by Giles Ekins
‘But you’ll make do with me, eh?’ Sandra pulls up her short skirt, takes off her black lacy knickers and stands before Charlie, displaying herself. As he suspected, she is not a natural blonde, she takes his hand and pulls it up between her legs. ‘Well then, you going to fuck me or not, I mean, I ain’t come here for the sake of me bleeding health, now have I? Or you into blowjobs?’
Charlie looks up wearily, almost reluctantly and then reaches for her and leads her over to the day-bed on the opposite side of the room.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Skegness, Monday Night
Some fifty yards back from the beach path, Selene stops by a sandy hollow surrounded by grassy hummocks, the moon breaks through the clouds and the moon-shadows of the swaying grass plays across her body, giving her skin the impression of scales, of shimmering snakeskin.
The moon is in its last quarter, but the sky is crystal clear, shimmering bright stars piercing the dark firmament in brilliant specks of cold light so many millions of light years away and the moonlight, silvery queen of the sky is brilliantly intense as the half-moon quivers just above the horizon and silvery lances of light dance across the waves. On the horizon a single ship emerges from the tenebrous darkness to the north and glides across the glistening sea and then disappears into the nightdark south. Even in his be-fuddled, robotic state, Charlie takes in the sight and a distant schoolboy memory comes to mind, something about a dirty British coaster and the one line;
‘something, something something and
‘a cargo of Tyne coal,’.
Not realising that he had spoken aloud,
‘What’s that,’ Sandra says, ‘What is it?’
.’Just summat I had to learn when I was a kid, recite it on the stage at school. I only remember that last line, prob’ly because it mentions the Tyne. Tyneside, that’s my home territory, like.’
‘Home, that sounds nice.’ Sandra says as she takes his arm companionably, ‘It’s a pity you’re moving on tomorrow, Charlie, you know, a girl could get to like you,’ looking up at him expectantly, ‘I mean…shit, what do I mean? You’re a nice man, kind, respectful, even to a slag like me. A girl likes that.’
‘Nay, pet, I’m not the sort of guy for you,’ why is it these poor fucked up girls want me to take care of them, first Polly from Liverpool and now this sad tart, shit, I’m in no fit state to take of myself, let alone anyone else.
‘No, s’pose not,’ she responds ruefully, ‘I mean though, it’d be good to find a nice man, settle down, a father for Emily, stop all this fucking around, I mean where’s that going to get me, in twenty years, end up like that sad old biddy, that sad tart with the saggy tits going with the likes of Bill Boy Boston. No thanks. Hey, I just thought of something funny, that old biddy that got in to see Billy Boy, what’s her star sign?’
‘Star sign?’
‘Yeah, star sign, she’s a Saggytitsarius, you get it? Not Sagittarius, Saggytitsarius,’ giving him a nudge with her elbow.
‘Clever, Sandra, aye dead clever.’ Must be catching, these witty plays on names,’ thinking of his own Mephistophelesical witticism.
‘What’s your star sign, then Charlie? I’m Taurus.’
‘Me? Gemini.
’‘Right, Gemini, the twins, dual personality, good and evil. You’ll be the good side though.’
‘You think?’
‘Yeah, like I said, you’re a nice man.’
Charlie and Sandra walked slowly along the footpath that ran along the top of the sea wall, the beach some ten feet below to their right. At frequent intervals, steps led down to the sands, grass strewn hummocks of shivering sand lay to their left, the dunes muffling the sounds and lights of the town.
Charlie looks up at the moon, ‘The moon shines bright on Charlie Chilton,’ no, I don’t fucking think so.’ the icy silver glare sending a shiver through his veins.
A nagging sense of unease echoes in his mind, there is something he has to do, some imperative, a command, it is there lurking at the edge of his consciousness, a will of the wisp, he shakes his head, trying to clear his thoughts. But it will not come
Behind them Selene follows, unseen, unheard, all but invisible, and now completely naked, without even the G-string. She had been waiting outside the dressing room whilst Charlie was ‘entertaining ‘Sandra,’ or was it the other way around? It was almost an hour later when the door opened and Charlie and Sandra emerge, she is adjusting her clothing, settling her breasts more comfortably into her bra. Charlie is dressed, ready to go back to his hotel, The Best Western North Shore, not too far along the road from the theatre.
