No Sharks in the Med and Other Stories (40 page)

We passed carefully along narrow ledges with rounded rims, through stepped, vertical slots or chimneys where the going was easier, from level to striated level, always ascending from one fearful vertiginous position to the next. But Carlisle’s advice—his sibilant instructions—were so clear, timely, and faultlessly delivered that I never once slipped or faltered. And at last we came to that high ledge behind its shoulder of rounded stone, where I’d seen and even tried to photograph Carlisle as he scoured the moorland around through his binoculars.

“Now then,” he said, and his voice had changed; no longer sibilant, it grated as if uttered through clenched teeth. “Now we shall see what we shall see. Look over there, a quarter-mile or so, that hollow in the ground where it rises like the first in a series of small waves; that very private place surrounded by gorse and ferns. Do you see?”

At first I saw nothing, despite that the mist appeared to have lifted. But then, as if Carlisle had willed it into being, the tableau took shape, becoming clearer by the moment. In the spot he had described, I saw a couple…and indeed they were coupling! Their clothing was their bed where they lay together in each other’s arms, naked. Their movements, at first languid, rapidly became more frenzied. I thought I heard their panting, but it wasn’t them—it was Carlisle!

And then the climax—their shuddering bodies, the falling apart, gentle caresses, kisses, and whispered conversation—the passion quenched, for the moment at least.
Their
passion, yes…but not Carlisle’s. His panting was that of a beast!

Finally he grew calm, and his voice was as before. “If we were to stay, to continue watching, you’d see them do it again and again, yessss. But my heart was herssss! And as for him…I thought he was my friend! I was betrayed, not once but often, frequently. She gave me back the ring which was my promise and told me her love could not be, not with me. Ah, but it
could
be with him! And as you’ve seen, it wassss!”

I didn’t understand, not entirely. “She was your wife? But you said—”

“—I said she gave me back my ring—the
engagement
ring I bought for her. She broke her promise!”

“She found someone she loved better or more than you.”

“
What
?” He turned to me in a rage. “No, she was a slut and would have had anyone before me! She betrayed me—deserted me—gave him what she could never give me. She sent me my ring in a letter, said that she was sssorry! Well, I made them
sssorry
! Or so I thought. But now, in their place of waiting, still they have each other while I have nothing. And if they must wait for ever what does it matter to them? They don’t wait in misery and solitude like meeeee! Even now they make love, and I am the one who sufferssss!”

“
Blind hatred! Insane jealousy!
” Now, I can’t be sure that I said those words; it could be that I merely thought them. But in any case he “heard” my accusation. And:

“Be very careful, Mr. Stanaaard!” Carlisle snarled. “What, do you think to test me? In a place such as this? In this dangerous place?” His red lamp eyes drew me from the stone shoulder until I leaned out over a gulf of air. For a moment I was sure I would fall, until he said, “But no. Though I would doubtless take great pleasure in it, that would be a dreadful waste. For this is not my waiting place, and there’s that which you still must see. So come.” As easily as that, he drew me back…

We descended from Tumble Tor, but so terribly
quickly
that it was al-most as if we slid or slithered down from the heights. As before I was guided by Carlisle’s evil voice, until at last I stood on what should have been solid ground—except it felt as if I was still afloat, towed along in the wake of my dreadful host to the far side of the outcrop. But I made no inquiry with regard to our destination. This time I knew where we were going.

And off across the moor he strode or floated, myself close behind, moving in tandem, as if invisibly attached to him. Part of my mind acknowledged and accepted the ancient, mist-wreathed landscape: a real yet unreal place, as in a dream; that was the part in the grip of Simon Carlisle’s influence. But the rest of me knew I should be fighting this thing, struggling against the mental miasma. Also, for the first time, I felt I knew for sure the evil I’d come up against, even though I couldn’t yet fathom its interest in me.

“Ghosts,” I heard myself say. “You’re not real. Or you are—or you were—when you lived!”

