The Thing on the Shore (28 page)

He looked around him. All of the fishermen had gone.
Those oppressive clouds were now more or less overhead. Even as he looked up, the first few drops of rain hit his skin like they'd been spat. These were raindrops falling from a great height. A
phenomenal
height.

When he looked back, the horrendous being was now perched just on the edge of the pier. Its eyes were visible. They were far too large. It was not a natural thing. It was too much. It was too wrong.

Arthur turned around, and as he did so, he saw that there was another one. Another of the massive bastards. Not directly behind him, but just to his left, as he stood with his back to the first. As if it had climbed up the side of the pier that had been to his right when he was sitting down. It was easily distinguishable from the first, having only one claw, but it was slightly larger. It didn't look injured, though. Just … different. It was as if, whatever species of thing these were, every specimen of it could be different. As if they hadn't all evolved to turn out the same.

Arthur ran toward the second one and booted it square in its horribly over-active mouth. It rattled backward, squealing, and over the side, splashing into the water beneath. From behind him the first of the monsters made that sickening coughing sound, and Arthur could hear it running toward him. He ran in the same direction, and found, thankfully, that he was faster.

Why was there nobody else around?

Once he'd put some distance between him and his nightmarish pursuer, Arthur turned. He thought about it and
then went back—started running back toward it. Because it had been visible for longer, and he had longer to think about it, he felt much more squeamish than he did with the other one. He'd had longer to let the revulsion in his body build up until he almost felt like he was going to stop running completely. But no, he reached the thing and kicked it hard, the sharp toe of his work shoe crunching into the space between its two—
panicked?!
—eyes. The crab, or whatever it was, flipped over, and … and, God, that mind-fucking
sound
, the
voice
, that hellish fucking
voice.
It babbled, the thing babbled. It was like … it wasn't like the sound any animal makes. It was like it was talking, like a human, but in another language. Arthur didn't attempt to understand, though. He just closed his eyes and stamped. He held his arms up high for some reason, and he kept his eyes closed and his mouth tightly shut as well, just in case some kind of fluid escaped and splattered on to his face. All the while, the thing spoke. Arthur carried on stamping, though. He could feel its legs clawing, twitching and spasming against his own.

Once he thought it had stopped moving, he opened his eyes and looked up at the sky. The rain was torrential, but he hadn't noticed it develop from those first few drops. It was the kind of rain that's so heavy you can't hear much else. Arthur had previously been able to hear the creature, but that was it. Now the only sound was the rain. He looked down at what he'd done.

Really, the underside of the thing was not remarkable. It did look like the underbelly of a crab, albeit a very large
one. Pale green with lots of chitin connecting and interlocking. The size of it made Arthur shudder and look away again for a while. It was like a huge dead hand lying there, palm facing upward.

Arthur knew that he should turn it over and try to establish what the creature was. Try to establish that it was, in fact, just a large crab. But he couldn't. He couldn't bring himself to prove that there was nothing wrong, just in case there
was
something wrong.

What the fuck was wrong with him? The Scape, then his red eye, and now—now this. And what was he doing out here, anyway—trying to somehow find some peace with his mum? She was dead.

He was as bad as his dad. He was turning into his dad.

The rain was roaring now. The sound was aggressive and muscular.

Arthur used his foot to push the now dead thing toward the edge of the pier, its ugly limbs snagging in the pitted stone surface. His shirt and lightweight coat stuck to his skinny frame. Finally, eventually, he gave the monster one last shove, and it slumped over the edge.

There was one person he now needed to talk to before anybody else: his father.

It was only when he was nearly home, walking along the road where he lived, in fact, that he started to wonder if any of those creatures had emerged from the sea while he wasn't around. If so, where had they gone?

Or … were they only drawn to him?

Yasmin got on the train at Whitehaven in a metallic, cloud-warped sunlight. The train plunged into the Bransty Tunnel immediately after the Whitehaven station platform, and by the time it shot out the other end the rain was torrential.

