David looked at him. Along the upper California coast, “the city” isn’t a catch-all term—it specifically means San Francisco. “How do you know I’m from there?”
“Happened to run into Ron Bleist, guy who owns the cottage you’re renting. Said you were a painter.”
“Happened to run into him?”
“My point is, nobody portrays Carmel as an equal-opportunity environment. It is what it is. If you can put up with that, you’re welcome here.”
“And if not?”
The man shrugged.
David found he was becoming genuinely angry. “You know the really crappy thing?”
“Tell me the really crappy thing.”
“Nobody here even knows the difference. You’ve got good eyes, presumably some experience of the real world. Everyone else I’ve encountered today… they can’t even tell I’m not a real drifter. I’m actually kind of well known for what I do. I’ve got a million-dollar condo up in the city. This crap all over me is paint and dust, not real dirt. And yet nobody here can even tell.”
“Maybe you’re a better artist than you realise.”
“Or maybe everyone here is dumber than they know.”
The cop shrugged once more.
“That’s it?”
“You want to string a sign round your neck, sir, declaring yourself a piece of performance art, be my guest. Otherwise, do yourself a big favour and go get cleaned up.”
“Is that some kind of warning?”
“Yes, it is.”
* * *
David did not go home, however. After fuming on the street for a few minutes, he stomped down to the beach. By the time he got there he was feeling hot and even more dreadful than before, so he continued down to the sea and walked straight into it. The water was very cold.
He trudged back up the beach, found some shade and sat down. When he awoke, several hours later, the hangover had abated a little. His irritation hadn’t, however.
A small group of people in their early twenties were now sitting some distance away. They wore shorts and T-shirts in various shades of pale. One of the guys glanced over at David, then turned back to the group.
David pushed himself laboriously to his feet. He went over. The dried sea-salt on his clothes had made them stiff, and caused interesting tidal patterns in the paint. Another unconscious finesse. He stood outside their circle. The same guy as before looked up at him. He was blandly good-looking, not overtly supercilious.
David croaked at him. “You got a problem with me?”
He’d noticed when talking to the cop that last night’s over-indulgences had coarsened his voice. Crashing out on the beach had turned the huskiness up another big notch.
“Nothing that needs resolving right now,” the boy said, mildly. He turned back to his friends, none of whom had appeared to pay David any attention at all, as if he wasn’t even visible.
Turning imperiously from them, David accidentally got his feet caught on a piece of driftwood, and fell over, full-length in the sand.
Nobody laughed, or jeered.
He got up and lurched away.
* * *
By now, if the truth be told, David was starting to tire of the game. He’d established that the residents and visitors of Carmel didn’t much care for down-and-outs. Big deal. He could have predicted that without the rigmarole. He wandered back into the centre, deciding to milk the effect one last time before going back to the cottage. A few people stared. Others crossed the street to avoid him. Nobody shouted, nobody called the cops.
Time to go home, have a bath. Reboot. Probably not work—with a hangover like this—but get an early night instead. Tomorrow’s always another day, potentially the start of a new chain. He still liked the idea of a drifter’s shadow in his painting. It worked. He could be up and at it bright and early. Have it blocked out by the afternoon, put the canvas to one side and start another. Have a civilised dinner at a restaurant in the evening, get back on course.
It might even have panned out like that, too, if his route hadn’t happened to take him past the grocery market, and if he hadn’t found a forgotten twenty in the back pocket of his jeans.
They may not like down-and-outs in nice stores, but they’ll always take their money for a big bottle of wine.
* * *
She came out of the alleyway just after eight o’clock, by which time it was the other side of twilight. David had been waiting across the street by the side of a gallery that had shut some time before. Galleries in Carmel didn’t have to work long hours.
He walked quickly across the street toward her. He nearly tripped on the curb—over half of the outsized bottle of wine was inside him now, and he was feeling much better for it. The barista girl from Bonnie’s looked up and saw him, and her face fell.
“Why’d you call him?”
His voice came out louder than he intended.
She took a step back. “What?”
“Why’d you call the cop? I was just sitting at a table. I’d paid for my coffee. I wasn’t getting in anyone’s face. So why’d you call the fucking cops?”
The girl started backing toward the alleyway that led to Bonnie’s, seeking safety in the work environment she’d just left. David followed.
He pressed her. “Can’t you see who I am? The guy who’s been coming in your place every day for a fucking week. I must have dropped fifty bucks in there. I asked you yesterday if you liked living in Carmel, remember? We had a conversation. Yet today, just because I look a little different, suddenly you’re all over 911.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, still backing up the alley.
“Big deal. The point is I’m the same guy. Actually, that’s not the point. Who even cares whether I’m the same guy? I’m a guy. A man. I had every right to sit there. I wasn’t causing trouble. So what the fuck?”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’ll tell you. There’s a chain between everything you do, what you did last, what comes next. There’s a chain between people, too, him and me—and there should be one between you and me, too. Get it? There’s a duty of care. Person to person to person. If not care, just simple politeness. We’re all part of the hundred percent.”
