by Guy Sheppard
Surging towards him there emerged four seahorses at the head of a glittering chariot all made of water.
He had to brace himself for when the glassy cavalcade struck his chest, even as the rush of foaming steeds ran him down to the sound of much hissing and spitting.
‘Help! For Christ’s sake, somebody help me! I can’t move my legs.’
He thought in all the confusion that he heard the sound of his own name. Felt himself scooped up. He screamed even as a glistening face shone through spray and spume to peer down and take him.
Next minute someone was plunging at him through the flood. Never before had he seen such flagrant neglect of their own safety. They took a deep breath and dived for him regardless of any tsunami; they half swam and half surfed through swirling silt and currents. They swept their arms left and right in front of them as they burrowed deep into the sea wave. If they had fallen flat in the mud they would most likely have got stuck, too. If they had panicked or ingested too much salt water, they would have been lost like him when the bore crashed over them both with its watery avalanche.
Seconds later a long thin hand grasped his arm. It pulled him upwards and backwards. It was Luke!
The year was 1991.
They were both ten.
*
Of the foaming chariot he had hesitated to say much at all. His mind felt forever fixed on that moment when, during his near-drowning, he had seen a red-headed charioteer ride by high above him in the water. How could he be mistaken about a vision so clear on her white crest of a wave? Yet it had been but a mirage?
Luke stood next to him, dripping water by the seawall.
‘Wow, Jorge. That was close. Thought I’d lost you. Can’t you swim at all?’
‘No way.’
‘Relax, I’ll teach you one day.’
‘Aye, aye, Captain Nemo.’
‘You okay?’
‘Why are you asking?’
‘You look bloody awful. What’s wrong? What did you see?’
‘It was nothing.’
‘Jorge, you’re ashen. Or is it just the cold?’
‘You got that right.’
‘You can’t be too careful. My grandmother says that on a spring tide Sabrina rides the bore as far as Gloucester.’
‘Who’s Sabrina?’
‘She’s the guardian goddess of the Severn, silly. She lives in a palace built of dead men’s bones deep underwater.’
‘What’s that got to do with me?’
‘Tonight’s a full moon. That’s when you’ll most likely see her.’
It was only another of Luke’s scary stories.
‘You see, Sasha, I swear he wanted me to believe that nonsense he told me that evening.’
The taste and smell of the sea still took his memory by storm and to this day he didn’t know how much faith Luke put in a legend that could never be proved.
But from that moment on they had considered themselves blood brothers.
He still did, even if they had, years later, gone their separate ways.
18
‘You seem upset and fearful, Mr Grey.’
‘Damn right I am, reverend.’
There came into Ian’s bright eyes something wild and disconcerting. His mention of a living lie excited him terribly, thought Luke. This high above canal and river he found himself sweating. Who was to say that his unexpected companion would not hurl them both from the ledge at any moment?
‘If you have anything to tell me, Ian, now’s the time.’
‘Trust me, reverend, what happened on the night of 25th October 1960 leaves a lot of questions.’
‘You suppose?’
‘Come see for yourself.’
Ian drew from his pocket a number of black and white photographs and placed them side by side on the broken parapet.
The first picture depicted a length of fallen railway line whose crumpled end had come to rest on a stretch of sandbank exposed at low tide. Pinched and kinked, each buckled rail looked as if it had been torn from its bridge by the vindictive hand of some enraged giant.
Luke studied the scene in detail: a black mass of wreckage turned out to be girders and barges that were inextricably entangled. Another picture showed the reason why. Some intrepid photographer had ventured to the very edge of the yawning gap in the sky where two iron spans had gone missing high above the River Severn. An impenetrable mist shrouded the distant shore at this point in something discernibly preternatural.
Track vanished into void.
‘It’s a shock to see pictures taken so soon after the event.’
‘Totally.’
‘It’s as if it happened yesterday.’
‘See here, reverend. People were cut off from each other on both shores; they had to sit shivering in their unheated homes for days because a gas pipe that was bolted to the bridge was also severed.’
Luke gave a shudder.
‘The first time I saw such horrifying depictions of the disaster was in a scrapbook that my grandmother kept in Chapel Cottage. She collected newspaper cuttings from the local Echo, too.’
But Ian had only just started.
In another photograph a thick pall of smoke filled the sky against which were silhouetted the hulks of two burning barges. The name WASTDALE H was clearly visible while the other barge sat grounded close beside it. The black and white image conveyed very starkly the aftermath of the tragic accident as the wrecks lay exposed but still smoking on the sands drained by the tide. Less like seagoing boats than stranded whales, the smooth, curving hull and flat bottom of the WASTDALE H in particular spoke again of some monstrous act of detestable violence.
The rest of the pictures showed the bridge being dismantled and cut up for scrap years later.
He sensed something disquieting stir inside him.
‘I wasn’t even born when the collision happened, yet many a night I relive my grandfather’s efforts to save dying men in my dreams. Why is that, I wonder? Honestly, I don’t want to know.’
