by Paul Finch
For all that, it had got quite dicey up there. It had been more than a little lax to get so distracted by other problems that they'd dropped their guard in that way. They hadn't even taken a torch, so it was really quite a relief getting back to The Shieling before night had fallen properly. From the outside, the cottage wasn't perhaps the best: a plain rectangular building with white pebble-dashed walls and a sensible slate roof. Even internally it wasn't everything you'd hope for in a Highland abode; roomy certainly, but filled with dark, heavy, farmhouse-type furniture, the few items of local interest- a tartan tea cosy in the kitchen and two tam o'shanters hanging from the clothes pegs in the hall-not offering much in the way of meaningful Scottishness. But it was clean and dry, and luxuriously warm thanks to the wood-burner, while outside, though the rain had eased off, a fierce, cold wind was still blowing.
He glanced once again at the far mountain ridge. The moon had shifted slightly, but still there was nothing framed against it-man or monolith.
Now dried off after their baths, they went back upstairs, where Sarah put on her pyjamas and Phil donned a tracksuit and trainers. He glanced outside a couple more times, from various windows, but way up here in the hills, beyond the reach of streetlights or the warm, welcoming glow from a neighbouring window, the darkness was more or less complete. To compound this, more rainclouds were drifting in from the west; if they covered the moon, the cottage would soon be a speck of light in an infinite void.
Coming back down to the kitchen, they made supper from the supplies they'd picked up at Arisaig while en route here-eggs, ham, cheese and buttered bread-and settled down for the evening. The satellite dish meant they could watch all the normal television channels, though after another hour or so, with the storm re-intensifying, and fresh rainfall hitting the cottage like catapult-loads of gravel, the signal was progressively disrupted to the point where it became untenable, and the link went down.
Shortly after this, the lights began flickering.
"A power-out is all we need," Sarah said from the armchair, where she was curled up. She had her Kindle with her, and was reading, but its battery was low, so she'd plugged it into the mains. Phil sat tensely on the sofa for several seconds, before abruptly standing up. He had ventured down to the cellar earlier to dump the canvas they'd worn when descending the mountain. While there he'd spotted a torch.
Now seemed a good time to go and get it.
The cellar, which was rock-walled and dry, was accessible via a steep timber stair, and ran the entire length of the building, though it was cluttered with heaps of dusty, web-enshrouded junk. When Phil got down there, the single bulb, which only gave faint, brownish light anyway, also flickered on and off. He cast around quickly. The wind groaned through the upper reaches of the house, rattling the coal doors at the far end of the cellar so violently that their catch came loose and they swung open over the metal chute positioned beneath them.
Shrill, cold air blasted the full length of the narrow chamber.
Phil ignored this, still searching. He found the torch on a shelf above a row of gardening tools-a spade, a hoe and a pickaxe- grabbed it and tested it. This too was faulty, giving off only a weak, intermittent glow, but it was better than nothing. They also had the wood-burner of course. He hurried back upstairs-just as the lights went out again. And this time stayed out.
"Damn," he said, entering the lounge.
"Hell of a racket outside," Sarah replied. She'd got up, pretty smartly by the looks of it, and was standing rigid in the red glare of the hearth.
Before he could ask her to elaborate, there was a loud metallic clash from somewhere to the front of the house. Phil moved to the bay window, but in the blackout the motion-sensitive exterior lights remained stubbornly off, and when he switched the torch on, it barely made an impact beyond the rain-streaked glass.
"Probably just the gate," he said, eyes straining to pierce the opaque turmoil. "I mean in this wind…"
There was another deafening clash, now accompanied by a torturous, twisted squeal.
Sarah appeared at his side, unconsciously grabbing his hand. "Sounds like the gate's falling down. Surely the wind's not that strong?"
The red-grey hairs at the nape of Phil's neck bristled as he heard what sounded like a scrunch of gravel. Was something being dragged along the drive?
"Away from the window," he said, drawing her backward. His whole skin was now crawling. He couldn't believe what he was allowing himself to think. "I'm just… I'm just going back down the cellar."
"Why?" Her eyes bulged as she spotted pinpricks of sweat on his brow. "Phil?"