She shook her head, looking miserable and scared, and kept backing up the alleyway, toward the courtyard.
David was aware this wasn’t coming out as clearly as he’d hoped, and his frustration started to run away with him. “If you break the chain nothing makes sense. You stop picking up the brush and doing something with it, anything’s better than nothing, then the paintings don’t get done. And if you stop respecting me just because I look like shit, society doesn’t work. We’re back to being animals. Do you get what I’m talking about now, you stupid bitch?”
She turned and ran the last yards into the dark courtyard. David, unsure of what he was doing, or why, strode enthusiastically after her. It struck him, in a corner of his soul he’d known was there but had always refused to visit, that breaking the chain might have interesting consequences.
He’d never been a violent man. Even his ex-wife would testify to that. But that was some other David. If the chain was broken… perhaps he didn’t have to remain consistent with that man’s behaviour. Maybe there were other ways of being that he could try. It struck him, like a bolt from the blue, that it might actually be interesting to punch a snivelling woman in the face. To knock her down and then stand over her and take his time over deciding what to do next—or what things, and in what order.
He realised with a shiver that these courses of action had always been there, running side-by-side with normal life, and it was only the restraining links to his previous ways that had stopped him trying them before.
As he lurched into the courtyard after her, he saw the girl reach the other side and go banging straight into the metal gate. During the day this gate yielded access to another alley, which let out onto the next street. Right now, however, it was padlocked.
“Huh,” he said, w
ith a slow smile. “So now what?”
But she turned from the gate to face him, and he was confused to see she didn’t look scared of him any more.
He realised, too late, that they were not alone in the courtyard.
Sitting at the small tables, waiting, were the young man from the beach, the woman who’d told him off for smoking the day before, and the man in the blue cap, along with several others.
They didn’t look scared of David either.
* * *
Two hours later the body was delivered to the cop’s house. It was brought over by Bonnie—owner of the coffee store, also the lady who’d asked David not to smoke—and her husband, coincidentally an amateur watercolourist. The body’s legs had already been removed and were waiting in the cold store of Max’s restaurant. Bonnie would later prepare them for the long roasting procedure that would ultimately create the smoky-sweet powder that not just the restaurant and her coffee shop but every eatery in town deployed, in one way or another, according to the recipe and procedures laid down by the town’s long-ago founders.
The cop received the body without enthusiasm. He’d tried to warn the guy, and he knew for a fact the village had plenty of the powder in reserve and so this didn’t need to have happened. Nonetheless, he did his job.
He put the body in the trunk of his car and drove it an hour along the coast road. He took a turn off Highway 1 not far from the Big Sur River Inn, and drove a further ten miles down an old, forgotten road to the secluded cove where, once again according to protocol—this one dictated by the Watchers—he unwrapped the offering from the plastic sheeting and left it face down on the sandy beach.
An hour after he left, three figures emerged from the pounding surf. The Watchers were as always dressed in long black coats—or cloaks, no human had ever been close enough to establish the difference and survive—and tall, pointed hats. They consumed the parts of the body they had a taste for, primarily internal organs. The rest was left for the crabs.
The Watchers took care to savour the experience, as they knew its days were numbered. The Elders amongst them had started to indicate they were growing bored of the special relationship with Carmel, and that it might soon be time for the town and its inhabitants to meet their end. A date had not yet been set for the night when the Watchers would swarm en masse up from the sea and fall upon the village, but it would be soon.
Or so they thought.
Unbeknownst to them, the vast god which lives—and has always lived—in the frigid waters just off Big Sur was reaching the end of one of its own millennial cycles. Within a consciousness that moved slowly (and yet was capable of sudden and terrible decisions), was stirring the thought that it was almost time to rise up again and consume this portion of the coast—if not tonight, then the next day or the next. As usual, and by intention, the process would closely resemble an earthquake, one that would on this occasion not merely knock down a few houses, but leave the shape of the coastline permanently changed.
So much changed, in fact, that the new outline would displease the nameless being that spends most of its time in the shadows on the dark side of the moon. This dissatisfaction would eventually cause it to destroy the Earth entirely, erasing it in an instant to swirling dust, so it could start its creative work again on a fresh canvas.
* * *
There are always chains, in work and love, from birth to death.
What keeps us sane is not knowing our position along them.
INTO THE WATER
by SIMON KURT UNSWORTH
KAPENDA WATCHED THE water, and the water ate the Earth.
“Isaac, the High Street’s finally going under, we need to go and catch it,” said Needham from somewhere behind him. Kapenda raised his free hand in acknowledgement but didn’t move. Instead, he let his eye rise, up from the new channel of brown and churning floodwater to the bank above. The house’s foundations were exposed by the water so that it now teetered precariously on the edge of a gorge. Fall, thought Kapenda, fall, please. The house didn’t fall but it would, soon, and he hoped to be here when it did.
“Isaac!” Needham again. The talent was already at the high street, waiting. The talent was like a child, got fractious and bored if it wasn’t the centre of attention; Don’t keep the talent waiting, was the motto. Don’t annoy the talent was the rule. Sighing, Kapenda finally lowered the camera and turned to go.
