by Paul Berry
‘We’re made out of the same stuff as that comet, the stuff that was created when the universe exploded into existence.’
‘But what happened the day before the explosion?’
‘Nobody knows. That was the only day when yesterday didn’t exist.’ He told me about Phobos and Deimos, the two satellites that orbit Mars.
‘They are Latin for fear and terror. So the universe is just as scary as one of your horror films.’ I started to feel sleepy, struggling to hold the binoculars to my eyes.
‘Does the universe make any noise or is it completely silent?’
He cupped his hand to his ear and looked up wistfully. ‘If it does it would sound like a growl, like some hungry animal.’ I stared excitedly through the binoculars. A faint streak of light raced through the sky and disappeared behind the clouds.
‘I saw it! Did you see it too?’ He was snoring, his binoculars rising and falling on his chest. I sighed and got off the chair, pulling the blanket on his knees up to his shoulders.
The taxi stops outside a terraced house that faces the ocean, a peeling ‘Dorchester’ sign flapping in the wind next to the front door. ‘Have a pleasant stay,’ the driver says sarcastically after Rachel pays, then trundles off into the night, smoke belching from the exhaust.
‘Looks rather grim,’ she says.
‘It might be the hotel from Psycho.’
‘If the owner’s dressed as his mother, we’re leaving.’ Rain runs down the back of my neck, and Rachel keeps her hand inside the pocket with the gun as I press the doorbell.
Chapter 32
There are footsteps and the door squeaks open. A woman with a blonde beehive looks at us in surprise and wipes her hands on her apron.
‘We don’t have a reservation,’ I say hurriedly.
‘Come inside before you catch your death.’ We wipe our feet on the frayed welcome mat, dripping rain onto the paisley carpet.
‘I hope you enjoy your stay at the Dorchester. I’m Ruby,’ she says, closing the door behind us. I almost give fake names when we introduce ourselves, suspicious that she’s been tipped off and will pick up the phone and alert the Syncret. ‘What brings you to New Innsmouth? Young lovers eloping, eh?’
She winks and Rachel rolls her eyes. ‘We’re definitely escaping something.’ Behind the reception desk is a crude oil painting of an octopus. Thunder cracks outside and the lights flicker. The tentacles writhe beneath the canvas and I touch my face, thinking my cheeks will start sprouting.
‘It usually does that when there’s a storm,’ Ruby says.
‘What?’
‘The lights. I need to get the wiring checked.’ The painting looks normal again, although the octopus seems larger.
‘The picture, it’s very … atmospheric,’ I say.
‘My son painted it.’ She drifts off and stares at it.
‘Can we have a room?’ Rachel asks, breaking the silence.
‘There’s an ocean view room available on the second floor. It has its own bathroom and you’ll also get the morning sun.’ She goes behind the desk and pulls out a key, a faded ‘12’ on the plastic fob. She hands it to me and her forefinger lingers on the back of my hand. I pull my hand away, resisting the urge to rub off the feeling of her touch. ‘If you’re here for a holiday, you’re going to be disappointed. It’s not a good town for young people.’
‘We’ve come to see the church,’ I say. ‘It’s for a class project.’
She looks at me suspiciously. ‘There’re plenty of churches in Cornwall much nicer than our ugly one.’
Rachel yawns dramatically and covers her mouth. ‘I’m absolutely knackered. We’re ready for bed, right, Sam?’
‘I’m about to fall asleep standing up.’
‘Take the stairs and follow them right to the top,’ Ruby says. ‘Breakfast is from seven till ten. Hot water will be turned on at six.’ As we trudge up the stairs, Ruby mutters, ‘This is the last time.’
‘She might be Norman Bates’s older sister,’ I whisper.
‘As long as she stabs me after I’ve had a shower, I don’t care. Yuck! I can’t believe I’m still wearing the same clothes. What do you think she meant by this is the last time?’
I shrug. ‘Guess we’ll find out tomorrow. Maybe she’s about to retire.’