‘So long then Charlie, you know, you’re not so bad for an old guy,’ she grins, ‘Quite the stud. You want me to come back tomorrow? Give me a ring; I gave you my mobile number, didn’t I? If you like I can bring Chrissie with me, make it a threesome. I mean Chrissie is a wild bitch, but wild, makes me look like Mary Poppins alongside her. That girl, she going to come to a sad ending but, shit, she’s my mate.’ Sandra bends down to fasten the straps of her shoes and almost overbalances, ‘Whoops’ clutching Charlie’s arm for support. Charlie’s bottle of JD has joined the ranks of the other fallen warriors and Sandra is more than little intoxicated.
‘How ‘bout it, eh? A threesome, or we could even do a foursome with that stuck up cow you work with, if’n you can prise the knickers of her, that is, looks to me like she wears cast iron ones, you’d prob’ly need a crow bar to get them off.’ Sandra giggles tipsily, holding herself up against the wall. ‘Gawd, listen to me running off at the mouth again, me Mum says I was born talking, my little chatterbox she used to call me, it’s a wonder I ever let up yakking long enough to give anyone a gobble.’
She gives Charlie a nudge, but he does not respond. ‘Alright then, suit yourself, you want to see me tomorrow or not. With or without Chrissie?’
‘What? No sorry, pet, tomorrow we pack up and move on, forgotten where, some other shithole no doubt. Barrow in Furness that’s it, aye, I was right, another shithole.’
‘Shame, I would have come back and seen you for sure, we had a good time, din’t we? Like I say, you’re not so bad, in fact I reckon I’d come without Chrissie, keep you for me’self.’
‘Not so bad yourself Sandra, take care now. Gan canny.’ She leaned up and gave him quick peck on the cheek.
‘Shame, catch up with you next time,’ she said and walked away, giving her buttocks an extra swing and waggling her fingers in a farewell wave.
Selene slides out from the shadows, giving Charlie a start. ‘Don’t you start that sudden appearing out of nowhere shit. How long you been standing there, anyhow?’
‘Not so long.’ Selene comes up close, very close, in front of Charlie, her grey eyes boring into his, he tries to break her stare away but cannot. Her eyes open even wider as she searches into his mind, suborning his will to hers.
‘Charlie, listen to me. Go after her, Charlie. Take her down to the beach, it is quiet, take her away from the lights. And then kill her.’
‘Kill…her’ Charlie shakes his head, trying to clear away the fog.’ Kill her, what are you talking about, kill her?’ trying to resist but his will is sapping as Selene takes more and more control of him.
Her voice is soft but metronomic, hypnotic, her eyes relentlessly locking into his psyche, mesmerizing him, absorbing his soul, mazing him, overpowering any sense of self control.
‘The time has come, Charlie, Mr. Tchort commands it. You must kill that girl. You understand? You must kill the girl now, Mr. Tchort demands his tribute. You have to keep the faith as you swore in blood.’
‘Tribute?’ he mutters dully.
‘Yes. Charlie. Tribute. Take the dirty little bitch down onto the beach and kill her. Here take this,’ handing Charlie a very fine black silk Hermès scarf which rippled through his fingers like quicksilver, ‘and strangle her.’
‘Strangle her.?
‘Yes, the time has come to pay your dues. Remember, you are one of us forever, Charlie. Forever.’
> Mechanically, robotically, Charlie turns away from Selene, a glazed look on his face and then he straightens up, as if finding a new sense of purpose and hurries along the backstage corridor after Sandra.
He catches up with her fifty yards from the theatre down Grand Parade, she’s talking on her mobile as she walks.
‘Sandra, wait up a minute, love.’
She turns, ‘Hang on a minute, Chrissie,’ she says into her mobile. ‘No, I’ll call you back in a minute, OK?’ and slips the mobile into her handbag. ‘Charlie?’
‘You fancy going for a walk Sandra, have a bit of a chat like, as you say, it is a shame we’re moving on tomorrow. Let’s go down by the beach.’
‘That’ll be romantic won’t it? It’ll be bloody freezing down there, and there’s bog all to see, just piles of sodding sand and seagull shit.’
‘You know, I haven’t been on a beach for years, it’s a nice night, warm, the moon is out. I just thought it would be nice, is all. Come on, it’ll be fun.’
