Old Shock

by David Senior



  OLD SHOCK

  David Senior

  Old Shock

  David Senior

  Copyright © 2013 David Senior

  nadirbooks@hotmail.com

  eastscapes.blogspot.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or redistributed without prior permission from the author.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  By the same author:

  The Sinners of Crowsmere

  Agony Pages

  For my family

  Old Shock

  As Paul approached the town the signal for his car radio began to fail. It seemed to sum everything up in a nutshell. Even national radio couldn't make it out to these coastal backwoods. Though the roads round this way were little more than single-carriage tracks most of the time, so why should he expect anything else?

  Once again, he silently cursed his brother for coming out here.

  He felt grouchy. It had been a long drive. However, even his mood improved at his first glimpse of the ocean – shimmering sunlight, reflecting the deep blue of the skies above – across the endless fields and towards the horizon.

  He wondered whether city dwellers like him ever truly lost that childhood excitement that comes with seeing the ocean. Maybe that was ultimately the appeal of this place to Robert.

  Paul drove past farms and woods and the odd campsite, towards the roofs and church towers beyond that marked the end of this leg of the journey. He kept fiddling with the radio but was getting no joy, only a blanket of snow and feedback over the music he wanted to listen to, so flicked it off.

  He passed by the town sign on the edge of the village. It read, in big friendly letters, WELCOME TO CROWSMERE. Even driving, Paul could make out the graffiti that some wit had scribbled across the greeting: “This Is Where People Come To Die.”

  Paul smiled in agreement at that. At least somebody out here knew the score.

  After all this, Robert had better be in. Paul had no intention of staying in this little inbred middle of nowhere village for long – he certainly intended to be sleeping in his own bed tonight – but the least his brother could do was buy him a pint in some local boozer for his trouble.

  “Sabbatical.” That was the word Robert had used to describe his year away from work. Not that it was hard graft to start with – droning on for a couple of hours a day in front of a few university students who would rather be out getting drunk and laid didn't sound exactly trying. The last time Paul had seen his brother, it had been almost a year ago at their mother's seventieth birthday dinner in the garden of a local restaurant. Robert had explained that he was taking the next year off from teaching to focus on working on his book. Their mother was, as ever, beaming with pride, and even their sister Kathy seemed to be at least feigning interest, so it was left to Paul to ask the questions like, “So, do you not get enough holiday as it is, then, with all the breaks the schools have?” and “So when are we going to see this book of yours in the shops, then?”

  Robert had smiled coldly, and Paul, knocking back his umpteenth glass of wine – not his usual tipple, he must admit, and so was feeling a touch heady – felt a sense of triumph. Brothers they may be, but sometimes that speccy know-it-all needing putting down a peg or two. Later, he had overheard Robert telling Kathy that he was going away for a few months – spending six months renting some old dear's house in some poky little seaside place called Crowsmere, at the other side of the country – to aid with his research. “Research,” Paul had scoffed, wandering back over. “I thought you just wrote about books other people had got round to writing.”

  “I'm writing a history of a folk tale specific to that region,” Robert said, turning on him. He looked his brother up and down, disgusted. “I doubt you'd be interested, Paul.”

  “Oh, aye?” was all Paul could manage, taken aback by Robert's hostility, obvious even with his senses dulled with booze. “Just wondering, like...” he continued, before Robert and Kathy turned away and continued their conversation. Practically turned their backs on him! Paul tried to ignore the affront, but with everybody else at the table talking to somebody else, he earwigged his siblings whilst gazing out across the garden. Kathy asked Robert about the folktale he was researching.

  “A story about Old Shock,” he'd said. “The Devil Dog. Goes back hundreds of years. Haunts the cliffs overlooking the beach all along that coast. Lots of occult activity in that region, and a history of smuggling, so there are various possible interpretations of...”

  Whatever, Paul thought now. A year off work to read about some fairytale nobody had ever heard of and the entire family fawns.

  Into the village proper now, Paul examined the streets around him. A bonny enough village, he supposed, as he passed a row of flint cottages facing the sea, but he still dismissed the entire place as ultimately nothing more than a hole in which to dump pensioners on their last legs and spotty boy racer native youths who would probably spend their entire wretched lives here. He noticed a block of derelict-looking holiday apartments called Clifftop View Flats, and parked up outside there, unwilling to drive even longer looking for a car park.

  He stepped out into the warm air, and stretched and rubbed the various aches in the small of his back. He looked around him. He locked the car and had a stroll down the promenade, past chip shops and amusement arcades and places selling souvenir tat. Nowhere was exactly busy, and even then it was mostly older folk wandering about. The summer holidays hadn't started yet, clearly.

  He bought himself a bag of chips and ate them whilst looking around. He found a pub called The Trawlermen and took a pint out into the mostly empty beer garden. He sat in the sun and supped at his beer and thought about his mother.

  The funeral was in two days. Kathy had found her dead on the living room carpet a week and a bit ago. The doctor told them it had been a massive heart attack. As well as arranging the funeral details – Paul was no good at that sort of thing, so just kept out of it – Kathy had tried constantly to contact Robert. Endless phone calls that were never answered, even a few letters. The problem was, nobody was sure if Robert was still away with his research or not. He certainly wasn't in his flat back home: Kathy had been round there several times, banging on the door, shouting through the letter box. Paul hadn't spoken to his brother since the meal and Kathy admitted she'd only been in contact with him when exchanging Christmas cards. By her reckoning, he should have finished up in this Crowsmere place maybe two months ago: all she could think of was he had decided to stay on down there longer, perhaps moving accommodation and not getting around to telling anybody.

  Kathy had gone through their late mother's address book but couldn't find an updated address, only the one he had initially given them. The one she had written out for Paul after begging him to drive down to try and find him. Paul had grumbled, but relented.

  Paul downed the remainder of his pint. He considered ordering a second, but already the beer and the afternoon sun were relaxing him perhaps too much. He went back into the cool darkness of the bar.

  “Excuse me, mate,” Paul said, calling over the barman, taking from his wallet the scrap of paper on which Kathy had written Robert's temporary address. “Do you know where I'd find this place..?”

  It was only a few streets away, as it happened – though a village this size, everywhere was only a few streets away from anywhere else. Paul followed the directions the barman had given him. Number 17, Poppy Lane. The houses down this road were old, and high – many were guest houses or B&Bs. Paul figured the one Robert had stayed in would be the same, but, as he stood outside the door glancing up at the building, he noted onl
y one doorbell, and it certainly looked like a single property.

  Certainly looks like an old woman's place, too, Paul thought, walking up to the door. The tiny front yard was slabbed but covered in pots of flowers in bloom. All the windows had net curtains across them, but again, plants and knick-knacks (porcelain figurines of dogs and fishermen of such unironic kitsch that they turned his stomach) stood guard on the window sills.

  By the house number on the wall by the door was a small sign, made from various pieces of sea shells and crockery glued together, with HAPPY HOME painted across it.

  He pressed the doorbell.

  A dog began to bark from inside, a deep, slow-sounding thing. Paul shifted on the doorstep and looked around him, watching an old silver-haired couple emerge from the guest house opposite and shuffle slowly in the direction of the beach front.

  This is where people come to die.

  Through the door, he could hear a female voice quietening the barking. A silhouette appeared against the frosted glass, and he heard a lock being slid back