The Gollancz Book of Horror - [Dark Terrors 05]

by Edited By Stephen Jones

  ‘I love you,’ she said, surprising herself. It seemed easy to say after the minor trauma of the pub. It was a comfort.

  ‘I love you, too,’ he replied, although she had not meant it as a cue. ‘I thought we were goners. I thought we were going to end up as part of a very disappointing Scotch egg-’

  She laughed again and then suddenly felt like crying. Her upset was nebulous, there was no real reason for it, no rational reason. They had just been people, strange only because they were slightly more different to her than she was used to. Must be exhaustion. She closed her eyes and through the reddish dark of that unshareable interior, she immediately saw the measured sweep of a deeper blackness across her vision. She opened her eyes but there were no boringly equidistant trees to cast their shadows, no houses since Swaffham now lay behind them. She shut out the light again and yes, here it was, a slow black glide from the top of her eyes to the bottom. And again. And again. Again.

  Her heartbeat then, she reasoned, not without some discomfort. But before she could offer any satisfying alternative, she was asleep.

  * * * *

  She swam out of the dark, panicking that she would not grasp Jonathan’s question and be able to answer it before he lost patience with her. But it was not a question, he was merely talking to himself, loud enough for her to infer that he was pissed off with her sleeping while he did all the work.

  ‘Sea view, they said. A sea view at the hotel. Oh yes, certainly, if you’ve brought the Hubble telescope along with you.’ He looked at her and she could tell why; both to check she was awake and that she appreciated his joke. God, he really could be a minor irritant sometimes. ‘Wells-Next-The-Sea, they call this place,’ he continued. ‘Mmm, and my name’s Jonathan-Two-Dicks-Chettle.’

  ‘We’re here then?’ Claire stretched in her seat, and blinked against the afternoon sunshine. A clutch of beached boats seemed to cling to each other in the distance. Well beyond them, a silvery grey line - like a mirror seen edge on - marked the leading strip of the tide.

  ‘Yes, arrival can usually be said to be on the cards when the driver is in parking mode. And hey! We’re in a car park. Well done. Super.’

  ‘Oh shut up, Jon,’ Claire sighed. Twin glints of light drew her gaze towards a range of thin trees forming a paltry windbreak against the sea’s muscle. Someone was looking in their direction with a pair of binoculars.

  ‘Birdwatchers,’ Jonathan said, with a mock shudder. ‘This place’ll be crawling with them. Come on, let’s go and christen our room.’

  They checked into the B&B and were led up a grand staircase past mounted blunderbusses and badly stuffed sea-birds. Their room looked out on the car park but was only slightly higher up, giving a better view of the acres between the hotel and the sea. Jonathan pressed up against her while she took in the tangy air. She let him peel down her jeans and panties, take her from behind even though she was dry. His pleasure, transmitted into grunts and selfish stabs, did nothing for her, but it was better than arguing about sex. She wondered why she had agreed to this holiday as he withdrew and came on her buttocks. She wondered if, as he wiped himself against her, it was to prove to herself that she did not want him any more.

  ‘Quick walk before dinner?’ he said, tucking himself away and kissing the back of her head. ‘I’ll wait downstairs. See if they can recommend some good restaurants.’

  She masturbated to a swift, shallow orgasm, then cleaned herself up and pulled on a pair of shorts. Jonathan was leaning against the door outside, absently sniffing his fingers. He looked at her, obviously irritated that he had had to wait so long, then motioned with his head and set off for the road before she had reached him. They followed its uneven surface towards the boats then struck out across the fields, past cement coloured cows with vicious horns and thick reeds nestled into a deep gulley just off the track they were walking.

  The quick, unexpected smell of camomile pleased her, a scent she had always associated with long summer walks as a child with Dad through the woods behind their house. She would ask him where they were going and he would reply, ‘The land of far beyond.’ They never arrived, though she would soon lose her excitement of that unseen place in favour of his soft words as he told her about the plants and the buildings and the animals they saw. More often than not, she would end up being carried by him, too tired to walk, as twilight drew around them.

  ‘What are you smiling at?’Jonathan asked.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, reluctant to share her memory. He would probably only scoff. ‘I thought this was a holiday. I thought I’d be able to smile without being invited.’

  ‘Do you have to be such a snidey bitch all the time?’

  ‘Only when I’m with you, lover.’

  Violently quiet, they approached an expanse of mud. Riven with trenches and pits, its scarred surface stretched out towards the sea. At this landlocked end, dry, stunted plants sprouted from its surface sheen. The acrid smell of salt was accompanied by something excretive: oil bound up in its organic processes, farting silently through moist fissures.

  ‘Jesus,’ said Claire. ‘Fucked if I’m wading through that’

  ‘This holiday was your idea, kid,’ Jonathan sang. ‘We could have been sipping anise outside the Café de la Mairie by now.’

  It took the best part of an hour to cross the flats, by which time they were hot and cross with the way the mud sucked their feet in easily enough but was reluctant to give them back without a fight. Eventually the land solidified and gave itself over to a tract of well-packed sand. They squelched towards a band of shallow water and rinsed their feet. At the other side, they headed towards the boats, parallel to the path they had taken. Two hundred yards away, a man with a dog collecting shellfish in a carrier bag cast featureless glances at them.

