The Blood of Angels

by Stephen Gregory

  At last, Harry struggled to his feet. His knees hurt him, and so did his hips. It was a sudden, lancing pain that made him very angry. He ground his teeth, squeezed his eyes shut and growled as the spasm shot through him. Then, opening his eyes, seeing the figure outside his house – who’d trespassed on his land, startled the wildfowl and was now cuddling the dogs that were supposed to be keeping trespassers away – he snorted with rage and went stumping downstairs. He forced his way past the piano. By the time he emerged from the front door, he was purple in the face and foaming at the mouth.

  The trespasser glanced up and saw him. Again the eyes widened and the jaw fell open, because the man looked a great deal more dangerous than the dogs; and there was nothing in the pockets of the baggy jacket to hold out as a peace offering.

  As the beachcomber stood up and turned to run away, Harry started shouting, ‘This is my land! These are my dogs! Why do you think you can start nosing around here? What difference does it make if the sea comes onto my land? It’s still private property, isn’t it? Bugger off, and don’t come back!’

  But the beachcomber, seeing that the dogs were too pre­occupied with their bones to give chase and that the wheezing, red-faced man was incapable of more than a harmless, lumbering charge, had stopped by the flooded ditch. Harry stopped too, winded so badly that he thought he might retch. He stood with his hands on his hips, glaring. He appraised the long, blonde hair and the soft, white face; the slender figure in jeans and jacket and boots.

  ‘Bugger off and don’t come back!’ he spluttered. ‘Or the dogs’ll have you! Bugger off, you nosy bitch!’

  He had to stop. He could hardly breathe, let alone shout. He thought the beachcomber was going to call something in reply, because the mouth opened and shut so that Harry caught a gleam of teeth and the glistening of a wet tongue. But then the figure turned to the ditch, crossed it with an easy, coltish leap and started running towards the foreshore. The brown jacket and flopping blonde hair dropped behind the remains of the hedge.

  ‘And sod the bloody dogs!’ Harry managed to croak, a feeble attempt at triumphant humour now that the trespasser had been put to flight. ‘Don’t come back unless you bring something for me to eat next time!’

  Gog and Magog had finished their bones. Even the rounded nub ends were crunched and swallowed. Harry limped to the dogs and lowered his hands towards them, to touch their ears as the beachcomber had done. But they showed their teeth. They snarled very deeply, a horrid, gurgling snarl through a mouthful of bone splinters, so that, seeing the cold, black light in their eyes, he backed away and stomped to the house.

  He went up to the landing, to wait at the window with his gun. The dogs had eaten well, but he hadn’t. He blasted and missed when a pair of mallard flew down to his field. He waited another hour. In the failing light of a November dusk, he blasted and missed when the widgeon came to roost. The duck clattered away, whirling into the gathering darkness to find shelter in the salt marsh on the other side of the estuary. And then it was twilight, too late to wait and try again. Disconsolate, he boiled some potatoes on the flickering flames of his diminished gas stove and ate them with a tin of sardines.

  That evening, downstairs, the tide was inside his house again, breaking into the hallway and onto the staircase. It boomed in the cellar. The gale blew through the front door and the shattered windows, banging the broken shutters, smashing the remains of the door and the panelling.

  Upstairs, Harry heaped his fire with driftwood; he lit a candle and turned up the radio. The dogs snored on the rug. At last he went to bed and buried himself under a mound of blankets.

  But, however he tried to plug his ears, nothing would deaden the din of the storm. However tightly he squeezed his eyes closed, nothing would dim the grin of the beachcomber, the gleam of teeth and the glistening of a wet tongue.

  ‘Bitch,’ he whispered a few times, before he fell asleep.

  Chapter Four

  No one came along the shore for several days, to pick at the wreck­age in the fields or to stare at the big, grey, derelict house. Even the windsurfers stayed away. Harry Clewe was alone with his dogs. No, not alone. As well as the starlings which habitually roosted in the living room, as well as the gulls which blew in with the gales, the farmyard rats were driven indoors by the floods.