‘What can I say, reverend? As a young boy your father Rex Lyons saw his father Sean row out to the bridge as it fell into flames, never to be seen again. The whole catastrophe was imprinted so deeply on his psyche that he must have bequeathed it to you? The terror of that night is forever part of your genetic make-up?’
‘It’s true my grandmother never stopped referring to it. She called it our family curse.’
‘One person’s curse is another’s blessing.’
‘Yeah. You’re probably right. But you’ve got to admit it all happened a long time ago.’
‘Doesn’t mean there aren’t still consequences.’
‘The photographs are so black and bleak.’
‘Like them or not, reverend, it makes no difference.’
‘Sorry, you’re not making much sense.’
‘That’s because nothing does.’
Ian pointed upriver towards the snaking bend in the Severn called The Noose.
‘Those barges are still out there, reverend. You’d see them right now if you had binoculars. Some people walk out to them at low tides despite the quicksand. After the collision the boats drifted together upstream where it’s largely unnavigable and had to be blown up with hundreds of tons of gelignite to render them harmless. They belong to the river now. A scary place is the Severn, don’t you agree? I do. Perhaps it’s because I can’t swim.’
Luke fixed his eyes on the awful focus of the other’s gaze and did, he thought, see the skeletal shells of two hulks gleam white in the dying light.
It was the mud.
Every ebb tide recoated the hulls in slime that dried so ghastly pale.
Next moment Ian offered him his hand.
‘Take a good look, reverend.’
‘Sorry, you’ve lost me.’
‘Please, I need you to see this.’
‘Ian. You’re panting?’
A gold pocket watch and chain lay in his shaky palm. A key on whose round disc a horse’s head had been engraved h
ung from its chatelaine, while its not dissimilar fob’s stiff neck and curly tail suggested more seahorse than stallion.
The cylinder bar key wind was working because they could both hear it ticking, although it was, by the time on his phone, ten minutes fast.
Before he could take a closer look its possessor snapped shut its cover.
It was now rapidly getting dark, but some strange light did gleam on the circle of solid gold.
Ian pressed his forearm with urgent fingers.
‘This watch belonged to your grandfather, Sean. How it looks is how I found it.’
‘You asking me?’
‘It’s not a question, reverend.’
‘How long has it been in your possession?’
‘I found it on the riverbank.’
‘What made it wash up there, I wonder?’
‘Sean Lyons dropped it.’
‘In 1960, you mean?’
‘I mean in 1981.’
‘No, no, I already told you, my grandfather died a hero on the night the bridge came down. He drowned in the river trying to save the crew of those burning barges.’
‘Keep telling yourself that.’
‘I’m definitely not listening to you now, Ian. How many times do I have to say it? He’s the one good thing about my family that I can cherish.’
‘And if it’s all an evil lie?’
‘Who says?’
‘What is this watch worth to you, Luke? Is it worth anything to you, at all?’
‘Yes, it is. It’s absolutely priceless.’
‘Good, because the proof of what you need to know lies inside.’
‘What do you want in return?’
‘As you say, reverend, to the right person the most treasured possession has no value. It’s the truth that counts. Without that, how do we know what to feel? In our hearts.’
‘Sorry. What?’
‘It’s yours. Take it.’
‘Why would you do that?’
Ian retreated round the curve in the railway cutting – he beat his way through its trees and bushes up the gradient towards town and docks where he paused only to call back briefly with a nervous laugh.
‘Fact is, Luke, I’ve kept silent far too long. That curse can be yours now. Meet me at the tin tabernacle. Come alone.’
‘Why wait until then?’
Ian’s right arm described in the air some dismissive semaphore. It was an unsettling, heartfelt, joyous wave as if in relief he felt reprieved.
‘First I have to see someone else. Don’t forget to look inside the watch, like I said.’
Luke stood motionless before the drop into the canal where, with pounding heart, he scanned the grey horizon for more signs of wreckage. Ian Grey was purporting to be his long lost friend. He really wasn’t. The old man was correct when he’d hinted earlier how he hadn’t cared much at all for Slim Jim Jackson’s behaviour years ago, but he hadn’t saved him from his attentions, either.
The unexpected donation of his grandfather’s watch temporarily drove all darker thoughts from his head, however. He pressed its cold, glass face hard against his ear whereupon its rapid ticking, like his heart’s, grew louder and more urgent.
*
That night in Hill House Sasha kept vigil while Luke closed his eyes by the fire.
In truth, there was little sleep in him.
He took up his new acquisition and looked for a hinge in the rim. He found it at the 6 o’clock position. Then he inserted the point of the four-inch blade of his flick knife into a little notch. Opened the watch’s back. The previous owner had obviously been in the habit of snapping the case-lid shut far too quickly. As a result, the steel latch, being harder than the solid gold, had worn out the spot on the rim where the latch engaged.
Inside the cover was the portrait of a young woman.
He could see by way of his magnifying glass that she was dressed in a jet black taffeta gown which was both very voluminous and nipped at the waist. The front yoke had a scrollwork pattern beaded with glistening clear bugle beads or something very similar. It was apparent, even in miniature, that the dress’s brief bodice was boned and shaped with panels in the bust cups in a style that had to date to the 1940’s.
