Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Shelter: A Supernatural Short Story
    Shelter: A Supernatural Short Story
    Shelter: A Supernatural Short Story
    Ebook82 pages1 hour

    Shelter: A Supernatural Short Story

    By Dave Franklin

    5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Darwin, 1974. Nick and Liz are preparing for their first Christmas together as the deadliest storm in Australia's history bears down on them...

     

    This ebook also contains a bonus story, Brief Meetings. Both stories can can be found in the dark fiction anthology Begin The Madness: The Straitjacket Blues Trilogy. Dave Franklin is the author of ten novels.

     

     

     

     

     

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBaby Ice Dog Press
    Release dateMar 30, 2014
    ISBN9781498972819
    Shelter: A Supernatural Short Story
    Author

    Dave Franklin

    Dave Franklin is a Brit who lives Down Under. He has also written ten novels ranging from dark comedy and horror to crime and hardcore porn. His naughty work includes Looking for Sarah Jane Smith (2001), Begin the Madness: The Straitjacket Blues Trilogy (2014), The Muslim Zombies (2018) & Welcome to Wales, Girls: A Violent Odyssey of Pornographic Filth (2018).

    Read more from Dave Franklin

    Related to Shelter

    Related ebooks

    Occult & Supernatural For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Beyond the Mangrove Trees

      Aug 6, 2020

      No one expects their house to float away. Ethel certainly hadn’t. Our story begins in the sleepy village of Greenwood, where Ethel had spent her entire life. It was an overcast Sunday afternoon and Ethel watched the rain lash against the window from

      7 min read

    • Article

      ABATH For All SEASONS

      Jul 4, 2019

      ABATH For All SEASONS
      7 min read

    • Article

      My Dinner with Denis Johnson

      Jun 25, 2018

      My Dinner with Denis Johnson
      13 min read

    • Article

      Summer Reading Guide

      Jan 2, 2022

      Summer Reading Guide
      6 min read

    • Article

      Let’s Play Dead

      Mar 3, 2020

      There was a man, let’s call him Henry VIII. There was his wife, let’s call her Anne B. Let’s give them a castle and make it nice. Let’s give her many boy babies but make them dead. Let’s give him a fussy way of being. Let’s make her smart and sneaky,

      17 min read

    • Article

      Best Of The Best

      Oct 29, 2022

      Best Of The Best
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Turn Of The Tide

      Sep 24, 2020

      The Turn Of The Tide
      4 min read

    • Article

      Discarded Wraith Of Apartheid

      Apr 13, 2024

      It’s been years since I read a book that strained the Likability Principle as viscerally as Karen Jennings’ new book, Crooked Seeds. Her previous novel, An Island, was longlisted for the Booker Prize, but I fear the more I tell you about Crooked Seed

      2 min read

    • Article

      Join The Weekly CONVERSATION

      Oct 24, 2021

      Thank you for the very interesting updates on the Prince Andrew sex saga. His liaisons with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein have certainly put the Queen in a very diffi cult position. The poor Monarch has met a lot of challenging shifts and changes during

      1 min read

    • Article

      Excerpt

      Dec 12, 2019

      He was an angry man, and he was an ugly man, and he was tall, and he was pacing. Not much space for it in the new home, just a few rooms lined up in a row, underneath a series of slow-moving ceiling fans, an array of antique clocks ticking on one wal

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Last Friend on Earth

      May 4, 2023

      It was as if Doreen Saunders had been waiting for me, passing the time until my arrival. She might as well have been sitting in a rocking chair, knitting needles clicking, jam tarts cooling on the side, the door wide open, waiting for the next visito

      6 min read

    • Article

      Everything But The Kitchen Sink

      Oct 10, 2021

      When Mary Little walks into her kitchen on Tuesday morning, the sink is under the window. At first she can’t even find it. She looks at the space where the sink is supposed to be, at the end of the island, and the sink is gone. Her son, Ben, sits the