  They came gradually at first, so that Harry, seeing from the landing that a rat was swimming in the hallway, could blast it with the shotgun before it tried to scramble onto the stairs. Or else the dogs were despatched to deal with it, splashing up to their bellies in sea water. Then, more and more rats sought shelter in the house. And when the tide rose higher, they started to climb the stairs. They settled in the chimney and the remains of the oak panelling; on still nights, when the wind had dropped and the sea lapped gently at the walls of the house, Harry could hear them snuffling and scratching where they’d found a quiet, warm place to hide. He tried to ignore them, although they reminded him of an earlier life he’d had, long ago, and the shocks they’d caused him.

  Other creatures came in too. Among the driftwood in the bath he found a pair of hedgehogs, rolled up and fast asleep. Either he’d carried them there with an armful of branches or they’d made their own way upstairs to beat the rising water. He tried not to disturb them. He covered them with twigs and dry leaves and left them snoring gently.

  There were toads burrowing under the landing carpet, and he would pick them up and hold them, to recall their rubbery squirming. There were mice in the cupboards, making nests in his clothes by shredding the material with their teeth. There were spiders, up the taps and down the plugholes. There were bats in the wardrobe, folded like soft, black leather gloves . . .

  No, Harry wasn’t alone. Whenever the wind dropped and the world was a slowly lapping, breathless place, he would sit in front of the fire and hear the house whispering around him. Surrounded by sea, it was more like a great, groaning ship than the house it had once been: more like the ark, where a man, two dogs and countless other creatures took refuge from the flood.

  Something was moving in the cellar.

  That night, there was a dead calm. Not a sound in the house, but the scurry of a mouse or the creak of a toad . . .

  The fire burned low. The embers, powdered to ash, fell inwards with a sigh and a golden flare brightened the room. Then the room was dark again. Harry had been dozing all evening in front of the fire, listening to his own breathing and the breathing of the dogs and the silence of the night which had folded like a thick, black blanket around the house. The tide was very high. There was a huge, silver moon. When he stared out of the window, it seemed to him that Ynys Elyrch was the island its name implied, in a lake as smooth and as still as oil.

  Not a breeze, not a ripple. The cry of a curlew far away. The snoring of the dogs. The whisper of a dying fire. The scratching of mice. A gentle, rhythmic thump, thump, thump . . .

  He listened as hard as he could. He held his breath so long that his chest began to hurt. He hoped that the thump, thump, thump was the pulse of the blood in his temples. He strained to hear. And when he glanced down and saw that the dogs were listening too, he knew he hadn’t imagined the thumping. It wasn’t the sound of his own heartbeat: it was a real sound, somewhere in the house, somewhere downstairs . . . a gentle, insistent thudding which made his scalp prickle.

  He shivered very violently, so that the dogs lifted their heads from the rug and stared at him. He knew where the thumping was coming from. He’d heard it before, in his worst and sweatiest nightmares. This time it was real. It was coming from the cellar.

  Gog and Magog heaved themselves stiffly to their feet, hackles up. But Harry slipped out of the room and shut the door on them. He stood on the landing and stared down at the deep water slopping in the hallway. The moonlight beamed through the front door, past the piano, where the sea rose and fell very gently, like a beast that had slithered into the house and curled asleep at the foot of the stairs. Harry listened. The hairs on his neck stood u
p, as the hackles of the dogs had stood up. Again he held his breath. When he squeezed his eyes shut, he could see a piece of the dream he’d had, the nightmare which haunted him, in which the thump, thump, thump was the beat of the fear in his blood. Terrified, he flicked his eyes open again. This time the haunting was real, not a dream from which he could struggle and sweat and suddenly surface. . . . In a kind of trance, he started to go downstairs.

  He stepped into the water, although it was icy cold and knee-deep and the footing was treacherous. Lifting his face to the moon­beam which fell through the front door, he paused to listen for the thumping again . . . but he knew in his heart where the sound was coming from. He turned to his right, waded across the hall and into the living room.

  Again he stopped, gazing from the doorway to see how the moon­light gleamed on the surface of the water, on the silvery corpses of stranded jellyfish, on the ammonite, spiralled on the mantelpiece. Then he trod heavily into the middle of the room.

