"The Silhouettes & Winds of the Valley" is OUT NOW!

Published in the "Invisible Ink 2" anthology

(by Baineth Publications)

You can now read

CGAllan's story

from the anthology below...

(a short shot at history)

by CGAllan

Original winner of a story challenge in 2000
at the Poetry Club website

"The redskins have a rain dance to beckon the rains, they have a medicine dance to heal their sick. They have a dance for just about anything you can damn well think of…"

Ned Cooper was talking at full gallop. The saliva glistened in the firelight at the corners of his mouth as only it did when he recalled his days as a scout for the Seventh Cavalry.

"But I once watched a group of Navajo braves dance a dance I had never seen before or have ever seen again." Ned's eyes grew smaller and the silhouettes thrown up by the campfire across his scarred face became menacing. "I am not a religious man, but I pray to God that my remaining days will be free of the torment of that sight."

A pale-looking padre, the youngest but one in the group, bowed his head slightly at this and Ned returned the gesture.

The Pine City stage had reached the halfway leg of its journey. Darkness swept across the West like a huge blanket laid over a sleeping giant and so the stagecoach had pitched camp for the night in the middle of an empty canyon deep in the heart of red rock country. Sharp, unwelcoming cliffs bordered the place and the ground was rough and cold. It was undoubtedly hostile territory.

Young Jimmy Jackson, son of a widowed homesteading family, who could often be wise for his mere ten years on the planet, listened keenly to Ned’s tales of the redskin warriors that he so wanted to see with his own eyes but was terrified to meet.

Jimmy had watched and learned about each of the passengers on the Pine City Stage since they began their journey. Their lives had been so varied but exciting in so many different ways that the young one was committing each new story to memory so he would be able to recount them to his school friends when he got home.

Ned had gone silent, his expression glazed over slightly as if he were travelling back in time within his mind’s eye.

"What was the dance for, Mister?" asked Jimmy Jackson, cuddling into his mother for warmth.

"Well, my young grasshopper,” replied Ned, his head springing up, pulling himself back to the present. "I never found out. All I know is that when they did this dance they whooped and wailed at such a pitch it gave me and my lieutenant nightmares for weeks. I remember they chanted over and over again, 'Chindi tsaedoninee!'"

"Aw, you're full of beans and wind!” laughed Mike Newell, who was riding shotgun for this trip. "You old-timers are all alike. Trying to scare the youngsters with tales of Custer and Geronimo."

Young Jimmy turned and peeked over his mother's shoulder, away from the fire. He watched the silhouettes of the jagged cliff tops that towered into the night around them.

Squinting in the moonlight he could almost see three hostile figures with feathers behind their ears patiently watching the stagecoach, waiting for their moment to pounce. But his mother soon told him to keep his thoughts to himself and whispered that he had too active an imagination.

Ned and the valley weren't the only ones to be quiet. Ironically, the most conspicuous member of the stagecoach party was the most mysterious. His long black ponytail and yellowy skin determined him to be of the Chinese nation. He sat with a copy of The Clarksville Bugle in his hand, although many of the group suspected that he probably couldn't read a word of English.

"My mother says you probably can't understand that paper, Mister," exclaimed young Jimmy.

The Mister smiled and said, "There are many things I cannot do, my young friend, but reading is not one of them. Let me show you something else I can do…"

He folded the single page of The Clarksville Bugle once. And then he folded it again. And again. And again and again and again, and once more after that.

Jimmy lost count of how many folds there were and before he knew it he was staring at a small duck with news of the James Gang's latest robbery emblazoned across its wings.

"Well, I'll be!” was all Jimmy could manage.

"This is for your mother,” said the quiet man. "And for you I have a special bird."

This time the folds were not as many and young Jimmy soon held in his hand a strange object. "That's not a bird!” He said sounding disappointed.

"It is,…" replied the man. "Because it can fly.”

Jimmy looked puzzled again.

Ned and Mike were watching this scene across the flames of the waning fire. Ned said he would like to cut that crazy Chinaman's ponytail off while he slept, but Mike reminded him of the outlaw Pat Montana who was the meanest ombray this side of the Rio Grande and how he had done just that to one of these Chinamen.

"A week later as Pat waited for the Mississippi Princess poker boat that same Chinaman crept up silently and kicked him off the pier. And now Pat Montana, the fastest draw in the Midwestern territories, can't even reach for his holster from his sanitarium bed in Pittsburgh."

Ned shifted his gaze from the Chinaman into the fire.

"They renamed that part of the Mississippi after Pat," reasoned Mike further. "It became Brokenback Ridge."

"Dagnammit!" cursed Ned. The young padre looked over his spectacles at the old prospector and Ned looked back across the fire at him, nodding his apology.

"Try it,” the yellowskin said to the young boy, gesturing with his hand to show Jimmy what to do.

Jimmy took the paper ‘bird’ and waited for the winds of the valley to pick up once more before releasing it to its invisible waves. The folded page glided and danced in the firelight only for a short while, but the stagecoach passengers all sat agog at this amazing scene.

"Well, I'll be…” was all Ned Cooper, the oldest, could manage.

The newspaper slowly descended to the dark green ground and the winds died away. It was a moment of perfect silence, one of those moments that doesn't occur very often, a moment that could change a life forever, because there is such clarity of thought in that silence that all that has gone before disappears across the horizon like the valley winds.

Aged ten and impatient with perfect silences, Jimmy Jackson got up to retrieve his bird.

He leant low to pick it up, but as he did, in that instant, an almighty gust of wind catapulted itself across the horses who lay sleeping behind the stagecoach, through the open windows of the stage itself, over the fire's embers, spurting ash up into the wide eyes of Ned and Mike, before spreading out to the place where the paper bird now rested.

And so it was that young Jimmy Jackson never got to touch his paper bird ever again.

As he tried to pick it up, it seemed to gain a life of its own and, taking off, it again landed a few feet away from where the boy stood.

"James!” his mother suddenly screamed.

Turning quickly Jimmy was blinded by a piercing light that seemed to fill the whole valley. Ned and Mike were pulling their six-shooters from their holsters and shouting for the boy and his mother to run for cover. The padre was already running for the stagecoach, but Mike was shouting after him that he was a yellow-bellied coward and he should be grabbing his shotgun from under the seat and shooting as many of these critters as God would allow!

Young Jimmy's eyes grew more accustomed to the new light around the camp site as he frantically rubbed them and he could now make out the 'critters' that Mike was shrieking about.

So this was what Indians looked like. Extremely tall, thin, and not red-skinned at all, but green...

Beyond the wall of light and the three greenskins coming towards him Jimmy could also make out a much larger stagecoach.

