by Dave Shelton
“Karen lost an eye, darling. She had broken bones and her face was very badly cut and one of her eyes … got very badly damaged. But she survived and the doctors did some operations on her and she was getting better.
“But then, after another operation …” Dad is wriggling about in his chair now, like he needs to go pee or something, but I know he can’t need to go pee because he’s only just gone (I heard the toilet flush while I was getting the milk out of the fridge). “There were complications. Infection. And Karen got very sick … and she died.” He stares at me very hard. His mouth has gone all small, and his forehead is wrinkly, but at least he’s not wriggling about anymore. I give a little smile to make him see I’m all right.
“How old was she when she died?” I say.
“Oh, um, let’s see … she was about a year older than you are now when … when the crash happened.” Dad swallows really loudly, even though he hasn’t touched his toast or coffee in ages. “And … and she died about a year after that. Yes. So she would have been eleven, I think.”
“What was she like?” I say.
“Oh,” says Dad. “I don’t really know. I think maybe she was quite like her mummy. You remember I told you before how Mummy and Susan were best friends and always looked after each other? Well, I think probably Karen was like that: kind and generous and brave. Darling, why are—”
“What’s in my sandwiches today?” I say.
Dad’s mouth stops being tight and he smiles a bit, and his forehead goes flat, nearly.
“Tuna and mayonnaise today, love. And an apple and a banana.”
I knew that already really (because it is Thursday).
“Come on. It’s time we were off.”
*
When I get to school, there’s Charley and Callum and Harry, from first grade, in the playground. Charley is kicking a tennis ball against the wall and Callum is prodding Harry, but he stops prodding Harry when he sees me. He comes over to me, trying to stomp scarily, which he’s not very good at. But he does look very angry with me and that is a bit scary.
I want to say something to try to calm him down a bit but he puts his hand over my mouth. I don’t like that at all—I would bite his hand, but I don’t want to get ill. Callum is pushing me backward with his hand on my mouth and with his other hand on my shoulder. I stumble backward and fall over and I think I tear my skirt and I hurt my bottom. And now Callum is looming over me and he isn’t saying anything, which just makes it scarier. He has clenched his fists up really tightly and he’s breathing really noisily and there’s a little bit of spit at the corner of his mouth. And I kind of know that he’s not really going to kill me, but I still kind of think that he might.
I scuttle along the ground like a crab or something (only a crab that goes backward and not sideways), and Callum follows me but quite slowly. His eyes look really mad. But I’m going faster than him so at least I’m getting a little bit farther away from him. And I think I should get up and run away from him and find a teacher but now I’ve scuttled backward into somebody’s legs so I’ve stopped and fallen down onto my bottom again. I think at first that they must be Charley’s legs, but then I see that Charley is still over by the wall, trying to get his tennis ball out of a drain.
Then the girl from yesterday steps past me to stand between me and Callum.
“Get out of my way!” says Callum. He sounds a bit mad.
The girl just stands there, looking at him.
My bottom really hurts. Maybe I’ve broken my bottom bone. I try to look at my bottom to check but it’s too tricky. When I look up again I can see that the girl has stepped toward Callum and pulled back her hair from her face and Callum has gone white and his eyes are very wide-open. I think probably this is because of how the girl’s face looks, because of what the complications and infection must have done to it, but I can only see the back of her head so I can’t be sure.
Callum is crying now and his breathing has gone funny like he’s forgotten how it works. It’s like each breath in is much bigger than the next breath out and so he is inflating. And his face has gone very white and he is shaking. Charley is still over by the wall, but he is looking over at Callum now and he keeps taking one step toward him and then one step back again, over and over, and it looks like a funny little dance. And he has the dirty yellow tennis ball in his hand and it looks like he’s squeezing it very tight.
And now I think Callum has wet himself and I wonder if the puddle of wee he’s standing in will make the lights in his sneakers stop working, but I don’t think it will. And then he falls down onto his bottom into the puddle of wee and he’s making funny wheezing noises and his face is all screwed up.
