by Неизвестный
I told her too late. She was dying, and fading so fast – she’d started the holiday season with the same no-nonsense energy as always, but then she’d got so slow, and so tired, and eventually we just asked our guests to leave and closed the doors on them. She lay in the bed, and I gave her all the space I could, I’d have moved to another room, but she told me she wanted me to stay by her in the night. I said that I loved her. I said that I had loved her for so long, and wanted to show her, wanted to do anything to her that would make her happy.
She smiled at me. She said, “That would have been nice.”
And I kissed her. I kissed her sand-studded cheeks, her skin was so coarse beneath my lips and there was nothing I could do to make it soft.
Still she never snored, still she slept so peacefully that some nights I woke up thinking she might already be dead. And there was that one night I woke, and she wasn’t there beside me. She hadn’t moved from the bed for over a week, she hadn’t the strength, and I was so frightened, I thought maybe she’d died and her body had simply melted away. I left the bedroom, went out into the darkness of the house, I lit a candle, I called for her. There I found her, down the staircase, on the bottom step, and she was stamping down on it weakly, without stopping, as if she couldn’t stop, not until I spoke to her. She turned up to me, up to the light. “I can’t get through,” she said. “Why won’t it let me through?” It was the only time I ever saw her cry.
She died only a few days later. I wasn’t there for the very end, but I don’t think it would have mattered much to her, she didn’t know where she even was by then, and if she called out a name it would be Thomas. Her missing husband, maybe? Even a son? Who knows? At the end of the day there was still so little I knew about her.
We found her body, you and I. You weren’t scared at all. You are still so young, and so fearless. You don’t even remember, do you?
I know you don’t remember Mrs Gallagher. My Nathalie. My own. But she was good to you. I wish you’d ask about her, and not about your father.
You know most of the rest of it.
Mrs Gallagher had left the house to me in her will. I had no idea, she had never discussed it with me. But I was not a blood relative, of course, and certainly could not have been considered a spouse, and after the death duties were paid there was no way I could afford to keep it. I sold it on.
Bed and breakfasts were all I knew now, that and the sea. I didn’t want to stay in the town, too many people seemed to know about me and my relationship with Mrs Gallagher, and I had no shame of it, but I wanted nothing to do with them. That’s why I moved us to the south coast, so far away, and bought our little hotel here. The sea here is warmer, the wind not as fierce, but I don’t mind, I’m getting old too.
I want you to understand this. You are not your father.
Your father was not a good man, though he wasn’t a bad man entirely. And you, I know there is good in you. I know you are better than he was. You must try to be better. The path you are treading, it isn’t the way. You have been caught stealing once, and we were lucky that charges were not pressed, and I know that if you’ve been caught once, you’ve got away with it a dozen times before. And I know your business with the girls down town too, you think I don’t hear? Mary Suffolk, and that Annie girl. And I don’t judge. But you mustn’t be cruel to them. Please, not cruel.
And you despise my hotel, and you despise me, and you want to leave, and I understand that. And all you want to know about is your father.
I have told you what I know.
And in the night sometimes, in the pitch black, I have gone down the stairs, and counted them off. I know you have heard me. I know that you have heard, but don’t like to ask. I shall tell you anyway. Because Mrs Gallagher told me. That when all those years ago she lost her husband, Thomas, or whatever his name was, when he found that extra step, and all those steps leading downwards from it, ever on downwards with no bottom most likely. She told me that it wasn’t in that house that she’d lost him. She moved away, and bought another hotel, right at the edge of the land, where she felt she could be free of him. And the extra step had followed her. Her husband had followed.
Because maybe we can’t just bury our mistakes, and move on. Maybe we carry them around with us, regardless. Maybe I’ll never be free of George. That seems right. That seems just. He’s had his punishment, I’ll take mine.
I go down the stairs. And there are twenty-one steps in the daytime. I can feel a twenty-second in the night.
You’re not your father, and you’re young, and you need to make your own mistakes. So go make them. But don’t make too many. I have come too far, and sacrificed too much. I will not tolerate it.