"What in tarnation is that?!" shouted Ned letting off a barrel of Mike's shotgun that he had just pulled from the quivering hands of the padre, telling him this was not work for a man of God.

"It's some sort of giant locomotive!” gasped Mike Newell, shotgun rider on the Pine City stage this trip and thirty two next birthday, as two greenskins carried him towards their 'train'.

"B-B-But the railroad hasn't reached this part of the territory yet!" whimpered the padre from inside the stagecoach.

Ned emptied the second barrel of the shotgun and before he could reload, was picked up and carried towards the greenskins' iron horse as well.

The padre made no sound when he was taken, having fainted when the door of the stagecoach was ripped off and five greenskins stood slightly bemused at the man hiding under the interior seating.

Then it was the turn of young Jimmy Jackson and his mother, recently widowed when her husband was killed in a crossfire between a bunch of cowboys and the Earps in Tombstone - such a waste after he had survived Gettysburg and following that blasted idealist Lee and his band of Confederates up and down the country almost twenty years before.

Silence swept across the valley once again. The winds grew and died repetitively and one lone figure sat cross-legged next to a burnt-out fire and an empty stagecoach.

Ten greenskins encircled the yellow-skinned man. They all stared agog at the serenity of this man's posture and were curious at the difference in the colour of his skin.

"This world is not ready for you!” he reasoned, knowing and accepting his fate at once. "Return in a hundred years and we may yet meet you as equals."

It took eight greenskins to carry the longhaired man away. But he managed to kick one into the hot ash of the dead fire, breaking its vertebrae like he had done to Pat Montana a year ago as he waited for a poker boat on the Mississippi river.

In a few weeks when the next stagecoach passed through this valley of spiralling monuments of rock, the camp site of the Pine City stage would be discovered. And the Pine City stage itself would be found as well. But that would be all. There would be no trace of the six who had travelled on it, nor would there be a copy of the last edition of The Clarksville Bugle that one of the six carried with him. The abductions would be blamed on the Navajo tribes of those territories who probably raped the woman and scalped the men for their trophy poles. That's how the next edition of The Clarksville Bugle would report it.

Before the greenskins departed, a smaller member of their group looked out across the dark, narrow valley. He, along with his elders had been observing the Pine City Stage from their craft ever since it set off from the tiny settlement the pale-skinned humans called ‘Shik-ag-ee’ two weeks before. Whereas the others in his raiding party had been more interested in taking readings of the humans’ physiology and make-up, the young greenskin had listened closely and recorded the spoken tales that each of the passengers had recounted. He liked stories but felt alone in his species for doing so. He was supposed to be a scientist when he grew up but he always kept a secret record of the oral traditionals of the races they abducted, scanning their primitive brains for every shred of useful data.

The gentle winds of the valley wafted across the young greenskin’s face and broke his thought patterns. Then something caught the adolescent dreamer's prominent single eye, lying on the cold ground among the sharp stones and dust about two feet from where he now stood. He leant low to pick it up, staring agog at its shape. His three fingers gripped the paper craft and then he threw it to an elder greenskin who stood at the mouth of their spaceship.

"They will be ready one day, young one,” gargled father to son as he caught the paper UFO. He smiled contently and took it and his son back inside. “Perhaps it will be when you return as leader of a future scouting patrol...”

The valley was once again at rest as the greenskins' ship took off and disappeared into the clear night sky... The valley winds were becoming stronger as dawn approached and the rising sun cast silhouettes across all that stood before it.

The winds flew across the Pine City stage and the dead fire which had once warmed six weary travellers. They continued out across the rugged stone floor of the valley, up the tall, jagged cliffs surrounding the camp site and met three unnatural silhouettes who had silently watched the events of the night unfold.

"Chindi tsaedoninee," sighed the eldest.

"Chindi tsaedoninee," replied his sons, nodding.

And from a distant place, the winds carried the sounds of drums and the wails of their Navajo tribe as they danced their star dance to mourn another six souls lost to the silhouettes and winds of the valley.

(word count: 2,212)

©CGAllan, 2000 - Please note: The right of CGAllan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.


This has to be my all-time favourite tale of the short stories I've written so far in my relatively short writing life... I've always been obsessed with "Westerns" and stories of the wild West. This was fed growing up from my dad's love of the cowboy films on TV - there probably wasn't a weekend that went by as I grew up that we didn't watch a Sunday afternoon Western. This fascination was also nurtured when as I got older one of our TV stations in the UK (BBC2 for those in the know!) used to show repeats of black and white and early colour Westerns in a "tea-time" slot every single week night, which was perfect timing for me getting in from school and a good excuse to delay doing my homework for an extra hour or so...

I originally wrote this story when I was a member of an online writing club back in 2000. The Poetry Club still exists today with its many different genres of writing groups, and is a good place to "cut your writing teeth" so to speak, with supportive comments normally the order of the day when it comes to feedback (and with different perspectives too, cos the writers on there are spread across the globe). When I first conceived it, this story was called "The Silohuettes & Winds of the Prairie" (not Valley) and it won the weekly writing challenge which I entered it in for (the brief was straightforward - "write a sci-fi Western story"). Here's some of the comments I got about my writing there:

"For delivery and style, Chris's story of the Indian's abduction dance takes it! Attaboy, Chris! Good on ya, Chris! Your story was incredible. Congratulations..."

The story literally came straight out of my head onto the page one day after reading the challenge brief on the Poetry Club's website and I remember sitting down and having a total "cathexis" and writing flurry - amazing what the proper motiviation and inspiration can do for you, I often think... And these "weekly challenges" were just the right thing at the time to get me writing regularly about a range of different subjects... You can see another of my Poetry Club efforts across at my Dark Sci-Fi page, entitled "The Thirst For Knowledge" - this one didn't win any prize but still got pretty nice feedback from the other members at the time too...

The reason I changed the title of the story from "Prairie" to "Valley", incidentally, is that I definitely wanted the story to take the stagecoach passengers through the eerie cliffs and rock towers of Monument Valley at night but also in the beginning had them stop in a lush grass prairie within the Grand Canyon territories... I later realised, doing some proper research, that there isn't necessarily any praires or grasslands in that particular area of the West, so endeavouring to make my story more believable, I took the decision when redrafting it to post up here on my Adventure Stories page to edit this slightly jarring part of the story.

