Rapt

by Chris Simms

‘The groan rolled down from above and the earth trembled beneath our feet. I stared into the blackness before me. Moments later, livid streams of red lit the night. Rocks splintered with a sound like rifle shots and my nostrils stung with sulphur.’

A young woman travelling in the Far East accepts a strange offer from a fellow-backpacker: to climb a volcano. Unaware the local religion forbids it, they prepare to sleep the night at the crater’s edge…

Includes an excerpt from the novel-length ghost story, Rats’ Nest.

27 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 16, 2016

About the author

I was born and brought up in rural Sussex, three miles from the nearest shop. Childhood holidays – which lasted for weeks as my dad was a teacher – were spent in a secluded spot in the heart of Exmoor. Sitting round the campfire at night, the haunting cries of owls floating in from the blackness beyond the flames, he would read me the ghost stories of MR James. The short walk to the safety of my tent was always taken at a sprint.
Books that interested me growing up? Plenty of mysteries – especially the Alfred Hitchcock and The Three Investigators series. I also loved Roahl Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected and read plenty of Pan Horror Stories, too.
Later, it was novels that gave insights into unusual minds: the twisted desires of Frederick in John Fowles’, The Collector; the tormented thoughts of Scobie in Graham Greene’s, Heart of the Matter; the violent urges of Francie in Patrick McCabe’s, Butcher Boy all had a major influence.
After school and university came a series of abysmal jobs punctuated by travelling. Quite a lot of travelling, actually. Then, just after my 30th birthday, the idea for my first novel came to me. I was broken down on the hard shoulder of a motorway in the early hours of the morning, waiting for a rescue vehicle to arrive. It’s about the driver of a van who roams the roads in the dead of night, looking for stranded motorists to murder…
Ideas for subsequent novels have occurred at all sorts of odd moments: glimpsing a derelict church from the window of a moving train; browsing a newspaper report about a walker who claimed he’d been attacked by a panther; half-reading a doctor’s surgery article on how some tinnitus sufferers don’t hear whistles or buzzes – they’re tormented by birdsong; listening to a radio program about a flotilla of yellow ducks that fell from a cargo ship and floated slowly across the Atlantic.

Reviews

[A G A VAN DEN BOS · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just when you think you know how it will end, there is a surprising twist. One that will have you wondering about a story beyond.
Very short, quick easy read.

[Kally Sheng · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinatingly thrilling!

With Mr. Simms’s short stories, they never turn out the way you anticipate, this one is no exception.
I had to reread the ending twice to ascertain that it is ended!
I wish it would go one.