Dark Terrors 5 - The Gollancz Book of Horror - [Anthology]

by Edited By Stephen Jones

  I crossed behind the van. Jerry was sitting in the sand, panting. He was looking at his left arm. I moved towards him and we both looked at his arm and, as we did so, a red line appeared. His flesh was white, numbed by the ghoul’s inhuman grip, and on that pale background a thin thread unravelled, as if slipping from a tapestry - and a trickle of blood oozed from the broken skin.

  ‘Aw, hell,’ he said, very softly. ‘Aw, hell. . .’

  And he looked at the lighthouse, so close now and so unobtainably far.

  Grey and bleak, it rose up beyond him.

  * * * *

  XXV

  Mary clung to him.

  She was gasping and sobbing and heaving violently at him, almost attacking him in her despair. Jerry was trying not to touch her. He held his left arm out to the side.

  He said, ‘I’ll go back.’

  She was crying. ‘Jerry! Jerry! No!’

  He said, ‘I’ll hold them for a while...stop as many as I can.’ He looked down at Mary, then at me. I understood. I took her by the shoulders and dragged her from him. She struggled against me, babbling incoherently, her mouth forming words that had no meaning...sounds that arose from depths far beyond language, from feelings far more ancient than speech. She struck at me. I had to change my grip. Jerry was reloading his revolver, tucking the shells into the open chamber with amazing delicacy. He snapped the cylinder closed and began fingering the bullets remaining in his belt. His lips moved; he was counting. He wanted no mistakes in that enumeration. He would have a use for the final bullet.

  ‘Jerry,’ I said. Words were absurdly inadequate. I said, ‘I’m sorry, Jerry. I...I’m glad I knew you.’

  Mary was reaching for him, clawing for him.

  And he couldn’t even kiss her goodbye.

  He said, ‘Mary...’ and his voice broke. His eyes were glazed over. He shook his massive body and turned. He didn’t look back. He walked back the way we’d come with his shoulders square and I saw him raise his hand to his forehead. I knew he wished he had his Stetson as he walked back through the sunlight. . .

  * * * *

  ‘Mary, please ... go to the lighthouse!’

  She ignored me.

  She didn’t even hear me. She stood on the rocks and looked back. Jerry had turned past the rim of the island. We couldn’t see him. Mary had tried to go after him and three times I’d had to stop levering at the reef and drag her back to the rocks. I handed her the rifle and she took it, holding it by the barrel, not knowing what it was. Crazed with grief and horror, her mind had slipped out of focus. Keeping one eye on her, I attacked the reef again. It was a harder job than I’d thought. The rocks didn’t roll off separately but splintered and came apart, spongy veins separating hard layers.

  Jerry’s gun sounded.

  It went off six times and Mary’s body jerked at every shot, just as if those bullets were slamming into her. I wondered if the sixth bullet had been for himself? But then he was firing again. He had reloaded, giving us all the time he could. He fired four more times. Then there was silence.

  Mary sank down on a rock. One foot trailed in the water. I pried a black slice off and stepped back, wondering if the gap was wide enough. It wasn’t. I knelt on the slippery reef and tried to lift a huge segment of stone. It was too heavy for me I wished that Jerry had stayed to help break the reef. I heaved with all my might and the rock would not move.

  Then the ghouls were coming.

  * * * *

  Loping, bounding, skulking ... in their various fashions, they came for us. One was dragging a disembodied forearm at his side. I didn’t want to know whose arm it had been. I heaved. The rock was far too heavy for me to lift, it was impossible that I should raise it and yet, ponderously, that great slab shifted. Fear had granted me strength as surely as mindless inhibition granted it to the ghouls. I rose up with the stone clasped to my breast; let it slide away, sideways, into the water. The water bubbled light green as the rock sank.

  Mary screamed.

  The first ghoul was on the reef, bounding from rock to rock. Blood streamed from an empty eyesocket. The other eye was fixed upon us. I backed away, reaching out for the gun, but Mary was too petrified to hand it to me; didn’t even know she had it. She was so terrified that she took a step forwards, towards the ghoul.

  I snatched the rifle from her, throwing us both off balance. Mary slipped forwards and I fell back. The ghoul sprang up from the rocks, he seemed to soar over the break as I fired from my knees, awkwardly, and the recoil shoved me over the slippery stone. Flailing wildly, I dropped backwards into the warm sea.

