by G. P. Taylor
As she walked on, she put down the sight of the red eyes in the darkened alley to the work of her imagination. She had deceived herself many times in the dark and this was just once more.
‘Stupid,’ she said again, to reassure herself it was not a chimerical thought. ‘Seeing things …’
Then came the footsteps. They struck the cobbles like cloven hooves. She turned and looked. From the shadows of Pilgrim’s Yard came the voice of a man.
‘No bombs tonight, Mary?’ he asked slowly, as if he drank his words.
‘New boots, Billy?’ she replied as she looked at the clean hob-nailed army boots.
He smiled. ‘Just like sparking clogs,’ he said as he leant against the wall to steady himself. ‘I’m away in a week – got the call-up and glad to be going. Sent me the boots to wear them in. Can’t be tramping through France in new boots – bad for the soul.’ He laughed.
The young man walked on, staggering down the hill and singing to himself pleasantly. Mary thought he was now’t but a lad – to young to go to war but too stupid not to. As she watched him go, the mist rolled in from the river, brought in by the tide.
‘Straight home, Billy,’ she shouted after him as he disappeared into the darkness.
‘Home,’ echoed his reply as the houses mimicked her call.
Then she heard the sound again. This time it was different. It stood the hairs on the back of her head and shot a shivered hand down her spine.
‘Who is it?’ she asked as she shone the torch to the street behind her. There came the sound of a thousand voices, whispering, crying, calling her name. It was as if the darkness covered a crowd of people all speaking at once. ‘You messing with me, Billy?’ she shouted.
All was quiet but for the rush of the distant waves and the swirling of the wind above her head.
Reluctantly, Mary walked slowly on. She kept close to the windows of the shops and turned with every other step to look back. She cared not for the blackout. Her torch scanned the road in front of her and was shone into the opening of every alleyway and yard as she fought the desire to run.
She knew there was an all-night café by the Fishermen’s Mission. It was next to the harbour. The windows had been boarded to keep in the light. There would be people there, fishermen, dockers and those who just could not sleep for fear of the war. Most of all, there would be someone to talk to and pass another hour of darkness with, hoping the night would be swiftly gone.
Taking the steps by the side of the cinema she dropped quickly from the street. The houses loomed above her as the stairs became a dark tunnel with just a flicker of grey in the distance. It was a dark short cut, one she would never usually take, but it was quick and the dreadful night would soon be over.
Mary could smell the sweet scent of fried fish and tea. It swept around her like a mistral wind and reminded her of home before the war. Three more steps and she would be away from the steps. All she had to do was cross the flagged yard of the Mission and turn the corner.
It was then she again heard the whispering. She shone the torch back up the steps. They rose like a jagged chimney up to the road above. The grey mist swirled in the light. Mary stared. For a moment she thought she could see a face. She shrugged her shoulders and the image was gone.
‘Who is it – what are you doing?’ she shouted, as if she was being tormented by her own mind. There was no reply.
Mary ran as she tried to cast off the darkness. She turned the corner past the old Mission. The door to the café was cracked open. A shaft of light flooded the street. Pushing it open, she was soon inside. The argon lamp that hung from a brass hook in the middle of the room burnt brightly. The café was full of men drinking beer and eating corn-fish. Mary saw one other woman by what used to be the window. She was looking out of a small hole cut in the wood. Unlike the others, she didn’t stop to look at Mary when she came inside. She just smoothed the sides of her red dress as if to push away the creases.
‘Seen a ghost?’ asked the man behind the counter. ‘The usual?’
Mary nodded as she took off her steel helmet, tightened the chequered headscarf and rested against the bar.
‘All that talk of people being killed,’ she said as she sipped as the hot barley milk that steamed in the thick glass. ‘Gets you thinking someone could be out there.’
‘No proof,’ replied the man, as if he had heard the words a thousand times before. ‘I was talking to one of the soldiers from the factory. He said that nothing had been found and the bodies were sailors washed up in the storm.’
