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

“…essssss-oarrrr…” The ocean slid away.

“What’s that?” I said, and moved the short distance to the skull, leant over it. “I don’t understand.”

“…essssss-oarrrr…” it said again, not even a foot from me, the force of it adding the sense of consonants it could not manage. And this time I was able to lay two fingers atop the cranium before it stopped sounding, felt a deep thrumming as it ebbed, like a real wave sliding back.

And understood.

Restore .

Spoke it, fingers still carefully in place. “Restore?”

“…eeeessssssssssssss…”

Which had to be “Yes.” And with the thrumming again, though quickly fading.

“Restore you where?” I asked, but knew the answer. “The room upstairs? Where you once were! Why up there?”

But nothing. Nothing now.

Just the night at the windows. The troubling image of those jaws spread wide, ready to bite.

Over breakfast, I asked if I could come back that night, not wait the whole week. Will was equally keen now he knew the skull had spoken.

What surprised him most was my request that we move both bed and skull to the floor above.

“You think that’s what ‘restore’ means?”

“Can’t say. But it used to be in the room above the one I’m in. Why was it brought down?”

“No idea. Mum or Dad would have done that, probably when my grandparents passed. This has been the family home for five generations.”

“Then your grandparents had it facing out like that. The way I saw it as a kid.”

“Can’t be sure. Why do you ask?”

“The dream before I woke. The skull was angry, Will. Fiercely angry. It wanted to bite.”

“You were open to suggestion, Dave. That talk about skull stories—”

“Just saying how it felt. Maybe they had it facing out for a reason. Otherwise why do that?”

“Frighten the local kids.”

I had to smile. “But it draws too much attention.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Put it back where it was. One floor up, right window facing out. Same angle, same height. I’ll carry the bed up now.”

“Maggie will be here around ten. You draw a quick sketch of how you remember it. We’ll do the rest.”

My darling Marta was good about it on the phone, asking a dozen questions about my new role as ghost-breaker for the neighbours and making me promise to keep her up to date on what developed. She admitted that she was being pressured to stay on as on-site consultant for the Quinn-Elliot mall project anyway.

After dinner, I locked the house and wandered along to 1A, but stood for a moment at the front gate admiring the modest but impressive two-storey Victorian mansion that had always been such a part of my life. In the last golden light of evening, I traced the line of the tower up from the front door to the room at the very top, below the railing and flagpole. There at the uppermost left window the skull sat in its old spot, just as I’d seen it all those years ago.

Right height, right angle now. Fiercely grinning as all complete skulls did. And facing northwest, I realized for the first time, given how Abelard Street was aligned.

Northwest. Such a simple thing to realize. Never watching me at all, really, rather scanning the horizon. The trees would have been smaller then, the view less obstructed.

It’s all about having a better view!

As I reached to unlatch the gate, I swung my gaze from the top floor down past the windows of the room I’d occupied the night before. There was something in the left-hand pane, I was certain, a smudge pressed to the glass like a thumb-print, indistinct but peering out. There may not have been eyes, but I’d been so taken with the skull that I easily imagined them.

I did an immediate double take, but there was nothing.

Just eye trickery then. Though another thought came. Ancient mischief.

After a final glance at the trickster skull looking down—no, out , northwest!—I went in to resume my vigil.

The uppermost tower room was identical to the one below it, but considerably less by way of a bedroom. My bed was there, the side table and lamp, all my things from the night before, even the chamber pot, but this room was still a storage space. Several cupboards and boxes had been pushed to the side, and the chamber needed a more thorough dusting than time had allowed.

The skull was perched at chest height on the edge of a narrow bookcase in the north-western corner, angled so it peered out the right-hand window just as depicted in my drawing. Maggie had done a great job.

Will and I spent a pleasant two hours at the spacious kitchen table enjoying the delicious casserole Maggie had left for us in the slow cooker and sharing a bottle of his vintage merlot. We talked about everything from his family’s extensive property holdings to his collection of limited editions of Poe and Edgar Rice Burroughs, anything but the skull waiting for me upstairs. We agreed that this was best, though it remained the unseen guest in the room.

I went up to bed at ten o’clock, making my way up into the tower wondering what new trials the night would bring, an odd way to think about it—burdens, trials—but that’s how it was. I read for a while, but soon fell into sleep so easily that I would later wonder if the skull played any part in that as well.

I was sure that it would wake me when the time was right.

Again it came on a dream—this time of a wild storm at sea, of waves crashing against a reef, great swells lifting and falling over hard stone ridges, beating themselves into vast swathes of whitewater and foam.

Lots of s ’s to make it easier, I told myself in the dream, self-aware as dreamers sometimes are.

At least there was no skull with jaws agape this time, just these ocean swells being torn into whitewater.

“Trial!” the word came, strikingly clear, known as much as heard.

No s ’s now, I told myself. The skull uses dreams for the words it cannot say!

“Trial!” it came again, above the wind-lashed breakwater of the reef.

I woke with a start, instantly aware that Solly had paid another visit and now sat perched upon my chest.

No, no, way too light for Solly!

I reached for the side light, pressed the switch, saw with a shock that the skull sat there, eye cavities staring, teeth grinning fiercely, rising and falling with every rapid breath.

I would’ve leapt up, but terror locked me in place, kept me there long enough for the silver glinting against lacquered bone to make me think: Fragile and Protect!

Will is doing this! I immediately thought. Or Maggie. How else could it move?

Then the sea came from inside the skull, rushing as it had the previous night.

“…sssssssssssssssss…”

With words carried along, nothing as hard to say as “trial.”

“…see-venssss-eyessss… see-venssss-eyessss…”

It couldn’t say “Will.” Like “trial,” that name was too much.

Stevens lies!

Could it be?

And more.

“…or-essssss… or-essssss… or-essssss…”

The silver on the cheekbones glinted. The rounded hollows where eyes once sat stared, fully lit. I could see the small holes at the back where the nerves and blood vessels had gone in, was more aware than ever that this was the setting for the jewel of the person it had once carried, someone’s only life.