      18 min read

    • Article

      Drawn to THE MOORS

      Feb 8, 2022

      Drawn to THE MOORS
      11 min read

    • Article

      Four Of A Kind

      May 3, 2023

      Four Of A Kind
      4 min read

    • Article

      Echoes

      Jun 22, 2022

      Echoes
      9 min read

    • Article

      Intarsia

      Feb 6, 2020

      Intarsia
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Apia Harbour Blues

      Jun 16, 2019

      Katie’s eyes moved from the boxy television, filled with pixelated green grass and a zigzagging soccer ball, to the legions of mosquitoes on the dirty ceiling, and then back again. That’d be right. She thought. I’ll get dengue fever on the way home.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Left To Lose

      Jul 10, 2022

      Around the time she gives up her name, it starts to feel like this entire revolution isn’t worth it anymore. The world is probably lucky that Kelian—she still remembers Kelian, in spite of everything—is there to pick up the pieces, the way he always

      11 min read

    • Article

      Stockpiling for Winter

      Dec 14, 2018

      Stockpiling for Winter
      3 min read

    • Article

      A WINTER weekend

      Jan 2, 2020

      A WINTER weekend
      6 min read

    • Article

      Summer at BEACON BAY HEIGHTS

      Aug 9, 2023

      Summer at BEACON BAY HEIGHTS
      9 min read

    • Article

      Summer Beach Reads

      Jan 10, 2021

      Summer Beach Reads
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Bad Housekeeper

      Jul 17, 2020

      The Bad Housekeeper
      5 min read

    • Article

      A winter WEEKEND

      Dec 22, 2020

      A winter WEEKEND
      6 min read

    • Article

      When Life Bites

      Sep 14, 2020

      When Life Bites
      6 min read

    • Article

      How The Life Goes On

      Feb 4, 2021

      How The Life Goes On
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Fox And CINDERELLA

      Dec 7, 2022

      The Fox And CINDERELLA
      6 min read

    • Article

      THE CYBER Saviour

      Feb 10, 2021

      THE CYBER Saviour
      3 min read

    • Article

      Yohanca Delgado

      Mar 9, 2021

      The widow arrived at LaGuardia on a Sunday, but the rumors about the woman who had rented a big apartment, sight unseen, had taken an earlier flight. We had already reviewed, on many occasions and in hushed tones, in the quiet that comes after long h

      15 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Shelter

    5/5

    1 rating0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Shelter - Dave Franklin

      ‘Tell me you love me.’

      Liz turned in the bed, propped her chin on a palm and reached across to stroke his hair.

      ‘I know you won’t mean it but I just wanna hear you say it.’

      Nick stared at the ceiling fan, massaging his temples. He breathed slowly as the wind picked up again and started buffeting the house. Liz had stolen into the spare bedroom almost an hour ago and he’d watched her remove her clothes as if a shop mannequin were undressing itself.

      Then she’d slipped into bed alongside him and tried her best before he’d batted her hands away. For a good thirty minutes no words had passed, sleep eluding both of them, as the ear-popping weather and a weird sense of foreboding grew.

      He removed her hand from his chest and patted it. ‘I’m gonna make a toasted sandwich.’ He threw off the damp sheet as she groaned and collapsed onto the mattress. He put on some shorts and turned. ‘Want one?’

      When she pulled the sheet over her face he padded down the long hallway, pausing to touch the crucifix on the wall. Last week he’d turned it upside down, her response suggesting she’d well and truly caught her parents’ disease. He entered the kitchen, listening to the wind moaning strangely as it whipped round the open laundry and storage room beneath his feet.

      Through the huge horseshoe-shaped window he was confronted by a solid bank of black cloud towering over the port as people scurried to and fro securing boats on the churning sea. Suddenly he was back on board the Pearl Queen, lashed to the gunwale to prevent him from being washed overboard after a routine fourteen-hour trip back from Port Essington had disintegrated into the worst twenty-four hours of his life. So dark it had been impossible to judge the distance between the swells, the skipper had steered down and across the massive waves in a bid to keep the bow out of the troughs.

