by Prey (lit)
In a way, it was almost a relief to discover that none of it was true. I stood alone in that darkened attic with tears in my eyes, feeling as if I had been liberated from some terrible responsibility. Godif Liz hadn't intervened, if Liz hadn't shown me how weird I had becomeI could have ended up in a mental home, nodding and twitching and telling my kindly nurses that Sothoth was out to get me. I could even remember where the name "Sothoth" had come froma short horror story that I had read at school, by H.P. Lovecraft "the noxious Yog-Sothoth, that spawn of the blackness of primal time, that tentacled amorphous monster whose mask was as a congeries or iridescent globes Yog-Sothoth, who froths as a primal slime in nuclear chaos forever beyond the nethermost outposts of space and time!"
I crossed from one side of the attic to the other, still crying. It was almost like being born all over againor, if not being born all over again, then at least like being forgiven everything that I had ever thought, and everything that I had ever done. I stamped on the attic floor where the trapdoor had beenor, rather, where it hadn't been, and then I went back down the stairs, and switched off my torch, and closed the attic door behind me.
Liz was still halfway up the stairs. "Well?" she said, with a smile.
"Well, I don't know what you're smiling for. I've just discovered that I'm mad."
"Oh, David, for goodness' sake! You're not mad! You've been struggling against stresstrying to keep your life together. Listenwhy don't we take the bus and go along to St Lawrence, to the Buddle Inn, and have some lunch. I love the Buddle Inn."
Danny was waiting for me, too, at the foot of the stairs. He took hold of my hand in a very grown-up, solicitous way, and led me out onto the patio.
"Are you all right, daddy?"
"Of course, yes. Of course I'm all right."
He stood beside me with his hands clasped behind his back like the Prince of Wales, looking out over the lawns and the overgrown oaks and the ruined chapel as if he owned them all, bless him. "Do you think we'll ever have a house like this?" he asked me.
"I don't know. We might, if things turn out all right."
"I wish mummy was here."
"Yes, I expect you do."
"Don't you wish that mummy was here?"
I shook my head. "I don't think so. I think that's all finished now. Mummy seems to be happier with Raymond. Perhaps I should try to be happier with Liz."
"I like Liz," said Danny, and I was pleased with that.
"What has two legs and flies?" he asked me.
"I don't know. What has two legs and flies?"
"A pair of trousers."
I couldn't help laughing. Not because Danny's joke was particularly funny; but out of relief, and release. I felt as if the burdens of the whole world had been lifted from my shoulders.
"Liz is funny," he said.
"Oh, yes?"
"Liz made my picture dance."
I looked down at him. I felt that cold, familiar drenching of dread. "What do you mean, Liz made your picture dance?"
"Sweet Emmeline, and the man in the chimney hat. She made them dance."
"How did she do that?"
Danny shook his head. "I don't know."
I was about to ask him what he meant by "making his picture dance" when Liz came out onto the patio, her hair brushed up, wearing crucially tight stretch-denim jeans and a red T-shirt that made it pointedly obvious that she wasn't wearing a bra.
"Are you ready?" she asked, coming up and kissing my unbruised cheek.
I don't know what kind of a facial expression I made; but it must have been complicated and concerned; because Liz shoved her arm into mine, and kissed me again, and said, "For goodness' sake, David. We're only going for lunch. Hurry upwe'll miss the bus."
We ate lunch outside, in the sunshinefresh-fried haddock and chips, pints of Ruddles beer, and I watched Danny dipping his chips in his tomato-ketchup and felt very English and normal, almost like a family again.
After lunch we returned to Bonchurch on the bus, while the sky grew black with impending thunder, and lightning flickered like snakes' tongues over Godshill and Whiteley Bank. By the time we clambered down from the bus at Bonchurch, there was a strong smell of ozone in the air, and raindrops the size of ten-pence pieces were spotting the roadway.
Liz and I walked arm in arm, while Danny skipped on ahead. Her breast bounced heavy and warm against my hand. I was still finding it almost impossible to believe that my excursions back to 1886 were nothing but my own imagination. But the extraordinary part about it was that it was less complicated for me to believe that it hadn't happened. It was easier to think that it had all been the stuff of nightmares: pushing Dennis Pickering out to sea, talking to young Mr Billings under the shadow of the trees, having my face scratched and bruised by Kezia Mason, and my crotch clawed by that sniveling, louse-infested Brown Jenkin.
How could it all be true? How could the Old Ones be true? How could Liz be impregnated with semen and saliva and blood, and give birth to three different creatures of no human shape? I could feel her next to meslim, bosomy, soft, girlish, and smelling like home-baked biscuits and musky Body Shop perfume. She was right. It was all madness.
A devastating crack of thunder split the sky from one side to the other, and lit the rooftops and chimneys of Fortyfoot House like a Hammer horror film. The rain suddenly pelted down, hissing and clattering through the laurel-bushes, and we ran as fast as we could to the front porch, where Danny was already waiting for us, skipping and dancing because he wanted to go to the toilet.
