The Rainbow Man Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, locales or events is wholly unintended and coincidental.

  The Rainbow Man © Copyright 2013 by P.B. Kane

  Cover, Book Design © Copyright 2013 by Rocket Ride Books

  Interior Illustrations by Daniele Serra (www.multigrade.it)

  A L L R I G H T S R E S E R V E D.

  Duplication by any means, photomechanical, electronic, or otherwise

  is strictly prohibited apart from prior written permission from

  the publisher.

  Rocket Ride Books—Fiction that takes you there.

  www.rocketridebooks.com

  [email protected]

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9823322-4-5

  ISBN-10: 0-9823322-4-6

  1. Title

  2. Young Adult Fiction—P.B. Kane

  3. Dark Fantasy—Mythology

  4. Mystery

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  TO ROBERT SWINDELLS.

  Without Brother in the Land, I wouldn’t be writing

  the kind of fiction I am today, so thank you.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’d like to thank Anthony and Renée Rotolo of Rocket Ride Books, who are not only a pleasure to work with, but also just terrific people. My thanks to Rachel Caine for her great introduction and to Steve Feasey for taking the time to read the book and offer a great blurb. Thanks to all my friends in the writing and film/TV world, for their help, advice and for the very nice things they’ve said about my stuff in the past. You know who you all are. A very special thank you, though, to people like Clive Barker, Stephen Jones, Mandy Slater, Amanda Foubister, Sarah Pinborough, Christopher Fowler, Barbie Wilde, John Connolly, Les & Val Edwards, Simon Clark, Tim Lebbon, Conrad Williams and tons more I don’t have the space to list here (it would take a book in itself). And, as always, to my wonderful family—especially my daughter Jen and my wife Marie, who always support my work and encourage me in everything I do. Love ya lots.

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  About the Author

  Other Titles

  INTRODUCTION

  I LOVED THIS STORY. Pure and simple.

  With all the modern mandates to start stories with a bang, to catch a reader’s eye (and discretionary cash) with an action set-piece right out of a Michael Bay movie (and yes, I’ve done that…) it’s easy to forget that stories used to be told differently, subtly, and often with a slow buildup that made director Alfred Hitchcock so famous.

  This story strikes me as especially Hitchcockian… an isolated island, with residents insular and dependent on each other, as well as at the mercy of the forces of nature. Storms. A body on a beach. Innocents drawn into a web of lies so gradually that it’s difficult to know what’s right and wrong, or what’s just in our protagonist’s head and what’s really occurring in the world around him.

  It’s also great to read something with a male teen lead who has a mother he loves, and a little brother who worships him—in short, a teen who hasn’t got a lot of baggage, except a recent loss that seems distant and shadowy at first, and then looms larger than you ever expected. And he’s got friends, normal friends who have good relationships with their parents. How rare is that, in the young adult world? And how effective, when we’re accustomed to the disaffected, ostracized characters often embraced by contemporary YA fiction (not unjustly, but it’s nice to see the normal-life other side of the coin.)

  Then, as the Rainbow Man begins to influence the town, we get new elements… an almost Shirley Jackson-ish feeling of doom gathering inevitably on the horizon, one that preys on the very strengths that had been the core of the town. A sense of Old Country tales that is common to many cultures, and universal in its feeling that mankind is a small thing, beside the old ways… and Rainbow Man has that in plenty.

  For me, this story compares favorably to some of the best of the early pulp stories—brave teen protagonists, high stakes, and a battle for not only our main characters’ souls, but for those of everyone they love. The DNA of this story has prestigious contributors—Lovecraft, Heinlein, Jackson, with a dash of Hitchcock and a pinch of King—and yet it remains wholly its own thing, in the end. And wholly unexpected.

  Welcome to a great pulp adventure, and a reminder and homage to how slow-building stories can still have the power to bespell.

  You’ll never look at that pretty, pretty rainbow the same way again.

  Rachel Caine

  Author of The Morganville Vampires, Weather Warden, Outcast Season and Revivalist Novels

  CHAPTER ONE

  DANIEL ROUTH WOULD NEVER FORGET the day they found the body.

  It had been the three of them. Him plus his best friends Greg Welles and Jill Sullivan... at least until his little brother Mikey wormed his way in. Mikey always tried to tag along whenever they were going somewhere, not that Daniel could really blame him. There wasn’t a huge amount of stuff for any of them to do on the island. That was bad enough when you were fifteen, but a complete nightmare when you were seven and a half (Daniel had been there himself, though it seemed like such a long time ago now).

  On this occasion Daniel hadn’t really been given a choice. Mikey had been getting under their mother’s feet all that Saturday morning, after waking them both up at the crack of dawn with his cartoons, so she’d more or less ordered Daniel to let his brother tag along. “It’s been a devil of a week at the surgery,” she’d told Daniel, rubbing her temple, “and I’ve got a splitting headache.”

  Daniel had glanced across at the empty bottle of wine on the counter, which his mum quickly scooped up and put in the recycling bin. “Look, just take Mikey with you, Daniel. You know how much he enjoys spending time with his big brother.”

