Mammoth Book of Best New Horror (31 page)

    Someone just got shot, down at the corner. Is the fire heading this way? God, I wish the power would go out, even though that idea rather frightens me.

    Maybe I should try to get away from here, though how or where I simply do not know.

    Maybe - better, easier - I'll just go back to the old house, back to that paint-redolent room. Turn one of the canvases around.

    And get lost.

    The same way everything is lost now.

    
Beautiful!

14 - David A. Sutton - The Fisherman

    When Stephanie first saw him, his eyes were wild yet unfocused. She found out why later.

    She and Rod were waiting outside the holiday cottage in Pembrokeshire; the keys were promised any minute. In front of them huddled the building that had been converted from a farm structure into holiday lets. Not strictly cottages as advertised, but she was not going to quibble. Behind them crouched the tiny inlet of Nolton Haven and the swell of St Bride's Bay beyond. Stephanie had turned to watch the waves that caroused so very close to the dwellings. The beach itself was hidden from her viewpoint, below the shelf of land they were standing on. The twin biceps of the cliffs on either side hugged the bay close. Rugged and yet secure, she thought.

    As she watched a seagull lazily ascend in the middle distance, a dark shape suddenly appeared out of the ground.

    
"Oh!"
she said, starting back and colliding with her husband as he peered into a room through one of the windows.

    Rod pivoted around quickly, recovering his balance and hers in turn. A few yards away an old man in oilskins was rising up as if he was emerging from the rough green turf that separated the promontory of land from the beach. They would later discover the foot-worn steps that allowed beachcombers to negotiate the ten-or-so-foot drop to the pebbles and sand.

    
"Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs"
the old man said as he climbed the top of the rise and walked with a determined pace towards the couple.
"Upon the slimy sea."

    Stephanie edged closer to Rod and put her arm around his waist. He could feel her shudder. The old man was very close to them now, had entered their personal space, and she could see his red and watery eyes close up - eyes that had been staring out to sea for too many years. A seafarer's eyes, focusing not on her, but distantly, or even inwardly perhaps.

    
"Get away you old fool!"
A middle-aged woman had rounded the corner of the holiday lettings, bearing their key. The old man turned to face her and his eyes hardened to marble, but he walked off towards the cliff path without saying anything further.

    "Mrs Rollason," Rod introduced her to Steph. "Stephanie, my wife."

    "He's all right," Mrs Rollason said. "Gilbert wouldn't hurt a fly I daresay, but he's not quite right, if you know what I mean." She smiled hopefully and handed Rod the. key to their accommodation. "Nice to meet you, Stephanie. I'm Joan. I've put a loaf of bread and some butter and milk in the fridge for you both, start you off. The beach shop sells groceries if you don't want to go into Broad Haven right away. If you need anything else in the meantime, please come over to the farmhouse. Either Ted or me'll always be around."

    Stephanie nodded in acknowledgment, but was distracted as she watched the old man labouring up the steep coastal path that navigated the cliffs out of Nolton Haven. "Does he live around here?" she asked, hoping he did not. The man had given her quite a jolt.

    "Up there," Joan nodded towards the highest visible point of the cliff. At the top, surrounded by gorse, was a small, once white-painted wooden building. It did not look much to live in. "His wife was drowned off the beach, quite a few years ago now, and he's out day and night looking for her, so they say. He's harmless enough. Needs help of course, but won't take it. Stubborn old fool."

    "What on earth was he jabbering about?" Rod asked. "Sounded familiar."

    "Oh, he's always saying some poetry or other. Now you two newlyweds enjoy your honeymoon and forget about old Gilbert, won't you."

    When the farmer's wife had gone, Stephanie snatched the key from Rod and opened the door to Swift Cottage.
A single-bedroom holiday cottage with all the modern conveniences,
she recalled the brochure. The roof space above the living room was open to the rafters, one of the charming features advertised. But the furniture was a bit tatty and the kitchen units, cooker and fridge had all seen their best days some years before.

