Саймон Бествик - The Devil and the Deep - Horror Stories of the Sea

Jenny had wanted to be polite but only barely stopped herself from telling Aunt Eleanor and her tax attorney son to go fuck themselves. Maybe down the line, when Jenny could clear her head, she’d realize she ought to dig through her father’s things and mail some keepsake or other to Eleanor, but as she began to go through the old man’s belongings, she found nothing her aunt deserved. Not that there was much to choose from. The boat still had a loan and would need to be sold. The house, though—she’d grown up in it, and so had her father. The taxes were nothing to sneeze at, but it had no mortgage, and she was grateful for that. Over the years he’d gone through very lean times, but Tom Leary had never given in to the temptation to take the money out of the house. There’d be an official reading of his will and it would have to go through probate, but she knew what was in it. Whatever he’d had would come to her.

All of these things were swirling in her mind as she parked her car outside the Whale’s Tale, a pub that looked over the harbor. As she climbed out, her shoes crunching in the gravel, the tattoo on her right arm felt strangely cold, as if it were winter instead of early fall. She slammed the car door and shivered despite the sweater she wore. She turned her wrist to stare at the tattoo on the inside of her forearm. It looked just as it had before and she felt foolish, wondering what she had expected.

Jenny took the walkway next to the restaurant—the main entrance opened onto a wooden boardwalk facing the harbor. She scanned the handful of people seated on the outside deck in spite of the chill and wondered if her lunch date would have opted for inside. It was comfortable for September, but the sky hung low and the clouds promised rain. She wished Matt had been her lunch date—he’d been so kind and attentive since her father’s death that she wondered if they might start over—but instead she was meeting with Rudy Harbard, who’d been one of her dad’s competitors and wanted to buy the Black Rose . They’d never liked each other much, Dad and Rudy, but Tom Leary had always respected the man.

As she stepped onto the boardwalk, Jenny inhaled deeply. The smell of the ocean, the sound of it, filled her heart. She glanced out at the water, at the boats bobbing out there, at the men working on their decks, and she longed to be with them. For a moment the idea of selling the fishing boat felt so wrong that she couldn’t take another step. She had always loved the sea, but now she felt a yearning so deep her bones sang with it. If she sold the boat—

A flash of white and gray whipped past her face. The gull cried out as it struck her right arm. She felt its claws but its momentum carried it past her and she twisted away from it. The bird alighted on the boardwalk, sending several people scurrying out of its path. Jenny glanced down at her arm, saw the small trickle of blood there, and then stared at the bird.

“You little shit,” she said. “You’re in for a kicking.”

She marched toward the bird, expecting it to hop backward or fly away, but instead it came toward her. A shiver went through her. Jenny heard another cry and looked up to see other gulls alighting on the little fence outside the restaurant’s porch and on top of a trashcan on the boardwalk.

A man touched her back. Startled, she jerked away from him, feeling as if she were under attack. The gull hopped closer.

“Let me help you,” he said, so calmly that he almost seemed to be sleepwalking. Maybe fifty years old, handsome and tan but leathery from a lifetime in the sun, he stared at Jenny as if he’d never seen another human being before, studying her as if to decipher some puzzle she represented to him.

“If you want to help—” she started.

The first gull cawed and took flight, right toward her. The leathery man dragged Jenny into a protective embrace. The bird might have struck him, she wasn’t sure, but then he turned and shooed it away. A toddler carrying an ice cream cone shrieked as the bird zipped over her head. Two other gulls jumped down to the boardwalk, and the leathery man shooed them away as well.

Over a dozen passersby had paused to become spectators, not including the people on the deck of the Whale’s Tale who were observing the show. Several of them, Jenny saw, were focused on her instead of the weirdness going down. One woman had her head tilted, her mouth slightly open, as if she’d taken the world’s best drugs. Jenny felt her skin crawling with the attention.

The man with the toddler—her father, she assumed—abandoned his child and walked toward her, scrutinizing her in a way that reminded her of a hundred showing-up-naked-at-school nightmares.

“Hey,” he said softly as he approached. “You. I need… I want…” He blinked and crinkled his brow like a flicker of common sense had tried to push into his forebrain. Then he shook his head. “What are you? Why do I want to—”

Leathery guy grabbed him from behind and slung him away. The quiet man almost tripped over his own toddler, startling the girl into letting her ice cream drop from the cone. She stared down at the strawberry glob on the boardwalk and her lip trembled, and then she started to cry.

The little girl’s sobs drew everyone’s attention. Even those who’d seemed somehow mesmerized were distracted long enough for Jenny to rush to the hostess stand. The fiftyish brunette had been watching the whole thing unfold and she frowned with maternal worry as she escorted Jenny straight to the restaurant’s entrance.

“Come inside, honey,” the brunette said. “We can call the cops—”

The tattoo on her right forearm prickled with the cold, as if the ink had turned to ice on her skin, and Jenny rubbed at it to try to drive that chill away.

“It’s okay. I don’t need… it was just—”

“Fuckin’ peculiar is what it was,” the hostess said with a glance over her shoulder. She dragged open the door, put her free hand on the small of Jenny’s back, and gently guided her inside. “Have yourself a drink, at least. Take a breath. I’ll let you know when those guys are gone.”

“I’m supposed to meet someone,” Jenny started to say, as the door swung closed behind them.

The crack of impact made her cry out as she and the hostess grabbed hold of one another. Jenny spun, backing away, staring at the spider-web pattern splintered into the door and the smear of blood streaking the glass. Through the clear, unbroken glass toward the bottom of the door, they could see the seagull that had just killed itself trying to reach her.

“What the hell?” the hostess whispered.

She glanced at Jenny and for the first time that maternal concern vanished. Instead, the woman took a step away, as if to move out of the line of fire, in case of whatever came next. Resentment kindled in Jenny’s chest, mingling with anger and wonder and a kind of helplessness she’d never felt before. She stared at the hostess, infuriated by the idea that the woman was afraid to come near her.

Later, she would remember that moment and wish that she could make everyone as hesitant to approach her as the hostess had been.

Over the following days, it escalated quickly. Everywhere she went there were men and women who looked at her too long, watched her too closely. Not everyone—whatever the allure, it wasn’t universal—but enough to make her increasingly uncomfortable. Even small children rushed to invade her personal space. Out for a morning run, Jenny encountered Emma Brill, a friend from high school, who’d been walking her infant son in one of those fancy jogger-strollers. The moment the boy saw Jenny, he’d begun to cry, stretching his arms toward her as if desperate to be held. As if Jenny were his mother instead of Emma. For a few minutes, Jenny complied, just so she and Emma could continue their conversation—though it consisted of the same beats as most of her recent conversations, full of condolences and shared memories.