Friday Precerpt: Curse of the Maestro and Other Stories (Walker) - The Hailey Cartwright Diary Room
Question: What is a precerpt?
Answer: A precerpt is a brief excerpt or preview of a book (or other text), used to give readers a taste of the content before they read the full piece. It's like a sneak peek that hooks the reader's interest (or at least, we hope it will hook yours).
This Friday's precerpt is from Curse of the Maestro by G T Walker --
THE HAILEY CARTWRIGHT DIARY ROOM
Bus discovery.
Wednesday, July 28.
Riia is not in the mood for snuggles.
Can’t sleep/get comfortable on my side of the
tent. My left leg is restless. It’s also cold. Dozed for a bit. Rummaging
around for some chewing gum. Still somewhat gaseous after a fortnight of Coors
and artisanal wildflower jerky.
My tummy growled like a Rottweiler until about
5:00 am when Riia reared up and cast me out into the night.
Outside the tent extricating myself from the
shattered remains of my banjo, I sprang to my feet. Brilliant. This had all
been her idea. The trip had been a chance to take a break from her own research
at the Paleopathology Association, a romantic little archaeological getaway,
digging up dead guys, just the two of us snuggle bunnies. Fair enough, it was I
who thought Hegelbach should send along Louden Carnard to see where the
Musicians Union money was going, but the Sigma Alpha Iota girls were already
here when we arrived. Engaged in some manner of elaborate hazing ceremony. Blindfolds/marijuana/salmon.
And we also needed Li’lLi’l Willy. She knew that. What else were we supposed to
do? Because R. hates shovels. The hole wasn’t going to dig itself.
I brushed myself off. I started walking, I did
not know where. In search of warmth. Or a quiet place on which to urinate. It
was quite early; the night sky had already begun to blush. The full moon had
disappeared down the other side of the canyon.
The front flap of Louden Carnard’s vacant pup
tent was fluttering in the evening’s breeze. A short distance downstream, the
contents of the Sigma Alpha Iota tent were silhouetted from within. Bodily
noises and giggles and scantily clad male/female body parts. And there was a
pepperoni scent. Somebody had smuggled animal products into our encampment. R.
was a staunch animal rights advocate, and she was going to be furious. God help
the blighters if R. finds any lunch meats on that Louden Carnard. Wanker! My intestines
knotted at the thought. I nursed my flickering lamp onward. Clambered the
barren ridge opposite our encampment. There, downslope from the interstate
lights, there was a shadowy outline of shrubbery. With all due urgency, I
positioned myself behind the most substantial cactus. I hastily lowered my
bottoms and prepared to release the kraken.
At that moment, I became aware of a low, rasping
snarl.
It was a guttural sound, as if Mother Earth
Herself was parting between my feet in inarticulate protest. I uneasily
adjusted the stream. Then, I felt the delicate puff of breath just off my right
cheek. The lamp dropped from my fingers. Bollocks! So, there in the darkness, I
ever-so-carefully stepped back into the pajamas pooled at my feet. As I inched
them back up into due modesty, I saw the creature behind my right foot.
The hideous writhing beast was two metres long
and half again in breadth. It was whistling like a flatulent anaconda. It was
as strong an argument for veganism as I have ever seen. But it was Li’lLi’l
Willy in a mummy bag.
A swift kick silenced the snoring. The intern’s
nappy head popped out the zipper.
“Your biotch, Riia,” he cried, eyes rolling back
in his head, “she of the Devil!”
Curled up in his sleeping bag between the cactus
and an old truck tire, Li’lLi’l Willy was a pathetic sight. While I remain a
staunch supporter of animal rights, Riia literally prefers livestock to men,
and this is why. Come to find out the previous evening she had discovered Li’lLi’l
Willy’s clandestine expedition to a local fast-food establishment. She had
proceeded to beat the carnivorous skank with his own Happy Meal. And now he was
banished to the far side of the valley. Was it an overreaction on R.’s part? Perhaps.
R. had grown prickly in the wake of fledgling experiments with anhydrous
ammonia first obtained at annual Paleopathology Association meetings in Cancun.
I looked down at him lying there in the
underbrush, lips turning blue, a tinny pulsation of Tupac from his earbuds. But
at that moment, I noticed the diminutive intern’s eyes widen. He suddenly began
to thrash about, pointing behind me and down the slope. I turned around and
looked back at the other cacti, now illuminated with a beam from the fallen
flashlight. There, ten metres above the river bed was a pair of long serrated
ruts in the dirt, the unmistakable skid marks of a wayward tour bus.
Willy and I scrambled down the incline for a
closer look. Quite a short time sufficed to reveal the beginning of a steep
excavation cut into the bedrock about four metres south of the remnants of a
guardrail and a similar depth below the current level of the valley.
We presently alerted the Sigma Alpha Iota girls
and commenced working. It took the whole of this day to free this excavation
before the lower margins of the skid marks could be demarcated. Indeed, it was
getting late, night had fast set in, and the full moon had risen high in the
eastern heavens. In the near distance, a pack of common mountain coyotes could
be heard howling into the wind. In high spirits, we lit our pipes and resumed
the previous evening’s debauchery.
Pre-order Curse of the Maestro!
Watch for more precerpts from Curse of the Maestro. Book to be released, appropriately, on Halloween.
For book excerpts (from already released books), click HERE.
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