    "You told her we were on our honeymoon?" Stephanie asked as she walked around the living room, her fingers lightly caressing an elaborately decorated earthenware ewer and bowl on an old sideboard.

    "Well, no," Rod answered, lowering his head to come through the door from the kitchen, where he had been examining the contents of the fridge. "But I didn't disabuse her if that's what she thinks. I just told her we were recently married."

    And so they were, but their honeymoon had actually been taken in Turkey earlier in the year and had turned out disastrously. The honeymoon holiday from Hell had nearly wrecked the marriage. They were still trying to get their money back from the tour company, as well as their fractured relationship from each other.

    During the holiday, Stephanie had discovered that she did not really know Rod very well at all. So much for whirlwind romances. She loved him still, but the comforting ache of new love had dissipated. She tried to recapture the emotion, yet it eluded her like a favourite piece of music that on subsequent hearing no longer has the passion to arouse. On their honeymoon she found Rod quarrelsome and bad-tempered, and he took his frustrations out on her, instead of the holiday rep.

    Nothing went right and, to try to salve the wounds caused by the various holiday brochure failures and their constant arguments, she had suggested on their return that they squeeze their bank account a little more, on the promise of actually getting some compensation, and go away again, for a few days while summer was still hanging on in England. Rod managed to wangle some more leave from the office and she walked another tightrope of self-certificated sick leave. It might be her last before her employer had to let her go.

    "Oh, well, this might as well be our honeymoon! The Turkish one definitely wasn't! In fact, Rod," she said eagerly, throwing her arms around his neck and draping herself onto him, "let's
call
this our real honeymoon, eh? Try to forget about the… about the…"

    "The-?" he began before he clocked her little jest. They kissed, Rod tasting the smear of lipstick she wore. He lifted her and carried her to the sofa, which creaked of old springs as he lowered her onto it. They began removing one-another's clothes and Rod's hands caressed her.

    His middle finger found its way inside her and she groaned. As her heart beat faster with her arousal, she wondered if the ache of new love was returning. Then she remembered the old man. Pushing Rod up off her, her eyes looked serious for a moment. "Close the curtains will you, Rod," she asked.

    He stood up and did so. "In case mad Gilbert peeks in?" he guessed. "Maybe we should pay him a neighbourly visit after, invite him down to dinner?"

    "Fuck off." She reached up and pulled his belt free from his jeans as if cracking a whip. "Now fuck."

    The seaward facing window of the wooden house that crowned the top of the cliffs gazed blankly across St Bride's Bay, the grey water reflected back upon itself. Inside, a shape moved across the window-pane, an eye's pupil milked by a cataract. The dwelling and its single occupant were as old and weathered and colourless as the sea.

    Gilbert pulled up his chair and watched through the salt-rimed glass. Cradled in his hands a mug of hot water in which was dissolved an Oxo cube. Down below, the waves, ever eager to smother the sand, were elbowing close to the land, lifting the stern of his little dinghy where it was moored on the beach. It would soon be dark and he would venture down to the surf and the shadows, and the silver light from the moon. Once again row out on the tide, undisturbed in his search.

    Tonight, as ever, he would unleash the boat and make his way to where the two walls of the cliffs hugged around Nolton's bay like protective arms. Out he would go, to where the wide sea spanned to the horizon and the gentle slop of the waves was omnipresent, but muted, so that the sound of the oars could be heard as they sliced and skated the slack ocean. Tonight would be a reprise of many such nights. A habit only curtailed when winter storms blew in, and sea spray mixed with driving rain dashed his tiny vessel with salty fury. Then he would have to curtail his repetitive and fruitless forays.

    Watery runnels formed in his glazed, despairing eyes like salt waves bridling across reddened sand, and dripped in a silent cataract down a face as craggy and dark as the grey cliffs. Out there… somewhere… his beautiful lost Siren.