Half turning, he looked back at me. “So finally you know,” he said. “And I ask myself: how is it possible that such a mind—as dull and unimaginative as yours—lives on corporeal and quick when one as sharp and as clear as mine is trapped in this place?”

“This place? Your place of waiting?”

“No, Mr. Stanaaard.” He pointed ahead. “Theirs! Mine lies on the other side of the tor, half way to the bald knoll where first I saw you and you saw me. You’ll know it when you see it: the mossesss, reedsss, and rushesss. But this place here: it’s theirsss! It’s where I killed them—where I’ve killed them a hundred times; ah, if only they could
feel
it! But no, they’re satisfied with their lot and no longer fear me. We are on different levels, you see. Me riding my loathing, and them lost in their lust.”

“Their love.” I contradicted him.

He turned on me and a knife was in his hand; its blade was long and glittering sharp. “That word is
poison
to meeee! Maybe I should have let you fall. How I wish I could have!”

Logic, so long absent from my mind, my being, returned however briefly. “You can’t hurt me. Not with a ghost knife.”

“Fool!” He answered. “The knife is not for you. And as for your invulnerability: we shall see. But look, we are there.”

Before us the place I had seen from Tumble Tor, the secret love nest surrounded by gorse and tall ferns; the lovers joined on their bed of layered clothing; Carlisle leaping ahead of me, his coat flapping, knife raised on high. The young man’s broad back was his target; the young woman’s half-shuttered eyes saw the madman as he fell upon them; the young man turned his head to look at his attacker—and amazingly,
he only smiled
!

The knife struck home, again and again. No blood, nothing. And Carlisle’s crazed howling like a distant storm in my ears. Done with his rival, he turned his knife on the girl. Deep into her right eye went the blade, into her left eye, her throat and bare breasts. But she only shook her head and sadly smiled. And her eyes and throat and breasts were mist; likewise her lover’s naked unmarked body: a drift of mist on the coarse empty grass.

“Ghosts!” I said again. “And this is their waiting place.”

Carlisle’s howling faded away, and panting like a mad dog he drifted to his feet and turned to me. “Did you see? And am I to be pitied? They pity me—for what they have and I haven’t! And I can’t
stand
to be here any longer. And you, Mr. Stanaaard—you are my elevation, and perhaps my salvation. For whatever place it is that lies beyond, it
must
be better than this place. Now come, and I shall show you
my
place of waiting.”

Danger! That part of me which knew how wrong this was also recognized the danger. Oh, I had known the precariousness of my position all along, but now the terror was tangible: this awful sensation of my soul shrinking inside me. I felt that I was now beyond hope. But before my fear could completely unman me, make me incapable of speech, there was something I must know. And so I asked the ghost, ghoul, creature who was leading me on, “What is…what
is
a place of waiting?”

“Ah, but that’s a secret!” he answered, as we drew closer to Tumble Tor. “Secret from the living, that is, but something that is known to all the dead. They wouldn’t tell you, not one of them, but since you will soon
be
one of them…”

“You intend to kill me?”

“Mr. Stanaaard, you are as good as dead! And then I shall move on.”

It began to make sense. “You…you’re stuck in your so-called waiting place until someone else dies there.”

“Ah, and so you’re awake at last! The waiting places are the places where we died. And there we must wait until someone else dies in the same place,
in the same way
! To that treacherous dog and his bitch back there, it makes no difference. They have all they want. But to me…I was only able to do what I do, to watch as I did in life, to hate with a hatred that will never die, and to
wait
, of course. Then you came along, trying to look beyond life, searching for someone who had moved on—and finding me.”

“I called you up,” I said, faintly.

“And I was waiting, and I was ready. Yessss!”

“But how shall you kill me? I won’t die of fright, not now that I know.”

“Oh, you won’t die by my insubstantial hand. But you will die of my doing, most definitely. Do you know that old saying, that you can lead a horse to water—”

“But you can’t make him drink?”

“That’s the one. Ah, but water is water and mire is mire.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, though I was beginning to.

