Excerpt: Shadowworld

As he started to wake up, the first thing that James noticed was the smell. It was a musty, almost overpowering smell, like the smell of old, stale food, damp, mildewy fabrics and wallpaper with mould and damp rot all mixed together into one unpleasantly pungant package. And there was something else to it as well, something that smelled darker and almost... rotton, all but hidden under the overwhelming smell of dankness, but still there, just making itself known on the edges of the senses.

Groggily, James started to sit up in his bed, reaching out to push his bedclothes from his body with one hand while rubbing his eyes with the other to clean the sleep from them. Still onlt half-awake, it didn't dawn on him at first that there was anything amiss when his hand couldn't find any bedcovers. It was only when he opened his eyes properly, blinking once or twice to try to get his eyes used to the change in light, that he started to realise that there was actually something wrong with his situation.

He hadn't been able to find any bedcovers when he had blindly reached out for them because there weren't any. Much more importantly, however, was the fact that he wasn't in his room. In fact, looking around, James didn't recognise a single thing about the room he had woken up in.