Kaspian had been just a baby when his mother
and father were brutally murdered by an escaped Bedlam lunatic. The madman had
believed William and Eliza Blackthorne were evil demons disguised as
respectable people. He’d followed them for months, skulking in the shadows,
before striking one night on their return from the opera. Despite there being
several witnesses to the violent attack, the murderer still managed to dispose
of their bodies so that they were never found. The whole case had been riddled
with inexplicable circumstances and so quickly became a national news
sensation. The murderer made no attempt to hide or escape; he maintained he was
working for the glory of God. Regardless of his belief, they hanged him in
front of a large cheering crowd.
With
no other relatives, Kaspian had been destined for the workhouse orphanage until
Heartlock came to his rescue.
Heartlock
had been a good patron, although perhaps a little lacking in his understanding
of children and childhood. As such, Kaspian’s nursery had been a study. His
playthings, strange scientific apparatuses and his childhood stories, great
leather-bound texts on religion and the supernatural. It sometimes seemed
Heartlock had been set on raising a protégé to carry on his life’s work rather
than a young man. As a result, although Kaspian’s upbringing hadn’t been cruel,
it had been serious; and although showered in fondness and attention, it had
lacked love.
Kaspian
pondered his eighteen years as he walked through the evening gloom of the
London streets. The rain had forced most people inside, creating the impression
that the great metropolis had turned into a ghost town. Kaspian liked walking
through the streets at times like this. It made him feel as if he were walking
through his own misty and silent empire.
He’d
been on an errand for his patron and was now returning, laden down with books.
His cargo didn’t stop him skipping over the puddles with an unusual childlike
joy, or humming to himself. He was happy and free.
Then
he saw her.
She
was standing under the streetlight, a newspaper held out in front of her as if
she were reading it. Kaspian thought it obvious she wasn’t; she was watching
the church on the other side of the cobbled street. He stopped midstride and
pulled himself behind a tree; spied on her as she took a pocket-watch from her
pocket and flipped open the lid. She cradled it in the palm of her hand and
raised it until it was level with her eyes before studying it carefully. This
struck Kaspian as an odd way to read the time, most people just looked down
with a quick glance, and it led him to believe the device she held was not a
watch at all, but another form of apparatus.
He
looked over to the church she was watching. It looked empty and he couldn’t
fathom what could possibly be of interest. The lights were out, the door
locked, and the whole place had the impression of sleeping. He turned his
attention back to the woman. She was tall and slender; striking in a slightly
over-powerful way. Despite wearing a full, black-silk skirt, the fitted waistcoat
and black necktie were manlier in dress than ladylike. He’d never seen a woman
like her, although he had heard of ‘her
sort’ as Heartlock’s companions would say.
Kaspian
took advantage of her intense concentration to move his head around the tree
and peer at her more closely. He could see she wore a monocle in her left eye
and was at least ten years younger than he’d guessed from the first impression;
about twenty-one. She must have sensed him looking at her because she turned
towards him and smiled at the rather ludicrous sight of him poking out from
behind the tree. Kaspian was already precariously balanced on the tip of his toes,
and in an attempt to dash back behind the tree, he stumbled straight into her
line of vision.
He
bent down and pretended he’d been about to tie his shoelaces, trying to mask
his clumsiness. As he looked up at her from under his flop of dark, wavy hair,
he saw she was still smiling at him; a strange reaction to the discovery
someone was spying on you. The boldness of her action unsettled Kaspian in a
way he couldn’t quite put his finger on. When he was sure she had returned to
her own secret observations, he scuttled past her and almost ran to the safety
of home.
By the time he pushed open the imposing front
door, Kaspian carried the strangest sense that something deep within him had
changed – that things would never be quite as before.
“Good
evening, Kaspian,” Heartlock said, greeting the boy in the hallway. “Is
everything alright?”
“Yes,
Sir,” he answered, dropping the small pile of books onto the hall table.