Because of my fondness for this story, I've actually revisted it a few times and even once submitted it to Focus Magazine, one of the British Sci-Fi Association's publications,(probably a bit naively as it got sent back, rejected!) but it's meant that I've kept redrafting and improving the story, which is important when you care about your writing (I'm committed to not letting my "old" stories gather dust and be forgotten, because I once thought they were important enough to write at the very least!) The feedback I got from the British Sci-Fi magazine editor was that the story seemed to jump too much from one character to the other, that is that there was no fixed viewpoint or consistent point of view for the reader to follow. With the most recent redraft I hope I've resolved this niggle more to show just why the viewpoint switches between the three sets of youths who appear (Jimmy, the alien kid and then the Indian boys who appear briefly at the end). For the most part and on t he surface it is Jimmy's story as he listens and commits to memory all the small details of his fellow passengers' lives, but then we discover it's really the alien kid who has overall point of view because he's been recording all the details too...

A couple of other things worth mentioning is that I'm not sure if I've taken some artistic licence with the invention of the paper aeroplane - the story is set in the 1880s or thereabouts and I've not been able to track down any history of the paper aeroplane, but know that origami (both a Chinese as well as a Japanese traditional craft) pre-dates the era of the Old West by centuries, so I felt I could use this in my story with a sort of clear conscience for historical accuracy. The whole thing about the two cowboys in the story wanting to cut off the Chinaman's ponytail and the fact he kicked "Pat Montana" off a pier, breaking his back, is strangely, believe it or not, an anecdote from my own family lore... Apparently when my great grandfather fought in the First World War and was stationed in France, he was challenged by his fellow enlisted men to (stupidly) cut off the ponytail of a Chinese man. He did so (as I said, stupidly!) and did a few days later get kicked off a pier somewhere in mainland Europe by the same guy, breaking his back in the process. That story has always stuck with me since hearing it when I was young and I sort of like using real life occurences and oddities like that whenever they fit with my fictional writing.

So there you have it, my favourite story to date (2008!) - as I said, I love Westerns, and it was perhaps inevitable that I'd end up writing one for myself someday - not least because I grew up in a small village called "Westerhope", where the running joke of the place was that John Wayne founded it, coming in from the east after being asked where he was riding off into the sunset to and simply replying, "West, I hope!"

In early 2007 I decided to try different ways to add intrigue and anticipation to my writing for readers and made this post over at my writing journal blog:

http://cgallan.blogspot.com/2007/01/get-in-for-trailers-before-main-feature.html

Then I put a "teaser trailer" on each of my story blogs to prelude the stories that were "Coming soon". Here's what the teaser for "The Silhouettes & Winds of the Valle" looked like:

Ready for a whipcracking adventure in a land that time's forgot?

Arriving here any day now, by express overland stage,
a brand new ripping yarn...

"The Silhouettes & Winds of the Valley"

(a short adventure)

by CGAllan

The West may never seem the same again...

(While you mosey on down to the saloon

tying your horse to the hitching post outside,

watching the horizon for the overdue stage,

you can read more dime-novel stories from CGAllan below...)

(a short back-and-forwards story)

by CGAllan

3rd PrizeWinner of

TheRaider.Net 2005 Fan Fiction Writing Contest

Summer has come early but it’s raining hard. I can see my drizzled reflection in the window of the hearse parked behind the small group of mourners only fifty paces away. Perched on my head, my fedora is reminiscent of the mountainscapes I’ve seen in a dozen different countries from my journeys around the globe.

The age of my faithful hat is being given away by the musty smell that the warm rainwater is teasing out of it. Only in Washington, capital of bureaucratic fools, could April showers arrive a month early. Like the sieve Marcus always used in his office at Barnett to make his tea, the rain continues to use my hat as a drainer. I look down, not wanting to believe all this is true but the rain, drenching everything it touches, brings a gleaming quality to the coffin as it’s lowered into the earth.

Looking up, I can see a woman across the way looking me over through the veil which covers her head. She probably thinks I can’t see her doing so through the black netting. She probably thinks I’m being disrespectful wearing this hat with a moth-eaten black suit and threadbare tie, but Marcus would have liked it. He would have chuckled in that English way of his.

The last time I wore this suit was about six months ago. That time it was at a memorial ceremony at Chicago University. It was for another close friend who I’d lost touch with in much the same way as Marcus. I didn’t know then that it would be the last time I’d see Marcus alive. I was preoccupied with a case I’d been asked to take up by a Shoshone Chief. The one thing I did comment on was that Marion hadn’t even bothered to turn up to her own father’s dedication. Marcus, of course, made excuses for her and quickly changed the subject…..

“Marion’s probably busy with her own life, Indy. You know it’s taken years for most of us to believe Abner really is dead, but Marion is about the only one who accepted it from the time he went missing.”

I had sneered. Marion and I had parted company a few years back, and I could only imagine what drunken life she would be busy with nowadays. But the truth of it was I missed her and had been hoping to see her again at Abner’s memorial.

"Listen, old friend, wouldn’t it be jolly good fun to go on one last adventure together?" He clasped my shoulder with one hand and patted my hip with the other. "You know, like in the old days?"

It had been the wrong thing to say to me then of all times. I know that time doesn’t stand still – today’s new inventions are tomorrow’s ancient archaeology, but the trail of the Shoshone peace pipe had been getting me down. I was starting to realise that the good old days might be behind me, that bruises that used to heal overnight, now ached for weeks on end. It was because of this that the only reply I gave to Marcus was a grunt and a handshake. And then I walked away…..

The woman in black in front of the hearse puts a white handkerchief up to her netted face. The way she’s crying you’d think she knew Marcus well. But Marcus wasn’t really ever a ladies’ man. He stuttered and stumbled around everything, especially women. But that hadn’t been my first impression of Marcus Brody. In fact, back then he had saved my life when I was the one stuttering and stumbling as a clumsy teenager.…

I was only a few months away from my fourteenth birthday when I first met Marcus, although I had no idea who he was at first. I was already well travelled at that age but still very much wide-eyed and full of interest at the things around me – even if they were in the dust-ridden streets of Utah.

'Waltz’s World of the Weird & Wonderful' trading store was one of my regular haunts in the town. It was on a busy back street but stood out because of its untidy windows and the peeling paintwork of its exterior. Joseph Waltz was a huge bear of a man with curly ginger hair and long sideburns to match. He was a man who belonged in the 19th century, not the 20th. All the kids in the town called him “Old Man Waltz” because he longed for the days of trappers and renegade Indians to return. He wouldn’t let anyone park their newfangled automobiles next to his store, which still had a dilapidated hitching post for horses outside. It was because of this feeling of not fitting in with the world that Joseph drank heavily, all day, every day.

Dad always warned me that Joseph Waltz turned into a Viking berserker when he got angry through the drink. But I felt safe around the old prospector on account of my getting on his good side when my scout troop discovered his lost brother earlier that year in Superstition Mountains. After that, Old Man Waltz didn’t seem to mind me hanging around his store any chance I got.

