“They weren’t men,” I overheard a boy explaining to his friends. The boy had ginger-coloured hair, and he was nine, maybe ten years old at the most. The children were sitting together at the edge of the weedy vacant lot where a travelling carnival sets up three or four times a year.
“Then were they women?” one of the others asked him.
The boy frowned and gravely shook his head. “No. You’re not listening. They weren’t women, neither. They weren’t anything human. But, what I heard said, if you were to take all the stuff gets pulled up in trawler nets—all the hauls of cod and flounder and eel, the dogfish and the skates, the squids and jellyfish and crabs, all of it and whatever else you can conjure—if you took those things, still alive and wriggling, and could mush them up together into the shapes of men and women, that’s exactly what walked out of the bay that night.”
“That’s not true,” a girl said indignantly, and the others stared at her. “That’s not true at all. God wouldn’t let things like that run loose.”
The ginger-haired boy shook his head again. “They got different gods than us, gods no one even knows the names for, and that’s who the Amesbury witch was worshipping. Those gods from the bottom of the ocean.”
“Well, I think you’re a liar,” the girl told him. “I think you’re a blasphemer and a liar, and, also, I think you’re just making this up to scare us.” And then she stood and stalked away across the weedy lot, leaving the others behind. They all watched her go, and then the ginger-haired boy resumed his tale.
“It gets worse,” he said.
A cold rain has started to fall, and the drops hitting the tin roof sound almost exactly like bacon frying in a skillet. She’s moved away from me, and is sitting naked at the edge of the bed, her long legs dangling over the side, her right shoulder braced against the rusted iron headboard. I’m still lying on the damp sheets, staring up at the leaky ceiling, waiting for the water tumbling from the sky to find its way inside. She’ll set jars and cooking pots beneath the worst of the leaks, but there are far too many to bother with them all.
“I can’t stay here forever,” she says. It’s not the first time, but, I admit, those words always take me by surprise. “It’s getting harder being here. Every day, it gets harder on me. I’m so awfully tired, all the time.”
I look away from the ceiling, at her throat and the peculiar welts just below the line of her chin. The swellings first appeared a few weeks back, and the skin there has turned dry and scaly, and has taken on a sickly greyish-yellow hue. Sometimes, there are boils, or seeping blisters. When she goes out among the others, she wears the silk scarf I gave her, tied about her neck so that they won’t have to see. So they won’t ask questions she doesn’t want to answer.
“I don’t have to go alone,” she says, but doesn’t turn her head to look at me. “I don’t want to leave you here.”
“I can’t,” I say.
“I know,” she replies.
And this is how it almost always is. I come down from the village, and we make love, and she tells me her dreams, here in this ramshackle cabin out past the dunes and dog roses and the gale-stunted trees. In her dreams, I am always leaving her behind, buying tickets on tramp steamers or signing on with freighters, sailing away to the Ivory Coast or Portugal or Singapore. I can’t begin to recall all the faraway places she’s dreamt me leaving her for. Her nightmares have sent me round and round the globe. But the truth is, she’s the one who’s leaving, and soon, before the first snows come.
I know it (though I play her games), and all her apostles know it, too. The ones who have come down from the village and never gone back up the hill again. The vagrants and squatters and winos, the lunatics and true believers, who have turned their backs on the world, but only after it turned its back on them. Destitute and cast away, they found the daughter of the sea, each of them, and the shanty town is dotted with their tawdry, makeshift altars and shrines. She knows precisely what she is to them, even if she won’t admit it. She knows that these lost souls have been blinded by the trials and tribulations of their various, sordid lives, and she is the soothing darkness they’ve found. She is the only genuine balm they’ve ever known against the cruel glare of the sun and the moon, which are the unblinking eyes of the gods of all mankind.
