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

Jenny turned in a slow circle, looking past the pine trees and her new house, imagining what lay beyond it all, trying to think of someplace, anyplace, she might run. A flutter of wings made her spin around and she stared at the single gull that alighted on the railing between her coffee mug and her cracked phone. It stared at her, black eyes yearning.

She left the gull there on the deck, left her coffee and her phone and went inside, drawing the sliding glass door closed behind her. The house breathed, quiet except for the crackling in the fireplace. The wood smoke gave the whole place the scent of autumn, reminding her of better days.

The metal screen curtain on the fireplace slid back easily. Jenny took the little iron ash shovel that hung with the tongs and poker, and she rested it on top of the burning logs. Crouched there, she waited while the iron grew hot, waited as her knees began to ache. When the first gull hit the slider, she didn’t flinch. It happened many times a day and she’d learned to ignore the sound. Her gaze shifted to her left forearm. Her sweater sleeve had slid down to cover the tattoo there and she slid it back up so that she could look at her father’s name and wonder how it had come to this. Had he been searching for the talisman or had he brought it up from the sea bottom with his net or a hook? Had he cut open a fish and found it inside?

It didn’t matter now, but still Jenny wondered.

The little hairs on her arm stood up and she shivered. Despite her nearness to the fire, or perhaps because of it, the ink on her right forearm felt icier than ever. The cold seemed almost to cut her, but she didn’t look at that triple spiral now, refused to glance at that symbol of the infinite sea despite the yearning in her.

Long minutes passed.

Another thump against the glass. Something scratched against it but she didn’t look. Jenny told herself it was just a gull, or maybe the first of the crabs to arrive.

She took the iron shovel from the fire with her left hand, stretched out her right and placed the flame-heated metal against the spiral tattoo. Hissing through her teeth, shuddering, she squeezed her eyes shut and kept the metal pressed there, as tightly as she could. The smell of searing flesh nearly made her retch and she went down on both knees, weeping silently as she fought the urge to take the shovel away.

At last she slumped to her side and let it fall from her hand. Breathing fast, almost hyperventilating, Jenny forced herself to look at the ruined skin. The tattoo had been cracked and blistered and reddened, but the ink showed through.

The cool solace of the sea slid up her arm, soothing the burn.

Jenny sat up and reached her left hand into the fireplace. She screamed as she grabbed the top log, cried out in agony as she dragged it out and pressed it to the spiral tattoo. Body rigid, she held it until her vision went dark and she slumped again to the floor.

The heat on her face brought her around. Her eyelids fluttered and she found herself staring at the still-burning log, bright embers glowing in the wood. It had landed on the tile between her body and the fireplace, and she knew the whole house could have gone up in flames. The idea did not terrify her the way it should have.

Her left hand sang with pain. Her right forearm screamed with it. Awkwardly, she shifted into a sitting position, cradling that left hand in her lap and the right arm across her knee. Full of dread, she braced herself to look down at the tattoo she’d worked so hard to destroy.

Even before she saw the wreckage there, saw the hideous, blackened, oozing flesh that would bear the scars of this day forever, she shuddered with relief. That peace she’d found had left her. The symbol had been burned away. No cool solace touched her skin.

Slumping, crying softly out of pain and gratitude, she found herself staring at the other tattoo. The one on the inside of her left arm. The one with her father’s name and the dates of his birth and death.

A terrible thought occurred to her.

The most terrible thought.

“No,” she whispered, launching shakily to her feet. “Oh, no.”

In agony from her burns, Jenny stumbled to the sliding glass door. With her good hand she dragged it open, then ran out onto the deck and down the stairs, ignoring her cracked phone and her coffee mug, noticing only that the gulls were gone.

“No,” she whispered as she turned at the bottom of the steps and ran down along the path between the pines.

If only she’d waited.

Heart thundering, left hand still cradled against her, she picked up speed, stumbled and nearly fell but managed to catch herself as she ran in the shadows of those trees. There were still crabs there, dozens of them, but they scurried away from her as she ran past them, disturbed by her presence. Searching for some comfort she could no longer provide.

At the dock, she paused a moment, staring out at the waves. Her burns throbbed, the pain only growing, and she felt as if they were still on fire.

Jenny strode out onto the dock, scanning the water for any sign.

“Daddy?” she called, quietly at first. Then again, louder, almost screaming.

She fell to her knees on the warped and weathered boards and stared out at the open sea.

It gave her no peace.

The sole condition Will Stevens set for letting me spend the night in the room with the skull was telling him everything it said.

My elderly neighbour was insistent about that. “Just be honest with me, Dave. I’ve lived with this for nearly three-quarters of my life. I need it put to rest.”

“I swear it. I need this put to rest too.”

Will stood in the doorway, a tall, weathered figure with a narrow face, pale eyes, strands of white hair combed in close against his own skull, wearing tan slacks, a cardigan over a white shirt. He was holding Solly, his big Persian cat, stroking it as he watched me settle in. “Well, I hope you’re comfortable,” he said. “I had Maggie set it up when she was here. My daughter comes by every day. Stays over on weekends when she can. She’d like closure about this too.”

“It looks great.”

A collapsible bed had been set up along the eastern wall of the small square tower room, with a side table with lamp, a digital clock, a decanter of water and a glass, a torch in case one was needed by a stranger in a strange house, even eye-shades since there were no curtains at the windows this high up. And, quaintest touch of all, there was a chamber pot.

“You know where the toilet is, Dave, but it’s a bit of a hike if you’re half asleep. You might prefer this.”

“Thanks, Will.”

“And, Dave, about the skull. I’ve slept here with it many times, all the good it did. Just don’t let it upset you. The whispering, I mean. I’ll believe whatever you tell me.”

“I’ll log it all in the notebook like I promised.”

“Thanks. And don’t mind if Solly joins you in the night. He sleeps wherever he wants. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

And that was it. Will had closed the door and headed for the staircase at the end of the landing that opened into both the modest square tower and the old Victorian mansion’s upper floor. I heard the stairlift whirring as it took him to his own digs at ground level.

I changed for bed as if I were in my own bedroom seven doors further along Abelard Street, eased between the covers as if it were my own bed, then checked the time.

It was 10:07 p.m. Same street. Pretty much the same night sounds through the half-open windows on all four sides: the same chirruping of insects; the occasional tock-tock of a frog in the front-yard pond; the sound of late traffic on Ryde Road; a plane on late approach to the airport on the other side of the city, way across these late-spring suburbs.