"Just stay away from the window. People can see in but we can't see out."
"Like who… you mean someone's outside?" A hollow clunk caught their attention. "Christ… that sounded like the car!"
"Never mind the sodding car!" he said over his shoulder. He was already out in the hall, from where the door connected to the cellar. He descended the stair as swiftly as he dared with only a weak, flickering torch to show him the way. It was a den of dusty darkness down there now, but there was enough juice in the battery to help him find what he was looking for-the pickaxe. He snatched it up. It was a heavy implement with a thick hickory handle; the closest thing he'd seen in the cottage to a weapon. He went back up the stairs, two treads at a time-to meet Sarah in the hall.
"It's okay," she said sounding relieved. "You won't believe it, but it's that bullock. I've just seen it through the bay window."
"Eh?"
She took his wrists as though to calm him, though her eyes were perhaps a little wild. "That bullock… it must have followed us down the mountainside."
"Sarah… why would it do that?"
"I don't know, but it's just gone past the window. It must have forced the front gate open and brushed against the car."
He regarded her in thinly disguised disbelief. "You actually saw it?"
"Well, I saw part of a big curved shape. Probably its bottom. It was going round to the back of the house. I bet it comes here all the time… for the grazing."
Phil continued to stare at her incredulously, until a dull thud sounded from the other side of the front door. Heavy though this was-a slab of nail-studded oak, with a tiny glass panel in the middle-it juddered in its frame.
"I thought you said it had gone around the back," he whispered.
"It did… I mean, why would it come to the front door?" She tried to laugh, but she wasn't fooling her husband, or even herself.
Phil moved stealthily forward, bent down and shone the flickering torch through the glass panel. At first he couldn't tell what he was seeing. Mountain mist, he wondered… combined with the Highlands dark to create a grey nothing?
And then he realised the truth.
Rock.
Mottled, mossy, rain-wet rock.
He darted backward with a gasp-shoving the faltering torch into Sarah's grasp, and hefting the pickaxe in both hands.
"What's the matter, what is it?"
He shook his head. There was another thud, and a slow scraping against the other side of the door. Sarah stepped towards it.
"NO!" he hissed.
"Phil…?"
"Shhhh!"
"Never mind shush. If you know who's out there, tell me!"
"Tigh na Cailliche," he mumbled to himself. "'The Hag's House'… 'the Hag's Home'. Dear Lord, we trespassed in their home…" His voice rose inexorably, as though he'd lost control of it. "In fact, we fucking destroyed it!"
"Phil, don't be ridiculous…" But her words died as the door began to creak and strain. She turned to face it, shocked. The sturdy oaken panels seemed to be bulging inward, as though to some insurmountable force and weight.
"Some bullock!" Phil said, goggle-eyed.
With a gunshot bang, the door jamb split, the structure of the entrance sagging. The glazed peephole broke, and a hinge went flying across the hall.
"The cellar!" he shouted, lurching sideways, kicking the cellar door partly open.
"The… cellar?" she stuttered.
Before he could explain, the front door exploded inward, showering them with dust and splinters. Sarah screamed; Phil coughed and wafted his hand. Only the dimmest starlight penetrated through the entrance, but this was minimised by the tall, amorphous shape standing there. Phil shrieked incoherently, raising the pickaxe, driving it downward-CLANK!-the massive shock of it jarring his elbows and shoulders. Sparks glistered.
"Phil!" Sarah shrieked, pivoting round behind him.
The feeble beam slashed across the tiny hall, glaring wetly from jagged, grainy granite, which as the second blow landed-CRACK!-fissured down the middle, the curved steel axe-head flying backward as its haft splintered, twirling over Phil's shoulder and caroming sideways, burying itself in the cellar door, knocking it all the way open. Sarah fell headlong through it, the on-off flashing torch going with her.
"Sarah!" Phil shouted, throwing aside the broken axe-handle, spinning in the darkness, fleetingly not knowing where he was going. More by luck than design, he found the cellar entrance and bustled through. But she wasn't waiting on the stair, and the light she'd been holding was completely extinguished.