She sits there, at the edge of the bed. She is always alone, no matter how near we are, no matter how many apostles crowd around and eavesdrop and plot my demise. She stares at the flapping sheet of plastic tacked up where the windowpane used to be, and I go back to watching the ceiling. A single drop of rainwater gets through the layers of tin and tarpaper shingles and lands on my exposed belly.
She laughs softly. She doesn’t laugh very often any more, and I shut my eyes and listen to the rain.
“You can really have no notion how delightful it will be, when they take us up and throw us, with the lobsters, out to sea,” she whispers, and then laughs again.
I take the bait, because I almost always take the bait.
“But the snail replied ‘Too far, too far!’ and gave a look askance,” I say, quoting Lewis Carroll, and she doesn’t laugh. She starts to scratch at the welts below her chin, then stops herself.
“In the halls of my father,” she says, “there is such silence, such absolute and immemorial peace. In that hallowed place, the mind can be still. There is serenity, finally, and an end to all sickness and fear.” She pauses, and looks at the floor, at the careless scatter of empty tin cans and empty bottles and bones picked clean. “But,” she continues, “it will be lonely down there, without you. It will be something even worse than lonely.”
I don’t reply, and in a moment, she gets to her feet and goes to stand by the door.
THE HAG STONE
by CONRAD WILLIAMS
I
A DICEY FLIGHT • I ARRIVE SAFELY AT FORT REQUIN
IT WAS MY first trip anywhere in an aeroplane.
I know that must sound absurd coming from a man in his seventies, especially in this day and age when cheap flights are so freely available and people hop on and off aircraft as if they were buses; but I (nor my wife for that matter) had never entertained the thought to go travelling, let alone sight-seeing. My idea of hell was a hot beach in a land where English was not spoken, and endless hours were spent chasing away flies from whatever inedible repast might be put in front of me at a less-than-reputable restaurant.
No, my heart (though recently damaged) was meant to remain in England. However, the best-laid plans, and all that.
How was I to know I would suffer a heart attack? I say that with the lack of foresight we all of us are cursed with in regard to the proclivities of health, but the question really ought to have been: how could I have expected anything but a heart attack? For the seat of all my passion and feeling had been under assault for two weeks, since my darling wife, my beautiful Clarissa, succumbed to the persistent and aggressive cancer in her spine.
Though the likelihood is that I don’t have much time left on this Earth, what time I do have will no doubt be shadowed by the memories of her final months and the pathetic attempts by the medical staff to arrest the inevitable. Clarissa had quite reconciled herself to that long sleep; I, less so, and I’m afraid I was something of a quivering wreck whenever I sat with her in her hospital bed.
She seemed to be shrinking by the day, but her smile remained a constant, as warm and as inviting as it had been on the first day I was favoured with it, over fifty years previously. And the grip of her warm, smooth hand retained its urgency.
Alas, a sure touch and a ready smile are not enough to repel death, and she succumbed one rainy Tuesday afternoon while I was failing to persuade one of the vending machines in the corridor to yield a hot chocolate.
A fortnight later, not sleeping well, drinking rather more than I ought and in a constant mither of wringing hands and regret, I suffered, in the lobby of a city-centre hotel, what my doctor called a heart seizure. Arrhythmia, apparently: the chaotic spasming of the m
uscle. I was rescued by the smart thinking of a receptionist who had first-aid training and knew where the nearest defibrillating device could be found.
I was in hospital for a week, and then happily discharged with a hefty arsenal of pills to take every day for the rest of whatever life I had left. I was warned, before leaving, about depression, and that a number of renowned foundations were available for me to consult, but I would not have it. I’d never felt happier. I was convinced that the seizure had marked the return of my wife as something living, and within me, to provide succour and prevent me from falling into a funk of loneliness. Any murmurs from now on I would attribute to her, geeing me up, reminding me to take my medicine, or prompting me to remember her.
Though it was my first journey through the air, it was a notable one, or so I was assured, by my fellow passengers on the flight down to Guernsey from Heathrow, and the pilot of the little Aurigny Trislander, a propeller plane that took us from Guernsey to Alderney.