And I don’t think he’ll try to do revenge on me now.
The girl turns around and smiles at me and holds out her hand to help me up. She had already let go of her hair so her face is half covered up again now and I can’t see what Callum saw, and I think that is a shame because I think it would be interesting to see.
Maybe I will ask her to show me later. I think we might be friends.
Amelia rocks gently from side to side, humming to herself. She pays no attention to the reaction of the others to her story; instead, she focuses on her candle flame, staring at it with her head cocked to one side.
Jack looks at her, this odd little girl, and thinks about her story. He thinks it was silly of her to say it was a true story, something that had actually happened to her, but then she is young. It’s the sort of thing a kid would say, to try to make a ghost story scarier, but Jack’s too old for that kind of nonsense. He’s seen right through it. What is scaring him, though, is how few people there are left to tell a story, and how he still hasn’t thought of anything for his turn. Maybe it’ll be all right, he tells himself. He’ll think of something when the time comes. He’s like this with his English homework sometimes, too. He always leaves it to the last minute, but he comes up with something in the end. And it usually works out okay. Usually.
“That was wonderful,” says Frances Crane, just a little too enthusiastically, her eyes shining in the candlelight.
“Really wonderful.”
“Thankyouverymuch,” says Amelia in a dead tone, without looking up from the flame.
“Amelia?” says Mr. Osterley.
“Uh?”
Mr. Osterley indicates Amelia’s candle with first a small hand gesture and then a more expansive one. Amelia fails to respond to either of them. Then Mr. Osterley coughs a small, controlled, but perfectly clear cough that likewise has no effect.
“Amelia, dear,” says Frances, and Amelia’s attention flickers briefly in her direction. “Blow out the candle, will you, please, my love?”
“Oh. Yes. ’Kay. Sorry.” After one last lingering look into the dancing flame, Amelia blows it out with a short, sharp breath, and then scrapes her chair awkwardly away from the table.
“Thank you, Miss Crane,” says the pale man. “Thank you, Amelia.”
Five candles left. Jack looks over at those others remaining seated at the table. Four of them all in a line, more or less opposite Jack: ragged-faced Mr. Fowler, pale Mr. Osterley, cold and silent Mr. Randolph, and Frances Crane with laugh lines on her face and scars on her wrists. And Jack by himself behind his own lonely candle. It’s hard not to imagine that they’re all watching him now, their faces eerie in the candlelight, staring at him.
Mr. Osterley raises a hand from its place on the table and turns it slowly at the wrist, his fingers splaying, the index finger stretching and pointing, pointing, pointing straight at Jack. His heart lurches, but Mr. Osterley’s hand continues to turn, and his finger moves on, now vaguely indicating the figure on his right-hand side.
“Mr. Fowler,” says the pale man without turning his head. “Perhaps it is time for you to share another of your tales with us.”
Mr. Fowler smiles. “Why, of course, sir, I’ll be glad to. And it’s a special tale I have for you tonight, for it is not just one of the many that I picked
up on my travels, but instead a more … personal story, that I seldom share. A tale from my own boyhood. Why indeed, from when I was about the age of this young fellow, I should think.” He raises an arm in Jack’s direction and fashions a wide smile on that craggy face of his. “It is a dark tale.” He narrows his eyes. “A dark tale as perhaps only belongs in childhood.” He seems now to be speaking only to Jack, his rich, cracked voice mesmerizing. “And it is a tale within a tale.”
Mr. Fowler’s candlelit face seems to Jack to be floating in the darkness. It is all that he can see.
“Darkness inside darkness,” says Mr. Fowler.
Then he begins.
“Darkness,” my uncle liked to tell me, “is good for business.”
I thought at first that this was just an excuse for his miserliness. I thought that he was simply unwilling to burn sufficient candles and lamp oil to keep his tavern well lit. But I soon saw for myself that it was true.
