The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 22

by Stephen Jones

  He could only just see over the green lip of the cliff but it was enough for him to descry after a while the flights of birds busy about the shore. Gulls, jackdaws, curlews, he thought he could make out and distinguish. And then – yes, surely: that serrated dark shape, that long neck and the angular form of the wings: they must be the cormorants whose quotability he had just this morning been exploring. They would emerge from the shadow of the sheer tower of rock that he was sitting upon, soar down to the shore, and then launch themselves into the sea to graze for fish. These glides upon the unseen currents of the bright air, followed by a gentle descent, soon had a fascination for him, as if he were watching an elaborate ritual or piece of theatre, and he found (despite himself) that he was drawn into an eager absorption in the birds’ activities.

  After a while he began to feel the chill of his exposed perch upon the cold rock and also the pull of seeing the birds at closer quarters. He saw that there was a worn, winding path from the headland to the beach, a narrow channel between the heather and the tall grasses. Carefully, stolidly, he began to follow this down. The wind died about him as he did so, and a greater silence fell for a while, cut only by the cawing and croaking of the birds. The way was not easy: he had to place his boots firmly and sometimes cling on to whatever lay to hand in the undergrowth. Once or twice this proved to be a crop of spiny gorse and his fingers received a sharp tingle followed by a seeping of blood. He cursed and sucked at his maimed hand, but he was not dissuaded and continued to lumber down.

  He reached the shoreline at last and from the final ledge of the path gave a little ungainly leap upon the sand, leaving a scuffed imprint. It came to him then as he made his way across the little inlet that, seen from above, if there had been another Utter watching this one, he would look as if he was writing upon the parchment of the shore. There was a quotation, he knew, one of those sonorous Victorian ones no doubt, perpetrated by men with a level stare, yes, and a lofty brow, and a preponderance of whiskers, about footprints in the sands of time. He knew it because it had always seemed to him an absurdly mixed metaphor. The sands of time, surely, are those that run through an hourglass, showing our moments as they run away. But you can’t put footprints in those sands: they are forever running on and, moreover, are generally encased in a glass funnel. But perhaps he was being too literal: as well as too literary. The thought was pursued by another, about the moving finger that writ and having writ moved on; and from the high vantage he had just quitted, he supposed he must seem like just such a scribbling digit.

  He took a deep breath of the quickening salt breezes and looked all about him. The birds, disturbed by his presence, set up a more clamorous calling, which echoed away at last as he stood still, clutching his umbrella, and they became more used to his presence. He craned back his neck and looked up to the defile he had just negotiated. The cliffs rose as a great looming shadow, but they were cut by vertical gashes into nearly separated columns, so that the effect was like looking at the spines of a vast case of dark basalt books. There was even gilt tooling upon these volumes, made by clusterings of ochreous moss, and perhaps their titles might be read by discerning the imprints and indentations left by the narrow hollows and niches in the rock. And then Utter saw how right the Powys fellow had been: for in many of these hollows he could make out the forms of cormorants, with their black loop of neck and long beak and their upright, inquisitive stance. Even as he observed them in delight, one dropped from its niche and landed on the rocks, looking inquisitively about, before suddenly, with a supple twist, taking to the shadowy sea.

  He walked further into the bay and settled himself once more upon a rock, this one grey and salt-crusted and festooned at its base with black bladder-wrack. White Strand was certainly a favourite habitation of seabirds, and their calling, and the crash of the waves upon the shore, set up a constant background noise like a wireless broadcast from some great station in the clouds. The cormorants were here in great assembly too: not only sheltering in the hollows of the steep cliff-side, but strutting on the shore and standing thoughtfully upon rocks further from him. They were roosting, perhaps, or resting, pausing before one of their fish-seeking dives; or holding out their wings to dry in that Luciferian posture old Milton had evoked; or pecking at their undersides; or simply regarding with their keen dark eyes the world as they found it; a world, he supposed, consisting chiefly of winds, waves, sea-currents, enemies and prey. A world simplified, but also stark and dangerous: where, as Powys had supposed, the bird might take an instinctive pleasure in its own being, in the craft of its fish-catching rituals, in the thrust of the air upon its pinions and the burst of the sea upon its sleek face.