"Hurry up, daddy!"
I unlocked the door and we went inside. Inside the house it was very gloomy and damp; and it smelled of neglect. I hung up my wet jacket, and then I went through to the kitchen and opened the fridge.
"What about a glass of wine?" I asked Liz. "There's some of that Bulgarian stuff left."
"Yuck, all right."
She came up to me and hung her arms around my neck. Her hair was wet and clung to her forehead in curls. I kissed her, and I decided that I liked her.
"I should get on with some decorating," I told her.
"So you've decided to stay?"
"I think sofor the time being, anyway. I get the feeling that Fortyfoot House doesn't want me to go."
"I don't think it's such a bad place," said Liz. "In fact I've grown quite fond of it."
Danny came into the kitchen, still zipping up his shorts. "Can I go down to the beach?" he asked.
"It's raining."
"That doesn't matter. I'll wear my swimming-trunks."
I looked out of the kitchen window. It was warm enough, outside; and over the Channel the sky was already beginning to clear. "All right," I said. "But stay on the rocks or the sand. Don't go in the sea. We'll come down and see you a little later on."
Danny changed into his bright blue-and-yellow Hawaiian-style swimming-trunks, collected his bucket and spade, and walked off through the rain.
"I think he's as mad as you are," grinned Liz.
I gave her a glass of wine, and said, "Nasdravye. Here's to madness, in whatever shape or form."
She clinked glasses, then kissed me. "Why don't we go upstairs?" she said. "Wine always tastes much better in bed."
I looked at her over the rim of my glass. The rain pattered softly against the window, and began to blow in through the open kitchen door, speckling the lino. In the far distance, thunder grumbled indigestively. Three sons, young Mr Billings had told me. One of seed, one of saliva, one of blood. Or had I really dreamed it, or imagined it?
Liz climbed the stairs ahead of me, turning around two or three times to smile at me and to make sure that I was following close behind. By the time we reached the bedroom, the sun had come out, and the whole room was charged with brilliant light. Liz put down her glass of wine beside the unmade bed, and immediately unbuckled her belt. She kicked off her jeans and then knelt on the bed, holding out her arms to me. Through the sheer white nylon of her panties, I could see the dark fan-shape of her pubic hair
.
I stripped off my shirt and stepped out of my trousers, and joined her on the wrinkled sheet. We knelt face to face like the lovers on the cover of The Joy of Sex, kissing each other and exploring the taste of each other's mouths. Liz tasted of wine, and some indefinable but highly-evocative sweetness that reminded me of some taste from long ago which I couldn't place.
I lifted her T-shirt over her breasts and her upraised arms. Her breasts swung heavily into my hands, and her nipples knurled in the sunlight, as bright as tangerine-flavored fruit pastilles. I kissed her breasts and teased her nipples with my teeth. She raked her fingers through my hair and chanted, "David, I love you; David, I love you," over and over again, in the breathiest murmur I had ever heard. It was almost like a song, or a ritual chant.
Awkwardly, I tugged her panties halfway down her thighs, and then eased her gently on to her back so that I could lift her legs and pull her panties right off. Her pubic hair glowed in the afternoon sunlight like gilded wire. The lips of her vulva glistened. She reached down with both hands and opened herself up for me, stretching herself wide apart.
door flew opensomebody whispered. It could have been me.
I wrestled out of my boxer shorts. My erection reared thick and crimson-headed. Liz took hold of it in one hand, massaging it slowly up and down, rolling the ball of her thumb against the cleft in its swollen head. "David, you're gorgeous; David, I love you."
I tried to force myself downwards so that I could slide myself into her, but she resisted, gripping my cock even more tightly. I felt her fingernails digging into my skin.
"I want you," I panted.
She gave me a taunting smile. "You may want me. But I haven't decided whether I'm going to let you have me."
I weighed down on her again, feeling more and more frustrated. She clutched my erection so tight that the head darkened reddish-purple with constricted blood.
"Lizthat hurts!"
"Don't you like pain?" she teased me. "I thought you were the kind of man who got a kick out of being hurt."
I hesitated for a moment, then pushed forward again. This time I felt a sharp scratch on the underside of my cock. I looked down, and a thin trickle of blood was running between Liz's fingers. It slid down the back of her hand, formed a heavy, viscous droplet, and then dripped between the chubby cheeks of her bottom.
I stared down at her. She stared back up at me, her eyes challenging me to say anything.
One of seed; one of saliva; one of blood. The three species of the Old Ones, waiting the great Renewal.
"What's the matter?" Liz asked me. My erection began to soften and die.
"I want you to tell me who you are," I demanded.
"You know who I am."
"I'm not sure any more. You've had all three things nowsperm, spit and blood. You could be one of the Old Ones that young Mr Billings was talking about. You probably are."
"Davidyou've really gone off your rocker."
"Oh, yes? So what was this scratching all about?"
