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GOTHIC

  By STEVE HESTER

  This eBook is licensed for your own personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold, shared or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and you did not purchase it, or it wasn’t purchased for your use only, then please visit your favourite eBook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

  Published by Steve Hester

  All events and characters in this novel are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to any persons living or dead is entirely coincidental. All other trademarks and trademarked properties mentioned in this novel remain the property of the original copyright holders and are used without permission.

  ©Steve Hester 2014

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Epilogue

  About

  INTRODUCTION

  Currently the time is 3:25AM and I'm sat in my bedroom watching the behind the scenes documentary from the movie Alien. I wish that I could say that the film has some kind of link with the story you're about to read but it doesn't.

  The reason I bring it up is that it’s always nice to know how things are made. If you’re really not interested then feel free to skip ahead, I won’t be offended!

  I had the idea for gothic way back in about 2001. I used to work in Manchester and depending on what train I got I either got off at Manchester Piccadilly and walk or get off at Oxford Street and just hop across the road.

  One day it was a Piccadilly job so I made my way out of the station and across the road to Whitworth Street and the five-minute walk or so to work but that day something caught my eye.

  Across from the train station is an old fire station from the turn of the 19th century. It's an odd building, especially as it's been long abandoned and unused for many years now. If you pass by it you can see the windows boarded up in parts from the inside with dust trapped between the wood and the glass and it doesn't take much imagination to picture the inside. Spider webs, dust covered floors lit only by tiny shafts of light poking through the cracks in the boards and lots of echoing corridors.

  To be honest I don't know what the inside looks like as I've never been in but that day I had a feeling that people HAD been in and some time recently as well. On one of the doors that was just as aged and battered as all the others, had a small plaque on it. It was a tiny black plaque, about six inches long, with white writing on it. It was nothing special, it looked like the sort of cheap plaque you could buy from anywhere that does engraving for under a tenner, and it just had two words on it:

  Gothic International.

  It just looked so bizarre stuck on this old building. I mean given the look of the place it fits in but it's really not what you'd expect to see on the way to work. I stood there for about a minute trying to process it and wondering who in their right mind would set up business in a place such as that. Then I started to think about what kind of business that mind would want to set up and who they'd get to work for them.

  I kept thinking about it on the way to work and for the rest of the day and I'd had the rough idea of a story that would explain it all. A group of people keeping us safe from the paranormal! It's so simple, and the fire station is their base! All makes sense.

  I wrote the story into a film script that would never get made partially because of the huge budget you'd need (although maybe not these days with the help of CGI) but mostly because of the heavy handed and much darker religious elements of the main story so I gave up on it for a while.

  After an aborted attempt to turn the script into a book in the mid 00's it went back into stasis for years until one day while I was looking through some old scripts, half arsed ideas and short stories I had written on my computer when I had an epiphany. The original script was very schizophrenic in terms of setting, dialogue and character. It was a piece set in America written by an English guy barely in his twenties with a story that was in many ways a little clichéd.

  Now I was older and entering my thirties things changed. I could see where things in my writing could change as well and so they did. I went back and took out all the Americanisms, relocated the story, added and changed characters turning them from po-faced martyrs into more rounded and real people. It felt like finally it was working.

  I took the first third of that original script and changed it into what would be a pilot script for a potential TV show that, once again because of cost, I did nothing with it in the end. Until now that is.

  That is one of the best things about going down the book route again. You have no budget to worry about; you have no producers or moneymen to answer to and no one saying that you can't do something because THEY don't like it. That pilot script is now here in this novel with many more ideas ready to go for follow-ups and an over arching story.

  Writing this book has been the one of the most creatively liberating times of my life. Freed from the worries of having your ideas mangled by someone else before they reach the world, I'm able to create the story that I wanted to tell, no matter what the end result will be. I'm very proud of getting this out of my brain and into the electronic device you're holding in your hand right now.

  I don't know if you'll enjoy it or not. I hope you do, I really do, but either way it's too late now.

  I already have your money. ;)

  Steve Hester

  25/08/2014

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  There are a few people I'd like to give many thanks to. These are in no particular order so no fighting guys!

  Thanks to Andrew John Craven for taking my cack-handed doodles and making them into a fantastic piece of cover art. See more of his work at https://www.andrewjohncraven.co.uk/(Be warned: though brilliant some of his work isn’t for the faint of heart or easily offended).

  My fellow actor and Railroader Kevin Horsham who provided all the advice for all the police sections (and the real, homemade pasties).

  Dave, Briony and all of the wonderful guys and girls who supplied me with cinnamon lattes in Rhode Island coffee in Stockport. Those little moments working on the book in your place are always the highlights of my day.

  Ethan, Isla, Ryan and everyone else who worked with me at GameStop. The best job with the best people I've EVER worked with and a special shout goes out goes to Rob for a number of things including reading the pilot script, giving me some fantastic inspiration and enjoying the follow up so much he thought it was a TV show he'd seen. Cheers buddy, made my day that did!

  Emma Hyde for putting up with all my questions and begging for validation as well as giving feedback. Bring on wine and TV nights!

  A big thank you goes to whoever it was that put the sign on that door. No idea who you are but it's thanks to you that this book exists.

  Finally the biggest thanks of all. Big hugs, lots of kisses and more thank you's than I can ever give to my Mum and Dad. For creating me, inspiring me and, for above all, putting up with me! I
love you both!!!