By the time he reached his destination it was almost midnight. He parked in an unconventional spot, away from cameras, and made his way to the staff entrance. In case he was spotted in any form, he wore the dust mask and had tightened the string of his hood to cover his face. He used Aldrich’s key to gain access. Inside, he entered the security passwords and shut down the cameras.
The only ways in were through the staff back-entrances or the main gate for tourists, which was locked shut at night and was too high to scale.
He made trips back and forth, bringing the rope, petrol cans, a lot of wood, and on his final trip he lugged Aldrich’s corpse out to The Burning Grounds.
The milky light of the moon licked the edges of each stone platform. In a playful sense it looked like a giant sheet of bubble wrap with needles poked into each air-filled hemisphere: the circular platforms were the blisters, only flat topped instead, and the wooden stakes were the needles. The sight of all thirty death-discs at night was enough to make the average human cringe. Ryan wasn’t fazed.
He yanked the body up onto the nearest disc and propped it against the pole. A foul pong occasionally wheezed out, but he ploughed on. He secured Dead-Aldrich with the rope and then piled the blocks of wood around him.
He soaked everything in petrol.
One of the pieces of wood was more like a long branch. He took it, dipped the end in fuel and set it alight. Taking a few steps back, he threw the torch underarm onto the platform.
An implosion sound brought on the flames, and a wall of heat slapped outwards. He looked at the vertical orange victim and tried to imagine thirty of them all at once.
‘I wish you were alive to feel this, Aldrich,’ he said, his voice muffled by the dust mask.
Sat in the calm night sky, the full moon watched the spectacle indifferently: the burning body, the fierce fire, like a red-orange dragon that danced too fast to track.
In Ryan’s eyes the reflection of the roaring blaze flickered, and above, the icy moon made an appearance. Crooked teeth smiled under the dust mask; his skin wriggled with delight.
Be updated about Future Releases
Would you like to be updated as soon as the next release in the series is available? Please sign up to the
Author Andrew Butcher Newsletter
here
.
Your Review - What did you think?
If you enjoyed this book, please share your thoughts by leaving a review & rating
here
.
Your feedback makes a massive difference to authors like myself, by helping to improve my writing skills, and also by informing other readers on what they are about to purchase.
Note from the Author
Thank you for reading. I hope you’ve enjoyed A Death Displaced. The next book in the Lansin Island Series, A Body Displaced, is planned for release in summer 2013.
In the meantime, a Lansin Island short story is available here:
A Note Below
More Information
For more information on the author & the Lansin Island Series, please visit the author website:
Questions and feedback are much appreciated.
You can discuss A Death Displaced with other readers on Goodreads
here
.
Andrew is also available on Facebook and Twitter:
http://www.facebook.com/authorandrewbutcher
Blurb for A Note Below
Could you live in a haunted lighthouse?
Gavin Locke’s reluctance to accept there are strange things happening in his home drives away his wife and daughter. As he grows lonelier and the ‘hauntings’ increase, he realises something has to be done ... before it becomes dangerous.
But what is causing the odd events? And what could it want from Gavin?
Set on Lansin Island, an Island with a dark history of witch burnings, Gavin must find a way to stop the hauntings and bring his family back home.
View it in store here
:
A Note Below
Works by Andrew Butcher
LANSIN ISLAND SERIES
A Death Displaced
A Body Displaced (TBR 2013)
LANSIN ISLAND SHORT STORIES
Acknowledgements
Thanks go to my dad for reading every chapter as I wrote it and for providing feedback and encouragement. Jenni Toes, Sophie May Denman, Amy Wood Kelly and Mamane Mabika also provided valuable feedback; thank you.
Thanks also go to my mum, the rest of the family (and our various pets), and to my close friends for emotional support.
And thank you to my partner, Luke, for supporting me and putting up with my nonstop obsession with writing this novel.
In memory of Monty