The Thing on the Shore

by Tom Fletcher

  It was a strange and compelling contrast, Arthur felt: the traditionally cartoony, fantastic world of the Mario games, replete with all of the magic and character that was unique to that world, against a backdrop of terrifying nothingness. A game that ultimately just asked you to jump from one tiny rock to the next, with no up, no down. And there, always, that dizzying, dizzying, drop. It would kill you, if you fell.

  BAD SMELL

  That Saturday, at work, Harry received one of those spoof emails. One of those funny ones that people passed on to each other. This one was supposed to be a letter from the manager of a branch of Tesco’s explaining to somebody why they’d been banned from the supermarket. The introduction to the email suggested that the catalog of misdemeanors identified could be used by male shoppers as a “to-do list” with which to alleviate the boredom of being dragged around by “the wife” on the weekly food shop.

  It wasn’t very busy, so Harry checked that there was no manager lurking behind him, looking over his shoulder, and then opened the attachment. (Not that anybody would have to be looking directly over his shoulder to see what he was up to; Harry’s screen resolution was set to display everything massively, so that anyone with adequate eyesight could read his screen clearly from a fair distance.) All around him was a combination of noises: the sound of the heavy rain falling against the glass and the sound of people talking quietly, tiredly, into their mouthpieces.

  Harry read the letter listlessly, his lips pursed, his eyes flicking along each line in turn. He could see the bits which were supposed to be funny, but nothing elicited a laugh or even a smile. He stopped when he got to the line about leaving a trail of tomato ketchup from the feminine hygiene products to the toilet doors, feeling disproportionately depressed by that, then closed the email. He’d rather just sit and wait for the next call than read things that made him feel so unhappy in such an insidious way.

  The beep.

  “Good morning—um, afternoon—you’re through to Harry. Sorry about that. How can I help?”

  “Hi,” the customer said, male with a Lancashire accent. “Harry, did you say?”

  “Yes, that’s … that’s right.”

  “Good afternoon, then, Harry.”

  The man’s voice was measured and yet hard. Harry knew this tone of voice. It meant the customer wanted you to know they were angry, but also wanted you to know that they were big enough not to express that anger.

  “Good … good afternoon. Could I take your account number, please?”

  “Hang on a moment, Harry. I thought you wanted to know how you can help me?”

  “Yes. Yes, I do. That’s right. But … Sorry, how can I help?”

  Harry could feel himself sweating and flaking.

  “Well, Harry. Let me tell you. I’ve had so much trouble with your company you wouldn’t believe it, so you’d better be able to help me. Anger is not the word. Now, then, I was expecting—”

  “S-sorry,” Harry said. “Actually, could I take your account number please? It just means that I can look at the notes. If … if you’ve called about this before, then—”

  “Have I called about this before? Ha!”

  Harry thought the customer sounded like he was enjoying himself too much to be as angry as he claimed. Maybe, after a long enough period of anger, people stopped actually behaving angrily and just became slightly psychotic.

  “No,” Harry said, “I know you’ve called before. I just mean … I just need, um, please can I have your account number?”

  “For God’s sake, man! It doesn’t bode well for the rest of our conversation if you’re getting confused before I’ve even told you what’s wrong! Dear me. Are you ready? My account number is seven-two-five-four-one-one-one-eight-seven-one. Get that?”

  “Yes,” Harry said, and actually he had caught the number, even though the man had spoken so fast that Harry was sure he had been trying to make things difficult for him. “Thank you. I’m just going to look at the notes, if that’s … if that’s OK.”

  “Basically I’ve been expecting a visit from one of your people to establish whether or not my supply is shared by my neighbors. Because, if it is, then I might be paying for their usage, and that would explain why my bills are so high. Would you agree?”

  “Yes,” Harry said quietly, while he waited for the notes page to load on screen.

  “But if we don’t share a supply, then there must be some other problem. Anyway. God knows how many times I’ve rung about this, and God knows how many times I’ve asked for this inspection, but as yet all you’ve done is disappoint me.”

  “I’m just … just looking all of this up now, Mr. Planer.”

  “How do you know my name?”

  Harry wasn’t sure if the man was being serious.

  “I’m … I’m looking at your account,” he explained, just in case. “It shows your name on here.”

  Mr. Planer did not reply.

  “Well,” Harry said, “I can see … I can see that you’ve rung up lots of times before to try and get this visit arranged.” Harry was scrolling through pages of notes relating to previous calls—one after the other, twice a week more or less, all the same issue.

  “I can’t tell you how many times,” Mr. Planer said. “And, every time, whoever I speak to refuses to help me.”

  “I’ll … I’ll see what I can do,” Harry said, although he could already tell from the notes how this conversation would probably end. “I can arrange for one of our contractors to call you and make an appointment. If I could just take your phone number, then—”

  “Never!” Planer spat. “I will not give you my phone number! You’ll pass it on to God knows who else, and all those sales people will never let me go, will never stop ringing. I’ve been down this road before and, believe you me, I know where that goes and I’m not falling for it again, Harry, oh no, I’m not.”

