Mors

This book is a work of fiction.

People, places, events and situations are the product of the author’s imagination.

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

©2020 M H Pierson. All rights reserved.

All work is fully owned and is the property of the author.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieved system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Printed in the United Kingdom.

Prologue

1873

Frederick Mors stood outside the Hudson River State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

I hated my time in there, he thought, as he stared at the thick gnarled barbed wire that surrounded the grounds, the orange bricks of the asylum gleaming as opposed to the dirty, dull orange they were when he was an inmate in 1916.

‘They called me a mad man and locked me up, but I should have been rewarded for doing away with those eight elderly people. They were of no use to anyone,’ he muttered angrily to himself, thinking back to why he ended up in the asylum.

          ‘I’d be careful if I were you,’ joked a passerby. ‘When they open that place next week, they’ll lock away people who talk to themselves.’

          Frederick Mors could feel his blood boil at the man’s comment. He hated to be made a fool of.

Maybe the mad house isn’t such a bad idea after all, thought the passerby, seeing the lookof pure hatred on the other man’s face. That’s exactly where people who talk to themselves should be.

Mors stole his glance back to the hospital. I wish I could have seen the look on their faces when they realised I was gone, he thought with a chuckle. How wonderful that would have been.

One of the disadvantages of being a time traveler is that you can’t go back and revisit yourself in time, so as a result, you don’t see the outcome of your actions. Frederick Mors would have liked nothing more than seeing the complete confusion amongst the staff at Hudson River State Hospital when they discovered that he had vanished into thin air, never to be seen again.

‘Enough of the past,’ he uttered, as he strode off after the man who had just laughed at him. ’Nobody laughs at me.’

After a couple of blocks, the man turned into a tavern.

‘You are making this far too easy for me,’ Mors sniggered, as he took a lone seat in a dark corner of the smoke filled tavern.

An hour later, the laughing man was well on his way to an alcoholic stupor.

Mors went to the bar and ordered a tankard of ale, then, sure that no one was watching, took a vile from his pocket and emptied it into the tankard.

‘Here my friend, have one on me,’ he said, as he offered the inebriated man the tankard.

‘Don’t mind of I do,’ belched the other man, not realising that he was about to seal his fate.

Mors smiled as he walked away to leave, but turned around when he heard a woman say, ‘you’ve had enough for one day,’ and took the tankard from the drunken man then tipped the poisoned contents onto the sticky, wooden floor.

Mors saw red. ‘How dare she? Who does she think she is to interfere?’ but then their eyes locked and the woman mouthed, ‘I’m coming for you Mors.’