The things inside that shop had the effect of catapulting me out of the dirt and tumbleweed life of Utah to all the exotic places I’d travelled with my family as a young boy. It was also responsible for keeping my interest in artifacts from the past alive. The store was made up of five narrow aisles with six faded pine shelving units, holding all sorts of dusty objects which most people would have thrown out with the rubbish. There were stuffed animals – a muskrat and a cobra with its fangs glistening. There were Indian wishing bones, dream catchers and half a totem pole that leant against the counter where Old Man Waltz sat with his bottomless keg of whisky. And there was old paraphernalia from the days of Waltz’s youth – a cavalry sword still in its sheath, gold-panning equipment and even a shiny old bugle, which was the reason I had gone into the store on that particular day.

Well, kid, are you gonna buy this thing or not?” You could almost see the liquor vapour curl in wisps out of Old Man Waltz’s mouth as he spoke.

“Gee, I’m not sure, Mister. I-I do like it…” My friend Herman Ketts could never make a decision. He’d been the one who dragged me into the store to look at the bugle he’d seen in the window.

“Look, kid, this was used at the Little Bighorn by none other than General Custer’s bugler!” rasped Old Man Waltz.

I took Herman aside. “What’s wrong? I thought you had enough for a new one?”

"I do, Indy" replied Herman with a pale smile. "But my father’s been teaching me to barter, so I’m gonna try to knock him down a dollar or two."

I left the two of them to it and wandered around the shelves again. I could still hear them haggling when something I’d not seen in the store before caught my eye. Underneath a rusted old miner’s lantern sat an amazing-looking chessboard. Its pieces were carved into the most fantastic shapes. I picked up one of the figures. It felt as cold as ice – the board and pieces were made out of marble. I lay my hand flat on the board and allowed the freshness of its surface to seep into my skin.

I remember clearly that I had twenty seven dollars stuffed inside my old journal at home which I’d been saving for my summer off from doing odd jobs around town, but I knew it still wouldn’t be enough to pay for the set. As I reached for the price tag, I knocked over one of the pieces – a white horse. It hit the floor and rolled into the shadows underneath the bookcase.

“Hey! You with the hat that don’t fit!” came Old Man Waltz’s voice as he marched towards me. He sounded more drunk than ever. “I’ll teach ya to thieve from my store while your friend distracts me!”

As he got closer I could see the red blood lust of his Norse ancestors rising in his tired eyes. He was about to go berserk and my mouth was glued shut with fear.

I-Indy! What should we do?” came Herman’s frightened voice from the counter.

I didn’t know what we could do in the cramped space of the shop, but I had to think of something. Suddenly Old Man Waltz lurched forward and let out a stinking roar but before he could grab hold of me I dived through the shelves knocking over the miner’s lantern as well as the chessboard. The pieces were scattered all across the hole-infested panels of the shop floor.

I was into the next aisle and looked around frantically for my friend.

"Herman, run! Get my dad! He’s at the museum today – look in the Crusades exhibit!"

Herman was silent. I thought he’d probably be cowering behind the store counter. I could hear Old Man Waltz clumping down the other aisle to get around the bookshelf. “I’ll find you! You ruined my brother’s lantern!” he screamed. He was a giant and although in my career since I’ve faced off against several men his size, at thirteen years old, I knew I didn’t stand a chance against him.

As he turned the shelves next to his counter he seemed to set himself ready to run at me, but suddenly the totem pole stood by his whisky keg toppled into his path. He tripped and fell onto the wooden floor with such a thump that I thought he’d be out cold, but it only seemed to make him more enraged. He growled as he struggled to his feet.

An energetic trumpet call came from behind Old Man Waltz and Herman’s red face complete with the bugle he’d been bartering for appeared around the shelves.

"This is gonna be YOUR last stand for doing that to me, kid," slurred Old Man Waltz, yanking the bugle from Herman’s quivering hands.

“I-I-Indy! Help!” screamed my friend.

I ran to the front of the store, into the next aisle and did the only thing I could think of that might stop Old Man Waltz in his fit of rage. I rushed at the nearest shelf unit and struggled with its weight trying to push it over onto him. There was a slight creaking, then an outrageous clatter as the stuffed muskrat and cobra fell onto him, as well as a few dozen other weird and wonderful objects. One after another, like dominos set up for the fall, four of the five long shelves of the store knocked each other over. And underneath it all with the Indian dream catcher next to his head was Old Man Waltz.

Herman walked along the shelves sheepishly and stood beside me watching the dust rise from the collapsed scene. “Geez, Indy, do you think he’s OK?”

There was an exhausted groaning from where the old prospector fell and we knew he was still alive at least. Herman walked towards the front door and I dusted myself down and straightened my fedora. Looking back up and refocusing I realised there was a sheathed cavalry sword pointing to my belly.

"What’s all this, then? What you little devils been doin’ to Joseph?" It was Jacob, Joseph’s younger but no less wily brother. From the smell of his breath, I could tell he was obviously drunk as well, and certainly didn’t recognise me from Superstition Mountains. “I’ll run you through and skewer your pig friend for our meal tonight!”

I looked back at Herman. He’d dropped the bugle and had picked up the Indian wishbones, rubbing them frantically obviously wanting some mystical help to be conjured out of the air. I turned to face Jacob again and heard the bell on the shop door tinkle slightly. Jacob Waltz unsheathed the sword to reveal a rusty blade with which he began chopping the air only about a foot from my face. I edged slowly back, Jacob matching my steps pace for pace.

"I say, what’s all the fuss about?" came a quaint English voice from behind me.

"Nothing of your concern!” snarled Jacob. “I’m teaching these runts a lesson.”

“I do believe you’re mistaken, my good man.” came the young English accent once more. “You see, that boy in front of you is in my charge, so I’ll have to ask you to kindly lower your sword.”

Jacob wasn’t taking any notice of the Englishman. His eyes dropped back to my level and with a defiant look on his face raised the rusted sabre. Without thinking too much I dropped to the floor and slid under the last remaining shelf unit into the safety of the outer aisle. On the other side I felt my head frantically - my then quite new and somewhat oversized fedora, had fallen off, right at the feet of Jacob Waltz. I threw my arm back under the shelves and whipped back my hat, a fraction of a second before Jacob’s cavalry sabre swished down through the air.

“Don’t worry, Joseph.” Jacob growled. “I’ll skewer the two pigs for our supper!”

“Sir, you’ve just confirmed my long-held suspicion that all meat-eaters are in fact cannibals!” came the English voice once more. “I’m afraid you will have to go through me before you get to those two boys.”

I watched through the shelves, only being able to see both men’s midsections. Jacob sliced and cut at the Englishman, and the Englishman, dressed in a beige suit, parried and blocked the attacking sabre with… a gentleman’s umbrella.