The weather was atrocious—a knot or two harder and the flight, apparently, would have been cancelled. We were buffeted like a favourite toy in the hands of a clumsy child. I must say, I found it tremendous fun, like being on a fairground ride, although the three other people sitting near me—a man and woman and (presumably) their young son—were a little green around the gills and spent much of their time clutching at sick bags and groaning at each other.
The sea was a riot of white breakers and I could not see any boats braving the swells. That said, I did see something moving against the waves, but at this distance I could not be sure what it was. A seal of some sort, perhaps. Whatever it was, it was alone, and moving fairly quickly.
Then all too soon we were coming in to land at the tiny airstrip. It was a little bumpy, but the pilot knew what he was doing and within a minute we were unfastening our seatbelts and being guided out of the aircraft towards the baggage claim and the single counter that served as passport control.
Soon, trusty suitcase in hand, I was in a taxi headed for my destination. I felt excited and childish, my head twisting this way and that as I took in the sweep of the land, and the houses nestled within it. Gulls were fastened to the sky—it was as if they need never flap their wings again. I was hoping for something exotic, I suppose, but this was only the Channel Islands after all. Even my taxi driver was from Manchester!
He was pleasant enough, and I chatted with him about this and that before the road suddenly gave way to a dirt track along the coast—a precipitous drop to our right on to jags of rock causing me to lean obviously to my left, as if that might help us from slipping down. The taxi driver moved with extreme caution; there were deep potholes here, he explained, and notwithstanding the cliff, he didn’t want to damage the car, or cause it to become stuck.
It took an age, but once we’d rounded the bluff, I saw our destination for the first time: Fort Requin, a beautiful old citadel built into and, somehow, out of a series of huge rocks that were like a final attempt by the island to reach as far as possible into the sea. Built around the advent of steam power, the fort was seen as a necessary bulwark against any possible naval attack by the French. Later it was seized by Hitler as a stepping-stone in his desire for British invasion. Once more I mentally thanked my sons, Brian and Gordon, for arranging and paying for this little holiday for me. They were fine boys and I was lucky to have them.
The taxi driver steered us down an incline and across a causeway to another slight rise which took us to the entrance to the fort. He parked and retrieved my bags from the boot and wished me a pleasant stay.
As I reached the gateway, the door swung open to reveal a tall man in half-moon spectacles and a bottle-green raincoat. This was the caretaker, a Mr. Standish, who briskly showed me to my rooms and gave me a map outlining the other accommodations that comprised Fort Requin.
“Here is the communal dining room,” he pointed out, “and here is a recreation room. No television, I’m afraid. Just books and some board games.”
I told him I was here for long walks and that while I might pick up a book or two, the only other activity likely to be given its head was plenty of sleep.
“Very good too,” he said, with a smile. “Now I must be away. Your food will be delivered some time in the next hour or so—we tried to get everything on your list, but we might have had to mix and match in some cases. The Cotterhams, the family sharing the facilities with you this week, have already arrived and are unpacking in the Officer’s Quarters.”
He put his finger to his forehead as if to help himself remember some important piece of information. “Two more things before I go. There is a Union Jack, neatly folded in the recreation room. It’s purely optional, but we invite our guests to hoist it on the flagpole to announce the fort is occupied—you’ll find it on top of the Upper Magazine, it’s on the map. There’s a bugle too, if you fancy blasting out reveille or taps. Now, the other issue is the Outpost. It’s no longer used because it’s inaccessible. Well, what I mean is that you can get to where there used to be a walkway across to it, but that’s all collapsed into the sea now. We have a danger sign and some metal fencing in place, but the determined will find a way around it. I’d respectfully ask that you steer clear of it, and do what you can to ensure young Ralph—he’s about twelve or so—steers clear of it too. I know it’s his parents’ responsibility, but you know what happens. They might oversleep, as parents of older children are wont to do, and he might nip off on his own. We’ve got a chap coming in to completely seal off the archway with bricks and mortar, but for this week, I ask that you keep a sea-faring eye open for potential mishaps.”
