Christopher Fowler - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 10

But she said nothing.

And in the next moment, the water covered her head and she was gone.

I wasn’t aware that I’d fallen to my knees.

For a long, long time I just knelt there, staring out across the moonlit water, listening to the wind.

When dawn began to creep up behind me, I staggered to my feet and headed for the rough path that wound up the cliffs. My car was parked up there, crude oil smeared on the back seat.

I didn’t look back at the sea when I climbed into the car and headed home.

So there you have it.

End of story.

And all I have are the bad dreams and the unanswered questions. Was it Amy? Or was it something that only looked human when it wanted to, and could pretend to be anyone it wanted to be by reading minds? Was it my sister, a grown woman thirty years later? Or one of those whom Ulysses had heard, when he was lashed to the mast of his ship while his companions’ ears were filled with wax? In the darkest moments, I wonder if those who drown become what I saw and experienced that day.

Come let me taste your tears, she had said.

What did she find there that prevented her from doing what she was created to do?

Stay away from Deep Water. My sisters and I feed there.

Why did she spare me and warn me?

The beaches are clean again. I spend a lot of time down at Tynemouth, on the beach and looking out to sea. Usually at night. The water has a strange attraction for me. I know that one day soon, I’ll have to go out there, no matter what she said.

Tonight, I heard sounds across the dark water. That’s why I’ve written all of this down.

It sounded like whales, calling to each other.

But perhaps it was just another siren-song as the sisters moved through the deep.

They’ve demolished the swimming pool now. It was sealed and drained before the work could commence. No one expected what they found in there. It was the Captain of the Edda Dell’Orso and one of the crew. Sucked in through the sluices with the oil slick. They say their faces were eaten away by fish. Except that there were no living fish in that black morass.

So many unanswered questions.

And as much as I used to hate the song my sister sang, there are times when I stand on that beach in the moonlight and with the sea-wind coming in cold and harsh from the east, I pray with all my heart that I might hear it again. Sung in that strange, echoing voice.

Some day soon, I’ll find out whether it really did happen, or whether I’ve just lost my mind. I’ll hire a skip, and head for Deep Water. Maybe then, if she’s watching and she can still taste my tears, she’ll have to do what she refrained from doing that day.

I won’t be afraid, I won’t resist.

Because perhaps. just perhaps. I’ll have the answers to all those questions before the waters close over my head and I submit to her caress.

Kim Newman’s novels include The Night Mayor, Bad Dreams, Jago, The Quorum, Back in the USSA (with Eugene Byrne), Life’s Lottery, An English Ghost Story and his multiple award-winning epic historical vampire novel, Anno Dracula, plus its sequels The Bloody Red Baron and Judgment of Tears (aka Dracula Cha Cha Cha). A fourth book in the sequence is planned, titled Johnny Alucard.

His short fiction is collected in The Original Dr Shade and Other Stories, Famous Monsters and the forthcoming Seven Stars and Unforgivable Stories, while two recent chapbooks are Andy Warhol’s Dracula and Where the Bodies Are Buried. Recent non-fiction volumes from the author include Millennium Movies: End of the World Cinema and BFI Classics: Cat People.

Among the blessings of civilisation,” began Ernest Virtue, his shrewd glance passing over us, one by one, “can any be more profound and yet simple than oak paneling? Its humble stoutness, derived from the most English of trees, serves us as our forefathers were served by the blockstones of their castles. Observe the play of firelight upon the grain. Does it not seem like armour? In a room lined with oak panels, one is safe, shielded from all harm, insusceptible to all fear. If not for oak paneling, I would not have the fortitude to tell you this story.

“Wondrous indeed is it to plump oneself in a comfortably-stuffed leather armchair in the heart of a metropolis and find oneself at peace, the raucous sounds of the outside world muffled, the pestilential fogs of the capital banished. Add to the picture a roaring fire providing both light and warmth, the after-effects of a hearty meal, generous measures of fine old brandy and healthy infusions of pungent cigar smoke, and one might think oneself transported from the cares of the quotidian world to a higher realm even than that ruled over by our own dear Queen, God rest the soul of her beloved Prince Consort Albert. Without such an Elysian refuge, a man might be maddened by London. For this city is the most haunted place on Earth.”

In the club-room, the topic of the evening had turned to the beyond, and we were telling ghost stories. Colonel Beauregard had conjured the hill-spirits of far-off India, detailing the unhappy fate of a degenerate officer who meddled with the native women and incurred the wrath of a little brown priest. The Reverend Mr Weeks had countered with a story of phantoms in a ruined abbey on an abandoned isle in the Hebrides, and of an unwary delver after treasure driven out of his wits by an intelligence that seemed composed of creeping, writhing kelp.

We were pleasantly stirred from the torpor that follows a substantial meal, awakened by brandy and terror, thirsty perhaps for more of both.

I had not expected Virtue — Mr Ernest Meiklejohn Virtue, of the brokerage firm of Banning, Clinch and Virtue — to enter into the field and contribute a story. I had written him up for the illustrated press some months earlier and had formed the opinion that he was a man entirely of this world. Somewhat past middle age, with a barrel of a body and a generosity of grey whiskers about his chops to compensate for a growing expanse of baldness upon his dome, he was a man of substance. If not for the quality of his clothes, he might pass as an ageing prize-fighter or the chucker-out in a rowdy hostelry. It was said that many who confronted him on the floor of the Exchange yielded for fear that he would extend his financial attacks into the arena of physical assault. Needless to say, away from the bearpit of the stock market, he had a reputation as the most charitable and mild-mannered of souls.

“I have in these last months become victim to a particularly pernicious species of apparition,” Virtue continued. “Gentlemen, you see before you a man persecuted beyond endurance, persecuted by spectres.”

I drew in breath. From his solemn countenance, I could tell Virtue was not joshing us. The Colonel and the Reverend had passed on tales given them by colleagues who were themselves not the primary parties in the events recounted. Both had endeavoured, in the spirit of the thing as it were, to embroider, to add their own details, increasing the horripilating effects of their anecdotes. In comparison, Virtue seemed to offer the uncut, unpolished stone of experience.

Even in the warmth of the club-room, I felt a chill. The brandy I sipped stung my mouth.

“London is full of fog,” Virtue continued. “Sulphurous, clinging, lingering, choking fog. As you know, it makes the streets seem like river-beds and turns us all into bottom-crawlers, probing blindly, advancing step by step. A moment’s lapse of concentration and one is lost. All this is familiar to you. But I tell you there are creatures in the fog, unperceived by all but a few. These entities harbour a singular hostility, a resentment almost, for those of us who enjoy the comforts of the living.”