  Daniel had sighed. He did know how much Mikey enjoyed it; unfortunately, the last thing you needed when you were off on an adventure was your little brother in tow. “I think we’ll be heading for the beach. Could be dangerous down there today.” He’d regretted the words as soon as he’d said them. Daniel might have been almost sixteen, but his mum could still keep him inside if she felt it necessary. He might just have scuttled the outing for them both.

  Luckily, his mother could see what he was trying to do. “It was a rainstorm last night, Daniel, not a nuclear attack. The power didn’t even go down this time. Just keep off those rocks and it’ll be fine.”

  “But—”

  She’d waved a hand to dismiss them and he knew there was no point arguing. Daniel groaned and said to his brother, “Go on then, get ready. I won’t wait around all day for you.”

  Mikey’s eyes had lit up and he’d raced off to pull on his coat and boots. Daniel slung his backpack on, containing the freezer bag he always took with him, picnic food kept cool inside, and various other items like his torch and a compass...

  Mikey had been pestering Daniel all the way to the meeting point, at the crossroads on the edge of town. “What do you think we’ll find?” he kept asking his older brother, tugging on his wrist. “Treasure? Do you think there’ll be treasure this time?”

  Daniel had ignored him for the most part. How should he know what they’d find till they got there? But he was pretty excited himself. It had been quite a storm the previous night, and
in spite of the fact the power hadn’t failed, the lights on the landing—that Mikey still insisted upon because he was afraid of the dark—had flickered several times during the night. Thankfully the worst of it had started up long after Daniel’s brother had gone to sleep, and it would have taken a brass band marching through to wake him. Mikey had always been a heavy sleeper once he could drift off. His mum, too, wouldn’t have heard a great deal of the storm, for other reasons…

  Daniel was envious of them. It had taken him hours to drop off to sleep, his ears attuned to the wind, the rain battering his window, the distant rumble of thunder, and the occasional flash of lightning casting shadows in his room (causing him to be a little afraid of the dark as well that night). It was probably the early hours of the morning when exhaustion claimed him, and the next thing he’d known had been the sound effects of cartoon characters being hit with anvils and hammers on the TV. It was probably why he was yawning as he walked, regardless of the anticipation.

  The meet had been arranged long before the storm even started, though. In fact, most weekends would find Daniel, Jill and Greg heading off to explore some part of the island, even if they’d been there before. Shorepoint wasn’t that big a place, but it did have lots of interesting nooks and crannies if you went in search of them. So, while most of their school friends on the island chose to play computer games or mess around on social networking sites, talking to people in much more thrilling places (that’s when they could keep the connection as it was notoriously bad here) they chose to get out into the fresh air. They’d investigate woods or caves, so long as they were safe ones, and… simply pretend. The trio had been doing it ever since they were kids, or at least since Greg and his family had moved to the island.

  Greg’s father was a fisherman, and the Welles clan had relocated here in the hopes that there would be less competition than in some of the larger fishing communities on the mainland. Sadly, the combination of dwindling fish stocks out in the sea and increasingly strict government regulations, which had even reached tiny places like Shorepoint, meant that things were little better here these days. So, in his spare time Greg’s father also carved sculptures out of any driftwood they could find, selling these to whatever tourists managed to find this island during the summer months.

  Daniel really liked Greg’s father: a big, rosy-cheeked man with a barrel chest, who’d tell them stories of the ocean that were so far from reality they made Mikey’s cartoons look like documentary realism. Tales of ghost ships and men that had been washed overboard rising from the depths to take revenge... Daniel was also very envious of Greg’s relationship with his father. He would watch them sometimes, laughing and joking, play-fighting—Greg’s dad was forever trying to teach his son boxing moves—and just plain hanging out. It was something Daniel missed dearly. Something Mikey could barely even remember.

  I’ve… I’ve got to go away now, son. But I’ll always be here, always watching out for you.

  Mikey had tugged again at Daniel’s sleeve. “Will you quit that, Shrimp!” Daniel snapped, using the nickname he often called him.

  The youngster looked up at him with the widest, roundest eyes, like a puppy craving affection. Daniel shook his head and sighed again, walking a little faster so that Mikey had to race to catch up. When they were a little way from the crossroads, Daniel could see the figures of his two friends waiting for him. One of them, probably Jill, held up a hand and waved. There was something else waiting there too, running round and round their legs.

  The closer they came, the easier it was to identify Jill’s five-year-old collie, Vincent, the lead trailing from her hand. (Daniel had vague memories of a dog their own family had owned, when he was very little, called Shadow; he remembered playing with it sometimes, until it got too old...) The dog strained at that lead when it saw the newcomers, almost pulling Jill off her feet. She yanked Vincent back, brushing a hand through her nut-brown locks to keep them out of her eyes. Greg just laughed.

  “Looks like I’m not the only one who brought a pet,” said Daniel as they drew up. He bent to stroke Vincent, and the dog’s tongue flopped out of the side of its mouth.

  “Aww,” Jill replied, “that’s no way to talk about Mikey.” She ruffled the lad’s tousled raven hair, which did nothing to contradict Daniel’s description.