Back and forwards they shuffled along the dusty, wooden floor. I followed along on the other side of the shelves, my gaze passing a Zulu warrior’s shield, a primed bear trap, and three Samurai Kamikaze daggers. The Englishman’s umbrella was soon in tatters and I looked again at the objects on the shelves in front of me.

Grabbing one of the Japanese daggers I ran to help but I was too late - Jacob was raising his rusty sabre to strike a decisive blow to the Englishman. And then suddenly, strange words began to come out of the Englishman’s mouth. He was speaking in a foreign tongue and Jacob’s face showed his ignorance. His sabre remained where it was as he grew distracted by the odd speech. It took me a short while, but I eventually recognised some numbers among the garbled words – it was Ancient Greek.

And then, as Jacob stood frozen with confusion, the Englishman spun his umbrella around and used the hooked end to grab Jacob’s leg. With a sharp tug Jacob fell to the floor and seemed content to remain there with his eyes closed.

“You boys best wait outside, if you don’t mind.” smiled the Englishman, turning to Herman and me. “I’ll talk to these men like gentlemen and clear everything up.”

“Who do you think he is?” asked Herman as he closed the front door behind us.

“I’m guessing a friend of my dad’s” I replied, pointing to my father’s black Model T Ford which was parked outside the store right next to the hitching post. Not many people in Utah had motorcars at that time and nobody had one like ours with its distinctive red wheel spindles and gold trimmings.

The door of Waltz’s store opened again. It was the Englishman. He held two brown paper bags, one under each arm.

“Here you are.” he said to Herman, handing him one of the bags, and then he turned to me. “And this is yours.”

We both opened our bags. Inside Herman’s was the cavalry bugle, and inside mine was the marble chessboard and pieces.

“I smoothed things over in there and offered to pay for those two items by way of reconciliation.” explained the Englishman. “Some of the chess pieces were irrecoverable, I’m afraid. But I’m sure we can find replacements for you this summer.”

“Mind telling us who you are, sir?” I asked. “I figure you know my Dad, right?”

"Oh, how inconsiderate of me not to introduce myself!" he chuckled. “My name is Marcus Brody. I’m an old school friend of your father’s. Henry telegraphed three weeks ago, inviting me to visit you both and asked if I’d try to persuade you to accompany me to Egypt on a trip for my museum.”

I was in shock. I had missed Egypt so much since my first trip there five years previously, but the odd Englishman standing in front of me was a complete stranger. Little did I know as I watched him put up his ripped umbrella that he’d become not only a surrogate father to me over the years, but also my conscience as well.

“Smith & Sons of London will be getting a stern letter from me – they aren’t making brollies like they used to.” sighed Marcus. “I’ll just have to get myself a fetching hat like yours for shade from this retched Nevada sun, Junior!”

Whether I was going to travel to Egypt with this man or not, I knew right then and there that I had to get one thing straight with him if our friendship was ever to last:

“Mr Brody, please, don’t call me Junior.”…...


“Indiana?” my Dad’s ageing voice brings me back to the present. I look around. The rain has stopped. People are dispersing – I’ve reminisced all the way through the funeral service. “You know, I never could quite figure poor Marcus out. I mean, he has no family or friends anywhere in Washington, so why would he have made arrangements to be buried out here in Brookland?”

“I have no idea, Dad.” I say with a sigh. I’m irritated that I haven’t paid my last respects properly. “Listen, I’ll follow you on shortly, OK?”

Dad takes out his pocketwatch, checks the time and begins to wind it, routinely. “Son, say your goodbyes quickly, eh?” he coughs and then winces from an old injury. “Remember, Indiana, no one lives forever. You spend too much time around death as it is, so do yourself a favour and don’t linger here too long.”

I walk around Marcus’s grave. My neck itches in this collar and tie. In fact, this whole monkey suit getup always felt unnatural. I think back to that day at Waltz’s store in Utah and Marcus’s present of the chess set which he was so proud to have given me. Herman’s mother had called Marcus our “knight in shining armour” and then banned us from Waltz’s store forever. I didn’t have time to find replacement chess pieces over the summer in Egypt for those lost in Waltz’s store and because my dad had to move to Princeton a few years later, I never got to sneak back and search under Waltz’s floorboards either. Over the years, I’ve gotten copies of most of them, but that elusive white knight which I first knocked over and which was the cause of all of the ruckus that day in Utah has remained the only piece I’ve yet to find.

I feel the rough texture of my dress jacket as these memories of Marcus roll over in my head. Reaching my right-hand pocket I realise there’s a bulge that shouldn’t be there. I keep nothing in this suit. I feel inside and pull out an envelope. Written on it in Marcus’s handwriting is:

"Indy, one last adventure?"

I open it quickly like a child tearing open the first of his presents on Christmas morning. I pull out a letter and something else falls to my feet, hitting the wet grass. I kneel down to retrieve it – it’s a chess piece, a white horse, exactly the style and carving of the set Marcus bought me almost forty years ago. I sigh and open the letter:

"Old friend, I know you’ve been searching for this particular piece all your life and was hoping you might return the gesture and retrieve a missing piece in a puzzle I’ve been working on for the last few years."

I clench my fist, gripping the chess piece tightly. The icyness of the marble hasn’t faded even after all this time. This is what he wanted to talk to me about at Abner’s memorial ceremony. He must have suspected, that because of our distance in recent years and my growing stubbornness, that he might not get a warm reception from me that day. I realise now that he must have slipped the envelope into my jacket pocket as he clasped my shoulder in front of Abner’s dedication plaque. It was a cheap pickpocket’s trick but it had worked a treat on me. I read on in disbelief:

"Indy, I did it – I located what we once let slip through our fingers. But I’m too weak to go on. I need you to complete the quest for this ‘object of unspeakable power'."

I look up, mystified. Marcus couldn’t have found where those Army chumps Eaton and Musgrove hid it, could he? The mourners have all but dispersed now. A stonemason’s truck pulls up with a bunch of headstones stacked in the back. Only the woman in the black veil remains near the grave. She walks towards me, but I ignore her, remaining in my crouched position, reading Marcus’ letter:

"Remember these words, Indy, you’ll need them to locate this needle in the haystack – ‘Top Secret – Army Intel – 9906753’. That’s the crate number you’re looking for. It’s in a warehouse at the docks on the East Potomac in DC. It’s a real rundown part of town, but you won’t believe the size of this place until you see it. I’ve had a valuable research assistant working on the project with me these past few years, and when I die she’ll hold the key."

The woman with the veil over her face is standing alongside me. She holds out her gloved hand and opens it – she’s holding a large rusty key with a written tag on it that reads: Warehouse 15.