Sandra laughs, ‘You’re the Devil you are’ no, just his misbegotten slave, ‘you just want to get into my knickers again, don’t you eh? Well it ain’t on, cos that sand it gets everywhere. And I mean everywhere.’ but nevertheless, her promise to call Chrissie forgotten, she takes his arm and they cross over Grand Parade, down by the side of a noisy amusement arcade, past some rank smelling public toilets and down towards the sea, turning onto the footpath that runs along the top of the sea wall. From the amusement arcade Charlie can hear Mick Jagger singing ‘I can’t get No Satisfaction.’ ‘You and me both Mick,’ he thinks, even though he had just been laid. With Satisfaction.
Unseen, invisible, Selene is following
‘I ain’t been down here in ages, I mean when you live in a place, you don’t take any notice, do you?’ Sandra says. ‘All this sun and sand and sea and shit, that’s just for holiday punters. You know, Mum and Dad and the snot-nosed kids, the two of them sitting in their deck chairs turning lobster red and Mom reads her magazines and puzzle books, Dad sleeps off his hangover else eyes up the girls on the quiet, wondering how soon he can get back to the boozer. The snot nosed kids, they get lost or cut their feet on broken glass or half the time it’s pissing down with rain. Some bleedin’ holiday I don’t think. Me Mum brings Emily down sometimes, she just loves it but me, I can’t be arsed.
A few hundred yards along the walkway they come to the rolling sand dunes. ‘You don’t say much, do you Charlie, you just let me rattle on, I kind of like that, most blokes just tell me to shut the fuck up and then talk about themselves all the time.’
The sense of unease pervading Charlie’s mind grows stronger, the imperative is there if only he can bring it to mind.
‘Me and Chrissie, we’re thinking of saving up to go to Turkey for a holiday, s’pose to be dead cheap and the fellas, wow! Avril Greenaway, she there went there last year, says the Turkish guys are just great, dead sexy. She’s going back this year; she met this guy, Emrah or Imran. some such name, he’s working as a waiter but actually he’s a student, studying you know. Says he wants to marry her. I ain’t never been anywhere before,’ she says wistfully, ‘you ever been to Turkey, Charlie?’
Charlie’s hand closed about the silk scarf and as he does so, Selene’s insistent words flow into his head like lava ‘Yes. Charlie. Tribute. Take the dirty little bitch down onto the beach and kill her. Strangle her.’ He can feel the muscles of his face tighten up into a grimace, more than a grimace, a silent mask of terror, a soundless scream of hate, of blood lust, his eyes screwed up into slits of fearsome rage, his mouth open in a rictus of savagery, the heat of a killing urge surges through him as he takes out the black silk Hermès from his pocket, holds the scarf between his hands like a garroting rope and drops a pace behind Sandra.
‘I said, you ever been to…’ she turns her head back towards Charlie, and a stifled scream as she sees the look on his face is choked off as he swiftly loops the ligature scarf about her throat and starts to strangle her. Desperately she claws at the choking silk but to no avail, her heels drum loudly on the footpath, the strap on her right shoes snaps with the impact of the frantic thrashing off her feet and then she slumps to her knees, kicking feebly as the occlusion of her carotid arteries, the ligature vascular obstruction, brings about irreversible neurological damage and oxygen starvation kills her brain. Her bowels evacuate and the sweet night air is soured by an acrid urinous, excremental stench.
A dark, evil cloud scuds across the rich velvet sky and shrouds the moon, plunging the beach path into muted darkness, the silvery sheen across the sea and beach dims and fades, shadow lines die, blurred and blackened. A night owl hoots across the dunes, a shivering, echoing, a doom laden shriek as a vole is taken, death savage in the wind-whispering sands.
Vaguely, Charlie hears lyrics from ‘Bad Moon Rising,’ the song ringing in his ears, an unbidden memory from a long distant night in a disco somewhere on the road. His hands ache from the strain of the garroting, the black silk has bitten deep into the flesh of his palms and the back of his knuckles, a red wheal as vivid as blood, the stark stigmata of what he has just done.
The black cloud eases away, bringing forth the moonlight, silvery and glittery across the gentle waves and surf-wet beach.
Selene glides up beside them, naked, the moonlight glistening on her perfect body. If God created woman then the Devil surely created Selene. ‘Good Charlie, very good,’ she says, ‘quick now, take her over into the dunes, out of the way.’
