Mammoth Book of Best New Horror (32 page)

    He did not mean the gesture in any other way than friendly acknowledgment, but the man raised his pewter pot also, saying, "Thanks, most obliged to you. I'll have a pint. Beth?" he called to the barmaid. "Put another one in there when you're ready."

    
"Nice one"
Stephanie said under her breath as the farmer moved down the bar and sat closer to them. She could imagine the state of both men in an hour or two's time, after performing one-upmanship with several more rounds of drinks.

    Rod ignored her comment, paying for the drinks and turning his attention to their companion. "Seems quiet," he said to the farmer. "Here. For the time of year," he added.

    Rollason took a long gulp of his fresh pint. "Welsh Tourist Board," he said as if that explained everything. "Still, the cottages help, as the farm don't pay these days."

    Stephanie thought Rod must have been thinking about the unpopulated-looking caravan park and the empty seats in the pub, not the farmer's holiday lets. "Well, it's a lovely place, Mr Rollason," she stated. "Very quiet. I like that." She added, "We're hoping to do some walking, forget about the car for a bit."

    "Ted's the name. Yes. You've got some good walking hereabouts, if you've a mind." Just then, his attention was caught by a rough-looking figure of a man who was leaving the pub, having put his head around the door and decided against entering. He snorted into his drink. Stephanie followed his glance and recognized the man passing along outside one of the windows.

    "Oh, that old man." She turned to face Mr Rollason. "Your wife told us a bit about him this afternoon. The one who lives at the top of the cliff?"

    "Ay, that was 'im." He drained the rest of his pint, keeping whatever thoughts he had to himself for the time being. "I'll take another one in there, Beth, if you please."

    Rod sipped his brandy. "His wife drowned, we gather, and it's sent him a bit over the edge."

    The farmer glanced sideways at their two unfinished glasses and thought better of offering to buy a round. "Some say," he said conspiratorially, leaning in Rod's direction, "that it was 'im that did it. That it weren't no accident."

    "Ahh," Rod said. "The plot thickens!"

    Rollason ignored his quip.

    Stephanie said, "That's terrible. That's murder." She shivered, in spite of the warmth in the lounge bar. Then she thought about it a bit more. "No, they'd have had their suspicions and arrested him by now, surely?"

    "They?" Rollason queried.

    "The police, of course," Stephanie replied. Who on earth did he think she meant?

    The farmer downed most of his pint in one go, before turning to them both. "Has a boat, he does. You might have seen it on the beach. They say he took her out in it one night and only he came back."

    "But it could easily
have
been an accident-" Stephanie rationalized, but Rollason was quick to reply.

    "Never found the body, see." Both she and Rod waited as he sipped the remains of his beer. She sensed he had a piece of evidence, a clincher he craved to impart, but wanted to milk the moment. Finally he said, "The tides, y'see, hereabouts. They always bring what's lost back to us." His implication was clear. Drowned bodies float back. Perhaps ones weighted down do not.

    Stephanie raised her glass and allowed the dregs of the liquor to inflame her throat and chest. The shivers were on her as soon as she pictured the old man's face, his eyes. That old man, lurking up the cliff in his hut, his secrets wrapped about him like dark green kelp. She would make sure the cottage was locked up tight tonight.

    Rollason carefully placed his tankard on the bar and, remembering that he was, to all intents and purposes, supposed to be an ambassador for Welsh tourism, said with a smile, "Don't mind them tales though. Gilbert's been living here quite a few years since it happened and nobody else has disappeared! Thanks again for the drink, I'll wish you goodnight."

    Shortly after he left, Rod and Stephanie also started for home. They sauntered down to the sands for a quick walk before bed. The tide was a gentle caress, chuckling over pebbles before drawing back to reveal flat sand gleaming under a risen moon. Out in the bay the water was more agitated, as if tumbling over submerged rocks.

    "Look out there," Rod said, pointing. Stephanie stared across the bay, but her eyes had not yet adapted fully to the darkness of the sea. There appeared to be ripples, or many circles of dimpled water, as if the sea itself was agitated. "Something's out there. Fish," he said, stopping to watch. "Swimming into the shallow water. Something big's herding them."