“He only discovered the cancer about a year ago.” I recognise the voice. It’s older, and slightly more gravelly than the last time I heard it but I’m sure it’s… Marion Ravenwood. She lifts the black netting to reveal her identity.

She hasn’t changed. A few new lines have grown here and there across her face but she’s still as beautiful as I remember. I smile and she smirks back. I wonder what she makes of my greying beard.

"We always knew the Ark of the Covenant belonged in a museum, Jones." Marion finally says. “So buy me a drink and I’ll tell you all about how Marcus and me found out where they’ve hidden it these past thirteen years or so.”

I walk away with Marion. She links arms with me and I see the stonemason lifting Marcus’s gravestone out of his truck. My dad chose the inscription and right now I can’t think of a better tribute to our old friend:

"Here lies Marcus Brody...

a scholar, gentleman and genius of the restoration."

(word count: 3,891)

©CGAllan 2005 - Please note: The right of CGAllan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

NB(i) - The "Indiana Jones" logo is a copyright of Lucasfilm Ltd. and is reproduced here only for non-profit purposes.

NB(i) - The sketch of a young Marcus Brody is used with the kind permission of the folks over at Indiana Jones & the Fountain of Youth who are creating a greatly-anticipated point-and-click Indiana Jones adventure...

First off, in case it's not obvious, the "Englishness" in this story that I promised every tale on this blog would have in one way, shape or form, comes in the character of Marcus Brody, the very English museum curator and stalwart friend to the very American hero, Indiana Jones.

And in fact, the character of Brody was my starting point for writing this story. I'm a huge fan of the Indiana Jones film and TV series, and had it in my mind that if Indy was ever to have a fourth big screen adventure, Marcus Brody could not appear in it, because the actor who played him, Denholm Eliot, died a few years back. Therefore, I began to conceive a story to fit in before Indy IV, which would explain how Marcus died.

I also knew I wanted to have a story that swung back and forwards through time, using flashbacks, because this is the aspect of the Young Indy series which I loved the best, so I used fan made Indiana Jones timelines on the Net to plot exactly which times my adventures would fit into. Indy IV is said to take place in the 60s, so I set the "present" of my story in about 1950, and I knew that in Indy lore, his first meeting with Brody hadn't actually ever been seen either on screen or in the many fictional adventure books written about the archaeologists life. (Incidentally, for any hardcore Indy fans reading this, we know that in mid 1913 Marcus took Indy on a trip to Egypt (from Young Indiana Jones & The Tomb Of Terror by Les Martin (1990), but before this, as far as we know, Indy had never met the English museum buff).

To be a little more geeky, I made sure there were quite a few classic Indy touches and references in the story (the Greek numbers, the character of Old Man Waltz, and of course the grabbing of his fedora just in time before it gets destroyed, to name but three.)

Anyway, the other thing you should know is that what prompted this story was an online fan fiction writing competition on an Indiana Jones fan site - http://www.theraider.net/features/contests/fanfiction.php - and I’m thrilled to say that I won 3rd prize for it (a collection of signed Indy books came all the way from Oklahoma, USA, recently for my efforts!) It’s the first fan fiction competition I’ve ever entered before, but I think they’re a great way to sharpen your storytelling skills, while creating something that’s not only satisfying to yourself as a fan of a particular story or saga, but hopefully to others out there too…

I’ve written twice before about Indy on my main writing journal blog and if you fancy seeing what I said there too, here are the links:

http://cgallan.blogspot.com/2006/06/razor-perceptions-that-cut-just-little.html

&:

http://cgallan.blogspot.com/2006/09/good-authors-too-who-once-knew-better.html

My days of writing about Indiana Jones are far from over, though. At the moment, I’m co-writing a story with another fan from Australia on an Indy forums board – anyone can join in, so why not join us? Unsurprisngly, I call myself “BrodyIsDead” on the boards there, and you can catch up with the story from the start here:

http://raven.theraider.net/showthread.php?p=183925&mode=linear#post183925

The last thing I want to say about this story is that it’s one of the first times I’ve seriously written in the first person – I thought this would give a different edge to an Indy story, getting inside his head, hearing his thoughts about getting old and not being able to swing on his whip across crevasses as much any more (but still having a damn good try) – and overall, I think telling the story from this honed-in point of view worked well for me as a writer – hopefully, it did for you as a reader, too… And so until the next artifact of an adventure is unearthed, farewell…

(Also of note is that over at the Raider.Net's "Raven Forums", in this first forum thread of June 2005 I received great feedback for "the Quest of the White Knight" and then in this second one in June 2006 I myself offered some insights into why I chose to include certain aspects of Indy lore and added more detail about how I went about crafting my story - remember to watch out for my posts as you read those, as I go under the alias of "BrodyIsDead" on the forum!)

(A Nat Smith mystery)

by CGAllan

"God hath chosen the foolish things of the world

to confound the wise"

(from St. Paul's first Epistle to the Corinthians)

-------------------------------------------

"You must learn to P-R-A-C-T-I-C-E... T-O... D-E-C-E-I-V-E." said Professor Lumb chalking the words onto the ancient-looking blackboard in lecture room G5.

'Practice to deceive' wrote Nathanial Smith on his pad as he struggled to stop himself from yawning. But then he went quickly back and scribbled over the first word, writing above it the more pleasing variation 'Practise'. He locked his jaw shut as the urge to yawn left him - he'd never get used to English spelling.

"Get your inspiration from L-I-F-E... write what you K-N-O-W..." said the Creative Writing Professor, his Scots accent curled and rolled around every letter as he chalked them onto the board. "Build characters by observing people down the pub, in the library or even the person sitting next to you."

Nathanial turned and looked at the girl sitting beside him. She had deep red hair and her face was speckled with fading childhood freckles. He didn't know her, but why should he? He'd only been at Newcastle University for three weeks.

"What kind of character would they be?" Asked the Professor of the whole class. And Nathanial suddenly realised the girl was now looking at him as well. Professor Lumb ended the lecture by telling them about their first creative writing assignment. "You are invited to interpret 'T-H-E-S-E... F-O-O-L-I-S-H... T-H-I-N-G-S' as broadly as you wish."

Nathanial quickly took down the details. "I will be putting high value on stories which demonstrate imagination, originality and literary flair."

"So…" said the girl as the Professor made his exit. "Just what kind of character would you be?"

He didn't really know how to answer that one.

She laughed. "I'm Elizabeth, by the way."

Nathanial only managed to reply with "I'm...", before Elizabeth interrupted him.

"The American - I know."

