by Ray Cluley
The little girl who used it was very happy even though the dentist had just put metal on her teeth because her daddy brought her to the beach instead of taking her back to school and she loved the beach. She wasn’t very good at digging. Tommy felt how she held the handle in the middle and tipped the spade to the sand and flicked it instead of pushing it in deep and lifting it or turning it. He felt how her daddy had helped. His hands were low and high on the handle like they were supposed to be. He dug the sand and the girl put handfuls into a bucket, he knew because the daddy knew, and the two of them were very happy. The daddy was glad she was still a child, and so was the girl but in a more muddled up way.
Tommy opened up a bin bag and put the green spade inside. He gathered the top together and carried it in his left hand because it was the treasure bag; things that people lost and Tommy found and took his joy from.
The man was still there. His long coat was open a little bit and the wind filled it up sometimes, puffing it like a dark sail. The man was like the mast of a ship that wasn’t going anywhere. He wore a scarf, too, burgundy like beetroot which Tommy didn’t like but ate because it was good for you, and the wind blew the scarf back like a flag.
Tommy took off his sandals to feel the sand better and because today he would remember to check the man’s footprints.
He found a whole carrier bag full of litter and went through it but put it all in the rubbish because he didn’t like the people. They were messy and angry and one of them was bullying the other one about his girlfriend. He also found a hairclip and even though it was quite a way from the sea it must have been there a while because it was clean so that went in the rubbish bag too.
Further along the beach he found one of the small balloon things he wasn’t allowed to touch. It was gritty with sand stuck all over it. He nearly touched it anyway because the feeling he got was so good but Sally had found one on his treasure shelf once and was very angry and disgusted and upset about it. She said they were for adults even though Tommy knew it belonged to someone still at school and she took it away in a bundle of tissues and threw it away. He looked for the square wrapper he sometimes found nearby because Sally didn’t say he couldn’t touch those and they felt good too, all excited and nervous and excited and excited, but he couldn’t find it.
He did find a comb. He thought it was funny whenever he found a comb because Sally and the people who looked after him said he was a beachcomber which was someone who collected treasures from the beach. He closed his eyes and reached for it. The man who had lost it carried it in his back pocket but never used it because he had no hair. He carried it because that’s what his father used to do. Father was the adult word for daddy. This man loved his daddy even though he was gone, which made him a bit like Tommy. He put it in the treasure bag after using it to make tiny little grooves in the sand.
The man was still there and Tommy only had a little bit of beach left to go before he was too close. He didn’t want the man to touch him in case he wasn’t nice. You could drop a thing that wasn’t nice but it could hurt and hurt if it was a person and you couldn’t drop them or make them let go if they didn’t want to.
The man said something. Tommy heard it snatched away by the wind and brought to him in a tangle of sounds that didn’t make sense anymore because they were unravelled. He wasn’t talking to Tommy which was good because he wouldn’t be able to talk back because he was a stranger. He was talking to the sea, or to himself. Then he wiped his face like he had sand in his eyes and he left. He walked to the other end of the beach where there was another car park.
Tommy waited for him to be gone completely and then he rushed down to where the man had stood.
The footprints moved away from the sea, long ovals with half-circles following behind, a line of exclamation marks calling out to be noticed. Tommy thought the man should have taken his shoes off because he saw the sea come up over his legs sometimes and now his feet and socks will be soaked and his shoes will squelch all the way home. If there was someone like Sally there she might be angry, especially if he traipsed sand into the house, which was when you made a mess. Plus if he got sand in his shoes it would itch between his toes later when they dried.
Tommy put his own toes over one of the prints, balancing on one foot and lowering the other one slowly. The man’s feet were much bigger than Tommy’s. He lined his heel up with the curve of the half circle and brought his foot down completely, filling only half, the sand squirming up between his toes but not itching because it was wet.
The man did not want to go home because it didn’t have someone like Sally there. That was all Tommy felt. He stepped forward into the next footprint to make sure. He needed to lunge a bit to make it in one step.
The man was going home because he was sad but he would come back tomorrow. He would come back very early in the morning. For a moment Tommy felt something of himself there, too, and that felt weird and confused him at first. The man had seen him, that was all, but Tommy didn’t think of that straight away. The man didn’t want Tommy to be there standing around all day but it was Tommy’s beach first. Maybe the man was shy.
There was a shell near one of the prints. He knew it didn’t count as treasure because there would be nothing on it but he took it anyway and put it in the treasure bag because Sally liked it when he made her things out of shells. He suddenly felt very lucky to have someone like Sally so he spent the rest of the morning looking for more shells to make her something special.
S
The next morning he got up very early, much earlier than usual, and the man was not there.
The day was a darker grey than usual because there was more night left in it, and it was quieter than usual because the air had sleep in it with the salt and the seagulls. Tommy had his bags already out of his pockets but not open and he ran the beach so he could start collecting treasure before the man got there. He held the bags out and they made noises like machine guns in the wind coming in off the sea, so he pretended to be a plane from one of the big wars. He had a medal at home from one of the wars and it used to be his favourite treasure until the key ring.
