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Foreword
I was born in Portsmouth and grew up in Stamshaw.
I loved to explore the harbours, scrapyards and dockyards that were in and around Portsmouth – sometimes trespassing into those sites to further my own sense of adventure. Not knowing how dangerous the sites we explored could be was part of the innocence of my youth.
Since my early teenage years, I’ve written short stories, film reviews, poems, scripts, novellas and books. It seemed fitting that a story filled with memories of my teenage years, albeit embellished with fictional aspects, should be set in and around the areas I grew up.
Some of the locations are since long-gone. Others have been developed and are unrecognisable as the places I once knew. Some you will recognise, especially if you were in Portsmouth and Southsea during the seventies and eighties.
I hope that as well as a unique horror story, The Wretched will provide you with some pleasant memories of places from a time that already, to me, seems so long ago.
Enjoy.
David E. Gates
