All the while, Mrs Marchant had kept her hands pressed together in the folds of her dress, but now she opened them. Selkirk half-expected a nun to flap free of them on starfish wings, but they were empty. “So much whiteness, Mr Selkirk. And yet it was dark. You wouldn’t think that would be possible, would you?”
“I’ve lived by the sea all my life,” Selkirk said.
“Well, then. That’s what it was like. A wall of white that shed no light at all. I couldn’t even see the water. I had the lamp lit, of course, but all that did was emphasize the difference between in here and out there.”
Selkirk stood. If he were Charlie Marchant, he thought, he would never have left the Convent, as he’d begun to think of the whole place. Not to go to sea. Not even to town. He found himself remembering the letters he’d sent Amalia during his dock-working years. Pathetic, clumsy things. She’d never responded to those, either. Maybe she’d been trying, in her way, to be kind.
“I’ve often wondered if Luis somehow sensed the ship coming,” Mrs Marchant said. “We’d trained him to bark in the fog, in case a passing captain could hear but not see us. But maybe that day Luis was just barking at the whiteness.
“The sound was unmistakable when it came. I heard wood splintering. Sails collapsing. A mast smashing into the water. But there wasn’t any screaming. And I thought . . .”
“You thought maybe the crew had escaped to the lifeboats,” Selkirk said, when it was clear Mrs Marchant was not going to finish her sentence.
For the first time in several minutes, Mrs Marchant turned her gaze on him. Abruptly, that luminous smile crept over her lips. “You would make the most marvellous stuffed giraffe,” she said.
Selkirk stiffened. Was he going to have to carry this poor, gently raving woman out of here? “Mrs Marchant, it’s already late. We need to be starting for town soon.”
If she understood what he meant, she gave no sign. “I knew what ship it was.” She sank back into her wicker chair, the smile gone, and crossed her legs. “What other vessel would be out there in the middle of winter? I started screaming, pounding the glass. It didn’t take me long to realize they wouldn’t have gone to the rowboats. In all likelihood, they’d had no idea where they were. The Kendall boys were experienced seamen, excellent sailors, Mr Selkirk. But that fog had dropped straight out of the heart of the sky, or maybe it had risen from the dead sea bottom, and it was solid as stone.
“And then – as if it were the fogbank itself, and not Charlie’s boat, that had run aground on the sandbar out there – all that whiteness just shattered. The whole wall cracked apart into whistling, flying fragments. Just like that, the blizzard blew in. How does that happen, Mr Selkirk? How does the sea change its mind like that?”
Selkirk didn’t answer. But for the first time, he thought he understood why the sailors in the Blubber Pike referred to those teasing, far-off flickers of light the way they did.
“I rushed downstairs, thinking I’d get the rowboat and haul myself out there and save them. But the waves . . . they were snarling and snapping all over themselves, and I knew I’d have to wait. My tears were freezing on my face. I was wearing only a dressing gown, and the wind whipped right through me. The door to the lighthouse was banging because I hadn’t shut it properly, and I was so full of fury and panic I was ready to start screaming again. I looked out to sea, and all but fell to my knees in gratitude.
“It was there, Mr Selkirk. I could see the ship. Some of it, anyway. Enough, perhaps. I could just make it out. The prow, part of the fore-deck, a stump of mast. I turned around and raced back inside for my clothes.
“Then I ran all the way to town. We never kept a horse here, Charlie didn’t like them. The strangest thing was this sensation I kept having, this feeling that I’d gotten lost. It was impossible; that path out there was well-travelled in those days, and even now, you had no trouble, did you? But I couldn’t feel my skin. Or . . . it was as though I had come out of it. There was snow and sand flying all around, wind in the dunes. So cold. My Charlie out there. I remember thinking, This is what the Bruxsa feels like. This is why she torments travellers. This is why she feeds. You know, at some point, I thought maybe I’d become her.”
Pursing his lips, Selkirk stirred from the daze that had settled over him. “Brucka?”