The black plastic streamed behind him from each fist and he thought it looked a bit like smoke if you pretended hard enough so he spiralled as if he’d been shot by Nazi bastards even though he didn’t know what they were and collapsed to the ground in a spectacular explosion of sand.
He found a pile of clothes.
Tommy found clothes on the beach sometimes. He found swimming clothes and t-shirts and underwear like pants or the funny tops that girls wore. Sometimes he found those balloons with the underwear. When he found clothes he usually only found one at a time, but here in the sand was a folded pile of one two three four five six things. Seven if you counted the shoes. Nine if you counted the socks and shoes separately. He’d never found so many all at once and never in a neat and tidy pile that suggested a strength of character. The shoes had the socks inside and sat on top of a pair of shorts on a folded shirt on some trousers rolled up on a coat with a dark red scarf poking out like a tongue. There was an envelope sticking out from under one of the shoes but it wasn’t addressed to Tommy. It wasn’t addressed to anybody, but Tommy knew unless it had his name on it he couldn’t look.
He recognized the coat, even bunched up, and the scarf. The shoes had sand on them and some had fallen off onto the clothes folded underneath. None of them were wet so maybe the man had learnt his lesson about getting too close to the water. Maybe he took his clothes off to go for a swim.
Tommy looked out to sea but as usual there was nothing there but the bumps that were the waves and some seagulls bobbing on the top of them. It looked very cold.
He wouldn’t take the clothes even if they were treasures but he would touch them and he did.
Sobs burst from Tommy the moment his fingers felt the stiff linen of the trousers that were nowhere near as soft as his
tracksuit bottoms but that was not why he cried. His chest heaved with the man’s pain and his head swam with a darkness he couldn’t put into words. The man was so lonely and sad and empty like a flat tire. He was on his own all the time like Tommy except Tommy had Sally and he had people that came and cared for him sometimes and this man had nobody at all. He had gone somewhere to be lost and never found because it was the only way he could let go of something bad.
Tommy wailed and pulled away and rubbed his hands in the sand. He fell on his back and stared at a sky that had no moon and no sun and was somewhere in between. He could feel the pain spreading out from the shoes and socks and shorts and shirt and trousers and coat and scarf. He rolled away from them but he could still feel it.
He ran home faster than he ever had.
He came back running even faster, even with the black sack slung over his back bumpbumpbumping him all the way. The man was still not there and that was good because Tommy still didn’t want to be touched or talked to, but he did want to help the man. He skidded to a stop in an abrupt slide, landing on his side and kicking up a puff of sand that settled on the plastic bag with a sound like telling off even though he was doing something good.
He opened the bag and all his treasures were inside, every one of them, all the things people had lost and he had found and that held good things, happy things, inside. He took them out in handfuls, smiling at how they tingled and tickled in his head, and he dropped them on the clothes so when the man came back he would see them. He left coins and bottle tops and jewellery he didn’t need to hand in, toys and lolly sticks and lipstick. He scooped postcards and pens and sweet wrappers from the treasure bag and left them on the clothes as well. It didn’t show a strength of character like he wanted to because it wasn’t tidy because he didn’t want to touch the clothes again. He wanted to bury them with everything he had that was good. The man would pick up the comic book, the train ticket, the broken phone with all its conversations, and he would see that he could be okay if he felt things that were nice. Tommy gathered all that he had and piled it high, careful not to cover the clothes completely and careful not to cover the letter because he didn’t want the man to be lost and not found.
He saved the best for last, putting the chunky pink plastic heart on the top like a shell on a sandcastle. Then he got up and went to where the man would have stood if he’d been there.
One set of footprints came down the wet sand, all curves and circles because the man had no shoes on. They didn’t come back. The man must be in the sea. The sea washes things clean and the man would know that because he was older than Tommy.
Tommy looked out to sea and watched for a long time and then he went home because maybe the man was shy and wouldn’t come back with Tommy standing around all day.
Tommy’s heart would wait for him.
Story Notes
A personal indulgence just because I like these things when I read a collection or anthology. Just a few words about each story. If you want to know more you can always reach me via my blog, probablymonsters.wordpress.com. There may be spoilers below, so consider yourself warned (though really? You skipped ahead?)
All Change
This story is my love letter to the horror genre, particularly the literature. It’s also meant to tackle the whole “horror as a bad influence” thing that comes up again and again but I figured “why get defensive?” and went the other way instead, suggesting perhaps yes, these books have had something of a negative effect on Robert. Unless, of course, he’s right about who (and what) he meets at the train station. Does he imagine such horrors because they’re easier to face than real ones, or are they a way of justifying his own dark impulses? Is he perhaps an unsung hero, defending the rest of the world from monsters they can’t even comprehend? I know what I think, but you can make up your own mind.
