The Man From Taured: A thrilling suspense novel by the new master of horror (World's Scariest Legends Book 3) Read online

  Acclaim for Jeremy Bates

  "Will remind readers what chattering teeth sound like."

  —Kirkus Reviews

  "Voracious readers of horror will delightfully consume the contents of Bates's World's Scariest Places books."

  —Publishers Weekly

  "Creatively creepy and sure to scare." —The Japan Times

  "Jeremy Bates writes like a deviant angel I'm glad doesn't live on my shoulder."

  —Christian Galacar, author of GILCHRIST

  "Thriller fans and readers of Stephen King, Joe Lansdale, and other masters of the art will find much to love."

  —Midwest Book Review

  "An ice-cold thriller full of mystery, suspense, fear."

  —David Moody, author of HATER and AUTUMN

  "A page-turner in the true sense of the word."

  —HorrorAddicts

  "Will make your skin crawl." —Scream Magazine

  "Told with an authoritative voice full of heart and insight."

  —Richard Thomas, Bram Stoker nominated author

  "Grabs and doesn't let go until the end." —Writer's Digest

  By Jeremy Bates

  Suicide Forest ♦ The Catacombs ♦ Helltown ♦

  Island of the Dolls ♦ Mountain of the Dead

  ♦ Hotel Chelsea ♦ Mosquito Man ♦

  The Sleep Experiment ♦ The Man from Taured

  ♦ White Lies ♦ The Taste of Fear ♦

  Black Canyon ♦ Run ♦ Rewind

  ♦ Neighbors ♦ Six Bullets ♦ Box of Bones ♦

  The Mailman ♦ Re-Roll ♦ New America: Utopia Calling

  ♦ Dark Hearts ♦ Bad People

  The Man From Taured

  World's Scariest Legends 3

  Jeremy Bates

  Copyright © 2020 Jeremy Bates

  All rights reserved

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN-13: 978-1988091440

  ISBN-10: 1988091446

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Title Page

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Part II

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Part III

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Part IV

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Books In This Series

  About The Author

  The Man From Taured

  Part I

  Narita International Airport

  Chapter 1

  According to the clock on the screen affixed to the aircraft seat in front of me, it was 12:05 p.m. Lunchtime. My least favorite meal of the day. In fact, it was a meal I usually skipped, preferring to make up the calories with a gluttonous breakfast that would power me through the day until it was time for a reasonably sized dinner. If I had been seated in economy class, I would have told the flight attendant I wanted neither the fast food teriyaki burger nor the soggy tonkatsu she was likely peddling. However, I was in the front of the aircraft in first class, and the fare on this side of the curtain was pleasantly palatable. Despite considering myself a connoisseur of fine food, I hadn’t been in the mood for the Japanese offering of soft-shelled turtle and simmered eel. Instead, I’d ordered the Wagyu beef sirloin from the Western menu. It had been meltingly tender and up there as one of the best steak meals I’d had on a flight. I skipped the dessert of mint profiteroles (I’ve never had much of a sweet tooth) but paired the beef with a light Californian pinot noir.

  Now I was enjoying a second glass of the wine with the chair in my Sky Suite reclined to a comfortable position and my feet propped up on the padded ottoman. I raised the glass to my lips—just as a shock of turbulence rocked the plane. The glass jumped in my hand. I cursed in surprise and scanned my starchy white dress shirt for crimson stains. Finding none, I cursed again, this time in frustration at the turbulence. I returned my seat to the upright position and finished what remained of the wine in one long swallow.

  “Everything okay over there?” asked the passenger in the Sky Suite next to mine.

  I glanced over the privacy screen and saw an attractive woman, about forty, with a blonde pixie cut and twinkling hazel eyes. She was dressed smartly in a houndstooth blouse and clingy leather slacks.

  “Reflexes like a cat,” I replied in my French-accented English, which cared little for the subtleties between stressed and unstressed syllables.

  “Turbulence is why I don’t drink red wine on planes,” she said.

  “How do you know I was drinking red wine?” I asked her.

  “I heard you order it from our lovely attendant.” She raised a small tumbler filled with a clear liquid above the privacy screen. “Vodka, on the other hand…well, you can actually use this stuff to get stains out.”

  “Vodka it is on the return trip,” I said agreeably, despite the fact the only spirits I drank were of the brown variety.

  “I’m Hallie Smith,” she said.

  “Gaston,” I replied. “Gaston Green.”

  “Like from Clue?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The murder mystery board game. You know, how the characters were all named after colors? Miss Scarlet. Mrs. White. Professor Plum. Oh, who was the yellow one?”

  “Colonel Mustard,” I offered.