    There seemed to be few tourists here, fewer beachcombers or sun worshippers.

    Stephanie and Rod were walking arm-in-arm along the road to the pub up the hill. From up here Stephanie could see a small caravan park nestling in the valley, from which there was little sign of movement, even though summer still had a few throes to throw. She conceded to herself that the beach was a small one by any standards and that the sea was probably too inconsiderate for swimming.

    The little bay, hemmed in as it was by high cliffs, allowed the tide too much wilful leeway; delightful rock pools at low tide, but precious little sand to sit on once the sea had ridden in at high tide. The bay had a wild charm but also, she thought, an aura of loneliness. As they walked she watched a lone fulmar skim the cliff's face, wheeling slowly this way and that, its wings as stiff as an aircraft's. The solitary bird evoked the sense of an ancient landscape, one so untenanted that it was a simple matter to believe that they were the first humans to reach this shore since some Celtic tribe harvested the fish here a millennia ago.

    Dusk was arriving with the cold breeze off the sea. "Hug me," Stephanie said, wishing she did not always have to ask.

    As he did so, Rod turned his attention to the pub. They climbed the steps that wove through the beer garden to its entrance. "Hope the food's hot."

    Stephanie wished he were not so easily distracted; she would have liked more of his attention devoted to her. But not wanting to dampen things with an unguarded comment, she said instead, "I ' should think they get plenty of business from the caravan park." As they entered the lounge, the dining area was surprisingly unoccupied. "Or maybe not." If a pub's busy at mealtimes, she tended to think, its food was likely to be more agreeable.

    "It's only," Rod glanced at his watch, "six-thirty. Oh, well, let's see what's on the menu."

    They found a small table in a cosy corner by a window and ordered some wine and a meal. While they waited, Stephanie watched the rollers through the window, forever surging for access to the land, but somehow blocked at the last second by a hidden influence, and rippling back. The quickening mass of the ocean was darkening, the surf tracing ragged luminescent curves against the shore.

    If she gazed seaward long enough something might take hold in her, she thought, until each gleaming breaker arrives with the impression that the sea is some surly spirit, rising swiftly, disgorging some half-sensed emotion on what was left of the beach. And that ill-natured spirit's jetsam was inside her already. Despite their earlier lovemaking, she did not feel anything much except a formless dissatisfaction.

    Rod sat silently beside her, also gazing westwards, until there was nothing but blackness outside, the sea a memory of salt and the tang of seaweed. Then someone switched on the pub's exterior lights, which illuminated the picnic tables in the beer garden and two spiky Cordylines in tubs. Stephanie perked up, trying to imagine that Rod was thinking about the two of them and not his work.

    The food finally arrived, and she almost balked at the size of the battered cod and mound of chips on both their plates. "We certainly won't go hungry tonight!" Smiling she brightened as she unwrapped the knife and fork from the red paper napkin and wove her head from side to side as if she did not quite know where on the plate to begin demolishing her meal. "We can find the shops tomorrow and stock up the fridge."

    "Maybe we'll eat out more - I wouldn't want you slaving in that excuse for a kitchen every evening." He despatched several french fries. "I've heard there's a couple of very good restaurants in Solva."

    
"Expensive
restaurants, Rod." She had also read the tourist information brochure the Rollasons had left in the cottage. "If you'll recall, we just gave a small fortune to that package tour company." It felt good to be chatting amiably.

    "Which we
will
get back… eventually."

    "If you say so. But, really, I don't
mind
self-catering." She prodded her fish and began to eat, and they lapsed into silence for a few minutes.

    Later they both sat on bar stools with a glass of brandy each, to finish the evening. The pub's restaurant had not filled up significantly, and most of the clientele appeared to be locals. Among them Rod noticed the farmer who they had rented the cottage from at the other end of the bar. "Evening Mr Rollason," he said, raising his glass.