I Have Heard
the Mermaids Singing
I got a little bit personal here. Not too much, but there’s more me in this story than in any of my others so far. It was also a genuine attempt to raise awareness of the serious diving safety issue in Nicaragua—the facts presented here are all too true, I’m afraid. I love diving stories though, and one day I plan to try it myself (preferably somewhere warm, and preferably with the appropriate safety precautions in place). I plan to return to this story with a sequel of sorts because I don’t think Eliot has said everything he has to say on the subject yet . . . .
The Festering
This time I aimed for creepy. Not so much the thing in the drawer, but the shuddery Mr. Browning. The drawer came first, though. I wanted to write something weird that just . . . was. Without explanation. I do allow for a certain level of ambiguity, something more psychological than an actual blobby pulsating icky thing, but to be honest I kinda hope both readings work. I wanted to write something about destructive cycles, addressing the horror of repetition. Ruby has a little more strength than her mother, perhaps, but maybe that’s merely the ferocity and cunning of her youth. Her youth is certainly important to the story, as are the masks we wear or force upon others for our own convenience. It’s possibly one of the most bleak stories in here, suggesting we’re all rotten (or rotting) somewhere inside, but hey—it’s just a story, right?
At Night, When
the Demons Come
This one is me having a blast with demons and guns and stuff and it gave me the chance to go all post-apocalyptic (I love that oxymoron) on the world. I also went for a bit of a comic-book vibe (which I’d love to see done, by the way—got a script/panel plan and everything, just saying.). It’s also one of a few stories where I tackle issues of gender overtly, and hopefully in a way that’s a bit different. Okay, so the persecuted women in a patriarchal setting might be a little familiar but I had fun modifying the damsel in distress trope and with a bit of luck this story shines a murkier light on that whole “patriarchal” thing I just mentioned anyway. I was thrilled to get this picked up by Ellen Datlow for her Best Horror of the Year series, and it marks my first appearance in a “best of” anthology. So I love it.
Night Fishing
I love the sea and have written quite a few stories about it, but this is one of the first ones. It’s also one of the first that deals with a topic that is rather personal, namely coping (or not coping) with the suicide of a loved one. At the time of drafting this story I was teaching Thom Gunn’s poetry and in one of those twists of fate that happen very occasionally, a student introduced me to the film The Bridge and suddenly everything fell into place all at once. Terrence and Bobby were already gay anyway so that, coupled with Gunn’s own sexuality and love for San Francisco, gave me (I think) a pretty solid story. It certainly seemed to work for some people; it’s brought me more emotional comments from readers than any of my other stories except “Beachcombing,” and Steve Berman was kind enough to pick it up for his Wilde Stories “best of” as well.
Knock-Knock
My ghost story that isn’t a ghost story, and then kind of is. There’s stuff here you’re meant to figure out on your own, and unless you’re J-J it shouldn’t be too difficult. I love J-J, he’s got another story too when he’s older but maybe that’ll appear in the next collection.
The Death Drive of
Rita, nee Carina
The statistics concerning car accidents . . . man, have you seen them? So much can go wrong on the roads. So, so much. I just upped the ante and made some of that deliberate. I’m hoping it wrong-foots the reader a bit, too, so that while you’re meant to feel some sympathy for Rita it should develop into something different pretty quickly (and then maybe back again). What also horrifies me is the calm with which we accept these accidents. Worse, we grow impatient when a road is closed and traffic delayed because of an accident instead of remembering that someone might have just been packed flat between sheets of metal. From this thoughtless disregard of our fellow humans it was easy
to step into the territory of the gods . . . .
The Man Who Was
I loved writing this. I mean, I love writing everything (mostly), but this gave me a chance to play with Poe, the grand master of horror. The story was originally written for an anthology edited by Steve Berman which looked at the work of Edgar Allan Poe from a different perspective regarding sexuality. I chose a less familiar story to rework, “The Man That Was Used Up,” and used it to do more than simply recast the characters according to their gender preferences. Partly I explore masculinity as a construct, something perhaps done a lot when it comes to stories concerning homosexuality, but here I was able to take a more literal approach too, focusing on the horrors of war as well. Not that I can take much credit for that—Poe got there first (as he did for so many other stories).
Shark! Shark!
Ah, “Shark! Shark!” I am very fond of this story. Not just because of the British Fantasy Award it won (see how casually I got that in there?) but because it was the first story in a while that I wrote just for me, just for fun. I had been writing a lot for specific audiences or specific anthology criteria at the time and while those stories are still “me” they felt a little pre-determined and restricted, more consciously constructed. This one had no planning or forethought at all, I just started writing and had a great time doing it. I’d always wanted to do something with sharks (I love them, they scare the crap out of me—as do most things in the sea), but I also knew there’d be problems with any shark story thanks to Jaws. My solution was to tackle that head on. And then I thought, hey, while I’m at it, why not address the writing process, the whole construct thing, head on as well? Hence the slightly intrusive narrator. The voice is pretty much me, with just a little tweaking to suit the story. I had no idea what to do with it when it was done, but thankfully Andy Cox took it for Black Static. It’s been reprinted in Polish, too, which is pretty awesome and makes me very happy.