“You will understand,” he promised me. “Ah, you will…”

Passing Tumble Tor, we started out across the low-lying ground toward the knoll. And in that region of my conscious mind which knew what was happening (while yet lacking even a small measure of control) I remembered something that Carlisle had said about his place of waiting:

“You’ll know it when you see it: the mossesss, reedsss and rushesss.”

“We’re very nearly there, aren’t we?” I said, more a statement of fact than a question. “The sphagnums and the rushes—”

“—And the mire, yessss!” he answered.

“The quagmire where you killed yourself, putting an end to your miserable life: that’s your place of waiting.”

“Killed myself?” He paused for a moment, stared at me with his blazing eyes. “Suicide? No, no—not I! Never! But after I killed
them
I was seen on the moor; a chance encounter, damn it to hell! And so I fled. I admit it: I fled the scene in a blind panic. But a mist came up—the selfsame mist you see now—and as surely as Satan had guided me to my deed, my revenge, so God or Fate led me astray, brought me shivering and stumbling here. Here where I sank in the mire and died, and here where I’ve had to wait…but no longer.”

We were halfway to the knoll and the mist was waist deep. But still I knew the place. Andrew Quarry had pointed it out on the occasion of our first meeting: the sphagnums and the reeds, pointers to mud that would suck my shoes off. But it now seemed he’d been wrong about that last. Right to avoid it but wrong in his estimation, for it was much deeper than that and would do a lot more than just suck my shoes off.

And it was there, lured on in the ghostly wake of Carlisle—as I stumbled and flailed my arms in a futile attempt to keep my balance, managing one more floundering step forward and wondering why I was in trouble while he drifted upright and secure—it was there that what little remained of my logical, sensible self took flight, leaving me wholly mazed and mired in the misted, sucking quag. 

Carlisle, this powerful ghost of a man, as solid to me now as any man of flesh and blood, stood and watched as it began to happen. His gaunt jaws agape, and his eyes burning red as coals in the heart of a fire, he laughed like a hound of hell. And as I threw myself flat on the mud to slow my sinking: “Murder!” he said, his voice as glutinous as the muck that quaked and sucked beneath me. “But what is that to me? You are my third, yes, but they can only hang a man once—and they can’t hang me at all! So down you go, Paul Stanaaard, into the damp and the dark. And with your passing I, too, shall pass into whatever waits beyond…while you lie here.”

It appeared I had retained at least a semblance of common-sense. Drawing my legs up and together against the downward tug of viscous filth, I threw my arms wide and my head back, making a crucifix of my body and limbs in order to further increase my buoyancy. Even so, the quag was already lapping the lobes of my ears, surging cold and slimy against my Adam’s apple, and smelling in my nostrils of drowned creatures and rotting foliage; in which position desperation loaned voice to what little of logic remained:

“But where are you bound?” I asked him, aware of the creeping mud. “Do you know? Do any of you know? What if your waiting places are a test? What if someone—God, if you like—what if
He
is also waiting, to see what you’ll do, or won’t do? What if this was your last chance to redeem yourself, and you’re throwing it away?”

“Do you think I haven’t—we haven’t—asked ourselves the very same questionsss?” he answered. “I have, a thousand times. But think on thisss: if the next place doesn’t suit me, I shall move on again by whatever means available. And again, and again…alwaysss.”

“Not if the next place is hell!” I told him. “Which I very much hope it is!”

“Wrong!” he said, and burst out laughing. “For my hell was here. And now it’s yoursss!”

I strained against the suction of the mud. I tried to will myself to stay afloat, but the filthy stuff was lapping my chin and surging in my ears, and I could feel my feet sinking, going down slowly but surely into the mire. Weeds tangled my hair and slime crept at the corners of my mouth; immobilized by mud, all I could do was gaze petrified at Carlisle where he stood like a demon god on the surface of the quag, howling his crazed laughter from jaws that gaped in a red-glowing Hallowe’en skull, his lank limbs wreathed in mist and rotten cloth.