Earthbound : A gripping crime thriller full of twists and supernatural suspense by Fynn Perry (audio ebook reader .TXT) 📕

ahead to see if they would make suitable cover and a vantage point. He discounted them when he realized his glow would seep out beneath. Suddenly, he had no more time to assess his options as the headlights of an approaching vehicle, coming from the direction of the gate, lit up the area. He looked frantically around for cover and noticed a recessed doorway just in front of the dumpsters. Racing toward them, he ducked into one, illuminating the recess with his soft glow. It was then that he realized he was not alone.

A young man was sitting in the doorway with a crack pipe loosely held in a limp hand. John didn’t wait for a second. He possessed him, his glow immediately disappearing. He was surprised at how easily the possession took place. His new host found it hard to think about anything other than his body aching for another hit of cocaine and where to get it.

There was a sound of tires struggling for grip on gritty, worn blacktop as a vehicle accelerated through the opened gate. John figured it must be an ambulance making a discreet entrance at the club’s request.

The host instinctively turned his head to hide his face as the vehicle passed by, his black coat and hair blending with the shadows. As the addict peered round the edge of the recess and through the gap between the wall and the dumpsters, John saw that a black panel van, not an ambulance, had pulled up about fifteen yards away. He heard a bolt unlocking, followed by a snatch of club music escaping from an open door, and then the bolt snapping shut. Two of the guards from before were carrying what looked like a perfectly still body on a stretcher toward the van. That’s some pretty harsh first aid, John thought. He heard the side door of the van slide open before the stretcher with the body was lifted inside. At the last moment, John saw the dull lighting reflected from a mysterious black box between the occupant’s legs.

A brief blast of dance music indicated the guards’ return to the club. The black van drove away, turned around at the end of the road and headed back toward John’s host, its LED headlights displacing shadow from every nook and filling the surroundings with bright-white light. It rolled past and an electric motor whirred into life, slowly wheeling back a section of the chain-link fencing. If he was to try and get into the van, it had to be now, and he had an idea how to do it.

John spoke to his host, which appeared as thoughts in his host’s mind: “There’re drugs in that van...a huge stash. They were in such a hurry that the back door isn’t locked...Quick! Move now while the van has stopped.”

The craving for drugs overwhelmed any resistance that the addict’s almost slave-like brain could offer. His ability to reason and calculate cause and effect had ceased long ago. The voice in his head said that there were drugs in the van, and that took precedence over anything else.

The addict made his way over to the back of the vehicle. John kept his host’s head down, but his staggering walk had not gone unnoticed. The gate was almost open when the driver got out to confront the intruder. John’s host had now made it to the back of the van. He was desperately pulling at the locked door. Panic overwhelmed him as he heard approaching footsteps.

John departed his host, letting him collapse in a heap, and dived through the van doors into the cargo area. Inside was the body of the man he had seen being carried into the van. He was shocked to see a plastic mask over his mouth and nose, connected by two tubes leading from the black box he had seen earlier, which he could now see was a portable ventilator. It hissed and puffed with mechanical precision as it gently raised and lowered the man’s chest, sending out a periodic beep, presumably to signal all was well with the machine. The visible parts of his face were bloody and swollen. It looked like the guards hadn’t held back in beating on him once he was out of public view.

Something gold caught John’s eye. It was protruding from under a black sheet behind the man on the ventilator. As he looked closer, he recognized that the object was a sneaker, not to his taste, but expensive-looking.

He realized, with increasing trepidation, that the sheet must be covering a second body. He hesitated a moment before making his fingertips interact with the cloth to pull it back. Beneath it was the body of a black youth. It wasn’t just his sneakers—all his clothes looked expensive: a navy silk shirt, designer denim jeans, a gold neck chain, and a gold Rolex. His face was beaten, too, but this guy wasn’t breathing; John was pretty sure he was dead.

Outside, John could now hear two voices discussing the subject of a bum lying on the ground behind the van. Guessing that the voices were those of the driver and another guard from the club, he nervously waited, willing for the doors not to be opened. Either one of them, or worse still, both, could be possessed. He didn’t want to hide in someone on life-support, let alone in someone dead. The voices escalated into an argument followed by a dragging sound—probably his previous host being removed from the yard.

The driver got in, and the van accelerated forward, allowing John to avoid making a decision, at least for now.

After ten minutes, the van started slowing down and came to a stop. He heard the driver get out and then the sound of several voices at the back of the van. Something to do with the bodies was probably about to happen, and the doors were about to be opened. Any one of the voices could belong to someone possessed. He was going