“See, this is a sailors’ inn,” he told me, “and a man who has been to sea has likely as not gathered some secrets to him on his voyages. And he may want those secrets to remain in darkness. So let them as wants to be seen go sit by the fire. Everywhere else … well, there should be light enough that if any man should kill another then he can be sure of his identity, but no more than that.”
My uncle, like my late father, had been a seafaring man himself in his day, and so had a good knowledge of the ways of sailors. And, indeed, his judgment proved sound. In the port town we had made our home, The Seven Stars was by far the most popular hostelry with seafaring folk, and the simple bill of fare of rum, ale, stew, and darkness (and a strong possibility of a decent brawl) proved both popular and profitable. My uncle, having married my mother shortly after my father’s death, regarded me as his rightful property, and so he set me to work in the inn. I worked a little in the kitchen, though this was principally my uncle’s domain, having himself been a ship’s cook in his sailing days, but mostly I served at tables, and seldom was trade so quiet that I was not worn ragged by the end of the night.
Occasionally, though, a brief respite from my labors might be gained when a lone sailor, in want of an audience for some unlikely tale, bade me join him at his table. I suppose, as I was young, that such men thought me more likely to be gullible and so to believe even their most incredible yarns, and my situation as an employee of the house forced me to maintain a polite silence even when I did not. But from time to time there would be a worthwhile story, well told, that rewarded my attention. Occasionally there may even have been a grain of truth in some of them.
One November evening, in my thirteenth year, it seemed as if just such a tale had come my way. A ship of His Majesty’s Navy had not long come into dock and The Seven Stars was riotously busy that night, our customers shifting around the place, restlessly seeking the best and rowdiest company. But the fellow who beckoned me to his table, alone among them, seemed content to remain seated in one place.
Despite his having chosen the darkest corner of the tavern, I could discern at once that he was not himself a Navy man, for he wore not a uniform, but instead a great and ragged patchwork coat. It was an extraordinary thing, seemingly pieced together from the remnants of a dozen other garments, all of different sizes, colors, and fabrics. The resulting garment was a lumpy, shapeless thing, and yet, I could just discern, held together with the finest and most exquisitely skillful stitching. His collar was turned up, and the wide brim of his ancient leather hat was tilted down toward me. So, now that his beckoning hand had returned to beneath the table, the darkness and his clothing combined to hide from me every last inch of his person save for his dimly visible, unblinking eyes. These I thought to be of different colors, though it was difficult to say for sure in such poor light. I thought it likely that he would be a rough fellow, but in fact when he spoke I found his voice to be soft and refined.
“I wonder, young sir, if you might bring me a plate of stew and a tankard of ale.”
“Of course, sir.”
“I am indebted to you.”
I duly served the strange gentleman his stew and ale and made to leave him, but he bade me stay.
“Please, lad,” he said. “Would you grant a sailor a few moments’ conversation? I have been long at sea and I would be grateful for a little company.”
I joined him gladly for, as I have said, I was weary already from the evening’s work. My uncle would no doubt punish me if he saw me but, as usual, he was in the kitchen rather than at the bar, so I reasoned I would be safe.
“Are none of your crew here for company, sir?”
At this he must have smiled a little, for I briefly caught sight of a faint glimmer of dim candlelight on dull teeth in the shadows beneath his hat brim. He twitched a little, too, as if a tiny ripple of laughter had passed through each of the parts of his body in turn.
“Aye, lad,” he said. “Some of my shipmates are here, right enough. But a soul can spend too long too close to his shipmates. I would rather a little fresh company. Besides, I have a fine tale to tell, if you’ll hear it, but it is one that they know very well already.”
“A tale? Gladly, sir,” I said, though not perhaps with much sincerity, for the weariness in my body infected my voice.
“Ha! You’ve heard many a yarn from all sorts and all ports, I’ll be bound. You must think there’s barely a tale of the briny that you’ve yet to hear. Well, I’ll prove you wrong, lad. You have not heard the like of this one, I promise you. For this is a tale of the worst deeds of a dark-hearted scoundrel who betrayed his shipmates: a tale of greed, and of ruthlessness, and of terrible, bloody revenge!”