I want to make sure you never have to join your father.
You’ve complained about sounds beneath the floorboards in your bedroom. Stamp your feet hard, that’ll usually shut the bastard up.
SIMON STRANTZAS
Stemming the Tide
SIMON STRANTZAS IS the author of four collections of short fiction, including the recently published Burnt Black Suns from Hippocampus Press. His writing has appeared in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, The Best Horror of the Year and The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror; has been translated into other languages; and has been nominated for the British Fantasy Award. He lives in Toronto, Canada, with his wife and an unyielding hunger for the flesh of the living.
“‘Stemming the Tide’ is set at the Hopewell Rocks in New Brunswick, Canada,” reveals the author. “The mechanics of the tide are true, though I must confess the actual landscape differs in many ways from the real setting … apart from the walking dead, of course. Still, that landscape isn’t what the story was about, but rather the dissolution of relationships and the growing spite that can occur near its end.
“This tale came together in a very short time – only a few days, in fact – which its length no doubt suggests; but unlike much of my work it did its coming together in a blazing heat, burning on its way out.”
MARIE AND I sit on the wooden bench overlooking the Hopewell Rocks. In front of us, a hundred feet below, the zombies walk on broken, rocky ground. Clad in their sunhats and plastic sunglasses, carrying cameras around their necks and tripping over open-toed sandals, they gibber and gabber amongst themselves in a language I don’t understand. Or, more accurately, a language I don’t want to understand. It’s the language of mindlessness. I detest it so.
Marie begged me for weeks to take her to the Rocks. It’s a natural wonder, she said. The tide comes in every six hours and thirteen minutes and covers everything. All the rock formations, all the little arches and passages. It’s supposed to be amazing. Amazing, I repeat, curious if she’ll hear the slight scoff in my voice, detect how much I loathe the idea. There is only one reason I might want to go to such a needlessly crowded place, and I’m not sure if I’m ready to face it. If she senses my mood, she feigns obliviousness. She pleads with me again to take her. Tries to convince me it can only help her after her loss. Eventually, the crying gets to be too much, and I agree.
But I regret it as soon as I pick her up. She’s dressed in a pair of shorts that do nothing to flatter her pale lumpy body. Her hair is parted down the middle and tied to the side in pigtails, as though she believes somehow appropriating the trappings of a child will make her young again. All it does is reveal the greying roots of her dyed black hair. Her blouse … I cannot even begin to explain her blouse. This is going to be great! she assures me as soon as she’s seated in the car, and I nod and try not to look at her. Instead, I look at the sunbleached road ahead of us. It’s going to take an hour to drive from Moncton to the Bay of Fundy. An hour where I have to listen to her awkwardly try and fill the air with words because she cannot bear silence for anything longer than a minute. I, on the other hand, want nothing more than for the world to keep quiet and keep out.
The hour trip lengthens to over two in traffic, and when we arrive the sun is already bearing down as though it has focused
all its attention on the vast asphalt parking lot. We pass through the admission gate and, after having our hands stamped, onto the park grounds. Immediately, I see the entire area is lousy with people moving in a daze – children eating dripping ice cream or soggy hot dogs, adults wiping balding brows and adjusting colourful shorts that are already tucked under rolls of fat. I can smell these people. I can smell their sweat and their stink in the humid air. It’s suffocating, and I want to retch. My face must betray me; Marie asks me if I’m okay. Of course, I say. Why wouldn’t I be? Why wouldn’t I be okay in this pigpen of heaving bodies and grunting animals? Why wouldn’t I enjoy spending every waking moment in the proximity of people that barely deserve to live, who can barely see more than a few minutes into the future? Why wouldn’t I enjoy it? It’s like I’m walking through an abattoir, and none of the fattened sows know what’s to come. Instead they keep moving forward in their piggy queues, one by one meeting their end. This is what the line of people descending into the dried cove looks like to me. Animals on the way to slaughter. Who wouldn’t be okay surrounded by that, Marie? Only I don’t say any of that. I want to with all my being, but instead I say I’m fine, dear. Just a little tired is all. Speaking the words only makes me sicker.
