by Gary Fry
Meg stepped backward, telling herself that a renewed shifting of debris beyond the bricked-up archway was just reverberations induced by her movement, even though it had possessed such a moist tone. For some reason, she pictured in her head the centipede she’d observed that morning, while tending her garden. This was immediately cross-fertilized by fickle imagination with a squidlike creature she could recall from TV documentaries. And moments later, her mind let loose on all this suggestive reality, that was what stood behind the wall for her: a giant insect made of pulsing jelly, writhing with electricity, and bearing countless limbs. Indeed, here came one of these appendages now, poking through the gap at the top of the tunnel’s mouth…
Meg snatched away her glance before she could observe any such thing. To the right was a zigzagging staircase, leading up and above the tunnel. But she refused to leave even her peripheral vision exposed to anything lolling over that incomplete wall. She quickly retraced her route back along the pathway, using the guidebook to select her next destination. Turning right up ahead would take her to two cement-stone mines, now sealed up by fans of shale. Farther on stood the site of the Alum House, a property in which liquid alum had been converted into its final crystal form…But by this time, Meg was tired and felt as if she’d seen enough for one day. She had the rest of her life to explore this area, after all, and with little else to distract her.
Walking back the way she’d come, she tried telling herself the almost imperceptible rumbling she detected underfoot was just her stirred emotions at work, and not any aspect of the elements out here, in such a vast, beguiling realm.
3
She spent most of the evening watching television—a documentary about sea life and then another about the banking collapse—before turning into bed at around ten p.m. Being alone here was vastly different from her experience in the city whenever her husband had been away traveling. There were fewer sounds outside, which of course drew her attention more insidiously to those she was able to hear. No passing people reassured her, nor cranky transport, nor surveillance helicopters, nor distant police and ambulance sirens. This was a place in which nothing much happened…and so why did her imagination now believe anything could?
She changed into nightwear and brushed her teeth, trying to suppress reflections on her walk today. It had been a pleasant, promising venture, and she hoped to explore more of the area soon. Nevertheless, something about it had crawled under her skin, like a pernicious insect, invisible to unassisted eyes, digging deeper, mining to the bone…Slapping her toothbrush back into its wall-mounted holster, she switched out the bathroom light and retreated to the bedroom, where the double bed awaited her, cold to the point of feeling moist.
She’d gone around the cottage and closed all its curtains hours earlier, just after it had grown dark. She’d seen enough movies, almost all selected by Harry, to realize psychopathic killers or merciless monsters always picked such moments to leap out from the night at unwary protagonists. It was silly, she knew—she was forty-two years old—but she hadn’t wanted to look outside while drawing the thick material along their solid brass runners.
After closing her bedroom door to prevent drafts overnight from making it creep like the stealthy approach of something with unfriendly motivations, Meg settled down beneath the sheets and eventually flicked out her bedside lamp.
Troubling thoughts came the moment she closed her eyes. Harry had called earlier, at about eight p.m., claiming to be tied up again at the office. It was a demanding time for the business, he’d been saying for a long time now, and he must put in extra hours to meet his obligations. That had sounded to Meg like the most clichéd reason to remain at work, but she knew she was being paranoid, not a state of mind she wanted to entertain willfully ever again. After all, if he’d called from his city center hotel, would that have made her less suspicious? Probably more so, she reflected, understanding that such places were full of people like him, itinerant employees with nothing better to do than prowl establishments’ bars…
But she was being ridiculous. Her husband might have suffered frustration as she’d emerged from her depression—she knew he had, even though he’d never admit it—but he was surely faithful. In her worst moments, shortly after the event had occurred, she’d made artful inquiries at his office, and there was no doubt he’d traveled to the likes of Madrid, Rome and Berlin unaccompanied, with no foxy new recruit in her twenties who was eminently pregnable…
But again Meg was being stupid. Harry hadn’t even wanted a child, had he? Which was not to say he wouldn’t have enjoyed being a father once the situation had been thrust upon him. But that wasn’t the same thing at all. If he strayed, it would be for other reasons, and not his partner’s lack of fertility. For him, this would surely be an issue of status, the need to hang a glistening bauble on one arm. Meg was fortunate to have good genes—her mother had been a natural beauty, her father tall and handsome—and even though she thought so herself, she’d retained the good looks that had once attracted Harry and held him at her side through arduous circumstances…No, she mustn’t worry about her husband; whatever suspicions existed deep inside her were erroneous, and she was foolish to try to excavate them.