    Stephanie could see the phenomenon now, frantic little blips on the surface, as what might have been the fins of fish riding about one another in their haste to escape some predator. Beyond them the sea was calmer, no sign of anything big, like a shark, say. "It's impossible to see exactly-"

    "Quiet," Rod said. "Wait." As if not talking would mean whatever it was would come to the surface and show itself clearly. "There's something out there," he repeated in a whisper.

    Why would he want to dramatize things? Stephanie asked herself. Yet the gentle, insistent lapping of the tide started to put her on edge. "What is it? A boat?" she asked. "I can't see
anything."

    Then a silver shape surfaced from the agitated black swell. It floundered. The sea decided to roughen up a bit and the rising water cut off her brief sighting. Whatever it was, the object was too large for a bird, too slim for a boat, too streamlined for flotsam.

    
"Yes!"
she cried involuntarily as the moon highlighted whatever it was again. The roiling fish were racing away now, back out to sea beyond the arms of the cliffs. The moonlight was rippling on the shape, silvering it, modifying both its real colour and its true outline.

    
"Quiet,"
Rod insisted. He gave Stephanie an indecipherable look in the dark, and she felt someone step on her grave. Why was he trying to frighten her?

    They both gazed, frozen in place by some unsettling emotion whose source eluded Stephanie. Maybe it was the stories about Gilbert and his drowned wife that had allowed vague uncertainties to invade her thoughts. Whatever the strange fancy was, she knew that Rod was experiencing a similar emotion too, though he would deny it if asked.

    Moored offshore, the old man's boat bobbed as if it, too, was fearful of whatever had been chasing the fish. Stephanie allowed her concentration to lapse, hoping that a less creepy mood might intervene. Further along the beach, up the rise in the dunes were the barn-converted cottages. There were welcoming lights in some of the windows, suggesting neighbourly occupants.

    "A dolphin perhaps?" Rod asked himself out loud. "Most likely."

    His words drew Stephanie's attention back to the deeper water and, as a wave seemingly sloughed off a temporary skin, she glimpsed it again. This time there was a more obvious movement, almost a gesture.

    "It has arms," she said. "I saw one of them waving."

    "Don't be stupid," Rod said. There was not simply disapproval in the sound of his voice, but anger too. "Who on earth would swim at night, in that?" He knew plenty of brave or foolhardy friends who would, but was not going to admit it to Steph. "Got to be a dolphin. Manoeuvring a shoal of fish."

    Stephanie resumed her silent watchfulness. She must have been confused. Rod was probably correct. Nobody would swim in the surf off Nolton's beach at night, not perhaps since Gilbert's wife went missing. Not in any event; the currents might be tricky.

    Stephanie kept watch intently for a few minutes more as the rollers relentlessly arched up the beach. Her eyes were beginning to ache with trying to distinguish the dolphin from the waves that intermittently allowed a peep into their troughs. Wanting desperately for it to be a dolphin. There was nothing, though, nothing more to be seen. The creature had swum back out to sea in search of that elusive shoal.

    Yet, lingering in her mind's eye was that half-seen shape, and it gave her the shudders just imagining what might still be out there somewhere in the depths, if it was not a cetacean. Rightly it must be something with flippers, a shark even, or a dead boat's hull surfacing, spars waving as the sea drove it.

    "Well it's gone." Rod said aggressively, as though disgruntled at not being able to make a positive identification. Stephanie slipped her arm under his and tugged gently against his resistance. They turned their backs to the sea and headed to their accommodation. He turned his head back briefly, paused, took a deep breath.

    Breasting the dunes using the half-hidden steps that the old man had climbed that afternoon, both of them turned to face the bay again. The moon was a fat crescent, very bright. The extra height furnished them with little more in the way of visibility, however.

    Gilbert's dinghy continued to rock to and fro, the only motion besides the restlessness of the tides.

    Rod was stroking Stephanie's back, but not affectionately. Unconsciously he was urging whatever had been out in the bay to reappear. The mystery of it aggravated him. Stephanie knew he did not enjoy ambiguities. She could sense his dissatisfaction, but could do nothing about that. In any case, it was hardly worth losing much sleep over.