“Bruxsa. It is like . . . a banshee? Do you know the word? A ghost, but not of anyone. A horrid thing all its own.”
Was it his imagination, or had the dark outside deepened toward evening? If he didn’t get this finished, neither one of them would make it out of here tonight. “Mrs Marchant, perhaps we could continue this on the way back to town.”
Finally, as though he’d slapped her, Mrs Marchant blinked. “What?”
“Mrs Marchant, surely you understand the reason for my coming. We ’ll send for your things. You don’t have to leave today, but wouldn’t that be easiest? I’ll walk with you. I’ll make certain—”
“When I finally reached Winsett,” Mrs Marchant said, her stare returning as that peculiar, distant smiled played across her mouth, “I went straight for the first lit window I saw. Selkirk’s. The candle-maker. Your uncle.”
Selkirk cringed, remembering those hard, overheated hands smashing against the side of his skull.
“He was so kind,” she said, and his mouth quivered and fell open as she went on. “He rushed me inside. It was warm in his shop. At the time, it literally felt as though he’d saved my life. Returned me to my body. I sat by his fire, and he raced all over town through the blizzard and came back with whalers, sailing men. Charlie’s father, and the Kendalls’ older brother. There were fifteen of them, at least. Most set out immediately on horseback for the point. Your uncle wrapped me in two additional sweaters and an overcoat, and he walked all the way back out here with me, telling me it would be all right. By the time we reached the lighthouse, he said, the sailors would already have figured a way to get the boys off that sandbar and home.”
To Selkirk, it seemed this woman had reached into his memories and daubed them with colours he knew couldn’t have been there. His uncle had been kind to no one. His uncle had hardly spoken except to complete business. The very idea of his using his shop fire to warm somebody, risking himself to rouse the town to some wealthy playboy’s rescue . . .
But of course, by the time Selkirk had come here, the town was well on its way to failing, and his aunt had died in some awful, silent way no one spoke about. Maybe his uncle had been different, before. Or maybe, he thought with a sick quivering deep in his stomach, he was just an old lecher, on top of being a drunk.
“By the time we got back here, it was nearly dusk,” Mrs Marchant said. “The older Kendall and four of the sailors had already tried four different times to get the rowboat away from shore and into the waves. They were all tucked inside my house, now, trying to stave off pneumonia.
“‘Tomorrow,’ one of the sailors told me. ‘Tomorrow, please God, if they can just hold on. We’ll find a way to them.’
“And right then, Mr Selkirk. Right as the light went out of that awful day for good, the snow cleared. For one moment. And there they were.”
A single tear crept from the lashes of her right eye. She was almost whispering, now. “It was like a gift. Like a glimpse of him in heaven. I raced back outside, called out, leapt up and down, we all did, but of course they couldn’t hear, and weren’t paying attention. They were scrambling all over the deck. I knew right away which was Charlie. He was in the bow, all bundled up in a hat that wasn’t his and what looked like three or four coats. He looked like one of my nuns, Mr Selkirk.” She grinned again. “The one with the bandeau that hides her face? I was holding her in my lap before. I made her in memory of this one moment.”
Selkirk stared. Was the woman actually celebrating this story?
“I could also see the Kendall boys’ hair as they worked amidships. So red, like twin suns burning off the overcast.
“‘Bailing,’ Charlie’s father told me. ‘The ship
must be taking on water. They’re trying to keep her where she is.’”
Again, Mrs Marchant’s smile slid, but didn’t vanish entirely. “I asked how long they could keep doing that. But what I really wondered was how long they’d already been at it. Those poor, beautiful boys.
“Our glimpse lasted two minutes. Maybe even less. I could see new clouds rising behind them. Like a sea-monster rearing right out of the waves. But at the last, just before the snow and the dark obliterated our sight of them, they all stopped as one, and turned around. I’m sorry, Mr Selkirk.”
She didn’t wipe her face, and there weren’t any tears Selkirk could see. She simply sat in her chair, breathing softly. Selkirk watched her with some relief.
