by Ray Cluley
Table of Contents
All Change
I Have Heard the Mermaids Singing
The Festering
At Night, When the Demons Come
Night Fishing
Knock-Knock
The Death Drive of Rita, nee Carina
The Man Who Was
Shark! Shark!
Bloodcloth
The Tilt
Bones of Crow
Pins and Needles
Gator Moon
Where the Salmon Run
Indian Giver
A Mother’s Blood
The Travellers Stay
No More West
Beachcombing
ChiZine Publications
FIRST EDITION
Probably Monsters © 2015 by Ray Cluley
Cover artwork © 2015 by Erik Mohr
Cover and interior design by © 2015 by Samantha Beiko
All Rights Reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Cluley, Ray, 1976-, author
Probably monsters / Ray Cluley.
Short stories.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77148-334-6 (pbk.).--ISBN 978-1-77148-335-3
(ebook)
I. Title.
PR6103.L84P76 2015 823’.92 C2015-900090-4
C2015-900091-2
CHIZINE PUBLICATIONS
Toronto, Canada
www.chizinepub.com
[email protected]
Edited by Courtney Kelly
Proofread by Dominik Parisien
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada.
Published with the generous assistance of the Ontario Arts Council.
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PROBABLY
MONSTERS
For everyone who said I could
then waited for me to believe them.
Especially my mother. She fought monsters and, for a long time, won.
Probably Monsters:
a brief explanation
The title of this collection comes from the imagination of a little girl called Isabella. She asked what had made the hole she’d discovered in the floor and we didn’t know, so with the straightforward simplicity only childhood seems to allow she provided her own answer: “Probably monsters.”
Nowadays, when people ask me what I’m writing about, I tend to say “probably monsters.” Sometimes the monsters are blood-sucking fiends with fleshy wings, and sometimes they’re shambling dead things that won’t rest. Sometimes. Sometimes they’re people, people like you and me (well, maybe you, certainly not me) and these ones are everywhere. But sometimes they’re worse than any of these. They’re the things that make us howl in the darkness, hoping no one hears—monsters we’ve perhaps made ourselves and struggle to overcome. Despite what our parents may have told us, there are such things as monsters. Lots of them. We discover that quickly, growing up. So enjoy the book. You’ll find a lot of different monsters here, including yours.
Probably.
Ray Cluley, February 2015
“‘It’s poor judgment’, said Grandpa, ‘to call anything by a name. We don’t know what a hobgoblin or a vampire or a troll is. Could be lots of things. You can’t heave them into categories with labels and say they’ll act one way or another. That’d be silly. They’re people. People who do things. Yes, that’s the way to put it. People who do things.’”
Ray Bradbury, “The Man Upstairs”
CONTENTS
All Change
I Have Heard the Mermaids Singing
The Festering
At Night, When the Demons Come
Night Fishing
Knock-Knock
The Death Drive of Rita, nee Carina
The Man Who Was
Shark! Shark!
Bloodcloth
The Tilt
Bones of Crow
Pins and Needles
Gator Moon
Where the Salmon Run
Indian Giver
A Mother’s Blood
The Travellers Stay
No More West
Beachcombing
All Change
Robert had become one of those people who ran for the train, huffing his way along the platform, briefcase in hand and heart struggling to keep up because he was getting bloody old. Well, sort of running; seventy-six, and feeling twice that. He knew people were making silent bets as to whether he would make it or not. To hell with them if he didn’t.
“The train now approaching platform three is the six-sixteen service for . . .”
“Excuse me, excuse me, coming through please.”
“. . . calling at . . .”
“Miss? Thank you. Excuse me.”
But he was too late. The people spilling from the carriages had become people heading for other platforms, heading for exits, greeting loved ones, buying coffee, and the one he was looking for was likely already gone.
“Oh, Chri—”
The full extent of his blasphemy was lost to the sharp blast of a whistle and the reprimanding hiss of closing doors. He scanned the people quickly, looking for loners, but everyone was in such a rush, criss-crossing each other’s paths, pushing, pausing, that he couldn’t get a decent fix on anyone or anything.
The train pulled away leaving Robert to wonder why they were never late when you needed them to be.
He closed his eyes and concentrated.
It had all been so much easier when he was young. Now there were too many trains, too many more platforms, too many new points to start and finish from. The only thing that didn’t change was the fact that they always came through here. Wherever they were heading, wherever they had come from, this was where they came to at some point in their journey. Strangers passing through, unnoticed by most. Usually he was ready to meet them, had already sensed who or what they were, but not today. Today, just a feeling that he was meant to be here, and then a feeling as to which platform, and that was all.
