Excerpt of Night Vision by Jane A. Adams

Neil Robinson should have been a happy man. Release date a week away, wife and family that had stood by him, a home to go to and even the vague promise of a job, working with his brother in law – though he had mixed feelings about that. Neil and Paul had never really got along and the idea of selling second hand cars really wasn’t Neil’s idea of a proper job.

As it stood, though, happiness was a long way distant from the way he felt. Scared was more like it.

The first postcard had arrived the week before and he had presumed it had come from Freddie Gains, released the previous month and promising to keep in touch. The powers that be seemed to have reached the same conclusion; Neil had been handed it along with a birthday card from his sister. Counting down the days, she had said inside.

Too right, Neil had thought.

‘Wish you were here,’ the postcard told him. A photograph of some sea side pier or other on the picture side. It had been signed only with an F. F for Freddie, he had assumed, though the rather neat print hadn’t looked like Freddie’s scrawl.

Then another card a couple of days after, bearing only the words ‘see you soon.’ Also signed with an F. The picture this time looked familiar and Neil looked for the little printed legend postcards normally bore which would tell him where this view of a marina was situated. He was puzzled to find that there was none.

He had gone back to look at the photograph of the pier; no clue there either and it occurred to Neil, rather belatedly, that these might not be commercially produced, shop bought postcards after all, but something someone had printed off themselves. On a rather good printer and on some pretty fancy card stock.

Definitely not the sort of thing Freddy Gains would have had the nouse to do.

It got Neil Robinson to thinking and that thinking finally coalesced into an answer that woke him in the night in a cold sweat.

He did know where the little marina was; in fact he could guess the owner of the boat tied up alongside the dock. And he could make a further guess as to the seaside resort that was home to that particular pier.

And then that morning a third postcard had turned up. ‘Not long now’, was all it said, not even a signature of any sort this time. He turned it over and looked at the picture on the front. A woodland scene, with a family picnicking in the shade of summer trees. They had their backs to him but Neil didn’t need to see their faces to recognize his sister and her kids

And Neil suddenly understood who the messages were from and what they meant