The two students left G5 and walked through to the foyer of the English Department, and while Nathanial checked the student noticeboards for new announcements, Elizabeth sat down and began searching in her bag.

"I'm not looking forward to writing that story, but we've only got three weeks to get it done." She said retrieving a box of cigarettes from the bottom of her knapsack. Nathanial didn't appear to be listening. "What's your name?" She asked suddenly.

"Nathanial, but I prefer Nat." He said still looking at the boards in an attempt to 'play it cool'. He moved to look in one of the glass noticeboards away from the foyer, as if to thoroughly check his timetable for the week.

"Nat it is, then." She shook her box of matches and Nat turned round, satisfied that he'd missed no important seminars.

Nat strained to see his reflection in the glass. He motioned to scratch his hair when in fact he wanted to smooth his brown hair flat on his head. He twitched his nose as if to make it less pointy. And seeing his stubble glint in the sunlight, he immediately wished he'd shaved for a second time that morning.

"That's strange!" Eilizabeth said opening the cigarette box. "I could have sworn that this was full earlier on."

"What's that?" Nat asked pointing to the inside of the box.

"Let's see." She unrolled the piece of paper that was where her cigarettes should have been.

It was a drawing of a spider on a small web.

“Are you an artist?" He asked her.

"No," she said. "I couldn't draw to save my life! It must be one of my flat mates having a laugh or something." She closed the box. “I’ll have to smoke this outside anyway. When I first came here this foyer was permanently filled with clouds of smoke, but now it’s naughty-naughty to smoke inside.”

The pair opened the heavy swinging doors of the Percy Building and walked into the cold air of the quadrangle. "Have you had any ideas about our writing assignment, then?" asked Elizabeth, tutting as she failed to find any more cigarettes in her bag.

Nat hadn't a clue, but since they only had until the beginning of April to get their stories done, he decided he would get working as soon as he got back to his flat in St. Thomas' Square.

"These Foolish Things... these foolish things..." he murmured to himself, as he paced round his still-filled boxes and travel bags in the flat. But a storyline was eluding him...

It was a crazy hour to be sitting in a lecture, thought Nat Smith as he struggled to listen to Professor Lumb give his lecture the following Week. Nat knew that the class were due to hand in the proposals for their writing assignment, but he was hoping that Lumb would forget about it.

"Where is the author coming from? Where does he want his story to go?" Sometimes it seemed as though Lumb didn't stop for a single breath. "You should stop at crucial parts of a story and try to guess where it will go next. Your reading this week is Sayers, Poe and Conan-Doyle."

The second half of the lecture was taken up by group work and since Elizabeth was nowhere to be seen, Nat reluctantly joined some students who sat in front of him. The new set of strangers predictably asked him to say some words and phrases that were typically American, but at least it broke the ice.

"Well, I'm Rob" said the loudest of the group of four after Nat had introduced himself. "This is Jo... Dave... and Wendy." The others smiled as Rob introduced them.

They stumbled through their set task before Professor Lumb announced that he had to leave early - news which everyone was grateful to hear. Nat wasn't sure if he was excited to be invited for coffee with his new friends after the lecture, but he accepted anyway. They waited for Jo in the foyer while she went to collect her saxophone from the basement of the building, but she seemed to reappear immediately and was anxious for them to follow her.

"When I took out my case, I found this." She said gesturing into her locker. The other four peered inside and saw the strange graffiti that Jo referred to. It was strange that is, to everyone except Nat who was familiar with the design - a spider dangling from a web.

"Is there anything missing?" he asked Jo. "Not that I can tell" She went to report the incident to the department secretary and then joined the others in the refectory cafe.

"Conan-Doyle's not too bad and Sayers is bearable, but I still find Poe a struggle." Dave said to Wendy, but she was deep in thought.

"There ARE some things missing, you know" Jo said at last, having checked her case again. "About ten sheets of my manuscript paper!"

"Why would anyone want to steal blank paper?" asked Dave.

"I'll have to report this as well" said Jo and she got up to leave.

"So how are you going with your story, Nat?" asked Rob after Jo had left.

"Not too good." He replied stirring his coffee. "I'm glad he didn't ask for our proposals today."

"I think I've got it!" Declared Wendy "I've been trying to work out a line from Shakespeare or somewhere about a spider's web and I’ve just remembered it." The others slightly taken aback by her outburst awaited her insight.

"'Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive'."

"Now that is strange" said Rob. "First old Lumby tells us to 'Practice to deceive' and then that web drawing appears on Jo's locker."

"It's not the first though" added Nat and he told them about Elizabeth's cigarette box.

"That's right" said Wendy, "I heard her telling everyone about it in the Common Room."

"Of course, the thief could be one of us" concluded Nat.

The others went quiet.

"No, I mean one of our Creative Writing class." He qualified his deduction.

"The thief could've heard the Professor's advice and then used the web symbol as a calling card."
"You said you were talking with that Elizabeth girl" said Rob, eventually breaking the silence.

"Well my money's on her, all those postgrads are suspicious characters if you ask me."

"Don't be silly" said Wendy. "It was her ciggies that were stolen, remember?"

Having finished their coffee and with noon approaching, the group parted company and Nat decided he would keep an eye on Elizabeth anyway.


But it wasn't until their next Creative Writing lecture that Nat Smith again caught sight of Elizabeth. She appeared soon after he had sat down beside Rob and Wendy in G5. Rob saw her too and immediately gave Nat a nudge to let him know that the 'thief was in their midst'. Wendy rolled her eyes at Rob, but Nat watched the graduate student as she lumbered in with an Over-Head Projector and thumped it down on the desk at the front of the room.

"Thank you Lizzy" said Professor Lumb, as he came through the doors carrying a huge box.

"Good morning, all! Today we will talk in more depth about those authors I asked you to read."
He began to fiddle with the OHP. The waiting students soon grew restless and private conversations were resumed.

"Right!" said Lumb at last, and gesturing to Elizabeth to turn off the lights, triumphantly switching on the OHP. The whole room fell immediately silent. On the screen, in place of whatever Lumb had intended to be displayed, was a picture of a spider in the middle of a huge web. Every student in the class, having heard about the previous 'spider' incidents, knew that the web was the mark of the thief. The lights went back on and the Professor asked who the joker was. Nat observed that Elizabeth was gone.

"Fine!" said the Professor. "If nobody is going to own up to this prank then we'll continue our discussion next week, shall we?" He stormed out of G5, almost tripping over the box he had brought in with him.

"How about old Lumby exploding like that?" said Rob as the five friends sat in the refectory cafe for their post-lecture coffee.

"He didn't ask for our proposals again." said Dave happily.

"Our proposals?!" laughed Wendy. "The assignments have to be in next week you idiot!"

