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ldquo;Santiago paints Tremore Beach in alternating strokes of lonely beauty and unpredictable danger, using the setting, hints of the supernatural, and Peter’s possible mania to invoke unsettling paranoia.”
Autorentext
Mikel Santiago is the author of several short stories and novellas. His short story Historia de un crimen perfecto became a #1 bestseller on several online platforms. Santiago currently resides in Amsterdam and spends his time writing, developing software, and playing guitar.
Klappentext
Gripping and impossible to put down, The Last Night at Tremore Beach is an atmospheric and chilling psychological thriller sure to appeal to fans of the novels of Stephen King and S.J. Watson.
An idyllic summer holiday on the Irish coast becomes a living nightmare with shattering consequences for a world-renowned composer and his loved ones in this “truly haunting page-turner” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
Recently divorced and in the middle of a creative crisis, Peter Harper decides to take shelter on the scenic and isolated Tremore Beach in Ireland. But one stormy night he is struck by lightning and, as a result, begins experiencing terrible headaches and strange dreams. As the line between his dreams and reality begin to blur, Peter realizes that his bizarre visions may be a warning of horror still to come…
Leseprobe
The Last Night at Tremore Beach
THE STORM, which some meteorologist with a fetish for biblical verse dubbed “Lucifer,” had been expected for days before it struck. It was going to be a big one, too, even by Donegal’s standards: look out for flying roof tiles and toppled streetlamps. The announcer from Coastal Radio broke in with an update every sixty minutes: “Make sure to fill up your generators with fuel. Do you have enough frozen food? Cans of baked beans? Don’t forget about candles and matches. To those of you who live near the coast, make sure to tie up your vessels. Dry dock your sailboats, if you can.”
That morning, they’d predicted fifty-five mile per hour winds and advised against trying to drive on the roads beyond the late afternoon. They’d said we should be ready for a powerful downpour and flash flooding inland. For everyone who lived on the coast it was going to be a night of hell on earth, they said.
I had gone to Clenhburran early that morning to run errands and to shop for some last-minute groceries. Clenhburran was a little town, the only one for miles around, which makes it significant when the only thing that ties you to the outside world is a narrow and tortuous stretch of road between rocky cliffs.
My first order of business that morning had been to take my lawn mower to be fixed at John Durran’s shop.
“Got your windows all boarded up, Mr. Harper?” he asked as I walked into his store. “You live over on Tremore Beach, right? Supposed to hit hard there tonight.”
Durran was one of the people in town lining his pockets thanks to the impending storm. Piled by the door on one side of his store was a stack of plywood six or eight feet high and hanging from the roof above a light-up sign cautioned his customers, “Protect your windows!”
Naturally, there were special offers on gasoline generators, candles, propane grills, and other survival gear. The few tourists or weekend residents who happened to be in town filled their shopping carts, and Durran rubbed his hands together in anticipation. Too bad—for him—we were still a month away from the official start of high season.
I told him I was hunkered down for the storm, though I hadn’t as much as boarded up a single window. Neither had Leo Kogan, my only neighbor on the beach, who had counseled me against it: “I’m sure it’ll amount to nothing.” He’s a veteran of the beach, and I’d always trusted his expertise until that morning. I confess, after witnessing the pre-apocalyptic tension at Durran’s and driving past homes completely shrouded in plywood, I started to get a little nervous.
I pushed the mower into the shop and told Brendan, the mechanic, that the day before I had again—for the second time this month—smashed into the same damn hidden septic tank drain, which was only partly covered by my lawn.
“Brand-new Outils Wolf and it’s already got four dozen battle scars, Mr. Harper. If you want, we can rig some kind of metal plate over that septic tank drain,” he said.
I told him the rental agency was supposed to do something about it—if, in fact, they ever got to it this millennium—and asked him when the mower would be ready.
“Well, we’ve got to change the blade and check the motor,” Brendan explained. “Maybe two or three days.”
I told him I’d be back for it then, and set off for a stroll down to the harbor. At the end of Main Street, I watched as the fishermen battened down their ships, and even Chester, the little old man who ran the newsstand, warned “something big” was headed our way tonight.
“Notice there’s not a single seagull around,” he said, as he placed my usual purchase into a bag: a copy of the Irish Times, a carton of Marlboros, and the latest best-selling mystery novel. “A clear blue sky and not a single one out hunting for food. That’s because they’re running from it, you know. The storm. They’ve all flown inland and right about now they’re probably shitting all over Barranoa or Port Laurel. If you ask me, there’s something big on the way. Haven’t seen anything quite like this since the big one of 1951. That night, tractors and sheep got tossed across the countryside. See that store sign over there? Wind caught it and my cousin Barry found it on the road to Dungloe a couple miles from here.”
But then I thought of my neighbor, Leo, who had insisted there was nothing to worry about. Just some sand spraying up against the windows, maybe a loose roof tile or two. Nothing major. He’d been living on the beach for more than three years now. He hadn’t even bothered to change his dinner plans for tonight. We’d made arrangements to have dinner together at his house more than two weeks ago and yesterday he’d called to confirm.
“You think it’s a good idea to be out tonight with the Apocalypse on its way?” I had asked him.
“It’s just two miles to my house, Peter,” he’d said with his usual cheeriness. “What could happen in the space of two miles?”
AROUND SIX in the evening, when I awoke from a nap, the storm front had already rolled in like a carpet across the late afternoon sky. I lay on the couch watching it through the living room’s large picture windows: A titanic mass of storm clouds bloomed on the horizon, as deep as an abyss and as wide as the eye could see, advancing like an implacable army. Its darkened innards crackled with lightning, threatening an epic battle with the earth below.
I stood up and the so-called best-selling mystery novel—whose first fifty pages had managed to lull me to sleep—tumbled off my lap and onto the Aztec-patterned rug. I picked my guitar up off the floor, laid it against the throw pillows, and pulled open the sliding glass door to go outside. I was met by a furious gale that whipped across my lawn and shook the bushes like baby rattles. The white picket fence around my yard was bearing the brunt of it, as well. Down on the beach, sand swirled in giant clouds and pelted my face like needles.
Watching that monstrous storm fast approaching the coast, I felt like an insect about to be squashed by a giant. I th…