  Utter felt a sea fret waft about him, drew his raincoat more closely over his torso, and clung to the bamboo handle of his umbrella. But he did not abandon his study of the cormorants. He felt he could watch for hours their descents, their sea-dippings and their wing-dryings, their apparent glinting-eyed meditations upon what to do next. There always seemed something new to notice. You might think, if put to describing them, that their plumage was black, and there was nothing more to be said. But he soon found this was not wholly true. Beneath the sheen of their scaly cloak of black, there was another hue, a subtle tint of malachite when the light was full on them, a hard green mineral gleam only seen at certain angles.

  Then what of their wings? We speak, he thought, of birds’ wings as if they were all alike, but he could now see that those of the cormorant had indeed something archangelic, and heraldic, about them. The way they were raised by the bird made them seem like shields of silver held in readiness by a knight’s squire for a great tournament.

  All the time he watched them he stayed still upon his rock regardless of the lappings of saltwater that found their way around him in little thrusting rivulets. And after a while it was as if the birds became almost used to him, and came to regard him as just an odd outcrop of rock. They began to land and to rest quite close by him and he was able to see their fine malachite-black cloaks, and their mythic wings at the closest possible quarters. He became entranced too by their gaze. One great old cormorant stood on the next rock to him, in its tilt-headed attitude, with its long hook of neck, and glared at him from its black eye with its rim of silver. He could not free himself from regarding the dark grace and the saturnine stare of the bird: he saw now exactly why those writers wanted to make it a myth or a metaphor, for it seemed to belong to some other, plutonic dimension, some strange black gulf of a different time. He looked long upon the preening, prying bird while a wild roar grew around him, as if indeed he were on the brink of entering some other plane of existence.

  And when he stirred at last from this reverie, he found that the little foaming streams around his rock had been fortified by a greater advance of the waves, and, gazing more widely, that in fact the sea had burst in upon the shore in great grey drives. He had better get back. He saw that he would have to hop from rock to rock if he were not to get his feet wet. Balancing himself with his umbrella like some seashore Blondin, he began to wobble from one rock to another; and then found that there were no more left, and he was not yet on what could be called the shore; indeed, that there was not very much at all that might now be called shore, for the sea was upon it all. He looked for where his cliff path was: but he could not make it out; and he realised that even if he did, he could not get to it, because the sea between where he was, and where it might be, was now surging in strong currents. Annoyed with himself, he teetered back to where he had been and began to wade through the still traversable tide, feeling its cold claws clutch at his feet, tugging at him. He pushed on as hard as he could toward the base of the rock face but found that the pull of the tide became greater almost at each heavy tread. At last, thoroughly wet and worn out, he made ground on a flat rim of rocks immediately in the lee of the cliff.

  He turned and saw the waves pound towards him. He looked down and saw the salt encrustations and the marine weeds even upon the rocks where he stoo
d. These, too, then would be engulfed, and he did not know with what force: he must go further up. Perhaps there might be another path, a way across the face of the rock: it was steep, certainly, but he could make out hand-holds and boot-hollows. Possibly people had been up that way before. He took hold firmly of a chunk of rock and hoisted himself up, then looked about for another and made a diagonal line across the bleak surface. The sea crashed below him and made a greedy sucking noise at the base of the cliff. He scraped his hands and knees as he scrambled further up.

  And then his burst of resolution gave way. No obvious places to grip presented themselves to his view. It still seemed a very long way up the cliff and the dim track he had hoped for was no longer apparent. Yet the sea was still roaring against the rocks and thrusting its pale tentacles of spray up towards him: it might only take one really big wave to dash him away. He inched very gingerly onwards until he felt he could go no further. He thrust himself in a sudden imploring hug against the cliff, as if its very nearness made him more secure. And then he tried to think.