"Speaking of which, have any of you actually started your stories yet?" enquired Jo.

"Nat kept quiet - he was musing over the morning's events.

"Are you joking?" it was Rob's turn to laugh. "I haven't a clue what 'These Foolish Things' could be yet!

"Nat suddenly broke his silence. "That's it, guys". He almost shouted. "The things that were stolen - they're foolish. The cigarettes, the blank paper, the OHP sheet - they're all totally unconnected, and that's what gives the game away!"

"So the thief has be from our class then." said Dave pleased with 'his' deduction.



What could MC Escher have to do with 'These Foolish Things'? Wondered Nat later that day, watching Elizabeth from a distance as she sketched from an art book. She was an artist after all. Nat had come to the Robinson Library to catch up on his study, but once again he'd been drawn into the mystery of the 'spider' thefts.

Elizabeth was not only an artist, but a liar - and that linked what she was drawing to the 'bigger' picture somehow. She was copying Escher's famous print of two hands drawing one another. As Nat tried to get a perspective on the confusing drawing, he realised that it was the confusion of the thefts that was the key... everything and everyone in the picture was linked.

He went back to the Percy building to confirm his 'hunch'. G5 was empty except for the OHP and Lumb's box, which kneeling down, Nat opened. Underneath a layer of packing paper were some familiar things,... some foolish things.

Coming out to the foyer Nat saw a crowd of students going out the main doors. The secretary, an elegantly thin woman with big hair and big glasses, had just put up a poster and threw an old one in the bin. "That's what should have been there!" she snorted.

Nat looked at the new poster - it announced a 'Belated Welcome Party' for the Undergraduate Writing Class the following week.

"Well, that's a long time in coming, but at least it should lighten things up a bit." came Jo's voice, as the crowd disappeared. Nat turned and saw his friends who he remembered he was supposed to have met up with a half hour earlier. They explained why so many students had been huddled around the noticeboards, showing him the poster that the secretary had thrown away - it was another web drawing.

Nat took his friends into G5 and showed them the box containing the cigarettes, the OHP sheet and Jo's music paper, which she took back. "It's Lumb and Elizabeth, I'm sure of it" he told them."

“They don't cover their tracks very well, do they?" said Dave.

"I say we go and ask them what they're playing at!" Rob was agitated.

But Nat disagreed. "We'll confront them in public next week - April 1st at the Welcome party."


Professor Lumb's next Monday morning lecture was predictably cancelled and Nat would have been glad of the extra sleep had he not been eager to bring to a close the tangled web of events of the past few weeks. He woke early on the morning of the party and met his friends in the foyer of the English Department.

"Are we ready to do this, then?" he asked them. They all agreed. The party was being held in the student common room on the first floor and as the five sleuths entered, they were greeted with smiles from both Elizabeth and Professor Lumb.

Nat's attention was drawn to a new poster for the party at the back of the room - it had a copy of the Escher drawing on it and was signatured by Elizabeth. Nat hesitated to speak when the group reached the two 'culprits', but Rob wanted to have the first words anyway.

"OK, Lumby, why did you break into Jo's locker?" Elizabeth smiled and Nat saw that sitting on a table under the poster was a framed piece of paper - he could just read it.

"I'm waiting for an answer Professor" pressed Rob, enjoying talking down to a member of staff, but Nat had to stop him before he made April-fools of them all.

"We've been on a wild goose chase, haven't we?" he said to the Professor.

"Of sorts, my boy, of sorts."

Nat's friends were stumped by his question. He elaborated a little, "Remember what the Professor told us? 'Practice to deceive' - that's what he's been teaching us all along."

"So you're not a thief, then?" Rob said sounding disappointed.

"I'm afraid not. I hoped that this little exercise might help you all to inject some life into your writing." said Lumby with a certain pride.

"In fact, we're going to make it an annual event" added Elizabeth. "A sort of 'initiation' for new students on the Creative Writing course."

The whole room was astounded. It certainly was unusual, but everyone began to see the funny side once the shock had settled in.

"And since you discovered our little plot, the five of you deserve this" said the Professor going to the table and fetching the framed 'winners' certificate.

While the students concentrated upon their prize, the Professor seemed to scowl slightly and, put his hand into his inside jacket pocket, and… he handed Rob a pen to sign their names in the blank spaces at the bottom of the certificate.

Nat needed a drink and Elizabeth followed him to the wine table. "Well done, Nat, we'll make a crime writer of you yet!"

He smiled back at her. "It was the Shakespeare quote that first gave us the clue."

"Oh, what a tangled web the mind of a literature student is!" laughed Elizabeth. "That’s not from
Shakespeare, it’s Sir Walter Scott - one of the Professor’s favourite writers, you know."

Nat sighed, then suddenly one last question occurred to him that the Professor hadn't answered.

But Rob had already remembered as well and returning the pen asked 'Lumby': "Does this mean we're getting an extension on our writing assignments, then?"

And all ears in the room listened attentively to hear what the Professor had to say...


(Nat Smith will return here soon in “Close Comfort House”)

(word count: 2,665)

©CGAllan 2000 - Please note: The right of CGAllan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

In 1999/2000, when this story was first conceived and written, I had recently graduated from my undergraduate degree in English Language from Newcastle University. My experience of studying in my home city left me wandering around those hallowed grounds a lot after I had left the university and began working in the city.

I used to look up at the old buildings in around the main quadrangle, walk through the "fat man's squeeze" and mentally noted the filmic-looking cast-iron fire escapes and towered roofs all around me as I cut through on my lunch. Perhaps to escape the boredom of everyday working life, I used to imagine what it would be like to run across the rooftops like Sherlock Holmes, tracking down a suspect in his latest case. (I did a module on the English degree called "Criminal Fictions" by the way!)

This time in my life happened to coincide with my real first decisions that I wanted to become a writer, and so I began to enter writing competitions as a way to motivate me to write to deadlines and word limits. "The Game Is Afoot" was originally called "Practise To Decieve" because the competition I conceived and wrote it for had this title as well. It asked for a twisty-turny detective style story.

"Write what you know" is advice that I used to read again and again from professional writers and so it seemed perfect to write an old-fashioned detective story in a modern setting which I knew well - namely Newcastle University and particularly the Percy Building, with its spooky basement lockers and corridor and the main lecture room, which anyone who's studied in the English Department there would recognise - G5.

"The Game Is Afoot" is very much an introduction to the main characters and their setting. I have at least half a dozen other Nat Smith stories in mind to write, as he progresses through his student days in Newcastle - each will be more detailed and longer, developing the characters as they go. I still count this as a very English tale, even though the main character is an American. Hopefully, it should give me a unique veiwpoint to write further adventures from...