  * * * *

  I surfaced, kicking and gasping. I had lost the rifle. I took one automatic stroke towards the rocks, then recoiled, pushing away. The ghoul’s leap had fallen short...the gap had proved wide enough and the creature was in the water. His gory head bobbed up and down, water streaming from the open mouth, blood streaming from the open eyesocket, the other eye white and wild with terror. He was reaching for the rocks.

  Mary stood there, staring down at the monster, frozen fast by her horror.

  ‘Go back!’ I cried.

  Water swirled into my mouth, choking me.

  The ghoul’s hand slapped down on the rock, shifted...and clamped on Mary’s ankle.

  She never made a sound as the creature dragged her down into the sea. The water bubbled around them. She was trying to swim and the frenzied thing tore at her. Three or four other ghouls had come up to the break in the reef; they stood there, staring down at the ghoul in the water - and the woman. I stroked to the rocks beyond the gap and hauled myself out, gasping. I looked into the gap from my side of the break and the ghouls looked in from their side and in the water between there was blood.

  Mary’s face turned to me.

  She pleaded with her eyes, silently.

  She reached out towards me and my hand went out to her, but she was too far away. She was closer to the other side. The ghoul had gone under now and Mary was alone in the turbulent gap. She twisted violently, trying to kick off from the rocks, but she had drifted too close. The ghouls reached down.

  She still made no sound, even as their hands closed over her and they drew her up onto the rocks. I would have shot her, of course...but I had lost the rifle. Mary was on the flat rock. She kicked spasmodically with one leg. The ghouls bent over her, slowly, solicitously, as if they had rescued her from drowning...bent to her, as if to give the kiss of life...

  * * * *

  Epilogue

  I thought I saw Mary amongst them today.

  I was watching through the binoculars, a group of them were milling about by the rotting swordfish and one looked rather like Mary. But I stopped watching. I didn’t want to know. I only want to know how much longer it will be, how many days or weeks I must sit here in my grey tower, rooted in the sea and rising towards the heavens. Not much longer, perhaps. They don’t seem as frenzied now, they don’t even fight amongst themselves when they make contact. I wonder if the madness is wearing off ... if they are recovering some human instinct ... or simply wasting away, weakening and dying? I hope it was not Mary I saw. When I looked later, most of them had gone. One was dead - lifeless, at least. The body had burst open and a length of intestine had uncoiled. I saw a seagull land on the ghoul’s shoulder and dip its sharp beak into the gruesome cavity.

  The gull’s head came up and it seemed to shudder, as did I. Larsen’s words came back to me. If a dog or a rat got at one of the bodies...Again the gull’s beak dipped; the plumed throat pulsed. Above the patrol boats the sky was clear and blue. The seagull was sated. It poised, wings lifted, then bore itself away.

  David Case was born in New York but for the past few decades has lived in London as well as spending time in Spain and Greece. His acclaimed collection The Cell: Three Tales of Horror appeared in 1969, and it was followed by the novels Fengrijfen: A Chilling Tale (1970), Wolf Tracks (1980) and The Third Grave, which appeared from Arkham House in 1981. More recently, a new collection
entitled Brotherly Love and Other Tales of Faith and Knowledge was published by Pumpkin Books. Outside the horror genre, Case has written more than three hundred books under at least seventeen pseudonyms, ranging from porn to Westerns. Two of his short stories, ‘Fengriffen’ and the classic werewolf thriller ‘The Hunter’ were filmed as - And Now the Screaming Starts!(1973) andScream of the Wolf(1974), respectively. ‘Pelican Cay’ was originally going to be published by the late James Turner in an anthology he planned to edit in the mid-1980s for Arkham House entitledSummoning the Shadows. When the horror market changed in America, the book was shelved and Case’s powerful novella languished in a file for many years until its publication here. ‘I wrote “Pelican Cay” in a seedy hotel in downtown Chicago,’ remembers the author, ‘but had lived in the Florida Keys before that, which inspired the atmosphere and setting. The Red Walls, or maybe Doors, was an upmarket place when I was there, but there were plenty of tales from when it was the haunt of shrimpers and salad girls (girls who signed on shrimp boats but didn’t necessarily make salads). A fella was drowning his sorrows there once and, morose, said he would commit suicide if he dared. They hanged him from the rafters. My favourite: thirteen shrimpers are standing at the long bar. A guy runs in with a shooter and shouts “This is a stick-up!” The shrimpers turned around and twelve had shooters, the other had a billhook. The bandit says, “I guess I’ve robbed the wrong place.” But he bought a round of drinks and they let him go.’

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