The Thing on the Shore

by Tom Fletcher

  “The day went on,” he said. “Rebecca started trying to occupy herself. She did the crossword, she read some of a book, she took me to bed. All within about an hour. She didn’t finish anything, though. She moved from one thing to another, looking for something that would seem to her to be worthwhile, but she could not settle. Have you ever felt like that?”

  Pauline did not respond at first. She didn’t realize that Harry was even addressing her; thought he was merely reporting some further snippet of remembered dialogue.

  “Pauline?” Harry repeated, meeting her gaze with his. “Have … have you ever felt like that?”

  “No, Harry,” Pauline said. “Chance to get bored would be a fine thing.”

  “I suppose there is always that,” Harry said. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt like that either. There’s always something to do, isn’t there? Or if not that then … then … there is always some pleasure to take, surely?”

  Pauline just nodded. It was rare for Harry to be this articulate. But then she, Pauline, was a good listener. Good at kind of fading away and letting people more or less talk to themselves.

  “It got worse as the afternoon went on,” Harry continued. “We went on a walk along the cliffs and it was such a beautiful day but Rebecca was not talking and she was not really looking at anything. She did not bother looking at the sea or the view. She kept just walking, and looking straight ahead or down at the ground. We got back and watched some TV, but then she just shook her head and said, I feel like I’m wasting so much time. I said, why? What should you be doing? And she said there is nothing that I should really be doing. That is what’s wrong, Harry. That is precisely what is wrong. And then she said, and what about Arthur? She said, we have just inflicted this same thing on him. What will he do when he is not working, or not at school? What will he feel? He won’t feel anything, will he? He will get bored like me.

  “I have to admit … I have to … I have to admit that knocked me for six, Pauline. When she said that. Honest to God, it knocked me for six. Why are you bringing Arthur into this? I asked. How can I not, she said. Everything we feel our children also will feel. Every problem we face, our children will face. That is what makes things so terrifying. Knowing that your children will have to face them too. I said, things are not terrifying, but I was starting to feel like they were. Most things are terrifying, Rebecca said, when you think about them. When you have time to think about them, most things are really very terrifying. And when you realize that your children will be terrified, too.

  “I wanted to tell her that things could be wonderful and that the world was a good world to live in. But I was starting to feel despair myself. We argued for hours, about everything. About the house being a mess even though it was spotless. About how we did or didn’t spend time with Arthur or let him go off wherever he wanted whenever he wanted to. We argued for hours, Pauline. In the end I came down here because it felt like whatever I said Rebecca would just get more sad and I didn’t think I was helping. After … After a few drinks I went back, and Rebecca was in bed asleep. I watched telly for a while and then I went to bed, too, and even … even though I was trying to be quiet, I woke Rebecca up. She just got out of bed and left the house. I don’t even know if she had been asleep, really. And then … and you know what happened then.”

  Pauline shook her head but didn’t say anything.

  BLOOD ON THE MOON

  “I want to be Mario,” Arthur said, animated and glassy-eyed in the warmth and warm light of the Vagabond. There was some early Tom Waits on—Nighthawks at the Diner— and the comforting aroma of gravy permeated the air. “I want to be Shaun of the Dead. I want to be Frodo Baggins. I want to be able to kill evil people or monsters with total moral justification. Y’know, in order to save good people. I want a clearly delineated path. You know what? I want the world to start ending so that I can rescue people, and then they’ll think me noble and worthwhile. I want to wake up and find that the world economy has totally collapsed, the government gone, nuclear war. I want to be Mario, looking for Princess Peach and rescuing her. The two of us would survive somehow.” He paused to suck in some beer. “We would be totally OK, in the end.”

  “Everybody wants the end of the world,” Bony said. “It’s many people’s favorite fantasy.”

  “I don’t know,” Yasmin said. “I don’t think it’s mine. Millions of innocent people would die. It would be rubbish.”

  “I think about that,” Arthur conceded. “My conscience and I wrestle with the fact almost daily. Somehow, though, I don’t feel much compassion for the dead. Not the dead in my fantasies, anyway.”

  “Hang on, though,” Bony said. “It’s never the end of the world in the Mario games, is it? Why do you want to be Mario?”