“I remember the older Kendall boy standing beside me,” she finally said. “He was whispering. Aw, come on boys. Get your gear on.’ The Kendalls, you see . . . they’d removed their coats. And I finally realized what it meant, that I could see their hair. They hadn’t bothered with their hats, even though they’d kept at the bailing. Remember, I’ve been around sailors all my life, Mr Selkirk. All the men in my family were sailors, long before they came to this country. My father had been whaling here when he sent for us. So I knew what I was seeing.”
“And what was that?”
“The Kendalls had given up. Less than one hundred yards from shore, they’d given up. Or decided that they weren’t going to make it through the night. Either rescue would come before dawn, or it would no longer matter. The ship would not hold. Or the cold would overwhelm them. So they were hastening the end, one way or another.
“But not Charlie. Not my Charlie. He didn’t jump in the air. He just slumped against the railing. But I know he saw me, Mr Selkirk. I could feel him. Even under all those hats. I could always feel him. Then the snow came back. And night fell.
“The next time we saw them, they were in the rigging.”
Silently, Selkirk gave up the idea of escaping Winsett until morning. The network of functioning lights and functional keepers the Service had been toiling so hard to establish could wait one more winter evening.
“This was midday, the second day. That storm was a freak of nature. Or perhaps not natural at all. How can that much wind blow a storm nowhere? It was as though the blizzard itself had locked jaws on those boys – on my boy – and would not let go. The men who weren’t already wracked by coughs and fever made another five attempts with the rowboat, and never got more than fifteen feet from shore. The ice in the air was like arrows raining down.
“Not long after the last attempt, when almost everyone was indoors and I was rushing about making tea and caring for the sick and trying to shush Luis, who had been barking since dawn, I heard Charlie’s father cry out and hurried outside.
“I’d never seen light like that, Mr Selkirk, and I haven’t since. Neither snow nor wind had eased one bit, and the clouds hadn’t lifted. But there was the ship again, and there were our boys. Up in the ropes, now. The Kendalls had their hats back on and their coats around them, tucked up tight together with their arms through the lines. Charlie had gone even higher, crouching by himself, looking down at the brothers or maybe the deck. I hoped they were talking to each other, or singing, anything to keep their spirits up and their breath in them. Because the ship . . . have you ever seen quicksand, Mr Selkirk? It was almost like that. This glimpse lasted a minute, maybe less. But in that time, the hull dropped what looked like another full foot underwater. And that was the only thing we saw move.”
“I don’t understand,” Selkirk said. “The sandbar was right there. It’s what they hit, right? Or the rocks right around it? Why not just climb down?”
“If they’d so much as put their feet in that water, after all they’d been exposed to, they would have frozen on the spot. All they could do was cling to the ropes.
“So they clung. The last healthy men came out behind Charlie’s father and me to watch. And somehow, just the clear sight of the ship out there inspired us all. And the way the mast was tilting toward the surface got us all angry and active again.
“We got close once, just at dark. The snow hadn’t cleared, but the wind had eased. It had been in our ears so long, I’m not sure we even realized it at first. The sickest men, including the older Kendall boy, had been run back to town on horseback, and we hoped other Winsett whalers might be rigging up a brig in the harbour to try reaching Charlie’s ship from the sea-side, rather than from land, the moment the weather permitted. I kept thinking I’d heard new sounds out there, caught a glimpse of the mast of a rescue vessel. But of course it was too soon, and we couldn’t really hear or see anything but the storm, anyway. And in the midst of another round of crazy, useless running about, Charlie’s father grabbed my wrist and whirled me around to face the water and said, ‘Stop. Listen.’
“And I understood finally that I heard nothing. Sweet, beautiful nothing. Right away I imagined that I should be able to hear Charlie and the Kendalls through the quiet. Before anyone could stop me, I was racing for the shore, my feet flying into the frozen water and my dress freezing against my legs, but I could hardly feel it. I was already so cold, so numb. We all were. I started screaming my husband’s name. It was too shadowy and snowy to see. But I went right on screaming, and everyone else that was left with us held still.