  “Gerroff,” complained Mikey, but the grin he was suppressing told Jill he loved the attention.

  Daniel was just glad the guys—okay, one guy and one girl—didn’t seem to mind his brother coming along for the ride.

  Jill nodded down at the collie, which she only brought occasionally when they went out. Usually when she’d been forced to by her parents, as Daniel’s mum had done with him that morning. But that hadn’t been the case this time, as she went on to explain. “Thought he might come in useful. You know, for sniffing things out.”

  Daniel nodded back. “He just might at that.”

  “Some weather we had last night,” Greg chipped in, scratching the top of his close-cropped head. He never let his own hair grow, probably because his dad was always telling him that long hair made him look like a girl. Greg’s father didn’t really have a choice, he’d been completely bald since he was thirty. It was something that would also probably happen to Greg, so Daniel would’ve made the most of it while it lasted, if he was him. It suited Greg’s square face, however, gave it more character. Daniel had often thought about cutting his own blond hair shorter, but knew his mother would go crazy if he did.

  Because Daniel also took after his dad in the way he looked.

  (The way he caught his mum staring at him sometimes, searching his features.)

  “You know, you really do look so much like him. Especially before—”

  But I’m not him, and never will be.

  “I guess we’re making for the beach, then?” Greg continued, interrupting Daniel’s thoughts. It was more or less a given, after the storm that had raged. Something like that could transform a familiar location, throwing up all kinds of things from the sea. “My dad wants me to look for more driftwood anyway.”

  “Do you think there’ll be treasure?” asked Mikey once more, turning the question on all of them.

  “Hey, you never know what you might find there,’” replied Jill with a smile. The kind of smile that brightened up any morning after dark and dismal weather. It made Daniel want to smile, as well, but Mikey had already beaten him to it. The boy began to race off in the direction of the fields. Fields that would gradually turn into cliffs, and give way to the beach.

  “Wait! Mikey… wait up!” Daniel chased after him, moaning as his boots sloshed on the still-wet grass, and the others followed.

  It was as they crested the second small hill that they began to feel it, the air more charged here than it was back in the basin of town. The nearer to the ocean they came, the more electricity was in each mouthful of oxygen, in each step they took. In fact the clouds over the horizon there were still quite angry-looking. The only thing that was cutting through them at the moment were a few shafts of sunlight...

  And the rainbow.

  Faint at first, and some way off, it arced in the sky and disappeared behind one of the outcroppings of rock: known to the locals as the Clown’s Foot, because that’s exactly what it looked like. There was another, similar, outcropping not that far away, which made up a pair.

  “Wow!” Jill exclaimed.

  Vincent barked.

  It certainly was a sight, especially as the rain had ended some time ago, and all the more reason to follow the winding side-path downwards. There was something very different about today. They could all feel it.

  Hey, you never know what you might find.

  Well, when they made it down to the beach itself—which was no less damp than the fields they’d been traipsing over to get here, in spite of the fact the tide was out—they found absolutely nothing. A cursory sweep of the area provided them with just a few unusual shells, some half-buried tin cans and bottles (which had glin
ted as though they might be something more interesting), plus Mikey found a branch from a tree. Who knows how it had gotten there, but he picked up and pretended to use it as a sword. No doubt he was battling invisible pirates, in preparation for finding that treasure of his.

  The rainbow was stronger now they were on ground level, but still pointing to a stretch of beach out of sight behind the Clown’s Foot, beyond the rocks. Vincent began barking again. It looked for all the world like he was actually barking at the rainbow itself.

  “I don’t think he likes it,” said Greg, chuckling and nudging Jill. “Probably just looks like a grey tear in the sky to him. Dogs can only see in black and white, can’t they?”

  It was at that point Vincent jerked on the lead again, tugging Jill forwards. Unprepared for this, and her hands wet from the last shell she’d scooped up, the leather had slipped through her fingers. Her dog did the same moments later.

  “Daniel!” she cried, hoping he could stop Vincent as he was a little further down the beach than them. He whirled, spotted what was happening, and leaped for the collie. Vincent dodged him with all the grace and determination of an American football player making for the end zone, leaving Daniel to fall flat on his face in the soft, but clammy, sand.

  Greg was also after the dog, feeling somewhat responsible for having distracted Jill in the first place. Now, instead of not liking the rainbow, Vincent actually appeared to be chasing it. Heading towards the rocks on the outcropping. Sprinting, Greg had almost caught up with the dog, or the lead at least, which was trailing behind in the sand like a snake.

  “Stop him before he gets to the rocks!” shouted Jill, now also running behind, but at a slower pace. Mikey had noticed the excitement as well, and had broken off his battle with Captain Jack Sparrow long enough to join Daniel.

  Greg put on an extra spurt and lunged for the lead. His fist almost closed around the thin leather strap, but he lost his footing and rolled head over heels. Casting one look back behind him, tongue lolling from his mouth again, Vincent redoubled his efforts and finally made it to the rocks, scampering up them regardless of their slippery nature.