“Did
you manage to get all I requested?”
“Yes,
all of them apart from the Valentine book. Mr. Foxglove said he was sure he
would have it by the end of the week.”
Mr.
Foxglove was one of Heartlock’s oldest acquaintances. He ran a bookshop
situated in one of Soho’s shadier alleyways. The sign above the door read, ‘Rare and Precious Books’ which made it
sound almost respectable. In truth, the great leather-bound books of poetry and
Shakespeare folios were a front for the back room; the place that held real
interest for its rather darker clientele.
Although
the shop had a small, narrow front, it had a seemingly endless body, which
always gave Kaspian the unnerving impression he was being swallowed by a giant
snake. Right at its tail was the occult section. Not only did Mr. Foxglove sell
occult books, but there were also shelves of other strange and curious objects,
which might appeal to the amateur alchemist or necromancer; glass jars of
preserved reptiles, grinning skulls, and black candles were amongst some of the
more identifiable items.
Kaspian
had visited Foxglove’s shop since being a small boy and he was no longer quite
so scared, or impressed, by its spooky appearance or its owner. Before Professor
Heartlock’s accident, they’d always visited together. It was one of the rare
occasions the old man shared any physical affection with his charge. Kaspian
would search out Heartlock’s bear-like paw and grip it tightly, afraid the
strange Mr. Foxglove might kidnap him and cook him for supper.
Mr.
Foxglove had always been ancient, and so paradoxically he no longer aged. He
wore a glass eye, but as he’d shrunk with age, it had become too big for the
socket and now bulged, giving the impression the eye belonged more to an insect
than a man. Even now, Kaspian constantly had to remind himself not to be rude
and stare at it because he found it totally captivating. Mr. Foxglove had long
lost the ability to stride and now shuffled along the stone floor in a pair of
velvet slippers. In all of his years of visiting, Kaspian had never seen the
man wear outdoor shoes.
The
occult section of the shop had no windows. Before the client entered, Mr. Foxglove
would shuffle into the darkness and light the dusty oil-lamps, which filled the
room with paraffin smoke, and cast dancing shadows over the books. As a child,
Mr. Foxglove had taken delight in teasing Kaspian about his fears surrounding
the shop, telling him the shadows belonged to the book goblins. Both men would
laugh, and although he knew he was being mocked, Kaspian’s imagination refused
to give up the idea – even now he found himself looking for the goblins out of
the corner of his eye.
Today,
Mr. Foxglove had already bundled and tied the books in readiness and they were
sitting on the counter waiting for collection. Kaspian was grateful for this;
not only did it save him time but it also meant he did not have to visit the
back room. The books were heavy and twice he had used them as an excuse to stop
and rest; once in a coffee shop and once to spy on the strange woman who now
haunted the edges of his thoughts.
“Ah, well – patience is a virtue,” said Heartlock,
snapping Kaspian out of his drifting daydream. The professor’s face flickered
with disappointment and he started to cough in reaction to the early winter air
Kaspian had brought in with him. Heartlock’s aging lungs squeezed and wheezed;
it was a sound now as familiar as the sound of his voice.
The
old man recovered the pile of books from the side table and placed them into
his lap before deftly turning his wicker wheelchair one hundred and eighty
degrees and wheeling back towards his study.
Kaspian
let out a deep sigh. The sight of his patron becoming so immobile and decrepit
added to the increasing sense of heaviness Kaspian believed was attached to the
adult world. Even the house, his home since childhood, faded and peeled on a
daily basis. It was as if the whole place was a projection of its master’s
state. The dust layer deepened, the gloom spread, and Kaspian felt increasingly
like he was suffocating.
When
Heartlock had been a fit man, the house had been full of fascinating visitors;
the sound of hearty, booming laughter and the tinkling of whisky glasses filled
the study, which was a hub of academic and scientific progress. It was amazing
how quickly a life could decay.