  “Yes! So—how long are you in Tokyo for, Mr. Green?”

  “Ten days,” I replied, not sure I liked her addressing me by my surname after the association she had made.

  “Plenty of time to enjoy the city. It’s one of the finest in the world.”

  “I am afraid this trip is for business, not pleasure.”

  “Yes, me t
oo. I’ve been based in Manila for the last five, six—oh God, maybe it’s even been seven years already! I work at the British embassy there.”

  “Do you enjoy living in the Philippines?” I asked. Most male expatriates I knew appreciated the abundance of young, friendly women, many of whom had no qualms dating foreign men old enough to be their fathers. Female expats, on the other hand, were more of a mixed bag. They enjoyed the Filipino people and the happy-go-lucky culture but often found it difficult to look past the endemic poverty and polluted cities.

  “Love it…until I hate it,” Hallie Smith said, confirming what I’d suspected. “But then I love it all over again.”

  We soared through another pocket of turbulence, which caused the aircraft to skate left and right, as if it were a terrestrial vehicle that had hit a patch of ice. A moment later the Fasten Seatbelt sign pinged on and a female voice requested everyone to buckle up.

  I obliged. Then I slipped my laptop from my carry-on bag and opened it. While the machine booted up, I realized—and regretted—I hadn’t asked Hallie Smith for her phone number. I’d noticed she wasn’t wearing a diamond when she’d raised her drink—reflexes like a cat, eyes like a hawk—and she seemed to be pleasantly sophisticated and outgoing. In other words, a woman with whom I might enjoy sharing a drink.

  Once my laptop was ready, I was greeted by the desktop wallpaper of my slobbering, grinning bulldog. He was back in my house in the Makati subdivision of Forbes Park, Manila, being looked after (and no doubt spoiled) by Grace, my live-in maid. I didn’t need Grace, but help in the country was cheap, and my company insisted on supplying me with not only a live-in maid but also a driver and a gardener. It was overkill, of course. I was a neat and tidy person by nature, so much so I had caught Grace ironing the drapes, simply for want of something to do. Raphael, my driver, was on call 24/7, and considering I spent most days working from home, he could often be found snoozing on the front seat of the Volvo SUV parked in my driveway (windows and doors hanging open due to Manila’s relentless heat). Mark, my gardener, came by each day to spend several hours trimming different sections of the front and back lawns with a pair of clippers, despite a brand-new lawnmower I’d purchased for him.

  With a click of the laptop’s trackpad, I opened the Excel document I’d been working on and began reviewing my most recent expense accounts.

  When I tell someone I’m a whisky ambassador, I often get bemused looks. Yet that was indeed my job title. Ambassador to East Asia for Glenfiddich. Most brands of Scotch whisky have such ambassadors, whose mission was to educate the public of the premium brands they represented. Or, as I liked to put it, spread world peace through whisky, one dram at a time.

  I’d lost count on how many occasions I’d been asked enviably how I’d landed such a gig. The answer, I’d tell them, was passion. I’d had an unrelenting passion for Scotch whisky since I was old enough to legally drink it, which was around the time of my first job managing a Four Seasons restaurant and lobby bar. Later, I started my own company that hosted private events and whisky tastings. It grew, and fast…as did my appreciation for single malt whisky. Over the years I’d gone out of my way to befriend master distillers, blenders, stillmen, mashmen, and warehousemen, all in the name of learning everything there was to know about the drink I so adored.

  Truth be told, however, I did not seek out the position of brand ambassador; it found me.

  Ten years ago I received an unsolicited call from a headhunter looking to fill a role at William Grant & Sons Distillers Ltd. I brushed him off. My company was turning over a decent profit, and the position he pitched sounded too much like a sales gig.

  A week later I received a second unsolicited call, this time from the top of the totem pole: W. Grant & Sons’ head of sales and marketing. Her name was Liz Gordon, and she insisted on flying me to London to meet for lunch. She was a witchy-looking woman with ebony hair, pale skin, and lips painted the color of smoldering coals. For most of the meal we talked about everything under the sun but whisky. It was only when we had finished our main course that she leaned forward and said, “Most people know shit about whisky, Gaston. Bartenders, clients, consumers, they know nothing. It’s an uneducated category. We need to educate them. And to do that, we need an educator.”

  I took a sip of the light beer I was nursing. “And you want me to be that educator?” I asked.

  She leaned forward farther—her gold necklace resting in the snug valley of her cleavage—and smiled in what I swear would have been a seductive manner had she been anybody else except my potential future boss. “You have the expertise, Gaston, but more important than that, you have the look. That’s why I wanted to see you in person. Pictures online can be deceiving. But, yes, there is no question about it, you have the look.”