  “A clearly delineated path,” Arthur said. “You know where you need to go. Might be difficult getting there, but you know where you need to go.”

  “The beginning of Super Mario Galaxy felt a bit apocalyptic,” Yasmin remarked. “Meteorites coming down all over the Mushroom Kingdom.”

  “True,” Bony said. “You’ve still got to rescue Peach though, haven’t you? I love those games, but the narrative is always, at root, the same. Bowser kidnapping the princess and hiding her in his castle, and what … what’s the subtext? Is he raping her? What’s he doing with her?”

  “I don’t know,” Yasmin said. “I think applying videogame conceits and structures to real life, or vice-versa, is probably a bit … I don’t know. Kind of missing the point, isn’t it?”

  “You know what’s good about the Mario games?” Arthur leaned forward over the shining varnish of the table top. “The way he can jump down a pipe and be somewhere else.”

  “Well,” Bony said, “that’s just pipes, isn’t it?”

  “You know what I mean.” Arthur said, sitting back again. “Another world.”

  “But it’s another world already,” Yasmin said.

  “Yeah, well,” Arthur said, turning to make direct eye contact. “I’m still jealous.”

  “Drinks,” Bony said, standing up. “Who wants what? Usual?”

  Arthur and Yasmin nodded assent.

  Outside, the harbor was lit by a full moon. It was a cold, clear night. Another Friday. They come round pretty fast really, but then so do Mondays.

  “I’ve fucked up our bathroom,” Arthur informed Yasmin in a low voice. “Don’t think we’ll be able to use the shower any more. I’ve knocked loads of tiles off the wall.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  “I’m sure there’s nothing wrong with you.”

  “I know … I mean, I don’t mean anything serious. I just mean that recently I’m not always quite with it.”

  “Maybe you’re stressed out,” Yasmin said. “People sneer about stress, but it’s a real thing.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Arthur said, “I think you’re right.”

  “Besides,” Yasmin said, “look at us. Look at all of us. Who’s not kind of mentally ill?”

  “Yeah,” Arthur said, and laughed. “I can’t think of anybody who’s not kind of mentally ill.”

  Yasmin put her arm around Arthur then—they were sitting next to each other—and pulled him close. Not in any meaningful way, as far as she was concerned. Just a friendly hug.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Bony said, when he got back to the table. “Bowser’s cock is probably as big as Princess Peach’s whole body.”

  “Depends on the game,” Yasmin said, and removed her arm from Arthur’s shoulders to accept her drink. “He varies in size from one to the next.”

  “Hey, Yasmin,” Bony said, “you should come and see this thing on Drigg beach.”

  “Is it still there?” Arthur asked.

  “Yeah, still there.”

  “What is it?” Yasmin asked.

  “We don’t know,” Bony said. “It’s a massive jellyfish or something.”

  “Like, huge,” Ar
thur said. “Too big to be an actual jellyfish, but that’s what it’s like.”

  “Maybe it is a previously undiscovered species of giant jellyfish,” Yasmin suggested.

  “That would just be too good,” Bony replied. “You’ll have to come and see it.”

  “I will,” Yasmin said.

  “I think it’s part of something else,” Arthur said. He leaned forward again. He was well on his way to steaming—they all were—and his facial expressions now had a childish excitement to them. “I saw this crab the other night, Yasmin, and it was really big and soft and green. And it had a man’s voice!”

  Yasmin smiled uncertainly at Arthur, flicking her eyes over toward Bony to see if this was some kind of joke they’d both cooked up. Bony looked back with a neutral expression, but then his expression was nearly always neutral, so Yasmin didn’t know what to make of that.

  “And,” Arthur continued, “last Saturday, when I was on the phone—you know when I passed out, Yasmin—I was in this other place. It was like being under water. The ground was covered in these starfish things, and I could only move dead slowly.”

  Yasmin was smiling with one side of her mouth, eyes bright, totally incredulous, still unsure of the source of this weirdness. Humor? Drunkenness? Stress? She wanted to laugh.

  “It was like … It was like my mum was there,” Arthur concluded, and the room seemed to fall quiet then, for him at least, and he looked down at the table, suddenly ashamed.