At that moment, something shuffled at the cottage’s rear, beneath the bedroom window looking on to that part of the property. But Meg was too drowsy to pay this moist, heavy tread much attention. It was probably just a hedge stirring in the quiet wind tonight…and that was as much as she remembered, because seconds later, she was asleep.
She dreamed of walking again, back along the path for the abandoned railway tunnel. The Sandsend Trail looked different, the borders flanked by piles of bones rather than alum…or to be precise, human bones. Skulls and tibia and femur and many others were piled up in haphazard profusion, as if the creature that fed in this area was immortal and had been dining for centuries.
Dining…mining…dining…mining…
Meg’s psyche now felt ungovernable, speculating automatically on material buried so deep she could barely even sense it, let alone dig it up. Then she’d reached that impromptu wall plugging the entrance to the tunnel. Something was definitely moving behind it, unseen in the cloying dark. Instead of merely listening, however, Meg grew more proactive on this occasion, looking around for a huge rock, finding one, dragging it across the ground toward the middle of the wall, and then standing on it. Now she could comfortably get her arms over the top, pulling herself up the way she had as a child, when she’d lacked the intrusive breasts of an adult. After getting her center of gravity above the crown, she swung one leg over, and then the other, before dropping at once onto the other side.
Inside it was pitch-black, like life inside another’s body was supposed to be. A chill draft assaulted her frame, tiny fingers feeling for warmth. There was a fetid odor, the scent an animal exudes in mating season or when hungry for more than food.
And that was when she heard the unsettling sounds.
Something was approaching from up ahead, along the length of the tunnel. Even though this was a dream, and at some level Meg knew that, she found herself scrabbling in one dream-pocket for her dream-phone. Then, as those rustling noises grew closer, she held the gadget and flipped open its lid, letting the tiny screen emit a light that brought her cramped surroundings to life. The passageway was full of rubble, chunks of stone, broken wood, even a rotting bicycle. The final item confirmed the thoughts she’d had while visiting this place earlier—that children had shambled over the wall and used it as a den or a hiding place—but then such reasoning was demolished by what appeared in front of her.
It was Harry, but not her husband as she’d ever imagined him. He was on all fours, and trailing behind a number of other beings, the first attached to his rear by tiny hands, the rest fastened to the one in front in the same way, so that the whole formed a facsimile insect, wriggling down the tunnel like some hellish conga. Even though her husband shocked her with his grin, as the procession grew closer, those s
mall figures in his wake frightened her more. Each was animated by whatever malevolent force Harry had clearly imbued them with, their half-formed legs pumping blindly and misshapen heads bobbing with idiot obedience.
They were all dead babies.
Meg awoke, crying and sweating. By the time she’d pulled herself free from a maelstrom of sheets, she could hardly remember what she’d imagined in her sleep. Something about that tunnel nearby, she thought…a long, shimmering entity emerging from its throat…But the more she attempted to chase the thoughts, the less coherent they grew, like a chunk of coal she was squeezing, which disintegrated in one hand.