      A real rollercoaster ride from hell that had left him so seasick he’d sometimes wished for death.

      Amazingly they’d managed to return to Darwin without any loss of crew or major damage but in the month he’d been ‘home’ he hadn’t even considered putting his name down for another deckhand stint. Sure, the money was great, he loved the carefree life, and his sea legs were better than most but that voyage had just broken... something.

      For weeks he hadn’t mentioned it to Liz, but after sinking a few cold ones and actually feeling like sex it had all come out one night in bed. She’d fussed over him as he did his best to get annoyed with her delight that he’d finally started to ‘open up’, but in truth being cocooned within her arms had seemed like the safest place on Earth, as if she had some sort of power of protection.

      Nick’s eyes flicked down from the malevolent sky as a rubbish bin toppled over and spilled a pizza box onto the garden’s immaculate lawn. It had contained last night’s meatball special which Liz, of course, had turned her vegetarian nose up at.

      Then a gust whisked the box out of sight. Trees were starting to strain under the weight of their unseen assailant. Large, heavy drops of rain spattered the diamond-shaped panes of glass.

      He looked at his watch. Five pm. It was getting dark a good hour earlier.

      Unease slithered down his spine. Beforehand in town he’d heard people talking of a cyclone as he wandered through the sticky drizzle, but he’d pushed the scenario away. He’d just survived one mother of a storm and the chances of getting caught in another surely bordered on the non-existent.

      Then he snorted.

      What did he care? He was on land. In a fucking house.

      He turned from the big window to use the sandwich toaster, irked by the tell-tale bare space alongside the kettle. Less than four hours ago he’d used the thing but Liz’s ever vigilant hands had already spirited it away. Everything in its right place, she liked to say. He yanked open a lower cupboard, pulled the toaster out once again and plugged it in.

      En route to the fridge her cockatiel Ozzie whistled and hopped around. He stared at it, still surprised the bird was allowed into the kitchen – the epicentre of her neuroses – but her desire to give it a sea view apparently outweighed her otherwise obsessive hygiene standards. The hateful thing had never warmed to him, always snapping at his fingers through the bars of its cage as if he were some sort of intruder. Still, it didn’t seem any keener on Liz and he was always amused by the way it bit and struggled whenever she handled it as if trying to get a bit of payback for being cooped up all the time.

      He lowered his face to the beloved pet, causing it to hiss and flatten its crest. ‘One day, little birdie, one day...’

      Nick turned to the fridge and hunted through a mini-mountain of veggies for the tomatoes and cheese. He buttered the bread, sliced a tomato and tossed on chunks of Cheddar as his vision drifted back to the port cowering beneath the sullen clouds. He stared at a navy patrol boat berthed inside Stokes Hill Wharf while idly scratching his groin rash, the third attack he’d suffered this year since the onslaught of The Wet.

      He placed the crudely assembled sandwich onto the hot plate and slumped over the sink. As he splashed cold water on his face he knew he should’ve run for the hills weeks ago or at least checked into a hotel.

      Then again, how could he have done that with no cash to hand? Boredom up in Port Essington had resulted in his poker getting a bit out of control and he’d lost most of his wages to the other deckhands. He’d returned with pockets almost as empty as his stomach.

      If only he hadn’t had that stupid bust-up with Rod during a drunken all-nighter just before that bloody trip. Could’ve been there right now sinking piss and laughing about old times...

      Instead he’d been forced to accept Liz’s longstanding offer of shelter, a girl who’d been barking up the wrong tree for more than three years despite their complete lack of things in common and his long absences. The truth was he didn’t really fancy her, having only ever slept with her because he could, but there was no denying her usefulness.

      Her devotion

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1