The water remains receded throughout the day, keeping a safe distance from the Hopewell Rocks, yet Marie wants to sit and watch the entire six hour span, as though she worries what will happen if we are not there to witness the tide rush in. Nothing will happen, I want to tell her. The waters will still rise. There is nothing we do that helps or hinders inevitability. That is why it is inevitable. There is nothing we can do to stem the tides that come. All we can do is wait and watch and hope that things will be different. But the tides of the future never bring anything to shore we haven’t already seen. Nothing washes in but rot. No matter where you sit, you can smell its clamminess in the air.
The sun has moved over us and still the rocky bottom of the cove, and the tall weirdly sculpted mushroom rocks are dry. Some of the tourists still will not climb back up the metal grated steps, eager to spend as much of the dying light wandering along the ocean’s floor. A few walk out as far as they can, sinking to their knees in the silt, yet none seem to wonder what might be buried beneath the sand. The teenager who acts as the lifeguard maintains his practised, affected look of disinterest, hair covering the left half of his brow, watching the daughters and mothers walking past. He ignores everyone until the laughter of those in the silt grows too loud, the giggles of sand fleas nibbling their flesh unmistakable. He yells at them to get to the stairs. Warns them of how quickly the tide will rush in, the immediate undertow that has sucked even the heaviest of men out into the Atlantic, but even he doesn’t seem to believe it. Nevertheless, the pigs climb out one at a time, still laughing. I look around to see if anyone else notices the blood that trickles down their legs.
The sun has moved so close to the horizon that the blue sky has shifted to orange. Many of the tourists have left, and those few that straggle seemed tired to the point of incoherence. They stagger around the edge of the Hopewell Rocks, eating the vestiges of the fried food they smuggled in earlier or laying on benches while children sit on the ground in front of them. The tide is imminent, but only Marie and I remain alert. Only Marie and I watch for what we know is coming.
When it arrives, it does so swiftly. Where once rocks cover the ground, a moment later there is only water. And it rises. Water fills the basin, foot after foot, deeper and deeper. The tide rushes in from the ocean. It’s the highest tide in the world over. It beckons people from everywhere to witness its power. The inevitable tide coming in.
Marie has kicked off her black sandals, the simple act shaving inches from her height. She has both her arms wrapped around one of mine and is staring out at the steadily rising water. She’s like an anchor pulling me down. Do you see anything yet? she asks me, and I shake my head, afraid if I open my mouth what might come out. How much longer do you think we’ll have to wait? Not long, I assure her, though I don’t know. How would I? I’ve refused to come to this spot all my life, this spot on the edge of a great darkness. That shadowy water continues to lap, the teenage lifeguard finally concerned less with the girls who walk by to stare at his athletic body, and more with checking the gates and fences to make sure the passages to the bottom are locked. The last thing anyone wants is for one to be opened accidentally. The last thing anyone but me wants, that is.
The sun is almost set, and the visitors to the Hopewell Rocks have completely gone. It’s a park full only with ghosts, the area surrounding the risen tide. Mushroom rocks look like small islands, floating in the ink just off the shore. The young lifeguard has gone, hurrying as the darkness crept in as fast as the water rose. Before he leaves he shoots the two of us a look that I can’t quite make out under his flopping denim hat, but one which I’m certain is fear. He wants to come over to us, wants to warn us that the park has closed and that we should leave. But he doesn’t. I like to think it’s my expression that keeps him away. My expression, and my glare. I suppose I’ll never know which.
Marie is lying on the bench by now, her elbow planted on the wooden slats, her wrist bent to support the weight of her head. She hasn’t worn her shoes for hours, and even in the long shadows I can see sand and pebbles stuck to her soles. She looks up at me. It’s almost time, she whispers, not out of secrecy – because no one is there to hear her – but of glee. It’s almost time. It is, I tell her, and try as I might I can’t muster up even a false smile. I’m too nervous. The thought of what’s to come jitters inside of me, shakes my bones and flesh, leaves me quivering. If Marie notices, she doesn’t mention it, but I’m already prepared with a lie about the chill of day’s end. I know it’s not true, and that even Marie is smart enough to know how warm it still is, but nevertheless I know she wants nothing more than to believe every word I say. It’s not one of her most becoming qualities.