  “And what look is that?” I asked, intrigued.

  Her smile grew. “The industry is no longer pipes and armchairs. It’s young. It’s dynamic. It’s full of energy.”

  “You have not answered my question,” I said.

  “Sexy, Gaston. You’re sexy. But we can make you even sexier. Glenfiddich is the bestselling brand of single malt Scotch in the world. Our market share is twice that of the next two single malts combined. As the face of our company, we’ll make you into the James Bond of the whisky world. How does that sound to you?”

  Pretty darn good, I had to admit. “I was told I would have to relocate to the Philippines?”

  “Glenfiddich has eighteen ambassadors worldwide. We’d like you to be the ambassador for our East Asia operations, and our East Asia headquarters is located in Manila, yes. There will be a lot of travel involved, make no mistake. But I don’t think we have to worry about your stamina, do we?” Now the coquettishness that had been in her smile touched her eyes.

  “No, you do not,” I said.

  “I’m glad to hear that. Coffee?”

  “No, thank you.”

  Liz Gordon stood. “That’s it then. We’d really love to have you on board, Gaston. Take a few days to think over the offer before getting back to me, will you?” She tucked her small black handbag under her arm and left the club.

  I didn’t need a few days to consider the offer. I’d always had a passion for traveling. Throughout my twenties I’d visited every country in Europe and spent three months looping through half the countries in Africa, so jet-setting around East Asia suited my nomadic nature and sense for adventure just fine. Getting to talk about, and drink, whisky sealed the deal.

  I called Liz Gordon to accept the position that evening. After a furious week of preparation, I relocated to a mini mansion in downtown Manila, where I hit the streets running with instructions and organized a last-minute whisky dinner in Singapore for that Friday. The dinner was a hit, the reviews were positive, and Liz Gordon called me to offer her congratulations.

  What followed was a decade-long blur of lavish parties and product launches, expensive hotels, fine dining and VIP booths, and schmoozing and boozing with the crème de la crème of society from Shanghai and Macau to Bangkok and Seoul.

  The job wasn’t all fun and games, mind you. I worked ninety-hour weeks, including weekends, and spent more time in airport lounges and hotels than at home, whatever down time I had was swamped with administrative work and training staff at restaurants and bars, dinner-hour events, after-hour visits to key accounts, and conference calls with the marketing team.

  Yet would I prefer to be doing anything else with my life? No, monsieur or mademoiselle, I would not.

  Now I massaged my temples, realizing the two glasses of wine had made my thinking sluggish. I worked on my expense accounts for another ten minutes before I began struggling to keep my eyes open. I closed the laptop and glanced over the privacy partition at Hallie Smith. She was sleeping, her lips parted slightly, her chest rising and falling in slow, steady intervals. She really was quite attractive, and I reminded myself to get her number before we debarked.

  I reclined my chair so it was 180-degrees flat, folded
my hands together on my belly, and closed my eyes. The 787 Dreamliner’s twin Rolls-Royce engines purred quietly as they thrust the aircraft along at its cruising altitude. Every now and then turbulence jiggled the cabin, though I traveled enough that this didn’t bother me, and soon I was asleep.

  I do believe one can never outrun their past, especially one involving any sort of traumatic event. In my case, I may be in my Volvo on a traffic-clogged Manila street, or watching the news in my lounge room, or, like now, reclined in a seat on an airplane, and all of a sudden, out of the blue, I’ll find myself thinking about the ski trip I’d taken when I was twenty-two years old.

  It had been November, 2001. I’d finished university earlier that year and had recently returned from a three-month backpacking sojourn through Europe. Four of my friends—Dominique Noiriel, Gérard Baker, Laurence Abélès, and Miley “Smiley” Laffont—had organized a ski weekend in the Pyrenees Mountains. Gérard pulled out at the last minute and I took his spot. Dom drove us to a small village situated at the base of a sprawling ski area known as Cinq Valées. We ended up spending all of our first day holed up in the wooden alpine house we’d rented because the snow was wet and heavy and not suitable for skiing. The following morning conditions improved, though many of the more challenging runs were off-limits due to killer winds at the upper elevations. The four of us spent the morning on the easy hills. By noon we had grown bored and we took the lifts as high as we could and went off-piste searching for deep powder.

  After about an hour of hiking without discovering any skiable routes, Dom and Laurence decided to turn back. Smiley and I were determined to carry on and told them we’d meet them back at the house for Happy Hour. After another half hour of difficult hiking we discovered a backcountry area covered in pristine powder. With great delight, we strapped on our skis and hit the slope.