    Except… the sighting had left her rather uncertain. As if she had glimpsed something that she should not have.

    Gilbert swore and stomped along the beach, his waders grinding on newly deposited seashells. As he skirted the rocky inlet, he opened his flies to relieve himself. The urine gleamed bright yellow in the moonlight and hissed as the swirls and eddies took it. He swore again and spat, the wedge of phlegm phosphorescent as it hit the surf.

    "Tonight.
Tonight… Tonight."
He mumbled to himself as he sloshed through the shallows to where his boat was tied up. The vessel tugged on its rein, a frisky horse, anxious for the ride. He felt the vibration in the painter surge through his fingers as he untied it. That urgent, persistent pull. As if the boat knew something… He let the line drop into the swell, releasing his watery stallion. As the hull rode the shallows, he stepped aboard and fixed the oars.

    Then he began to row, the wooden craft breasting the waves. His strength was transmitted to the timbers and, as if they were extensions of some strangely articulated arms, the oars rowed and rowed.

    
Tonight…

    Beyond the cliffs, the sea swell lifted the puny craft and dropped it again, but Gilbert stood up nevertheless as he cast his fishing net overboard. "I'll give an almighty haul," he muttered to the waves. "I cut it loose once." He sat, rowed a few strokes to allow the net to drift on its floats. "I won't next time.
I won't."
He huddled himself against the sharp and persistent breeze, hugging his waterproofs tight around him.

    The sea sensed his presence and the water grew more restless. The moon brightened as luminous drifts of cloud hurried out of the way. Selenitic light shimmered on his oilskins and lit up the boat's cracked paintwork. His eyes roamed to the heavens.
"The water, like a witch's oils, burnt green, and blue, and white."

    He waited as the boat nodded in acknowledgment of the waves. The moon's argent haloes existed for the brief life of the swell and were a second later lost and another created. Then there was the tug, the net pulling against the boat's prow. Instinctively he moved hand over hand, reeling in. The drag of the mesh was steady at first, as if what was netted was somehow comforted, embraced by the nylon lattice. But then whatever was hidden in the waves began making furious water.

    "Coming to bed?" Rod's call from the small bedroom sounded muffled, sleepy.

    "Mmm. In a minute." Stephanie moved the closed curtains aside and peeped out. There was the cove, glittering under the high moon.

    The surf was rougher now, endless waves poised constantly, on the edge of breaking, gathering their brawn from tideless deeps. She cupped her hands to the glass to eliminate the glare of a table lamp and then she saw the rowing boat coming ashore.

    She was holding her breath as she watched a hunched, black-clad, wetly luminous figure haul the dinghy out of the water. Across the thwarts of the boat a fishing net dragged, as if the ocean's hand had gripped the tangled nylon fibres and held them.

    She knew who it was. He fell, slipped on seaweed or net or through old-age, and a muffled curse rang out loud in the night. He struggled to his feet, hauling himself up using the boat and it wallowed, daring him to try again as he lost his footing once more. He. was acting in a panic now and began dragging on the net while still prostrate in the shallows. Quickly the motion of hand-over-hand in time with yelled words, repeated over and over:

    
"Tonight! Tonight!"

    And some thing was dragged into the shallow water, a shape that flopped, not struggling, as if unsure whether dry land offered more safety than the sea. On the shining sand at Gilbert's feet, luminescent plaits of water… and this…?

    Stephanie pressed her face closer to the glass, fascinated and terrified at the same time. In the net… bilious white, flesh that might have been partly consumed by some predator. She tried to imagine it had arms, the waving arm she had seen earlier. Gilbert reached out his hand and began tenderly to untangle the wrinkles of the net. No… she mouthed the word silently. He stood and moved in front of her line of sight and bent over the shape on the beach. There was a cry, an echo of which reverberated around the cliffs. An inconsolable cry. Stephanie squeezed her eyes hard shut and, when she next opened them, the old man was trudging for the rocks and the cliff footpath that led to his house.