‘Probably. She’s at least a thousand years old. Although I’m insanely jealous of that peroxide hairdo.’ We reach door 12, the painted numbers entwined by tendrils of flowers.
The room is small, with two narrow single beds separated by a table. I close the door and lock it. We also move the armchair against it. I open the curtains and look out of the window. Forks of lightning strike the sea and gigantic waves roll towards the promenade, crashing against the wall and sending up fountains of spray onto the road, and I wonder if my dad is thinking about me, trapped and alone.
‘You’re thinking about your dad, aren’t you?’ she asks.
‘It might be too late to save him. Even if we can bring him back, he might be … different.’ My mother, Professor Ward and Nathaniel Peaslee were all infected and mutated by the Datum, and I shudder when I think what effect it’s having on him. I sit on the bed nearest the window, the mattress as hard as planks.
She sits next to me and puts her arm across my shoulders. ‘It’s going to be like sleeping on concrete.’ There are soft footfalls in the corridor and a shadow appears behind the crack under the door. Rachel’s arms tenses and she reaches into her jacket pocket. There is a gentle knock.
‘Do you need anything?’ Ruby asks. ‘I’m about to turn in.’
‘No, we’re fine,’ I say loudly.
‘Have a restful night.’ The shadow remains, as if she’s waiting for another response. She sighs and her footsteps recede down the corridor.
Rachel takes off her shoes and jacket and lies down on the opposite bed. ‘I’ll set an alarm for eight. We don’t want to miss the hot water.’ She fiddles with her digital watch, pressing buttons that set off tiny beeps. ‘What are we going to do when you use the crystal?’
‘In the film Poltergeist, before the mother enters the spirit world, they tie a rope around her waist so they can pull her back out. Maybe you could do the same – yank me and my dad out when I’ve grabbed him.’
‘As weird as it sounds, that might actually work. We’ll have to find a really long rope, though.’
I go to the window, about to draw the curtains, and glimpse a figure on the promenade, barely visible against the railings. It jumps over them and disappears into the surging waves. I open my eyes wider and stare at the sea. It could have been a trick of the light, or maybe tiredness is still making me see things.
‘Rachel, take a look outside.’ She doesn’t answer and I turn around.
She is lying on her side, asleep, her mouth slightly open and her face peaceful. I switch off the light and lie on my bed, listening to the sounds of waves pummelling against rock.
I’m dreaming about Professor Ward clawing at the door of her burning cell when I awake to the cries of seagulls. Rachel is already dressed.
‘Good morning, Rip Van Winkle,’ she says cheerfully. I grunt and half open my eyes, adjust my jeans, which are riding up uncomfortably into my crotch, and rub my eyelids, which feel dry and gritty. ‘The shower’s pretty good, though we have to find a clothes shop. I smelt a lot better before I put these back on.’ She sniffs the sleeve of her jumper and wrinkles her nose.
I climb out of bed, my knees cracking, and look through the window. The sky is clear blue apart from a few wisps of cloud, the seagulls wheeling around merrily in the sunshine. I half expect to see the Syncret surging down the promenade towards us, but it’s deserted. I root around in the backpack and take out the folded book page, my fingers accidentally scraping against the gun. The townspeople in the photographs under the church look even more dour in the daylight, black-pit e
yes in their pruney faces.
‘It shouldn’t take long to walk to the church,’ she says. ‘I don’t think this town’s very big.’
‘What if we don’t find any answers there?’
She stops drying her hair and looks at me apprehensively. ‘Then we’ll figure something else out.’
‘I’m sorry. For all of this.’
She ties her hair back with an elastic band. ‘We need to stop apologising to each other. It’s not your fault, it’s not my fault. Apart from our bad taste in men, I think this was always going to happen. Those cogs of fate have been turning for a long time.’
‘Cogs of fate? You’re never usually this poetic in the morning.’
‘I have hidden layers.’
‘Like a Victoria sponge?’
‘Get yourself cleaned up. You’re offending my delicate sense of smell.’
