Fire in the Sea

by Myke Bartlett

  She gasped and reached behind her for the door handle, but her hand instead snatched at her grandpa’s shirt buttons. Stan shoved Sadie against the screen door and slapped the dog hard across its snout. It fled whimpering under the house.

  ‘Get inside,’ Stan ordered.

  Granddaughter and lawyer obeyed.

  In the dining room, Frobisher laid the contents of the brown paper bag across the dusty table. They were the clothes Mr Freeman had been wearing: a long-sleeved grandfather shirt, a pair of beige chinos, a brown suede waistcoat and a leather cap. A canvas satchel on a leather strap held a wallet, house keys and glasses case. Tucked into a pocket was a still-ticking ancient watch, its face hidden behind a leather hood. Tangled about the hood was a chain with a brass talisman—a small, tarnished disc, engraved with a sickle. Each item seemed only to draw attention to what, who, was missing.

  ‘This should all go to charity,’ Stan said. ‘Give it to someone who needs it. You could sleep twenty people in this place. There are people out there spending nights on park benches.’

  ‘It’s not for us to say Stan,’ Ida said quietly. ‘It’s Sadie’s place.’

  Sadie was about to disagree, but then Frobisher pulled the last item from his bag. It was an earthenware urn.

  ‘What’s that?’

  The lawyer blinked, surprised she had to ask. ‘It’s Mr Freeman.’

  He cleared his throat, resting one hand on the urn’s lid. ‘I am obliged to point out clause 2.2 in the documents I supplied yesterday. Miss Miller is not permitted to sell or otherwise dispose of any articles from, and including, these premises. Not until the twelve month caretaker period has elapsed.’

  ‘She’s not after money, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

  ‘Stan.’ Ida’s tone was forceful enough to cause her husband to step back.

  ‘As noted in clause 3.4, there is a substantial amount of money in a savings account, to which Miss Miller will gain access after the twelve months. If she has proved satisfactory in her role.’

  Stan’s forehead creased. ‘Role? What role?’

  ‘Miss Miller will be required to protect the house and its contents.’

  ‘You want a fifteen-year-old girl to fight off burglars?’

  ‘She’s sixteen,’ Ida reminded him, gently tapping Sadie’s shoulder. ‘What do you want to do, Sadie love?’

  ‘Um,’ Sadie looked to her grandfather, but he wouldn’t meet her gaze. Instead she asked the lawyer: ‘What would I actually have to do, as caretaker?’

  Frobisher stared at a point just below a decorative cornice, as if his lines were written there. ‘Ideally, you,’ he paused, glancing reluctantly at Stan and Ida, ‘and your family would move in here, immediately.’

  ‘Not going to happen,’ Stan snapped. ‘Sadie has a home.’

  ‘Mr Freeman has—had—a lot of valuables. Some of them are very…unusual.’

  Sadie swallowed hard. ‘Grandpa, please.’

  Stan ignored her, pressing in on Frobisher. ‘She has exams. She’s going to university.’

  ‘Those are the conditions of the will,’ Frobisher said calmly, picking up his leather satchel. ‘Good afternoon.’

  The front door key had been left on a ring with several others on Mr Freeman’s folded clothes. Sadie went to pick it up, but her grandfather swept the belongings from the table and shoved them back in their paper bag.

  ‘When you’re eighteen, you can make your own decisions. For now, these stay with me.’

  Taking the keys, he dumped the bag on top of the kitchen cabinet, where he intended it to stay.

  Sadie hadn’t thought she wanted the house, not really. Now she felt a strange duty to Mr Freeman and, even more than that, she didn’t like having a decision taken from her. She was ready to argue with her grand-father, but Ida’s look told her it wasn’t the time.

  That evening there was an argument like never before. Stan refused to discuss the matter of the keys and Sadie refused to let it drop. But for all her shouting and demands and attempts to sound reasonable, Stan wouldn’t budge.

  ‘I don’t want you going anywhere near that house,’ he said.

