DARK COUNTY (9 page)

‘Oi,’ he said as he walked over. ‘I still had money in there.’

The businessman looked him up and down, he regarded him with a look of pure disdain, like Paul was nothing but a bit of shit on his shoe.

‘You left the pub,’ the businessman said in a condescending tone. ‘How was I supposed to know you were coming back?’

‘I left the pub?’ Paul said in disbelief. ‘Did you see what happened? I was dragged out of the pub, against my will.’

‘You still left,’ the businessman said, smiling towards his friends at the bar.

‘Well, you just robbed me of seventy quid,’ Paul said. ‘I still had money in the machine, that jackpot is mine.’

Paul was aware that people in the pub had stopped talking. The constant murmur of voices had ceased.

‘Look, mate, I didn’t even win it on your quid, I put two in after that,’ the businessman said.

‘So?’ Paul said. ‘I would have put more money in. You stole my game, and now you’re stealing my money.’

The businessman rummaged in his suit pockets, he pulled out a pound coin and tossed it to Paul.

‘There’s your money back,’ he said. ‘Now fuck off.’

Paul stepped forward and grabbed the man’s lapel.

‘That’s not enough, mate,’ he said, his pulse racing and his jaw tense. ‘Not nearly enough.’

‘Out!’ The barman said stepping from behind the bar. He put a hand on Paul’s shoulder. ‘Didn’t you hear me? I said out.’

‘Me?’ Paul said in shock. ‘He’s the one who stole my money.’

‘He gave you your quid back, take it and piss off,’ the barman said. ‘You’re barred.’

Well, wasn’t this a perfect little analogy for the state of this country? Paul thought to himself. He had done no wrong, in fact he’d been a victim of an assault, yet he was the one being punished. Meanwhile the man in the suit, who had robbed him blind, was not only getting away with it, he was being protected by those in a position of power. Conservative Britain at its best.

He could not be bothered to argue. He felt cheated and abused, but had no energy to fight his cause. Instead, he stormed out of the bar and into the cool winter air. The whole incident had soured his mood. He considered going home, but found him self ambling down chip pan alley. The aroma of chip fat and fish clung to the air down the road as it always did, even though most of the chip shops were closing for the evening. Paul carried on towards the clock tower near the sea front. He saw the embassy centre, the theater and pub complex, he considered going in the Litten Tree pub, but decided against it. He only had ten pounds left. That would get him two drinks at most. He saw the neon lights of all the arcades heading up to the pier. ‘Why not?’ he thought to himself. why not see if he could turn this ten pounds into something more? He crossed the road and entered the first arcade he came to. He walked past the endless rows of computer games and headed for the roped off area with all the signs saying that no one under eighteen was allowed to enter. This was where the big money gambling machines were kept. The ones with the seventy pound plus jackpots.

He was alone in the area and had the choice of machine. He went straight to his favourite, the deal or no deal machine, and started to pour in pound coins. The wheels went round and around. Several times he got onto the game board, but always went bust.

‘We’re closing in a couple of minutes,’ a voice behind him said.

He turned around to see a young man in a fleece with the arcades logo on the chest.

Paul turned and waved at the young man, acknowledging the comment. He was down to his last few quid anyway. He hit the start button and carried on with his game.

As the arcade closed down Paul exited with nothing but his hands in his pockets. He knew now that he would have to get up early and leave town tomorrow, before Baz could find him. He would ask his mum to lend him some more money to get on a train, and he would get away for a while. He still had friends in Nottingham, from his university days, who would be willing to put him up for a while. Maybe he would try to get a job over there, but with his record that was unlikely.

4

He wandered the streets aimlessly, lost in his plans. Eventually he found himself stood on the end of the pier looking out to sea, and the distant, blinking lights of boats. Perhaps he should do that, get on a boat and go out to sea, find himself, get over this damned gambling habit, then he could start over.

‘The problem with going out to sea to find yourself is you might not be the only thing you find,’ said a voice at his side. He turned to see a man stood next to him. His age was difficult to discern as he wore a large, wiry beard and had a hood on. He looked disheveled, a tramp, Paul assumed.

