Morgan Berry’s mother had always wanted a daughter and when she gives birth to a son, she simply dresses him as a girl and treats him as she would a daughter. When he’s picked on and teased at kindergarten, she homeschools him herself. Morgan is eight when his mother brings home a new beau, a no-nonsense man called Dennis O’Rourke. He compliments his new ‘daughter’ on how pretty she is and when his mother doesn’t correct the man, Morgan flees the room in embarrassment. Naturally, Dennis eventually discovers Morgan isn’t a girl. From that moment on, he barely acknowledges Morgan’s existence and is, in fact, openly hostile to his cross-dressing step-son. On the eve of Morgan’s eighteenth birthday, Dennis, now an alcoholic, bashes his stepson until Morgan loses consciousness. Morgan wakes up outside. He has no idea how he came to be under a tree on top of a small hill beneath a starry sky. He’s trying to work it out when he meets Reginald Batt, of the Big River Batts. Morgan and Reginald become inseparable and together they experience worlds of wonder and awe. Morgan is shown sights he could never have imagined and in the process he learns many things about the world, and about himself -- the most important of which is a revelation indeed.

Stranger Things

“We’ve decided to try our luck,” said Rosamond, winking surreptitiously at me.


We spent the day resting in the forest. I returned to the river because I found the sound of the water running over the rocks soothing. I felt lethargic and kept drifting in and out of sleep until I was roused from my slumber, sometime around mid-afternoon, by an ungodly shriek.


“You know your idea about the Court of the Night?” said Rosamond as she raced past. “I think it’s a brilliant idea.”


She ran into the river and dived beneath the water. A split second later the sound of heavy footsteps running towards me drew my attention back to the forest path and what I saw froze me to the spot. I had never in my entire life, or death, seen anything as truly frightening as the beast coming down the path.


Chapter 20