  Sadie slammed three doors on the way to her room. One of them hadn’t been shut in years and she pulled her shoulder. It was still aching an hour later as she lay on her bed, staring furiously at the wall. Ida came in and sat on the edge of the mattress behind her. She placed a cup of tea on the bedside table.

  ‘He worries about you Sadie, love. He and I aren’t going to be around forever—’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ Sadie snapped.

  ‘Well, it’s true. We’re not immortal—’

  ‘I don’t want to hear it.’ Sadie’s eyes burned.

  ‘Family has always been the most important thing to him. He’d do anything to protect us.’

  Sadie didn’t say anything. She was too angry to see any good intentions on the part of her grandfather.

  She slept lightly. Her stomach was rumbling and empty. Around midnight she realised she was awake, staring at the ceiling. The window was open, to tempt in a breeze. In the garden someone was scratching about. Was it Stan? Was he also sleepless and miserable?

  Sadie went to the window and pressed her nose to the flywire. She caught the sweet, meaty scent of over-ripe figs and almost called out to her grandfather, but she remembered her grudge and kept silent.

  She heard breathing—heaving and snorting like a wild animal. Something was clawing at the dirt and ripping up the veggie patch. Squinting into the darkness, she tried to find a shape among the shadows.

  Then the thing moved into moonlight.

  It was a man, stripped to the waist and hunched over on all fours. Sadie eased herself away from the window, intending to make a quiet path to the phone and call the police. But then the man stood up.

  He was at least seven foot tall and as broad as a bodybuilder, his arms as thick as legs, his legs as thick as pylons. But Sadie was looking at his head. It was too wide, even for such broad shoulders. And above each oversized ear, was a horn. Horns. The half-naked stranger in her backyard had horns.

  Sadie screamed.

  The horned man startled, echoed her scream in a bellow, stamped his feet and then tore off, shredding the garden and crashing through the timber fence.

  Sadie’s bedroom door burst open and Stan hurried in, tying up his dressing gown.

  ‘Sadie? Are you all right?’

  ‘There was a man,’ she said, ‘in the backyard.’

  Stan peered out through the flywire. ‘Well, there isn’t now.’

  He smiled at her. Then, remembering his bad mood, his head lowered and he closed the door behind him without another word.

  Sadie stayed awake, her eyes darting from one shadow to another, but the man with horns didn’t come back.

  5

  THE INTRUDER

  There was no conversation over breakfast. Stan was in the garden, tutting over destroyed carrots and hammering chipboard over the hole in the fence. Last night’s visitor had torn through the vegetables, but nobody seemed to want to talk about it. Sadie ate her toast and pretended to read the newspaper. Then she wheeled her bike out of the garage and rode off to meet the others at the beach.

  The scene on the terraces was the same, from a distance, but it felt more uncomfortable than ever.

  Every hour or so, Tom stood up and announced his intention to swim. For five minutes he would splash about in the low surf, then resume his position, hugging his knees on the sand. Throughout the afternoon, Sadie could feel him looking to her for some contact or connection, but she couldn’t bring herself to offer it. Instead she turned pages without reading them and every so often threw the book on the grass and dropped back on her elbows.

  ‘What is wrong with you, anyway?’<
br />
  Sadie sat up. Kimberley was peering at her over the top of her designer sunglasses.

  ‘Sorry?’

  Kimberley nodded at Heather. ‘I mean, she does the whole emo thing, but it’s like a fashion statement. With you, it’s like a sickness and, seriously, I don’t want to catch it.’

  It occurred to Sadie that her cousin was asking after her health.

  ‘You actually want to know?’

  ‘I want you to get over it, so if that’s what it takes, yeah.’

  Sadie thought she would want to say nothing. But it was such an odd experience, having her cousin interested in her, that she found she wasn’t quite ready to brush her off. Maybe she did need to talk things through and, in the absence of a girlfriend, maybe Kimberley would do. So she told her cousin about the old man, how she and Tom had run to his rescue. How he had died. She told her about Frobisher and about the house on the beach. About the view from the attic room. About her grandfather taking the keys and the argument that followed.

