The Secret Bunker Trilogy: Part One: Darkness Falls Read Online Free

to notice it, and I can’t even
remember if I pointed it out to Dad at the time. He called me over to take a look at the email on the morning that it
arrived.
Mum was at work already, David at school and Harriet at playgroup.
Just me and Dad.
It looked just like you’d expect any holiday company email to look. A big banner packed with images of wonderful scenery and happy
people. A signature at the bottom of the email that looked like it was real, but
which was really an image. A big, red ‘Congratulations’ sign at the top of the message.
An 0800 ‘Call us if you have any queries’ telephone number in case of
problems. Why would anybody be suspicious about that?
    Except that company logo was troubling me.
Where had I seen something like that before? It wasn’t a perfect match, mind you, but it was almost as if it had been
copied from somewhere. It took me a day or two before I figured it out.
I’m sure that with some problems your mind works away on it in the
background and then - at a completely random moment - you just get
the answer. My moment of realisation came while I was cleaning my teeth with my
electric toothbrush, my mind idly skipping from thought to thought.
I realised where I’d seen that logo before. Not exactly the same, but not far off it.
It was just like the metallic logo on Dr Pierce’s tie.
Remembering Nat
    Memory is a funny thing. Sometimes I can remember thoughts, events and feelings with
absolute precision, like all five senses captured and recorded every
aspect of an event. Other times I wonder if I was even there, my recall is so hazy.
Even though I was only nine at the time, I can remember certain
elements of Nat’s accident with remarkable clarity.
    Bear in mind that I was processing the world through the eyes of
younger child, not a twelve year old. So many of the things that happened, although I didn’t fully
understand them at the time, have taken on a new significance as I get
older. Three things happened that day that I still remember very clearly.
On the day itself, and in the weeks and months that followed Nat’s
death, these didn’t seem to have much significance. But now, when I re-run those events in my mind, things don’t seem to
quite add up.
    It’s a bit like a complicated jigsaw puzzle. You can know where the corner pieces go, where all the straight edges
line up and how colours, lines and shapes need to cluster together to
create some sense of the main body. But until that final part slots into place, there is no standing back and
seeing what you’ve got, the picture is incomplete until you have that
last piece in place.
    There were three pieces of this puzzle that I was unable to slot into
place - like they belonged to a different jigsaw. First of all, I’m pretty sure that black car was coming for me and Nat.
It was only because I stepped back to look at a bug on the floor that it
missed me.
Secondly, Mum had been distracted by somebody talking to her, so she
wasn’t watching Nat and I as carefully as she would normally.
That’s the only reason that the car got anywhere near us, Mum’s
attention was completely elsewhere at the time. And last of all, I’m pretty certain that I saw Nat moving as the
ambulance doors closed and we were parted for the last time.
Inside The Grey Office
    Although she will be unable to recall these events, just like those
who went before her, the woman is all too aware of what is going on before her
memory is erased. To somebody watching from the outside, it would be clear that she is
nervous, uneasy, concerned - but she is not being coerced or forced to
be in this room.
    She is here of her own free will, but she would rather not be.
It is like she has had to make a choice, and this is the best of a series of
bad options. Where there are no good options available, it’s amazing how the
human mind can make the best of a bad thing. All of a sudden, a thing that in any other situation would look