  The journey back seemed free of obstacles and they were able to relax and enjoy the walk. The sea breeze flirted gently with them, taming the sun’s heat. Claire was able to laugh at one point, at some lame crack or other that Jonathan came out with. She did not care. The water that they had crossed had broadened and it soon became apparent they would have to recross it to get back to their cottage. It seemed much deeper, with a fast-running spine.

  ‘Shit,’ Jonathan spat. ‘We could swim it.’

  ‘I’m not swimming anything. I’ve got my sunglasses on and money in my pockets. And my watch isn’t waterproof.’

  ‘And God fucking forbid you should smudge your fucking make-up!’

  Claire flinched from his rage and inwardly threatened herself not to cry. She would not do that in front of him again. She was not happy with her silence - a mute response might only goad Jonathan further - but if she opened her mouth she would start bawling. She could not remember how their relationship had started. It was as passionless and inexorable as a driver picking up a hitch-hiker on the road.

  While he judged the depth and keenness of the water, she watched the tide in the distance, creaming against the slate-coloured sand at a tempo to match the beat of her resentment towards him.

  ‘I’m going to try this, try walking across. To show you. Then you’ll be safe.’

  Do I hate him? she challenged herself, bitter with her redundancy in this situation and angry that he should be illustrating her uselessness by making such a sacrifice. My hero. Suddenly she did not care if he disappeared into the sand and drowned. She would not dive in to help him, she would not scream for assistance. She might just sit down on the sand here for a while and count the diminishing bubbles.

  ‘Nah,’ he said, waist-high in water, ‘sand’s giving way. Too dangerous for you.’

  She gritted her teeth and looked back along the flow. She saw a place where it chuckled and frothed and padded over to it. Shallow land. She had skipped across to the other side while Jonathan was still struggling to free himself of the beach’s suck. She had to turn away from him to conceal her laughter. He caught up to her, red and soaking.

  ‘You might have told me, you twisted little cunt,’ he hisse
d into her ear, and strode off.

  She watched him, his prissy little steps. Yes, she thought, yes I do.

  * * * *

  Shocked and hurt by his attack on her, more than she wanted to admit, Claire rinsed her feet in the sink while Jonathan languished in the bath. It seemed his good mood had revived somewhat in the twenty minutes it had taken them to return. His hand was gripping the head of his straining cock.

  ‘Hey, baby,’ he said, in a mock cowboy voice. ‘Why don’cha mosey on over here ‘n’ milk my love udder.’

  ‘Fuck off,’ she muttered, leaving him to it.

  She dressed and went downstairs. Ordered a drink from the bar. An hour later, Jonathan was with her. Her distress was a palpable thing, spinning out from her like barbed hooks: a blind, flailing defence against his insinuative cruelty. She felt subsumed by his personality, as if he were trying to ingest her. Maybe it was the drink, but she was convinced his feelings for her were as shy of respect and concern as she had suddenly come to realize hers were for him.

  ‘Sorry about that whole “cunt” thing. Bit strong. You know I love you. What shall we have for dinner?’

  She picked at a chicken and apricot pie while he polished off a bowl of mussels. ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘This sea air! I’m knackered!’ He looked at her hopefully.

  ‘I’ll stay down here for a while,’ she said. ‘I’m not ready for bed yet.’

  He saluted and trotted upstairs. She swallowed hard. It seemed an age ago that she had been able to think of him as attractive and warm. As - God, had she really? - a potential life-partner.

  She took a drink with some of the other tourists, middle-aged women in oatmeal coir jumpers and Rowan bags. They tolerated her presence, although she could tell she unnerved them for some reason. The landlady came in and lit the fire, asking everyone if they wanted any brandy and she was going to start a game of whist if anyone was interested.

  Claire bid everybody goodnight and went up to her room, the skin of her nape tightening when she heard the word ‘blood’ mentioned behind her, by one of the women. Did you smell the strength of her blood? She thought maybe that was what she had said.

  Jonathan was snoring heavily. The TV was on, a late-night film with Stacey Keach. She switched it off and went to the bathroom where she undressed quietly. And stopped.

  Her period had begun.

  Did you smell the strength of her blood?

  ‘Oh,’ she said, feeling dizzy. ‘Okay.’ She cleaned herself, applied a sanitary towel and slipped into a pair of pyjamas. Stealthily, praying she would not wake Jonathan, who would read her clumsiness as a prompt for sex - or an argument - she climbed into bed and willed sleep into her bones before her mind could start mulling over the steady, sour creep of their relationship. She failed. She was awake as the full moon swung its mocking face into view, arcing a sorry path across the sky that might well have been an illustration of her own trajectory through darkness. Jonathan’s ragged breathing ebbed and flowed in time with the tide of disaffection insistently eroding her from within.

  As dawn broke, she managed to find sleep, although it was bitty, filled with moments of savagery and violence that were instantly forgettable even as they unfolded shockingly before her.