  Kimberley was indignant.

  ‘No way. The old man gave you that house. Grandpa has no right to take it off you.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I said that. It didn’t do any good.’

  ‘Let’s just go.’ Kimberley was already putting on her sandals. ‘We could totally have a protest or something. You know, occupy the place. What’s Grandpa going to do, call the cops?’

  Even Heather was listening now. She had unplugged a single earbud and tinny music buzzed at her throat.

  This talk of injustice and rebellion excited something in Sadie. Maybe she did need to take a stand. Most days she despised Kimberley for caring more about shoes than rising sea levels, but today Sadie needed a bit of selfishness.

  ‘It’s not even that I want the house,’ she said. ‘But Mr Freeman gave it to me for a reason. Looking after it is the right thing to do.’

  It was only a kilometre to the house, if that. Maybe she could do this. But the stark sunlight burned these thoughts out of her.

  ‘Thing is, Grandpa’s got the key.’

  ‘A key.’

  Everyone looked at Tom, surprised.

  ‘I mean, it won’t be the only key,’ he continued. ‘You know what old people are like. Bet there’s one under a pot plant somewhere. Or a doormat maybe.’

  Sadie nodded with growing enthusiasm. ‘There was a doormat. On the back veranda.’

  ‘I’ll drive,’ Tom said.

  In the evening half-light, the house had a morose aspect, as if judging Sadie for disobeying Stan.

  Kimberley peered out through the windscreen. ‘That is a seriously ancient house. It’s like five hundred years old.’

  Sadie peered over her cousin’s shoulder from the back seat.

  ‘Wow. Remind me how much your parents pay in school fees?’

  Kimberley rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t get all superior and snarky, geek girl. I’m just saying it’s old, that’s all.’

  Heather hadn’t said a word. Occasionally she coughed in Sadie’s direction, to remind her that they still weren’t speaking.

  ‘If I was a vampire, that’s the sort of house I’d live in,’ she said now.

  Kimberley scoffed at her sister in the rear-view mirror. ‘What d’you mean, if?’

  Tom opened his door and put his shoulders back. ‘I’ll go round the back. See if that key’s there.’

  ‘Watch out for the dog,’ Sadie said. ‘He doesn’t play well with others.’

  There was a narrow, overgrown path up the left side of the house, where ivy tangled around a locked wooden gate. Tom strode through the long grass like some old explorer.

  ‘I so reckon it’s haunted,’ Kimberley said, wiggling her fingers as if playing a ghostly organ. ‘Heather could make some friends, finally.’

  ‘I have friends.’

  ‘You so do not.’

  ‘I so do.’ Heather sniffed, peering out her window. ‘Anyway, you shouldn’t make fun of ghosts. They could be listening.’

  Just then, a light went on in a second floor window. Kimberley squealed.

  ‘Spooky!’

  ‘It’s Tom,’ Sadie said.

  Heather shook her head. ‘Uh-uh.’

  Tom was still beside the house, just through the gate.

  Another squeal from the passenger seat. ‘Double spooky!’

  Sadie opened her door.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Kimberley asked.

  ‘I’m supposed to be looking after the place. Maybe it’s time I started.’

  The front door was unlocked. Trust Tom not to try it, Sadie thought. The thing was, she clearly remembered Stan checking the handle when he shut up the house. Someone else had reopened it. Looking back to Tom’s car, she noted her cousins had wound up their windows, and pressed themselves invisible against their seats. She was on her own.

  She put one foot down on the hall floorboards. Nothing creaked and no one came running. But there was someone in the house, that was certain. Someone was moving about and muttering upstairs. Something thudded and something else crashed.

  Okay, Sadie thought, feeling a bit less brave now.

  The front room was in complete disarray. Books had been pulled from shelves and scattered across a rug. Various ornaments had toppled onto cushions, if they were lucky, and onto floorboards if they weren’t.

  Sadie remembered the figure in the garden last night, remembered his horns. From the stand by the front door, she grabbed the old man’s walking stick and, brandishing it like a baseballer, began a slow climb up the stairs.