She got up, dressed and then set about tidying her new home. She’d kept the place impeccably clean, but even so, she spent a good hour making sure everything was in its right place, with no dust or debris marring the new furniture, electric equipment, carpets and curtains…After lunch, she began preparing a meal for Harry’s return later in the evening. Her husband was fond of pasta and so she put together a lasagna from their well-stocked cupboards. Harry also liked trifle, and it was a simple task dissolving gelatine in hot water and then microwaving to get it hot enough to set. Midway through this process, however, something went wrong, with the microwave protesting about the new bowl she’d used to hold the jelly. After removing it, Meg realized it had a metal rim, that this had caused sparks to fly, which had even affected the glutinous liquid inside. She looked at this shimmering substance for a long time, imagining it much thicker and attached to—no, firmer than that—imagining it constituting a vicious creature that was yards long, crackling with organic power as it emerged from a pit, its multiple limbs scrabbling idiotically against mud and clay…
But then she put a stop to these thoughts. Too many half-baked impressions had gathered in her mind, demanding a coherent form she was unable to process right now. She simply pushed it all aside and continued with her dutiful chores.
After Harry had texted to say he’d be home at about seven p.m., Meg went back out into the garden, to catch what remained of the day’s sunlight. It was as chill as yesterday, but with an undeniable hint of rain in the air. Nevertheless, she was able to prune some wilting roses as well as prize more weeds from the soil. At about four o’clock, schoolchildren appeared, either walking home from today’s lessons or playing out before dark. Meg could see only the faces of four or five boys bobbing above the hedge that demarcated her land. To her irrepressibly fretful mind, this resembled a single, multi-headed entity lurking beyond the vegetation…but she was able to thrust this aside, too. With a sense of urgency perilously close to maternal, she hoped none of the children was in uniform, because the dirt they appeared to be throwing around would surely mar their clothing.
Despite their penchant for mud-slinging, at least the boys here, unlike their city-dwelling counterparts, seemed well-behaved. A little rowdy perhaps, but that was expected from a gender with elevated levels of testosterone. Her husband was similar, ever restless and always in need of some adventure. More recently, Meg had grown out of such desires, preferring simple acts like reading and gardening. She wondered whether this now rendered her and Harry fundamentally incompatible, whether they’d grown apart…but she suppressed these concerns, too, and then stepped around to the back garden.
There were manic handprints all over the cottage’s rear wall.
She saw them first at a distance, after returning her tools to the shed. There were about ten or fifteen, each stenciled onto the brick with indistinct pressure. She paced hurriedly forward, her heart a solid presence in her chest. Close up, she observed that all the prints were clustered around her bedroom window, behind which she’d slept the night. Many were underneath the sill, several alongside the uprights, and none above the lintel…But then Meg realized this was untrue. There was a print above the window—just one, a firmer handprint near the roof, inches below the building’s eaves.
The insubstantial nature of most of the prints had led Meg to assume that children with devilment in mind had committed this minor vandalism, their hands filthy from dirt fights. Some of the impressions of palms and fingers barely suggested much flesh at all, just strips of bone and tatters of skin. That was only an effect of the way the earth had failed to stick to the wall, of course, but what to make of the one at the top, surely far higher than any child could reach? Had this impish boy sat on a friend’s shoulders? He must have had a solid base to impose such a complete-looking print on the wall.
It was so big it could belong to an adult human.
4
When Harry eventually arrived home, an hour later than he’d promised and with no call to explain, Meg served up their meal and asked him why he seemed so tetchy.
This was certainly true. As soon as he’d entered the cottage, the atmosphere had assumed an edginess Meg was unable to ascribe to all she’d experienced these past few days. Her bad dream overnight was largely forgotten and she’d scrubbed off those weird prints from the back of the property before dark had encroached upon Sandsend. And so what else could this tension be but her husband’s sour mood?
It wasn’t detectable in anything he did; rather, in what he didn’t do. He hadn’t given her his usual hug; he hadn’t inquired about what she’d been up to today, let alone noticed improvements she’d made to their previously messy garden. The building had a security lamp that bathed the place in light whenever anyone stepped up close after a seasonably variable time. There was no way Harry could have failed to notice all the deadheading she’d done, not to mention the weeding.