  Gulls shrieking as they spun above the hotel awakened her. Jonathan had left a note on the pillow:

  Did not want to wake you for breakfast - you were well out of it. Nipped out for a newspaper. Enjoy your toast. Love, J.

  He had wrapped two pieces of wholemeal toast and marmalade in a napkin and left them by her bed. The gesture almost brought her back from the brink but she guessed he considered it a chore. If he mentions it to me later, she thought, I’ll know he’s after a reward, a pat on the back. I’ll know it’s over. She giggled a little when she thought the death of their relationship should come down to a few slices of Hovis but that was not really the case; it was just a tidy way to cap it all, a banal necessity to make the enormity of her realization more manageable.

  An hour later, they were piling along the A149 coastal road, Jonathan singing loudly to a Placebo song. The sea swung in and away from them, lost to bluffs and mudflats before surprising Claire with its proximity. She did not like the sea here. It appeared lifeless and sly. Where it touched land, grey borders of scum had formed. It simply sat there, like a dull extension of the Norfolk coastline.

  They pulled off the road for a cup of tea at a small café. While Jonathan argued with the proprietor, who was loath to accept a cheque under five pounds, Claire watched an old woman attempting to eat her Sunday lunch. Her hands shook so badly that she could not cut her meat; her cutlery spanked against the side of her plate like an alarm. The winding blades of an old-fashioned fan swooped above them all. Something about its movement unsettled Claire.

  ‘Come on,’ said Jonathan, imperiously. ‘We’ll have a drink when we get to Cley.’ He turned to the café owner, who was now flanked by her waitresses, alerted by the fuss.

  ‘Suck my dick, Fatso,’ Jonathan said, and hurried away. Claire raised a placatory hand but the proprietor only looked saddened. The woman at the table raised her jerking head and showed Claire what she was chewing.

  * * * *

  ‘Jon! How could you say that? How could you embarrass me like that?’

  ‘Us Chettles do not suffer fools lightly, Claire. I’m not about to start now.’

  She wanted to leave him, to just go home, but it was his car and she did not know where the nearest railway station was. Sheringham, probably, a good twenty miles away. She had not seen a bus or taxi since they were in Ely the day before yesterday.

  ‘I don’t feel as though I’m on holiday, Jon. I haven’t been able to relax. All we’ve done is drive and argue. And I really needed this break.’

  ‘Hey, it was your choice.’

  ‘Oh, like it would have been different if we were in Paris?’

  He was nodding. ‘Paris is the city of romance. It’s impossible to have an argument there.’

  She snorted. ‘There’s a word for people like you. Dumbfuck, I think it is.’

  He let that one go, but she could see his jaw clenching, his knuckles whitening on the wheel.

  She saw the windmill first. It rose up from a coppice beyond a low range of roofs, its naked, motionless blades seeming to pin the sky into position. She pointed it out and Jonathan nodded, turning the car on to a gravel track. They crested a small humpback bridge over a stream choked by rushes. The windmill was white, tall and solid. Some of its windows were open; lace curtains wagged in the breeze.

  Jonathan parked the car and got out without looking at Claire. He walked through the heavy wooden door at the windmill’s base. Claire collected the bags and stood for a while, looking out towards the dunes. On the path, a cluster of birdspotters in brightly coloured windcheaters alternated their focus between her and a clump of gorse. They surprised her because there was not a man in their midst. Occasionally, one of them would raise their binoculars and favour her with a brilliant stare. A woman in a fluorescent green beanie trotted further down the path and the others followed. Claire laughed. They looked intense and foolish.

  At the door, she paused. She could not see anybody inside.

  ‘Jon?’

  There was a visitors’ book open on a bureau next to a coffee cup. A small jar of lollipops on the windowsill had been discoloured by the sunlight. ‘Hello?’

  She left the bags by the door and headed towards the room to her left. The door was ajar; an old woman was turning back the covers on the bed.

  ‘Oh, hello?’ said Claire, raising her hand. The woman looked up and smiled.

  ‘Hang on dear,’ she said, fiddling with her ear. Claire saw she was wearing a hearing aid. ‘I keep it turned off when I work. Nice to have silence every now and again.’

  ‘My name’s Claire? Claire Osman? I booked a double room for tonight.’

  She moved past Claire and checked her name in the ledger. ‘Yes. Room for two. Where’s your partner?’
>
  ‘He went in ahead of me.’

  The old woman gave her an askance look before shuffling towards the other end of the room. She twisted the handle on the door at the end but it was securely locked.

  ‘Nobody came in here, my love. Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m certain!’ Claire blurted. ‘I saw him come in before me. He must have gone through that door.’

  ‘Aye, if he was a spirit. That’s the door to the windmill. It’s always locked unless we have a party of schoolkids come around, or enthusiasts, you know.’

  ‘The other guest room then. He must be joking with us.’

  ‘There’s someone already in that, my love.’

  ‘He must be in there.’ Claire felt sick. She would have been happy to see the back of Jonathan in any other circumstances but this was just too weird. Suddenly too final.