“Is this right platform for six thirty-four?” a young Asian lady asked, clutching his arm.
Robert shrugged off her hand with a, “How should I know?” adding, “I don’t work here.”
Though of course it looked like he did. That was why he wore the blue trousers, the blue blazer, the awful tie. Not quite the uniform but close enough, and people barely noticed the briefcase.
The woman said something in her own language to an older lady beside her and they left him. The older woman looked back, but they
were already too far for Robert to hear whatever curses she threw back at him.
They weren’t real curses. Just an offloading of foreign syllables. He let them go.
“Where?” he muttered. “Where?”
There was a man, by the kiosk, looking around, maybe searching for—No. He had a coffee cup stuffed with an empty crisp packet; he was only looking for a bin. There, coming down the stairs, a woman, awkward in her steps because perhaps she—No. Just walking too fast in new heels. That one, though, the young lad looking up at the screen—something felt right about him. Or rather, it felt wrong. Yes, yes, it was getting stronger as Robert made his way over. A man in his early twenties, dark hair, brooding looks, pale—No. Not him. It was the screen he was looking at. Robert was feeling the screen. The arrival time. The next train.
He didn’t know who or what he was after yet, but he knew the train they’d be on. He hoped he could kill them quick and get home before dark.
S
He was going to have to get on the train. It wouldn’t be the first time, but those days had been in his youth, when he was less confident. Once, when he’d just started, he’d followed one all the way up to Scotland to make sure he was right about them. He had been, and he’d done what he had to, but his caution had meant another long uncomfortable journey back again. Plus there was the expense to consider. It was cheaper back then, of course, riding the train, much cheaper (and with a better chance of a seat) but at the time it had still emptied his wallet. These days he usually managed to get it done at the station. Usually. Often it happened in one of the toilet blocks, or far enough down the platform, near enough to the lines, that he was able to drag whatever was left to the edge and roll it on to the rails. It depended on what he was dealing with. Some he could do away with even in a crowd, confident nobody would know what had happened.
“Excuse me, mate, where’s the gents’?”
Robert raised the briefcase to point because his other hand was clutching the knife in his pocket. The lad looked feral, but then a lot of them did these days.
“Cheers.”
He watched to see if the young man actually went there, if it had been a genuine enquiry and not an attempt to glean something from Robert’s actions or demeanour. But the lad headed right for the toilets, with some degree of urgency in fact. It seemed genuine enough.
Robert remembered one particular encounter in those toilets. He always remembered the pretty ones. She’d looked like a backpacker but the bag was there to conceal a large gelatinous hump, the weak spot Robert lunged for as soon as he’d identified the type. After that it was just a case of scooping handfuls of water from the sink to wash the ooze down the drain set in the floor. He’d bagged the clothes and binned them.
A man on the platform checked his watch, checked the screen, looked around. His gaze settled briefly on the tunnel down the track but from where Robert stood he couldn’t tell if it was with impatience for the train or with a longing for the darkness he saw inside. If the man moved that way, Robert would have to follow. He hated working in the tunnel now that the lines were electrified, but such hazards had their uses. Still, it had all been so much simpler in the old days.
Old days? Young days, more like. These were the old days.
The rails made a quiet tsst-tsst, whispering the train’s imminent arrival (tsst-tsst) moments before the voiced announcement declared it. Six twenty-five. He still didn’t have his target; he’d have to get on board with the crowd.
People shuffled closer to the platform, some of them moving further up its length as if they could tell where the doors would stop, though they hadn’t seemed able to do so before when they’d had all that time waiting. People picked up bags and cases and extended the handles of their wheeled luggage. One man shouldered a guitar case that could have really been anything of a number of things. Robert was getting his feeling from all around but couldn’t pinpoint a target. He would have to get on the train with whatever it was he was here for and worry about locating it later.
S
The train had three carriages. Robert wanted to seat himself at the furthest end but it was remarkably full. All the seats were taken except one that was wet with something pungent. The man in the next seat, asleep against the greasy glass of the window, didn’t seem to mind it though. Maybe it was his. Robert let him keep it, turning his body sideways and moving further up the aisle. Despite his care, his case bumped the armrests and elbows of a few passengers but they accepted his apologies with the familiarity of seasoned rail users.
“Here you go, you can sit here.”
“Oh no,” Robert said, though it would be a good spot. He hated the fact that he looked old enough for the young lady to give up her seat.
“Really,” she said. “I won’t need it much longer.” She had beautiful eyes, green like go.