"Sarah!" He stumbled frantically to the bottom, where he almost toppled over her limp form slumped against the newel post. "You fall? You okay?"
"I'm… all right," she moaned. "I… broke the torch…"
"Never mind that!" He grabbed her by the lapel of her pyjama top, and hoisted her to her feet. "This way!"
He ran forward blindly. The coalhole and chute were directly ahead-he could tell by the slanting shaft of starlight. But immediately he tripped and staggered, boxes, crates and buckets flying every which way, crashing and clattering into the walls. He buffaloed on regardless, shouting and bawling to Sarah behind him, until he ran headlong into some heavy, unyielding object, the sheer force of which collision punched the wind from his lungs and spun him away into a corner, where a heap of semi-rancid cloth cushioned his fall, but did nothing to protect him from the mass of collapsing shelves overhead. All kinds of grotty bric-a-brac deluged onto him, but Phil's adrenaline was now flowing-he dug free and lurched to his feet. By instinct, his left hand still clung to the cloth-it was the pile of mouldy canvas they'd pillaged from the Tigh na Cailliche. In some ways, it was hardly appropriate that he swung it around his shoulders and flung other sections of it at Sarah as she blundered in the darkness behind him.
"To keep us dry as we cross the loch," he shouted, shinning up the coal chute. "Especially with you in your PJs! There'll be no hot bath and roaring wood-burner at the end of this trip, love!"
The rain hit him even before he left the cellar, slapping his head and shoulders with vicious force. When he emerged onto the path, the wind caught him too, sending him staggering sideways. He glanced back. Sarah was emerging, bundled head to foot in canvas. "Hurry!" he said, fighting forward through the gale.
There was a path down to the landing, but Phil couldn't find it in the confusion. Besides, who or what might be waiting on that path, he didn't like to consider. Thankfully the grass was sodden but firm; they kept their footing as they descended the headland. The loch boomed like an ocean, its wind-driven breakers crashing into the jetty, erupting in fountains of spume. Fleetingly this whole scheme seemed like madness. Ever since a childhood accident on the Grosvenor Canal, Phil had tried to avoid water. And out on this water they'd be thrown around like shuttlecocks. But what lay behind was surely worse. Not that there was any choice. With the route to the car blocked, the motorboat across the loch was their fastest, if not only, route to safety.
"Careful!" he shouted, as they tottered along the jetty, its woodwork wet with spray. Briefly the moon broke through rags of racing cloud, and he saw the outboard ahead. It swung on its mooring rope, dipping and tilting. But it was a solidly made vessel-he'd been down to look at it when they had first arrived here-possessed of a powerful four-cylinder motor capable of generating two-hundred horsepower plus.
He made it into the prow of the craft with a single leap, but landed awkwardly and heavily, his back across a rowing-bench, which drove the wind from his lungs. The boat bucked like a bronco, straining on its tether. But Phil's fingers were already working the mooring knot, the line coming loose just as Sarah landed in the stern, her tent-like flaps billowing from her ungainly form, her weight tilting the boat upward to a terrifying gradient. Phil clung desperately to either gunwale as he seesawed into the air, his ears filled with the cracking and popping of timbers, his eyes bugging as dark waters poured over the sides, swirling around the figure below, which sat rigid even as it went slowly underneath.
Myriad horrors invaded Phil's mind as the gurgling surface rushed up to meet him. His flesh turned deathly cold; his spine and shoulders stiffened as it licked icily around his feet, his knees, his thighs, as it swamped his groin, belly, chest, as it clapped over his head with the echoing crash of a cathedral door.
The howls of the storm abruptly ceased.
Reality was a bubbling, turgid murk, into which Phil rapidly descended. Belatedly, he tried to kick himself up and away, but the shock of paralysis combined with his innate lack of skill to anchor him to the boat. Even when it struck the bottom, that wasn't the end. Thanks to Morar's steep descent to the abyss, and the massive weight in its stern, the craft slid swiftly downhill, tobogganing through primal ooze, only halting when it struck a rotted, twisted root, the impact of which jerked Phil forward, so that he tumbled the length of the outboard-straight into her rugged, rocky embrace.