His eyes fastened next on her hair: a crocheted bag kept the back of its black curls neat in a snood while the fringe was left out and rolled.
He prised free the photograph and on its back were a few words penned in black ink: To Sean with love from O.
He studied the face again and her large, ebony coloured eyes peered right through him. Her long nose, stiff neck and jutting chin suggested a stuffy aristocratic air of entitlement that was belied by her wild stare. The defiant curl of her lip was openly rebellious as he estimated her age to be the early twenties.
Ian was right, the pocket watch had never been exposed long to the elements. Certainly it had not spent years at the bottom of any river. And yet, what it managed to do was to bridge, from then till now, the gap between the missing and the found.
*
And so at midnight, surrounded by his mummified fish and model ships in glass cases, Luke dozed off in his chair.
He dreamt that he was his grandfather on the night the bridge came down.
Must row harder…
Flames as high as the bridge.
…in and out of pools of burning petroleum. Looks like one barge has hit another. I can see someone in the water.
Can’t get near the fallen girders.
Tonight burns like hell.
All this fog is fire.
Are those cries I can hear from the riverbank?
It’s no use, I’m literally too late already.
Or am I?
‘Is anyone there?’
‘Yes.’
The answer comes back very faintly.
‘Where are you in the water?’
‘I can’t say. I just am.’
The blaze is so fierce, not even the firemen can get near. Can just about make out the crackle of radios and flash of lights through the red glow. No sign of the fireboat from Sharpness Docks. No wonder. It’s built for the ship canal, not river. In these conditions it doesn’t stand a chance.
The water must be alight from shore to shore in a wall of fire for nearly a mile…
At last! There! Beyond my rowboat’s bow.
…straight ahead beneath the burning oil.
Swing the boat hard around.
That’s where they could yet resurface…
That beautiful face.
Visible suddenly…
Time to ship the oars and call again.
Beneath the slick of iridescent oil shine agate, Turkish blue and emerald green…
‘Give me your hand, Sean.’
‘What makes you think you can save me?’
‘What makes you think I can’t?’
‘But I’m not wearing any life jacket.’
‘Be quick, I tell you, or you’ll burn me with you.’
‘You go, my boat could sink at any moment.’
‘Better to come with me to the bottom.’
Again, those other, distant voices of frantic concern.
A red navigation light flashes its bloody eye on the bridge’s double pier seventy feet above me.
That siren voice from beneath the waves is so luring and tempting.
Tomorrow dark water will disgorge its deadly flotsam.
*
Luke opened his eyes with a start, still convinced that he waded dead men’s bones at the bottom of the river.
Sasha pawed at his chest. Barked and growled. She urged him to hurry up and take notice.
It was pouring with rain outside Hill House – he was listening to rain, not drowning.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
The fire beside him was reduced to glowing ashes which was why he felt so cold? He stood up sharply in almost total darkness. Then he felt his way cautiously across the floor as far as the door.
Sasha followed.
&nbs
p; If someone else was in the house, then they had just entered while he was dreaming?
Violent gusts of rain flooded the patio doors that stood open at the very end of the corridor that divided the house from east to west on its ground floor.
Sasha awaited his command but as a precaution he kept his hand on her collar. She would, once unleashed, be unstoppable.
Before a bookshelf stood a man in a camel coat. Somebody urgently thumbed pages. He glanced at them through his wire-rimmed spectacles.
Long, thick fingers were dreadfully pale.
Luke guessed at once that he was not reading but looking for something.
Of his face he saw only the misshapen jaw and twisted nose of a street fighter who’d suffered more than a few brutal knocks in his heyday. The large, bullet-head had a cap drawn low over its brow. A strap over his shoulder went to a bag at his hip into which he was ready to press some vital volume or other.
His breath condensed white in the cold air that blew through the doors that he had forced open from the terrace.
If the bibliomaniac had looked beyond the flash of his torch then he might have noticed them. As it was, he sighed aloud in obvious frustration which struck Luke as dishearteningly often.
Sasha understood his alarm but not his caution.
Something prohibited him from challenging or retreating, a strange edict born of the dream from which he had just woken. They shared the house with a ghost?
19
Day 5 was a day of delight.
According to his cabbage soup diet, he was permitted to devour a sizeable piece of chicken, Jorge noted.
He could also eat several fresh tomatoes.
The downside was that he was supposed to drink lots and lots of very boring water. The minimum, apparently, was eight glasses. This was to flush out something called uric acid.
Honestly, until now he hadn’t even known he had uric acid.
The best diets, doubtlessly, were those which engendered just the right level of fear by feeding off a person’s ignorance.
‘I mean, uric acid!’ he said. ‘It can’t be good. Can it?’
Sasha rested her chin on her paws and flattened one ear while he added two tablespoons of olive oil to a large pot which simmered over medium heat in the vicarage’s newly cleaned kitchen. The future, he resolved, had to be a fresh start. He would from now on be more of a grazer than a feaster. Gone from the freezer were ten tubs of ice cream that he had bought only yesterday.