  “You … you don’t have to give me your phone number,” Harry said, “but our contractors will need it, if they’re going to visit. They won’t just accept a request from me without a phone number, because … because it’s expensive for them to visit and then find there’s nobody in or something. That’s a … it’s a wasted visit.”

  “I don’t care how much it costs your company! I’m a paying customer, damn it!”

  “S-sorry, Mr. … Mr. Planer,” Harry said. His forehead was wet now and he could smell his own armpits. “It’s not quite the … the cost that’s the issue. They just … they simply … they just can’t do it without ringing you first. I can’t request a visit without giving the phone number.”

  “What about people who don’t have phones, eh? Eh? What about them?”

  “I can’t … I can’t honestly say that anybody without access to a phone has ever rung me up,” Harry said.

  “I hope you’re not trying to be funny with me, Harry.”

  “N-no,” Harry said, confused.

  “Do they have a telephone number, these contractors?”

  “Yes, they do,” Harry said. “I was … was just about to try and speak to them now, actually. But I should … I should say beforehand that their phone line is very busy, so I might not be able to get through.”

  “Just sort it out,” Planer said.

  “O-OK,” Harry said, and put Planer on hold while he dialed the number for the contractors.

  Five minutes later Planer was still on hold, and Harry still hadn’t got through to the contractors. He was on hold too, in effect, listening to some on-hold music as inane and frustrating as that to which Planer was probably listening as well. He was about to give up and return to Mr. Planer, when he heard something. It sounded like a kind of rattling, metallic laugh in the distance, a long way down the wire.

  Harry terminated the outgoing call as soon as he heard that sound. He mopped at his forehead with his shirt-sleeve, then took Planer off hold.

  “Hello? Hello, Mr. Planer?”

  “Still here,” Planer said.

  “Sorry … sorry about the w
ait there,” Harry said.

  “You’d better have some good news for me after wasting so much of my time.”

  “I … I’m really sorry, Mr. Planer, but I wasn’t able to get … to get, um … to get through to … to the … to the contractors, so I’m going to have to ask … to ask you again for your phone number, or … or we won’t be able to, um, come and visit your … your property to … to …”

  “Right,” Planer said. “Right, then, Harry. This is what’s going to happen, OK? I’m going to take your name, and then you’re going to sort this out, OK? I’m going to take your name and hang up, and then you’re going to get back in touch with me to let me know the next steps. So, then, what’s your surname, Harry?”

  “Miller,” Harry said.

  “Harry Miller,” Planer said. “OK, then, Harry Miller. I’ll expect a call from you within the week. And if I ever have to ring back, it’ll be you I’m asking for, OK?”

  “OK,” Harry said. “But I don’t have your—”

  The phone went dead. Harry quickly logged out and put a damp forehead in his wet hands. He felt like he was dissolving. His brain had become totally useless. He took his headset off and placed it on the desk and he saw that he was shaking. He stood up, and saw everybody else quickly look away, and he wondered how loudly he had been wittering, stammering, blathering.

  He went to the toilets and locked himself in a cubicle for a few minutes.

  While Harry was away from his desk, a newish employee who was sitting nearby—Oscar—rushed over and unscrewed the small metal microphone from the end of the arm of Harry’s headset. He looked furtively around him and, encouraged by the stifled laughter and witless gestures of a couple of his team-mates, stuck the mic down the back of his trousers and pushed it into the puckered aperture of his anus. He then removed it and screwed it back on to the headset arm, gave his team-mates the thumbs-up and went off to wash his hands.

  *

  Harry returned to his desk after composing himself, and put his headset back on. He lowered the arm so that the microphone was positioned in front of his mouth, ready for the next call, and logged back into his phone. He grimaced. He could smell shit. There was no doubt about it. Shit. He panicked, started to stand up, but stopped himself in case somehow the smell was coming from him and its source was visible on his clothing. It smelled strong, so it must be coming from him. He wouldn’t be at all surprised if his body had humiliated him in this way. He wouldn’t be surprised if, in the sweaty, flapping state he’d got into, he’d let a little bit go. He knew his ass felt damp, anyway, and had thought that was just sweat; but what if it was more than that? He realized he was vigorously shaking his head and stopped it. He looked up and saw that people nearby were staring at him and laughing. They must be able to smell it too.

  Fuck’s sake. Harry could feel tears rising. This was intolerable.

  He shrugged his ratty little coat on and stood up and started walking quickly away from his desk. The headset caught and pulled, and he ripped it from his head.

  “Fuck—fucking thing!” he said, and threw it on to the floor. Then he left the room and went down the stairs and exited the building.

  It was only as he was walking past Tesco’s that he realized he couldn’t smell shit any more. But he didn’t know what that meant.

  Water was bucketing down out of the sky. Harry sloped along the harbor toward home, still feeling fragmented, still feeling incoherent and brain-dead. The seagulls, with their mad shrieking, seemed to be making more sense than his own thoughts.

  As he climbed the many steps up to the estate, an idea solidified in Harry’s thoughts. A hot shower. Yes.

  That’s what he would do.