****
Sarah lay where she had fallen, at the foot of the cellar stair.
The many blows delivered to her body as she'd come down it head over heels were as nothing compared to the jolt to her brow from the flying pickaxe head. It had split her flesh wide open; it might have fractured the bone beneath-her face was stiff and sticky with congealed blood. There was little movement in her body and limbs, though increased awareness was gradually settling over her. She had some vague memory of Phil trying to get her to her feet, shouting incoherently-and even though she had some notion why that had been, it all seemed too nonsensical.
All she knew at present was that she ought to stay where she was. She wasn't cold, she wasn't even uncomfortable. For all she knew, she might be in bed, dreaming. And when a diminutive shape came to her through the darkness, and snuggled up alongside her, inserting itself under the crook of her arm, there was no denying the pang of pleasure she felt. Though it hurt her shoulder, though the arm itself was numb, she tightened it around the small, shivering form.
"It'll be okay," she crooned. "You're safe now."
FLOTSAM
Tim Lebbon
Since her husband had died, Debbie always tried to sleep on the beach. The feel of sand slowly giving out the day's heat mimicked his warm touch. The smell of drying seaweed and decaying crabs and fish reminded her that he was dead. The constant hush of waves on the shore might have been him sighing in her ear. An unseen creature's delicate legs trailing across her stomach were his fingers soothing her skin, and the stark sea breeze preceding dawn was his last gasp of air before he went under that final time. Everything was Marc. All that she had known, and all that she would ever know of him again.
She could never abandon that.
But three years is a long time. Plenty long enough to get over things, her friends had tried to tell her, before they ceased being her friends. And more than long enough for others to start seeing her in a different light. Mad old sea woman. The lonely mermaid. Beach bitch.
She'd heard it all, and cared for none of it. The sea entranced and intimidated her, and sometimes she went a whole day without even remembering Marc at all. Beaches became home. Sand became habit. Life wasn't always about mourning and loss. Sometimes life was driven by the tides.
By day she would sell homemade jewellery to tourists from the small home they'd once shared. It backed onto the beach and was becoming ever more rundown, its wooden boarding scoured by th
e salt breeze. The sea eroded her home just as it had eroded her life.
She never told the tourists her story.
Some nights when Debbie slept on the beach, she spoke to him. But the times she spoke out loud were becoming less frequent. Memories were a form of communication, more personal and internalised. Sometimes it felt like they were impressing themselves upon her rather than forming from the shadowy depths of her own experience. On occasion, though, it simply felt good to talk.
"See the stars?" she would ask, lying back in her sleeping bag and tracing one hand across the clear sky. In moments she swept whole galaxies aside. Marc had loved looking at the stars. Sometimes she'd find him lying on the decking at the bottom of their garden, mildly drunk and grinning in delight as he stared, and stared. She'd join him for a while, but the cold always got to her, or the thought of unseen insects and other crawling things exploring her loose night clothing. A few times it had been his hands doing the exploring, and she had stayed with him a while longer. He had always insisted that she sat astride him, so that he could see her against the universe as they made love.
Other times she would say, "It's so cold tonight," wrapping herself tighter, curling up in the sleeping bag so that she looked like a giant shell among the dunes.
"Maybe I should go home." She said that less frequently. It was a strange concept, when home was rarely more than a mile or two along the coast. But sleeping out here, beside the sea, beneath the stars, felt like a way of honouring her husband's memory. Returning home to sleep would be moving on. She was not certain she was ready to move on so far.
So she bought thicker sleeping bags for the winter, and invested in heavy-duty tents, and weathered the storms of water and wind and people's scorn. And even after three years, on occasion she still spoke to Marc.
She had never expected a reply.
****
The bottle was wedged between two rocks at the edge of a rock pool. It was almost buried in sand, and she wouldn't have seen it if she hadn't slipped on a slick stone. She did not quite fall, but her foot splashed into the pool, water entering her boot. When she looked down she saw the opaque curve of glass. There was often glass on the beach, cruel edges smoothed by time spent washed back and forth across the sea bed. But this bottle was whole. Even more intriguing, it was stoppered with a cork and wax sealant.