When the factory had opened three weeks after war had been declared, the town had changed. Several old railway sheds had been taken over on the far side of the harbour. The buildings had been clad in scaffolding and black tarps so they could no longer be seen. The factory had become a place of secrets. Workers were shipped in and kept in a camp on the open ground between the river and the wood below Hagg House.
A tall steel fence capped with barbed wire had been placed all around and even the water of the estuary had been covered so that no one could see what went on. It was called the factory because of the noise of the steam generator that started every morning before it got light. It would churn for twelve hours, gushing smoke out of a hastily built chimney, and then it would stop.
The factory was guarded by soldiers. A sign on the fence said that anyone entering illegally would be shot. Some people thought it was a place for germ warfare, either that or a base for submarines. It had to be something. In the woods behind were gun emplacements covered in spidery camouflage netting.
‘I heard that,’ Mary said in a whisper, hoping that no one would overhear. ‘Didn’t believe it. The bodies were on Tate Hill Sands the night the sea began to make all that noise.’
‘It’s like I said last night, Mary. Switch jobs – go work on a farm or something – it’s not right you being out alone at night. Even if there is a war on.’
‘Not that easy. Not since the factory opened. I don’t have the security clearance. My father was Irish – Free State. Don’t want people like me working in a place like that.’
‘Then stay here all night. Wash up – serve drinks – make breakfast. I’ll look after you,’ the man said as he touched the back of her hand. ‘If you hear the bombs falling run out and catch them.’
Mary laughed. He was the one man who could make her do that.
‘And what would Eddie say if he found out I was washing up for you and making breakfast?’ she asked.
‘Better me than the Devil out there snatching children from their beds and doing away with anyone he finds in the street. You know what happened the last time the red-eyed comet appeared.’
‘That was a hundred years ago,’ she replied.
‘And what happened then is happening now.’
Somehow he didn’t seem funny any more. Mary looked to the door as she drained the milk from the glass. The café was full of noise. Men talked loudly. The woman by the window was watching her as if she was trying to listen to everything Mary was saying. The brass clock that hung on the grease-stained wall behind the counter signalled eleven-thirty.
‘Have to check the bridge. I’ll be back before morning,’ she said as she unwillingly put the glass down on the counter and looked back at the woman in the red dress. ‘Keep the water hot.’
‘Same …’ said the voice as she closed the door behind her and stepped into the cold street.
Mary glanced back at the boarded-up window. It was covered in torn war posters with frayed edges that flapped in the breeze. A fat man in a polka-dot bow tie stared grimly. He pointed his finger and demanded Deserve Victory – whatever that meant. She noticed a chink of light in the far corner just above his head. She looked up. From inside, the woman’s eye followed her along the street as she walked towards the harbour.
When she reached the Esk River, she stood for a while holding on to the metal railings and looked down to the two gigantic piers that stretched out to sea. Floating on the incoming ti
de was a veneer of mist. It grew in depth and thickness as it reached the bridge. There, it swirled darkly over the peat-brown water and rose up in spirals that twisted like figures dancing along the iron stanchions. Mary set off and walked slowly into the mist that spilled across the quayside and shone blue in the moonlight. The fog filled the empty street to the height of her waist and had thickened even more by the time she had reached the bridge.
As usual, she took out her notepad and looked up to the sky as she wrote ‘All Clear’. It had been the same every night she had been a warden.
Midnight on Whitby Bridge.
Check for aircraft.
Complete pocket book.
Return to point.
As she wrote, an old Daimler coupé broke her concentration as it crawled slowly through the fog. The haar-fret covered most of the car, leaving just the windscreen eerily above the mist. Silently, the car slowed as it went by. Mary looked at the sombre chauffeur in his gray coat and hat. There was an old man in the back seat. He covered his face with his hand as they drove by. It looked deliberate, as if he didn’t want to be seen. She made another note in her pocket book: ‘Car on bridge – nothing else to report.’
It was then that she heard the sound of someone running. The footsteps clattered in the empty street. Coming towards her along the quayside was the woman in the red dress. With every pace, the woman looked back. It was as if she knew she was being followed. Their eyes met.
‘He’s there!’ the woman shouted. ‘I saw him in Calvert’s Yard.’