The tide rushes in after six hours and thirteen minutes, and though I’m not wearing a watch I know exactly when the Bay is at its fullest. I know this not by the light or the dark oily colour the water has turned. I know this not because I can see the tide lapping against the nearly submerged mushroom rocks. I know this because, from the rippling ocean water, I can see the first of the heads emerge.
Flesh so pale it is translucent, the bone beneath yellow and cracked. Marie is sitting up, her chin resting on her folded hands. I dare a moment to look at her wide-open face, and wonder if the remaining light that surrounds us is coming from her beaming. The smile I make is unexpected. Genuine. They’re here! she squeals, and my smile falters. I can’t believe they’re here! I nod matter-of-factly.
There are two more heads rising from the water when I look back at the full basin, the first already sprouting an odd number of limbs attached to a decayed body. The thing staggers towards us, the only two living souls for miles around, though how it can see us with its head cocked so far back is a mystery. I can smell it from where we sit. It smells like tomorrow. More of the dead emerge from the water, refugees from the dark ocean, each one a promise of what’s to come. They’re us, I think. The rich, the poor, the strong, the weak. They are our heroes and our villains. They are our loved ones and most hated enemies. They are me, they are Marie, they are the skinny lifeguard in his idiotic hat. They are our destiny, and they have come to us from the future, from beyond the passage with a message. It’s one no one but us will ever hear. It is why Marie and I are there, though each for a different reason – her to finally help her understand the death of her mother, me so I can finally put to rest the haunting terrors of my childhood. Neither of us speaks about why, but we both know the truth. The dead walk to tell us what’s to come, their broken mouths moving without sound. The only noise they make is the rap of bone on gravel. It only intensifies as they get closer.
For the first time, I see a thin line of fear crack Marie’s reverie. There are nearly fifty corpses shambling toward us, swaying as they try to keep rotted
limbs moving. If they lose momentum, I wonder if they’ll fall over. If they do, I doubt they’d ever right themselves. Between where we sit and the increasing mass is the metal gate the young lifeguard chained shut. More and more of the waterlogged dead are crowding it, pushing themselves against it. I can hear the metal screaming from the stress, but it’s holding for now. Fingerless arms reach through the bars, their soundless hungry screams echoing through my psyche. Marie is no longer sitting. She’s standing. Pacing. Looking at me, waiting for me to speak. Purposely, I say nothing. I’ll let her say what I know she’s been thinking.
There’s something wrong, she says. This isn’t—
It isn’t what?
This isn’t what I thought. This, these people. They aren’t right …
I snigger. How is it possible to be so naïve?
They are exactly who they are supposed to be, I tell her with enough sternness I hope it’s the last she has to say on the subject. I don’t know why I continue to make the same mistakes. By now, I’d have thought I would have started listening. But that’s the trouble with talking to your past self. Nothing, no matter how hard you try, can be stopped. Especially not the inevitable.
The dead flesh is packed so tight against the iron gates that it’s only a matter of time. It’s clear from the way the metal buckles, the hinges scream. Those of the dead that first emerged are the first punished, as their putrefying corpses are pressed by the thong of emerging dead against the fence that pens them in. I can see upturned faces buckling against the metal bars, hear softened bones pop out of place as their lifeless bodies are pushed through the narrow gaps. Marie turns and buries her face in my chest while gripping my shirt tight in her hands. I can’t help but watch, mesmerized.
Hands grab the gate and start shaking, back and forth, harder and harder. So many hands, pulling and pushing. The accelerating sound ringing like a church bell across the lonely Hopewell grounds. I can’t take it anymore, Marie pleads, her face slick with so many tears. It was a mistake. I didn’t know. I never wanted to know. She’s heaving as she begs me, but I pull myself free from her terrified grip and stand up. It doesn’t matter, I tell her. It’s too late.