"I like to scratch when I make love, that's all. It's the animal in me, I suppose."
"The animal? Or the thing?"
Liz sat up, and put her arm around my shoulder. "David, this is crazy. I'm sorry I scratched you, I was only playing around. But there is no thing and there is no 'young Mr Billings' and there is no 'Brown Jenkin' and there is no 'Kezia Mason.' They're all in your mind, David. They're nothing but fantasies . . . nothing but your own imagination."
"They can't be," I insisted. "If they're part of my imagination, how can I possibly remember them in such detail? I can even describe the engraving on young Mr Billings' pocket-watch. It was like a kind of an octopus. I was there, I went there, I'm sure of it."
Liz put her arms around me and held me close, her cheek pressed against my shoulder. "David," she soothed me, "I know that you think you went there. I know that you really believe it. But it just didn't happen. You didn't go anywhere."
"I don't know," I told her. "I don't know what the hell to think."
I climbed out of bed and went over to the window. Liz lay back on the pillow and watched me.
The sky was clear now. The storm had passed. Only the faintest rainbow shone over the ruined roof of the chapel. No chimney-hatted figures stalked the wabe. No hunched-up rodents rushed behind the bushes, hooded and clawed and shaking out showers of licebehind the bushes. With a huge sense of relief, I began to understand that at Fortyfoot House I had created a world of fantasy for myself . . . an invented world in which I had tried to deal with all of my problems by giving them faces and shapes and names.
Liz came up behind me and put her arms around my waist. I felt her nipples brush my bare back. "You remember what I said before?" she asked me. "You can get over Janie. You can learn to be yourself. It's your life, David. Take hold of it with both hands."
I turned my head around and kissed her. Her eyes flashed scarlet in the sunlight. One of blood. Outside the window, the seagulls screamed, and the afternoon swelled with warm and sunlight, a benison from nature, perhaps from God.
"Look at itit's brilliant," I said. "It makes you glad to be alive."
But then I saw Danny emerge from the trees and walk slowly toward the house. In one hand he carried his bucket and spade. In the other, he was carrying something which he was throwing and catching, throwing and catching.
19 - A Summer's Death
I was still buttoning up my shirt when I met him at the kitchen door.
"Hallo! Fed up with crab-racing?"
He rubbed his forehead as if he had a headache. "I don't like crabs any more. Not after what they did to Mrs Kemble."
"They weren't to know. They don't know the difference between fish and people."
"They're horrible."
"Well, yes," I said. "I suppose they are. Do you want some limeade?"
He threw something dark and metallic up in the air, and caught it again.
"What's that?" I asked him, as I unscrewed the bottle of limeade and filled up a glass for him.
"Keys," he said. "I found them on the beach. They must be a hundred years old."
"Keys?" I asked him. "Let me have a look."
"They're all rusty. And they've got oysters on them."
He handed me a small bunch of keys on a ring. I laid them flat on the palm of my hand and examined them. He was right. They must have been at least a hundred years old. The steel keys had been rusted by seawater until they were nothing but wafer-thin prongs, and the brass keys had been blackened by salt, and encrusted with tiny limpets.
The key-ring itself was a metal disk, with some kind of triangular badge on it. There were a few traces of blue enamel around the triangle; and underneath it I could make out the corroded letters "Re. .It".
"Do you think they're worth a lot of money?" asked Danny. "They could be pirates' keys, couldn't they?"
Slowly, I shook my head. "No . . . they're not pirates' keys. They're car keys."
"But they look so old."
"They are old. But look what those letters say, underneath the badge. Resomething-something-somethingIt. Renault. These are the Reverend Pickering's car keys. He was trying to find them this morning."
"How can they be so old when he only lost them this morning?" Danny frowned.
I had pushed his disemboweled body into the sea, and the waves had carried him away . . . but his keys must have slipped out of his pocket, on to the rocks. They were over a hundred years old, yet Danny must have found them almost exactly where they had fallen. They were over a hundred years old, yet they hadn't been there until this morning.
I sat down, sorting through Dennis Pickering's keys again and again, while Danny watched me in bewilderment. These keys vividly demonstrated the numbing paradox of Fortyfoot House. In Fortyfoot House you could change both the past and the future. You could make sure that things had happened in the past, even though they had never happened. And most disturbing of all, you could make sure that things hadn't happened, even when they had.
Dennis Pickering's body had lain under the living-room floorboards since Brown Jenkin had murdered him in 1886. I had seen him there. Yet now he wasn't there at all . . . now I had changed the past. I suddenly understood that time wasn't linear, but parallel. Our awareness moved from one event to the next like the flicker-cards in a "What The Butler Saw" machine. But we could always stop the cards, and go back to the beginning. We could always take cards out, and replace them with other cards. The events were always there, from pre-history to the end of time. Queen Victoria was still there, Henry VIII was still there, Caesar was still there. So was I, as a boy. So was Janie. Perhaps I could go back in time and make sure that Janie never met the Bearded Fart.