I had heard similar claims before, and oft enough been disappointed just the same. But I remembered my uncle’s words. A sailor likes the shadows to conceal his secrets. Here was a man almost made of shadows. Would he not have the darkest secrets to draw upon for his stories? I leaned in toward him, the better to hear his words, and he grinned at my attention.
“There was a ship set sail, some years back—an old tub, her glory days long behind her, but sturdy enough to weather another few squalls yet—sailing to Barbados. It was a smooth enough voyage out. The captain and many of the crew knew the boat and the route well, and the weather and the seas were kind enough, so they arrived in good time and fine spirits. They off-loaded their cargo, and their work, for the moment, was done. So the crew, believing themselves entitled to some rowdy entertainment at the end of a voyage, set about the gaining of sore heads, one way or another, in various taverns around the town.
“When the ship was to set off homeward, three days later, several of the crew had not returned, having been variously waylaid by imprisonment, injury, or amorous entanglements, but the captain deemed that they still had sufficient hands to see them home safe so they did not delay and set sail as planned.
“Now, three days out on the return trip and all’s been well so far when something is spotted off the port bow. The captain puts his spyglass to his eye and sees there is a jolly boat, seemingly adrift with no man aboard, but only a gigantic black bear in a cage.
“They sail alongside, expecting that, perhaps, there may be a sailor lying asleep, as yet unseen, who might be able to explain this strange circumstance. But there is none, nor any other clue to aid their understanding. There is only a great black bear, in a cage, in a jolly boat, adrift upon the waters.
“Now this is a rum thing indeed, and sailors may be more prone than most to superstition, as you know, so there is some debate amongst the crew as to what should be done. Some think it an ill omen and best left well alone. Contrarily, others think it will bring them good fortune, so they should bring the beast aboard. And yet others say that superstition can go hang, but surely such a beast could be sold for a good price once they are home. This last argument is the one that finds most favor with the captain, so block and tackle and the strong arms of four sailors hoist the cage aboard, with the bear in it, and the ship continues on her way home.
�
�Well, the crew are wary of the beast at first: intrigued and fascinated, but also cautious. It is a beautiful creature and black as the devil’s shadow, and sailors know enough of dark beauty to be wary of it. But despite its confinement in so small a space this bear proves to be a placid creature, and as the days pass, he grows in the crew’s affection. One night, when one sailor plays his squeezebox, the bear rises to his hind legs and dances a crude jig, and this is great entertainment for all. Some of the crew, full of groggy courage, even venture close enough to the cage to push a hand through the bars and stroke that blackest fur, and the bear makes no complaint. It is a happy night for all.
“Well, nearly all. While all else are laughing and carefree, the ship’s cook, alone amongst them, has a face like a thunderhead. While ashore, he had spent his time gambling and enjoyed unusual luck. But this night he finds his luck has stayed on land. The cards are against him and he loses all of his winnings and more to the ship’s carpenter. There’s an angry fire in his belly, which he feeds with an excess of rum. He accuses the carpenter of cheating. There has been bad blood between these two before now, and old wounds sting afresh in the salty air, but the rest of the crew prevent a fight. They know these men of old and they are not alike. The carpenter is a fine fellow, strong and brave and true, but the cook is a sorry soul, selfish and deceitful, a weasel of a man, quite unlike his brother, and—”
“His brother?” I said. The sailor looked up at me, and even with only his eyes discernible in the shadows of his face I thought I read a teasing amusement in his expression.
“Did I not say? The cook and the carpenter are brothers, though two men less alike you would seldom meet. But that’s of little matter. Now, where was I? Yes. So the crew keep the men apart and prevent any violence between them and they mock the cook as a poor loser. He swears and fumes and threatens in return, but the crew only laugh harder at his bluster, and eventually he slopes off to his bunk, muttering curses as he goes.