“Well if you don’t mind,” he conceded, already sitting down. Before he could complete the action the train pulled away and he had to steady himself with an arm against the fold-up table of the seat in front. He fell into his seat with the lurch of movement. The fold-up table opened in front of him. A newspaper had been tucked there, folded open to a page he knew was the third one because of the picture.
Robert sighed, turned the paper over, and settled himself. He put his briefcase by his feet to the annoyance of the teenager lounging in the adjacent seat who had to move his own feet out of the space. For a moment Robert thought the lad’s ears were bleeding but it wasn’t blood, it was a red wire leading to an iP3 M-pod thing somewhere in a pocket. Still, from the sounds of how loud it was, Robert was surprised there wasn’t blood as well. It was suddenly clear why the young woman had been so eager to move.
He was feeling something from the kid, but it might have just been teenage angst and rage and hatred at the world, judging from the band that screamed at him, yelling directly into his brain. In fact, the feeling could’ve been coming from anyone around him; the carriage was so full it was difficult to tell. His plan had been to work his way slowly up the train but he was already in the right carriage, he knew that much. Robert was getting old but he could still go to the toilet on his own, it just took him a little longer; this would be no different.
He feigned getting comfortable so he could fidget a few looks at other passengers.
Opposite him, reading something from a tiny screen that wanted to be a book, was a swarthy fellow in business clothes. Suit, trousers, shirt open at the neck with no sign of a tie. He wore a tiny crucifix, so that narrowed the possibilities down one. His chest and throat were rather hairy, though. His nails were long; Robert saw them whenever he pressed a button on his toy. Next to him was a woman in a burka that could have been disguising all manner of signs; Robert thought perhaps a body wrapped in thin crisp bandages, skin tight and leathery, a skeletal figure held together with cobwebs. In front of them, a pair sat talking in quiet tones, whispers, and maybe they—
The teenager beside Robert shifted in his seat, turning away from Robert to face the window. He traced lines in the condensation. Nothing arcane, not an ancient script, just faces. Reminders of previous victims? Maybe it wasn’t music he listened to, maybe it really was the screaming it sounded like, something to remember his prey by. Or maybe the faces were something voodoo he could spit a hex at. No. He wiped them away.
The countryside was out there somewhere, rushing past the window, but it was dark and all Robert saw were streetlights where he wanted trees, and the red rear lights of cars like evil eyes in the early night. He noticed his fellow passenger had a reflection in its surface. And he noticed the teenager notice him notice.
“What are you looking at?”
Robert didn’t answer but turned away.
“Tickets, please.”
Robert settled back into his seat and patted his pockets for his wallet, found it, folded it open. There was a library card in the plast
ic window where the photo of a loved one should have been. He caressed it briefly, as he might a lost wife. When Robert was a child he loved spending time in the library. As he grew older, to escape the horrors of the war that terrified his country, he buried himself in books. From boys’ adventure stories he went on to Stoker, Poe, and M.R. James. By the time he was old enough for the war there was no part for him to play in it, but he was old enough for Lovecraft and Machen and Clark Ashton Smith. The library had taught him a lot. It taught him how to fight a different war, different to the one his father had died in but a war just the same, and just as dangerous. More so, because the enemy was always changing and had a variety of strengths. Fortunately most had a variety of weaknesses, too. The books had taught him that.
He needed to clear his mind for a moment before trying to focus again. As nice as Nikki (19, a student from Middlesbrough) looked in bikini pants and oil, Robert decided to read a book of his own rather than the newspaper. He rested his case on his lap, flipped the catches, and rummaged around inside without opening it more than he had to. He would feel what he wanted easily enough, avoiding the bottles and the vials and the cold metal, the leaves, the chalk, the holy symbols. The first book he found was old and brittle and ribbon-bound, sealed with a silver clasp, but the next had the comfortable warm flexibility of a second hand novel and he withdrew it eagerly. It was Ray Bradbury’s The October Country. He would read “The Jar” again, take comfort from its familiarity and regain a sense of who he was, what he was doing.
“Tickets?”
“Return, please,” Robert asked, pulling out a handful of notes. “End of the line.”
The conductor tapped at a device he wore strapped across his chest. His actions were slow and weak and Robert thought maybe he could detect a faint odour coming from the man. Something chemical, something . . . earthy. He looked carefully at the man’s face, his hands, and thought maybe they were too pale. He had the complexion that was referred to as ashen, or wan, depending who you were reading. When the man saw him looking and offered a hesitant smile, the teeth Robert saw were crooked and yellow and there was something caught between the front ones. Spinach, maybe. Maybe something else. Then the machine was spitting out an orange ticket, cutting it with a robotic hiccup as the man took Robert’s money. He shambled away to the next row of seats. “Tickets.”