‘Excuse me?’ Paul said, startled by the man's presence.

‘You said you should go out to sea and find yourself,’ the tramp said. His accent was English, but not recognisable to Paul. It sounded old fashioned. The words, though, troubled Paul, he could not remember saying them, he could only remember thinking it, but he guessed he must have been thinking out loud.

‘It’s a wonderous thing, the sea,’ the tramp said. ‘Spent many a year out there myself.’

Paul was not in the mood to listen to an old, vagrant mariner's tales. He wanted nothing more than some time to himself to finish planning how to get away from the serious beating that Baz was destined to give him tomorrow.

‘Well, I have to be going,’ he said, but the tramp put his hand on his arm. Even through his coat, the hand felt cold and damp. A shiver, like a little electric shock, ran up his arm. For some reason he could not understand, Paul felt scared all of a sudden. More scared than he had ever felt before.

‘There are many wonderous things out there,’ the tramp repeated. ‘And, many things that would turn your soul icy and cold. Things most people never see, things most people don’t even know exist.’

Paul tried to pull his arm free, but the tramp tightened his grip.

‘I’ve seen them, though, I’ve seen the lot of them, Paul,’ the tramp continued. Paul barely registered that the tramp was using his name, he was just so terrified.

‘Once you’ve seen them, you can’t ever forget them. They change you, Paul, change your very essence. It’s so long since I’ve been home, I doubt it’s even there anymore. Now all I do is travel around and do their bidding. A slave to the sea. A slave to the cold. A slave to them.’

Paul was freezing. It was like his arm was turning to ice where the tramp had hold of him. The cold was spreading through his veins. It was getting hard to breathe. Paul was sure that if he were to look in a mirror he would be turning blue.

‘Once the sea has you, Paul, it won’t let you go. It drains your blood and fills your veins with ice-cold brine. It takes your humanity, your very soul and makes you something else. I never wanted to be this Paul, I never wanted to be the harbinger of doom for those fucking monsters, but here I am.’

Paul could hear his own heartbeat in his ears, despite his terror it was slowing down. He was certain he was getting hyperthermia.

‘There is one thing they allow me to do, though, Paul, they allow me the chance to save one soul, a single survivor. I’ve chosen you, Paul, you can escape what’s coming.’

The tramp let go of his arm and Paul staggered backwards. He fell back against the railing and only just managed to stay upright. He couldn’t feel his arm. It was like it was frozen solid. He gasped for breath, trying to fill his lungs. It had felt almost like he was drowning. The tramp approached. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a large gold coin. To Paul, it looked like something from a pirate film.

‘Here’s your chance, Paul,’ the tramp said smiling, showing his blackened teeth. ‘I know you’re a gambling man, so you’ll take the chance. You only get one, though, that’s it and then I’m gone. So what’ll it be, Paul, heads or tails?’

Paul didn’t know what was happening, his body was still reeling from that frozen grip the tramp had put on him. He was just starting to get a pins and needles feeling in his arm as it came back to life.

‘Heads,’ he said.

The tramp nodded and flicked the coin high into the air. It went spinning upwards, disappearing into the darkness of the night. It was a moment that seemed to last forever, time slowing down, the night was strangely silent.

Then the coin came crashing to the ground. The sound was deafening, like a hammer hitting an anvil. Paul covered his ears to protect them from the sound. The tramp stepped over and looked down at the coin.

‘You’re a lucky man, Paul,’ he said. ‘Now get out of here.’

Paul didn’t need telling twice. He set off running, not even thinking where he was going. The tramp began to laugh, the sound carried with Paul until he reached the sand of the beach, then abruptly stopped. Paul was panting from the run. He turned and looked back at the pier. The tramp was nowhere to be seen, despite the fact that the spot they had been stood in was well illuminated.

Paul shook his head, he found it hard to believe that the whole thing had actually happened. Perhaps it had been some kind of hallucination. Perhaps he was losing his mind. It would not surprise him, with all the stress he was under anyone would snap. The problem with this explanation was that his arm still felt cold, nowhere near as cold as it had been, yet still cooler than the rest of his body.