As usual, when it stopped at Sellafield, the train filled up with noisy commuters chatting and laughing.
Maybe I could get a job at Sellafield
, Yasmin thought.
I really don't know what else to do.

She was the only person to get off the train at Drigg. As soon as she did so she was soaked. The sky above was black. She ran from the platform out on to the small road, and then continued down the middle of it—there were no cars—and away from the railway, away from the level crossing, heading toward Bony's house. Trust her to be wearing such a flimsy dress on a day like this. It was dark blue, mind, with a pattern of tiny red and yellow flowers, so she didn't look indecent, but still. The long, lightweight
white cardigan she wore above it was as protective as tissue paper now. She hammered on Bony's door until he answered, which he didn't do nearly quickly enough.

“Yasmin?” he said, frowning at her. “You OK? Something wrong?”

“It's raining!”

Bony looked up at the sky, and then all around. “So it is,” he said, and stepped back to let her in. “Hope you didn't get too wet.”

They sat in Bony's living room, which—compared to other rooms in his house—was quite sparse. There was a sofa, a small coffee table, a big TV on a stand crammed with various consoles, and some shelves full of video-game boxes, DVDs and books. The floor was bare wood, without carpet or rugs. The walls were white. The windows were huge, with French doors leading on to a small patio at the rear, but there was so little light outside now that the blinds were drawn and the lights turned on. Yasmin knew that Bony was weirdly anal about keeping this room tidy; whenever they visited him, he would pick up any rubbish or empty mugs and take them through to the kitchen immediately, rather than wait to clear everything up later, in one go.

They each soon had a steaming mug sitting on the coffee table, and the room felt warm and safe. Yasmin felt she could just rest here, if she let herself—just sit back and rest. It was a restful place.

“These emails,” Bony began.

“Yes.”

“I haven't read them yet, but how did you send them to me?”

“I sent them from Artemis's own laptop to my personal email address. Then I used my phone to forward them to you.”

“Oh, right.” Bony nodded. “And Arthur's OK?”

“I don't know,” Yasmin said. “I don't even know where he is.”

“They'll have made sure he's OK, though, if they took him away?”

“You would think so, wouldn't you?” Yasmin said. She looked at Bony with eyes wide.

“Well, I would think so, yeah.”

“I tried to ring his mobile, but couldn't get through,” Yasmin said. “Otherwise I'd have told him where we are.”

“Let's ring his home number now, before anything else,” Bony said. “We can speak to him or leave a message.”

Bony reached for his mobile, which lay on the coffee table, and dialed one of the only two numbers he knew by heart. He put the phone on loudspeaker and then held it to his ear. It rang for about half a minute, before there was a click and somebody answered.

“Rebecca?” said a small, fearful voice. “Is that you?”

Bony and Yasmin looked at each other and winced.

“Harry,” Bony said. “Hi, it's—”

But Harry had already hung up.

“Harry's phone calls are something to do with all of this,” Yasmin said, “but I can't work it out.”

“With all of what?” Bony asked. “Arthur passing out?”

“Yeah.” Yasmin bit her lip. “Bony, Arthur came round the other night … God, it was only last night. Anyway, he came round to talk about that vision he'd had.”

“Oh, right,” Bony said. He nodded. “Did he tell you he fancies you?”

“
What?
” Yasmin exclaimed.

“What?” Bony said, jumping at her sudden sharp tone and looking behind him. “You mean he didn't?”

“No! And I'm sure he doesn't.”

“Well, he does and I thought he would have said something. I would have thought that's why he came round.”

“Can we stay on topic, please?”

“Yeah, sure. Sorry … I just. Well, I think it's better that you know, anyway.”

“I can't believe you just told me that,” Yasmin shook her head. “Something like that's probably a big deal for Arthur.”

“So you do believe me, then?”

“Shut up!”

“To be honest I think it's hard to know what's a big deal for Arthur, and what's not. He's hard to work out.”