After I shower, we walk down the stairs to the dining room, my stomach rumbling in anticipation when I smell bacon. It only has three tables, and various fishing implements decorate the walls. Attached to the ceiling like a canopy is a fishing net. Ruby is setting cutlery on a table.
‘Make yourself comfortable,’ she says, inclining her head towards it. We sit down next to a bleached set of shark jaws snarling from the wall. Ruby makes several trips to the kitchen and comes back with plates of full English breakfast and mugs of tea. We eat in silence, shovelling food into our ravenous mouths. Rachel mops the plate clean with a slice of bread, soaking up every last streak of egg yolk. Ruby replaces our mugs with fresh tea and smiles approvingly.
‘Looks like you two needed that.’
‘It was delicious,’ I say, trying desperately not to burp at the same time.
‘Do you have a tourist map of the town?’ Rachel asks.
Ruby shakes her head. ‘Tourists don’t usually visit. Maybe it’s best if you try to catch a train out of here.’ She looks around nervously as though afraid someone heard her.
‘Not until we’ve seen the church,’ I say.
She sighs. ‘I suppose I could draw you a map. I’m not much of an artist, though.’ She clears away the plates and knocks over Rachel’s mug. She pulls out the cloth tucked into her apron. As she’s mopping up the spill, I notice a scar snaking down her wrist. She sees me looking and turns away awkwardly.
‘I’ll bring you some more tea.’ She leaves the dining room, the plates clattering as she carries them.
‘Do you think we’re the only ones in the hotel?’ Rachel asks.
‘She said the town doesn’t get many tourists.’
‘It almost feels like she was expecting us.’ I shiver and stare at the profusion of razor teeth lining the shark jaws. I remember the dream where the mouth swallowed the world and wonder whether, if I put my hand inside, they would bite off my fingers.
‘Do you think your mother, whatever she is now, is already here?’
‘Possibly. But if she’s the same as the other vampires, she won’t be able to walk around in daylight.’
‘We’ll need to be prepared before the sun sets.’
I feel my stomach clenching uncomfortably around my breakfast. ‘We might have to kill her.’ She squeezes my hand. ‘Although I’m not sure if she can be killed. Guns barely slowed her down.’
‘Are you two planning to shoot someone?’ Ruby asks, carefully putting down mugs in front of us. Her hands are trembling slightly and tea trickles over the edges.
‘We have a strange sense of humour,’ I say.
‘Very strange.’ Rachel smiles. Ruby places on the table a sheet of paper which is covered with a spider-leg maze of roads and barely legible writing, spots of tea darkening the paper in patches. In the far corner is a crudely drawn octopus with ‘church’ scrawled underneath. The names of the streets seem strangely abhorrent: Lich Street, Nest Road, Dunwich Lane.
‘Is there a clothes shop anywhere?’ Rachel asks. ‘We left our suitcase on the train.’
Ruby takes out a biro and marks a circle. ‘Try the one on Crouch Street. It’s usually open. Don’t expect anything fancy.’ Rachel takes her purse out of the backpack, but Ruby shakes her head. ‘Put that away. Your company was payment enough.’
She gives us sandwiches wrapped in tinfoil before we leave, and Rachel kisses her on the cheek. ‘Thanks for everything.’
‘Come back soon,’ she says, looking around the reception area furtively. ‘Keep away from the town square. There’s nothing worth seeing there.’
She stands at the front door waving at us as we walk across the road to the promenade, her forehead furrowed in worry.
Chapter 33
I lean over at the place where I saw the figure jump over the railings. The tide has gone out, the smooth crystalline sand sparkling in the sunlight. I take out Ruby’s map.
‘Do you remember anything else about the church when you drew it?’ Rachel asks. I scour the memory of the picture for any clues, the picture I left in the library, which will ultimately lead my mother here.
‘Not really. Perhaps I got it all wrong and it was a warning for us not to come.’ I shiver when I recall the purple clouds I drew above the town with those malignant eyes staring out from them.