It had rained for months, on and off. Summer had been a washout, the skies permanently thick with cloud, the sun an infrequent visitor. On the rare occasions the clouds broke and the sun struggled through, grounds steamed but didn’t dry out. The water table saturated upwards, the ground remaining sodden until the first of the winter storms came and the rivers rose and the banks broke and the water was suddenly everywhere.
They were less than a mile from the town, but the journey still took several minutes. The roads were swollen with run-off, thick limbs of water flowing down the gutters and pushing up from the drains, washing across the camber and constantly tugging at the vehicle. Kapenda wasn’t driving but he felt it, the way they pulled across the centre line and then back as Needham compensated. It had been like this for days now all across the south of England. Kapenda leaned against the window, peering at the rain and submerged land beyond the glass.
There were figures in the field.
Even at their reduced speed, they passed the little tableau too quickly for Kapenda to see what the figures were doing, and he had to crane back around to try and keep them in view. There were four of them, and they appeared to be crouching so that only their shoulders and heads emerged from the flooded pasture. One was holding its arms to the sky. There was something off about the shape of the figures—the arms held to the clouds were too long, the heads too bulbous. Were they moving? Still? Perhaps they were one of those odd art installations you sometimes came across, like Gormley’s standing figures on Crosby beach. Kapenda had filmed a segment on them not long after they had been put in place, and watching as the tide receded to reveal a series of bronze, motionless watching figures had been quite wonderful and slightly unnerving. Had they done something similar here?
The rain thickened, and the figures were lost to its grey embrace.
The talent, a weasel of a man called Plumb whose only discernible value was a smoothly good-looking face and a reassuring yet stentorian voice, was angry with Needham and Kapenda. As Kapenda framed him in shot so that the new river flowing down Grovehill’s main street and the sandbagged shops behind it could be seen over Plumb’s shoulder, Plumb was moaning.
“We’ve missed all the dramatic stuff,” he said.
“We’ve not,” said Needham. “Just trust in Isaac, he’ll make you look good.
“It’s not about me looking good,” said Plumb, bristling, brushing the cowlick of hair that was drooping over his forehead. “It’s about the story.”
“Of course it is,” said Needham. “Now, have you got your script?”
They didn’t get the lead item on the news, but they did get the second-string item, a cut to Plumb after the main story so that he could intone his description of Grovehill’s failed flood defences. Kapenda had used the natural light to make Plumb seem larger and the water behind darker, more ominous. He was happy with the effect, especially the last tracking shot away from the talent to look up the street, lost under a caul of fast-moving flood whose surface rippled and glittered. The water looked alive, depthless and hungry, something inexorable and unknowable.
Now that, thought Kapenda, is how to tell a story, and only spotted the shape moving through the water when he was reviewing the footage a couple of hours after it had gone out. It was a dark blur just below the waves, moving against the current and it vanished after perhaps half a minute. Something tumbling through the flow, Kapenda thought, and wished it had broken the surface—it would have made a nice image to finish the film on.
* * *
Plumb had found an audience.
They were in the bar of the
pub where they were staying: the tiny, cramped rooms the only place available. The flood had done the hospitality industry a world of good, Kapenda thought; every room in the area was taken with television and print reporters.
“Of course, it’s all global warming’s fault,” Plumb said.
“Is it?” said the man he was talking to. The man’s voice was deep and rich, accented in a way Kapenda always thought of as old-fashioned. It was the voice of the BBC in the 1950s, of the Pathé newsreels. He punctuated everything he said with little coughs, as though he had something caught in his throat.
“Of course,” said Plumb, drawing on all the knowledge he had gained from reading one-and two-minute sound-bite pieces for local and, more latterly, national news. “The world’s heating up, so it rains more. It’s obvious.”
“It’s as simple as that,” said the man, and caught Kapenda’s eye over Plumb’s shoulder. One of his eyes was milky and blind, Kapenda saw, and then the man, disconcertingly, winked his dead eye and smiled.
“He really is an insufferable fool, isn’t he?” the man said later to Kapenda, nodding at Plumb, who was now holding court in the middle of a group of other talents. What’s the collective noun for the talent? thought Kapenda. A show-off? A blandness? A stupidity? He moved a forefinger through a puddle of spilled beer on the table, swirling it out to make a circle. The man, whose name was David, dipped his own fingers in the puddle and made an intricate pattern on the wood with the liquid before wiping it away.
“He thinks he understands it,” said David, and gave one of his little coughs. “But he doesn’t.”
“What is there to understand?” asked Needham. “It’s rain. It comes down, it floods, we film it and he talks about it and tries to look dramatic and knowledgeable whilst wearing an anorak that the viewers can see and wellingtons that they can’t.”
“This,” said David, waving a hand at the windows and the rain beyond. He was drunk; Needham was drunker. “It’s not so simple as he wants to believe. There are forces at work more complex than mere global warming.” He coughed again, a polite rumble.
Weirder Shadows Over Innsmouth Page 31