But he’d said nothing much, just a brief hello before retreating to the bedroom and changing into night attire. Reappearing five minutes later, he’d looked a little less fraught, but it was only after pouring a few fingers of scotch from their drinks cabinet in the dining room and then settling in front of his favorite dish that he seemed relaxed enough to speak without potential friction.
During their marriage, Meg had often appealed to his appetites, first regular sexual advances, when they were young enough to be preoccupied by that, and later, as they moved inexorably toward middle age, with food and drink. Despite his up-and-down personality, he wasn’t a complex man; input always led reliably to output, like a semi-trained dog. She watched him devour his lasagna as if he’d worked up a hunger through physical activity, but how can that be when he simply ran an office?
It was only when he’d nearly finished his main course that Meg said anything other than, “Here you are,” and “Hope you enjoy it.” On this occasion, she asked, “Have you had a hard few days?”
“Oh, you know, just work,” he replied, after consuming a last mouthful of mince and tomato, and then licking sauce from his lips.
The lascivious way he stared made her feel uncomfortable, as if the scotch and food had enlivened him, leaving him eager for even more satiation. But it was too early for that…or perhaps Meg meant it was too late. At any rate, focusing on his words rather than how he’d delivered them, she went on.
“Are you still dealing with all those terrible redundancies? I imagine it’s difficult letting certain people go.”
When he responded, his eyes sparkled, as if this was the least of his anxieties right now. “Oh, no. Frankly, with a lot of them, it’s a case of good riddance to bad rubbish. They’ve never cut the mustard, to be honest, and our cost-cutting exercise has been a great opportunity to get shut.”
He made it sound like personnel were just baggage, sacks full of debris to be consigned to a tip. She imagined her husband mining deep in the business, scooping out bad materials and tossing them aside with gleeful abandon, as if the process gave him pleasure…Maybe it did, but that struck Meg as rather sadistic. Surely nothing was more important in life than people. Had seeing their child at peace in its hospital crib done nothing for his sense of perspective? It had changed her forever.
Later, when they were in the lounge and side-by-side on the couch, Meg tried to revive their conversation, as if trying to seek reassurance that their
marriage still had energy and that their move out here, alone together on the coast, was unlikely to develop into an ill-advised disaster.
“Do you have any conferences or seminars to attend before Christmas?” she asked, hoping to settle her mind in advance of the festive period. The season was indelibly associated with children, and it would be the first to endure since it had happened. She’d need as much support as possible, and if that included Harry staying home as often as he could, was that such an unreasonable expectation?
But all her husband said was, “That reminds me. I’ve a bunch of expenses to reclaim from my trip to Edinburgh last month. There’s about two hundred quid to come.”
“Two hundred?” she asked, astonished at the sum, her suspicious mind running like a ground-penetrating drill. “How on earth did you manage to run up that much?”
He laughed, sipping more of the scotch—his fourth this evening; Meg had counted—and then switched over the TV with the remote control, settling on a movie with more noise than even their city lives had possessed. “Well, they’re not all genuine,” he explained, his eyes tracking a monster cavorting across the screen. “These things never are. It’s the way things work. Everybody knows it; everybody does it. It’s no big deal. Nobody cares.”
Except those losing their jobs, she thought, recalling how her own stressful days in business had involved similar paper-based subterfuge. She’d never resorted to such tricks herself, however; she hadn’t seen the point. She’d always had everything she’d needed…well, almost everything.
Something stirred nearby, from outside their window maybe, but the bestial grunt she’d detected must have come from the TV, the sound thrown across the room by its stereo speakers. Indeed, if anyone had come prowling around the cottage—more of those mud-slinging boys perhaps, out later than children should be, even in such a relatively safe area—the motion-sensor lamp would be activated, lighting up the square of curtains. And there was nothing there, just the dimness of the room animated by flashes of Hollywood gunfire.