  But absurdly, all he called to mind was a questionnaire he had been sent the year before, in preparation for giving a radio interview about one of his books. Amongst the many trivial and vulgar questions was one which had asked when he had come nearest to death. He had been tempted to answer on the form: “While doing this: by boredom”, but supposed that the answer would not be original. In fact, the question might be better than it seemed; for it had perplexed him. In his forty-four years he did not know that he had ever been close to that highest risk of all. Well, perhaps now he was: now, if he survived, he could certainly quote this experience. He even began, to distract himself and delay taking any decision about inching further up the severe rock face, to compose how he would now word his answer: “Questing for cormorants, I . . .”

  But that supposed, of course, that he would live to tell the tale. A sudden fevered surge of fear leapt up in him and his whitened fingers clung even more tenaciously to the little rims of the rock face. A cloud cleared the sun and he saw outlined in a film of light every crevice, every crack, each striation and scratch upon the adamantine surface. It was like looking at a strange map. But the effect, so far from giving him a sure route, was that of casting him into despondency. There simply were not sufficient wide enough and secure enough hand-holds for him to claw at, still less sockets or ledges where he might rest his feet. And even if he did succeed in negotiating the hazardous way, he could not deny that at the very top of the climb there appeared to be a great overhang, thrusting out from the vertical column he was on, so that he would have to work his way at an acute angle over and around it. A very seasoned climber, with all the right impedimenta, might manage it; he knew that he could not.

  Very, very slowly he manoeuvred his feet upon the bare outcrop and cautiously turned his body around, keeping his gaze at first straight ahead. Don’t look down, he told himself, don’t look now. He pushed his palms against the merest hint of pillars on either side of him, and his raincoat unfurled its fawn wings. There was nothing further he could do. There was no question of descending again, for he could not trust himself to do it: and there was no hope of ascending all that terrible way he had seen illumined around him. He would have to wait until somebody came. Perhaps the caretaker might at length wonder that he had not seen him all day, and, remembering their conversation, set out to search for him. He clung to that dim hope as to the rock, with a forlorn desperation.

  At intervals he gave a hoarse cry in case there should be anyone passing above: and he was answered by calls quite like his own, coarse and shrill, from the seabirds he had disturbed.

  The day darkened: he could see he would soon be benighted here; in the gloom it would be harder to keep his balance; harder to stay awake. It already seemed many hours he had been here and he was very tired. Inevitably after a while he started to imagine, though he knew he must not, what it would be like when – if – he could hold on no longer and he dropped into the churning waters. Could he even then contrive a graceful dive, or would he simply flop? Would he strike his head on a rock, and end things insensible? Or struggle and gasp against the force of the waters until his breath gave out?

  In the last of the light he thought he saw a dark flicker of movement come to rest in the next niche of rock to his. There was a sense as of a supple sliver of shape: and a rank, fishy stench. A single bead of black light seemed to stare at him. He remained perfectly still. They were all wrong, really, he reflected, those great men. The cormorant was not after all an embodied vice, not a devil, a dandy or a pagan saint: it was, like his days, like all our days, a living dark question mark, a plunge from the edge of existence into the silvery glinting silence of the future. Yes, that was it. Furtively, with extreme care, he removed his palms from their place of steadying, and then righted himself, reached into the pocket of his raincoat, and took out his notebook and pen. After the entry on the cormorant, he wrote, slowly, gently, “Myself, I have come to the conclusion . . .”

  GARRY KILWORTH

  Out Back

  GARRY KILWORTH HAS BEEN a full-time writer of imaginative fiction now for nearly forty years and has had more than eighty books published.

  He believes the short story is his forté and is happiest when employing that form. His most recent publications include Moby Jack and Other Tall Tales and Tales from the Fragrant Harbour, two collections of short stories from PS Publishing. His novel Attica attracted the attention of Johnny Depp, whose film company Infinitum Nihil (under the Warner Bros umbrella) will shortly be making a movie of that book.