I told him he could rely on me while I was here and that was that. I closed the door behind him and, turning, took a deep breath of the salty, crisp air before heading down to the German Casement, which was to be my home for the next six nights.
II
THE COTTERHAMS • THE FISHERMAN • THE OUTPOST (I)
What a queer place this was! I was in a room with two beds, and racks on the wall showing where the original bunks had been positioned for the German soldiers of the Third Reich—imagine it!—to lay their weary, English-hating heads. I knew Alderney’s citizens had been given the option to evacuate at the start of the war, when the British government decided they held no military significance and would not be defended.
After the German occupation in 1940, four concentration camps built on the island—the only camps of their kind to exist on British soil—housed around 6,000 slave labourers helping to build fortifications, shelters and gun emplacements. What a desolate, lonely island this must have been for those stationed or imprisoned here.
The view from my window was staggering. The ocean and the surrounding rocks—including Les Etacs, an island turned white by the thousands of northern gannets that had colonised it—and miles of thunderous sky. Once more my eye was drawn to the churning sea, and the compulsion that something was swimming within it, against its currents, creating a wake as it moved just beneath the surface.
I kept my eye on it, praying to see the tail of a whale, or the joyous leap of a dolphin, but it remained submerged and, after a few seconds, the wake receded, as whatever it was finned to depths that were only imaginable.
It was slightly on the chilly side in the room, despite the presence of a cast-iron Duchess radiator, and there was a faint smell of oil, as if the grease from the Germans’ guns, or the oil from their lamps, had left indelible traces of itself behind.
I unpacked, hanging my clothes in one of the pair of handsome oak wardrobes, then I took a brief, refreshing shower and dressed for dinner. I reached the kitchen just as the last of the supplies were being delivered. A box on the long dining table had my name pinned to it. A woman was putting the last of the groceries away from her own three boxes. She was the kind of woman who wears a faint smile no matter how laborious the task being undertaken, and went about her work briskly, no-nonsense. She’d have been the kind of woman depicted on those old DIG FOR VICTORY posters
that were produced during the war.
“Mrs. Cotterham?” I said, and she looked up, startled.
“Oh my!” she said. “You did surprise me. I think we took that earlier flight together.”
“You’re right,” I said, recognising her now that the colour was back in her cheeks. Her hair was tied neatly back from her face too. “I do hope you feel better?”
“Much better, thank you, Mr.…” she eyed my grocery crate, “Stafford?”
“Adrian, please,” I said.
“You’re alone?”
“I’m afraid so. This is meant to be a convalescence of sorts. I’m recovering from illness.”
“Oh dear, I’m sorry to hear it,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind that we’re here too.”
“I wasn’t expecting to be here by myself,” I said. “And, truth be told, I’m glad there is someone else. I imagine this place would be a little alarming for the lone visitor.”
“You’re right there,” she said. “Especially if this weather carries on.”
The wind groaned as if in agreement, and it heralded the arrival of Mr. Cotterham and his son. We shook hands and exchanged names (Penny and Alastair; young Ralph I’d already heard about) and Penny invited me to dine with them. We all mucked in together, peeling vegetables, uncorking wine, setting the table and, before long, we were tucking into excellent pork chops and trading tales as if we had been known to each other for months as opposed to minutes.
By pudding (pears poached in red wine, delicious) I had learned Alastair (a tousle-haired, portly gentleman with a somewhat out-of-fashion moustache—he reminded me of the playwright Colin Welland) was a technical writer who specialised in the history of British military jets since World War II. He already had three books under his belt regarding decommissioned fighters, bombers and reconnaissance aircraft. I liked the self-deprecatory way in which he brushed off his achievements as so many dry accounts, and liked even more Penny’s leaping to his defence.
Weirder Shadows Over Innsmouth Page 15