He tried to remember the things that the tramp had said, but they had seemed like delusional ravings, Paul had been too scared to truly let the words sink into his mind. He remembered that he had won a coin toss, and that meant he was saved, but he had no idea from what.

He walked down the beach, towards the sea. It was low tide, and as everyone who has ever been to Skegness knows, that means a long walk to the sea. He stood there in the cold sea breeze, smelling the salty air, hoping it would clear his head. He had real problems. How was he going to get away from Baz? He did not have the time to be worrying about the crazy talk of some mad tramp. He needed a plan and he needed one quick, he looked at his watch and saw that it was nearly midnight, he only had about nine hours to get away, before Baz came looking for him.

He stood at the line of the sea. It gently lapped at his shoes as the tide began to turn. He looked down at the gentle foam, and saw something. Every so often in the water he saw small flickers of blue light, about the size of a pin prick. The first few times he thought it was his imagination, or a trick of his eyes. Then he saw them again, and again, and again, thousands of them blinking bright blue in the dark water. He looked up and down the line of the beach. They were everywhere.

He bent over and stuck his hand into the water, which was cold but not as cold as the tramp’s grip had been. He swilled his hand around in the water, seeing the blue flashes brighter as he did this. When he pulled his hand out of the sea, it was covered in a gelatinous clear substance. It felt strange. It clung to his hand, and yet was not sticky to the touch. He saw the flashes within the substance, dim at first, but when he touched it they grew brighter. He rubbed his hand on his trousers, wiping the mysterious goo off his skin.

He had no idea what these things were, he guessed that maybe it was some kind of jellyfish spawn, but then he did not ever remember hearing of such a thing. All of a sudden he felt very vulnerable out there on the beach alone at night. It was something he had done a million times, and it had never bothered him before. The worst you were likely to encounter was Mad Mike, who lived in a tent on the beach with his equally mad mother. Mike was harmless, though, he just talked to himself. Tonight, though, after all that had occurred with Baz and the tramp and now this strange illuminating slime, he felt that he needed to be away from here. He headed home.

5

His sleep that night was restless, and filled with awful dreams. He dreamt of Baz chasing him down the street with an axe. Crowds of people just stood and watched, almost complicit in their inaction.

Then he dreamt of his mother, they were on a boat together in the dream, and she fell overboard. As much as Paul fought to save her, something was fighting against him, dragging her down into the depths.

Then he dreamt of a cold dark place under the sea, ruled by unspeakable beings, cruel beings. He knew he shouldn’t be there. If they were to find him, he would be turned just like the tramp, yet he could not find his way home.

He woke to the sound of his alarm bleeping. He leant over and switched it off. It was seven in the morning, he had two hours to get some money off his mother, pack, and get the hell out of Skegness before Baz caught up with him, demanding either the money, the drugs or Paul’s blood.

He quickly got up, washed and dressed. He walked to the kitchen, expecting his mother to be reading the paper and drinking coffee. His mother had always been a creature of habit. She was always up at six-thirty and then she would read the papers and drink coffee. It was a ritual he had never known to be broken in his whole life. It was as certain as the seasons, or the tide of the sea.

Thinking of the sea scared him. Images from his nightmares flooded his mind. He worried for his mother’s safety. It was because of the dream of the boat trip. He brushed the feeling aside, assuming that there must be a logical explanation for his mother’s absence. He walked to her bedroom and gently knocked on the door.

‘Mum?’ he said. ‘Mum, are you okay?’

He waited, but no reply came.

He tried knocking once more, a little louder, but still there was silence from the other side of the door. Gently he pushed the door open, expecting to see the room dark and his mother asleep. The room, however, was light, and the bed was made. She had got up as normal, then where was she?

The papers, he thought, perhaps they hadn’t been delivered and she had gone down to the newsagents to get them. This was plausible, his mother was so set in her ways that if the papers weren’t there she would have to go and fetch them before she could get on with her day.

He looked at his watch. It was quarter past seven. How long would she be? He really didn’t have the time to wait for her, not today, he decided it was best that he headed to the newsagents with the hope of catching her on her way home. He took the bag he had packed with him, so he could be on the first train out of town.