  Yasmin glanced back at Bony. He held her gaze but Yasmin was really not sure what he was trying to convey, if anything.

  “Oh, Arthur,” she said, in the end, “are you OK?”

  “Yes,” Arthur said. “Well, like I was saying, sometimes I feel like I’m losing it slightly, but otherwise I feel happier than I’ve felt in a long time.”

  “That’s good, then,” Yasmin said.

  “It is good,” Arthur said. “What I was going to say, though, was that Mum died in the sea, didn’t she? And that … landscape I saw, and the crab, and the Thing on the beach, and the way Dad talks to Mum on the phone, it all … it all adds up to something, I’m sure of it. Even if I don’t know what it is.”

  “I don’t know about you,” Bony said, “but I’m feeling the urge to go outside. Let’s drink up and get some fresh air.”

  They sat on the low sandstone wall that ran along the edge of the promenade and sloped gently down into the calm waters of the marina’s far side. It was cold but that was OK. They had coats on and they were drunk, and they were only ten meters from the Vagabond door if they suddenly started to feel chilly.

  “Look,” Yasmin said, pointing up. “Blood on the moon.”

  “What?” Arthur said. “What do you mean?”

  “Never heard that before? It’s just an expression for when you can see those rings around it. Those pale rings.”

  “No,” Arthur said, “I’ve never heard that.”

  “I can’t believe you’ve never heard that.”

  There was a moment’s silence.

  “But then,” Arthur said, “maybe I’ve led a sheltered life. I thought that teacakes were savory things until last year. They’re just bread buns.”

  Yasmin laughed. Arthur felt like a retard then. Her laughter was good-natured, but, still … Am I a retard? he wondered. It wasn’t a word—retard—that he’d ever say out loud, but in his head, he reasoned, it was OK. Nobody knew he was thinking it, right? Stars dusted the sky. The sky was almost pale with them. People had told him that in cities and other places you could never see as many stars as you could in West Cumbria. Arthur wasn’t sure he could really exist in such places.

  “There’s somebody over there looking at us,” Bony said. “Over by the Wave. He’s on the far side. Look.”

  Arthur looked and saw a hulking figure in black, his exposed features lit green by the Wave. He could see that the figure’s face was indeed directed their way.

  “Artemis,” Yasmin said.

  “I saw him come through Drigg on the train,” Bony said. “Looked like a vicious fucker.”

  “He is,” Arthur said.

  “Fuck,” said Yasmin, “he’s walking over here. Why is he walking over here?”

  The three of them sat and watched as Artemis strode toward them like a teacher might approach a fight taking place in the playground. Yasmin and Arthur already knew that this was just the way he walked, but Bony wore a faint smile of disbelief. Who was this vicious fucker, and why was he walking like he owned the whole place?

  Upon arrival, Artemis glanced cursorily at Bony and then addressed Arthur and Yasmin. “What brings you two out here?” he asked.

  His voice was civil but in a strained, unnatural way.

  “Just getting some fresh air,” Yasmin said. “Been in there.” She nodded toward the Vagabond.

  “I see,” Artemis said. “Out for a drink, were we?”

  “Yeah,” Arthur said.

  Artemis gazed at Arthur for what to Arthur seemed like a long time, then. He felt that in some way he was being examined or evaluated.

  “Well,” Artemis said quietly, “don’t spoil yourselves.”

  “What are you up to out here, anyway?” Bony slurred, breaking the silence. “And who are you, again?”

  Artemis looked at Bony. “I know you,” he said. “I recognize you.”

  “Yeah,” Bony said. “You saw me from the train, in Drigg, couple of weeks ago.”

  “Oh yes.” Artemis was sneering slightly, despite himself. “Drigg. Well, as Arthur and Yasmin here can confirm, I’m Artemis Black, the new manager at the Interext site. You might know it better as the Outsourcing Unlimited site.”

  “I know where you mean,” Bony said. “Doesn’t really matter what it’s called though, does it? Or what company runs the spot. It’s always just another fucking office.”

  Artemis’s face froze a little bit, transforming into a hard, narrow-eyed mask.

  “Just remember who you’re talking to,” he said.

