Muriel Gray - Furnace

MURIEL GRAY

Harper Voyager an imprint of

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Harper Voyager 2015

Copyright © Muriel Gray 1997, 2015

Cover photograph © Wiskerke/Alamy

Cover layout design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2015

Muriel Gray asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008158255

Ebook Edition © December 2015 ISBN: 9780007582051

Version: 2015-10-29

For Hamish, Hector and

Rowan Marsaili Barbour, with love

Contents

Cover

Title Page MURIEL GRAY

Copyright Harper Voyager an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk First published in Great Britain by Harper Voyager 2015 Copyright © Muriel Gray 1997, 2015 Cover photograph © Wiskerke/Alamy Cover layout design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2015 Muriel Gray asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library. This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins. Source ISBN: 9780008158255 Ebook Edition © December 2015 ISBN: 9780007582051 Version: 2015-10-29

Dedication For Hamish, Hector and Rowan Marsaili Barbour, with love

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

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading

The Ancient: Chapter 1

About the Author

Also By Muriel Gray

About the Publisher

There was no need for her nakedness. Not yet. But as she stood on the rock and looked at the pale hands stretched out before her, she was glad that she had shed her clothes. The dawn light would break over the mountain behind her at any moment, and although the cold was fierce, her shivering was of anticipation rather than physical discomfort. The chill breeze on her skin felt good and the heavy scent of dogwood blossom and wet grass filled her nostrils.

Far below in the dark sweep of the Shenandoah valley, the lights of isolated trucks and cars moved along the highway as though pulled by an invisible link. She opened the fingers of her right hand and moved them across the blackness until they cupped one of those moving lights like a firefly. Perspective. It was incredible to her that it had taken the human beings until the Renaissance to interpret size and the distortion of distance correctly. What did ancient man think when he held up his hand as she was doing now, perhaps to balance a herd of animals on his palm? Did he think that by the visual evidence of their diminished size he became their master? And what made that thought more obtuse than the beliefs of modern man? To his eye, this would be no more than a naked woman standing alone on a hillside, playing an optical conjuring trick that allowed a truck to drive across her opened hand. How long before the next Renaissance-like awakening of intelligence? The awakening that would confirm his mistake in this respect.

As she became aware of the first rays of the new sun back-lighting her hair, she closed her hand slowly and obliterated the lights of the far-distant vehicle from her view.

‘Hey, Peterbilt. You got the four-wheeler leg shot ahead of you?’

Josh Spiller smiled before thumbing the CB in response.

‘Might do. Might not. How you gonna get that crawling piece of junk past my rig an’ find out?’

There was a cowboy whoop from the radio speakers, and as Josh had guessed, the source of the message was the reefer coming up on his left, increasing its speed and pulling level with him. He glanced with measured amusement at the cab of the Freightliner Conventional. It was like he thought. A company truck. Company drivers. A name ‘Kentucky Meat and Foul’ was painted on the door in fat blue letters, and the leering bearded face of the team driver hovered above them at the window, like he was a painting and the letters below spelled his title. The guy gave Josh a triumphant surfer’s thumb and little finger, accompanied by a shit-eating grin as his partner at the wheel came on the radio again.

‘Come on there, big truck. Bet you snatched a look at the snatch. Am I right, or am I right?’

Josh rolled his eyes skyward, trying hard to suppress a smile, then looked forward again.

To his right, the great rolling back of the Appalachians was a graceful black cut-out against the lightening sky, and in only a few minutes the first orange arc of a new sun would break across that heavenly silhouette. But to the guys on his left, the sun could come up accompanied by a cloud of naked golden angels sounding trumpets, and all they’d do would be to slap their thighs and guffaw at the fact that they could see some flying bare ass.

He felt a sudden wave of sympathy for the girl in front, still oblivious to the harassment she was about to endure. Channel 19 had been discussing her for the best part of an hour. Sure her legs were long and her skirt short, though if she hadn’t left her interior map light on no one would have known. But the bumper sticker on the back of her tiny Honda, that line-drawn fish that declared the driver was a Christian, suggested that light being left on was an innocent error. In Josh’s experience Christian ladies didn’t flash truckers.