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

George’s phone buzzes in his pocket. A cold, salty gust pushes in off the gulf as he draws the phone from his jacket. He sneers at what he finds on the screen.

“Eugie has started calling again.”

“I thought she insisted all communications go through your lawyers?”

“Apparently, that only applies to me.” George knocks his head against mine again. “She’s getting nearly everything. I can’t imagine what she wants now. But we’re going to be living on peanut butter sandwiches if this keeps up.”

“We discussed this,” I say.

“I know, sweetheart. It’s just going to take some adjustment.”

“We’ll be fine,” I say.

He slides around in front of me and kisses me hard on the mouth. “I know that.”

We continue along the beach, and George barks out a startling laugh. “God, I almost forgot the smell.”

“Eugie’s smell?” I ask.

“No, though I could tell you stories.”

“Please don’t.”

“No, I mean the globster. Jesus, I’ve never encountered anything so rank in my life. It was like someone made a gas out of fish rot and seaweed and bombed the entire beach with it. I had to have been twenty yards away from the thing, and the shit got in my throat. I gagged half the afternoon.”

I released a grumble of distaste.

“Didn’t bother the mosquitoes any. The little bastards were everywhere.”

George likes to swear. Eugie had forbidden it. For thirty-two years, “darn” and “gosh” were the expletives Eugie allowed her husband. Now, he showers the world in vulgarities: another freedom of which he takes full advantage.

Without invitation, George’s son entered the apartment. He tromped through the living room like it was a hotel lobby. His presence struck me as wholly wrong. He didn’t belong among George’s things, among our things. This place was a sanctuary, and Barry was a marauding force.

He’d been calling for a week, ever since the reading of his father’s will. I had no interest in speaking with him. George had told me enough about his son, about the privileged boy who could never quite make life work for himself, to know we’d clash. I’d endured his sneers in the lawyer’s office, along with the glares of disgust from his mother. A chasm of status and finance had separated me from this aggressive tribe, but even gone, George remained a bridge, spanning the gap.

“Why are you here?” I asked.

“I told you, we need to talk about my dad.”

“What’s left to say?” I asked.

He knew what had happened to George. Everyone knew.

Barry walked to the table by the window and lifted the set of keys.

“Are you going to sell the place?” he asked.

“Who’d buy it? The Gulf Coast is a ghost town. People have been evacuating since… that night. I’ve alerted the bank that George is deceased. They’ll take it over and claim a loss with the government.”

“Where are you going to live?”

“Far from here.”

Barry crossed to the bedroom and pushed open the door. He stepped over the threshold and then stepped back.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I asked, outraged.

“Just wanted to see the place,” he said. “Dad never had me over. Not once. That’s not right. A family all split up like that. It’s a nasty thing. Bad business, all of it. I’ve stopped by a few times this week. You were never here, or you weren’t answering the door. Whatever. Just wanted to see it. It’s not bad.”

“The bank would probably give you a good deal on it.”

He chuckled. “Nah. My wife and I moved in with Mom. Beautiful house. Incredible house. My boyhood home. Of course, Mom’s under a lot of stress right now. Real bad. Dad’s will was a shock to her. To everyone, really.”

George had left substantial assets to me. One evening after we’d first moved in together, he’d set me on the sofa and performed a presentation, regarding the contents of his will, as if he were attempting to sell the proposal to a board of directors. The numbers shocked me, as they represented a financial security I’d never imagined, but even before George delivered the caveat-“The divorce is going to change all of these numbers dramatically.”-I recognized his bequest, while sweet, was fundamentally symbolic. He wanted to show me how important I was to his life.

Even so, he’d been a responsible man. A good man. He hadn’t been neglectful of his family.

“He accounted for both of you in his will. In fact, he was extremely generous.”

“I’d expect you to see it that way. Of course you would.” Barry’s tone was critical. It was harsh, and more than ever, I wanted him out of George’s home.

I wake in the early morning hours, startled and terrified to find George bent over my side of the bed. His face hovers a few inches from mine, and from his throat, a guttural and explosive chant emerges as if he is denouncing me in a violent foreign language. I roll away to George’s side of the bed. The sheets press too hot against my skin. His attention follows. Blank eyes. Hardened expression. Growling and grinding words that have no place in civilized language. I say his name. Shout it. Beg him to snap out of whatever nightmare he is attempting to vocalize, but the chant continues for another full minute.

Then, his posture changes, and he is standing tall and rigid. His arms rise above his head as if he’s celebrating a touchdown and his feet stamp–left, right, left, left, right.

By the time his eyes clear and his face slackens, I am in tears. I don’t know if this is a stroke or dementia or some mental instability that stress has ignited, but it scares the hell out of me.

His eyes grow focused. His features soften. He stands upright and scratches the back of his head and says, “Hey, that’s my side of the bed.”

I didn’t want to talk about George’s estate, not with his son. George had made his last wishes clear. Even his lawyer, who was not above editorializing–making his own displeasure with George’s late-in-life behavior known through head shakes, shrugs, and shaded provisos–admitted that the will was a binding document. Though he did comfort Barry Caldwell and his mother with the word “Contest,” on more than one occasion.

“When did Dad get sick?” Barry asked.

“About a month before… before the beach,” I said.

“So, he spent a month just dancing around this place?”

“That’s not how the virus works,” I said, wishing I could think of a chore to accomplish, so that I could busy myself rather than stand before Barry’s arrogant gaze. But I’d already packed everything of value, at least everything I valued. Despite a compulsion to throw the man out on his ass, I didn’t. He’d been tracking me with a purpose, and until I knew what it was and how to address that purpose, I’d endure him. “It was sporadic. I only saw George in seizure a couple of times.”

Barry retraced his steps to the bedroom and then paused by the fireplace. He looked at the pattern of wrought iron vines on the screen and the mesh wires joining them. Then his head cocked to the side so he could peer at the bedroom door. “And you’re not worried?” he asked.

“Worried? What more could happen?”

“I’d be worried. I’d be shitting myself. You could have caught it.”

“It’s not a cold, Barry.”

“Yeah, but they’re saying it can be sexually transmitted, right? A bunch of reports. Lots of ’em. They’re coming out all the time.”