“He's not the only one.”

“Yeah,” Bony nodded. “That's true.”

“Anyway.”

“Anyway.”

“I think Arthur's really found something out. I'm starting to believe him.”

“Shall I put some music on?”

“Will you
listen
to me, you big, fucking …
prick
?” Yasmin shouted, throwing her hands up in the air and tensing her fingers into claws.

Bony eyed her quite calmly. “I
am
listening,” he said, “but I'm going to put some music on. For some reason I'm starting to feel a bit nervous, and some music will help diffuse that nervousness. I'm sorry if it looked like I wasn't listening.” He stood up and went over to the TV, which he turned on. “Please,” he said, looking back at Yasmin. “I'm sorry. Carry on with what you were telling me.” He knelt down and found a CD, which he slid into one of the consoles.

“Well, as I was saying, Arthur came round the other night—last night—and we were talking about his vision, and … what's this?”

“It's the Lady Gaga album,” Bony said. “
Fame Monster.
”

“Oh, Bony,” Yasmin laughed, “you are such a freak.”

“It's been said,” Bony said, grinning at her.

“The gist of it was, I think, that Arthur believes there is a landscape—some kind of landscape—in the telephone system. Not actually
inside
the system, because he kept talking about an interstice, like … like when you ring somebody up, their voice isn't where they are, and yet they are not where you are, but you are both communicating somewhere … somewhere else, somewhere in between. In that place, that somewhere else—that's where he's talking about.”

“In the wires,” Bony suggested.

“I'm not sure.”

“Well, that's where the voices are.”

“Maybe, then.”

“But you can't fit a whole other world inside the wires. What's he on about?”

“I don't know if I'm explaining it very well.”

Yasmin and Bony were both standing now, although neither had been aware of getting up.

“You know how it is when you're at work, and you start to forget where you are?” Yasmin said. “You even start to forget that you're there at all, that you have a physical presence. You become this thing that only exists in the phone call. And then there's this
space
—there has to be, if you think about it—that all of these telephones access, where all of those signals exist.”

“I'm not sure,” Bony said. “I still think he might be losing it.”

“Really?”

Bony looked at her very seriously. “Don't you?” he asked. “I mean, look at Harry.”

Yasmin didn't say anything. Instead, she sat back down. Neither of them spoke for a moment.

Then Yasmin clicked her fingers and stood up again. “Bill Viola!” she exclaimed.

“The artist?”

“You're full of surprises, Bony,” Yasmin said. “Yeah, the artist. He talked, in an interview, about another world—something to do with shared spaces, empty spaces, blank spaces. Something to do with there being no horizon.”

“Something to do with perception, too,” Bony said.
“Something to do with … like
The Matrix
, you know? The world as we know it is created by our perception of it, but it might actually be very different.”

“Yes! So, what if Arthur just saw, for want of a better word, this Scape—that's what he calls it—through some other input?”

“Through the phone?” Bony looked puzzled for a moment, and then laughed. “He saw it through his ears!”

Yasmin laughed at that, too, and then grimaced. “Oh, I don't know,” she said.

They fell into silence again, and both sat back down.

“Let's have a look at these emails,” Bony said, after they spent a short time finishing off their now cooling coffee.

Bony left the room and returned with his laptop, dragging a power cable behind him.

“I've just remembered something,” he said, as he plugged the machine in. “Talking about Bill Viola reminded me. Nu.”

“What?”

“Nu. It's from Ancient Egyptian mythology: Nu or Nun.” He pronounced the word as “noon.” “It's an abyss or a void, a place with no horizons. It surrounded the whole of existence, and you could access it in places where there were no edges. If you were deep underwater, say, and everything all around you looked the same, or if you were in a cave and there was absolutely no light, you could find yourself in the abyss. Nu itself was a deity; the abyss was a being. The same abyss that Aleister Crowley used to
claim he could communicate with, or summon from.”