  The author also writes under the name “Richard Argent” and has recently published an historical fantasy, Winter’s Knight, available from Little, Brown Books.

  “‘Out Back’ was written for a group of friends,” Kilworth recalls, “who appear as characters in the story under their initials, as I do myself. Those who know me well will recognise the protagonists.

  “Iken is a real village on the edge of the marshes behind Snape Maltings in Suffolk. Two years ago I wandered along the periphery of the reed beds which stretch down towards the coast as a green and golden sea, the waves created by the winds that blow across the flatlands. Looking at the church that sits on a knoll above the marshes I thought, ‘This is a perfect setting for a horror story.’ And so . . .”

  THE COTTAGE WAS EVERYTHING that R. had expected it to be: remote, comfortable and unfussy. He had a book to finish. Ten-thousand words. The other ninety thousand had been difficult. This last tenth seemed impossible. His plot had become derailed. He was unable to see his way through the smoke and coke dust of a mythical railway track that should stretch ahead. Yes, the characters were there, good and solid. Indeed, the story’s engine was strong and had shunted yet forward and forward, with only one or two sharp halts. But six weeks ago he met the bumpers. R. was now stuck in a deserted station, his progress blocked.

  So, he had come out here, beyond the real marsh country of Snape, where Benjamin Brittan had built his concert hall out of derelict malting houses. The village, some few miles back down a dusty track, was called Iken: an old Anglo-Saxon cluster of dwellings whose only claim to any sort of fame was its church, in which yard Aberdeen Angus cattle roamed, keeping the grass short around the graves. It had been a difficult place to get to, this Iken hamlet, but it might be worth the journey. Here there were no distractions, as there had been in London, especially now S. was working at home. They got in each other’s way, entangled mentally if not physically, and R. was sure with his mind freed from traffic noise, neighbourhood noise, postmen, plumbers, random religious sects knocking on the door and various other infuriating interruptions, he would be able to grasp the vision of his novel’s final destination.

  “Well H., here we are,” he said to the squirming bundle in his arms. He put the cat down on the stone flags of the kitchen floor. “Just you and me for a whole month.”

  H. was in a bad mood, as any cat plucked from his familiar home and whisked
out to the end of nowhere had a right to be.

  “You’ll like it here,” R. said, filling a plastic bowl with water from the ancient brass tap. “Out back looks like a jungle. You like jungles. You can hunt to your heart’s content here, old chap. Bring in a mouse or two. A rabbit? Perhaps even a deer. Think you’re up to a deer? Those muntjacs are not so big. Just go for the jugular.”

  H. looked with disgust at the bowl of water.

  R., large and lately somewhat ungainly, ambled to the kitchen window to stare out. There was nothing resembling a garden at the back of the cottage. A lagoon of rugged-looking turf rolled away from the back door for about twenty feet and then suddenly the landscape leapt up into a wild sea of unkempt gorse bushes and batches of stinging nettles tall as ships’ masts. There were also tall ferns, some gone to bracken, and thistles crowding the gaps. Like R.’s book, the view had no visible end. The dark green shrubbery tumbled over and over itself in waves which seemed to go beyond the horizon. It was a bleak scene. One could get just as lost out there as in the plot of a novel.

  “S. would soon get stuck into that lot,” he murmured. “She’d sickle the lot down to three inches.”

  He then wondered about the legitimacy of turning a noun into a verb to give his image more effect. Yes, why not?

  A knock on the front door jerked him out of his word mode. He opened it to find the estate agent who had rented him the cottage.

  “You didn’t sign all the documents,” said the harassed-looking woman. “Would you mind?” She waved some papers under his nose.

  R. let her in and motioned her towards a rickety-looking walnut table in the front room. He found a pen amongst his luggage and signed the two documents the woman placed before him. Then he asked her if she wanted a drink of some kind. A cup of tea?

  “No thanks, I have to get back. It’s quite a trek out here, isn’t it? I had to walk that narrow footpath from the road in these.”