Sunlight reflects off a metallic object as we walk further along the promenade. It’s a bronze octopus sculpture, its tentacles entwined around an ornate key, the same as the weather vane on top of the church. Its granite base is carved with eldritch symbols like the ones inside the crystal and the Necronomicon.
‘Can you understand what it says?’ Rachel asks.
I shake my head. ‘They look like random squiggles.’ That’s not entirely true. Even though the symbols don’t spark into discernible configurations, a vague pattern in their arrangement is gradually becoming clearer.
I touch its bulbous head and feel repulsed, as though the metal is alive under my hands.
‘They really like octopuses here, or is it octopi?’ Rachel asks.
‘I’m never going to look at one the same way again,’ I say, recalling the thing that was forcing its way out of my mother’s face, the same thing that had infested me.
‘Do you think it’s somehow connected to Hastur?’
‘I’m starting to think there’s some plans afoot we’re about to discover.’ I remember how Adam accessed my memories and used them against me. Perhaps Hastur had also been tampering with my mind, guiding my hand when I created the picture of this town. ‘I guess we can’t take free will for granted anymore.’ The idea that we are being helplessly manoeuvred like chess pieces scares me the most.
Above my head, a flock of gulls cry out, and I quickly remove my hands from the sculpture, the knobbly imprints left on my palms tingling, and I rub them on my jeans as though I’m wiping off a film of grease.
‘I’ll try to read the glyphs.’ I crouch down and visualise a blank sheet of drawing paper, letting the symbols take shape on it. After a couple of minutes, Rachel taps me on the shoulder.
‘You looked like you were in a trance.’
‘I can’t read them.’ I realise I’m caressing the metal tentacles of the octopus and I jerk away in revulsion.
‘Let’s go. That thing is giving me the creeps.’ As we walk away, the octopus’s tentacles quiver in the corner of my eye.
Beyond the promenade, the waves roll gently towards the shore, breaking and spreading across the sand like sheets of opaque glass. We both look at each other and smile, walking further down until we find a flight of steps leading to the beach, the weathered stone flecked with spiral fossils. Against the sea wall are a couple of tattered deck chairs, the sun-faded red-and-white canvas seats flapping like tongues in the breeze. They look identical to the ones I sat on with my dad when we watched Halley’s Comet. Further along the shore, jutting out into the sea like a skeletal arm, is the remains of a pier, the timbers blackened as though it was ravaged by fire.
‘I can’t remember the last time I went to the beach,’ Rachel says, bending down and scooping up the clotted sand between her fingers. I pick up a stick crusted with dried algae, walk to the edge of the shore and write my name in the sand. I start drawing an ‘A’ underneath, then scratch it away.
‘Still missing Adam?’ she asks.
‘Not really.’ A wave licks across the letters, blurring them into faint lines. I sigh. ‘He was the first boy I …’ My cheeks flush with embarrassment.
‘You can say it. There’s no one around to hear you.’
‘Kissed.’ I’ve decided Mr Hewitt doesn’t count.
‘There’ll be others. I guarantee it.’
We are interrupted by the angry cries of seagulls. Further up the beach they are crowded around a black object trailed across the sand. As we walk closer, the gulls glare at us, their vicious orange beaks streaked with black ichor.
‘What is that?’ Rachel asks. She raises her arms and waves them about while shouting. The gulls pause for a moment, then take off in a shrieking cloud, settling a few metres away from us, clawing the sand in frustration. ‘God, I hate those birds. They’re like flying piranhas.’
It looks like a huge snake, but as I get nearer I realise it’s a tentacle. I stretch out my hand holding the stick and prod it. The mottled skin breaks open and thick black slime gushes out, the fetid smell of rot wafting upwards.
The tentacle spasms and pulls the stick from my hand. Rachel grabs the collar of my jumper and jerks me back.
‘Do you think it’s alive?’ she asks in disgust. The seagulls swarm back over it.
‘Maybe it’s some kind of reflex action.’
‘We should leave our feathered friends to their lunch before they decide we’re next on the menu.’ We walk along the shore until the sound of the gulls is drowned out by the waves. Rachel bends down and takes off her shoes and socks.