  REALISATION

  Arthur was looking out of his bedroom window at the rain, jacket half on, when he heard the front door go. He frowned. Dad shouldn’t be back from work this early. He listened to his father ascend the stairs and then slam the bathroom door.

  “Dad?” Arthur shouted, moving out on to the green-carpeted landing. “Are you OK? Have you come home sick?”

  “Yeah,” Harry shouted back. At least, that’s what it sounded like through the door. “Fine.”

  “I’m going out,” Arthur said.

  “Fine,” Harry said. “Fine. Fine. Fine.”

  Arthur stretched out his arms and flattened himself against the slick, streaming exterior curve of the lighthouse, his cheek cold against the wetness, the water running down his neck and under the collar of his jacket.

  The rain splashed down heavily, roughening the surface of the sea and dancing across the pitted stonework of the pier. The sky was a whitish-gray, not the dark sultry gray of storm clouds, just the color of frosted grass maybe, or the color of bone. The sea itself was the color of bruises, a less vibrant version of the palette that had been evident in that other landscape—or, as Arthur had been thinking of it, “the Scape.”

  The Scape was not under water. Arthur realized that much now. He thought about it again, as the violent precipitation plastered him against the bright white and red of the lighthouse. He closed his eyes. He had needed to move slowly, when he was there, but that wasn’t due to any resistance from water. It almost wasn’t physical movement as such at all, but it was as if his mind had been floating over the green and purple surface of spidery starfish and pulsing tentacles. There had been a sky, of sorts, and the City in the distance and—despite the creatures crawling over the ground, so numerous and densely packed as to have maybe even formed the ground—his impression had been of a dry place. He had not been aware of having to breathe. And yet there had been a solidity to it all: a tangibility.

  Arthur turned and walked to the edge of the pier and looked down at the water splashing up in the rain. The Scape was not the sea, but there was still some kind of connection; some kind of echo or reflection of one in the other.

  When Arthur got home the shower was running, and he could hear the voice of his father from the bathroom. As he went upstairs, Arthur could see that the bathroom door was actually open. Steam billowed out, floating down the top few steps, and leaving moisture on the landing walls.

  Harry was singing weakly. He was singing something excruciating by some terrible rock band from the eighties, but Arthur didn’t know what.

  “You OK, Dad?” he called, from just outside the bathroom door.

  “Son?” Harry replied and the shower was suddenly turned off. “Is that you?”

  “Yeah,” Arthur said, placing his hand nervously on the door. He was aware of his pulse speeding up.

  “Oh, son,” Harry said, “it’s been an awful day. Put the kettle on, eh? Must be time for … for Paxman.”

  “It’s only half past three,” Arthur said, “and it’s Saturday.”

  “Well,” Harry said, “it’s still been bloody awful.”

  “What’s happened?”

  Harry didn’t reply.

  “Dad,” Arthur persisted, “I’m going to open the door. I don’t think you’re well.”

  He waited a moment and then entered the room.

  Harry was sitting in the bath, his shoulders shaking, his skin blotchy. He evidently hadn’t pulled the shower curtain across, and water was everywhere. It was all over the bathroom floor, the hand-towel they used as a bathmat almost floating, the whole room sodden and miserable.

  The plughole was partly blocked with loose plaster that the shower had washed away from the now exposed section of the wall, which meant that the bath itself was nearly half-full with grit and soapy water. The wall, where the tiles had been, was now black and disgusting.

  The worms were there, too, of course. When he approached the bath, Arthur balked on seeing them all wriggling in the water and clinging to his father’s skin. He didn’t dare look too closely at the wall itself, for fear of spotting some as-yet unseen writhing knot, evidence of some kind of habitat cluster.

  After what felt like an age of hesitation, he grabbed his father under the armpits and hauled him up.

&nb
sp; PART FOUR

  ARTEMIS AT WORK

  Artemis worked best when there was nobody else there. He tended to haunt the call center through the night and on Sundays. This was a Sunday. This was the Sunday after the Saturday on which that flaky fuckwit Harry had thrown a pissy-fit and run screaming from the office. Well, he needn’t think of coming back.

  Artemis was going through the head count with a red pen, comparing names against call-quality scores and then cross-referencing with average handling times. He ticked people off as he went.

  “Dozy cunt,” he would mutter as he did so. “Uppity fucker. Daydreamy bastard. Egotistical twit. Intolerable bitch.”

  Anybody observing might have found it curious that Artemis had such vehement personal feelings toward each and every employee who was, by his draconian standards, underperforming. The fact was that Artemis had vehement personal feelings about everybody, underperforming or not.

  The vacant floor stretched away from him in all directions. Empty chairs, desktop terminals with blank screens. The place was quiet. The only sound was the terrible, interminable precipitation outside. It never seemed to end here. Of course, obviously, sometimes there would be nothing falling from the sky; it was just that Artemis always seemed to miss those rare moments.

  After a time spent slashing the head count, he stood up and went for a walk around the center: the working floor, the pods, the training rooms, the meeting rooms. In one meeting room he stared out of the east-facing windows and watched waves of white hailstones billowing across the railway platforms and the small scrappy skate park beyond them.