  His heart seemed to burst in his chest. And as the blood in his head banged louder and louder, beating in time with the beat of the thing which was thudding under the floorboards, so the trance fell away from him. A blinding panic took over. He started to shout. He kicked at the water to shatter the stillness of the reflected moonlight, to try and block out the thumping. Hysterical with fear, yet powerless to resist being drawn to the pulse beneath his feet, he threw aside the slippery dead weights of the jellyfish, he flung handfuls of tangled weed, he plunged into the water and groped for the bolt on the trap door. Finding it at last, he shot it across, caught his hook in the ring and heaved with all his strength, roaring and roaring, unable to pull the trap door open because the weight of the sea was too much for him to lift . . . and all the time, although he shouted so loudly and thrashed the water to a foam, he could hear the thump, thump, thump of the thing which was moving down in the cellar.

  Suddenly the trap door flew open. Harry fell backwards, sitting down with a great splash. Straight away, he struggled to his knees and stared into the hole in the living room floor, peering into a current of the iciest, blackest water which welled out of the hole and swirled at his legs.

  Something swam out of the cellar. It floated to the surface, bobbing towards him . . . a thing he’d seen in his ghastliest night­mares.

  A face, a woman’s face, from which the skin and the flesh had been nibbled by the fish.

  No nose, but two black holes in grey bone.

  No eyes, but black empty sockets writhing with eels.

  No lips, no gums, but long, yellow teeth which grinned as the face broke through the surface.

  A mat of filthy black hair which knotted round his fingers as he tried to pull his hands away . . .

  With a cry of disgust, as he heaved so hard that the contents of his stomach rose into his throat, Harry staggered to his feet. Instinctively, he felt for the mantelpiece and the ammonite on it. And then, kneeling into the water again, screaming with horror and retching at the same time, he crashed and crashed at the thing which had been knocking under the floorboards, which had floated towards him when he’d opened the trap door. He smashed and smashed until the skull was stove in. And still he continued to smash. He smashed with the ammonite until he was too exhausted to lift it up. Then he dropped the fossil and knelt there, sobbing, heaving, gibbering, while the water lapped and subsided around him.

  At last the pool was calm again. The moonbeam fell through the windows. It glistened on the surface of the water. It gleamed on splinters of bone and teeth.

  Harry knelt in the living room for a long time: all night, because when he stood up, in great distress at the cold in his body, it was dawn and the tide had gone out of the house. No moon, but grey daylight. He got to his feet very painfully and stretched himself, staring around the wreckage of the room, at the sand and the shingle and the weed and the shells, at the shattered windows and skirting and panelling. The sea had been in his house again. The sea was still in his cellar, black and deep and as cold as ice.

  He saw the ammonite on the floor. He saw the skull he’d pounded flat and the hair wound round it. So it wasn’t a nightmare he’d had. The knocking he’d heard was real, and so was the face which had floated towards him. But when he knelt in the sand to pick up the ammonite, when he bent to examine the remains of the skull, he cursed himself for a stupid, hysterical, short-sighted fool . . . because the skull he’d smashed was only the skull of the sheep he’d tossed into the cellar a few weeks before, and the hair was only the matted fleece.

  Not the woman whose face was a part of his nightmares. Not Helen, whom he’d killed with the ammonite she’d found on their honeymoon. Not Helen, whose body he’d dropped into the flooded cellar. Not Helen, whose rhythmic knocking under the floor­boards had haunted him ever since. Not Helen. Only a sheep.

  Harry put the ammonite back on the mantelpiece. He studied the honeymoon photograph: Helen, smiling, sexy, sleek, pleased to have found such a fine specimen on the beach. He remembered her laughter, harsh and cruel, a year later, when the emptiness of their marriage had made them hate one another. Even now, he thought he could hear her taunting voice as she’d stood by the man­tel­piece and shouted, ‘Look at this! The other fossil in my col­lection! Just like you, Harry Clewe, it’s dead and cold and fuck­ing useless!’

  He’d gone blank with rage. That was when he’d slugged her with the fossil she’d picked up on Lyme Regis beach.

  He opened his eyes again. The laughter and the voice faded. Crossing the room, he kicked the pieces of bone and the hank of fleece into the cellar and then he closed and bolted the trap door.