  Sadie Miller. Armed vigilante.

  The first step creaked and she froze. The clatter and cursing from above continued. The second step sighed and Sadie stopped again. Something glass shattered overhead.

  On the first floor landing, she waited. The intruder was in the attic. The door was wide open and various artefacts rolled out. Was she really going to do this? She lowered the walking stick, wishing she’d brought her mobile with her. She should have called the police. Why didn’t she just call the police?

  Something else shattered and Sadie lifted the stick again. She climbed the rest of the stairs with slow, deliberate steps, but, on reaching the second floor, a floorboard groaned, and she flattened herself to the wall, listening. There was no longer any noise coming from the attic. Whoever was in there had heard her. The light went off, plunging the corridor into darkness. Her palms were sweaty on the walking stick. She edged along the wall towards the doorway.

  There was a sudden movement in the shadows and Sadie’s legs were swept out from under her. She landed heavily on her back, the air thumped from her chest. The walking stick flew out of her reach. Before she could be sure what was happening, there was someone astride her, bare knees either side of her waist. A blade, cold and sharp, was at her throat.

  ‘Where is it?’ a man’s voice hissed.

  Sadie had always imagined that on the edge of death she would cling to dignity. Now, any idea of dignity deserted her. ‘Don’t hurt me, please.’

  ‘Answer me quickly and I’ll let you live. Where’s the relic?’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘You broke in here. I know what you were looking for.’

  ‘I didn’t break in. The front door was open. You’re the one who broke in.’

  Sadie felt the blade shift. Her attacker’s hand flicked out to the hallway light switch, and she blinked against the sudden glare. Straddling her hips, a sword in his right hand, was the most gorgeous boy she had ever seen. There was a moment of sudden heat in a cold place in her chest. She felt embarrassed and exposed.

  The boy was naked, except for a pair of cotton boxer shorts. Water glistened in his long dark hair and there were traces of shaving foam on his square jaw. Shadows sculpted the tight muscles of his a
rms.

  It took Sadie a moment to remember he had a sword at her throat.

  ‘I know you,’ he said.

  Sadie was as irritated at herself as she was at her attacker. ‘There’s no money in the house, if that’s what you’re after, or drugs.’

  The boy frowned. ‘Drugs?’

  He was about her age, Sadie thought, maybe a year older. She felt her fear ebbing. ‘You were having a shower. Not really normal behaviour for a burglar, is it? So it’s a drug thing, right? Unless it’s a perv thing. You break into other people’s showers—that is a bit pervy.’

  ‘You’re rambling.’ The boy glared down at her, with his head tilted as if he needed a better angle from which to understand her. ‘You looked different last time I saw you. Younger.’

  Sadie blinked. ‘Younger? This so is a drug thing. What are you on?’

  ‘It was you. You were there, the night I died.’ The boy sniffed the air, nostrils flaring like a wild thing. ‘Is that perfume?’

  ‘What? Stop smelling me, please.’ Sitting on her, with an alarmingly casual air, the boy was clearly crazy. Gorgeous, almost naked and crazy. ‘I’ve called the police,’ she said.

  ‘Why on earth would you do that?’

  ‘I saw the light on from outside. We thought the place was being burgled. Of course I called the police.’

  ‘Burgled? And how exactly does a man burgle his own house? Oh.’ He stood up and the blade finally dropped from Sadie’s throat. ‘It isn’t my house,’ he said. ‘It’s your house, isn’t it.’

  Sadie smiled, clambering upright with her back to the wall. ‘That’s right, this was all just a simple misunderstanding. We all get our houses mixed up sometimes. And you’re still saying you’re not high?’

  ‘Frobisher has transferred the deeds to you, as caretaker.’

  Sadie’s wide eyes blinked. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘It’s what he does, when I die. I’m getting better at it, but there’s still no saying where I’ll end up. It takes a while to get back from a mud hut in the Kalahari, believe me.’ All of this he said without even the hint of a smile. His blue eyes were steady.