“But I got no answer. If it weren’t for the swirling around my feet, I might have thought even the water had had its voice sucked from it.
“And then.”
Finally, for the first time, Mrs Marchant’s voice broke. In a horrible way, Selkirk realized he envied her this experience. No single hour, let alone day, had ever impressed itself on him the way these days had on her, except perhaps for those few fleeting, sleet-drenched moments with Amalia. And those had cast an uglier, darker shadow.
When Mrs Marchant continued, the quaver had gone, as though she’d swallowed it. “It was to be the last time I heard his real voice, Mr Selkirk. I think I already knew that. And when I remember it now, I’m not even certain I really did hear it. How could I have? It was a croak, barely even a whisper. But it was Charlie’s voice. I’d still swear to it, in spite of everything, even though he said just the one word. ‘Hurry.’
“The last two remaining men from Winsett needed no further encouragement. In an instant, they had the rowboat in the water. Charlie’s dad and I shoved off while they pulled with all their might against the crush of the surf. For a minute, no more, they hung up in that same spot that had devilled all our efforts for the past thirty-six hours, caught in waves that beat them back and back. Then they just sprung free. All of a sudden, they were in open water, heaving with all their might toward the sandbar. We were too exhausted to clap or cheer. But my heart leapt so hard in my chest I thought it might break my ribs.
“As soon as they were twenty feet from shore, we lost sight of them, and later, they said all they saw was blackness and water and snow, so none of us knows how close they actually got. They were gone six, maybe seven minutes. Then, as if a dyke had collapsed, sound came rushing over us. The wind roared in and brought a new, hard sleet. There was a one last, terrible pause that none of us mistook for calm. The water had simply risen up, you see, Mr Selkirk. It lifted our rescue rowboat in one giant black wave and hurled it halfway up the beach. The two men in the boat got slammed to the sand. Fortunately – miraculously, really – the wave hadn’t crested until it was nearly on top of the shore, so neither man drowned. One broke both wrists, the other his nose and teeth. Meanwhile, the water poured up the beach, soaked us all, and retreated as instantaneously as it had come.”
For the first time, Selkirk realized that the story he was hearing no longer quite matched the one Amalia had told him. Even more startling, Amalia’s had been less cruel. No rescues had been attempted because none had been possible. No real hope had ever emerged. The ship had simply slid off the sandbar, and all aboard had drowned.
“Waves don’t just rise up,” he said.
Mrs Marchant tilted h
er head. “No? My father used to come home from half a year at sea and tell us stories. Waves riding the ghost of a wind two years gone and two thousand leagues distant, roaming alone like great, rogue beasts, devouring everything they encounter. Not an uncommon occurrence on the open ocean.”
“But this isn’t the open ocean.”
“And you think the ocean knows, or cares? Though I will admit to you, Mr Selkirk. At the time, it seemed like the sea just didn’t want us out there.
“By now, the only two healthy people at Cape Roby Point were Charlie’s father and me. And when that new sleet kept coming and coming . . . well. We didn’t talk about it. We made our wounded rowers as comfortable as we could by the fire on the rugs inside. Then we set about washing bedding, setting out candles. I began making this little sister here—” as she spoke, she toed the doll with the white bandeau, which leaned against her feet “—to keep him company in his coffin. Although both of us knew, I’m sure, that we weren’t even likely to get the bodies back.
“My God, the sounds of that night. I can still hear the sleet drumming on the roof. The wind coiling around the tower. All I could think about was Charlie out there, clinging to the ropes for hope of reaching me. I knew he would be gone by morning. Around two o’clock, Charlie’s father fell asleep leaning against a wall, and I eased him into a chair and sank down on the floor beside him. I must have been so exhausted, so overwhelmed, that I slept, too, without meaning to, right there at his feet.
“And when I woke . . .”
The Kendalls, Selkirk thought, as he watched the woman purse her mouth and hold still. Had he known them? It seemed to him he’d at least known who they were. At that time, though, he’d had eyes only for Amalia. And after that, he’d kept to himself, and left everyone else alone.
The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New Horror Page 82