‘There’s no one,’ Mary said as the woman ran towards her through the veil of mist. ‘You’re alone.’
‘No,’ said the woman as she grasped Mary’s arm. ‘I saw him. I came out of the café to speak to you – but you’d gone. There is something you should know. I waited and had a cigarette and then I saw him. He was in the shadows looking at me. I couldn’t go back. He was between me and the door.’
‘Who was he?’ asked Mary as she looked back along the empty street.
‘Just a man. He was hunched over as if he was sick. It was his eyes – they were …’
Her voice was sharp. The woman in the red dress didn’t finish what she was going to say. Mary was staring into the fog.
‘Is that him?’ she asked as she pointed through the mist.
The woman turned and looked. There, coming towards them, sauntering along the empty street, was the dark figure of a man. He kept close to the walls of the buildings along the quayside. His long black coat trailed behind him and for a moment Mary could see him sniffing the air like a dog.
‘You have to know,’ the woman said to Mary urgently. ‘It is true about the bodies. I saw them myself. I work for the morgue. We were told to say nothing.’
‘But who were they?’ Mary asked quickly as the man leant against the wall by a lamp post.
‘They were from the factory, all of them,’ she whispered, a look of fear on her face.
‘But what of the …’ Mary didn’t have time to finish. The man was running towards them with a knife in his hand. ‘Run!’
Before the woman could even scream, the man was upon them. He smashed Mary to the floor with a single blow. Then he picked the woman up and threw her into the river as she kicked and screamed. Mary lashed out with the steel flash lamp, striking the man as hard as she could. She got to her feet and ran towards the police box across the bridge. The woman in the red dress was in the river screaming for help. Mary knew she had to escape. She looked back. The man was gone. She was alone. The screaming had stopped and the water was still beneath the bridge.
‘EDDIE!’ she shouted in fearful prayer as she gripped the door handle of the police box. It was soothing and cool in her hand but it wouldn’t open. The door was jammed shut. Mary heard footsteps. They echoed along Sandside Row. She ran again, hoping to make the door of her small, meagre house on Church Street just a hundred yards away. She knew the door would be open. Mary had left it so since her husband had gone to war. It was in case he ever escaped the fighting and came back unannounced. She held the image of his face in her mind as she ran. The footsteps followed, keeping pace with hers. Mary looked back. The man was there, the tails of his long black coat billowing out like a raven’s wings.
Mary ran faster, banging on the doors of houses as she went by. No one stirred. It was as if they were charmed in their sleeping. The man made no attempt to catch her. He ran at the same pace, as if he was waiting for the right place to strike or for Mary to give up the fight. His feet made no sound as he skipped across the cobbled stones.
‘Biatra … Biatra,’ Mary sobbed for her daughter as she got close to the house. She clutched the brass handle as if it were sanctuary. The man was nowhere to be seen. The street was empty. ‘Biatra,’ she said again.
‘She can’t hear you,’ said a soft voice from the darkness of Arguments Yard.
‘It’s you?’ Mary replied slowly, as if she recognised the man.
She sighed and said no more. His hand gripped her throat and dragged her to the floor as he covered her with his long black coat.
In the churchyard the wind blew and masked the screams from below.
‘Should do for now,’ said Jack Henson as he finished his digging and scraped the clinging earth from the spade with his boot. ‘See how long it takes to fill this one.’ He climbed the wooden ladder with the spade over his shoulder and stood for a moment over the empty pit. ‘Not fair on you, Maria Barnes – not fair on your lass.’ Henson looked above his head to the red-eyed comet. ‘All this for your sake?’ he asked the star in his melancholy.
First published in 2010
Faber and Faber Ltd
eBooks published in 2011
Grosvenor House Publishing Ltd
All rights reserved © G. P. Taylor, 2010
Cover picture copyright Bret M. Herholz 2009
Used by kind permission.
More of his fantastic work can be seen at
herbertzohl.blogspot.com
Bret can be contacted at [email protected]
The right of G. P. Taylor to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-908105-74-5 for epub format
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