The End of the Lane
Title
THE END OF THE LANE
M.K.Jacobs
A CLAIRE LANE MYSTERY
Copyright
Text copyright C. 2015 Meredith Jacobs-Smith
All Rights Reserved
This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locals are strictly coincidental.
This E-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and my not be re-sold or given away without the author’s approval.
Cover by: Rod Dyksman.
Facebook: MK Jacobs
Twitter: MKJLS
Also by M.K. Jacobs
Contact Bleu
Contact Rouge
The Road to Tarascon
The Road to Saint Brieuc
Claire: How do you know you’re...God?
Earl Of Gurney: Simple. When I pray to him I find I’m talking to myself.
Prologue
Château de Coinin. Pas de Calais. November 1916
Dawn. One horrible word I’ll never forget. I lay face down breathing in the stench of the battlefield. Hollow sobs hardly heard in the silence. God wouldn’t have selected this place for my memorial. Mud, the eternal mud. Caked and mushed into every crevice. Not moving. No shelling. Ensconced in their gloomy abode, the Germans must have stopped for bratwurst. I was alive. Alive for what? Having no idea where or for the life of me who I was.
Could I have been dreaming? Then the rain started. The blasted rain. No more rain please, no more mud. I wanted to move. I had to move. Then the blackness started. I closed my eyes, I remembered something. Something about fields of daffodils and wild daises growing in a laneway. Then with eyes open there was nothing.
A sloshing sound evaded my thoughts. A whisper. Not understanding what it was. Someone lifted me. My mind was playing tricks again, then the movement. Descending once more into blackness, to find my self awake and lying in a strange bed. Strange room. In the dim light the walls were black with soot. Two figures hovered over me, I could not see them. Then a voice.
‘Do you know your name? A woman’s voice. She spoke with a soft accent. Was she French? Or German?
‘Your tags say, Fennings. L P. Capt.’ she said.
My name? Of this Fennings person she spoke about, I had no idea.
‘Rest,’ she said. ‘Don’t try to remember. We will look after you.’
The room revolved again. Drifting, high above the hedges bordering the lane. Running towards a big house. Then the darkness. ‘Help me, I cried. Help me know who I am.’