  He was shivering with a terrible cold; he ached in all his limbs. Upstairs, he lit a fire as quickly as he could, threw off his clothes and pummelled his body with a rough, dry towel, and then he crawled into bed.

  He slept soundly and warmly. The thump, thump, thump from the cellar had stopped, for the time being.

  Chapter Five

  There were bright, dry, squally days at the end of November.

  Harry built up his supply of firewood, spending hours on his fields gathering the branches and spars that the big tides left behind. Expert with the axe and the wedge and the sledgehammer, despite his disability, he worked in the yard with his sleeves rolled up and then he carried the fuel upstairs to stack it in the bathroom. He didn’t care that, in every armful, there might be a thousand spi­ders or a hedgehog or a toad or a trembling shrew; he didn’t mind the starlings that flocked in the drawing room or the rats that sneezed in his chimney. He was glad of the isolation from human beings that the floods guaranteed.

  His gas bottle was empty. The batteries of his torch and his radio had run out. He had no more candles. One day he thought of walking to Caernarfon, four miles along the shore; but the prospect of meeting other people – people who would ask him how he was coping and might try to persuade him to quit his house and move to accommodation inland – was so unappealing that he decided against the expedition. He had plenty of firewood. He was warm and dry in his little spare room at the top of the stairs. He had sacks of potatoes and parsnips. He had plenty of cartridges. He didn’t need people.

  When the tide ebbed, he worked the harvest of flotsam and jetsam, a bounty replenished every day; when the tide flowed, he was poised with his gun at the landing window for all kinds of wildfowl that floated within range, for the waders that fed on the sodden fields.

  A feast every evening, in front of a blazing fire: widgeon or teal; shoveller or shelduck; merganser, whose flesh was rank with the flavour of fish; woodcock, wonderfully meaty for a bird that felt as light as a sparrow when the dogs brought it to him; curlew, tasting of mud; oystercatcher, salty and tough. Plucked and gutted, basted on a spit hung over the flames, served with vegetables boiled in sea water, this was all the food he wanted. For days on end, Harry Clewe saw nobody and spoke not a word except to the dogs. This isolation suited him well.

  Then the beachcomber came back.

  Harry w
as kneeling at the landing window, levelling the gun at a mallard drake which was feeding on the edge of the flooded ditch. A fine picture he had, as he squinted down the barrel: a sunbeam on the gleaming green iridescence of the bird’s head, on the vivid blue wing flashes, on the pearly pink-grey plumage of its back; behind the duck, the round, white face of the grandfather clock, sticking up from the ditch.

  As he steadied his breath and started the gentle squeeze on the trigger, he wondered where the dogs were. He hadn’t seen them for hours. Usually, they were near enough at any time to know when he was waiting to shoot, and they would wait with him, ready to react to the noise and smell of the gun. No matter: what­ever they were, they would come at the sound of the shot. Harry squeezed the trigger.

  The gun rocked against his shoulder. The explosion made the windows rattle and filled the air with smoke. A flock of curlew fled from the field, crying hoarsely, and dozens of jackdaws whirled into the sky, but the mallard drake was grounded. Still squinting down the barrel, Harry saw the bird thrashing in the mud, beating and beating until its wings were brown and sodden.

  He looked around for Gog and Magog, exasperated that, in their absence, he’d have to go out and retrieve the injured bird. They must have heard the shot. So he waited at the window, expecting at any moment to see the big black beasts come lumbering into view, to see one of them lifting the duck from the mud and turning to bring it back to the house and up the stairs.

  But for a minute, a long and puzzling minute for the man at the window, there was no sign of the dogs.

  His heart jumped when a figure in jeans and a baggy brown jacket trotted across the field, followed at heel by Gog and Magog. He watched, so angry that he could almost have blasted again with the second barrel of the gun, as the figure picked up the duck and killed it with a sudden tug on its neck. Then the beachcomber, the same one that Harry had already chased twice from his fields, started walking towards the front of the house, dangling the duck by its feet, whistling the dogs to heel. Gog and Magog followed meekly with their tongues hanging out. The sunlight gleamed on the dead duck’s head and the beachcomber’s fine, blonde hair.