  “What?” Bony laughed, standing up. “What? I’m not one of your employees! You can’t do anything to me. You can’t sack me. Besides, you’re not at work now. You don’t have to pretend to be so into it. It’s Friday night, for fuck’s sake!”

  “Nobody’s pretending,” Artemis replied, his voice quiet again. Arthur and Yasmin watched nervously, eyes flicking to and fro.

  “Anyway,” Bony said, “you didn’t answer my first question.”

  “I don’t have to answer any of your questions.”

  “But you asked these two the same question,” Bony said, waving his arm to indicate Yasmin and Arthur. “Why can’t I ask you?”

  “They’re my employees,” Artemis said.

  “No,” Bony said, “not outside of work they’re not.” All trace of drunkenness was gone from his voice.

  Artemis’s long black coat flapped slightly in the gathering wind.

  “I was just out for a walk,” he said. “Just thought I’d go out for a walk, that’s all. The hotel sometimes gets oppressive. Having said that, I’m very tired and, if it’s quite all right with you, I think I’ll be heading back there now.”

  “OK,” Bony said. “Well, sleep well. Have a good weekend.”

  “I will,” Artemis said. He grinned mirthlessly at Bony, and then looked back at Arthur before letting his eyes rest on Yasmin for a moment. He glanced back at Bony. “I don’t think drink suits you,” he said, “because you seem thoroughly unpleasant. That’s how I’ll always remember you: unpleasant. You understand?”

  Bony didn’t say anything. There was a set to his mouth and a glint to his eyes that neither Arthur nor Yasmin recognized.

  Artemis walked away—away from the harbor, past the Vagabond, and on to Swingpump Lane. He turned right and disappeared.

  “Bony,” Yasmin said. “Wow.”

  “It’s as if he wants the whole town to be afraid of him,” Arthur said.

  “But what is he?” Bony said. “He is nothing.”

  “I
know,” Arthur said. “It’s sad.”

  “A nothing person,” Bony said, “but maybe also a vicious fucker. Keep your eye on that one.”

  “He kind of reminds me of Bowser,” Arthur said. “He’s like a genuinely evil version of Bowser who actually would be raping Princess Peach up there in his castle.”

  Bony had dropped his Nintendo Wii off at Arthur’s house prior to their stint in the pub. Yasmin decided against joining the boys for a late-night gaming session, despite really wanting to, as she was working overtime in the morning, of course. So Bony and Arthur both hugged Yasmin goodnight at the door to the building she lived in, and set off walking south past the old warehouses (now flats), past the Wave, past the nice restaurants, past the burned-out hotel, up the steep steps—up and up and up to the estate.

  “I’m not sure why you find her so attractive,” Bony said.

  “You wouldn’t,” Arthur said.

  “Yeah,” Bony said, “I suppose. I mean, she’s lovely. I don’t mean she’s not lovely.”

  “The reason you don’t find her attractive is that you’re not really capable of it,” Arthur said. “The reason lies with you, not with her.”

  “You’re right,” Bony said. “You’re right.”

  The game they played was Super Mario Galaxy. Bony took control of the eponymous hero—the plumber, Mario—as he was the more sober. Arthur happily fulfilled the role of Player Two, pointing at the screen with the second controller to gather the collectibles, or firing multi-colored projectiles at the numerous weird denizens of the various planetoids that Mario traversed.

  The room the two of them were seated in was dark, apart from the glow of the TV screen. It was a mass of bright colors, and soon, to Arthur or Bony, there was no room surrounding them, and there was no darkness either. Just Super Mario Galaxy, in which Mario had to visit and fix one solar system and then the next on his voyage to catch Bowser—some giant, dragonish, turtle creature—and rescue Princess Peach. Each solar system was made up of tiny planets of varying incredible shapes and sizes, some close enough to each other for Mario to jump between them, using their gravitational fields to zip from one puzzle or obstacle course to the next, and all the while that incredible gulf was wheeling beneath him, the infinite universe—a dazzling black or deep-blue or kaleidoscopic sea of nebulae, always full of stars that glinted in the depths. A beautiful space. And it was always there—just beyond the edge, just one clumsy step away.