Obediently, robotically, Charlie takes hold of Sandra under her arms to drag her to the side of the path and into the dunes. ‘No, Charlie, lift her up, no drag marks. Quickly now.’ Charlie, with some distant first aid training dredged from a memory of his days as a Boy Scout in the 1st Collierston Scout Troop, (he had been Patrol Leader of the Panther Patrol) managed to lift Sandra to an almost upright position, took her right hand on his left, put his right hand between her thighs and hoisted her supine body onto his back and shoulders in a fireman’s lift. He staggered slightly, she was heavier than expected and he had drunk a considerable quantity of bourbon. Steadying his balance he followed the fleeting Selene deeper into the dunes, panting with the effort of carrying Sandra’s body, unmindful of the stench of her evacuated bowels.
Another cloud obscured the moon but even without moonlight upon her, Selene’s flesh still had a silvery, almost metallic sheen as she glided on ahead of Charlie, who staggered under Sandra’s weight and the unevenness of the dunes, unable to gain purchase on the slithering sand.
Some fifty yards back from the beach path, Selene stops by a sandy hollow surrounded by grassy hummocks, the moon breaks through the clouds and the moon-shadows of the swaying grass plays across her body, giving her skin the impression of scales, of shimmering snakeskin. ‘Here, Charlie, put her down here.’ He tries to set her down gently, but she slips from his grasp and tumbles into the hollow, arms and legs all asplay. Gasping and panting Charlie flops down, holding his head in his hands whilst he regains his breath.
After some minutes, when he has recovered somewhat, Selene handed him a big knife, almost as big as a machete with a razor’s edge. ‘Where the hell has she been carrying that,’ he thinks, but perhaps it’s best not to know.
‘Cut off her head,’ Selene demands. ‘Take her head for the glory of Tchort.’
‘Her head?’
‘Yes, Charlie, your tribute. Cut off her head. Do it now.’
With his will totally submissive to Selene’s, Charlie takes a hold of Sandra’s hair, pulls her head back to bare her throat and starts to cut through her neck. There is surprisingly little blood, maybe she practiced yoga,’ he giggles tipsily, recalling Tchort’s response when he asked him about blood loss when Selene loses her head.
The deed is soon done. He stands, holding Sandra’s head by her hair and holds it up to the moon.
‘One head is taken for a head’ he says to the moon, somehow understanding in the deepest, darkest, most primeval reces
ses of his mind that the price of Selene’s head in the illusion is that of another…
‘Leave her now Charlie,’ Selene says, taking Sandra’s head from him. She stares deep into his eyes again, the moonlight shimmering in her own eyes, now densely black ‘Go back to the hotel, see nobody, talk to nobody, this did not happen. You never saw this girl, you never met this girl, do you understand me? This did not happen.’
TWENTY-NINE
Skegness, the days following
I never worried when Sandra was with Chrissie; she’s such a sensible girl.
PETE EMMERSON AND ALAN MALCOLM run together most mornings before going to work. They have been best friends since school growing up in the north Yorkshire town of Northallerton and they are inseparable, closer than brothers. They came to Skegness four years ago to find summer jobs and liked it so much they decided to stay on. Pete Emmerson now works in the men’s wear department at Beales store, whilst Alan is a Customer Advisor at Carphone Warehouse.
They rent a small flat together and most people assume they are a gay couple but they are not. They simply enjoy being with each other to the exclusion of virtually everyone else, or so it seems to everyone else. Ironically, the fact that they both had had girlfriends only served to strengthen the suspicion that they were gay.
They play football for one of the local Sunday league teams and train by running the beach, they run the sands, they run the dunes and they run because they enjoy it.
Pete and Alan begin their morning run as usual by the small park opposite the clock tower. They both wear identical BHS grey track suits; Pete wears Nike running shoes whilst Alan favours Adidas. Pete is tall and blond with a bland soft featured face with full red lips, androgynous looks that add to the perception that he is gay, whilst Alan is short, squat and dark haired with the looks of a petulant bulldog, in fact at school his nick-name had been Bulldog.
They jog on the spot for a few minutes to warm up and then set off down towards the beach, past the boating lake to their right, the public toilets and the entrance to a large car park and onto the beach. It is just after 5.20, the sun having risen half an hour earlier. They run northwards along the deserted beach and then up onto the beachside footpath at the top of the sea wall, now following the same route as Charlie and Sandra had taken the night before. They run side by side, Pete Emerson more of a sprinter with a long stride; Alan Malcolm was built more for distance running with a shorter stride but with greater endurance.